What is Neocolonialism and Neoliberalism in the context of education?

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What is Neocolonialism and Neoliberalism in the context of education?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Neoliberalism = a political approach that favors free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending.

Neocolonialism = the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former dependencies.

In the context of education, could mean teaching people about the political approaches.

Or, it could mean using these approaches to permit a broader range of educational behaviors (neoliberalism) or compel adherence to a narrow set of ideologies (neocolonialism). In most of education, the progressives are neocols and the conservatives are neolibs.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You are essentially asking two separate questions because although they start with neo they are fundamentally different ideas. One is how one country influences another, the other is representative of the reappearance of 19th century ideas regarding free market capitalism. Essentially the first is an idea of nation to nation relationships ie control/influence, where the second is ultimately about the supposed nature of people to people relationships ie competition. How they relate to education is an extremely broad and ill-defined question. Do you mean how they are taught? How they affect education? An entire thesis could be written on a question that was half as broad, so maybe narrow it down a little by being a bit more specific.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Neocolonialism you can think of as colonialism but exercising mostly economic power rather than military. A common example of this is the World Bank and other lenders attaching education requirements to loans. So it results in a country needing to take on education as defined by the World Bank (typically a Western model) and rather than guns being pointed at a country it’s economic pressure. Depending on where one draws the line this can also be less direct like if you want to be able to go to a US university or get a US job coming from another country, it is much easier if primary and secondary education resembles US education. So you get other countries adopting US educational policies, or for example AP testing, but it’s not direct coercion just economic incentives.

Neoliberalism is essentially capitalism and market ideals in every walk of life. In the US, a common example is charters or choice schools or high stakes testing where the idea behind it is that through competition and pressures of the market, schools will improve.

Edit: added detail