Abstract
The contemporary focus on learner centered or ‘child-friendly’ schooling has roots in international visions related to the rights of the child and the subsequent EFA movement that gave it clear form. What started as grand vision now takes form as bland orthodoxy as the child becomes the competent, skillful and productive centerpiece of the global knowledge economy.
This narrative – only one possible reading - takes its own form in the global south, where meaning is created amongst tidal waves of cultural, political and economic change. Proliferating signs meet hectic attempts at sense-making, fostering wild associations and fantastic dream scapes. In Nepal, a country where all of the recent growth in school provision comes from private sector initiatives, we see a legitimate yearning for cosmopolitan belonging, economic opportunity and social distinction, all delivered with enthusiasm by a new breed of educational entrepreneur. If this assemblage within the global cultural economy can be named, we might call it ‘full Montessori’, the slogan of many school billboards, recruitment brochures and school improvement manifestos. Rather than only indicating global policy convergence, ‘full Montessori’ can be understood as a loose signifier for competing visions of school and the subject of/ in education as well as a call for a different sensibility when we explore global education phenomena.
The paper will consider the rise of child-focused schooling in Nepal. It will illustrate how new global attachments and an intense market for schooling lead to the resurrection of a distinguished vision of pedagogical reform, turning it into banal and hyperreal statements that tell us much about our global situation as well as the prospects for studying global education reform as policy ‘science’. Building on the fatal research and writing strategies of Jean Baudrillard I outline a different mode of exploring a world in/ of fragments. What can be pieced together? How and Why?
This narrative – only one possible reading - takes its own form in the global south, where meaning is created amongst tidal waves of cultural, political and economic change. Proliferating signs meet hectic attempts at sense-making, fostering wild associations and fantastic dream scapes. In Nepal, a country where all of the recent growth in school provision comes from private sector initiatives, we see a legitimate yearning for cosmopolitan belonging, economic opportunity and social distinction, all delivered with enthusiasm by a new breed of educational entrepreneur. If this assemblage within the global cultural economy can be named, we might call it ‘full Montessori’, the slogan of many school billboards, recruitment brochures and school improvement manifestos. Rather than only indicating global policy convergence, ‘full Montessori’ can be understood as a loose signifier for competing visions of school and the subject of/ in education as well as a call for a different sensibility when we explore global education phenomena.
The paper will consider the rise of child-focused schooling in Nepal. It will illustrate how new global attachments and an intense market for schooling lead to the resurrection of a distinguished vision of pedagogical reform, turning it into banal and hyperreal statements that tell us much about our global situation as well as the prospects for studying global education reform as policy ‘science’. Building on the fatal research and writing strategies of Jean Baudrillard I outline a different mode of exploring a world in/ of fragments. What can be pieced together? How and Why?
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2019 |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
| Event | The Challenge of Theory in Comparative Policy Research ... and Its Possible Re-Articulation - Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark Duration: 17 Sept 2019 → 17 Sept 2019 https://dpu.au.dk/fileadmin/edu/Arrangementer/2019-09-17_ComparisonRe-Articulation-Seminar.pdf (Seminar programme) |
Seminar
| Seminar | The Challenge of Theory in Comparative Policy Research ... and Its Possible Re-Articulation |
|---|---|
| Location | Aarhus University |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| City | Copenhagen |
| Period | 17/09/2019 → 17/09/2019 |
| Other | Seminar hosted by the Research Program Policy Futures with Bob Lingard, Professor, University of Queensland, Stephen Carney, Associate Professor & President of Comparative Education Society in Europe, Roskilde University, and John Benedicto Krejsler, Professor. |
| Internet address |