Corporate education reform goes global
Business interests have captured the United Nations education agenda
From its inception in 1945, the United Nations has been involved with education on a global scale. The U.N. viewseducation as crucial to eradicating poverty, building peace and fostering intercultural dialogue, and it remains committed to “a holistic and humanistic vision of quality education worldwide.”
Yet there has been a dramatic shift in the U.N.’s educational mission from supporting a well-rounded, humanistic conception of education to one that focuses on teaching children the “hard skills” necessary to participate in the global economy. This turn began with the Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015) and has intensified with the Sustainable Development Goals that launch this month. One of the new targets, for instance, is to “increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship” by 2030.
The U.N. has thrown its weight behind what Finnish scholar Pasi Sahlberg calls the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). According to Sahlberg, there is a “global unified agenda” to rebuild educational systems to benefit multinational corporations. GERM began in the U.S. and United Kingdom, and has spread throughout the world. GERM is committed to educational standardization, a focus on literacy and numeracy, high-stakes testing and centralized control of the schools.
According to Sahlberg, this movement “limits the role of national policy development” and “paralyzes teachers’ and schools’ attempts to learn from the past and also to learn from each other.” In other words, GERM disempowers communities and educators and forces them to teach a narrow set of skills measured by standardized tests.
The U.N.’s sustainable development goals articulate many admirable ideals, including eradicating poverty, combating HIV/AIDS, reducing inequality and ensuring environmental sustainability. According to Sahlberg, Corporate Education Reform Goes Global | Al Jazeera America:
