Abstract
Increasing school enrolment has been a focus of investment, even in remote rural areas whose populations are surplus to the requirements of the global economy. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in primary schools and their neighbouring communities in rural areas of Lesotho, India and Laos, we explore how young people, their parents and teachers experience schooling in places where the prospects of incorporation into professional employment (or any well rewarded economic activity) are slim. We show how schooling uses aspiration, holding out a promise of a 'better future' remote from the lives of rural children. However, children’s attachment to such promises is tenuous, boosted yet troubled by the small minority who defy the odds and succeed. We question why education systems continue to promote occupational aspirations that are unattainable by most, and why donors and governments invest so heavily in increasing human capital that cannot be absorbed.
Highlights
Increasing school enrolment has been a focus of investment, even in remote rural areas whose populations are surplus to the requirements of the global economy
Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken in rural schools and their neighbouring communities, we explore how education is delivered to and experienced by children in remote rural areas of three very different lower middle-income countries: India, Laos and Lesotho
We introduce our three research settings and the research that was undertaken and focus on three aspects: the ways in which education in these settings puts forward promises of particular futures; the limited conviction with which most children and their teachers subscribe to these promised futures; and the effects of the confounding complication that a small minority of rural children do secure the futures held out by education
Summary
This paper is situated in relation to two trends that are shaping the lives of people in remote rural areas of the global south. Rural areas are increasingly home to 'surplus population': people superfluous to the requirements of the global economy (Li 2010). The actors funding free primary education (notably the World Bank) speak of investing in human capital. They use the promise of a 'better future' to inspire and mobilise children, families and national governments, despite little evidence that the futures they propose are attainable (Jakimow 2016). Children are encouraged at school to aspire to a future in formal employment They express the ‘correct’ motivations, but few appear to believe the promise held out to them. We explore contemporary global processes through which education increasingly figures in future making for rural youth, and the role played in this by promoting aspiration. The paper concludes by considering why it is that education systems push aspiration and why governments and donors support education in contexts where its overt aims are largely unattainable
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