A system that supports inequities...
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In recent weeks, I have been critical of the way the education system in Australia, following neoliberalism, supports capitalist interests by focusing on maintenance of the status quo and producing a citizenship who accept inequities as a normal part of any society, ceasing to question the system that produces those inequities.
These inequities are substantial. In the US, a survey of salaries in 2014 found four CEOs whose salaries were 1000 times the median worker salary (the CEO of Discovery Communications earned $156.1 million in 2014, an amount 1951 times the firm’s median salary).
In Australia, similar data is much more difficult to obtain because CEO pay is somewhat obscured through the use of bonuses and equity allocations. The May 2016 ABS data suggests that the average annual wage for Australian workers is about $81,000. At that time, the CEO of CommBank took home 106 times that amount when bonus and equity payments are included in the calculation.
The gap between executive pay and the pay of workers has not always been this large in Australia. The gap was demonstrated to have begun increasing in the mid-1970s, and has continued to increase after the global financial crisis, while the increase in worker pay has slowed.
I have been arguing that our education system is producing citizens who accept these inequalities as normal, who no longer question them, and in fact, are likely to accept recommendations that increases in worker salaries be capped in the interests of company financial viability: belt tightening for some of us but not all of us.
The May 2016 ABS data suggests that the average annual wage for Australian workers is about $81,000. At that time, the CEO of CommBank took home 106 times that amount ...
Are there alternatives?
Are there alternatives? Is there any example of an education system that challenges neoliberal capitalism and focuses instead on social justice and empowerment?
I suggest there is, and we need to look outside our box to see such a system in operation. One such example is from Cuba. The Cuban approach is based on universal participation irrespective of class, gender, ethnicity or religion. In Cuba, education is free at all levels for Cuban citizens and its aim is to empower all to participate in society. Participation means that citizens all learn to argue coherently, hold meetings, make informed local decisions and develop their own personal autonomy.
In the 50 years since beginning their “new” education system, Cuba changed from widespread illiteracy, and the related lack of access to health care, to a nation with better life expectancy and infant mortality rates than 20 other American nations including the USA.
The Cuban system in NSW
Let me introduce briefly the work of Jack Beatson (CEO of Literacy for Life - www.lflf.org.au) and Bob Boughton, based on the Cuban “Yes, I can” adult literacy campaign here in NSW. I have recently read a thesis by Lia Weitzel that examines the implementation of this program in a number of towns (Bourke, Brewarrina, Wilcannia, Enngonia, Walgett, Toomelah and Boggabilla) in western NSW. Here Indigenous adults take part in a series of lessons using the Cuban literacy curriculum and the success rate is outstanding.
Communities hosting the program have become empowered to continue literacy intervention beyond the program itself, and the families of graduates are demonstrating improved literacy. Teachers report that children are beginning school with improved literacy levels as parents take a more active interest in literacy activities in the home.
Adults with improved literacy are now accessing further training (for example TAFE) and have improved employment outcomes and fewer criminal offences (including assault and violence), less harmful drinking and greater involvement in health care.
Costs per graduate of the program are around a quarter of the cost of formal post-school courses run through the VET system.
There are alternatives...
There are alternatives to our neoliberal, compliance-oriented education system. As educators we have to decide where we want to put our time and effort and, to do this we have to think for ourselves what we really want our education system to do.