Neo-liberalism and educational reform in Latin America

Abstract

A review of the policies promoted hemispherically to reform education shows a clear congruence with the explicit objectives and policies of neoliberal economic programs. Consistently, regional analyses produced by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) identify the following problems confronting educational systems: lack of responsiveness to changing labor markets; disproportionate allocation of resources to higher education; large, centralized ministries; powerful and well-organized teachers unions that resist reform and decentralization; lack of local autonomy for school managers; lack of parental choice; inefficient administration manifest as lower-than-necessary student-teacher ratios and unnecessary administrative staff; and the sorry state of the teaching profession in Latin America (Inter-American Development Bank 1996; [Jeffrey Puryear] 1997). This diagnosis of the shortcomings of educational systems in the region then leads to a series of policy prescriptions that conforms closely to overarching neoliberal economic policies. In its 1996 report, Social and Economic Progress in Latin America, the Inter-American Development Bank assigns priority to questions of organizational structure in education, and employs neoliberal analysis and policy prescriptions quite explicitly (Inter-American Development Bank 1996, 288). The increasingly dissatisfied assessment of public education hardly mentions cuts in the education budgets over the years as the most probable cause of educational deficits. Instead, the report recommends drawing the sector into the sphere of commercial production and consumption, using the very operational principles that have accentuated poverty and deprivation. This political cul-de-sac is finessed, however, by identifying other forces as responsible for the shortcomings of Latin America's public schools and lack of opportunity in its economies. Two actors in the educational process are singled out by the IDB: the fiscally undisciplined state and the teachers' unions. 3 Between the unions and successive permissive governments, according to the IDB, the educational sector has absorbed vast public resources without providing an adequate education, even at the primary level. This financial waste persists because of a lack of competition, and is to be resolved through decentralization of administration and financing, centralization of curriculum control and assessment measures, and fortified links between schools and the labor market. This program is what Michael Apple refers to as neoconservative pedagogy and curriculum, and neoliberal financing and purpose (Apple 1999). The report suggests that teachers and the public service in general are failures, and that "innovations" in education must be developed. Ironically, although the programs are best suited to the U.S. middle class, when this class expresses its opinion politically, it has consistently rejected both voucher programs and national educational standards. Public education has served the middle class well in the United States, and vouchers threaten to fracture it and drain away financial resources. In Latin America, however, where indebtedness to the multilateral banks continues to constitute a determining factor in defining social policies, adoption and implementation of this entire project are underway, with varying degrees of resistance. For example, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Chile, and El Salvador are conducting joint studies of their targeted programs in basic education for the purpose of evaluating them and replicating them on an international scale. Governments in Mexico, Argentina, and Ecuador have made repeated efforts to introduce fees into public institutions for higher education. In Chile, one-third of schools are now private voucher schools. The MERCOSUR countries have adopted a common curriculum for secondary technical-vocational education and are designing regional assessment standards. Argentina has decentralized educational financing and administration.