State-sponsored Education Research Articles

Socialism in Education: Propaganda of Political Parties in Nepal

Mainstream political Parties have officially adopted the notion of socialism, also recognized in the constitution of Nepal, 2072. However, the commitment towards socialism is not in tandem with the practical considerations because of their attachment and penetration with neo-liberal policy. This paper aims to explore why state and political parties unlike their declared commitment towards state-sponsored education system tend to privatization and the role of political parties in this regard. The study is purely qualitative and it employs content analysis as the tool of collecting data. The finding of the study is that adaptation of neo-liberal policy in education system in Nepal contributes in supporting the privatization of educational institutions, creating two different layer of education.

The Morality of Schooling: Women's Education as an Arena for Social Tension in Cabo Delgado

In this article, I reflect on education as a continuing arena of tension for people in Cabo Delgado. The tension between formal (state-sponsored) and religious education as a backdrop of the conflict in Cabo Delgado has been widely mentioned but largely misunderstood. Scholars have consistently mentioned poverty and people's lack of access to formal education as drivers of the disenfranchisement that has led to violent extremism in the province. There are also references to how the insurgent movement has shunned formal education in favour of Islamic teachings. The existing literature about the insurgent's rejection of state-sponsored education, especially for girls, fails to address a trajectory whereby formal (state-sponsored) education has been a field of tension for a long time. Similar tensions happened across the Swahili coast in both English and French colonies. From interviews focused on women's relationships and experiences with both the colonial and postcolonial state, it emerged that Muslim populations in Cabo Delgado, particularly on the coast, have a long history of suspicion towards state-sponsored education. This includes showcasing a locally established practice for women's education that predated and existed alongside formal education. This follows that cultural and religious dynamics do not preclude women's influence in society, particularly education. In fact, it relies on her active participation. At the same time, despite potential violent cooptation, in the context of the conflict, the insurgent movement is able to tap into the existing tensions, including that around state-sponsored education. Evidence from the field indicates that, despite the disadvantages of resisting formal education, religious education remains central to most people, not just those following the extremist movement. What may appear to be an extremist rupture from mainstream practice should be understood within a logic operating on shared and familiar values.

Gendered Care Work as “Free Labor” in State Employment: School Social Workers in the Education Welfare (Investment) Priority Project in South Korea

This article draws on ethnographic research to elucidate ways in which young women's care labor is appropriated by the state as “free labor” in South Korea. Building upon John Krinsky's notion of free labor as state-orchestrated exploitation of public sector workers and Kyounghee Kim's research on gendered care labor, this article examines the gendered experience of school social workers who are certified at a lower level than professional social workers, and are hired, laid off, and rehired by the state-sponsored Education Welfare Priority Project. It traces recent unionization efforts by school social workers and attempts to explain why these workers do not recognize care work as a source of exploitation. Finally, the author presents analytical tools to better understand the intersection of state employment, exploitation, and gendered care labor as an emerging neoliberal form of labor.

Décoloniser l’école? Hawai‘i, Nouvelle-Calédonie: Expériences contemporaines by Marie Salaün (review)

Reviewed by: Décoloniser l’école? Hawai‘i, Nouvelle-Calédonie: Expériences contemporaines by Marie Salaün Nathalie Segeral Décoloniser l’école? Hawai‘i, Nouvelle-Calédonie: Expériences contemporaines, by Marie Salaün. Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013. isbn 978-2-7535-2165-0, 303 pages, bibliography, table of contents, French. Paper, €17.00. With Décoloniser l’école?, Marie Salaün provides a highly informative, detailed, and thorough comparative study of the school systems of New Caledonia and Hawai‘i, with a fixed gaze on the relationships and experiences of indigenous populations with state-sponsored education. An anthropologist and historian of education, and one of the very few French specialists of colonial and postcolonial studies in Oceania, Salaün starts from [End Page 570] a deceptively simple question: How can one seize the postcolonial moment in education? In the wake of the intellectual and conceptual disruptions such a question can foster, the author explains how she moved from studying the part played by education and the school system in the perpetuation of the colonial order to focusing on how these can contribute to the dissolution of that same colonial order. This is a complex, timely topic, and Salaün is at pains to lead the reader into rich discussion of the material contexts and issues facing education in the colonial and postcolonial Pacific. In a notable early passage, she reminds the reader of New Caledonia’s 1999 organic law, article 215, which specifies that Kanak languages are recognized as appropriate for teaching and cultural practice (15). Thus, she notes that the question of how the education system can be adapted to indigenous cultural contexts is woven into the country’s contemporary political and legal framework. Refusing to engage in a discussion of what is possible or what is desirable, she rejects a normative position, but, more importantly, her aim is to acknowledge the evolution of the social and political context. Drawing on the length of her research engagement with the region, beginning in 1994, she is well positioned to note that such evolution has only been accelerated by the 1998 Nouméa Accord. In the new context, in which it is now taken for granted that Kanak languages and cultures must be included in the curriculum, she asks, what are the new stakes? The question has now shifted from “Should we do it?” to “How should we do it?” The first chapter deals with the discrepancy between the principle of equality among all citizens in contemporary democracies and the acknowledgment of specific collective rights for indigenous people. How do indigenous people’s rights challenge the model of the democratic nation-state? The second chapter confronts a first level of complexity in implementing decolonization in the school system on indigenous lands: To what extent does the emergence of a school system specifically designed for indigenous children challenge “l’indifférence aux differences” (16), the indifference to differences that is characteristic of the way in which the French school system operates? To her mind, such a shift requires a careful reflection on the nature of the “colonial” in order to rid oneself of the illusion under which some believe that there is a continuity between the colonial period and today, when, in fact, there is a complete rupture (16–17). She reminds the reader that, literally, to decolonize (dé-coloniser) amounts to undoing (dé-faire) the school system that colonization had implemented (17). And yet, to “decolonize” education, it is not enough to introduce Kanak languages and cultures. As an assistant professor of French at the University of Hawai‘i, I have noticed firsthand that several of my undergraduate and graduate students who come from Tahiti voice recurring complaints regarding the contemptuous and prejudiced attitudes that were displayed by some of their metropolitan school teachers when they were growing up in French Polynesia. It appears that decolonizing the school system remains intrinsically linked with decolonizing mentalities. [End Page 571] The third chapter deals with the discrepancies among the various objectives attributed to indigenous language and culture teaching. The fourth chapter questions the tensions between theoretical models, practical experiences adapted to indigenous people, and expectations in terms...

Educating the “Immortal Pupil”: Emerson's Identity Politics and the Question of Freedom in the Age of Reform

An Emersonian notion of originality and autonomy has over the last century and a half evolved into an enduring part of our cultural heritage. In a nation fractured by racial or class barriers, this assertive individualism continues for many to hold forth the hope of a fundamental principle overlapping our cultural divisions. Of course, this self-reliance has not gone unquestioned in an age of postmodern skepticism. If once a defiance of history and society seemed the American Adam's heroic gesture, recent critics such as Frank Lentricchia and Donald Pease have pointed out the Emersonian self s inescapable ties to the overdeterminate world of discourse. Not only have recent critics dismissed the plausibility of Emerson's idealism, they have disavowed its ideology of solipsistic independence that repudiates collective life. What I would like to do is to pose the problem of Emersonian individualism differently, to frame the terms of the debate less according to false oppositions between authenticity and culture, self and society, or freedom or fate, than in terms of complex negotiations about social authority undertaken in response to the “age of reform's” blurring of traditional distinctions between the public and private. In the second quarter of the 19th Century, the push toward state-sponsored education, specifically, was refiguring power in terms of socialization. Within his essays, Emerson acknowledges that identity is, and could only be, a social construct. Rather than trying to elude the fate of circumstances, Emerson, it might better be argued, attempts to redefine the nature and limitations of freedom in a world where, as he says in his lecture on “Culture” (March, 1851), “education” has superseded politics.

BOOK REVIEWS

Christian Principles in Industry. By C. H. Northcott. State Sponsored Education in Public Administration. By Luther Gulick and others. Housing Management. Edited by Rosemary J. Rowles. People for Australia: A study in Population Problems. By A. Lodewyckx.