The Era of Neoliberal Globalization and Development - Essay Example

Challenges faced by Educators in Era of Neoliberal Globalization and Development Student’s name: Institution: Instructor: Subject: Challenges faced by Educators in Era of Neoliberal Globalization and Development Neo-liberalism emerged in 1980 as a result of new liberal response from realism (Allen, 2010). People, who practice it, do believe that the United Nations and other institutions that are recognized internationally have a role to play in resolving the conflicts in nations. Before neoliberal globalization, the education systems were fully controlled by the governments. Furthermore neoliberal globalization creates the notion that the nations should cooperate with one another and be able to work towards achieving a long term mutual relationship with one another, instead of focusing on individual gains which are of short time. The neoliberals do agree with realists that the nations the nations acts out of self interest while not sharing the theories pessimism of realistic and the possibility of the international co-operation. Otherwise, neoliberals believe that nations can cooperate fairly often since it is in their best interest to do so. With regard to education, the liberal conception of the state is based on the notion that public powers should be separated and that the public powers should be thought as the supreme authority of politics within the precise limits. Wesly (2011) further explains that the liberal notion on political authority is what is recognized from the political science perspective. With this liberal democracy, questions about the problems of the political representation and the accountability arises and how the actions of individuals, state and the institutions can be able to control and check the balances. This is more particularly relevant with regards to actions that the individuals make with regard to the institution of learning with respect to the corporations and the state agencies in the constitution and the democratic pact. This essay seeks to determine the challenges that are encountered by neoliberal globalization and development. It also seeks to provide ways through which the educators should respond to these challenges. Liberalization in education sees situations where development in the kind of education offered to the citizens of the country does not necessarily matter on the agendas of the government. Education in information technology has seen many exiting application of information technology coming into place. Schools have validated the new technology-based model of teaching whereby the learning has to dramatically improve the educational outcomes. This has seen many people asking on how to scale-up the scattered and successful instructional technology that have empowered the universal improvements in the schooling. Educators more so the teacher, have to keep training whenever there are new technologies that comes with improvement in technologies. However, the governments are the ones responsible for employing the teachers and providing resources for them to effectively discharge their duties. Many governments are not able to effectively coordinate these activities therefore leaving the educators in a challenging spot. In this new information age, institutions, ranging from primary schools, high school, colleges and the universities are giving their students a continuous access to the multimedia-capable, internet based computers as one of the tools for learning. Though this looks quite fashionable, numerous challenges comes to the teachers, trainers and the educators in who have the responsibility over this resources. Most communities are urging volunteers to support these net days that wire the school. The information technology vendors are offering special programs that encourage massive educational purchases (Allen, 2010). A growing number of states are setting aside enough monies to build the structures of the information that are dedicated to the institutional usage. However, most of these innovations come from the first generation that underlies the whole vision. Multimedia capabilities like use of the internet are seen as a magical device to help to solve the problems of schools. The teachers and the administrators who are using this new media are assumed to be automatically more effective than those who do not. The class room computers are as a result of envision of technology that is comparable to fire whereby by just sitting near these devices, the students are able to benefit from the knowledge and skills that comes in the radial monitor in their hands. Trainers in these institutions have to be conversant with what is going on in this area of which most of them are not. At the same time there are those other negative things that accompany the use of information technology like pornography which would have negative effect on the minds of the students (Mark, 1983). The majority of the trainers have little or no knowledge on this field which makes it hard for them to have full control over it while they are training. Again information technology is an evolving field, which requires experts in this field to be continually monitoring what is happening and be able to advice teachers accordingly on any new field. Again there is issue of putting in place the resources and maintaining them. This issue challenges the trainers who may not be fully conversant with this field. Yet this decade of experience with the innovation in technological developments and the innovation have demonstrated that this viewpoint may be misguided. The classroom computers are parts of the projects of the information technology. It is cost- effective only in the contest systematic reform. Unless there are other situations that comes simultaneously to the innovation in the pedagogy, assessment, curriculum and the school organization are associated with the use of the instructional technology. The time and the effort that is expended on implementing these devices would provide few improvements in the outcome. The current situations in the primary schools and classrooms are among the major causes of the problems (Mark, 1983). Majority of the primary school teachers have insufficient command in languages that they can use to teach effectively. Before neoliberal globalization, it mattered least on the language of communication rather what mattered was the ability to deliver the message. Globalization converges the world into a global village, whereby the students that are trained need to fit anywhere in the world. Most of the teachers in the previous era had no sufficient knowledge on what is happening elsewhere in the world and therefore poor command in international languages. Good grammar and vocabulary commands lacks from alongside most striking failing in the pronunciation due to the interference of the native language to the English language. As a result many teachers find it hard to teach in English and if they are assigned to do so they feel as if they are victimized and therefore they may not teach their timetable periods. In most situations, the lower standards for teaching the English language may be ignored altogether. As a teacher, having insufficient knowledge in subjects makes one to have very little confidence in it. Another major cause of problems is situations where the teachers are not assisted by the materials they require for teaching. Mealik (2011) explains that materials have not been prepared with the level of the available teacher expertise in mind. Teachers require help which in most cases is not provided. The only thing that sends an alarm that not everything is going on well is when there is poor results after an examination. Teachers need textbooks and many more classroom activities and exercises set out. They need the training materials that are easily understood in their language. Sometimes, teachers need to do all they can to make their students or pupils to understand what they need. With lack of available materials, this would pose as a great challenge on whichever objectives they are trying to achieve. The technology that is based on innovations also offers special opportunities and challenges. Most of the innovations made are made to solve specific problems in specific country. In situations that the government may not be willing to fully co-operate with education institutions, neoliberal will have a negative impact on this kind of education. International agencies may be pushing on matters and issues of education that have been seen to work on other countries yet they are not compatible to the nation which they are being imposed. The person who bears the hardest responsibility would be the educator since he or she may not be able to fully comply with what the government and the international agencies wants (Trimpel, (2010). Without extended and substantial professional development in the field of innovative models of teaching and learning the technology in the institutions makes the educators would not be able to use this knowledge to their full potential. Institutions should invest on ensuring their teachers are aware and able to use the technology that comes in their hand. The second generation way of thinking does not see the computes as a magic, rather it does make mistake of focusing on the automation as the fundamental purpose. The computers are envisioned as a way to empower the learning and teaching which serves as a fire hose to spray the information from the internet into the mind of the learner. Even without this technology of education, the classrooms have already been drowning in the data. These classrooms also have overcrowded curriculums that put the teachers and the students on the brink of the intellectual indigestion. Adding more information makes would seem to be worsening the educational settings the situation than improving it. Globalization has brought this situation where a student can shift the citizenship from one country to another. A student may be in primary school in one country, go to high school in another country and study the university in another country. When there are mixed tribes and races in a given class, the teacher may not be aware of how to handle students from a different community. More so he or she may find it difficult to deal with a mixture of more than one tribes or race in one class. This would require that the teacher is aware of the traditions and the backgrounds of his or her students. Sometimes conflict that arises from people of different background and the immediate person required to solve this conflicts is the trainer or the teacher. The democratic communities are formed mainly through various institutions of governance and practices of govern mentality and the development of modern and new forms of disciplinary powers and other institutions that produce the rules, understandings and the norms that are based on the power and knowledge about different populations. In the institution of academia the models and the strategies is surely of clearly glowing relevance (Wianty, 2009). Though the general scholarships on the relationships between the governance and schooling are thin, there are a number of very useful theories that concerns the links between the national economic formation and the national education. The main tenor of this work mostly relates from primarily examining how the systems of public education are developed and maintained mainly for the purpose of sustaining the capitalistic systems of accumulation. In the essence of this work the question arises on the kind of relationship between the production and the social reproduction. Educators are the ones charged with the responsible of ensuring their clients foster the good relationship even when there are these conflicts. Whichever the conditions that the trainers are in, they have to be direct their energies to the benefit of their students. According to Torres, (2002), before liberalization came into place the projects of schooling served primarily to uphold the existing power structures within the nation state. Through various practices in the authority, regulations and categorization of public schools became the sites through which a social order was perpetuated and inscribed through time. The educators were fully involved in countless ways to often offer minor and good regulation and control to the national education system. This enabled power to be normalized and the relations of power did serve as a means of mediating the class systems and colonize the civil society. With liberalization in place, the trainers have to report to other authorities, the government does not have full control of it (Singh, 2011). For this reason, the people, the initial reason for training is shifted against the interest of the power structure and now to the interest is based on improving the life on the trainee. Educators have the challenge of handling the conflict between what the authorities and the governments want and what the international organization wants. This result to governments offering different forms of education regulations other than those initially offered which again makes educators to abide by regulations that come from different independent authority bodies. One of the key elements that are emphasized by the education systems is discipline of the students in the system. All institutions of learning aim towards producing citizens that are disciplined. With liberalization, there is the understanding on how multiculturalism functions that regards to the most effective constitution of the national identity (Guillermo, 2007).. They also have a certain logic that they push for implementation within the nation format. Both the conservative and progressives may or may not find a common ground for the utilization of the multiculturalism as a way through which the community is able to sustain development. Both the groups that support the neoliberal and those that do not support have different opinions concerning the advantages and the disadvantages of liberalizing education over time. A question that arises is what would happen when the community stops becoming necessarily a national one, and the state’s interest in the disciplining the population and regulating. Multiculturalism was able to operate effectively as a conceptual philosophy in the service of state formation. The educators have the greatest responsibility to ensure that through these conditions they are able to deliver. They have to promote the relations between the capital and the labor which involves various mechanisms of the state control and the interventionist, the developmental of the welfare of the state. Globalization can be viewed as a new phenomenon that started with the creation of nation states and their expansion overseas. It means standardization in the production and the consumption when it is viewed with respect to neo-liberalism (Allen, 2011). This would then result to greater understanding, choice, efficiency and the wealth for all. Some people would see globalization as a cultural phenomenon that is largely about the exportation of America way of life to the contemporary everyday life. Through education this knowledge is passed to the citizens. The information passed by the educators to the people has to be impartial so that whichever the decision that the citizens decides to make concerning the issues affecting them are based independent of the educator. Teachers training should be concerned with ensuring two elements. That the teacher has enough subject knowledge and also enough subject application (Chris & George, 2005). Having enough subject knowledge will ensure that the future teachers knows and understands enough about what they intend to teach and that they do understand what they are to teach and they do it effectively. In terms of subject application, teachers future teachers should know and understand more than enough of how to teach what they intend to teach and also be able to do it effectively. This is because; the application of subject cannot take place without the knowledge of the subject. Having little knowledge about a subject makes it unfair for one to place the expectations on the primary school teachers. There should be careful planning and injection of money from the relevant authorities. But the institutions should not request for too much money and resources that it is impossible to get it. In area where there insufficient resources, issues should be taken step by step with a well planned process to ensure that the schools eventually meets the needs they require. For educators to fully dispatch their duties they need to get enough support from both the governments and the international community that advocates for neoliberal (Mitchell, 2011). Beyond maintaining sound fiscal and monetary policies, the governments must be ready to committee to liberal economic policies that will enable them to capture the enormous economic opportunities that are offered by the global capitalism. By giving the educators the support they require in terms of funds and resources, the countries shall be able to lead the paths to greater economic growth that will translate to greater growth in jobs. By becoming a superconductor for the global capitalism would mean the educators shall be able to open up new economies so that those whom they train would be able to access and benefit from a variety of the existing innovations and the processes that are known to increase the production. Doing this would mean rethinking on the policies in terms of trade, new entrants in markets, limitations on foreign direct investment and the production in the product market. Regardless of how we define globalization, two things are certain. For one, those corporations that are transnational, there are frequently very great advantages to be gained through education over the rivals in the same country. This are for example the ability to take advantage of the different labor costs in the different parts of the world that play various local governments against each other in order to extract the financial concessions and to benefit from the dubious transfer pricing practices. Secondly, it does not matter whether or not that the world economy is empirically is more integrated and that it is globally orchestrated now than the earlier times, what matters is that there is a certain perception among many that it is, and it is this perception that drives the people’s action. In most situations the perception that comes in the mind of the people depends on the source of information that one has had from a source he or she can trust. Educators are part of this group whose information really matters on how the people are going to perceive that idea. References Allen, K. (2010). Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from multicultultural self to the strategic comopolitan USA: Washington University Allen, K. (2011). Primary school teachers and the problems faced with teaching.Village Education project, 7(2), 1-3. Chris, D. & George M (2005). Six Challenges of the Educational Technology, Impact of Technology in Education, 5 (24), 1-13. Guillermo. H.(2007). Neoliberal Globalization: A Casus confessions?, Journal of Latin American Hermeneutics, 5 (2), 4-50. Mark, K. (1983). Globalization, Education and Development India: Stephth. Mealik, A. (2011). Neo-liberalism, Education and Globalization, 7 (27), 1-23. Mitchell, K. (2011). Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from multicultultural self to the strategic comopolitan USA: Washington University Trimpel, N. (2010). Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from multicultultural self to the strategic comopolitan USA: Washington University Torres, C. (2002). Abu The state Privatization and Education policy: A critique of Neoliberalism in Latin America and Some Ethical and Political Implications, 3-12. Singh, A. (2011). Globalism, Neo-liberalism, Public Schools and Higher Education: Is your academic institution moving toward corporate model under globalism and Neo-Globalism. Education and Globalization, 6 (24), 1-23. Wianty, L. (2009). Public Schools and Higher Education, Education, 6 (24), 1-23. Wesly, A. (2011). Six Workers’Education and Neoliberal Globalization: An adequate response to translational corporation?, Adult Education Quarterly, 51(1), 9-31. Read More