Asia-Pacific Social Science Review
Asia-Pacific Social Science Review
Neoliberal Restructuring of Education in the Philippines: Dependency, Labor, Privatization, Critical Pedagogy, and the K to Twelve System
Neoliberal Restructuring of Education in the Philippines: Dependency, Labor, Privatization, Critical Pedagogy, and the K to Twelve System
Abstract: The neoliberal onslaught on the peripheries shows no sign of abating even as neoliberalism's tenets-privatization, deregulation, corporatization, exploitation, austerity, destruction of labor power, developed countries' dominance, developing countries' dependence-are increasingly becoming unpopular or at least exposed as bankrupt by their clear failure to resolve the two thousand eight crisis. In the Philippines, the K to Twelve scheme represents a clear neoliberal restructuring of the education system attuned to the core countries' attempt to manage the crisis. Using Dependency Theory and critical discourses on neoliberalism as tools of analysis, this research is aimed at mapping the contours of this restructuring through contextualizing its link to dependency, privatization, contractualization, technicalization of education, and other aspects of the neoliberal agenda. Furthermore, the current study will shed light on how K to Twelve complements the Philippines' thirty-year old Labor Export Policy.
The latest global crisis that smashed the neoliberal world myth into smithereens in two thousand eight remains technically unresolved as proven by a plethora of current statistics and events: One) current average unemployment rates in leading capitalist economies-four point nine percent in United States and eight point nine percent in the European Union member-countries-are still higher than the pre-crisis levels of four point six percent and seven point two percent in two thousand seven; Two) austerity measures aimed at resolving the crisis but instead brought nothing but more economic turmoil are still in place; Three) global economic growth is anemic; Four) right-wing parties such as the United Kingdom Independence Party, the French Front National, and the Italian Lega Nord have strengthened their electoral bases through anti-immigrant propaganda that wrongly blames immigrants for high unemployment rates-brought by the two thousand eight crisis-that are now decimating the Eurozone middle class, and similarly anti-immigrant and ultranationalist groups are now able to conduct big rallies in many European cities; Five) the rhetorically anti-austerity and anti-neoliberal left-wing party Greek Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás/SYRIZA leads the governing coalition in the most austerity-stricken Eurozone country, and its sister-party, the Spanish PODEMOS, has become one of the most dominant factions in their country's politics, while in the United Kingdom, the Scottish National Party gained massive majorities-by opposing austerity-in the most recent parliamentary election, almost wiping out the United Kingdom-wide mainstream parties in Scotland, and the United Kingdom Labour Party shocked the establishment by electing the life-long leftist Jeremy Corbyn as leader shortly after it lost the general elections to the Conservatives; Six) Capital-rich countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa pooled resources to form the New Development Bank that will rival the neoliberal World Bank in the developing countries, in an effort parallel to what similar formations such as the Latin American financial consortium Banco del Sur and China's Asian Infrastructure Development Bank attempt to achieve; Seven) Pope Francis-to the glee of radicals everywhere-emphasizes that the current global economic set-up is untenable and must be radically transformed, devoting huge segments of his first apostolic exhortation to expound on why the faithful should say "no to an economy of exclusion," "no to the new idolatry of money," "no to a financial system which rules rather than serves," and "no to the inequality which spawns violence"; Eight) sundry groups from pacifist ones like Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States to armed revolutionary movements such as the Communist Party of the Philippines provide a similar critique on the unjust status quo; Nine) in the United States, growing numbers of citizens support the radical and anti-Wall Street presidential candidacy of self-described democratic socialist and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, exceeding expectations and defying mainstream media's predictions steering the country from the center to the Left, at least in a number of aspects; Ten) poverty and inequality rates remain scandalously high in many countries.
Surprisingly, the neoliberal onslaught on the peripheries shows no sign of abating even as neoliberalism's tenets-privatization, deregulation, corporatization, exploitation, austerity, destruction of labor power, developed countries' dominance, developing countries' dependence-are increasingly becoming unpopular or at least exposed as bankrupt by their clear failure to lift billions of people out of hunger and poverty despite rehashed promises of inclusive development. In the Philippines-an Association of Southeast Asian Nations member with around twenty to forty million poor citizens as per official government and World Bank statistics, and used to be above China, Thailand, Indonesia, and Mongolia in the Human Development Index-the Benigno Aquino the Third administration intends to intensify the export of semi-skilled laborers and professionals to developed economies by aligning its education system to the Bologna Process applied in the forty-seven-country European Higher Education Area and the Washington Accord for professional engineering academic degrees that allow cross-country mobility. The Philippine government intends to add two more years of secondary schooling ("senior high school") to the pre-university education of its citizens, pointing out that such set-up called K to Twelve (Kindergarten to Twelve Years of Pre-University Education) will permit its citizens to gain enough skills to work abroad even without college degrees. On top of these, mirroring the global trend, this neoliberal restructuring of Philippine education will also lead to the massive privatization of secondary education and adjunctivization or contractualization of the teaching and non-teaching personnel in universities. Furthermore, the curriculum for the said education restructuring involves the abolition of subjects-such as Philippine History in high school, and Filipino Language, Literature and Philippine Government and Constitution in college-vital to critical pedagogy in a post-colonial or neocolonial set-up.
Within this context and using Dependency Theory and critical discourses on neoliberalism as tools of analysis, this research is primarily aimed at mapping the contours of the aforementioned restructuring of education through contextualizing its link to dependency, privatization, contractualization, and technicalization of education and other aspects of the neoliberal agenda. Furthermore, the current study will shed light on how K to twelve complements the Philippines' thirty-year old Labor Export Policy. This endeavor will also help citizens everywhere understand and possibly reverse the continuing neoliberal restructuring of education, towards seeking alternative people-centered educational and social reform in a world where, as Amin asserted, people " ... construct an autonomous national system based on the establishment of self-sustaining industry combined with the renewal of agriculture organized around food sovereignty" and contribute to " ... the development of a second wave of awakening for the peoples of the South who could then link their struggles with those of peoples of the North, who are also victims of a savage capitalism in crisis and for which the emergence of a globalized production system offers nothing." The construction of such autonomous economic systems is impossible without developing equally autonomous education systems aligned with the requirements of public good rather than private profit, and informed by a vision for a better world of equal opportunities, rather than the status quo of glaring inequalities.
Dependency Theory and Critical Discourses on Neoliberalism
Dependency Theory and Critical Discourses on Neoliberalism
In the past decades, Dependency Theory or Teoría de la Dependencia became popular in many developing countries. Dos Santos, one of
Dependency Theory's eminent scholars, defined dependency as a " ... situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subjected," categorized as colonial dependency or financial-industrial dependency. Dos Santos noted that aside from influencing the international affairs of the subordinated country, dependency also covers "their internal structures: the orientation of production, the forms of capital accumulation, the reproduction of the economy, and, simultaneously, their social and political structure." Simply put, Dependency Theory scholars assert that industrialized countries exploit poor countries through economic and political neocolonialism which perpetuate the latter's pre-industrial or semi-industrial status-majority of which are former colonies of developed countries.
In a speech at a plenary session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Ernesto "Che" Guevara summarized Dependency Theory's critique of the global status quo: "The inflow of capital from the developed countries is the prerequisite for the establishment of economic dependence. This inflow takes various forms: loans granted on onerous terms; investments that place a given country in the power of the investors; almost total technological subordination of the dependent country to the developed country; control of a country's foreign trade by the big international monopolies; and in extreme cases, the use of force as an economic weapon in support of the other forms of exploitation." In relation to Guevara's declaration, Amin described the world as an entity divided into "developed and underdeveloped countries" whose disparity " ... has not become less pronounced ... the gap between them continues to grow larger and has brought about the first crises of a capitalist system that had only just begun to be a world system." Such crises are evident in actual disparities in human development between developed and underdeveloped countries documented throughout the decades by the United Nation's annual Human Development Report. Amin also shed light on the "mechanisms of dependence" that expose the "process of development and underdevelopment,"
through which "(t)he underdeveloped economy is made up of sectors, of firms that are juxtaposed and not highly integrated among themselves, but are each of them strongly integrated into entities the centers of gravity which lie in the center of the capitalist world. What we have here is not a nation, in the economic sense of the word, with an integrated internal market. Depending on its geographical size and the variety of its exports, the underdeveloped economy may appear as being made up of several atoms of this type ... " These "atoms" refer to industries and businesses which prop-up the import-dependent, export-oriented economy of many developing countries, designed to suit the needs of developed and/or capital-rich countries.
Such description of developing countries mirrors the Philippine situation: the economy is composed of atoms of industries of semi-manufactured goods and service-oriented businesses (malls, fastfood chains, call centers) that trap it into being one of the world's "repositories of cheap labor," and subject it to "other forms of exploitation." Amin explained why such economic disparity perpetuates "asymmetry in international relations" by pointing out that
(i)t is the center, (the advanced capitalist countries in the West, or the First World) that takes the initiative in trading relations - the center that imposes upon the periphery the particular forms its specialization assumes. This asymmetry, which reflects the commercial dependence of the periphery (the developing countries, or the Third World) is shown in the anteriority of the center's exports in relation to its imports (the exports of the periphery, which has submitted to the forms of specialization required by the center). The periphery's commercial dependence is aggravated by its financial dependence. The basic reason for this is that investments of foreign capital in the underdeveloped countries automatically engender a reverse flow of profit transfers. At the average rates of reward of capital, which range between fifteen and twenty percent, the backflow of profits does not take long to become bigger than the inflow of capital investment, and, after a certain level has been reached, the balance of external payments tips.
Statistics from the Central Bank of the Philippines (2016) and World Bank (2016b) showed how low reinvested Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) earnings are, as a percentage of the primary income on FDI in the Philippines-averaging a mere 17.78% only in 2006-2014-proving that Amin's analysis remains relevant as ever.