NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
THE IDEOLOGY OF GROWTHNORRAG AND CERC RUN SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM IN THE OXFORD CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION, SKILLS AND SUSTAINABLE GROWTH, 2007
By Bjorn Harald Nordtveit, Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC), Hong Kong
KeywordsEducation, Skills, Sustainable growth, 2007 UKFIET Oxford education conference
Summary
There are a series of theoretical and policy challenges presented by education-growth relations, starting from the challenging notion of growth itself, and leading to the exploration of which type of education and training interacts with which type of growth. The NORRAG-CERC-convened symposium at the 2007 UKFIET Oxford education conference will explore the interactions amongst education, skills and sustainable growth with a special focus on developing countries. This article begins the process of thinking through these issues by examining briefly the ideology of growth.
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The NORRAG-CERC-convened symposium at the 2007 UKFIET Oxford education conference will explore the interactions amongst education, skills and sustainable growth with a special focus on developing countries. This symposium is open to presentations on the theoretical and policy challenges presented by education-growth-development relations, starting from the notions of growth and development themselves.
Growth and development are often taken as synonymous, uncomplicated concepts that are repeated like a mantra by the world-developers. In his famous inauguration speech President Harry Truman defined most of the world as underdeveloped, and proposed the notion that that all nations move along the same path as the United States, and aspire to the same goals. From the very beginning, the vision of development was built on an American ideology of economic growth. At the time, development efforts concentrated on increasing levels of agricultural and industrial production as well as the exploitation of natural resources (mining, forestry, etc.), which, it was believed, would lead to economic growth. It was not before the early 1970s that leading donor agencies began focusing on rural development, and then, in rapid succession during the 1970s and 1980s, began developing specific programmes to address poverty, basic needs, education, and gender issues (Sachs, 1999). The purpose of most funding agencies? programmes, however, never shifted from the overreaching goal of economic growth.
In 1987 the term ?sustainable? was introduced into the development discourse by the Brundtland report. The work on this report started in 1983, when the United Nations appointed an international commission to propose strategies to improve human well-being in the short term without threatening the local and global environment in the long term. Sustainable development especially favoured ecologically sound growth: ?transition towards greater sustainability would require a more holistic approach to development, entailing inter-generational equity as well as harmonization of economic growth with other human needs and aspirations? (Mehmet, 1999, p. 133). In the 1990s, the notion of sustainability was adopted by most international development agencies, and was largely incorporated into the neoliberal discourse. The ultimate goal of development, of course, was still seen as economic growth. However, it was increasingly recognized that growth may incorporate negative externalities ? and that the survival of the human race might prove to be nearly as important as economic growth!
Critical theory has questioned the basic assumptions of the postwar development ideology, including the assertions that some countries are developed whilst some are underdeveloped; that development is a series of stages towards a society which mirrors Western societies; and that the advancement through these stages of development is based on economic growth. Most critical views argue that the development vision must shift from the question of how to obtain economic growth, towards questioning how to obtain a more just society. A core issue for the critical schools is the question of power and wealth distribution. The growth-based ideologies recognize, implicitly, that power relations in the society are ?just? and that the poor will become less poor by the development of the economy as a whole (Todaro & Smith, 2002). The critique of the growth-based paradigm is based on several points, including that the ideology of growth is based on an erroneous assumption that economic growth is the core instrument of development; that the ideology of growth is based on a further erroneous assumption that economic growth is contributing to reducing poverty through the improvement of the economy as a whole; that the ideology of growth puts the economy as a supra-structure above human needs and the environment (despite the fashionable-word ?sustainable?); and that the ideology of growth precludes policy choice (since the policy choices are already made; they are based on market demands and growth imperatives).
Critical theory proposes to address poverty through different measures to correct the distribution of wealth and adjust the power balance to give equal voice to the vulnerable in society. Hence, policy choices, including education policies, should respond to the power and distribution criteria, not to the criteria of economic growth. Herman Daly, a former economist at the World Bank, challenges the ideology of growth by pointing out that (i) economic growth cannot continue without limits because there is an ecological boundary for growth; (ii) economic growth is not distributed equitably in society; (iii) therefore, instead of promoting (un)sustainable economic growth, development should be striving to promote a qualitative change towards an improved and more equitable society (Daly & Farley, 2004). In keeping with this view, development can no longer be understood as a theory of stages in which countries progress towards a Western-inspired ?civilization.? On the contrary, development must be understood as a redistribution of existing wealth within the society and improvement of production processes, to create a more just society, in which the equity and justice concerns are of an inter-generational nature. Consequently, education, skills and sustainable growth must be rethought as three separate entities. Education and skills development should seek redistribution and social change, and not just be seen as a tool for the economy.
We hope that the presenters at the NORRAG/CERC-convened symposium at the UKFIET Oxford Conference will critically explore the concepts of development, education, skills and sustainable growth and challenge the vision of education as a sub-sector of the economy. Click here for more details on the symposium.
References
Daly, H. and Farley, J. (2004) Ecological economics: principles and applications. Washington: Island Press.
Mehmet, O. (1999) Westernizing the Third World: the Eurocentricity of economic development theories. New York: Routledge.
Sachs, W. (2001) Planet dialectics: explorations in environment and development. London: Zed Books.
Todaro, M. and Smith, S. (2003) Economic development. 8th Ed. The Addison-Wesley series in economics, Boston: Addison Wesley.
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