To What Ends: Educational Reform Around the World

Many “reforms”—such as those related to welfare programs in the United States—can be actually seen as “deforms.” These so-called “reforms” have led to increasing impoverishment and lives of misery for many instead of improving the lives of individuals and their communities. In examining educational initiatives that are purported to contribute to improvements in educational equity, quality, and efficiency—the three major challenges facing educational systems around the world—it is useful to examine who is instituting the changes, based on what assumptions and values (i.e., what ideologies), with what ends in mind, and with what outcomes. In basic policy analysis, a leading question is who pays and who benefits from efforts to change or reinforce the status quo.

In attempting to provide a conceptual framework that would simplify and provide coherence to an enormous amount of material at issue, I have decided to adopt a model suggested by Rolland Paulston and Gregory LeRoy to examine nonformal educational programs. The framework consists of two principal axes—a vertical one, concerning where reform is initiated (whether at the top in international and national bureaucracies or at the bottom in grassroots movements), and a horizontal axis, concerning the goals of educational changes—varying between principal economic instrumental goals or sociocultural and political change (often associated with identity movements). Paulston and LeRoy’s review of the literature on nonformal education indicated that most programs fell in the upper left quadrant of Figure 1, and were designed to meet the so-called “manpower” or “human resource” requirements and the needs of dominant groups. Still, there were also a number of grassroots movements that viewed education as a catalyst for fundamental social changes.