Towards Ustopia

In her opening speech ‘The imperative of the future’ at the UKFIET 2023 Conference, two key arguments in relation to a just education stood out from Maria Balarin. First, less politically challenging topics have a greater chance to make it into policies and practice, and second, the depoliticisation of education policies undermines the potential for justice.  Balarin’s arguments are fundamental in interrogating the inequalities of the Global North-South relationship for a just education in present time. Drawing inspiration from Margaret Atwood’s Ustopia, which denotes the collective imagination of human species where tensions are acknowledged yet everyone has what they need to thrive, I make two arguments in relation to debates about just education – (1) the utopian visions promoted by international organisations (IOs) fail to engage underlying structural inequalities that impede equitable education and (2) Global South and grassroot movements can serve as a source of inspiration in the knowledge-making of a just education.

The utopian visions of the international organisations

In recent times, IOs, predominantly occupied with experts from the Global North, deploy utopias to shape the future of education through technologies of government (Tikly, 2004), such as foresights, anticipation, and scenario planning. Utopian visions are deeply problematic because they gloss over complex and complicated realities, and often times exaggerate the ease to achieve desirable futures. By assuming the role of ‘guardians’ of education (Robertson, 2022), such utopian visions do not engage with a just education in a meaningful way, rather they are used by IOs to legitimise the considerable influence they hold over education futures. Examples of future-making visions promoted by IOs are the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Reimagining our Futures Together and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030 and Digital Education Outlook. While UNESCO advocates a “new social contract” with justice at its core, the OECD promotes “soft” skills and technologies as panaceas to tackle an uncertain future (Robertson & Beech, 2023). Given the influence and reach of IOs and their visions through global agendas such as SDG4 (Quality Education), Global South countries are compelled to embrace educational agendas that are based on Western values and epistemologies, representing a form of new imperialism (Tikly, 2004). 

Against the background of Hannah Arendt’s warning that utopian visions can have depoliticising effects and totalitarian outcomes (Arendt, 1951), it is important to critically unpack these educational visions put forward by IOs. Based on an analysis of several OECD and UNESCO reports, Elfert (2023) highlighted the emergence of two policy strands – ‘sustainable futures’ and ‘technosolutionism’. Although both policy strands have different ontological underpinnings – sustainable futures are associated with the humanistic-emancipatory agenda such as lifelong learning, and technosolutionism which are related to the ‘economics of education’ movement and represents the unwavering belief that technology will save us all. Elfert (2023) carefully illustrates that educational visions stemming from both these policy strands have the potential to undermine democratic principles. For example, she argues that UNESCO’s notion of the social contract, outlined in Reimagining our Futures Together, diverts attention away from political action and creates potential for the abuse of higher collective ideals. Meanwhile, the OECD’s emphasis on enhancing the understanding of human learning through scientific evidence serves the commercial interests of educational technology (EdTech) companies. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, EdTech companies have successfully embedded themselves in public education by passing national laws (Williamson & Hogan, 2020). Companies such as Google For Education and Microsoft Education play an influential role in the digital education landscape offering technological solutions and leveraging their tools in the promise of enhanced education. Subsequently, such EdTech corporations not only have a say in global education policymaking, but also insert themselves in global and local networks that afford them legitimacy. Additionally, there is a growing influence of EdTech in education in the structure of global governance around the Sustainable Development Goals (Patil, 2024). The rise of global governance and the influence of EdTech corporations require us to think about a just education more contemplatively, particularly in the unequal North-South relationship. 

Elfert’s (2023) work on IOs’ utopian visions push us to think about how justice in education can be achieved without being grounded in an analysis of structural inequalities? The intensification of ‘scientific evidence’ in education was meant to advance human knowledge to make sense of the uncertainties in a volatile world. If utopia itself is ambiguous, and IOs are shaping visions of how they want the world to be through imperial technologies of government, where would this leave marginalised communities in the Global South? Therefore, Elfert’s (2023) argues that these global educational discourses do not bring us closer to the supposed utopia, rather they contribute to the widening inequalities between the North and South. Owing to this, new sources of inspiration, such as reparations (Sriprakash, 2023) are needed to imagine a just education for the future. 

Seeking inspirations from grassroot movements

In a recently published book, titled Laboratories of Learning: Social Movements, Education and Knowledge-making in the Global South, Mario Novelli, Birgul Kutan, Patrick Kane, Adnan Celik, Tejendra Pherali, and Saranel Benjamin highlight grassroot examples of justice in education from the Global South, namely in Turkey, Colombia, Nepal, and South Africa (Novelli et al., 2023). Their collaborative research sheds light on how the South can produce vital knowledge as they struggle for a better world. If anything, the social movements’ struggle for a just education for their communities were achieved by confronting the structural inequalities. These grassroot movements, referred to as ‘laboratories as learning’ offer rich and innovative insights into advocacy work for and by marginalised groups and provide evidence of the role of the Global South in the knowledge-making process, particularly in the context of equitable education. Another example is Rebecca Tarlau’s (2019) research on the educational initiatives of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, focusing on how the social movement of rural workers struggled for agrarian reform. Tarlau highlighted that the social movement was able to push for co-governance of rural public schools to encourage youths to remain in the countryside. With the rising influence of EdTech corporations, it is also pertinent to look at examples of Ustopias from a technological perspective. In her latest book Viral Justice, Ruha Benjamin (2022) highlights how technologies have the potential to deepen discrimination through automated decision making. As a counter example, in Barcelona, a digital platform for citizen participation called Decidim collectively create policies that respond to citizens’ needs, without the influence of technology companies. In Atlanta, people utilised their imagination and mobilised digital tools against the construction of a police facility that would lead to destruction of one of Atlanta’s largest forests. Although Barcelona and Atlanta are localities of the Global South, the mobilisation of these young communities from marginalised backgrounds shows that technological power can be harnessed for a better and just society. 

The struggles of these self-mobilised and politically-motivated social movements and digital initiatives represent Ustopias in action, powerful counter-visions to the depoliticised global utopias promoted by IOs, that can serve as inspirations to realise an education that is more just and meaningful for communities around the world.      

References

“2023 Conference Opening Plenary.” YouTube, uploaded by Sarah Jeffery, 2 October 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A1XImyErWg

Benjamin, R. (2022). Viral justice: How we grow the world we want. Princeton University Press.

Elfert, M. (2023). Humanism and democracy in comparative education. Comparative Education, 118.

Novelli, M., Benjamin, S., Çelik, A., Kane, P., Kutan, B., & Pherali, T. (2021). Laboratories of learning: Education, learning and knowledge-making in social movements: Insights from Colombia, Nepal, South Africa and Turkey. Pluto Books.

Patil, L. (2024, January 25). Education Global Governance and Technology Corporations: Inherent Conflicts and Potential Safeguards for a New Social Contract. NORRAG.

Robertson, S. L. (2022). Guardians of the future: International organisations, anticipatory governance and education. Global Society, 36(2), 188-205.

Robertson, S. L., & Beech, J. (2023). ‘Promises promises’: international organisations, promissory legitimacy and the re-negotiation of education futures. Comparative Education, 1-18.

Sriprakash, A. (2023). Reparations: Theorising just futures of education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 44(5), 782-795.

Tarlau, R. (2019). Occupying schools, occupying land: How the landless workers movement transformed Brazilian education. Global and Comparative Ethnography.

Tikly, L. (2004). Education and the new imperialism. Comparative Education, 40(2), 173-198.

Williamson, B., & Hogan, A. (2020). Commercialisation and privatisation in/of education in the context of Covid-19. Education International.