The Irish Education Forum; Formulating An Activist Future For Education.

national | anti-capitalism | news report Wednesday March 03, 2004 04:11 by antrophe - IEF antrophe at hotmail dot com

No longer debatable in the abstract, globalisation is now impacting on Irish education with the local face of a neo-liberal driven Irish state After the defeat of fees last year, cutbacks are being used to force college authorities into an implicit acceptance that funding will have to come from outside taxation. This is no coincidence. The World Trade Organisation's 'General Agreement on Trade In Services' has long defined public services as 'trade barriers' to be eliminated, education is no exception and Article 133 is there to speed up the whole process. Of course the business lobby are only delighted to eye up opening spaces for profit production. The only way to spin a profit from education is through commodification, and like all products the only way we can then access it is through paying.

Of course given the culture of secrecy around the formulation of these agendas, no one has bothered to consult the thousands of people who already can’t access third level such as travellers, people with disabilities, mature students, mothers and so on, the state simply seems intent to rush ahead with a business driven agenda dressed up in the rhetoric of social inclusion.

While University Heads and the OECD step up calls for the privatisation of education, USI fumbles for figures in a cash crisis which may see many officers made redundant, opening themselves up to increased scathing criticism. From the surface it could look like the student movement is up against the wall. But at the flipside, students are getting it together on the campuses with increasing success. The Boycott Coke Campaign got a new shot in the arm with victory in Trinity, and there’s a referendum on the way in Maynooth. Direct action got the goods in UCD, as library hours were restored after a campaign culminating in an overnight occupation. The national media pissed itself with excitement when it emerged McDowell had been apparently ‘assaulted’ in UCD by members of the anti-deportation campaign, UCD services told a different story; still the issues being raised by the activists remained submerged in the media warbles.

These new grass roots based movements need a forum for discussion and the promotion of grassroots activism through out Ireland. Hence the Irish Education Forum. The IEF will bring together students, trade unionists, and other activists from across Ireland to map out the Future of the Student movement in Ireland. It will be an open space for ideas with plenaries and workshops to inject some much needed ideas and energy into the movement. Plenaries will cover areas like Internationalisation, fighting cutbacks, defending education as a public service and access to education.

More information on what the Irish Education Forum is follows.


What is the Irish Education Forum?

The Irish Education Forum is a participatory dialogue seeking to formulate a grassroots response to the direction in which education is being pushed by nation states, international bodies and corporate interests. It will take place in the UCD Student Centre on March 18th and 19th, providing a counter-summit to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) meeting taking place in Dublin Castle. The Irish Education Forum strives to open up a forum for the co-operation and development of those involved in advocating a public education system driven by social needs rather than the states corporate agenda.

A series of plenary discussions will provide a focus for various workshops which will be taking place, under the headings such as the following.

Access.

In 2001 UCD the country’s biggest university had just 937 students whose parents were in semi skilled or unskilled jobs. 8,354 students came from employer, professional and managerial backgrounds. With the state appearing only too happy to maintain registration fees, inadequate grants, unaffordable housing, physical barriers and transport problems as social and economic barriers to education. It seems education is free in rhetoric alone as educational institutions remain closed off to large sections of the population. The publication of a recent OECD report recommends the privatisation of education, which can only accentuate the problems of access. Despite the language of social inclusion being adopted as a façade by the state in it’s recent onslaught against public education, the state remains oblivious with suggestions implying that educational inequality begins and can be solved at the college gate. Egalitarian education can only come about through the address of wider structural, social and cultural barriers in all levels of education. Under-funding in secondary and primary, as well as poverty in the community all remain as issues which the state refuse to address; while maintaining that erecting further financial barriers to third level will eliminate wider problems. If we are to formulate a social response to the corporate driven agenda of the state and private interests, then we need to identify where barriers to access actually emanate from, and what should really be done about it in order to challenge an increasingly regressive dialogue emanating from the state.

Globalisation.

No longer debatable in the abstract, the concept globalisation is now impacting on Irish education with the local face of a neo-liberal driven Irish state. After the defeat of fees last year, cutbacks are being used to force college authorities into an implicit acceptance that funding will have to come from outside taxation. This is no coincidence. The World Trade Organisation's 'General Agreement on Trade In Services' has long defined public services as 'trade barriers' to be eliminated, education is no exception. Of course the business lobby are only delighted to eye up opening spaces for profit production. The only way to spin a profit from education is through commodification, and like all products the only way we can then access it is through paying. Research funded by private interests, as has been the case already in some instances, means the end of the critical university and research that was once public being swallowed up for the benefit of private coffers. Not only do students and academics suffer, but those who keep our third level services ticking over face being franchised out to private agencies who only have to answer to their shareholders. In a discussion on GATS, David Kearns the US chair of Xerox described how ‘businesses will have to set the agenda…a complete restructure driven by competition and market discipline.' Of course, what ever doesn't fit the mould of the speculators will be driven out, unable to compete for private funding as no apparent market value is obvious. In the economic equation there is no room for the social value of free education. It is no coincidence the IEF is colliding with the meetings of the OECD around the EU presidency here. The formulation of the Lisbon and Bologna process of which education is a part seeks to speed up the globalisation process within the EU. The EU commission has after all described GATS as ‘first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business.’ While international power structures meet behind power doors to decide the fate of our public services with no consultation. There is more need than ever for a flip side response from the students, academics, workers and communities whose real value from education is social rather than economic.

Democracy.

Increasingly profit is colonising our educational institutions, and is dictating the structures and decisions which are taken rather than democratic accountability. With competition for artificially limited resources increasingly deciding what is studied and what isn’t, education as an all encompassing experience is undercut in favour of churning out economically productive units instead of rounded individuals. Once tied into a business ethos, education and its running become a question open only to shareholders and private interests rather than those directly involved. While the structures of power in education become increasingly alienated from the democratic process, democratic control of social space in education also becomes eroded, as franchises set up and occupy the cultural and social milieus of academic experience. Students, workers and academics become redefined a ‘customers’ and their value and experience dictated by economic ends rather than social. The question of democracy extends into calling into question the current relationship between learner and teacher, the structures and habits governing how lecture, class and educational experience is organised. Does how we learn exclude and alienate people through misshapen notions of what academic capability is? The question of democracy in education is one which binds together all other questions, access, participation, who makes the decisions and in who’s interest? Extending beyond education, the issues posed by democracy in education call into question the models of governance and decision making structures which exist throughout society. If we are to pose an alternative vision of education, then how should it operate? And what practical applications from this vision can we implement in our own movements for change?

Anybody interested in hosting a participatory workshop to further delve into any issue over the course of the forum should get in touch as soon as possible. The findings of the workshops will be presented at the closing open floor plenary session.

To become get involved in discussions around the forum and to organise it join our discussion list at

[email protected]

Links;
http://www.education-is-not-for-sale.org European based student movement organising against the local manifestations of globalisation
http://www.zmag.org critical takes on globalisation and more
http://www.freeeducation.cjb.net there are still a good few articles on here about globalisation
http://www.indymedia.ie for grassroots non-corporate news, analysis and reportage.
http://www.struggle.ws list of Irish anti-neo-liberal campaigns.
http://www.usi.ie national student union.
http://www.ucdsu.net the hosts of the forum.