Author Archives: Max Weber Stiftung

About Max Weber Stiftung

The Max Weber Foundation promotes global research, focused on the areas of social sciences, cultural studies and the humanities. Our research is conducted at ten institutes in various countries across the globe with different and independent fields of focus. Through our globally operating institutes, we are able to contribute to the communication and networking between Germany and our host countries or regions. By promoting academic dialogue and merging academic and non-academic employees from several countries with different cultural backgrounds, the Max Weber Foundation is able to strengthen the internationalization of research.

Equity and Social Cohesion in Post-Apartheid South African Education

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Conference Paper to be presented by Yusuf Sayed

Yusuf Sayed is the South African Research Chair in Teacher Education and the Founding Director of the Centre for International Teacher Education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa. His research focuses on education policy formulation and implementation as it relates to concerns of equity, social justice and transformation.

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South African Pre-School (Photo: private)

The formal end of apartheid was greeted with much optimism and many expectations. A new Government of National Unity with Nelson Mandela at its head signalled a new just and democratic social order, including social justice in and through education. Redress was assured through the deracialisation of education provision and the opening of schools, through equality in education spending and through a commitment to positive discrimination in favour of the marginalised. Whilst there have been many gains, twenty years later, formally desegregated yet class-based educational institutions, continuing disparities and inequities and poor academic achievement are key features of the contemporary educational order. Learner assessment results suggest that South Africa is characterised by a two-tier system of education, resulting in a poorly resourced public schooling sector serving the poor, while the wealthy have access to semi-private public schools and have significant management control over the running of the schools, rupturing the ideals of social cohesion encapsulated in the powerful metaphor of the “rainbow nation”. Based on a review of education policy in South Africa since 1994 (Sayed, Kanjee, & Nkomo 2013), this paper considers how this has come about, focusing specifically on a review of the changes in the governance of schools since 1994. The paper argues that for the poor in South Africa the doors of quality learning and education and social mobility remain firmly shut. In this context, this paper also considers some key strategies to advance social justice. The paper is a call to act with urgency to reform South Africa’s educational approach to make it possible to address the systemic crisis of education that especially affects South Africa’s historically disadvantaged and marginalized peoples.

The Role of Science in the Ideology of Five Models of Latin American Modernity

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Conference Paper to be presented by Hebe Vessuri

Hebe Vessuri is an anthropologist and currently research collaborator at the Research Center of Environmental Geography (CIGA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Her research focuses on science in world peripheries, the current internationalization of the social sciences and the interface between higher education, scientific research and other forms of knowledge.

To understand the role of science as a relevant component of the ideology of modernity in Latin America, we must recognize that, until the last quarter of the twentieth century, with different chronologies and nuances acording to the countries, the predominant form of social organization was the “state-national-popular matrix”. This matrix was based on the model of endogenous development, the “compromise state” (which corresponded to a pattern of unstable arrangements between the middle classes, organized working classes and dominant classes formed by the bourgeoisie and the oligarchy), social movements politically oriented toward the state and social integration, and the exclusion of peasants and the urban poor.

The populist formula implied the massification of public services and allowed a certain initial basic social democratization, in the form of access to specified goods or services. Crucial among them were the universalistic and expansive character of social policies: public education first, then public universities and the institutionalization of scientific-technical research were part of the process. The development crisis led to structural adjustments since the 1980s, which implied a problematic transition to another development model in which economic policies were aligned with the “Washington Consensus” and were later made viable by international organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank. In all cases, poverty and inequalities increased while the hithero existing relationship between the state and the social actors disarticulated, weakening their organizational and ideological capacity.

In recent years, several models linked to the reconstruction of relationships between state and society were proposed as responses to globalization. Scientific activity entered into the strategies of these models in different forms, as part of more or less exclusionist technocratic ideologies or of elitist programs, as an integral component of the identity struggles and for giving a sense of ownership to the modernization and transformation processes (cultural diversity) or as a general critique of the relationships between state and society. This paper briefly reviews five such models in which science and higher education play specific roles. The responses have fluctuated between equality and its need of a locus (society), and equity, which is an absolute principle that does not require a locus (such as a specific society). And they have occurred in the context of new inequalities, of globalization and of ascriptions as valued sources for social diversity and differentiation.

Colonising Education: Canada’s Indian Residential Schools and the Promotion of Structural Inequality

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Conference Paper to be presented by David MacDonald

David MacDonald is a Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph, Canada. He has been actively involved with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, coordinating sharing circles and academic panels, and authored the chapter on genocide for the TRC’s Final Report, due in mid-2015.

From the 1880s, the Canadian government, along with the four main Christian Churches, ran a network of Indian Residential Schools for over a century. Legislation from 1920 forced Aboriginal children to attend, and children were ostensibly kidnapped from their parents. The schools were often poorly run, received very low funding and had high mortality rates. The focus was often on training in agriculture and domestic labour to prepare children to be workers, while actual Western education (promoting literacy and numeracy) was sporadic. Sometimes described as “total institutions”, the IRS system saw staff wielding almost complete control over the lives of their young charges. High rates of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were endemic. The schools exacerbated problems of structural inequality, which had a knock-on effect afterwards, as high rates of intergeneration trauma perniciously undermined the ability of many Aboriginal communities to function either in their traditional ways or according to Western models. In the IRS system, the actual education of children was almost always a secondary goal. For the Churches, conversion and linguistic and cultural assimilation were central goals. For the government, aggressive assimilation was designed in part to clear indigenous land for settlement. In coming to terms with seven generations of schooling, the UN Genocide Convention is increasingly used, with a focus on article 2(e), which prohibits the forced transfer of children from one group to another. This presentation also problematizes the term “education” – since colonial educational practices can have a detrimental effect on indigenous peoples, especially if they are (1) radically different from pre-existing practices developed over thousands of years and (2) designed to colonize young minds and bodies and promote forms of self-loathing. The dissonance between indigenous educational and spiritual practices forms an important backdrop for understanding why these forms of education were so devastating.

The Ambiguities of Colonial Education

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Conference Paper to be presented by Peter Kallaway

Peter Kallaway is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Western Cape and a Research Associate at the University of Cape Town. He is interested in the history of education in South Africa and British colonial Africa, particularly in the interaction between missionary educators, philanthropists, and colonial governments.

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South African Pre-School
(Photo: private)

The forms of knowledge that came to dominate the African colonial mission school curriculum, and later government schools, have often been criticised for their lack of sensitivity to African or indigenous culture and languages. This state was famously termed “cultural imperialism” in the 1970s and was said to have been one of the causes of the weakness of the educational systems that were inherited by the new national states in the independence era. For example, there was a move to promote an authentic heritage of knowledge (Indigenous Knowledge Systems, IKS) in South Africa after 1994 in keeping with this perceived need to transform public knowledge in line with the liberation politics of the contemporary order.

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Educational Stratification in Brazil: 1960 to 2010

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Conference Paper to be presented by Carlos Costa Ribeiro

 Carlos A. Costa Ribeiro is Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies at the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. His research focuses on the determinants of economic opportunity within and across generations.

The paper studies inequality of educational opportunity in Brazil from 1960 to 2010. Census data is used to analyze educational careers of children and youth in Brazil in this period. These five decades were characterized not only by an enormous expansion of the educational system, but also by major social changes in terms of urbanization and industrialization. While in 1960 55 percent of the population lived in rural areas, in 2010 only 15 percent were in the countryside. From 1960 to 1980, the country’s economy grew extremely fast mainly because of industrialization and the expansion of service sectors in the economy. This period was also one of increasing income inequality. In contrast, from 1990 to 2010, the country’s economy grew at a slower pace, but income inequality decreased. The data analyzed indicates that social background inequality in terms of parental income and schooling decreased for offspring entering and completing primary education, remained constant for those entering and completing secondary education, and increased for those entering college. Gender and racial inequality in educational transitions decreased throughout the period. These trends culminated in a very large expansion of youth attending college. Therefore, I also present some analyses of horizontal stratification on the university level in terms of fields of specialization. The data on completion of college for different professions is analyzed in terms of income returns, gender, and race. The analyses indicate changes and continuities in horizontal stratification among people with credentials in different careers. In particular, gender inequality in labor market returns on tertiary education decreased significantly, while racial inequality remained very high.

Education Quality and Education Equity: Using Welfare State Typologies for Comparative Analyses

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Conference Paper to be presented by Klaus Hurrelmann

Klaus Hurrelmann is Senior Professor of Public Health and Education at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He served as a director and managing team member of several population surveys, among them three Shell Youth Studies and two World Vision Children Studies. His main research is on the connection between family and education policy.

The educational level of each member of society is relevant not only for the individual, but also for the entire societal development: Individually, the level of education achieved is primarily significant for the position a person will have in the labor market, while also having crucial secondary effects on other important societal issues, such as health status throughout his or her life course. Socially, education is fundamental for achieving a productive economy, creating a cohesive society, combating social exclusion and poverty, and securing the prosperity of the entire society.

In the light of these correlations it is surprising that comparative analyses of welfare regimes pay little attention to educational policy. The influential Typology of Welfare States (Esping-Andersen) is based first and foremost on a country’s social policy, which in turn is primarily understood as being part of social security policy. There is much evidence that educational policies are highly correlated with particular types of welfare states and are decisive for the results produced in the respective educational system. Ideally, these results should be evaluated according to two standards: (1) the educational level of the population should be as high as possible with a view to the level of qualification and competencies achieved (education quality); (2) differences in the level of education achieved by the various population groups (i.e., different gender, social background, etc.) should be as low as possible (education equity).

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“Now We Know How These Schools are Being Run”: Children, Education and the Legal Form, 1997-2007

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Conference Paper to be presented by Sarada Balagopalan

Sarada Balagopalan is an Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, and at the Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers University, Camden. She is the author of Inhabiting “Childhood”: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial India (2014).

In the decade preceding India’s Right to Education Act (2009), which guarantees each child the right to quality elementary schooling, the Delhi High Court adjudicated several cases involving the city’s elementary schools. Not only was the volume of cases unprecedented, but each drew attention to a particular aspect of the highly iniquitous landscape of elementary education with several of the judgements shaping key provisions of this new law.

In my presentation, I will focus on a few of these cases, not analyzing their judgements, but rather to explore the heterogeneous elements that compose a “case” and foreground the ways the “child” was deployed, both empirically and figuratively, to signal a certain urgency. My attempt is to both anchor as well as open up the discussion around “inequality” and “social justice” in elementary education in India by asking how judgements, which are perceived as a strong challenge to those who govern, get turned into a technology of power through the Right to Education Act. In what ways does invoking the “child” as an agential figure capable of exercising “rights” appear to ironically regulate the project of “social justice” at the same time that it underscores the inequality that underlies schooling?