Vol.2 issue3
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This document is an issue of the magazine EDucate! which aims to challenge existing paradigms of education and development. It contains various articles on rethinking education including interviews and pieces on commodification of education, corporatization of education, media and technology, and societal learning. It also contains regular features such as an editor's note, inspirations and reflections, and a voice of the voiceless section. A critique from a reader comments that the magazine focuses too heavily on theory and could benefit from more practical examples from Pakistan. Reflections on the critique discuss balancing theoretical challenges with more links to practice while maintaining the magazine's progressive stance.
![They want to control access, and that’s a large part of Microsoft’s efforts:
control access in such a way that people who access the Internet will be
guided to things that they want, like home marketing service, or diversion,
or something or other.
to come out of this. That includes also the entertainment
industries, so-called, the various modalities for diverting
people from the public arena, and so on.
And there are new things happening all the time. Like
there’s a dramatic example, that’s the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI). The negotiations have
been going on in secret for about three years. It’s
essentially a huge corporate power play, trying to give
‘investors’ – that doesn’t mean the guy working on the
shop floor, it means the board of directors of GE, of
Merrill Lynch, and so on – to give investors extraordinary
rights. That’s being done in secret because the people
involved, which is the whole business community
incidentally, know that the public is going to hate it. So
therefore the media are keeping it secret. And it’s an
astonishing feat to keep quiet about what everyone knows
to be a major set of decisions, which are going to lock
countries into certain arrangements. It’ll prevent public
policy. Now you can argue that it’s a good thing, a bad
thing, you can argue what you like, but there’s no doubt
about how the public is going to react, and there’s no
doubt about the fact that the media, which have been
well aware of this from the beginning have succeeded in
virtually not mentioning it.
How would a company like Microsoft benefit from the MAI?
They could move capital freely. They could invest it
where they like. There would be no restrictions on
anything they do. A country, or a town, like say,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I live, where I work,
could not impose conditions on consumer protection,
environmental control, investment and set-asides for
minorities or women, you name it, that would be ruled
out.
Now exactly how far this would go depends on the
disposition to enforce it. These things are not determined
by words. There’s nothing in the Constitution, or the
amendments to the Constitution, which allows private
tyrannies to have the right to personhood. It’s just power,
not the wording. What the MAI would mean in practice
depends on what the power relations are, like whether
people object to it so strenuously they won’t allow it to
happen, maybe by riots, or whatever. So those are the
terms that they're going to try to impose.
A crucial element of this is what they call the ratchet
effect; that is existing legislation is to be allowed, but it
R E T H I N K I N G MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
has to be removed over time. It has to be rolled back,
and no new legislation can be introduced conflicting with
the rights of Microsoft to do anything they like in the
international arena, or domestically. Well over time that’s
supposed to have a ratchet effect, to turn the world over
more and more in the hands of the major private
tyrannies, like Microsoft, with their alliances and
interactions.
Economist Brian Arthur argues that with the rapidly changing
nature of technology, no one will remain in a monopoly
position for long, so that monopoly power in the technology
industries is different than what we’ve historically seen, and
is nothing to worry about.
But there never was monopoly power; or there very rarely
was monopoly power. Take highly concentrated power
systems, like the energy industries. But they’re not strictly
speaking monopolies. Shell and Exxon are competitors.
This is a highly managed system of market administration,
with enormous state power entering in the interests of a
small collection of private tyrannies.
It’s very rare to find a real monopoly. AT&T was a
monopoly for a time, that’s why it could create things
like the transistor, for example. It was a monopoly, so
therefore they could charge high rates. But that’s certainly
unusual.
Do you think the whole monopoly issue is something to be
concerned about?
These are oligopolies; they are small groups of highly
concentrated power systems which are integrated with one
another. If one of them were to get total control of some
system, other powers probably wouldn’t allow it. In fact,
that’s what you’re seeing.
How has the transfer from the public to the private sphere
changed the Internet?
As long as the Internet was under control of the
Pentagon, it was free. People could use it freely [for]
information sharing. That remained true when it stayed
within the state sector of the National Science
Foundation.
As late as about 1994, people like say, Bill Gates, had
no interest in the Internet. He wouldn’t even go to
conferences about it, because he didn’t see a way to make
a profit from it. Now it's being handed over to private
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![C R I T I C A L
EDUCATORS
Education
Incorporated?
HENRY GIROUX
From the management of public schools to the content of the curriculum, corporate values
threaten the democratic purposes of public education.
O
ne of the most important legacies of public education has
been to provide students with the critical capacities, the
knowledge, and the values to become active citizens striving
to realize a vibrant democratic society. Within this tradition, schooling
is defined as a public good and a fundamental right (Dewey, 1916;
Giroux, 1988). Such a definition rightfully asserts the primacy of
democratic values over corporate culture and commercial values.
Schools are an important indicator of the well-being of a democratic
society. They remind us of the civic values that must be passed on
to young people in order for them to think critically; to participate
in policy decisions that affect their lives; and to transform the racial,
social, and economic inequities that close down democratic social
relations. Yet, as crucial as the role of public schooling has been in
history, this role is facing an unprecedented attack from proponents
of market ideology who strongly
advocate the unparalleled expansion
of corporate culture (Molnar, 1996a;
Pecora, 1998; Consumer Union
Education Services, 1998).
Preparing Citizens or
Consumers?
HENRY GIROUX
Henry A. Giroux is currently teaching at
Pennsylvania State University. Professor
Giroux has published extensively in a
wide-ranging number of scholarly journals
and books. Giroux is internationally
renowned for his work in critical
pedagogy and has published many
books on the subject. He lectures widely
on a variety of cultural, social and
educational issues in the United States
and abroad.
Growing up corporate has become
a way of life for youth. This is
evident as corporate mergers
consolidate control of assets and
markets, particularly as such
corporations extend their influence
over the media and its management
of public opinion. But it is also
apparent in the accelerated
commercialism in everyday life,
including the “commercialization of
public schools, the renaming of
public streets for commercial
sponsors, [and even] restroom
advertising” (Wright, 1997, p.
181). Although many observers
recognize that market culture
exercises a powerful role in
shaping identities, it still comes
as a shock when an increasing
number of young people, when
asked to provide a definition for
democracy, answer by referring to
“the freedom to buy and
consume whatever they wish,
without government restriction”
(Wright, 1997, p. 182).
Growing up corporate suggests
that as commercial culture
replaces public culture, the
language of the market becomes
a substitute for the language of
democracy. At the same time,
commercial culture erodes civil
society as the function of
schooling shifts from creating a
“democracy of citizens [to] a
democracy of consumers” (Grace,
1997, p. 315). One consequence
is that consumerism appears to
be the only kind of citizenship
being offered to children and
adults.
Our youth are absorbing the
most dangerous aspects of the
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![classroom materials that blatantly hawk their
products. For instance, “General Mills has sent
8,000 teachers a science curriculum about
volcanoes entitled 'Gushers: Wonders of the Earth,'
which uses the company's fruit Gushers candy”
(Shenk, 1995, p. 52). Similarly, the Washington
Post reported that McDonald's gives elementary
schools curriculum packages in which students
learn how a McDonald's restaurant is run and, in
case they miss the point about future jobs, how
to apply for employment (Sanchez, 1998).
The Growing Disregard for Public
Life
As market culture permeates the social order, it
threatens to diminish the tension between market
values and democratic values, such as justice;
freedom; equality; respect for children; and the
rights of citizens as equal, free human beings.
Without such values, students are relegated to the
role of economic calculating machines, and the
growing disregard for public life is left unchecked.
History has been clear about the dangers of
unbridled corporate power. Four hundred years of
slavery, ongoing through unofficial segregation; the
exploitation of child labor; the sanctioning of cruel
working conditions in coal mines and sweatshops;
and the destruction of the environment have all
been fueled by the law of maximizing profits and
minimizing costs. This is not to suggest that
corporations are the enemy of democracy, but to
highlight the centrality of a strong democratic civil
society that limits the reach of corporate culture.
John Dewey (1916) rightfully argued that
democracy requires work, but that work is not
synonymous with democracy.
Education for Democratic Life
Educators, families, and community members need
to reinvigorate the language, social relations, and
politics of schooling. We must analyze how power
shapes knowledge, how teaching broader social
values provides safeguards against turning
citizenship skills into workplace-training skills, and
how schooling can help students reconcile the
seemingly opposing needs of freedom and solidarity.
As educators, we need to examine alternative
models of education that challenge the
corporatization of public schools. For example,
R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATORS
In the face of corporate takeovers,
ongoing commercialization of the
curriculum, and growing interest in
students as consumers rather than as
citizens, educators must reassert the
crucial importance of public education.
pioneering educators such as Deborah Meier, Ted
Sizer, James Comer, the Rethinking Schools
Collective, and other groups are working hard to
link educational policies and classroom practices
to expand the scope of freedom, justice, and
democracy.
Education as a moral and political practice always
presupposes a preparation for particular forms of
social life, a particular vision of community, and
a particular version of the future. We must address
the problems of public schooling in the realms of
values and politics, while holding firm to the
possibilities of public education in strengthening
the practice of active citizenship (Boyte, 1992).
Schooling should enable students to involve
themselves in the deepest problems of society, to
acquire the knowledge, the skills, and the ethical
vocabulary necessary for what the philosopher and
Czech president Vaclav Havel (1998) calls “the
richest possible participation in public life” (p. 45).
Havel's comments suggest that educators must
defend schools as essential to the life of the
nation because schools are one of the few public
spaces left where students can learn about and
e n g a g e i n t h e e x p e r i e n c e o f d e m o c r a c y.
In the face of corporate takeovers, ongoing
commercialization of the curriculum, and growing
interest in students as consumers rather than as
citizens, educators must reassert the crucial
importance of public education.
Educators as Public Intellectuals
The corporatization of education reflects a crisis
of vision regarding the meaning of democracy at
a time when market cultures, market moralities,
market mentalities [are] shattering community,
eroding civic society, [and] undermining the
nurturing system for children. (West, 1994, p. 42)
Yet, such a crisis also represents a unique
opportunity for educators to connect the purpose
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Vol.2 issue3
- 1. Issue No. 3, Vol. No. 2 Rs. 45 ED ucate! Education & Development tiz in g E d u ra ca o rp tio Co A Quarterly on po An Interview with rl d n C or r a tizi n g T h e Ashfaq Ahmed Page 21 o W
- 2. REMEMBERING Said’s importance lies finally and mainly in the range and power of the questions he has raised, rather than in his own answers to those questions. He therefore almost invites us to refer back to the closing lines of Beginnings, written almost three decades ago: “In the course of studying for and writing this book, I have opened, I think, possibilities for myself (and hopefully for others) of further problematics to be explored...These are studies to which I hope our moral will shall be equal – if in part this beginning has fulfilled its purpose.” Edward Said’s death removes hope that he could fully pursue the many possibilities that his work opens up; but whoever now does pursue them, the honour of the beginning, of the first discoveries and of the moral example, will be his. Stephen Howe Edward Said abhorred fans, schools of thought, disciples. He had little patience with the younger generations who merely followed and copied their masters. He made fun of grant theories and the armies of theoreticians fighting over the details…If at this point he were to demand something of us he who demanded nothing more than he demanded of himself - he would insist that we look forward, that we fight for what is just in the world using our own autonomous capacities, loving life on earth and not wasting our time with metaphysical inanities, knowing that in history, with human capacity itself and nothing else, the improbable becomes probable, the impossible becomes possible. Stathis Gourgouris www.edwardsaid.org
- 3. EDWARD SAID 1935-2003 “Remember the solidarity shown to Palestine here and everywhere... and remember also that there is a cause to which many people have committed themselves, difficulties and terrible obstacles notwithstanding. Why? Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights.” “I urge everyone to join in and not leave the field of values, definitions, and cultures uncontested. They are certainly not the property of a few Washington officials, any more than they are the responsibility of a few Middle Eastern rulers. There is a common field of human undertaking being created and recreated, and no amount of imperial bluster can ever conceal or negate that fact.”
- 4. Issue No. 3, Vol. No. 2 Rs. 45 ED Rethinking Education ucate! Education & Development rp ora tiz i n g E d u ca ti o Co A Quarterly on po 29 DR. SHAHID SIDDIQUI rl d n C or An Interview with Commodification of Education o r a t iz i n g T h e W Ashfaq Ahmed Page 21 Commercialism 101: An Introduction to the Corporatization of Education 32 TRACY THOMPSON KHAN Cover Story Rethinking Development But Can’t Technology Solve the Problems? 35 TED TRAINER when CORPORATIONS rule the world is there a way out then? EDITED & COMPILED BY MASHHOOD RIZVI & AMBREENA AHMED Page 8 Critical Educators Education Incorporated? 43 HENRY GIROUX Rethinking Media & Technology Noam Chomsky: Perspectives on Corporate Power & Communications Technology 39 ANNA COUEY AND JOSHUA KARLINER Societal Learning U R on! Books for a Better World Bringing the Food Economy Home 26 How ‘They’ Run the World 27 Societal Learning An Interview for EDucate! ASHFAQ AHMED By Aziz Kabani & Somaiya Ayoob Page 21 Websites for a Better World www.corpwatch.org Holding Corporations Accountable 28
- 5. EDucate! Issue No. 3, Vol. No. 2 Regular Features OPEN LETTERS MISSION STATEMENT 4 This pioneering magazine has been created to challenge ethically, morally and intellectually the inequalities in the existing paradigms of education and development in order to liberate people’s thoughts and actions. CHAIRPERSON Prof. Anita Ghulam Ali EDITOR’S NOTE 7 EDITOR–IN–CHIEF Mashhood Rizvi EDITOR Ambreena Ahmed WAKEUP CALLS INSPIRATIONS & REFLECTIONS ASSISTANT EDITOR Aziz Kabani 20 CONTRIBUTORS Dr. Shahid Siddiqui, Tracy Thompson Khan, Ted Trainer, Henry Giroux, Anna Couey and Joshua Karliner VOICE OF THE VOICELESS 47 EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE Shakeel Ahmed, Umme Salma PROOF READING Fatima Zaidi DESIGNER Zulfiqar Ali Zulfi ILLUSTRATION/PHOTO CREDIT Muhammad Waseem CORRESPONDENCE MANAGER Somaiya Ayoob CIRCULATION MANAGER Moid-ul-Hasan CONTRIBUTIONS We welcome your questions, suggestions, support and contributions. Letters to the editor should not exceed 500 words. Essays and articles should not exceed more than 3000 words. Previously published articles and essays should be supported with references and permissions to reprint. The editor reserves the right to edit submissions prior to publication. DISCLAIMER EDucate! is published quarterly by the Sindh Education Foundation. The opinions reflected in the various contributions and articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sindh Education Foundation. PERMISSIONS Sindh Education Foundation. No written permission is necessary to reproduce an excerpt, or to make photocopies for academic or individual use. Copies must include a full acknowledgment and accurate bibliographic citation. Electronic copy of the magazine can be viewed at www.sef.org.pk. Copies are available at the Sindh Education Foundation, Plot 9, Block 7, Kehkashan, Clifton 5, Karachi–75600, Pakistan and leading bookstores of the country. CORRESPONDENCE CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING Word Rate: Rs.15 ($0.5) per word* Please address correspondence to the Correspondence Manager at the above address or via e-mail at dprc@cyber.net.pk or sef@cyber.net.pk. Correspondence relating to subscription, membership, previous issues and change of address should also be addressed to the Correspondence Manager. Display Rate: Rs.1500 ($26) per inch* PRICE Pakistan Rs. International US$ Please indicate the desired heading for your ad copy (the first few words of your ad may appear in caps). The column width for display ads is 2 inches. Type or clearly print your advertising copy as you wish it to be printed. Indicate the heading you want it to appear under. Payment must accompany order. Mail copy along with your name, address, phone number and full payment to: EDucate! Magazine Data Processing & Research Cell Sindh Education Foundation Plot 9, Block 7, Kehkashan, Clifton 5, Karachi-75600, Pakistan Phone:(92-21) 111 424 111 Fax:(92-21) 9251652 E-Mail: educate@sef.org.pk 45.00 4.25 SUBSCRIPTION 1 Year 3 Years 315.00 450.00 17.80 International US$ 2 Years 170.00 Pakistan (Rs.) 25.5 35.7 Please include mailing charges Mailing Charges Pakistan International Rs. 100 per year US$ 10.00 per year *Please note that these are introductory rates and are subject to change To subscribe, please enclose a cross cheque/demand draft in the name of ‘Educate Magazine, Sindh Education Foundation, Pakistan.’ Cash payments can also be made directly to DPRC, Sindh Education Foundation. For advertising details contact Correspondence Manager somaiya@sef.org.pk Claims for missing issues must be made within four months of the date of publication.
- 6. OPEN letters INSPIRATION FOR EDUCATORS EXAMININIG EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS EDucate! has always been a great source of inspiration for me as I, myself, am related to the field of educating children. I just wanted to draw your attention to the content and language used in the magazine. I find it a bit difficult for the people around me to understand. It would be a great effort on your part if your team can simplify the language so that it can be read and understood by a wider audience. I wish you the very best of luck . Nudrat Shahab Chaudry, Lahore The sixth issue of EDucate! examines very significant e d u c a t i o n a l p r o b l e m s i n a s t i m u l a t i n g w a y. Robert Arnove, emeritus professor, Sociology of Education, School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA INSIGHTFUL PERSPECTIVES The issue of EDucate! is in your usual tradition of providing us with insights which are either not available or have been censored out. I confess that if I make any insightful remark or show any awareness of what is going on in the world of education then EDucate! has a lot to do with it. Keep it up! Dr. Tariq Rahman, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad VALUABLE SERVICE TO PEOPLE EDucate! provides an enormously valuable service to the people of Pakistan. The growth of civil society needs encouragement and visibility. EDucate! is a part of that important effort. I particularly appreciate the Voice of the Voiceless section. The Tariq Rahman interview is excellent. David Barsamian, “ace interviewer”, Director, Alternative Radio/Boulder, Colorado, USA I have a few comments about your magazine. Although, I think it’s a very good effort and there needs to be a magazine about education, I feel that the magazine focuses too heavily on theory and the politics of education. It does not do enough to highlight the actual scene in Pakistan. Teachers in Pakistan would benefit from seeing examples of good teaching practices being put to use in our country’s school rooms. I would like to see more articles about teachers and educators in Pakistan, as opposed to articles by foreign educators and intellectuals which, in themselves though are interesting, don’t have as much relevance to our local scene. I also 4 COMMENDATIONS Once again an excellent issue. Keep up the excellent and important work EDucate! is doing! Dave Hill, Professor of Education Policy, University College Northampton, UK The issue looks excellent. All best wishes in these dark times. Joshua Cohen, Professor of Political Science, MIT, USA The latest issue of Educate! looks very good. Prof. Michael Apple, USA It is excellent. Robert McChesney, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Congratulations on the new issue. These are indeed difficult times. David C. Korten, author of the famous “When Corporations Rule the World” & “The Post Corporate World” CRITIQUE from a Reader find them hard to read and understand and I think most teachers and educators in Pakistan would appreciate simpler, more newsy type articles in an easier to read format. The magazine is fine as an example of the latest theories and research work that’s being conducted in the West, but I think there is so much jargon involved that it doesn’t make for easy reading. I’d like to see many more articles
- 7. about the state of Pakistani education, interviews with educators and teachers in Pakistan, windows on innovative educational programs in both urban and rural areas and write-ups from teachers themselves about their ideas, experiences and concerns from the Montessori to the university level. The magazine also needs more photography and artwork to make it visually pleasing. Finally, I do feel that the magazine has a definite political agenda which leans towards the socialist side. Is this really desirable in a I think she feels that the magazine is about education in Pakistan alone. I see it as a magazine about educational theory. Why this is important is because there is no publication of a theoretical nature in Pakistan in this field. There are several on schools and what happens there. Teachers themselves find little time to write and this kind of work is done by academics in universities because they have more time, more money and more autonomy. What you could do is to encourage at least one article on the educational scene in the country but do not bring down your high standards in the name of putting in more people who are actually teaching. If they come up to your standards they are welcome, of course. But if they do not, they should be sure that what they are doing (actual teaching children) is possibly even more important than research. That they are not published does not mean that they are inferior teachers. The bottom line is DO NOT lower the standard of the magazine and provide us with knowledge of what is going on in the theory of education. Maybe you can put in some articles by right wing theoreticians also but do not dilute the quality. Tariq Rahman I see her point about there being too many articles that feel distanced from the Pakistani context. I think one way to respond is to try to build in the links to Pakistan issues and realities, with each article that raises new ideas; explicitly connect it to Pakistani concerns and maybe include some questions/exercises for people to discuss and work on, so that it feels OPEN L E T T E R S publication which is ostensibly about education? I think the magazine would be better served and would have a wider appeal if politics were left out of the content for the most part. The message of what you are promoting is not crystal clear – is it education and teaching, or is it socialist ideas in the world of education? This is an important distinction to make and I think your vision needs some redefining in that way. I hope you find this useful. Bina Shah. REFLECTIONS on the Critique more interactive and tied to them. However, it sounds like she has a fundamentally different idea for what EDucate! should be about. I think she wants it to be like a teacher training or school reform magazine, which gives best practices and tells about new experiments in schools; something light to inform and inspire teachers. Yet, I think EDucate! is aspiring to something quite different, that is, to challenge teachers, parents, policymakers, practitioners, etc. to think quite differently about education and development. It is serious and thoughtprovoking, and it wants us to ask questions about our assumptions and beliefs. It is not ‘socialist’, as she suggests. That would be mislabeling of its purpose and ideological stance. Rather, it is expressly bringing out the political and economic context of education, which is all around us, yet rarely discussed explicitly. That context is vital for getting us out of the trap of looking at education as something only in a school or only with teachers and administrators. It broadens and deepens our understanding about learning and living, both today and for the future. But I agree that EDucate! needs to make more links to practice, so that these ideas feel grounded in context for people. For example, the issue on media had some good 5
- 8. essays to spark thoughts and ideas. But what would have enhanced it is adding some stories/examples/exercises on how to take this critical media awareness and bring it out in your family or organization or school or neighborhood, or some questions to get people imagining and creating new practices. Hope this helps in your process of evaluation... Shilpa Jain As far as Bina Shah’s critique goes, I agree with the idea that it would behoove Pakistani readers to address topics of local import in more quantity and detail. As for her idea that the magazine should rid itself of its socialist bent, I strongly disagree. A person’s ideology is the driving force behind his opinions about the goals, methods, and structures of education. If the purpose of the magazine is, as it appears to be, to present an ethical, progressive view of education, then that’s what it should do. Tracy Thompson Khan I have read Bina Shah’s comments on your magazine and found them interesting. I agree with some of her comments but not others. I do think that some contributions from teachers, practitioners and even students themselves a b o u t t h e i r ex p e r i e n c e s w o u l d p r o v i d e interesting insights into what is really happening in our schools and colleges. These could be analyzed by researchers for their own study. I also agree with the relevance issue to some extent because analyses of Pakistan’s educational system would throw light on what it is that we are teaching our children and what is it that we are doing to them. However, for comparison purposes some matter from neighboring countries would help place education in a regional perspective and provide cross-cultural insights. However, I do not agree with Bina’s comments as regards theory and politics of education. I think there is a severe dearth of educational theorizing in Pakistan and we desperately need to provide the discipline with a theoretical basis and insight which are critical. There is no neutral social science and there is always a vantage point from which one examines social phenomena. If EDucate! has a 6 socialist leaning there is absolutely nothing wrong with that and this may even add to its credibility and standing. Most magazines fail to take any position and end up by default being liberal. I appreciate EDucate! for its socialist position. I also appreciate the fact that it is printing articles and papers by famous critical theorists of education such as Henry Giroux and Michael Apple as their contributions to the field are highly valuable for understanding the project of education as a political project. In my view all knowledge is political and cannot be separated from the social relations of society. It does not exist ‘out there’. Therefore, I don’t agree with Bina’s comments that education and politics are two mutually exclusive domains – on the contrary, education is a political project through and through. It has been traditionally a conservative discipline b y i t s v e r y n a t u r e t o t r a n s m i t ex i s t i n g knowledge to children, but it can be transformative and critical if educators so desire. So, congratulations upon bringing out a magazine that has a clear political and ideological stand and is critical in its approach. There is no other magazine that shares these qualities. Most educational magazines end up being mere experience sharing, superficial and devoid of any thought provoking ideas. So keep up the good work and yes, if possible, do add critical stuff on Pakistani educational systems. I support this effort totally and find it very helpful to have such a magazine available. I will be using it for a paper that I am writing on Pakistan's state of education and will cite it as the only example of critical theorizing in Pakistan. Rubina Saigol We welcome your comments, critique and suggestions. Fax: 92-21-9251652 E-mail: educate@sef.org.pk Mail: Plot 9, Block 7, Kehkashan, Clifton 5, Karachi – 75600, Pakistan Include your full name, address, e-mail, and daytime phone number. We may edit letters for brevity and clarity, and use them in all print and electronic media.
- 9. Editor’s Note C orporations! What are they? Who runs them? Why do corporations exist? What are the impacts of corporatization on the world’s people and resources? What is the corporategovernment connection? Have corporations improved our lives and strengthened our societies OR will we be better off without them? Is there an alternative to corporate power and greed? This issue of EDucate! aims to discuss that how the modern corporation has come to dominate practically every aspect of modern society, including the state, the educational system, the media, and the family. Our everyday lives have become increasingly “colonized,” we argue, by a managerial ethos that is fundamentally at odds with our core democratic principles. While modern corporations offer opportunity and financial well-being, their unmediated, distorted growth has considerable ecological and human costs. To examine how corporations work and what are the implications of the corporate stranglehold on the developing countries especially in economic and social terms, we have designed our magazine’s content around the themes of ‘corporatization’ and ‘corporatization of education’. We believe that it is absolutely essential to be exposed to David C. Korten’s work if anybody wants to understand how the corporations function and have evolved into controlling and oppressive societal systems. The coverstory presents the crux of his work (or perhaps not because it’s truly difficult to summarize the extent and depth of his powerful analysis) on corporations and viable alternatives to corporate hegemony. Even though Korten’s work has been featured time and again in EDucate! – an elaborate introduction is also included. We also proudly present an interview with Ashfaq Ahmed, a great person and writer who needs no introduction. All those familiar with Urdu literature and Urdu plays know him well and know how inspirational he is. We hope we have done justice to make his interview inspirational for you all. “Voice of the Voiceless”, the most popular section of the magazine, takes views from that ‘voicless’ segment of the society, which although is not deprived of life’s amenities, but finds scant openings to let their views known. We asked both students and professionals (of commercial and social sector) to voice their opinions about whether corporate philanthropy is a genuine effort on part of the corporations or does it act as a shield to ‘legitimize’ their wrongs? ‘Rethinking Education’ features a range of perspectives on how education is turning into a commodity and how the corporations are making their way into our schools and other educational institutions, inducing consumerism rather than consciousness amongst the students. In the end, we are grateful to Shikshantar Institute, India for always actively participating in EDucate! and introducing us to powerful thoughts, ideas, essays and above all many intellectual resources. Ambreena Ahmed 7
- 10. Pictures Courtesy : www.davidkorten.org Is a socially just world a real possibility or an illusion? What role the corporations are playing in our society today? Do we want to be citizens of a society that is driven by corporate greed and consumerism? Can we do something about it? COVER STORY EDITED & COMPILED BY MASHHOOD RIZVI & AMBREENA AHMED
- 11. Dr. David C. Korten, when CORPORATIONS rule the world is there a way out then? ? world’s leading critic and analyst on the impact of big corporations and corporate lead globalization talks to EDucate! He says that by law and structure, the publicly traded, limited liability corporation is a single purpose organization in the business of making money for money without regard to the consequences for people, communities, or nature. The publicly traded corporation and its employees are legally obligated to serve money to the disregard of life. It is not only incapable of acting with conscience, it is legally prohibited from doing so. He comments, “human persons who behave in a similarly selfcentered and destructive way devoid of conscience are called psychopaths and are commonly deprived of their freedom as threats to society and confined to prisons or mental institutions”. He concludes, “yet in the suicide economy, corporate psychopaths are regularly rewarded with rising share prices and their CEOs are rewarded with multi-million dollar bonuses. Corporate officers suspected of sacrificing share price to acts of conscience out of concern for workers, community, or the environment face a serious threat of dismissal”.
- 12. What is a corporation? Who runs it? What are transnationals and multinationals; are they synonymous to corporations? Why do corporations exist? What are the impacts of corporatization on the world’s people and resources? What is the corporate-government connection? What is privatization; is it good or bad? Have corporations improved our lives and strengthened our societies OR will we be better off without them? Is consumerism environmentally friendly; is it the answer to happy living? Is there an alternative to corporate power? In our cover story, we try to answer some critical questions regarding corporations and their far reaching impacts in the light of Dr. David C. Korten’s remarkable work on corporations, especially his two most popular books “When Corporations Rule the World” and its sequel “The Post-Corporate World”. Dr. Korten, in addition to being the author of international bestsellers, is the co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network and founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum. His work, in the words of his critics “continues to be at the very center of this expanding global dialogue” and “is creating an intellectual framework for dealing with the issues of the entry of humankind into the 21st century”. He has had a leading role in raising public consciousness of the political and institutional consequences of corporate driven globalization and the expansion of corporate power at the expense of democracy, equity, and environmental health. Radical as such ideas may seem in the present context, Korten shows how they are already being put into practice by ordinary people around the world as they respond to capitalism's deadly blows to their lives, communities, and natural environments. We, at EDucate! have been privileged to have David Korten on our panel of contributors and we have published many of his articles in our previous issues. As part of our cover story we asked our colleagues at the Sindh Education Foundation to forward their queries regarding corporations and put those forward to Mr. Korten. He, despite his very busy schedual, responded immediately. We hope that Korten’s interview with the SEF and EDucate! will be a mindshifting one for you! Can you please explain from a layman’s perspective the 'plundering mechanisms of MNCs and corporations? Many people have no idea as to how the system functions? For example most of us do not understand that how IBM or Toyota in Pakistan can be harmful when it is giving jobs to many and also once people have jobs they spend and spend locally? First let’s correct our terminology. You refer to Multinational Corporations, a term that technically refers to a corporation that is local everywhere, a good local citizen in every country in which does business. It is part of the public relations image. The reality is we are dealing with global or transnational corporations, which means corporations that do not recognize any national or local interest or obligation. The details of the mechanisms of corporate plunder are spelled out in my book When Corporations Rule the World. The publicly traded, limited liability corporation is the institutional centerpiece of a global suicide economy that is rapidly destroying the foundation of its own existence and threatening the survival of the human species. Visit the headquarters of a publicly traded corporation and you see people, buildings, furnishings, and office equipment. By all appearances the people are running things. An organization chart will show clear lines of authority leading to a CEO who in turn reports to a board of directors. It is easy to think 10 of a corporation as a community of people. It is, however, a misleading characterization precisely because in a publicly traded corporation the people, including the CEO, are all employees of the institution — paid to serve the institution at its pleasure and required by law to leave their values at the door. The publicly traded, limited liability corporation is in the legal sense not a human institution. It is a pool of money, dedicated to the sole vocation of making money, on which a corrupted legal system has bestowed special legal privileges and protections not granted to real living persons. The people, including the CEO, can be dismissed at any moment, virtually without recourse. Employees must be willing to leave their values at the door if they hope to rise through the ranks of a global corporation. In effect management is hired by money to nurture money’s growth and reproduction even at the expense of life. Only the money, which the corporate officers are legally bound to serve, has rights. In their advertisements and public statements corporations profess their commitment to people and nature. It is pure image. Read the business press, like the Wall Street Journal or the Economist magazine, and you get the real story of the push for ever greater profits and CEO compensation at all costs — especially in the reports on corporate crime. Also be aware that many of these companies were getting awards for social and environmental responsibility and were included in socially responsible investment portfolios right COVER S T O R Y
- 13. What is a Corporation? Transnational corporations are one of the most important actors in the global economy, occupying a more powerful position than ever before. Fifty years ago, only a handful existed. Now they number tens of thousands, and have a profound political, economic, social and cultural impact on countries, peoples and environments. Defined by the United Nations as ‘an enterprise with activities in two or more countries with an ability to influence others’, TNCs produce a vast range of goods and services for international trade, and often for the domestic markets where they operate. Sometimes called multinational corporations, they operate across national boundaries in a context of nation states. Their power is huge and often underestimated, as also is their impact on the poor.1 Another perspective, a literal definition of corporations hold: “Specifically, a up to the time their fraudulent practices were exposed. Make no mistake. Global corporations are in Pakistan for one reason — to extract as much wealth as possible as quickly as possible and move on to another country as soon as a better opportunity presents itself. In the meantime they will buy politicians and government officials to get exceptions from taxes, labor standards, and environmental regulations. They will strongly resist unionization by whatever means and seek to keep wages and benefits low. Some corporations are a bit less ruthless than others, but they are all in the same business. Some may say it is different in Pakistan. I’m not current on the Pakistan experience, but this is the record pretty much all around the world and I doubt it is particularly different in Pakistan. It is starkly true in the United States. If one has any illusions that those who head the largest corporations are committed to high standards of ethics and public service one needs only read the financial pages of the international press will set them straight. and follow the continuing wave of financial scandals that first came to attention with the collapse of Enron. Powerful though global corporations may be, the ultimate decision power in the suicide economy resides in the global financial markets — institutions for which the only reality is money. Each day global financial markets exchange trillions of dollars of electronic money that exists only in computer memories as traders who act with a herd mentality place their COVER S T O R Y bets on the price movements of various financial instruments. In a mere instant the actions of the money traders may make or break the fortunes of individuals, giant corporations, and powerful nations. The computer screens of the traders, however, tell them nothing of the consequences either for nature or for the millions — even billions — of people whose lives their decisions affect. The traders and their world are equally invisible to the ordinary people who bear the consequences of these decisions. It is an evil of the highest order. Those who make the decisions have no knowledge of the consequences of their actions and those who bear the consequences cannot identify and confront oppressor that remains invisible and therefore unknown. It is a system designed not to self-correct. This perverse system is inexorably transferring wealth and power from the many to the few, creating an unconscionable and growing concentration of wealth and power that encourages wasteful extravagance on the part of the few while imposing deprivation and servitude on billions and accelerating the depletion of natural wealth it took our living planet billions of years to produce. Either of these trends will seal the human fate if allowed to continue. What is your analysis of institutions like the IMF and WTO? Do you think that these are mere extentions of MNCs or vice-versa? Interesting correlation! Let's look at the global public 11
- 14. corporation is a legal artificial person, a person that is separate, distinct and apart from you. It is a distinct, different and totally separate legal or artificial person. A distinct legal entity. through, the possibilities become fascinating. The key point to remember here, is that when you own a corporation, the corporation exists as a separate entity or person.”2 As an artificial person, a corporation's rights, duties and liabilities do not differ from those of a natural person under similar conditions, except where the exercise of duty would require the ability to comprehend, or think. That's where the Board of Directors comes in. They do the thinking for the corporation. A corporation can buy, trade, sell and make loans. A corporation can literally do anything you as a person can do as long as these thoughts and actions are simply documented by resolution. When you think it Korten on Corporations On the question of rights of corporations as an individual, Korten asserts that human rights secure our freedom to live fully and responsibly within l i f e ’ s c o m m u n i t y. We , a r e f i n d i n g , h o w e v e r, t h a t a s corporations have become increasingly successful in claiming these same rights for themselves, they have become increasingly assertive in denying them to living people. For example, they use property institutions that are shaping global and national economic policies. We presently live under two competing system of global governance: The Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations. The former is primarily aligned with the corporate interest and the latter is primarily aligned with the human and natural interest. The Bretton Woods institutions — the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), previously the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) — are major institutional players in rewriting the rules of the global economy to circumvent democracy to rewrite the economic rules to favor the concentration of wealth and power. All three claim to be dedicated to the cause of the poor and the disadvantaged. But look at their policies and actions and you find the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO consider the ideal country to be one in which all assets and resources are owned by foreign corporations producing for export to generate foreign exchange to repay international debts. Their favored country has no public services. Power, water, education, health care, social security, and financial services are all owned and operated by foreign corporations for profit on a fee for service basis. Food and other goods for domestic consumption are all imported from abroad and paid for with money borrowed from foreign banks. This is the global corporate agenda for Pakistan as it is for every other country in the world and it is clearly is not about 12 rights as an instrument to deny the economically weak the most fundamental of all human rights – the right to live – by denying them the right of access to a means of living. Supported by legions of corporate lawyers and sympathetic judges, corporations have worked through the courts to acquire ever more of the rights and freedoms that living persons gained only through long and difficult political struggle. They have in turn used the rights so acquired to extend their control over the institutions of democracy and the material, communications and knowledge resources on which people depend to secure their living. There seems to be an ironclad relationship. The stronger the rights of corporations, the weaker the rights of persons to meeting the needs of people — least of all the poor. It is about concentrating ever more power in the hands of the global financiers who control the corporations that are increasingly monopolizing the world’s resources, markets, jobs, information, money, and politics to their own exclusive ends. If they were truly concerned about the health and well-being of Pakistan and its people they would be helping Pakistanis strengthen their ownership and control of their own economy with substantial priority to living wages, safe working conditions, a strong tax base, and strong environmental regulation. The real issues behind the resistance against corporate globalization are issues of justice and democracy — the right of each person to a voice and a means of living. It is about who will rule the world: people or money? I have the privilege of being a member of an extraordinary international alliance of civil society leaders from both Southern and Northern countries called the International Forum on Globalization. We came together to educate the world on the realities of corporate globalization and to encourage the mobilization of a broad resistance movement. For the past three years we have been working to define a consensus among ourselves on an alternative to the corporate global economy. Last December we published a report on our conclusions titled Alternatives to Economic Globalization. Initially, the question of whether global rule making should COVER S T O R Y
- 15. live fully and well with freedom, responsibility and dignity. Thus, to restore human rights and dignity we must establish clearly the principle that human rights reside solely in living persons. Korten’s Argument According to Korten, there are two worldviews. The first holds that corporate globalization constitutes world’s largest corporations and world’s most powerful governments, backed by the power of money. The objective is to create a single, borderless global economy where the mega corporations are free to move goods and money anywhere where there’s a profit opportunity with no government interference. Two main tools used to attain these objectives are privatization of public services and assets and strengthening safeguards for investors and private property. The proponents of this worldview believe that corporate globalization is the result of irreversible and inevitable historical forces that drive a powerful engine of technological innovation and economic growth that is strengthening human freedom, spreading democracy and creating the wealth needed to end poverty and save the environment. The second worldview advocates that the forces of a newly emerging global movement is a culmination of planetary citizen alliance of civil society organizations. It brings together social movements with a common cause, is selforganizing, is dependent largely be centralized in global institutions or decentralized to the extent possible to national and local levels was an important point of contention. Those of us from the North tended to favor a centralization of rule making and standards to set and enforce uniform labor and environmental standards for the world. Our Southern colleagues noted, however, that when rule making is centralized, the rules are generally made by the more powerful countries of the North and invariably favor their interest. They called instead for an international system that favors the localization of rule making at national and community levels to secure the sovereign political and economic rights of people — delegating upward only those decisions that cannot realistically be made locally. This would require a number of actions. Among others it means eliminating the institutional form of the publicly traded, limited liability corporation in favor of human-scale enterprises locally and democratically owned by engaged stakeholders who are liable for their actions. A chapter on international institutions calls for dismantling the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO and replacing them with new institutions under the United Nations with mandates exactly the opposite of the institutions they will replace. In the place of a World Bank coaxing Southern countries into ever deeper international debt and dependency, we call for the creation of a UN International Insolvency Court responsible for helping countries work their way out of international debt. In the place of an IMF that prohibits COVER S T O R Y on voluntary social energy and is committed to democracy, equity, community and the web of planetary life. The proponents of this vision reckon that corporate globalization is neither inevitable nor beneficial. It is the product of intentional decisions and policies of WTO, I M F, W o r l d B a n k , g l o b a l corporations and politicians who depend on corporate money. Corporate globalization is enriching the few at the e x p e n s e o f m a n y. I t i s replacing democracy with the rule by corporations and financial elites. It is destroying planet’s wealth and society to make money for the already wealthy and it is eroding the relationship of trust and caring, which is the essential foundation of a civilized society. countries from exercising essential oversight over the flow of goods and money across their borders, we call for a UN International Finance Organization to help countries put in place mechanisms to maintain balance and stability in their international financial relationships. Instead of a World Trade Organization preventing governments from holding corporations accountable to the public interest, we propose a UN Organization for Corporate Accountability to work with citizens groups and nation states to break up concentrations of corporate power and hold all corporations with operations in more than one country to a high standard of public accountability. A common understanding is that MNCs have hired so many locals and all, MNCs provides so many opportunities at the local level, if we were to uproot them, thousands will be job less? How would you respond to that? It is true that global corporations have been restructuring our economies everywhere to increase our dependence on them. The reality, however, is that transnational corporations provide only a tiny percentage of the total employment anywhere in the world and most of the jobs they do provide are low paying and insecure. The minute they can get a better deal in another country, they are gone. Countries that chose to build their economies based on providing low paid workers to produce export goods for transnational corporations need to keep in mind two things. 13
- 16. Korten on the Impact of Corporate Power The social and environmental disintegration is accelerating in nearly all countries of the world. Korten argues that the only way most corporations can produce the profits the financial system currently demands is by passing off ever greater costs to the society. We need scarcely look beyond the daily reports to find examples of the world’s largest corporations profiting from the: Depletion of natural capital by stripmining forests, fisheries and mineral deposits, aggressively marketing toxic chemicals, and dumping hazardous wastes that turn once-productive lands and waters into zones of death. Depletion of human capital by maintaining substandard working conditions. Depletion of social capital by breaking up unions, bidding down g g g Obviously suddenly uprooting the global corporations in Pakistan and sending them packing would have disastrous consequences in the short term. The more sensible path is to gradually turn the thrust of policy in the direction of favoring national ownership and the use of national labor and resources to produce things for sale in the Pakistan market in response to needs of Pakistani people — gradually reducing foreign control and dependence. at give a way prices and allowing them to charge what the market will bear. Don’t confuse a push to privatize education, water, health care, or prisons with a “donation.” Even corporate foundations have become increasingly explicit that their grants should be carefully targeted to serve the corporate bottom line. Indeed, if they do otherwise they will be subject to a shareholder revolt or even law suits for “giving away” the shareholder’s money. In this part of the world in particular and in the world at large, MNCs and corporates are adapting a social legetimization strategy by giving huge donations for public and social services? Do you think they mean it or it is simply an extension of ecomonic and social oppression? In the United States corporations have extracted so many tax concessions from local governments that local governments have increasing difficulty funding public schools. Then corporations step in to "help out" by offering the schools money in return for exclusive marketing contracts that allow them to promote and sell Coca Cola and other junk foods in schools that are desperate for any source of additional income. The corporations also step in with “gifts” of teaching materials that present a corporate friendly view on environmental and economic issues. Most are thinly disguised combination of political propaganda and advertising aimed at indoctrination and building brand loyalty. I’m startled by your characterization. If global corporations are freely and generously donating to the support of public and social services in Pakistan it would be unique in the world. In the United States, and to my knowledge pretty much everywhere else in the world, most global corporations are putting enormous pressure on governments to reduce or eliminate their taxes to eliminate their contribution to the support of essential public goods and ser vices. The World Bank and IMF are similarly pressing government to reduce expenditures on social services and ultimately to privatize public utilities like water, electricity, and telecommunications by selling them to global corporations 14 Is survival of countries and people possible in today's corporate lead world without any engagement with big corporations/MNCs? If Yes, then how? and If No (or if countries/people opt to invite them) how can one best safe guard the public interest? So long as corporations are setting the global economic, social, and environmental agenda the very future of the species is COVER S T O R Y
- 17. g wages, treating workers as expendable commodities, and uprooting key plants on which community economies are dependent to move them to lower-cost locations – leaving it to society to absorb the family and community breakdown and violence that are inevitable consequences of the resulting stress; and Depletion of institutional capital by undermining the necessary function and credibility of governments and democratic governance as they pay out millions in campaign contributions to win public subsidies, bailouts, and tax exemptions and fight to weaken environmental, health and labor standards essential to t h e l o n g- t e r m h e a l t h o f society. Korten emphasizes the fact that increase in economic output as organizing principle for public policy has led to the b r e a k d o w n o f e c o s y s t e m’ s regenerative capacities and of social fabric that sustains human community. He also stresses that the continuing lack of resources has led to the intensification of competition for resources between rich and poor. And the poor invariably lose. The governments’ failure to respond has given rise to a crisis of governance because the power has shifted from the governments to a few corporations which are driven towards short term financial gains. In order to achieve short term financial gains, the corporations downsize to shed people and functions and tighten control over market and technology through mergers, at risk. The term suicide economy is not simply a metaphor, it is the proper name of a process that is converting the human, social, institutional, and natural capital of the planet into corporate profits. Let me spell out what is at stake. This graph addresses a very basic question. “How many planets endowed with an area of biologically productive land and sea equivalent to that of earth would it take to support current levels of human consumption of food, materials, and energy on a sustainable basis. This graph indicates we passed beyond the limits of the human burden this planet can sustain sometime around 1980. As a species we are now consuming at a rate of about 1.2 planets. Unfortunately, since we don’t have another two tenths planet we are making up the difference by depleting natural capital, both non-renewable capital, like fossil fuels, and the renewable capital of our forests, fisheries, soils, water and climatic systems. About 85% of what remains is expropriated by the more fortunate 20% of the world’s population to support our often wasteful patterns of consumption. The least fortunate 20 percent of the world’s people struggle to survive on slightly more than 1 percent. Unfortunately, most people miss the true implications of inequality because we are in the habit of thinking of money as wealth — which it isn’t. Money is a claim on wealth. It’s just a number that exists only in our heads. This next overhead helps us see the deeper implications of this reality. The next graph (top next page) represents world stock market COVER S T O R Y acquisitions and strategic alliances. The corporations’ control of the media has turned it into an active propaganda machine constantly assuring us that consumerism is the path to happiness. Korten on Alternatives to Corporate Rule The corporations want the world to become a mass market for their products and people their consumers – with v i r t u a l l y n o o t h e r i d e n t i t y. Power of money rather than power of people should be the defining principle for every aspect of life. This is the agenda of corporations. David Korten, in his book, When Corporations Rule the 1.4 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 capitalization — the total value of all the stocks traded on the world’s stock exchanges. It tracks growth in financial assets. What we’ve tracked so far only goes through 1999, so the graph doesn’t show the more recent down turn, but the basic picture is clear. Bear in mind here that although some 50 percent of Americans own some stock, the richest 1 percent of households own nearly 50 percent of the value of all stocks owned by Americans. Globally the ownership of stocks is far more concentrated. Surely less than 1 percent of all households in the world participate in stock ownership in any consequential way. 15
- 18. World, has beautifully outlined concrete steps that need to be taken if we want to reclaim the people’s power from the corporations and put a stop to the total disintegration of our planet’s resources and cultures. According to him, corporate globalization is being advanced by the conscious choices of those who view the world through the lens of the corporate interest. Human alternatives do exist, and those who view the world through the lens of human interest have both the right and the power to choose them. To defeat the corporate tyranny, the action must start from the grassroots: Planetary Consciousness: Consciousness should be the first step; realizing, understanding and then resisting the destructiveness engulfing humanity should set the foundations for societal transformation. higher value to nurturing love than to making money. Valuing Local Economies & Social Capital: The challenge is to create a locally rooted planetary system that empowers all people to create a good living in balance with nature. The goal is not to wall each community off from the world but rather to create zones of local accountability and responsibility within which people can reclaim the power that is rightly theirs to manage their economies in the common interest. The human purpose is better served by a system that divides corporations and forces them to compete for the favor of people, in the true spirit of a competitive g Reclaiming Responsibility for Life: Taking back the responsibility for our lives, and reweaving the basic fabric of caring families and communities to create places for people and other living things. Bringing greater visibility to the people and positive initiatives that are laying the f o u n d a t i o n s f o r transformative change. Our pursuit of material abundance has created material scarcity; our pursuit of life may bring a new sense of social, spiritual and even material abundance. Create societies that give a g g g The bottom half of this overhead is the Living Planet Index — a measure of the health of the world’s forests, freshwater, ocean, and forest ecosystems. This represents the life support system of the planet, the living capital that is the ultimate source of all wealth. The index has declined by 37% in the past 30 years. From the perspective of the planet, the good news is the species that bears the responsibility for this devastation will be gone well before the index reaches zero. It’s not especially good news, however, for us humans. g MAKING MONEY-GROWING POORER 40 World Stock Market Capitalization Trillion Dollars 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 Source: 2003 Bloomberg L.P. We are told that those who make money are creating wealth that adds to the pie of society’s total wealth. No one loses, so therefore no one should begrudge the wealthy their proper reward for their contribution to the increased well-being of all. Of course it’s a bogus argument. Inflation of the financial bubble increases the claims of the holders of those assets against the world’s shrinking real wealth far out of proportion 16 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 98 19 96 19 94 19 92 19 90 19 88 19 19 19 As I said, money is a claim on wealth. Money can grow virtually without limit, but its growth is increasing the claims of the few against the real resources on which all our lives depend. In a full world, equity becomes an essential condition of a healthy, sustainable society. 86 0 82 The rich and poor gap is increasing at an unprecedented pace. How are the MNCs responsible for widening the gap? Living Planet Index Source: WorldWide Fund for Nature Living Planet Report 2002 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 Prepared by David C. Korten 6/26/2003 The Positive Futures Network www.yesmagazine.org COVER S T O R Y
- 19. g g market. Let corporations compete to earn their profits. Let people and communities compete to create a good living for all. Social bonding is as essential to the healthy functioning of a modern society as it was to more traditional or tribal society. Corporate globalization is l e a d i n g u s t o a n evolutionary dead end. In contrast, economic systems composed of locally rooted, self-reliant economies create in each locality the political, economic and cultural spaces within which people can find a path to the future consistent with their distinctive aspirations, history, culture and ecosystems. Defeating Consumerism Some 80% of environmental g damage is caused by 20% of the world’s population – 1.1 billion overconsumers. Another 20% of the world’s people live in absolute deprivation. A major part of t h e b u r d e n w e overconsumers place on the planet comes from our use of automobiles, airplanes and throwaways products that come in unnecessary packaging, and our consumption of unhealthy foods produced by methods that destroy the earth and leave what we eat poisoned with toxic waste. Individual choices can make a difference. We can reduce the amount of meat in our diets. We can buy a water filter to reduce our dependence on bottled water and soft drinks. We can buy fewer clothes or a to any contribution they may have made to real wealth. As a result a fortunate few enjoy multiple vacation homes, private jets, and exotic foods, while the least fortunate are displaced from their homes and farmlands and condemned to lives of homelessness and starvation that bears no relationship to need, contribution to society, or willingness to work. g more gas-efficient car. There are countless such positive choices to be made. If our goal is to provide a good living for people, we need to transform our food and agriculture system much as must transform our habitats and transportation systems. An appropriate system would most likely be composed of tens of thousands of intensively managed small, family farms producing a diverse range of food, fiber, livestock and energy precuts for local markets. Steps towards such a system would include carrying out agrarian reform to break up large corporate agricultural holdings. Although moving toward more localized food and agricultural systems and healthier, less fatty diets CEO, Play, S&P 500, Corporate Profits, Worker Pay, and Inflation , 1990-99 600% CEO Play+535% 500% 400% The gap between glutinous extravagance and dehumanizing deprivation grows in proportion to the financial gap. Furthermore, as the corporate scandals of the past couple of years have made so glaringly evident, many financial fortunes are not simply unearned, they are based on active and intentional fraud, theft, and the destruction of human and natural capital. This brings us to another bogus argument. We are told that economic growth is the key to ending poverty and that environmental protection harms the poor. Again the truth is much the opposite. Growth in economic output actually accelerates depletion of the natural wealth on which all life depends and intensifies the competition for what remains — a competition the poor invariably lose. In face, the entire economic and financial system is structured to assure that the gap between rich and poor keeps growing. As you see in this graph, worker play remained pretty much even with inflation throughout the 1990s. The economic gains went to corporate profits, owners of stocks, and CEO COVER S T O R Y S&P 500+297% 300% 200% Corp. Profits +116% 100% Worker Pay +32.3% 0% 1990 Inflation +27.5% 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 compensation. This is not accidental. The tools of economic and financial analysis seek to assure that every public and corporate policy decision is made with the intent to maximize returns to money, which means to people who have or control money — call them the money people. If it appears that wages are rising, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow the economy to increase unemployment and maintain a downward pressure on wages. The announced purpose is to prevent wage “inflation.” The unstated purpose is to make sure that the gains of economic growth and productivity are captured by money people rather than by working people. 17
- 20. would require adjustments in our eating habits, this is not a vision of sacrifice and deprivation. Rather, it is a vision of a fertile earth and of vibrant and secure human communities populated by people with healthy bodies and minds nourished by wholesome, uncontaminated foods. The elements of this vision simply require restructuring the relevant system in line with the human rather than the corporate interest. Reclaiming Political Spaces and Decolonizing Culture Corporations have no natural or inalienable rights. The corporation is a public body created by a public act through issuing a public charter to serve a public purpose. We, the sovereign g g g people, have the inalienable right to determine whether the intended public purpose is being served and to establish legal processes to amend or withdraw a corporate charter at any t i m e w e s o c h o o s e . We need only decide. The problem is the system. Incremental changes within individual corporations or political institutions cannot provide an adequate solution. The whole system of institutional power must be transformed. Removing corporations from political participation is an essential step toward reclaiming our political spaces. With their dominance of the mass media and their growing infiltration of the classroom, corporations increasingly While our politicians are cutting taxes for the rich and launching pre-emptive wars on already devastated countries, the UN World Food Organization reports that the number of chronically hungry people in the world, which declined steadily during the 1970s and 80s, has been increasing since the early 1990s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that by 2008 two-thirds of the people of SubSaharan Africa will be undernourished. Forty percent will be undernourished in Asia. In the United States, presumably the richest country in the world, 3.3 million children experience outright hunger. Ten percent of U.S. households, accounting for 31 million people, do not have access to enough food to meet their basic needs. This all is so daunting. How do we ever break the cycle of poverty? What do you think can be done? The only way to end poverty is to redistribute how we use the available, sustainable wealth of the planet. To do that, we must redistribute financial wealth. In summation: It is impossible to grow our way out of poverty on a finite planet. To end poverty we must achieve both equity and sustainability. We confront a defining evolutionary moment for our species that leaves us very little time to accomplish the following: g Bring the material consumption of our species into balance with the earth. 18 g g g g control and shape our primary institutions of cultural reproduction, constantly reinforcing the values of consumerism and the basic doctrines of corporate libertarianism in an effort to align mainstream culture with the corporate interest. To reclaim our colonized political spaces, we must reclaim our colonized cultural spaces. 1. Special antitrust legislation for the media should be put in place to prohibit a single corporation to own more than one major public media outlet, whether a newspaper, a radio station, TV station or home cable service. It should ensure that the outlet is not used primarily as a means to advance other corporate Realign our economic priorities to assure all persons have access to an adequate and meaningful means of living for themselves & their families. Democratize our institutions to root power in people and community. Replace the dominant culture of materialism with cultures grounded in life affirming values of cooperation, caring, compassion, and community. Integrate the material and spiritual aspects of our being to become whole mature persons. The global economic and political crisis is at its core a spiritual crisis and is properly the concern of every person of faith because it involves profound values questions that go to the heart of who we are and what we value. We humans live by stories and our stories differ dramatically among us. Indeed, you might say we are a species divided by our stories. The great global clash between corporate globalists and global civil society that caught the world’s attention during the historic protest here in Seattle in 1999 against the World Trade Organization can be characterized as a clash of stories so different as to be from two wholly different worlds — which in many respects they are. The corporate globalists — corporate officers, public relations spinners, media, politicians and economists — inhabit a world in which their power and privilege continue to grow — leading them to see progress at every hand. In their story COVER S T O R Y
- 21. interests. No individual should be allowed to have a majority holding in more than one media corporation. This would enhance the free speech rights of the public by limiting the ability of a few powerful individuals and corporations to dominate access to the major means of public communication. 2. I n c l a s s i c a l m a r k e t economics, the role of businesses is to respond to market demand, not to create it. Tax deductions for advertising provide a public subsidy for hundreds of billions of dollars a year in corporate advertising aimed at enticing people to buy things that they neither want nor need and creating a consumer culture detrimental to the health of society and the planet. Advertising, other than purely informative advertising based on verifiable facts regarding the uses, specifications and availability of a product, is not in the public interest. At a minimum, the costs should not be deductible as a business expense. In addition, as a pollution control measure, a public fee might be assessed on advertising in outdoor or other public spaces with the proceeds used to fund public-interest consumer education. Factual product information might be provided on demand through product directories, including on-demand directories that re accessible through computer services and interactive TV. 3. Schools should be declared advertising free zones, administration of public schools should remain a public-sector function, and corporate-sponsored teaching modules should be banned from classroom use under the ban on in-school advertising. Relentless, destructive and overpowering, the corporate factor has crept into our lives and dominates almost every aspect of our living. The great struggle between the forces of corporate globalization and the forces of the emerging movement – between financial values and life values – is far from resolved. But let us hope that humanity’s long standing dream of a truly civil society – a dream shared by countless millions throughout human history – is an idea whose time has finally come. It’s in our hands to make it happen. the deregulation of economic life and the removal of economic borders is expanding human freedom and clearing away barriers to creating the wealth that will ultimately end poverty and save the environment. In their story they are champions of an inexorable and beneficial historical process of economic growth and technological progress that is eliminating the tyranny of inefficient and meddlesome public bureaucracies and unleashing the innovative power of competition and private enterprise. financial speculators and global corporations dedicated to the blind pursuit of short-term profit in disregard of human and natural concerns. Their story portrays global corporations as the greatest and most efficient of human institutions. It celebrates the Bretton Woods institutions the World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization as essential and beneficial institutions that are expanding market freedom and driving the wealth creation process by increasing safeguards for investors and private property and removing restraints to a free movement of goods and services that is creating unprecedented wealth. In the eyes of civil society the corporate global economy is a suicide economy that is destroying the foundations of its own survival and the survival of the species. They see a corrupt political process awash in corporate money and beholden to corporate interests rewriting our laws to provide corporations with massive public subsidies while eliminating the regulations and borders that hold corporations accountable to some larger public interest. They see the World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization as leading agents of this assault against life. By contrast, civil society tells the story of a world in deepening crisis of such magnitude as to threaten the fabric of civilization and the survival of the species a world of rapidly growing inequality, erosion of relationships of trust and caring, and a failing planetary life support system. Where corporate globalists tell of the spread of democracy and vibrant market economies, civil society tells of the power to govern shifting away from people and communities to COVER S T O R Y Civil society sees corporations replacing democracies of people with democracies of money, self-organizing markets with centrally planned corporate economies, and spiritually grounded ethical cultures with cultures of greed and materialism. How would you conclude your discussion for readers of EDucate! The truth lies with global civil society. The human future depends on a deep economic transformation aimed at ridding human society of the pathology of the global, publicly traded, limited liability corporation. 19
- 22. Inspirations & Reflections... The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails, and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like... the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern. C.S. Lewis We are witnessing an unprecedented transfer of power from people and their governments to global institutions whose allegiance is to abstract free-market principle, and whose favored citizens are soulless corporate entities that have the power to shape and break nations. Joel Bleifuss The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very t h i n g i t s e e k s t o d e s t r o y. I n s t e a d o f diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. Noam Chomsky 20 WAKEUP CALLS!!! Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs). The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10. The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world p o p u l a t i o n ) l i v i n g i n ‘ s e v e r e ’ p o v e r t y. While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world's workforce. U.S. corporations dominate the Top 200, with 82 slots (41 percent of the total). Japanese firms are second, with only 41 slots. In 1970 there were approximately 7,000 corporations operating internationally. Today there are approximately 60,000 transnationals with over half a million foreign affiliates. Trade between subsidiaries within the same parent corporation now accounts for roughly a third of world trade. Mergers and a proliferation of strategic partnerships among corporations are giving a few producers an undue amount of influence on the market. Market power often also translates into political influence. The current cascade of mergers is bolstered by the broad trend toward privatization of state-owned companies and public infrastructure, deregulation and the liberalization of trade, investments and capital markets. Oxfam estimates that developing countries lose tax revenues of at least $50 billion a year due to tax competition and the use of tax havens. The World Bank has predicted that by 2025 two thirds of the world population will not have enough drinking water. Much of the world's water corporations are privatizing supply.
- 23. U R on! An Interview for EDucate! ASHFAQ AHMED By Aziz Kabani & Somaiya Ayoob I am confronted with a strange dilemma; intellectually I am deeply committed to humanity because of which I write copiously about their grief and pain and protest at the injustice and cruelty perpetrated on them. But strange enough, I do not like humans per se – the people around me, my friends, my relatives, my neighbors, my peers. None of them please me and I criticize them severely time and again. A person who does not share my views or agree with me, I cannot bring myself to even talk to them. What am I to do? Who do I confide in? Who should I expect to lend a helping hand to me? Although I am in love with the abstract form of humanity, I cannot conjoin with its living, breathing attribute, the humans themselves, in their hour of need and distress. The ignorant barely seem human to me and like Mir Taqi Mir, I consider it a sheer waste of time to have a discourse with them. Inspite of this my love for humanity is immense; I march on holding its flag. I want to break free from the burdensome contradiction but find no one to support and (worse still) all paths leading to renaissance appear blank. I am wasting away, wasting away in the depths of my love for humanity. Translation of a Letter by Ashfaq Ahmed – a letter that sums up his philosophy about life and humanity. Ashfaq Ahmed, one of the most famous playwrights, authors and public intellectuals of Pakistan. In this exclusive interview with EDucate! he discusses the importance and significance of cultural values and indigenous societal learning systems.
- 24. Q: Do you think that our generation is mesmerized and overwhelmed by the West? Before discussing the implications, I would like to emphasize that our young generation is unable to understand the ‘cultural vacuum’ that exists in our society. At a surface level, they may be familiar with our cultural heritage, for example, they may have heard about Bulle-Shah or Bhitai without any profound understanding of their works. I feel that mere pace of the technological progress is at times too much to handle or absorb by our youth. Let me try and further elaborate on my point. I feel that ‘ humanistic’ or ‘spiritual’ traditions and learning mechanisms that existed in our society were a product of deep thoughts and collective communal efforts. These traditions and societal mechanisms, in my opinion, are not really compatible with today’s fast paced random systems of societal bonding and progress. I also feel that there is an inherent and historical difference between the moral values of this part of the world and Europe or America. And I feel the difference has increased in recent times as Europe and America are leading so many regions of the world towards destruction and annihalation. I therefore feel sorry to add that where we used to send our children or youth for education to the west, now it is literally like sending them to learn how to hate and kill other human beings. It seems that the quest is now for material wealth and gain rather than progression in science and technology. I think that even sceince which I thought was there to discover for the betterment of humanity is falling in the trap of developing ‘ultra sophisticated’ weapons for human destruction. do you feel that we are Q: Generally speaking, or ‘westernized’? In both being ‘modernized’ cases what do you feel that implications are? You rightly pointed out that ‘westernization’ is equated with ‘modernization’. We failed to trace out the meaning of modernization in our culture and how to respond to the challenges of western modernization academically and more importantly intellectually. Unfortunately, we failed to develop our academia which in turn would have developed a contextualized understanding of modernization through the lense of our cultural and moral values and systems. do not have the human capacity to do such a job. Our renowned universities, such as Jamshoro University or Punjab University, are devoid of teachers who could point out that modernization existed in our society as well with all the necessary societal systems. Our public intellectuals, I feel, have let us down. They have shown no capacity what so ever to repond to the challenges of social breakdown and apathy that I feel our 22 We failed to trace out the meaning of modernization in our culture and how to respond to the challenges of western modernization academically and more importantly intellectually. youth is faced with today. I also feel that we have not done justice to our religion and its teachings regarding societal change. Q: Do you think the family’s role is much more important than school’s in bringing about a positive societal change? In a family, values and knowledge are transmitted throughout the course of a child’s upbringing. It is, thus, a natural phenomenon. It is not necessarily told; it is practiced, observed and internalized. Gradually, the cultural traditions of parents become a part of their children’s lives. I believe no matter what you say or project that you have liberated yourself from the bounds of your cultural traditions it continues to play an important role in an invisible manner and one cannot completely be void of ones family or cultural values and traditions. I think the good values of a family – values that based on the principals of fairness and justice do come in the way if one choses to go on a path that is otherwise. For example, when I returned to my village after completing my Bachelors of Arts, the old cobbler of the village, who has seen me grow and is guarding the societal norms and values, would find some of my actions inappropriate. When I would ask him as to why he thinks my conduct is wrong instead of providing me with a ‘scientific’ rational he woud simply reply by saying, “this is not the way of your forefathers”. The real questions then is, “what were the ways of our forefathers?” The ways were: respect the elders, help others, participate in one anothers happy and sad moments etc. He was obviously no Socrates. But my point is that is how the social system used to funtion. Then came the school. A schooling system based on the philosophies and teachings of people and ‘lords’ like MaCaulay and Keynes. According to them life is all about a quest for supriority by hook or crook. The entire system of living will only be supportive to those who will ‘gladly’ relinquish their morality and spirituality or to those who have none of those to begin with. Now these are the people who developed the modern schooling system and we are blindly following it. One system i.e. the system of oppression imposed on my Buddhist culture, my Hindu U R On...
- 25. culture, my Sikh culture, my Christian culture, my Muslim culture. A system in which human being will succeed only if they were to bow down to greed, injustice and finally selfishness. that the world could be Q: You meanwe were to rid ourselves much better if from systems that are economically driven? Yes, I think we live in an artifical world or a world that is artificially created by what you call in the language of religion, Satan – an ‘evil’ called economics. This economic system forces you to impose an education on your child that motivates him/her towards maximum material gains. You no longer recommend your brother to go to the Khurasan University and learn poetry, or compare the works of Khayam with the modern poetry or compare the 13th century poetry with Bhitai’s poetry or with Hyde’s or Eliot’s. As I come to understand, the race for material gain at times is not a matter of choice for us it is something that is imposed on us. I can assure you that within the next 50 years, this so called democracy would loose its meaning and would totally dismantle. It would be replaced by an emerging and awful enemy called the ‘multinational’. Multinationals would never let any form of democracy to grow. They have the ‘money’ and are based on money. Eight percent or perhaps more of the world’s wealth is under the absolute control of multinationals. My grandson usually corrects my pronunciation; he says its multinational (mul-tae-national) and not multinational (mul-tee-national), as I say it. When I tell him that we had gone to school years back that’s why my accent is obsolete, he gets nettled. So these multinationals have control over our lives. We are not living a life of our own choice – we are living a ‘manufactured’ life. Nowadays, the propaganda on the media is that ‘we’ are protecting democratic values or rather we are protecting the civilized world. In reality, all ‘they’ are protecting is the interest of rich people and the multinationals nothing else! For example, there is a group of around two million people in Pakistan including doctors, writers, industrialists and journalists (we intellectual are also included in that group). Whatever happens in this country, whether there is democracy, dictatorship or army rule, we have little or no concern with it. As long as our air conditioners and geezers are functioning, we are comfortable. At times we public intellectual may seem very bothered and concerned about the plight of the people who are oppressed but I believe most of us only put up a pretence. I feel that at times our concerns are limited to mere talk and nothing beyond that. I have met Mao Ze Tung, you must have heard about him. I was the only non-dignitary from Pakistan who has met Mao and shaken hands with him. Since I was his ardent admirer, I went to see him. But when I saw him, I was speechless. Although we had only about five minutes to talk but he was too nice and conversed with me for more than ten minutes. He told me how dear Pakistan is to China and why but that’s a different story altogether. The most important thing which he told me was that whatever you may preach, unless it is not followed by a long march i.e. masses you won’t get the desired results. Unlike Mao, we try to run our social and political movements and institutions from the top. We don’t try to give an opportunity to the masses to become a part of the process. We entice people to do what we say by offering them incentives. In turn, people feel grateful to us and think we must be doing something for them since we look well-dressed and sympathetic. They consider us their Sain (master). Ironically there is no common point of interest for us. A long march is a strange thing. It means to live with ideas rather than holding back on them – in other words to live with the people at the grassroots and involving them in building social movements.
- 26. The reason why progressive ideas could not trickle down is because we did not try hard. We did not talk to people. We did not live with them. We did not march with them. Interacting and living with people would help you recognize reality. Q: We think thatinprogressive thought exists in our society pockets. By progressive thought we mean thinking ahead of our time rather than submitting ourselves to the status quo and overlooking limitations of the present system. We often think why this progressive thought does not trickle down to the masses and shape up as an integrated intellectual/social movement? Because we never meet people at the grassroots level. Let me quote my own example, I call myself a progressive person and yet I have not met so many living in distant corners of Pakistan. A cobbler living in some remote area may be very progressive in his own context. The local people are very progressive in their work and in the way they think. I cannot think the way they do. Their progressiveness is evident from their creativity – they create so many unique things. For example, I could never think of making Ajrak (a shawl manufactured in Sindh, Pakistan). I went to Shahkot to see the manufacturing process and my God I was stunned. The whole procedure was amazing; based on creativity with immaculate precision and elegance. To me this is progressiveness, which we really need as human beings. Today, we do have a lot of progressive ideas which we want to transfer to the grassroots but unfortunately these ideas are not indigenous, we have borrowed them from somewhere else. The reason why progressive ideas could not trickle down is because we did not try hard. We did not talk to people. We did not live with them. We did not march with them. Interacting and living with people would help you recognize reality. I want to tell you people a story – a real one. I went to college and after completing the first quarter I came back to the village. I was considered as an important person and had lofty ideas. I thought it was appropriate to act superior, since I was studying in a city college, and made my fellow villagers feel ashamed because they could not achieve what I did. My mother asked me to go and visit our village cobbler. In our village, old men were addressed as Taya (paternal uncle). Taya Qasim used to repair shoes under a tree in our village. I thought since I am a literate person and amongst the very few in the 24 village, why do I need to go and visit a cobbler? But because my mother had asked me to, I went to him. When I met him, he praised me and wished me all the best for my future. Taya Qasim then asked what have I learnt from the city? I asked him whether he knew of a subject called Zoology. Then explained to him that it is the study of animals. I also told him that there is another subject about flowers and plants called Botany. Then I asked him whether he knew that a housefly has upto three thousand eyes. You see, the system in the eyes of a housefly is such that it can see things from multiple angles. Not believing me he reconfirmed the number of eyes twice. After hearing my reply, he finally said, “damn the stupid fly; despite having three thousand eyes, whenever she sits, she sits on dirt”. And I became speechless. To me that was original and progressive thinking. schools, colleges and Q: Do you think that our us arrogant? Not only universities are making that, they are taking us away from our own values. Yes! In the context of education, we use a cultural expression zaivar-e-ilm say aarasta karna (decorating oneself with the ornament of knowledge). I advise people to alter this expression because a person who would wear ornaments would invariably gaze at him/herself in the mirror. If you have adorned yourself with that kind of materialistic education, you would be self-absorbed and obsessed with yourself. You would try to be in front of the mirror all the time and will not consider others worthy of our attention. Therefore, I urge that let people be hungry, let them be illiterate but don’t let them be deprived of self-respect. I always advise my daughters and sisters to give due respect to women who come to work at their houses. The dignity of work must be upholded. It is fine to give them clothes and incentives but first of all it is important to give them the respect they deserve as human beings and treat them as equal humans. Once we see them and view them as equals we will be able to respect them and by that we will eventually be able to respect ourselves. A g a i n , y o u’ r e a b s o l u t e l y c o r r e c t , i n s a y i n g t h a t contemporary and eurocentric education turns human beings into very arrogant and egotistical creatures. Therefore, whatever is being taught, it should be aimed at helping individuals to become better people. In our society, we have many well educated people but not many good human beings. Educated people with high social and financial standing, coming out of their cars, considering themselves to be better human beings because they have a privileged position in society. But they cannot become good human beings unless they do not empathize with others and have a sense of justice in them. U R On...
- 27. Look at our traditional learning systems. We had deray1 where a Sain used to sit. Bhit Shah 2 is a glorious example, where people visited Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai for learning. Consider Buddha, who sat under a tree to share people’s concerns and grief. Although he was a king of a huge dynasty, he relinquished his empire for the sake of seeking spirituality and being close to the common people. This is how heigthened learning takes place. People like Bhittai and Buddha tried to go deeper into the human soul. This is how spiritual values are developed and shared. And I believe, that today our teachers and educators need to assume the same role in order to make our education system more meaningful. Do you think that the values embedded in the the oriental cultures and religions could help us resist the Western value system – a system what you think is based on greed and materialism? Q: I see it in a different way. First of all it seems very difficult because of the mere magnitude and the might of the western reference points that have been shaped by the western educational institutions. Interestingly, when a youngster goes to the US for studies, he starts offering his Friday prayers in the Islamic Center. He would usually not pray in his own country. Although he would become a better Muslim ritualistically (as far as performing religious obligations are concerned), as he would feel that his identity is under threat. Ironically, in all other ways he would try to become an American. Let me tell you that our conflict with the West is not based on rituals. They have no problem if you say your prayers seven times a day instead of five or you fast for two months instead of one. They have a problem with the kind of lifestyle you follow i.e. your ideology that is based on higher principles of morality and spirituality – an ideology that motivates you to challenge injustice. Q: Do you think that the present situation is becoming hopeless? No, I don’t think so. Honestly speaking, I cannot give I strongly believe that our existence has a meaning. No matter how powerful evil is; truth will keep on resisting it. Not the truth which we try to fabricate but the truth that reflects our inner selves. This would emanate from all of us. This truth is delicate like a spider’s web and yet it is so strong that it cannot be easily splintered. If this was not a reality I would not have had hope. that opposing system. Unfortunately, we are not fully aware of the strength and potential that system possesses. To be very honest, our society lacks the kind of intellectual rigor which is needed to confront the Western value system. We have to defeat the immoral systems, whether western or eastern, with a greater sense of morality. I have a high regard and deep respect for our religious leaders but when you discuss your problems with them, especially vis-à-vis this issue, you find them struggling for answers. They have nothing to offer in terms of intellectual guidance. I recently asked one of them about the current global political situation and he told me that ‘Inshallah’ (God willing) everything would get better. I have no doubt that God will help us but we have to have a strategy to deal with our situation. Q: Why don’t we have such an alternative system? Because our intellectual class (tabqa) and the education system is westernized. No matter what our people do, they are unable to deconstruct fully or detatch fully from 1 2 you an explanation in words because there is another side of the reality which can only be experienced and for which words would not suffice – it is something that relates to Sufis. I belong to a religion and a school of thought which believes in the dominance of wisdom (danai) and intellect (aqal) and which commands its followers to reflect upon the universe by using one’s intellect. God clearly indicates to humans, in the Quran, to explore the universe and seek His signs in it. I believe this is what education is all about. I am not a pessimist. The presence of 140 million people in this country and the existence of billions on earth elevate my hope. I strongly believe that our existence has a meaning. No matter how powerful evil is; truth will keep on resisting it. Not the truth which we try to fabricate but the truth that reflects our inner selves. This would emanate from all of us. This truth is delicate like a spider’s web and yet it is so strong that it cannot be easily splintered. If this was not a reality I would not have had hope. I am talking about metaphysics; I believe that we have so far explored the known world. We have not yet ventured into the ‘unknown’, which is infinite. A place usually isolated, like under a tree or a hill where people would gather around a saint for seeking knowledge and spirituality. Dwelling of a famous Muslim Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai in Sindh, Pakistan. U R On... 25
- 28. SOCIETAL LEARNING B O O K S Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness Helena Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield and Steven Gorelick Published by Zed Books for the International Society for Ecology and Culture Bill Glassmire One fundamental inequality in today's world is the economic and cultural divide between the developed North and the developing South. Challenging that inequality will involve huge changes in both the South and the North. In the South, and all over the world, the hungry and the poor should have enough to eat and should enjoy economic and cultural selfsufficiency. In the North, and all over the world, the overfed and the rich should live more simply and should still enjoy economic and cultural self-sufficiency. In the last edition of EDucate! (Issue No. 2, Vol No. 2) the article “The Case for Local Food” by Helena Norberg-Hodge explains how building local food economies would provide everyone with enough to eat, strengthen local communities, and nurture the land. Now there is an expanded discussion of local food economies in a new book “Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness”, by Ms. Norberg-Hodge and others. The book is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the thinking behind the burgeoning ‘local food’ movement. The bulk of the book is an extended explanation of how the global food system contributes to many of the problems which the world faces today, from global warming to the decline of rural economies, from extinction of species to loss of democracy, from water scarcity to unsafe food. It shows, both with common sense and with facts and figures, that worldwide economic and environmental havoc are an inevitable consequence of ‘global food’. An example particularly relevant to the South is the story, told by Vandana Shiva, of the effects of the 26 F O R A B E T T E R W O R L D Green Revolution and genetically modified ‘Golden Rice’ on the rice farms of India. Ms. Shiva explains that the intensive input methods of industrial agriculture both use too much water and make people sick, and she argues that health, freedom and true food security depend on the biodiversity which results from small-scale farming. The book's fundamental argument is that, because of the widespread impact of the global food system, local food is one of the most effective entry points for solving the world's interconnected problems. The benefits of localization include stronger links between farmers and consumers, strengthening communities in both the country and the city, direct participation in economic structures, healing and nurturing the environment, and reducing the disparities between the North and the South. This movement towards local food is especially important in the North, because, as the book points out, in the South a much greater proportion of the population still lives on or close to the land. However, there are lessons for the South. For example, many Southern governments still use subsidies for chemical fertilizers and for pesticides to encourage large-scale agriculture for export, not small-scale diversified farms to feed their own people. The book describes a variety of ‘ideas that work’. Most of the examples are from the North, such as Community Supported Agriculture schemes in North America and the United Kingdom and the Japanese consumer cooperatives which link urban households w i t h o r g a n i c f a r m s . H o w e v e r, o n e e x t r e m e l y provocative story comes from Cuba, which in the 1990s shifted “away from chemical-intensive monoculture for export, toward the production of diverse, organic food for local consumption”. Cuba's story demonstrates how quickly an entrenched agricultural system can be changed when an entire society – government, rural peoples, and urban dwellers – joins in developing a local food economy, and it shows the tremendous benefits which result. In its conclusion, the book points out that localization of our food systems will require changes at the international, national, and local levels. It offers an overview of what those changes might be, such as renegotiation of international trade treaties, shifting national subsidies to promote local food, buy-local campaigns and other community initiatives. Actively supporting ‘local food’ at all these levels is a powerful way for each of us to begin bridging the economic and cultural divide between the North and the South.
- 29. SOCIETAL LEARNING B O O K S How ‘They’ Run the World The Global Economy or, Why We are Poverty Stricken Najma Sadeque This publication is a remarkable effort on behalf of Shirkat Gah, Women’s Resource Center. The purpose of this book is to identify and discuss critical issues pertaining to the multi-faceted development injustices and inequities in the South, and its relation to the flourishing North. This crisp and critical collection talks of concerns like economic injustices in the South, the controlling agencies and how millions in our society suffer at the hands of those who ‘legitimately’ rob them off their resources. It aims to bring to light such pending concerns of which most of the population of our part of the world is a victim. The first chapter titled “The Making of the Third World – How it all Began” explains the mechanism by which the developed world took control over the developing nations’ resources and how wealth got concentrated in a few hands. F O R A B E T T E R W O R L D “Colonization of Agriculture” explains how the Northern colonials took over the agriculture of the South and pioneered the monoculture system. The colonizers exploited the South’s resources and labor for their own profits. The adjoining chapters highlight other burning issues like “The Takeover of the South – Trade and Bondage”, “Imitation of Nature – Settled Agriculture”, “The Creation of Dependency – HighYield Variety Seeds”, “World Bank and IMF – Banks that Dictate Economies”, etc. One of the critiques “Not-So-Free Trade – Export-Oriented Versus PeopleOriented” underlines the West’s trade objective of ever-increasing production and consumption. It stresses how in the last couple of decades the South’s selfsufficiency has been damaged and how it has become dependent on importing food from the North – a situation artificially created by the latter. “The Gene Banks and Food Security – Killing Bio-Diversity for Control” discusses at length the importance of bio-diversity to healthy crops and how the multinationals have seized control over small enterprises responsible for plant breeding, commercial seed production and seed patenting – ventures with sizable profits and tools for making the South dependent on seeds as well as food. Other bravely written accounts include “Militarization of World Society”, “The Arms Industry”, “The Piracy of the First World”, “Where We Stand Today” etc. The book is simple, comprehensible and reader friendly, especially for all those who are new to the concepts of strategically unequal and violatory development. To order a copy or obtain more information, email N a j m a S a d e q u e a t s h i r k a t @ c y b e r. n e t . p k o r sgah@lhr.comsats.net.pk INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES AND PRACTICES PRESENTS ITS REVOLUTIONAIZING SET OF PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLISH AND URDU Transform A Quarterly on History, Development, Education & Culture IDSP Institute for Development Studies & Practices Quetta, Pakistan aksulamal@yahoo.com – idsp@qta.paknet.com.pk – www.idsp.sdnpk.org 27
- 30. SOCIETAL LEARNING WEBSITES FOR A BETTER WORLD corporate globalization, CorpWatch campaigns in these specific areas: Alliance for a corporate-free United Nations Exposing the poor human rights and environmental records of companies forming partnerships with the UN. www.corpwatch.org HOLDING CORPORATIONS ACCOUNTABLE Aliya Suleman “CorpWatch counters corporate-led globalization through education, network-building and activism. We work to foster democratic control over corporations by building grassroots globalization a diverse movement for human rights and dignity, labor rights and environmental justice”. Introduction: For the past five years San Francisco-based CorpWatch has been educating and mobilizing people through the CorpWatch.org website and various campaigns, including the Climate Justice Initiative and the UN and Corporations Project. In addition to the vast array of resources available on CorpWatch.org, the organization's accomplishments are many. They include playing a role in pressuring Nike to improve conditions at its overseas sweatshops by releasing a confidential independent audit that exposed the conditions at a Vietnamese sweatshop. The release of the audit garnered significant media attention, including a front-page story the New York Times. Climate Justice Initiative CorpWatch is helping to build a new movement for Climate Justice – one that aims to hold corporations accountable by bringing local battles for human rights and environmental justice together with the international efforts to protect the world’s climate. Greenwash Awards CorpWatch gives out bimonthly Greenwash awards to corporations that put more money, time and energy into slick PR campaigns aimed at promoting their eco-friendly images, than they do to actually protecting the environment. Nominations fore these awards come from the audience. Action: You can join CorpWatch's Cyber-Action Team (CW-CAT) and receive regular email announcements of CorpWatch Action Alerts. As a member of the Cyber-Action Team,you will be asked to send a free fax or to email a corporate mogul or government official to help support campaigns for human rights, environmental justice and corporate accountability. The section has a list of current actions and an archive of previous undertakings. Issues: In this section you will find in-depth information on a wide range of issues involving corporate power, corporate globalization and grassroots resistance to it. The sections in the Issue Library are updated periodically, so the library not only serves as an archive, but also as a source of ongoing coverage. You can use the site search engine or peruse the issues below. CorpWatch has also co-produced five live one-hour radio broadcasts from the WTO Ministerial meeting and protests in Seattle that aired on 135 stations. They broke the story of the UN's growing entanglement with corporations in 1999 and have campaigned on it ever since. They are also working hard to re-define the global warming issue as a question of local and global human rights and environmental justice. Hand-on research guide: If you are looking for information on corporations for an activist campaign, investigative article, lawsuit, socially conscious investment, or a school paper, this interactive guide will take you step by step through researching on the internet. Functions of the website: § News, information, exposes, analysis and first person accounts § Updates on CorpWatch campaigns § A hands-on guide to doing your own on-line research on corporations § Activist alerts and information on how you can get involved in grassroots action Press Here you will find the latest press releases, clips and information about CorpWatch and its campaigns. Site Segments: Campaigns In addition to providing in-depth information related to 28 The section also gives research tips and provides guidelines as to how to develop a research plan and conduct industry research. In the News: This section features breaking news on globalization and corporate related issues from around the world. News items are selected from a variety of sources, both mainstream and alternative. The section is updated weekly and an archive is maintained of all the previous items.
- 31. R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATION Commodification of Education DR. SHAHID SIDDIQUI W hile revisiting the history of education, we come across opposing trends regarding the aim, content, pedagogy, and dynamics of education. The socio-political situation and economic status of a society have their influence on education and similarly, education – in its own way – impacts and shapes the politico-economic scenario of a society. There were times when education was considered an ivory tower where the main objective was to acquire ‘pure knowledge’. The students of such educational institutions would devote their lives to life long processes of learning. Occupational skills were learned by practice – usually by working with people who had the expertise and knowledge regarding a particular trade. The schools were owned and managed by the State and were considered as social institutions. The state not only subsidized the expenditures but also charged nominal fee. As a result, a large majority of parents could afford to send their children to schools. Those were the days when subjects like social sciences and humanities were offered as part and parcel of a higher education curriculum. The teachers worked with sheer sincerity and students respected them for their commitment and dedication. In short, the primary aim of education was not maximizing profit. DR. SHAHID SIDDIQUI Dr. Shahid Siddiqui has done his Ph.D. in Language Education from University of Toronto, Canada, M.Ed. TESOL from the University of Manchester, UK; and M.A. English from University of Punjab. Currently Dr. Siddiqui is working at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology where he heads the Management Sciences and Humanities Program. After the creation of Pakistan, a few private schools were also established, sponsored by certain ‘anjumans’ or philanthropist groups. These institutions were set up with the purpose of spreading education across the country and not for reaping profits. Education did not come with a hefty price tag, the text books were reasonably priced and the school bags were not that bulky. Around three decades ago, a new phenomenon became popular on the international economic front: the notion of neo-liberalism, which had an impact on all walks of life including education. In Pakistan, however, its impact became more pronounced during the last decade. Before analyzing its impact, it is imperative to unpack the phenomenon itself. Neo-liberalism in economic terms simply means, ‘ free market’, where there is aggressive competition, a great deal of e x p l o i t a t i o n o f l a b o r, n o intervention of state and almost no morality. Profit maximization is the foremost aim of neo liberal economy. In Pakistan, education sector got its share of the ‘free market’ in the last decade. Neo-liberalism, as it advocates free market and no intervention of the state, encouraged privatization, which became a popular trend in the country especially in the education sector. Privatization itself is not a negative phenomenon. As I mentioned earlier, in the past there were some quality educational institutions which were established and run by the private sector without any money-making motive. Even in 29
- 32. Although there are different notions regarding the aims of education, most of the contemporary educational initiatives are totally money driven. present times, there may be a handful of such institutes that are working with a genuine spirit to make education accessible and affordable for the masses. But the privatization that came under the influence of neo-liberalism was primarily aimed at profit maximization. Here I would like to refer to an interesting observation by Dave Hill (2003) who suggests that “…the capitalist class has a Business Plan for Education and a Business plan in Education.” This observation holds true for the contemporary educational scenario in Pakistan where we are encouraging the trend of turning education into a lucrative business. Interestingly, the industry has influenced our education system in various forms. For example, a number of institutions have been set up by those who are primarily known for their role and stature in industry e.g. industrialists, business magnates etc. Similarly these business people predominantly occupy key positions on the boards of educational institutions. As part of the lucrative package, they often sponsor buildings, furniture and equipment and expect on-campus use of their company’s products alone to market the image of their c o m p a n y a m o n g s t t h e s t a ke h o l d e r s o f t h e institution. Education, in its existing state, can be dubbed as a big supermarket where the transactions continue to depict a ‘bullish trend’. Let us further unpack the metaphor of market and see how it can be applied to education. We start with the aims of education. Although there are different notions 30 regarding the aims of education, most of the contemporary educational initiatives are totally money driven. Education has emerged as a very good ‘business’ which has tremendous demand in the market, with private sector successfully dominating. Given the ‘efficiency’ of the private sector, a large number of educational institutions have emerged as ‘industrial zones’ or ‘production units’ whose sole aim is to maximize profits by producing more. Teachers in this supermarket model are reduced to sales persons whose job is to deal with students politely and deliver the ‘goods’. As labor is exploited in a free market, the teachers are made to work for long hours and in return get low salaries. Also the salaries given to young teachers in renowned school chains of Pakistan are lowscaled as compared to the work and job pressures they are subjected to. One very important aspect of neo-liberalism is to keep the jobs insecure. Nowadays more and more teachers are hired on contracts and at higher education level, they are usually appointed as part time employees. The temporary and insecure jobs not only bodes well for the owners in terms of money (as the contracted teachers are not eligible for the benefits enjoyed by regular employees) but also in terms of maintaining pressure on the employees for contract renewal. Similarly, if teachers join good private schools for internship they are given no salaries. The concept of knowledge in the supermarket culture of education is reduced to a commodity. An analogy can be drawn between the supermarket economy and the schools, as they are run today: R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATION
- 33. Lesson plans and teaching methodologies are more and more being homogenized. They are prepared at a central place and dished out to different school branches, spread out across a particular geographical region. This approach underestimates the individual role of teachers and reduces their role to that of consumers. Only those items are kept in a super store which are in popular demand. The subjects offered in higher education are determined by the ‘market forces’ – hot items being IT and management related courses. Since subjects like humanities and social sciences are not market driven, they are conveniently removed from the curriculum. Fancy tags on products attract customers. Giving fancy titles to subjects to fascinate ‘customers’ (students), e.g. e-commerce, e-management, has become a norm in higher education institutions especially business schools. The outlook of a superstore plays an important part in business. Schools make special efforts to ‘look good’. When parents visit schools for admission, they are immediately taken around in order to ‘sell’ the school environment to them. Expanding business operations by opening new branches and outlets is a typical practice in the corporate sector. Schools have also become ‘chains’ by opening new campuses rapidly; without necessarily maintaining the quality/standards of education delivered. Lesson plans and teaching methodologies are more and more being homogenized. They are prepared at a central place and dished out to different school branches, spread out across a particular geographical region. This approach underestimates the individual role of teachers and reduces their role to that of consumers. In any corporation, enhanced productivity that leads to maximum profit is the ultimate aim. Similarly, in the corporatized culture of education, quantification plays an important role. The more you produce, the more you earn. Increasingly, educational institutions are enrolling a large number of students much beyond their capacity. Another example is the high accessibility to degrees like PhD which in the past were considered rare. The quality of education (both in terms of delivery and content) is easily compromised to accommodate the burgeoning student population to ensure greater flow of money to the institution’s budget. The students in this scenario are the customers who buy knowledge as a sold ‘commodity’. As the famous rule of business goes, customer is always R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATION right, therefore, students hold a central place in any education related mandate. The teachers (who are acting as sales persons in the corporate culture of education) are in the most miserable position. They face pressures from the owners of the educational institutions and from the parents, who are paying exorbitant amount of fees. The students usually exploit the situation; they do what they please both in terms of discipline and studies. Teachers have become helpless creatures who are mere workers in the production unit of education and can easily be fired by the management on any complaint by the ‘customers’. The concept of hierarchy plays a central role in the corporate culture. The structures of our educational institutions are also based on authoritarianism. There is invariably a top person whose will is the final authority and whose words are the ultimate rules. The kind of curriculum which is popular with private institutions is competency based. The objective of such a curriculum is to aim for a set of competencies which are required to succeed in the working world. The role of assessment in the corporate culture of education is confined to quantifiable and tangible items with especial emphasis on monitoring teachers whose every move is checked in the name of quality auditing. The scenario of total commodification of education needs to be revisited and transformed. Here are some suggestions: 1. The link between education and industry can be quite productive but educational institutions should not be influenced and ruled by the industrial and business magnates whose perspectives drastically differ from those of the educationists. 2. It is important that subjects should be offered keeping in view the contemporary needs of society. Nevertheless, leaving the choice fully to the market forces can be very detrimental. For inculcating basic human values, which are so crucial for a society, we need to encourage humanities and social sciences as well. 3. It is good to encourage private sector to contribute to education but there should be some check by the government to monitor their academic and financial policies. 4. Teacher is the most important player in the process of education. The exploitation of teachers needs to end. The teachers need to collaborate and establish professional forums so that their voices could be heard. 5. Curriculum should not be geared towards competencies only. It should also strive to target some societal objectives. 31
- 34. Commercialism 101: An Introduction to the Corporatization of Education and the False Heroism Implied Therein TRACY THOMPSON KHAN T he School of Damsel in Distress at Nell University is strapped for m o n e y. A n o t h e r o f i t s worthwhile educational pursuits has been tied to the tracks, and the Budget Cut Train is bearing down hard. Enter Dudley Doright Incorporated, stopping the locomotive with a mountain of cash just in time to save the program from certain oblivion. So where are the cheers of Hurrah? Does no one support our valiant hero? Will education administrators succeed in coaxing Dudley to save them from their next impending catastrophe? Or will those pesky progressive thinkers foil them next time? inadequacy of government funding, have turned to commercial sponsors for support. According to a 2001 survey in the US on behalf of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, 92% of principals surveyed feel that schools should use business partners to supplement funding shortages and support educational programs. On the other hand, on ethical and principled grounds, progressives almost universally oppose corporate sponsorship of education. The Scent of Money In the US, Australia, Canada, and Britain, education administrators are trying desperately to close the gap between inadequate government funding and high testing standards/the desirability of quality education. In order to provide schools and universities with furnishings, equipment, and teaching materials beyond the limits of government allocations, administrators solicit funds from so-called ‘corporate partners’. Education Administrators vs. Progressives Corporate cash is a substantial lure. The e-brochure of the Poway School District in San Diego CA, How To Become A Partner In Education, cites the following contributions received, among many others, from several different business concerns during 2000 – 2001: A donation to the District's Reading Recovery program for $16,500. Teleconferencing equipment totaling $12,990. 33 Mavica digital cameras totaling $19,800. Furniture and computer hardware valued at $5,275. It is ironic that, in the debate over the corporatization of education, both sides are shooting at the same target: the desire for students to be supplied with quality learning programs, facilities, equipment, and opportunities. Education administrators, tired of the In another example, The City of Ottawa in Canada solicits what it calls Community Sponsorship Opportunities, asking for business TRACY THOMPSON KHAN support at several levels. A $10,000 Tracy Thompson Khan is an Islamabad or more Platinum Community based newspaper columnist and teacher of literature, communications, and Sponsor contribution goes to feed mathematics. Her weekly column, Grey the children at three local schools Matters, appears in The News every for a year. Monday. THE BASICS g g 32 g g R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATION
- 35. It is interesting to note that corporations have quietly absented themselves from the battle over the regulation, implementation, ethicality, legality, and morality of corporate contributions to education. Yo u H a v e t o G i v e t o G e t But there is no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it’s served up on a platinum platter. In order to attract business sponsors, schools and universities are willing to cough up all kinds of perks in return. The Vanderbilt University in Nashville TN will “allow faculty and graduate students to work on specific research projects for corporations,” and will “work with your firm to help you meet your specific workforce strategy.” The University of Illinois at Urbana – Champagne promises that “Development of undergraduate curricula can be enhanced either through designated gifts or an unrestricted grant.” The University of Virginia – McIntire School of Commerce claims that its “Corporate Partners Program provides participants with a competitive recruiting advantage” and offers corporations the opportunity to set up “McIntire Centers – established independently, typically when a corporation or an organization generously donates funds to the McIntire School to foster further study in a specific functional area.” g g g At primary and secondary level, corporate sponsors are allowed to penetrate schools in a much more direct fashion, including: Math text books with problems based on brand-name products. Corporate-prepared educational materials that are reported to contain varying levels of inaccurate or misleading information. g g R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATION Advertising space in school hallways, on school buses, and in school locker rooms. Broadcasting of corporateprepared news programs on donated audio-visual equipment. In the City of Ottawa example, Platinum Community Sponsors are given “an original work of art from a student,” and are declared “a local hero/ine to children in the City of Ottawa.” g g Progressives Speak Out Those opposing the corporatization of education say that business sponsorships come at too high a price. By supporting or endowing only the educational programs of their own choice, corporations are by definition shaping school and college curricula to suit their own needs and desires, in particular, steering funding away from less popular and more expensive courses. Corporations naturally want to transmogrify college students into ideal employees, and so will finance only those research projects, courses, and areas of study that are of interest to themselves. As for school children, parents may not be aware of the content and quantity of direct and indirect advertising aimed at their children while they are at school. Exposing kids to corporate messages while at school takes them out of the student realm wherein they learn to deal with the different facets and challenges of life, and limits them to being merely little consumers and potential cogs in the corporate machinery. In addition, when kids are exposed to advertising without the censorious presence of their parents, it can fuel their desire for products that their parents may wish them to avoid (such as fast food, expensive brand name clothing, and medications,) thus undermining the guiding/nurturing role of parents. THE CORPORATE FACTOR It is interesting to note that corporations have quietly absented themselves from the battle over the regulation, implementation, ethicality, legality, and morality of corporate contributions to education. Yet, as they hand out money, they are forever changing the face of education. The Myth of Corporate Philanthropy According to most economists, there is no such thing as c o r p o r a t e p h i l a n t h r o p y. A corporation’s loyalty is to the financial interests of its shareholders. Defined by Wikipedia as “a legal, artificial entity owned by stockholders,” a corporation is supposed to be inhuman, soulless, acting solely to further its own interests – as per Milton Friedman’s famous paper, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits. As per Noam Chomsky, “Corporations are not benevolent societies.” As per Edward, Lord Thurlow, “Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be damned.” As per Henry Giroux, “The power of corporate culture, when left to 33
- 36. its own devices, respects few boundaries and even fewer basic social needs.” Corporations seem to have accepted these stigmas with equanimity, and happily embark on all the rotten scoundrely activities they are expected to indulge in – including sponsoring education so as to mold students, schools, and universities to enhance their own profitmaking abilities. part-time, temporary, easily replaceable teaching staff. THE UPSHOT Silence of the Lambs Ethical dilemmas sit comfortably in the laps of those who are too lazy, shortsighted, or hedonistic to stand up and confront the unrighteous. At the crux of this particular issue lies our unhealthy preoccupation with money to the exclusion of all else. All the fuss them from their ethical responsibilities is like blaming a car for an accident and not its driver. It is pure moral lassitude to fatalistically accept the antisocial, self-serving behavior of corporations as inevitable. It’s time to redefine our expectations of corporations to acknowledge the fact that they are run by human beings – by us, the corporations’ shareholders, employees, and consumers. Our It is pure moral lassitude to fatalistically accept the anti-social, self-serving behavior of corporations as inevitable. Our obsession with making and saving money as we serve in each of these roles has compelled us to willful silence in the face of corporate misdeeds. A Wealth of Intangibles By picking and choosing the educational institutions and programs it wishes to support, a corporation gets a bargain for its buck. Seen by progressives as opportunists taking advantage of the financial plight of schools and universities, corporations use educational sponsorships and endowments to achieve several goals at once: They build themselves a t a i l o r- m a d e w o r k f o r c e b y giving support to students in areas of corporate need, They gain a captive audience by marketing their products in the inescapable environment of school. They drastically cut their own research costs by incorporating company research needs into university programs. They change curriculum to suit their own needs by choosing what to fund or not to fund. They break down the support systems of educational facilities by encouraging the use of g g and hullabaloo over the control and implications of corporatesponsored education could very easily be avoided if only the public would insist that government devote more tax dollars to education, thus precluding the need for corporate contributions. As is, driven by the need to drum up support for worthwhile educational programs that should ethically be financed by government, education administrators have been reduced to strutting and strolling and batting their eyelashes like beauty pageant contestants vying for the next glittering trophy to roll off the corporate truck. g g g 34 With Heroes Like These, Who Needs Villains? The idea of the corporation as a hero to be courted and placated, and called on to selflessly rescue the fragile tenets of education is baseless myth. To classify corporations as nonhuman entities and thus release obsession with making and saving money as we serve in each of these roles has compelled us to willful silence in the face of corporate misdeeds. Lies, Damned Lies, and Sadistics The lie of the corporation as an amoral, suprahuman entity has been told so many times that it has become truth. We ignore the ethical violations of corporations because we WANT to ignore them, because competition for customers and sales supports the committing of these violations in the interest of making money. Corporations are not performing selfless acts of heroism on behalf of education when they fork out financial support; we as the building blocks of these organizations need to recognize and put a stop to the damage we are causing ourselves by allowing business to mix with the pleasure of education. © 2 0 0 3 Tr a c y T h o m p s o n K h a n R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATION
- 37. R E T H I N K I N G DEVELOPMENT But Can't Technology Solve the Problems? TED TRAINER T he essential issue set by the limits to growth argument is whether or not it will be possible for us to go on living as affluently as we do now, with ‘living standards’ and the GNP constantly rising as the years go by. The ‘technical fix’ optimists believe that this will be possible because technical advances will be made to solve the problems that our way of life is generating. Official statements on ‘Environmentally Sustainable Development’ are always based on this assumption. A strong case can be put against this view. Technology is Falling Behind Despite technical advance, almost all the serious global problems are becoming more acute. Technology is not solving the problems and it is becoming more and more difficult to do things like deliver a barrel of oil or catch a tonne of fish; i.e., more costly in dollar and resource terms. The cost of minerals and energy fell throughout the last century, until around the early 1970s. Studies indicate that since then real costs trends might have begun to rise. The energy cost of getting minerals and energy is likely to rise at 2-3% per annum from here on, i.e., to double each 25 years. If technical advance were gaining on these problems the costs would be falling. Often technical advance is unable to overcome losses due to ecological deterioration. The amount of land farmed, and the amount irrigated are either stable or declining. World average yields for major crops are stable or falling, despite ever-increasing inputs. Nearly all the major environmental studies of the last decade have concluded that access to food and agricultural products will become more difficult and expensive. Even for items where production is increasing, this is often achieved by rapidly increasing inputs of energy etc., meaning that in many important cases we are experiencing sharply diminishing returns. For example the world’s fish catch increased slowly in the decade to 1980 but the required effort, such as the number and tonnage of fishing vessels, has increased much more TED TRAINER r a p i d l y, a b o u t 6 0 % i n 2 0 y e a r s . Increases in the efficiency of many Ted Trainer teaches at the University of processes, e.g., generation of electricity N e w S o u t h Wa l e s . H e i s o n e o f A ustralia’s foremost environmental or production of ammonia, have campaigners. Trainer has called for a tapered over time and the overall new movement towards ‘eco-villages’ as productivity of investment has fallen a way to teach the public about considerably. sustainable alternatives. 35
- 38. More importantly, right now most people are seriously deprived of a fair share of the worlds' resources. Every day people in rich countries go on hogging most of the resources and binding Third World people to a global economy which does not develop what they need... The Magnitude of the Task The technical fix optimists usually fail to recognize the magnitude of the tasks this view involves. Firstly, surely they would agree that we should be talking about ways of 36 living that all can share; surely our concern is not just working out how a few people in rich countries can go on living well while the rest are poor. If so, then we are at least talking about a world in which 1011 billion people, and that means that most resource supply and pollution problems would be at least 10 times as big as they are now. In other words, the challenge is not just “can technology go on meeting the present demands?” but “can it meet 10 times these demands, indefinitely?” If the goal is to lift all people to the living standards rich countries will have by 2060, assuming 3-4% per annum growth, then technical advance would have to deliver hundreds of times of the present levels of production. R E T H I N K I N G DEVELOPMENT
- 39. The Long List of Tasks In order to make our present way of life possible for us through coming decades, let alone for all people, a long list of major technical breakthroughs would have to be made, many in fields where there is no prospect of this despite much research. Solar cells would have to be produced at far below their present cost, ways of conducting modern agriculture reversing the many forms of soil damage would have to be invented, a new fuel for aircraft would have to be introduced, vast new capacity for dumping garbage and industrial waste would have to be created, etc. It should be stressed that even if many of these huge breakthroughs were made, failure in any one of the several crucial areas would mean that our way of life could not be continued or extended to all. For instance, no matter how many other breakthroughs were made, if a liquid fuel to substitute for oil can’t be developed then modern agriculture and the cities it feeds cannot continue on anything like the scale they take now. Growth The technical fix optimists' task gets worse by at least 3% per annum. Anyone who assumes we can go on as we are now is saying we can sustain at least 3% per annum more economic activity every year. That means 8 times as much production and consumption every year by 2060, (or if we assume 5% per annum growth until then, 32 times as much.) Sooner or later continued economic growth will outweigh any plausible advances in energy conservation or pollution reduction. The limits to growth argument is that present levels of production and consumption are causing unsustainable damage to the environment so we should be doing all we can not just R E T H I N K I N G DEVELOPMENT Many of our most serious problems, especially to do with hunger, poverty and deprivation, are due to unjust social arrangements, i.e., to the fact that the rich few are taking most of the available resources. These problems cannot be solved by the development of better technology; in fact they could be made worse. to stop growth in the amount of production and consumption, but to reduce present levels. waters and ecosystems cannot tolerate the present rate of impact for many more decades. Recycling and Substitutes More importantly, right now most people are seriously deprived of a fair share of the worlds' resources. Every day people in rich countries go on hogging most of the resources and binding Third World people to a global economy which does not develop what they need, at least 50,000 people die as a result of this deprivation. Even if we could see that technology would in time be able to provide our living standards to all, obviously it does not follow that the present situation should be accepted until then. There is an urgent need to redistribute the world wealth immediately. The technical-fix position is at its strongest regarding the difference that recycling and substitutes might make. However a considerable proportion of many items is already recycled (more than half of iron and steel produced) and it will be increasingly difficult and costly to recycle higher proportions, especially in view of the energy cost of collection. Technical advance will surely develop substitutes for many uses of scarce things, but again the magnitude of the task and the costs are the main issues. Australians use about 450 kg of steel per person per year. From what substance might we derive substitutes for such a volume of this very energy-costly material, and are they likely to have anything like the same properties? Their energy cost c o u l d b e e v e n h i g h e r, e . g. , f o r materials made from cellulose, plastic or silica. The Question of Time Even if we could see that various technologies would eventually make it possible for all people to live as we do it would probably take many decades, possibly a century to reach that situation. But there seems to be little doubt that soils, species, forests, Many Problems Are Not Technical Many of our most serious problems, especially to do with hunger, poverty and deprivation, are due to unjust social arrangements, i.e., to the fact that the rich few are taking most of the available resources. These problems cannot be solved by the development of better technology; in fact they could be made worse. In the Green Revolution plant, technologists bred more productive grains, greatly increasing food availability, but one consequence was that many people actually became more hungry because richer landowners saw the opportunity to 37
- 40. increase their incomes using the new technology and pushed tenant peasants off their leases in order to increase planted areas. Hence a new technology can easily worsen the situation of poorer people if it is introduced into unjust social systems. Similarly if the technology to mine the sea economically were to be developed, in the present world economy the few rich countries would be the only ones who could afford it and they would surely proceed to grab most of the accessible resources. lung disease that smoking makes much worse, but I still smoke because you never know, they might soon find a cure for this disease”. The limits to growth argument is that the sensible thing to do is to get off the track that is leading to serious trouble, at least until it is quite clear that technology has found a way for us to continue safely. A Statement of Faith At first when we look at the global predicament we are in we might think we have many separate problems, e.g., an environment, energy, peace, Third World and a quality of life problem. But when we examine these problems from the limits to growth perspective we realize that all are primarily consequences of the commitment to endless growth on the part of the overproducing, overconsuming and overdeveloped countries. It is not possible for the technical fix optimists to show how we will definitely be able to solve the big problems. At present there are no plausible solutions to many of the problems. What the technical fix optimists are usually doing is expressing the faith that something will turn up or be invented to head off the problems our behavior is There is Only One Problem There is in other words only one problem; the basic cause of the many serious problems we face is our mindless commitment to a growth and greed society. There is therefore one neat and simple solution – change to a conserver society which does not generate these many problems! The interconnectedness of the subproblems should also be stressed. For example we can’t expect to solve the forest destruction problem unless satisfactory development is initiated in Bolivia, Brazil and Central America where poverty obliges people to clear rainforest. We cannot expect to solve the greenhouse problem unless the Chinese can be convinced that there is a satisfactory non-urbanindustrialized development path they could take and can see the rich countries taking it. We cannot expect peace until there is far greater justice in the world, and we cannot achieve that until rich countries agree to consume less, and we cannot do that Institute for Education Policy Studies The Institute for Education Policy Studies is an independent Radical institute for developing analysis of education policy. It critiques global, national, neo-liberal, neo-conservative, New Labour, Third Way, and postmodernist analyses and policy. It attempts to develop democratic transformative policy for schooling and education. Contact: Dave Hill (IEPS) University College Northampton Boughton Green Rd Northampton NN2 7AL UK Email: dave.hill@northampton.ac.uk dave.hill@ieps.org.uk The Founder Director of IEPS is Professor Dave Hill, the Deputy Director is Professor Peter McLaren. The Associate of the IEPS is Dr Christine Fox. http://www.ieps.org.uk/ R E T H I N K I N G DEVELOPMENT
- 41. RETHINKING MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY Noam Chomsky Perspectives on Corporate Power & Communications Technology ANNA COUEY AND JOSHUA KARLINER S o our first question is, how significant do you see the skirmishes between the Department of Justice and Microsoft? Do you see it as an important turn of events? We shouldn’t exaggerate it. If there are three major corporations controlling what is essentially public property and a public creation, namely the Internet, telecommunications, and so on, that’s not a whole lot better than one corporation controlling, but it’s maybe a minor difference. The question is to what extent parasites like Microsoft should be parasites off the public system, or should be granted any rights at all. Give us a little bit of historical context. How does what’s happening with Microsoft’s growing power, and its role in society fit into the history of Corporate power, the evolution of corporations? Here’s a brief history, a thumbnail sketch. There were corporations as far back as the 18th century, and beyond. In the United States, corporations were public bodies. Basically, they were associations. A bunch of people could get together and say we want to build a bridge over this river, and could get a state charter which allowed them to do that, precisely that and nothing more. The corporation had no rights of individual persons. The model for the corporation back at the time of the framing of the Constitution was a municipality. Through the 19th century, that began to change. It’s important to remember that the constitutional system was not designed in the first place to defend the rights of people. Rather, the rights of people had to be balanced, as Madison put it, against what he called ‘the rights of property’. Well of course, property has no rights: my pen has no rights. Maybe I have a right to it, but the pen has no rights. So, this is just a code phrase for the rights of people with property. The constitutional system was founded on the principle that the rights of people with property have to be privileged; they have rights because they’re people, but they also have special rights because they have property. As Madison put it in the minority of the opulent against the majority”. That’s the way the system was set up. In the United States, around the turn of the century, through radical judicial activism, the courts changed crucially the concept of the corporation. They simply redefined them so as to grant not only privileges to property owners, but also to what legal historians call ‘collectivist legal entities’. Corporations, in other words, were granted early in this century the rights of persons, in fact, immortal persons, and persons of immense power. And they were freed from the need to restrict themselves to the grants of state charters. That’s a very big change. It’s essentially establishing major private tyrannies, which are furthermore unaccountable, because they’re protected by First Amendment rights, freedom from search and seizure and so on, so you can't figure out what they're doing. After the Second World War, it was well understood in the business world that they were going to have to have state 39
- 42. coordination, subsidy, and a kind of socialization of costs and risks. The only question was how to do that. The method that was hit upon pretty quickly was the ‘Pentagon system’ (including the DOE, AEC, NASA). These publicly-subsidized systems have been the core of the dynamic sectors of the American economy ever since (much the same is true of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, etc., relying on different public sources). And that certainly leads right to Microsoft. So how does Microsoft achieve its enormous profits? Well, Bill Gates is pretty frank about it. He says they do it by ‘embracing and extending’ the ideas of others. They’re based on computers, for example. Computers were created at public expense and public initiative. In the 1950s when they were being developed, it was about 100% public expense. The same is true of the Internet. The ideas, the initiatives, the software, the hardware – these were created for about 30 years at public initiative and expense, and it's just now being handed over to guys like Bill Gates. What are the social and cultural impacts of allowing, not only a monopoly, but even if it’s just a few large corporations, dominating something as basic as human speech, communication with each other? It’s a form of tyranny. But, that’s the whole point of corporatization – to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run – which includes production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything – are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public. And there are various modalities for doing this. One is to have the communication system, the so-called information system, in the hands of a network of, fewer or more doesn’t matter that much, private Microsoft achieve its tyrannies. So how does enormous profits? Well, Bill Gates is pretty frank about it. He says they do it by ‘embracing and extending’ the ideas of others. Let’s take the media. These are corporate media, overwhelmingly. Even the so-called public media are not very different. They are just huge corporations that sell audiences to advertisers in other businesses. And they're supposed to constitute the communications system. It’s not complicated to figure out what’s going 40 R E T H I N K I N G MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
- 43. They want to control access, and that’s a large part of Microsoft’s efforts: control access in such a way that people who access the Internet will be guided to things that they want, like home marketing service, or diversion, or something or other. to come out of this. That includes also the entertainment industries, so-called, the various modalities for diverting people from the public arena, and so on. And there are new things happening all the time. Like there’s a dramatic example, that’s the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The negotiations have been going on in secret for about three years. It’s essentially a huge corporate power play, trying to give ‘investors’ – that doesn’t mean the guy working on the shop floor, it means the board of directors of GE, of Merrill Lynch, and so on – to give investors extraordinary rights. That’s being done in secret because the people involved, which is the whole business community incidentally, know that the public is going to hate it. So therefore the media are keeping it secret. And it’s an astonishing feat to keep quiet about what everyone knows to be a major set of decisions, which are going to lock countries into certain arrangements. It’ll prevent public policy. Now you can argue that it’s a good thing, a bad thing, you can argue what you like, but there’s no doubt about how the public is going to react, and there’s no doubt about the fact that the media, which have been well aware of this from the beginning have succeeded in virtually not mentioning it. How would a company like Microsoft benefit from the MAI? They could move capital freely. They could invest it where they like. There would be no restrictions on anything they do. A country, or a town, like say, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I live, where I work, could not impose conditions on consumer protection, environmental control, investment and set-asides for minorities or women, you name it, that would be ruled out. Now exactly how far this would go depends on the disposition to enforce it. These things are not determined by words. There’s nothing in the Constitution, or the amendments to the Constitution, which allows private tyrannies to have the right to personhood. It’s just power, not the wording. What the MAI would mean in practice depends on what the power relations are, like whether people object to it so strenuously they won’t allow it to happen, maybe by riots, or whatever. So those are the terms that they're going to try to impose. A crucial element of this is what they call the ratchet effect; that is existing legislation is to be allowed, but it R E T H I N K I N G MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY has to be removed over time. It has to be rolled back, and no new legislation can be introduced conflicting with the rights of Microsoft to do anything they like in the international arena, or domestically. Well over time that’s supposed to have a ratchet effect, to turn the world over more and more in the hands of the major private tyrannies, like Microsoft, with their alliances and interactions. Economist Brian Arthur argues that with the rapidly changing nature of technology, no one will remain in a monopoly position for long, so that monopoly power in the technology industries is different than what we’ve historically seen, and is nothing to worry about. But there never was monopoly power; or there very rarely was monopoly power. Take highly concentrated power systems, like the energy industries. But they’re not strictly speaking monopolies. Shell and Exxon are competitors. This is a highly managed system of market administration, with enormous state power entering in the interests of a small collection of private tyrannies. It’s very rare to find a real monopoly. AT&T was a monopoly for a time, that’s why it could create things like the transistor, for example. It was a monopoly, so therefore they could charge high rates. But that’s certainly unusual. Do you think the whole monopoly issue is something to be concerned about? These are oligopolies; they are small groups of highly concentrated power systems which are integrated with one another. If one of them were to get total control of some system, other powers probably wouldn’t allow it. In fact, that’s what you’re seeing. How has the transfer from the public to the private sphere changed the Internet? As long as the Internet was under control of the Pentagon, it was free. People could use it freely [for] information sharing. That remained true when it stayed within the state sector of the National Science Foundation. As late as about 1994, people like say, Bill Gates, had no interest in the Internet. He wouldn’t even go to conferences about it, because he didn’t see a way to make a profit from it. Now it's being handed over to private 41
- 44. corporations, and they tell you pretty much what they want to do. They want to take large parts of the Internet and cut it out of the public domain altogether, turn it into intranets, which are fenced off with firewalls, and used simply for internal corporate operations. They want to control access, and that’s a large part of Microsoft’s efforts: control access in such a way that people who access the Internet will be guided to things that they want, like home marketing service, or diversion, or something or other. If you really know exactly what you want to find, and have enough information and energy, you may be able to find what you want. But they want to make that as difficult as possible. And that’s perfectly natural. If you were on the board of directors o f M i c r o s o f t , s u r e , t h a t’ s w h a t y o u’ d t r y t o d o . Well, you know, these things don't have to happen. The public institution created a public entity which can be kept under public control. But that's going to mean a lot of hard work at every level. What would it look like if it were under public control? It would look like it did before, except much more accessible because more people would have access to it. And with no constraints. People could just use it freely. That has been done, as long as it was in the public domain. It wasn’t perfect, but it had more or less the right kind of structure. That's what Microsoft and others want to destroy. We are curious about this potential for many-to-many communications, and the fact that software, as a way of doing things carries cultural values, and impacts language and perception. And what kind of impacts there are around having technology being developed by corporations such as Microsoft.? I don’t think there’s really any answer to that. It depends who’s participating, who’s active, who’s influencing the direction of things, and so on. If it’s being influenced and controlled by the Disney Corporation and others it will reflect their interests. If there is largely public initiative, then it will reflect public interests. So it gets back to the question of taking it back. That’s the question. Ultimately it’s a question of whether democracy is going to be allowed to exist, and to what extent. And it’s entirely natural that the business world, along with the state, which they largely dominate, would want to limit democracy. It threatens them. It always has been threatening. That’s why we have a huge public relations industry dedicated to, as they put it, controlling the public mind. What kinds of things can people do to try to expand and reclaim democracy and the public space from corporations? Well, the first thing they have to do is find out what’s 42 Ultimately it’s a question of whether democracy is going to be allowed to exist, and to what extent. And it’s entirely natural that the business world, along with the state, which they largely dominate, would want to limit democracy. It threatens them. It always has been threatening. happening to them. So if you have none of that information, you can’t do much. For example, it’s impossible to oppose, say, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, if you don’t know it exists. That’s the point of the secrecy. You can’t oppose the specific form of globalization that’s taking place, unless you understand it. You’d have to not only read the headlines which say market economy’s triumphed, but you also have to read Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve, when he’s talking internally; when he says, look the health of the economy depends on a wonderful achievement that we’ve brought about, namely ‘worker insecurity’. That’s his term. Worker insecurity – that is not knowing if you’re going to have a job tomorrow. It is a great boon for the health of the economy because it keeps wages down. It's great: it keeps profits up and wages down. Well, unless people know those things, they can’t do much about them. So the first thing that has to be done is to create for ourselves, for the population, systems of interchange, interaction, and so on. Like Corporate Watch, Public Citizen, other popular groupings, which provide to the public the kinds of information and understanding that they won't otherwise have. After that they have to struggle against it, in lots of ways which are open to them. And it should aim, in my opinion, not just at narrow questions, like preventing monopoly, but also at deeper questions, like why do private tyrannies have rights altogether? What do you think about the potential of all the alternative media that's burgeoning on the Internet, given the current trends? That’s a matter for action, not for speculation. It’s like asking 40 years ago what’s the likelihood that we’d have a minimal health care system. These things happen if people struggle for them. The business world, Microsoft, they’re highly class conscious. They’re basically vulgar Marxists, who see themselves engaged in a bitter class struggle. Of course they’re always going to be at it. The question is whether they have that field to themselves. And the deeper question is whether they should be allowed to participate; I don’t think they should. R E T H I N K I N G MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
- 45. C R I T I C A L EDUCATORS Education Incorporated? HENRY GIROUX From the management of public schools to the content of the curriculum, corporate values threaten the democratic purposes of public education. O ne of the most important legacies of public education has been to provide students with the critical capacities, the knowledge, and the values to become active citizens striving to realize a vibrant democratic society. Within this tradition, schooling is defined as a public good and a fundamental right (Dewey, 1916; Giroux, 1988). Such a definition rightfully asserts the primacy of democratic values over corporate culture and commercial values. Schools are an important indicator of the well-being of a democratic society. They remind us of the civic values that must be passed on to young people in order for them to think critically; to participate in policy decisions that affect their lives; and to transform the racial, social, and economic inequities that close down democratic social relations. Yet, as crucial as the role of public schooling has been in history, this role is facing an unprecedented attack from proponents of market ideology who strongly advocate the unparalleled expansion of corporate culture (Molnar, 1996a; Pecora, 1998; Consumer Union Education Services, 1998). Preparing Citizens or Consumers? HENRY GIROUX Henry A. Giroux is currently teaching at Pennsylvania State University. Professor Giroux has published extensively in a wide-ranging number of scholarly journals and books. Giroux is internationally renowned for his work in critical pedagogy and has published many books on the subject. He lectures widely on a variety of cultural, social and educational issues in the United States and abroad. Growing up corporate has become a way of life for youth. This is evident as corporate mergers consolidate control of assets and markets, particularly as such corporations extend their influence over the media and its management of public opinion. But it is also apparent in the accelerated commercialism in everyday life, including the “commercialization of public schools, the renaming of public streets for commercial sponsors, [and even] restroom advertising” (Wright, 1997, p. 181). Although many observers recognize that market culture exercises a powerful role in shaping identities, it still comes as a shock when an increasing number of young people, when asked to provide a definition for democracy, answer by referring to “the freedom to buy and consume whatever they wish, without government restriction” (Wright, 1997, p. 182). Growing up corporate suggests that as commercial culture replaces public culture, the language of the market becomes a substitute for the language of democracy. At the same time, commercial culture erodes civil society as the function of schooling shifts from creating a “democracy of citizens [to] a democracy of consumers” (Grace, 1997, p. 315). One consequence is that consumerism appears to be the only kind of citizenship being offered to children and adults. Our youth are absorbing the most dangerous aspects of the 43
- 46. Most disturbing about the market approach to schooling is not only that it is bereft of a vocabulary of ethics and values but also that it has the power to override competing value systems. Such systems are not commercial in nature but critical to a just society. commercialization of everyday life. Within corporate models of schooling, young people are now subject to the same processes of ‘corporatization’ that have excluded all but the most profitable and most efficient from the economic life of the nation. No longer representing a cornerstone of democracy, schools within an ever-aggressive corporate culture are reduced to new investment opportunities, just as students represent a captive market and new opportunities for profits. And the stakes are high. Education becomes less a force for social improvement than a force for commercial investment. Such education promises a high yield and substantive returns for those young people privileged enough to have the resources and the power to make their choices matter—and it becomes a grave loss for those who lack the resources to participate in this latest growth industry. Corporate Models of Schooling According to the Education Industry Directory, the for-profit education market represents potential revenue of $600 billion for corporate interests (Applebome, 1996). Not only is the corporate takeover of schools rationalized in the name of profits and market efficiency alone, but it is also legitimated through the call for vouchers, privatized choice plans, and excellence. Although this discourse cloaks itself in the democratic principles of freedom, individualism, and consumer rights, it fails to provide the broader historical, social, and political contexts necessary to make such principles meaningful and applicable, particularly with respect to the problems facing public schools. For instance, advocates of privatization and choice have little to say about the relationship between choice and economic power, nor do they provide any context to explain public school failure in recent decades. They ignore factors such as joblessness, poverty, racism, crumbling school structures, and unequal school funding. 44 Refusing to address the financial inequities that haunt public schools, advocates of the corporate model of schooling maintain ideas and images that reek with the rhetoric of insincerity and the politics of social indifference. Most disturbing about the market approach to schooling is not only that it is bereft of a vocabulary of ethics and values but also that it has the power to override competing value systems. Such systems are not commercial in nature but critical to a just society. Once-cherished educational imperatives that enabled the capacity for democratic participation, social justice, and democratic relations – especially as countermeasures to the limits and excesses of the market – are ignored. Commercialization in Schools Corporate culture does not reside only in the placement of public schools in the control of corporate contractors. It is also visible in the growing commercialization of school space and curriculums. Strapped for money, many public schools have had to lease out space in their hallways, buses, restrooms, and school cafeterias, transforming such spaces into glittering billboards for the highest corporate bidder (Consumer Union Education Services, 1998). School notices, classroom displays, and student artwork have been replaced by advertisements for Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Hollywood films, and a litany of other products. Invaded by candy manufacturers, breakfast cereal makers, sneaker companies, and fast food chains, schools increasingly offer the notso-subtle message to students that everything is for sale – including student identities, desires, and values. Seduced by the lure of free equipment and money, schools all too readily make the transition from allowing advertising to offering commercial merchandise in the form of curricular materials designed to build brand loyalty among members of a captive public school audience. Although schools may reap small financial benefits from such transactions, the real profits go to the corporations who spend millions on advertising to reach a y o u t h m a r ke t o f a n e s t i m a t e d 4 3 m i l l i o n schoolchildren “with spending power of over $108 billion per year and the power to influence parental spending” (Sides, 1996, p. 36). Eager to attract young customers, companies such as General Mills and Campbell Soup provide free R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATORS
- 47. classroom materials that blatantly hawk their products. For instance, “General Mills has sent 8,000 teachers a science curriculum about volcanoes entitled 'Gushers: Wonders of the Earth,' which uses the company's fruit Gushers candy” (Shenk, 1995, p. 52). Similarly, the Washington Post reported that McDonald's gives elementary schools curriculum packages in which students learn how a McDonald's restaurant is run and, in case they miss the point about future jobs, how to apply for employment (Sanchez, 1998). The Growing Disregard for Public Life As market culture permeates the social order, it threatens to diminish the tension between market values and democratic values, such as justice; freedom; equality; respect for children; and the rights of citizens as equal, free human beings. Without such values, students are relegated to the role of economic calculating machines, and the growing disregard for public life is left unchecked. History has been clear about the dangers of unbridled corporate power. Four hundred years of slavery, ongoing through unofficial segregation; the exploitation of child labor; the sanctioning of cruel working conditions in coal mines and sweatshops; and the destruction of the environment have all been fueled by the law of maximizing profits and minimizing costs. This is not to suggest that corporations are the enemy of democracy, but to highlight the centrality of a strong democratic civil society that limits the reach of corporate culture. John Dewey (1916) rightfully argued that democracy requires work, but that work is not synonymous with democracy. Education for Democratic Life Educators, families, and community members need to reinvigorate the language, social relations, and politics of schooling. We must analyze how power shapes knowledge, how teaching broader social values provides safeguards against turning citizenship skills into workplace-training skills, and how schooling can help students reconcile the seemingly opposing needs of freedom and solidarity. As educators, we need to examine alternative models of education that challenge the corporatization of public schools. For example, R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATORS In the face of corporate takeovers, ongoing commercialization of the curriculum, and growing interest in students as consumers rather than as citizens, educators must reassert the crucial importance of public education. pioneering educators such as Deborah Meier, Ted Sizer, James Comer, the Rethinking Schools Collective, and other groups are working hard to link educational policies and classroom practices to expand the scope of freedom, justice, and democracy. Education as a moral and political practice always presupposes a preparation for particular forms of social life, a particular vision of community, and a particular version of the future. We must address the problems of public schooling in the realms of values and politics, while holding firm to the possibilities of public education in strengthening the practice of active citizenship (Boyte, 1992). Schooling should enable students to involve themselves in the deepest problems of society, to acquire the knowledge, the skills, and the ethical vocabulary necessary for what the philosopher and Czech president Vaclav Havel (1998) calls “the richest possible participation in public life” (p. 45). Havel's comments suggest that educators must defend schools as essential to the life of the nation because schools are one of the few public spaces left where students can learn about and e n g a g e i n t h e e x p e r i e n c e o f d e m o c r a c y. In the face of corporate takeovers, ongoing commercialization of the curriculum, and growing interest in students as consumers rather than as citizens, educators must reassert the crucial importance of public education. Educators as Public Intellectuals The corporatization of education reflects a crisis of vision regarding the meaning of democracy at a time when market cultures, market moralities, market mentalities [are] shattering community, eroding civic society, [and] undermining the nurturing system for children. (West, 1994, p. 42) Yet, such a crisis also represents a unique opportunity for educators to connect the purpose 45
- 48. of education to the expansion of democratic practices in order to promote economic justice and cultural diversity as a matter of politics, power, and pedagogy. As educators, it is important to confront the march of corporate power by resurrecting a noble tradition, extending from Horace Mann to Martin Luther King Jr., in which education is affirmed as a political process that encourages people to identify themselves as more than consumers, and democracy as more than a spectacle of market culture. But more is needed than defending public education as central to nourishing the proper balance between democratic public spheres and commercial power. Given the current assault on educators at all levels of schooling, educators must also struggle against the ongoing trend to reduce teachers to the role of technicians who simply implement prepackaged curriculums and standardized tests as part of the efficiency-based relations of market democracy and consumer pedagogy. Democratic citizenship needs teachers who have the power and autonomy to function as intellectuals working under conditions that give them the time to produce curriculums, engage in dialogues with students, use the resources of surrounding communities, and participate in the organizational decisions that affect their work. One precondition for a vibrant democracy is fostering schools that are responsive to the teachers, students, and communities that they serve. In short, I want to argue that teachers should be defended as public intellectuals who provide an indispensable service to the nation. Such an appeal cannot be made merely in the name of professionalism, but in terms of the civic duty that educators provide. Educators who work in our nation's schools represent the conscience of a society because they shape the conditions under which future generations learn about themselves and about their relations to others and to the world. The practice of teaching is also by its very nature moral and political, rather than simply technical. At best, such teaching engages students in the ethical and political dilemmas that animate our social landscape. 46 ...educators must reclaim public schools as a public rather than a private good and view such a task as part of the struggle for democracy itself. Renewing the Democratic Mission of Education In the face of the growing corporatization of schools, educators should also organize to challenge commodified forms of learning in the public schools. This suggests producing and distributing resources that educate teachers and students to the dangers of a corporate ethos that treats schools as extensions of the marketplace and students as potential consumers. In addition to raising critical questions about advertising, educators might also consider addressing the long-standing tension between corporate culture and noncommercial values in order to contest the growing tendency to subordinate democratic values to market values. At the level of policy, public schools should ban advertising, merchandising, and commercial interests. And educators should establish a bill of rights identifying and outlining the range of noncommercial relations that can be used to mediate between the public schools and the business world. If the forces of corporate culture are to be challenged, educators must enlist the help of diverse communities; local, state, and federal governments; and other political forces to ensure that public schools are adequately funded so that they will not have to rely on “corporate sponsorship and advertising revenues” (Consumer Union Education Services, 1998, p. 41). How public schools educate youth for the future will determine the meaning and substance of democracy itself. Such a responsibility necessitates prioritizing democratic community, citizen rights, and the public good over market relations, narrow consumer demands, and corporate interests. Although such a challenge will be difficult in the coming era, educators must reclaim public schools as a public rather than a private good and view such a task as part of the struggle for democracy itself. R E T H I N K I N G EDUCATORS
- 49. of the VOICE VOICELESS AZIZ KABANI For this issue we gathered opinions of people regarding whether corporate philanthropy is for real. Do the multi-nationals/corporates really aim to support education and other social welfare initiatives or are they doing so for the promotion of their products and to counter increasing criticism against them? Results . . . “The corporates, together with celebrities, coax people to buy their products by publicizing that they will allocate certain percentage of sales for charity. The public responds positively to such campaigns. The reason why these tactics are successful is that our government has failed to invest enough resources and efforts in the social sector. Now if the corporate and media stars are making efforts to support the social sector, it is not considered a bad practice as we believe in the dictum, something is better than nothing. The children who did not have any hope to ever in their lives be educated are getting some opportunities through these initiatives. If you look at the fabric of our society, there are two classes. One is a rich class – people with resources and status. The other, which in terms of economics is called, the ‘lower class’, consists of people who do not have enough resources at their disposal to live a contented and respectable life. Unfortunately, they do not enjoy any status in society. Society does not pay heed to their needs of education, health, employment etc. I think if corporates are working for the benefit of the underprivileged, even with an underhand motive to counter the increasing criticism against them, then this is not ethically wrong. Nowadays, people usually do not differentiate between right and wrong. They just see the advertisements and if they find a product useful, they just buy it. If this purchasing contributes to the society’s welfare, the people do not see any problem with the corporates.” Asif Ashiq Ali – Community Education Officer “In my opinion (based on some knowledge about how the corporate sector works) they do so primarily for the promotion of their products. However, even in that case I think it is fine. The main objective of a corporate is to make money and for that they have huge marketing and advertising budgets. Due to the environmental and social responsibility standards in many western countries, the corporates are obliged to spend some money in the social sector – specifically known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER). This also gives them a small tax cut. But their main purpose remains profits. I feel that this is not wrong either – at least they are spending some money on something good, whatever be their intentions. There is no denying the fact that by entering the social sector, they are deceiving the masses and creating sympathy for themselves and would continue to do that. But at least they are giving something back to the society. It is my personal choice that I work for a social development organization. My belief is there – but I’m also pragmatic – corporates are there to stay. And we have to live with that. We should work with them rather than alienate them.” Saima Pervez Baig – IUCN, Pakistan “The primary purpose of the corporate sector/ multinationals is to attain profits. It is hard to imagine that they would get involved in social work purely with philanthropic motives. They definitely have their own interests attached; they could be either increasing sales or defeating competitors. However, it is possible that their engagement in the social sector bear good fruits. Irrespective of what their intentions are, as long as they are contributing something to the well being of society, it’s acceptable.” Noman-ul-Haq Siddiqui, Research Associate, IED, AKU “In my opinion, education and other social initiatives taken by multinationals are part of their marketing and repute building. Most of these initiatives have less to do with human development and more to do with the firm’s own profits. My discussion with students and management of the few best business schools in Karachi suggest that their curriculum is designed with the consent of the CEOs of big multinationals. The purpose of such a curriculum is to make students learn how to make big money. I believe MNCs need to be educated themselves in the domain of human ethical values and ends which can be achieved through proper management of money.” Alnoor Khimani, Training and Development Consultant “In today’s world, everything has been commercialized. Multinational organizations are a direct result of the most true theory, survival of the fittest. These organizations are enjoying huge profits, however, community and social development initiatives have also been the part of their global policy – thus investments in social sectors like education, health etc. There may be doubts in people’s minds regarding the motive behind this venture of MNCs into social development. Here, I believe in dictum that the end justifies the means. Nobody can deny the benefits, which are accruing out 47
- 50. VOICE of the VOICELESS of this social philanthropy of the MNCs despite the fact that they may have other motives. I think we should see the positive aspect of the picture which is the benefit of society. If Shell Pakistan has launched its Tameer Project, the aim is to make a positive difference in the lives of people and to help the youth of Pakistan with respect to their career and future. Unilever's project of building schools in rural areas of Pakistan has done a lot of benefit to the society and Kidney Centre gets donations from major multinational companies. All these examples clearly reflect the fact that the society is benefiting from the social welfare projects of these organizations. My strong conviction is that multinational companies should be encouraged for giving opportunities to people for the development of society as a whole.” Malik Murad – Shell Pakistan “Personally, I believe that as long as NGOs and other organizations that address issues related to social development require funds and substantial financial basis, it doesn’t matter if donors (MNCs and corporate firms) do it for their own benefit, via promotion of their products, or for simply shouldering the responsibility to make things better. For e.g. Shell establishes various programs supporting environment consciousness. It may very well be to put a lid on what many view as completely drilling the rainforests in South America to nothingness. But Shell is still hugely generous in various moves made to clean things up. A realist attitude, but one I believe that works in this corporate world where soon everything from monuments to wonders of the world may have MNC sponsorship tags on them.” Youshey Zakiuddin – Student, LUMS “My experience and interaction with the corporates suggest that the social work undertaken by the MNCs is either for marketing their own products or countering threats. Whenever social work representatives approach a corporate for funding, a positive reply from them is never unconditional. The corporate donations are duly encashed by the companies. They keep conditions like displaying their banners if it is an event they have funded. This information is then used in their marketing campaigns and build a positive image, especially in the eyes of their stakeholders. Generally evaluating the corporations’ activities, it is evident that they only indulge in marketable welfare. They focus on urban areas where their customers reside and not on the neglected rural areas. They just want to push customers to buy more and more and be impressed by their activities. A corporate never intends to undertake any activity (even if it is social welfare), which does not ensure lucrative returns for its business portfolio. Look at the social contribution of companies who urge customers to return their product packages so that they are able to help the poor in building a school or a health centre. What they actually want to convey is that you buy our product worth Rs. 50 or 60, and only then we would pay (say up to Rs. 1) for the welfare, and not otherwise. Thus social activities undertaken by corporations are only for selling their own image and products.” Karim Kabiruddin – Assistant Vice President, PICIC “Multinationals have been making a considerable contribution towards social investment in Pakistan. Apart from offering jobs to a number of nationals and contributing significantly towards the economy of our country, their investment in the development of society as a whole is also commendable. With their valuable contribution, various organizations have now had the opportunity to work in the areas where no work could previously be done, considering the lack of financial support available to these areas. Apart from making the financial contributions, some organizations like Shell are also providing valuable technical support as well. We need to recognize these efforts, extending our full support to help make a prosperous Pakistan for us all.” Imran Ahmad – Shell Pakistan On a final note… This section of our magazine is dedicated to that segment of the society which cannot voice their feelings and concerns about the social issues. Suppression (in terms of their social, political and economic rights) is one of the reasons of their voicelessness. I believe there is another segment in our society which may not be suppressed in terms of accessibility to resources or knowledge but usually does not find a proper channel to express their views and feelings. Therefore, their views and opinions remain limited to their respective circles or sometimes these individuals simply become indifferent and voiceless. In this issue, the theme we are exploring has provided us an opportunity to bring to the fore the views of such members of our society who previously did not get a chance to open up. Most of our interviewees are either engaged in the development sector or the commercial sector or they are students and aspire to join one of these sectors in future. Additionally, with the formal entrance of commercial sector in the field of social development, it is more likely that their motives and interest would play a cardinal role in shaping up the future course of action of the social development initiatives. Through Voice of the Voiceless, the EDucate! team got this opportunity to explore the perceptions of people working in these two sectors on this critical issue. Most of the responses suggest that people working both in the social and commercial sector believe that the primary objective of the corporate philanthropy is the promotion of their products. Some of our respondents did not consider this a problem if it eventually leads to the benefit of people as ‘end justifies the means’. Admittedly, a large segment of our society believes in this utilitarian philosophy. Nevertheless, in the context of human development, it is not judicious to hold the notion that end justifies the means as both means and ends have grave impacts upon human beings. Thus, in case of corporates/MNCs it is not wise to say that eventually corporate sector is doing ‘something’ for human welfare. By doing so, we simply overlook the fact that corporates and MNCs are directly responsible for inflicting grave damages upon human society both socially, economically and ecologically. Thus, the cost humanity pays to attain these benefits is perhaps far beyond our naïve imagination. The purpose of raising the point, ‘whether corporate philanthropy is for real’, is not to resist or undermine anybody’s involvement in social welfare. However, it is our moral responsibility to ensure that human welfare should be the ultimate motive behind all our development endeavours. No other interest should dominate this course of action. 48
- 51. “ Think for yourselves and do not uncritically accept what you are told, and do what you can to make the world a better place, particularly for those who suffer and are oppressed. Noam Chomsky ” World renowned linguist and America’s foremost social critic in an interview for EDucate! Magazine a ch ange Ed r soci l ucating fo ORDER IT TODAY! Price: Rs.125 US$ 15 Includes Mailing Charges EDucate! series now on CD A compilation of thought provoking discussions and articles on the field of education & development To order please send us your contact details along with a bank draft in the name of “Educate Magazine, Sindh Education Foundation” to the following address: EDucate! Magazine Sindh Education Foundation Plot 9, Block 7, Kehkashan, Clifton 5, Karachi Phone: 111-424-111 Ext. 234 Please allow 2 weeks for delivery