Education in perennial crisis: Have we been asking the right questions?

Abstract

When a crisis is talked about for six decades, it begs the questions: How is the educational crisis being defined? If a crisis continues for sixty years, is it still a crisis; or are some inherent characteristics of the education system and process being misrepresented? In other words, are we asking the right questions? The writer, from five decades of involvement in efforts to enhance the relevance of education to fighting poverty, inequality and exclusion, suggests some likely missteps in conceptualizing and defining education system problems. The experience of Yidan education prize aim of ‘creating a better world through education’ is brought up to illustrate the complexities of navigating through some of the missteps raised in the article. The discussion of the challenges and efforts to address them lead to a two-fold conclusion -- that the narrative of persistent crisis arises from a mismatch of expectations from education and the system’s capacity to deliver in the larger socio-political context; and that political settlement determines chosen activities and priorities, what is implemented or not implemented – not necessarily the technical merits of a solution. Influencing the political dynamics of decision-making is critical for educational transformation, which education scholars and advocates of reform tend to neglect. The pragmatic way ahead lies in major stakeholders in education uniting to build a supportive social compact that changes the political dynamics for realizing the expectations from education.