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Business-Managed Democracy » Education » Business Campaigns » Education Crises |
In country after country, beginning in the mid-1970s in the US, education was declared to be in crisis. This was not so much a reflection of the real state of education as a means to justify the massive school restructuring that business people and their allies wanted. The manufactured perception of crisis served the purpose of discrediting existing institutions and structures and making radical change more widely acceptable. The following nations are discussed in the following sections:
In New Zealand a “crisis was ‘manufactured’ by treasury officials, the conservative National Party in opposition, the media and the business roundtable”. The Treasury report viewed teacher unions as coming between providers and consumers and therefore interfering with the free market.
An educational crisis was declared in Ontario in the late 1980s when the media reported that children performed badly on international standardized tests. The reports continued into the early 1990s and in 1993 when a Royal Commission on Learning was set up. That year reading and writing tests were introduced into schools at grade 9.
If you have any examples or updates you would like to contribute please email them to me and I will add them here. Please give references for where you sourced the information.
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