The Impact of Neoliberalism

Education in the Philippines

Youth's Role

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO THE SOCIETY AS TEENAGERS?

As teenagers, honestly, so many ideas popping up in our mind when we speak of contributions to the society but we know we can’t do it like what our imaginations can do because we have no power to do it unless great people or high-ranked ones will help us to organize and implement it. They always say “Youth is the hope of the nation” but what can we do when only few teenagers are serious in their responsibility? Well, it’s the initiative of an individual to do what’s right.

We can do simple ways like little contributions like giving aid like clothes, foods, and financial matters to the less fortunate people. We can’t deny the fact that high technology is widely spread that even young and adult ones are into it, not to overlook the addiction of most teenagers of craving for what’s in and out, the latest ones and more. As such, joining some organizations that can help improve the society. At least in small tasks with many people who’ll join and be involved in it, there’s a probability of having a great effect which can change the world to a better one.

We just don’t limit our competencies in contributing to the society, at least we have shared our knowledge, energy, innovative mind and new creations of ideas have been discovered and implemented. As the saying goes, “Big things start with small ideas.”

Neoliberalism in the UP

Neoliberalism in the UP

        Since its founding in 1908, the University of the Philippines (UP) has been
inextricably linked with neoliberalism in essence. A relatively new term,
neoliberalism is associated with free market methods and fewer state
restrictions on business operations and economic development – which
also goes by the name of globalization marked by liberalization, deregulation,
and privatization. Its alternatives are said to be economic nationalism, fair
trade, and anti-capitalism or socialism.
     
         U. S. imperialism at the turn of the century ushered in the conditions
of globalization such that the Philippines as a colony became the source of
raw materials and cheap labor used in manufacturing and agri-business in
the United States. At the same time, the Philippines became a dumping
ground for US monopoly capitalism – flooding the country with goods
and services needed in its “benevolent assimilation” or pacification campaign.
In 1907, a Philippine Assembly was elected by propertied voters
(workers, peasants and women had not yet been enfranchised to vote) and
one of their first bills was to establish a state university. Hence, the UP was
founded at a time when the colonial government was at the height of its
pacification campaign against Filipino “insurgents.” The colonial rulers
needed to train the new bureaucracy made up of Filipinos many of whom
would be educated in the US through pensionadoships. The Philippine
Normal School was earlier established to train teachers using English as the
medium of instruction in the public school system. UP was to become a
key part of the ideological apparatus of the colonial government.
   
      Murray Bartlett in his inaugural address as UP president in 1911
stated that “the surest way of bringing about Filipinization of the government
is through the university where skilled and efficient public servants will be
trained for the various bureaus.” Thus, the colonial policy was to co-opt
and train the elite which would then serve as a surrogate for the colonial
establishment. Hence, after the granting of formal independence in 1946,
the national leaders who formed part of the ruling class have continued to
serve American interests.

            The first era of globalization is said to have occurred after the
shocks of the First World War. Free trade policies imposed at the turn of
the century operated more fully during this period marked by (a) the
development of cash crops (sugar, abaca, and coconut) and extractive
industries (metal ore) for export – the raw materials needed by American
industry; and (b) the importation of consumer goods (including cultural
fare) mainly from the US. When the US stock market crashed in 1929, the
Philippines like the rest of the world felt the effects of the Great Depression
that occurred during the 30s. The second era of globalization occurred after the Second World War, and the UP played a key role in the development of units geared to the needs of the Cold War – the so-called struggle of the Free World against the Soviet Union. If the UP during the colonial period produced efficient articulators of colonial ideology, the university after the war produced anti-communist and neocolonial intellectuals and professionals. US funding agencies and foundations had seen to that. Under President Vidal Tan (1952-56), the university became “an American.conduit of anti-communist propaganda”. With the Cold War at its height, nationalist and liberal-minded professors were victims of McCarthyite witch-hunting. The Military Intelligence Service surveilled the campus and recruited agents from the
students and the faculty.

         The International Cooperation Agency (ICA), the forerunner of
the US Agency for International Development (USAID), provided training
grants for UP personnel. The Fulbright-Smith-Mundt program under the
US State Department gave fellowships for UP faculty members and brought
in American professors. Cornell University assisted UP Los Banos in its
programs. Michigan State University aided the Institute of Public
Administration. Stanford helped the colleges of engineering and business
administration. Under these programs, “agents of US imperialism in the
guise of exchange professors and academic technicians swamped the
campus.”

         Other foundations that participated in co-opting the “sympathies
of the Filipino intelligentsia” included the Asia Foundation, Ford Foundation,
Rockefeller Foundation, and the US Philippine Education Foundation which
provided grants and scholarships. The result was a “bumper harvest of
Cold Warriors” who became the deans and directors of the university, and
eventually technocrats and cabinet members of the government. Some were
later promoted to key positions in the World Bank. The administration of President Vicente Sinco (1958-62), who tried to follow the liberal tradition of Rafael Palma and Bienvenido Gonzalez,
was under scrutiny of the Hannah Survey Mission which set criteria for
higher education within the “ideological limits of what the Americans saw
as essential for enlightened citizenship and leadership in a free and democratic
society” (PDF 1984).
The Hannah recommendations were implemented during the term
of Carlos P. Romulo (1962-68). The Americanization of UP intensified
with the proliferation of units and programs with neo-colonial and neoliberal
ideas of development. Under Salvador P. Lopez’s (1969-74) notion of the
university as critic of society and agent of social change, progressive students
and faculty members examined the neocolonial state, using heretofore
proscribed frameworks of analysis. Rallies, demonstrations and teach-ins
became accepted forms of mass education.
But this radical trend was cut short when martial law was declared
in September 1972, and the first target for control was the educational
system. A Marcos decree transformed UP into a System and created
autonomous units, such as the UP Los Banos, to apply the university’s
academic and intellectual expertise and physical resources to achieve the
goals of the “New Society.” The successor to S.P. Lopez, who was eventually
fired after criticizing the dictatorship, provided the ideological justification
for martial law by stressing the pre-eminence of collective rights over
individual rights in his investiture speech.
The UP finally became the “biggest consulting firm for the national
government and private business,” “a think-tank of the Marcos regime,”
and “a pool of trainors, speakers and resource persons involved in
‘development’ agencies of the government.” (PDF 1984: 13) New UP
units were established by decree: (1) the Philippine Center for Advanced
Studies (1973), autonomous like UPLB with dubious programs like the
Institute for Strategic Studies; (2) the Philippine Center for Economic
Development, to provide the government with an “adequate research base
for economic planning and policy formation” and working closely with College of Business Administration described as a “a conduit of corporate, multinational ideology legitimized as academic research;” (3) the National Engineering Center, intended to ensure that the “number of engineering graduates would match the requirement of industry and economy”; and (4) the UP Visayas whose rationale for establishment depended mainly on foreign loans and grants, with the World Bank giving generously to develop
its campus in Miag-ao, said to be ideal for fishery development.

        Long established units were revitalized or reoriented to be useful
to the Marcos regime and big business: the Statistical Center, College of
Public Administration, School of Labor and Industrial Relations, School
of Economics, College of Education, College of Law and Law Center,
College of Engineering, College of Business Administration, Institute of
Mass Communication, and Institute of Small-Scale Industries.
UPLB is a classic example of how the university has been used by
funding institutions for their own purposes. In 1964, the World Bank began
helping the College of Agriculture develop as an instrument for the bank’s
concept of rural development among others. As conceived by former WB
president Robert McNamara (who became US defense secretary during
the Vietnam War), the strategy of rural development called for the creation
of “small, capitalist producers in the countryside to pre-empt the Vietnamtype
liberation movement. This new stratum of petty kulaks can serve as a
cushion to absorb and diffuse pressure from the masses, landless peasants
and rural workers” (PDF 1984: 18). There were other dubious US
undertakings in UPLB.

       The World Bank, with its assistance of $6 million to the College of
Agriculture for improvement of its facilities, then embarked on a sustained
program in education, in conjunction with other US foundations. The World
Bank funded the setting up of the national polytechnic system, 10 regional
manpower centers, 13 experimental agricultural high schools in 1973-78,
the Instructional Materials Corporation to prepare the textbooks in science,
math, social studies, English and Filipino (1976-81), agricultural programs
in UPLB and the College of Veterinary Medicine in 1976-81, and the Ten-
Year Program for Development of Elementary Education in 1981-1990
(Ordoñez 2003: 93). Making Education Work, prepared by technocrats from the UP for
the Education Commission headed by former UP President Edgardo
Angara, reflects the World Bank’s neoliberal ideas of education and
development. For whom? One may ask. Renato Constantino answered the
question way back in 1978: The World Bank wants an educational system that will meet the
manpower needs of the transnationals; that will facilitate the growth
of agri-business production of the global market and that will
insure the internationalization of the entire student population of
values and outlooks, supportive of the global capitalist system.
(Constantino 1978) In this World Bank strategy, the UP played a key role during the years of
the dictatorship. UP after EDSA has not veered away from the control of the
World Bank. In fact, the university under Emil Javier, a product of UPLB,
adopted the Medium-Term Philippine Development Program of President
Ramos, otherwise known as “Philippines 2000,” which followed the World
Bank prescription for an export-oriented economy dominated by transnationals
with the Philippines providing cheap, English literate and docile
workers. UP Plan 2008 (anticipating the university centennial) has all the
features of neoliberal development of the institution and seems to be the
framework of the present UP administration. Even the Department of English tried to get into the scene by
sponsoring during Javier’s term two conferences on the theme of “English
and Global Competitiveness.” UP professors particularly from the School
of Economics and Business Administration, several of whom became
cabinet members, are particularly vocal proponents of globalization. The
contagion has spread to the University Council which approved the revised
general education program, which has the ideological underpinning of
neoliberal thought.
     
           With the national government scrimping on education including
the UP budget, the university administration is now compelled to pursue
what it has believed all along – raise funds from the commercialization of
its “idle assets” and increase of tuition fees. The UP under the present
leadership will not be wanting in physical and intellectual resources in making
the neoliberal type of education work on campus – a model for other state
colleges and universities.

Neoliberal Education in the Philippines

Neoliberal Education in the Philippines 

        Ever since the first liberal apologists of the bourgeois class have
become ascendant in universities in the US with their fervid emphasis on individualism, knowledge has been considered a commodity as is true with all products produced by capitalists. Terms like the universities as
“marketplaces of ideas” and “students as consumers of knowledge,”
inspired by the market mentality of the bourgeoisie have seeped into the academic vocabulary. With their new-found confidence after the fall of the USSR, US monopoly capitalism is now more than ever determined to commercialize education. In UP, this took the form of the Revised General Education Program (RGEP) introduced in 2002 where students are given the choice as “free” consumers of knowledge to select what subjects they want among a variety being offered in the university “market” to suit their personal interests. As a result, subjects which are vitally important for nation and culture-building like history courses are dependent upon the economic calculations of the students. Since these students exist in a capitalist milieu where monetary advance is considered of primary importance, students consider if they will profit from such knowledge materially or not. In this market-driven culture, the purpose of education of instilling the values of social responsibility is defeated in the face of intense individualism promoted by liberalism and neoliberalism as they are expounded in theories in our schools today.

  With the drive to dominate the global market by monopoly capitalism with its neoliberal rationalization of globalization, which is of course detrimental to weaker economies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organization (WTO) have popularized the call for liberalization, deregulation and privatization as beneficial for all societies. With the approval of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in December 1995, the TNCs have eyed the educational systems as a lucrative area for business. It is to be noted that the TNCs under GATS have already succeeded in opening wider the global financial and retail systems, causing the great financial crisis of Asia, Russia

and Latin America from 1997 to 2001 which have wrought havoc to the lives of millions of peoples in these areas. 

         The TNCs, led by US monopoly capitalism, has lobbied in
conferences on GATS in Geneva for the elimination of government subsidies for education under the program of privatization and deregulation being pushed by globalization. They have formed a so-called Global Alliance for Transnational Education (GATE) headed by a certain Gleen R. Jones, CEO of the virtual university Jones International Inc. This Alliance with the support of the World Bank aims to make the service of education market-based as it has identified the $2 trillion cost for education or 1/20th of the world GDP as a very promising new investment area. The World Bank had been very cooperative in this project, pressuring governments, including those in Europe, either to privatize state schools or to increase tuition fees, gradually freeing governments from educational subsidies. Moves to eliminate state support for education in France and Germany have, however, been met with massive student and faculty demonstrations, with French students forcing the closure of Sorbonne University for two months in early 2003 in their show of force against the commercialization of education. The Chirac government as a result of these student protests rescinded its decision to abolish free tertiary education. 

       The GATE, with the assistance of the WB’s own Alliance for Global
Learning, has sponsored so-called Information Technology (IT) rooms in schools and universities under their program of e-learning, primarily aimed to sell their computer products. It has undertaken training for teachers and is working closely with governments and private firms to conduct intervention programs in educational institutions. Other business sponsors of such programs are the corporate bank JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, the consultancy firm Ernst & Young and TNCs in IT, such as Sun Microsystems and 3 Com. The Bill Gates Foundation has also been funding the putting up of techno parks in English universities to sell Microsoft products. As Glenn R. Jones enthuses, “Education is one of the fastestgrowing of all markets. Private training and the adult education industry are expected to achieve double-digit growth throughout the next decade.”
      

  The intrusion of private business into the educational system of welfare-state societies in Europe has alarmed student and faculty organizations in this continent. This is expressed by Per Nyborg, Chairman for the Committee for Higher Education and Research, Council of Europe: The emergence of other providers of higher education than the domestic universities has caused concern in many countries. Especially in developing countries and in countries in transition, governments have felt the need to increase their control over these new providers. National standards, curricula and degree-awarding powers must be protected to safeguard the inclusion of higher education in national objectives for economic development for protection of the culture and for the further development of a democratic society. Little is known about the consequences of GATS for quality, access and equity of higher education. There is in the university sector a fear that GATS may influence the national authority to regulate higher education systems, and have unforeseen consequences on public subsidies for higher education. Both the European University Association (EUA) and the National Unions of Students in Europe (ESIB).

Liberalism, Neoliberalism and the Rise of Consumerist Education

          The rise of the bourgeois class into economic and political powers in the17th to the 19th centuries in Europe correspondingly brought with it a theoretical justification of this social phenomenon, the dissemination by this class through their intellectuals of the theory of the natural rights of men. Though the theory of the universal rights of men first gained academic credence in the Peripatetic school of the Stoics of Ancient Greece, dominated by the Athenian middle class, it was revived in Northern Europe, particularly among the active merchant class in the Netherlands by two philosophers, Athusius and Grotius. The Ancient Stoic philosophy had still a religious basis as it expounded that all persons are the breaths of One God and therefore are equal and that there is a Divine Plan in the world. Stoic philosophy did not, however, reach the masses as it was confined as a culture of high learning among the intellectual elites of Greece and Rome, the most notable of which is seen in the writings of the stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD ). 

          The theory of natural rights as it was resurrected by the intellectuals of the rising bourgeois class in the 17th century, after its long hiatus during the Middle or the Dark Ages when all forms of Greek thought were eschewed, later found expression in the theory of liberalism of Thomas Hobbes. While his predecessors still advocated a God as the basis of rights, Hobbes eliminated all religious justifications of these rights. To him they are founded on the basic instinct of self-preservation or what he calls the right to life of every person. John Locke, who was closely associated with the English bourgeois class as a custom official, developed the right to life and happiness of Hobbes to include the right to property of the individual. 

        The theory of liberalism when it appeared in Europe primarily emphasized the rights of the individual against the state, which was then controlled by the nobility and the clergy, who had as their favorite milking cows when their coffers ran out, the emerging wealthy bourgeois class in the form of new taxes, enforced monetary contribution and even outright confiscation of properties.Thus to the liberals the right of the individual became the right to do business unmolested by the state (Adam Smith and the French Physiocrats) and the right against unjust taxes, the rallying cry of the French bourgeoisie in the French revolution of 1789. This was also the case in the earlier American 1776 revolution in which the main spark of the rebellion against colonial master Britain was what the nascent American bourgeois class considered unjust taxes on imports which led to the Boston Tea Party. 

        After the successful revolutions of the bourgeois class against the feudal monarchies in Europe, using the masses as cannon fodders who were led to believe that they too will enjoy political and economic emancipation after these social upheavals, this class forthwith limited the right of suffrage to the propertied and educated. And all promised economic reforms were all but forgotten. The masses were made to believe that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the National Assembly in 1789 will bring about their liberation from the shackles of feudalism, under a new regime of liberty, equality and fraternity for all “citizens or people” as the French revolutionary bourgeois and pettybourgeois intellectuals call them. But such trust in their bourgeois leaders proved to be misguided. The betrayal of the libertarian promises to the lower classes pushed them to seek for an explanation of their unfortunate fate as some of their leaders were even hanged by the victorious bourgeois classes (the cases of the Levellers in the Cromwellian Army in the English revolution and Babeuf and other leaders of the League of the Just during the French revolution).For indeed the liberal philosophy of the bourgeoisie only reflected the morality of this class which became economically and politically dominant in Western Europe and the United States.  

Thus the virtue of individualism and the inviolability of private property were lauded in the constitutions of this class and none of the rights of man went beyond egoistical man, “an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his privatecaprice” (Marx 1964: 26). In short, the modes of life of the successful bourgeois became the rights of the citizen.

What is Neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism

"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.

"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.

"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.