Neoliberalism In Education

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Neoliberalism is a powerful and complex, economic, political and cultural system that transfers market values into all aspects of life. Neoliberalism promotes the idea of competition and privatisation. It affects everything including politics, law, the economy, global relations and the education system. To understand how neoliberalism has affected education, it is important to understand the history of education first. Education was founded to nourish, develop and cultivate the minds of young people so that they may grow into people who would participate in society, by being thoughtful and critically minded, and who would work to make the world a better place. After World War Two, preparing students to contribute to a democratic lifestyle …show more content…

This is because of the continuous use of standardized testing to measure effectiveness and progress. The curriculum is drawn up in such a way that makes standardization easier to implement. This means that subjects such as the arts are often cut in order to teach learners what they need to pass the standardized test. In addition to standardizing education, neoliberalism also deregulates education. This means that instead of learners choosing the school, schools are now choosing learners. These learners are not being chosen because of their intellect but rather because of how wealthy they are. However, this often leads to increased competition and …show more content…

These students then start to feel powerless and trapped within the system. Throughout the process of neoliberalism becoming infused in education, schools become factories where things like creativity, intelligence and imagination are supressed and students are forced to fit into moulds that ignore their unique backgrounds and personalities and instead try to make them all the same [Dodge, S. 2016]. Neoliberal rationality has many consequences for schools and the way they function. It also, however, affects the lives and experiences of its students and because of how influential education is in the forming of our futures, it impacts our world as a