Tag Archives: Education

Video and Discussion Paper: Global Knowledge Disparities – The North-South Divide

Barbara Ischinger (OECD), Hebe Vessuri (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and Andreas Eckert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin/Forum Transregionale Studien) discussing about “Global Knowledge Disparities – The North-South Divide”.

Video: Humboldt-Ferngespräch: Global Knowledge Disparities – The North-South Divide on Vimeo.

Text: You can find the discussion paper of the Humboldt-Ferngespräch here (pdf). The text and video are based on the “Humboldt Ferngespräche” discussion held at the Humboldt-
Universität zu Berlin on November 20, 2014  within the framework of the international Winter Academy “Education, Inequality and Social Power. Transregional Perspectives” organized by the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung –
Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland.

Perspectives of Educational Inequality: Variations and Entanglements of Local and Global Asymmetries

By Jane-Frances Lobnibe (University for Development Studies, Tamale) and Jana Tschurenev (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)1

Report of the Winter Academy “Inequality, Education and Social Power: Transnational Perspectives”. The Winter Academy took place in Berlin, November 16-25, 2014 and was convened by the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland.

An condensed version of the text is published via the online communication platform H-Soz-Kult.

Introduction

Participants Winter Academy

Participants Winter Academy (Photo: Photo: Forum Transregionale Studien under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

As the global economy slowly recovers from the 2008/9 recession, rising social inequality exacerbated by stagnating wages and unequal income distribution is emerging as a major concern of policy makers and national leaders in both the “developed” and “developing” worlds. This development has come about amid a fast changing knowledge economy, requiring specialized labor skills and high quality education to meet the challenges of this complex technological and interconnected world. To be sure, there is a widespread assumption that a panacea to the current predicament is an expanded equal access to quality education. However, as a public good and ideologically charged concept, education is often viewed as a means of and for social mobility and is set with high expectations. But education can also produce inequality and disenchantment in case some groups are denied or excluded from its benefits. The interdisciplinary Winter Academy and conference “Inequality, Education, and Social Power,” in Berlin explored this ambiguity from multiple perspectives. The seven-day event was convened by the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland in Berlin in cooperation with the Max Weber Foundation’s Transnational Research Group (TRG) on “Poverty and Education”, the research network desiguALdades.net and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.

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  1. Since both authors participated in the same working group and to some extent also in the thematic discussion groups, this summary is necessarily a very selective one and cannot do justice to all the rich and inspiring presentations given within the winter academy and conference. []

Jutta Allmendinger: “Education pays off”

An introduction to the keynote of Jutta Allmendinger

by Ellen von den Driesch 

In contrast to the increasing value of education regarding employment and income, most EU member states continue to have too many people with too little or no education. Across the EU, 8 percent of young people lack a general school-leaving certificate. Worse even, an average of 19 percent of the 15-year-old boys and girls are considered functionally illiterate or innumerate. This conclusion is drawn by Jutta Allmendinger and me from WZB Berlin Social Science Center in our large-scale study on social inequalities in Europe. The report maps the extent of social inequalities both within and between the 28 EU countries, looking at educational attainment, employment and income. For the report, recent studies have been analyzed and brought together. The report is published as a WZB Discussion Paper and can be downloaded here.

On November 24th 2014 Jutta Allmendinger presented our recent report in her keynote at the conference “Inequality, Education and Social Power: Transregional Perspectives” at WZB. She explained why education pays off in all EU countries but also how that differs between the several member states. Furthermore she shows that people’s earnings are not only driven by the level of their certificates, but also by their cognitive competences.

You can also find an interview with Jutta Allemendinger on educational poverty and gender inequality here.

“Education for the Poor: The Politics of Poverty and Social Justice”

On February 14, 2015, the Transnational Research Group “Poverty and Education in India” will move into their new offices at the India International Centre in New Delhi. Therefore, the Centre invites the interested public to the panel discussion “Education for the Poor: The Politics of Poverty and Social Justice“, followed by a lecture by Carlos Torres (University of California, Los Angeles) on “Neoliberalism, Globalization Agendas and Banking Educational Policy: Is Popular Education an Answer?

The speakers are:

Marcelo Caruso, Professor and Chair of the History of Education Division, Institute of Education Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin

Kalpana Kannabiran, Professor and Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad

Krishna Kumar, Professor, Department of Education, University of Delhi and Former Director, National Council for Educational Research and Training

Crain Soudien, Professor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Former Director, School of Education, University of Cape Town Chair and

Moderator: Geetha B. Nambissan, Professor, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

 

The Transnational Research Group (TRG) “Poverty Reduction and Policy for the Poor between the Sate and Private Actors: Education Policy in India since the Nineteenth Century”, that also joined the Winter Academy, is a cooperation between the German Historical Institute London, the King’s India Institue at King’s College London and the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CEMIS) at Göttingen University. Their local cooperation partners in India are researchers from the Centre for Historical Studies and the Centre for Educational Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. The goal of its 12 docs and post-docs is to explore education in India from a historical perspective.

Find out more about the TRG on their website where you can also find more information about the panel discussion.

“A collapse of formal schooling in Egypt”: Interview with Hania Sobhy

Hania Sobhy Photo: Max Weber Stiftung under CC BY 4.0

Hania Sobhy
Photo: Max Weber Stiftung
under CC BY 4.0

Hania Sobhy is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Orient-Institut Beirut where she is writing up her research on Pro-Revolution Mobilization in Egyptian Elections 2012-2014. In 2012-2013, she was a postdoctoral Fellow with the EUME program of the Forum Transregionale Studien

During the conference “Inequality and Education”  she presented a paper about Educational Privatization and the Collapse of State Institutions under Mubarak”. She published recently an article about “Mafish Ta’lim: Why Egypt Ranked Last on Education” on the Mish ma32ool Blog.

What was surprising to you when you were a child? What is it that you always wanted to know about the world?

I think that from a young age I wanted to know why things that seemed so wrong, unjust or counterproductive happened and continued to exist. At the age of 17 I wrote a letter to a famous newspaper columnist with a lengthy critique of what I understood as the policies, conflicts of interest and corruption that created the poor and increasingly marketized condition of education I was experiencing. He actually published portions of my letter over three days in his column. In a sense, I was interested in the incentives and power relations that sustained the status quo. I was also starting to wonder about what it is that creates a will to resist. I wanted to understand why most people took little action to contest these corrupt practices. Is it ‘cultural’ as some might argue? Is it a kind of ‘learned helplessness’ based on repeated experiences of the futility – and often emotional and physical violence – that are associated with such acts of contestation?

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“Right to Education and Equal Education Opportunities. A View from Berlin”: Discussion with Anja Schillhaneck

Anja Schillhaneck; photo: Anaïs Bordes under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Anja Schillhaneck; photo: Anaïs Bordes under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0  
 

During the Winter Academy we invited Anja Schillhaneck, Vice President of the Berlin Parliament and Spokeswoman for Science, Sport, European and Federal Affairs for the parliamentary group of the green party “Bündnis 90/Die Grünen”, to share her expertise in the field of education policy with the participants.

In her presentation “Right to Education and Equal Education Opportunities. A View from Berlin” Anja Schillhaneck introduced the German education system and explained the particular challenges that arise from the three-tiered school system in terms of inequality and social mobility.

Discussion with Anja Schillhaneck; photo: Anaïs Bordes under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Discussion with Anja Schillhaneck; photo: Anaïs Bordes under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Drawing on her practical experience as a politician, she also discussed how recent reforms of the school system in Berlin try to increase the equality of education opportunities. During the lively discussion with the participants which covered various topics ranging from the “PISA shock” to university enrollment fees, Anja Schillhaneck provided interesting insights into current debates within German education policy.

You can also find a report by Anaïs Bordes on the discussion on Anja Schillhaneck’s website (available in German).

Private Actors and Education for the Poor in India

Conference Paper to be presented by Geetha Nambissan

Geetha B. Nambissan is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research focuses on exclusion, inclusion and the education of marginal groups, the middle classes and educational advantage and the social and educational implications of private schools for the poor. 

Over the last decade, transnational and local advocacy networks have been projecting the low-cost unregulated school market in India as a cost-efficient, high-quality and equitable solution to the education of the poor and as a site for viable business options. The actors in this market include individual “edupreneurs” and, more recently, corporate groups that have entered the school business in later-developing countries. What we are witnessing is the construction of narratives of “good education” for the poor in extremely minimalistic terms, validated through “research” and disseminated by powerful networks. The attempt is to evolve globally scalable models that will deliver “high-quality” education at the lowest of costs, ensuring profits. In this paper, I map some of these trends, highlighting the manner in which private actors are attempting to change education policy in India by drawing upon neo-liberal discourses and constructing new narratives, networks and practices around schooling. I argue that these trends have serious implications for social justice in education for the poor.

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

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

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?

A Script for the Masses? Pedagogic Practices and Didactic Traditions among Sylhetis

Research Project (to be discussed at the Winter Academy) by Debarati Bagchi.

Debarati Bagchi is as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Dehli, and a member of the Max Weber Foundation Transnational Research Group “Poverty and Education in Modern India”. She is currently working on Sylhet Nagri texts and pedagogic practices in colonial Northeast India.

This proposed project intends to track the circulation of printed and handwritten texts in Sylheti-Bengali, written in Sylhet Nāgarī script in late nineteenth-early twentieth century Sylhet and later among the London-based Sylheti diaspora. The Sylhet Nāgarī script was projected to have been devised as a ‘simplified alternative’ of the sanskritised version of Bengali and was chiefly attributed to the ‘illiterate masses of the Muslim population’ including peasants, fishermen, boatmen – people who were ‘not well versed in Bengali literature.’ Its entire pedagogic endeavour was to bridge the gap between the written (lekhya bhasha) and the spoken (kathya bhasha) and thereby meeting one of the preconditions of democratisation of education – the concern for reaching out to a larger mass. The primer of the script differed from the available forms and contents of primers in the school system not only in its lack of secular content but also in addressing the audience. The declared purpose of this primer was to address an adult audience who would be able to read the texts in Sylhet Nāgarī outside the school system. In content, these texts dealt with the ethics and values associated with the local form of Islam where it was not impossible to find the stories of Yusuf Zuleikha along with the stories Radha-Krishna and the nineteenth century concern for the pervasive threat of conversion to Christianity. Besides songs by Pirs and Fakirs, didactic manuals for the followers of Islam, popular stories viz. the war of Karbala, the life story of Hazrat Muhammad or the love story of Yusuf Zuleikha, the texts also occasionally dealt with chronicles of contemporary social events. It was quite a popular pastime among rural households, especially among women who gathered together from neighboring households to read and listen to these texts.

We do not yet have a comprehensive understanding of the social content of readership and the meaning of these texts in their everyday lives. Through the study of these didactic texts, this project aims to explore the nature of ‘alternative’ pedagogic practices prevalent among the poor masses of Sylhet. Instead of probing the origin of the script or analysing the religious-philosophical foundations of the texts, this project would track the circulation of the texts and the politics of standardisation of the script. It attempts to form an understanding of the public sphere that once consumed these texts and develop an understanding of the colonial modern in the formation of a regional identity. The project also seeks to add a postcolonial dimension to the question by trying to address the historical reasons leading to the revival of Sylhet Nāgarī script among the diasporic population in UK.

Educational & Professional Status of Scheduled Castes/Tribes: Attainment & Challenges

Research Project (to be discussed at the Winter Academy) by Bharat Chandra Rout

Bharat Chandra Rout submitted his doctoral thesis on social justice and higher education in the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. Currently he is a research fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and assistant editor of the journal ‘College Post’, a quarterly journal of the Indian Colleges Forum.

Scheduled Castes [SC] and Scheduled Tribes [ST] constitute around one-fourth of the total population of India. Both of these communities are considered as deprived and exploited for various reasons. While SCs were (and even now are) subjected to discrimination and marginalization through the processes of untouchability and rigid caste practices, STs were deprived and exploited because of their socio-cultural and geographical isolation in Indian society. The caste system presupposes a form of social stratification in which people in the society are divided into different ‘strata’. The essential characteristics of a caste-based division of society into different hierarchical caste groups are, amongst others, the rigid occupational entitlements by birth, rigid caste identity based on endogamy and a lack of social mobility. The dominant and depressed caste groups in India are characterized by the differential access to societal opportunities and entitlements, social mobility and larger social/public resources. It is the lower strata of the society, particularly that of SCs and STs, to which social opportunities and economic facilities have long been denied. Access to public resources, institutions and even to basic needs were structurally guided by the system of social stratification. In other words, the caste system legitimized the forms and contours of neglect and deprivation and wilfully rationalized marginalization and discrimination of SCs and STs.

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Hauptschüler. The Role of Education in Exclusion Processes in Germany

Research Project (to be discussed at the Winter Academy) by Stefan Wellgraf.

Stefan Wellgraf obtained his PhD from the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder. His dissertation dealt with problems of exclusion in Berlin, Germany. In 2015, he will start a research project on the affective dimension of exclusion.

The German terms “Hauptschule” and “Hauptschüler”, loosely translated as general secondary school and its students, are associated with a range of negative associations. Consequently, the learning conditions at “Hauptschulen” have become increasingly problematic and reputation of those schools has deteriorated. Education plays a crucial role in this processes. In German, the term “Bildung” has a double connotation: On the one hand, it stands for an ideal of self-development, for the deployment of human capacities and for a transformation of the relations to oneself, to others and to the world. This ideal of “Bildung” can be traced back to German Idealism around 1800 and was therefore often regarded as a specifically German interpretation of “Bildung”. On the other hand, there is an idea of “Bildung” focusing more on the acquisition of those skills and certificates which promise economic benefits. This tendency has often been linked to an “American” or “neoliberal” model of education. Both models were never neatly separated, but coexisted – both in Germany and in the USA – in diverse and historically changing constellations. Taking both sides into account nevertheless helps to understand contemporary forms of exclusion in German “Hauptschulen” and reactions to them by “Hauptschüler”. The problem of the “Hauptschule” is that it cannot live up to either of the two versions of “Bildung” and has instead become an institution of only negative selection. A transregional perspective could help to compare these phenomena and situate them in a global context of historic and contemporary politics of education and labor. The role of the state as well as transregional processes of neoliberalization will come into focus from this perspective. Such a view is particularly relevant, given that the majority of “Hauptschüler” in Berlin are migrants. In a way, they transform the schools into transnational spaces from below.

Working Class Youths and Education in Post-Industrial Mumbai

Research Project (to be discussed at the Winter Academy) by Sumeet Mhaskar.

Sumeet Mhaskar is an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen. He is currently working on a project that examines rural urban linkages in globalising Mumbai city with a particular focus on rural labour migrants’ urban experience.

During the last two decades of the 20th century large scale industrial closures took place in major Indian cities such as Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Kolkata and Mumbai. The industrial closures resulted in the retrenchment of a large amount of workforce as well as a sharp decline in the employment opportunities in the formal manufacturing sector. The implications of industrial closures on the workforce and to a certain extent on their families have received significant scholarly attention. However, there remains a major gap in the literature that investigates the implications of industrial closure on working class youths’ educational and occupational attainment. Whilst studies have hinted at the negative implications of workers’ retrenchment on their children’s education and overall life chances this aspect remains largely understudied. This project aims to fill this gap by examining both working class youths’ educational attainment as well as their occupational choices. In order to explore this phenomenon this project relies on the quantitative survey data of 924 ex-millworkers families that was collected during 2009 and qualitative interviews with ex-millworkers children, workers, trade unionists, school teachers and social and political activists. In addition, personal documents, biographies, relevant reports have been consulted.

The Informal Education Sector in Egypt: Between State, Market and Civil Society

Research Project (to be discussed at the Winter Academy) by Sarah Hartmann.

Sarah Hartmann is a doctoral candidate at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include youth, education and social class in the Arab World as well as anthropological and political science approaches to statehood and informality.

This PhD project explores the relationship between Egyptian citizens and the state through an analysis of the widespread practice of private tutoring for school students, i.e. by taking a closer look at the coexistence, interdependence and entanglement of formal institutions and informal practices in the Egyptian education sector. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo in 2009-2010, it provides a detailed account and analysis of some of the institutions, actors, social relations, and discourses involved in the provision of supplementary tutoring for school students, with a special focus on tutoring centers in lower income neighborhoods of Cairo. Despite its socio-economic and political significance, no in-depth ethnographic study of this phenomenon has been undertaken so far. The project aims to contribute to current debates on statehood and informal institutions in anthropology and political science. While tutoring developed as a coping strategy to compensate for the deficiencies of an underfunded and overburdened public education system, a means for teachers to supplement their meager salaries, and a strategy for students and parents confronted with the pressures of a strongly examination-oriented education system, it has turned into a generalized and deeply engrained feature of Egyptian educational culture during the last decades, with social, economic and political effects and implications that go far beyond the teaching and learning process itself. The ideal of the welfare state is increasingly replaced by neoliberal values of entrepreneurship, consumerism, and the privatization of risk and responsibility, rendering access to education and other services dependent on the financial means of the individual.

Teachers’ Struggle for Income in the Congo (DRC). Between Education and Remuneration

Research Project (to be discussed at the Winter Academy) by Cyril Owen Brandt.

Cyril Owen Brandt is currently a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam. He is researching teacher pay in contexts that are conflict-affected and lack functioning public administration.

As the ambivalent role of education for sustainable peace building is gaining increasing attention in international debates, it is important to analyze the conditions under which education is taking place. The provision of education in so-called conflict-affected and fragile countries depends on a range of factors, among which teacher remuneration plays a pivotal role.

The Congolese education sector is characterized by a gradual retreat of the state in the provision of education and an increasing authority and decision-making power of local actors. The predominance of uncodified practical norms causes constant negotiations between different actors. Among these, teachers have the particular role of providing education to the students. They must do so in a multi-scalar context of reconstruction agendas, inadequate payment, erroneous administration, practical norms and competition between schools for students. Moreover, there are a range of ambiguous effects from global and national agendas, e.g. around free primary education.

Previous studies have outlined the structural impacts on teachers, but none focused on their agency. If teachers are still coping with their very basic needs due to their income situation, quality of education is not the primary or sole concern of their everyday actions. Hence, they have developed a range of strategies to exercise their agency in relation to their income.

Teachers must invest time and money for different purposes in order to be registered and paid. They do so vis-à-vis governmental brokers in a corrupt environment. At other times, they have common objectives with parents with whom they cooperate. Moreover, there is not one teacher employment status, but a range of de facto statuses. For instance some teachers are only paid locally by parents and do not receive any governmental money.

The research design is based on the Extended Case Method and was conceived in order to allow a thorough analysis of the complex multi-scalar political economy concerning the school and teacher registration system and teacher payment. Theoretical choices include the Strategic-Relational Approach and a focus on Real Governance.

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