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Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1. All Human beings are free and equal in dignity and rights.
2. All people are entitled to rights without distinction based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, opinion, origin, property, birth or residency.
3. Right to life liberty and security of person
4. Freedom from slavery.
5. Freedom from torture.
6. Right to be treated equally by the law.
7. Right to equal protection by the law.
8. Right for all to effective remedy by competent tribunal.
9. Freedom from arbitrary arrest.
10. Right to fair public hearing by Independent tribunal.
11. Right to presumption of innocence until proven guilty at public trial with all guarantees necessary for defence.
12. Right to privacy in home, family and correspondence.
13. Freedom of movement in your own country and the right to leave and return to any countries.
14. Right to political asylum in other countries.
15. Right to nationality.
16. Right to marriage and family and to equal right of men and women during and after marriage.
17. Right to own property.
18. Freedom of thought and conscience and religion.
19. Freedom of opinion and expression and to seek, receive and impart information.
20. Freedom of Association and assembly.
21. Right to take part in and select government.
22. Right to social security and realisation of economic, social and cultural rights.
23. Right to work, to equal pay for equal work and to form and join trade unions.
24. Right to reasonable hours of work and paid holidays.
25. Right to adequate living standard for self and family, including food, housing, clothing, medical care and social security.
26. Right to education.
27. Right to participate in cultural life and to protect intellectual property rights.
28. Right to social and international order permitting these freedoms to be realized.
29. Each person has responsibilities to the community and others as essential for a democratic society.
30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms ser forth herein.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Report on Martin Carnoy's Globalization and Educational Reform: What Planners Need to Know
In Globalization and educational reform: What planners need to know, a 1999 UNESCO publication, Carnoy explains globalization and how it has affected education reforms. His primary point is that since globalization has been dominated by financial-driven strategies and free-market ideologies, less has been spent on education instead of more, and this has been counter-productive, not only to education, but also to the nation-states' ability to function effectively in the global market.
In sum, Carnoy suggests that globalization can be and should be embraced, but some of the ideological rhetoric of finance-driven reforms should be resisted. Other reforms, however, such as decentralization, testing and standards, can work as long as there is a coherent and systemic effort by the public sector that produces more and more effective public spending.
Following is a more detailed summary of the book's seven sections.
Part I considers what globalization is. Carnoy argues that it is not merely a matter of trade, investment, or national economy, but a "new way of thinking about social space and time". This occurs because the new information and communication technologies have redefined distance and time. On the one hand, Carnoy argues, this diminishes the power of the nation-state by producing new social movements and networks. On the other hand, this does not diminish the power of the nation-state in that ultimately, nations-states still influence "the temporal space in which capital has to invest and where most people acquire their capacity to act globally". Intriguingly, Carnoy makes the point that schools can become centers of new communities built around information and knowledge.
Part II considers the impact of globalization on work. In terms of education, his essential point is that while new information technology may displace workers and may influence short-term training and investments, that does not negate the essential fact that the new labor markets are increasingly information intensive, flexible, and disaggregative--and that our educational strategies should take that into account.
Part III considers globalization's impact on educational reform strategies. Here, Carnoy argues that changes in the world economy have provoked three kinds of reforms in education: (1) competitiveness-driven reforms, (2) finance-driven reforms, and (3) equity-driven reforms.
1. Competitiveness-driven reforms aim to improve economic productivity by improving the quality of labor, even if this means spending more on education such as higher teacher salaries and expansion of educational levels. These types of reforms can be classified into four categories: (1) Decentralization, where local municipalities and schools are given greater autonomy in decision-making, (2) Standards, where some central authority gives clear signals to the community the academic expectations of schools, and (3) improved management of resources, such as universalizing access to schoolbooks, peer-tutoring, and utilizing communications technologies. and (4) improved teacher recruitment and training.
2. Finance-driven reforms have the primary goal of reducing public spending on education and are promoted by such international agencies of the IMF and the World Bank. Carnoy see three main finance driven reforms:
• shifting public funding from higher to lower levels of education, since higher education costs more and basic education costs less
• privatizing secondary and higher education
• reducing cost per student at all levels, which includes increasing pupil/student ratio
3. Equity-driven reforms, where the primary goal is to increase equality of economic opportunity. Here, Carnoy argues that globalization tends to push governments away from these types of reforms since (a) there is a better pay-of for higher-level skills over the lower-level skills and (b) finance-driven reforms tend to dominate educational change, and those reforms tend to increase inequity in education services.
Part IV discusses educational reforms in the global economy. Here, Carnoy argues that how governments respond to globalization depends on three key factors: "their objective financial situation, their interpretation of that situation, and their ideological position regarding the role of the public sector in education". After explaining the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s-90s, he notes that when the IMF and World bank were called upon to help relieve the debt problem, they imposed a set of "structural adjustment policies (SAPs)" that reflected a neo-conservative paradigm.
In this section, Carnoy cites empirical studies that have shown the ineffectiveness of most reforms. For instance:
• studies show that the neo-conservative policies promoted by the WorldBank and IMF are associated with increased poverty, increased inequality and slow or negative economic growth; these financial reforms have actually served to limit public resources for education
• decentralization and school autonomy movements have also been unsuccessful in producing any significant student achievement gains.
• privatizing education through vouchers has led to increased inequality of educational outcomes and does not in itself improve student performance
In discussing reforms, specifically in Latin America, Carnoy notes that what has worked has been the reforms instituted by Chile, where the central Ministry has intervened and provided new materials and teacher training to the lowest-performing schools.
Carnoy discusses decentralization in some detail and notes how globalization has usually been accompanied by a free market ideology, in which financial austerity is a condition of economic progress. According to Carnoy, the motives for educational reform have been essentially financial and ideological not, really, educational. Such reforms have actually increased pressure on teacher salaries and, as a consequence, have produced resistance in those most central to education improvement. Carnoy argues that teachers are the key to producing academic success and that decentralization globalization reforms have actually done more harm in this regard than good.
Part V considers the impact of globalization on educational practices. In this section, he focuses primarily on competitiveness driven reforms, where increasing numbers of developed and developing countries are moving towards school assessment examinations intended to identify poorly performing schools and either shame them into doing better or suggest ways of improvement. Especially interesting is the research that has shown that students in Cuban schools have scored almost two standard deviations higher than those in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina schools that have followed all the policy recommendations of the new global thinking. Carnoy's point here is that Cuban schools use tests as an incentive to invest more, not less in education, and he argues that for testing to be effective, it needs to be a part of a systematic effort to assist teachers and schools, not reduce their funding.
Overall, according to Carnoy, the World Bank ideological rhetoric and financed-based reforms havemade teachers the villains. Consequently, they are the ones who have had to face the brunt of government attempts to reduce costs. This has been counter-productive, because what really matters in student achievement is the time teachers spend teaching, the effort they expend, and the quality of their teaching methods. These things are not measured, and they are ignored in the World Bank's policy considerations.
Perhaps the heart of the entire book is when Carnoy argues that if nations hope to increase the skills of their students, they will have to rely on the commitment of their teachers and to do this requires a "management system that takes teacher needs into account and involves their participation in improving the quality of education".
Carnoy also discusses educational technology in some depth. Essentially, he demonstrates that in the past technology has mostly been expensive add-ons and not really served to teach more cost-effectively than traditional written materials. But in 1999, Carnoy is extremely optimistic about the new information and communication technologies and the extraordinary opportunity they offer for extending schooling to more difficult to reach communities.
Part VI considers globalization and cultural identity. Interesting here is Carnoy's observation that those less successful in the global marketplace turn in other directions for their identity and do so more intensely than in the past. Especially troubling is how the less globally successful are turning to religious fundamentalism. Carnoy notes that the fastest growing self-identify group is Muslim fundamentalists, but Christian fundamentalism and Hindu fundamentalism are growing and mobilizing as well. Obviously, this has serious consequences not only for education, but also for world peace.
Part VII sums up by suggesting some basic educational strategies for a global economy. Four major guideposts are: foreign
1. the state will continue to be responsible for education and expansion in finance, management, and regulation
2. testing and standards, decentralization and school economy can work as long as the motives are to improve student performance instead of to cut costs
3. well-organized public administration is key to educational improvement
4. teachers are fundamental to the process and the quality of education will largely depend on the quality of teaching and teacher effort
Carnoy points out that there is no right way to organize an education system, but there are some objective realities that educational policy makers should keep in mind. They include:
• Since globalization increases the returns on higher levels of education, there will be pressure for more rapid expansion of higher secondary and university education. Privatization and well-run scholarships may be the most equitable way to achieve this.
• Since work will increasingly be organized around flexible, multi-tasking knowledge workers, planners should reconsider long held views about the balance between general education and vocational education
• Since workers need to be more flexible, so should educational systems--accepting adults returning for life-long learning
• Testing and evaluation brought about by globalization can have a positive effect on educational quality "when combined with an activist and well-organized public-sector effort to improve capacity for teaching and learning".
• Decentralization and local auto many can be productive and can help preserve identity and culture
• The new information and communication technologies have enormous implications for making education available to more students and ever-decreasing costs.
In sum, Carnoy suggests that globalization can be and should be embraced, but some of the ideological rhetoric of finance-driven reforms should be resisted. Other reforms, however, such as decentralization, testing and standards, can work as long as there is a coherent and systemic effort by the public sector that produces more and more effective public spending.
Following is a more detailed summary of the book's seven sections.
Part I considers what globalization is. Carnoy argues that it is not merely a matter of trade, investment, or national economy, but a "new way of thinking about social space and time". This occurs because the new information and communication technologies have redefined distance and time. On the one hand, Carnoy argues, this diminishes the power of the nation-state by producing new social movements and networks. On the other hand, this does not diminish the power of the nation-state in that ultimately, nations-states still influence "the temporal space in which capital has to invest and where most people acquire their capacity to act globally". Intriguingly, Carnoy makes the point that schools can become centers of new communities built around information and knowledge.
Part II considers the impact of globalization on work. In terms of education, his essential point is that while new information technology may displace workers and may influence short-term training and investments, that does not negate the essential fact that the new labor markets are increasingly information intensive, flexible, and disaggregative--and that our educational strategies should take that into account.
Part III considers globalization's impact on educational reform strategies. Here, Carnoy argues that changes in the world economy have provoked three kinds of reforms in education: (1) competitiveness-driven reforms, (2) finance-driven reforms, and (3) equity-driven reforms.
1. Competitiveness-driven reforms aim to improve economic productivity by improving the quality of labor, even if this means spending more on education such as higher teacher salaries and expansion of educational levels. These types of reforms can be classified into four categories: (1) Decentralization, where local municipalities and schools are given greater autonomy in decision-making, (2) Standards, where some central authority gives clear signals to the community the academic expectations of schools, and (3) improved management of resources, such as universalizing access to schoolbooks, peer-tutoring, and utilizing communications technologies. and (4) improved teacher recruitment and training.
2. Finance-driven reforms have the primary goal of reducing public spending on education and are promoted by such international agencies of the IMF and the World Bank. Carnoy see three main finance driven reforms:
• shifting public funding from higher to lower levels of education, since higher education costs more and basic education costs less
• privatizing secondary and higher education
• reducing cost per student at all levels, which includes increasing pupil/student ratio
3. Equity-driven reforms, where the primary goal is to increase equality of economic opportunity. Here, Carnoy argues that globalization tends to push governments away from these types of reforms since (a) there is a better pay-of for higher-level skills over the lower-level skills and (b) finance-driven reforms tend to dominate educational change, and those reforms tend to increase inequity in education services.
Part IV discusses educational reforms in the global economy. Here, Carnoy argues that how governments respond to globalization depends on three key factors: "their objective financial situation, their interpretation of that situation, and their ideological position regarding the role of the public sector in education". After explaining the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s-90s, he notes that when the IMF and World bank were called upon to help relieve the debt problem, they imposed a set of "structural adjustment policies (SAPs)" that reflected a neo-conservative paradigm.
In this section, Carnoy cites empirical studies that have shown the ineffectiveness of most reforms. For instance:
• studies show that the neo-conservative policies promoted by the WorldBank and IMF are associated with increased poverty, increased inequality and slow or negative economic growth; these financial reforms have actually served to limit public resources for education
• decentralization and school autonomy movements have also been unsuccessful in producing any significant student achievement gains.
• privatizing education through vouchers has led to increased inequality of educational outcomes and does not in itself improve student performance
In discussing reforms, specifically in Latin America, Carnoy notes that what has worked has been the reforms instituted by Chile, where the central Ministry has intervened and provided new materials and teacher training to the lowest-performing schools.
Carnoy discusses decentralization in some detail and notes how globalization has usually been accompanied by a free market ideology, in which financial austerity is a condition of economic progress. According to Carnoy, the motives for educational reform have been essentially financial and ideological not, really, educational. Such reforms have actually increased pressure on teacher salaries and, as a consequence, have produced resistance in those most central to education improvement. Carnoy argues that teachers are the key to producing academic success and that decentralization globalization reforms have actually done more harm in this regard than good.
Part V considers the impact of globalization on educational practices. In this section, he focuses primarily on competitiveness driven reforms, where increasing numbers of developed and developing countries are moving towards school assessment examinations intended to identify poorly performing schools and either shame them into doing better or suggest ways of improvement. Especially interesting is the research that has shown that students in Cuban schools have scored almost two standard deviations higher than those in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina schools that have followed all the policy recommendations of the new global thinking. Carnoy's point here is that Cuban schools use tests as an incentive to invest more, not less in education, and he argues that for testing to be effective, it needs to be a part of a systematic effort to assist teachers and schools, not reduce their funding.
Overall, according to Carnoy, the World Bank ideological rhetoric and financed-based reforms havemade teachers the villains. Consequently, they are the ones who have had to face the brunt of government attempts to reduce costs. This has been counter-productive, because what really matters in student achievement is the time teachers spend teaching, the effort they expend, and the quality of their teaching methods. These things are not measured, and they are ignored in the World Bank's policy considerations.
Perhaps the heart of the entire book is when Carnoy argues that if nations hope to increase the skills of their students, they will have to rely on the commitment of their teachers and to do this requires a "management system that takes teacher needs into account and involves their participation in improving the quality of education".
Carnoy also discusses educational technology in some depth. Essentially, he demonstrates that in the past technology has mostly been expensive add-ons and not really served to teach more cost-effectively than traditional written materials. But in 1999, Carnoy is extremely optimistic about the new information and communication technologies and the extraordinary opportunity they offer for extending schooling to more difficult to reach communities.
Part VI considers globalization and cultural identity. Interesting here is Carnoy's observation that those less successful in the global marketplace turn in other directions for their identity and do so more intensely than in the past. Especially troubling is how the less globally successful are turning to religious fundamentalism. Carnoy notes that the fastest growing self-identify group is Muslim fundamentalists, but Christian fundamentalism and Hindu fundamentalism are growing and mobilizing as well. Obviously, this has serious consequences not only for education, but also for world peace.
Part VII sums up by suggesting some basic educational strategies for a global economy. Four major guideposts are: foreign
1. the state will continue to be responsible for education and expansion in finance, management, and regulation
2. testing and standards, decentralization and school economy can work as long as the motives are to improve student performance instead of to cut costs
3. well-organized public administration is key to educational improvement
4. teachers are fundamental to the process and the quality of education will largely depend on the quality of teaching and teacher effort
Carnoy points out that there is no right way to organize an education system, but there are some objective realities that educational policy makers should keep in mind. They include:
• Since globalization increases the returns on higher levels of education, there will be pressure for more rapid expansion of higher secondary and university education. Privatization and well-run scholarships may be the most equitable way to achieve this.
• Since work will increasingly be organized around flexible, multi-tasking knowledge workers, planners should reconsider long held views about the balance between general education and vocational education
• Since workers need to be more flexible, so should educational systems--accepting adults returning for life-long learning
• Testing and evaluation brought about by globalization can have a positive effect on educational quality "when combined with an activist and well-organized public-sector effort to improve capacity for teaching and learning".
• Decentralization and local auto many can be productive and can help preserve identity and culture
• The new information and communication technologies have enormous implications for making education available to more students and ever-decreasing costs.
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