Drivers of the Dominant Discourse--Economic Determinism and Rationality

Yesterday, I presented an introduction to the critique of the dominant discourse. Today we explore one specific aspect of that critique.

Learning happens in cultural context.  Jarvis (2008) positions global capitalism as a culture which fosters certain values which influence LLL.  Although this was discussed in a previous posting, I'll summarize again here.  This culture develops from and reflects the interests of the neoliberal substructures of capital and technology, specifically embodied in the WB, OECD, EU and influenced by international corporations and the European Round Table of Industrialists. As part of the superstructure, LLL is then influenced not only by the values and interests of civil society and the state, but also by the neoliberal core. Neoliberalism describes a market-driven transactional-thinking approach to policy.  Generally associated with a belief in the efficiency of private enterprise, and therefore, open-markets, it seeks to maximized role of the private sector and a minimized role of the public sector. Thus, it is difficult to separate the academic critique of the second generation of LLL discourse from critique of neoliberal governance.  The discourse is both steeped in neoliberal ideology and supportive of it (Fejes, 2008; Jarvis, 2008b; Rubenson, 2004).

It is important to remember that neoliberalism is an economic model and  there is nothing inevitable or necessary about it. The economic downturn of the 1980s and 1990s led to a suspicion of the state, limitations of public expenditures, and  a focus on accountability (Rubenson, 2004).   It is a product of deliberate policy initiatives allowing the free movement of capital between nation states that Olssen (2008, p. 38) says were advanced by “intellectual economic policy elites and state in advanced states”.  Consequently, LLL has been “directly engineered as a consequence of the neoliberal revolution since the 1970s” (p. 38). 

I understand economic determinism to be the belief that economics determines the course of history and the conditions of mankind.   The dominant discourse argues that LLL will increase economic competitiveness and individual wealth.  This in turn will create more jobs and will encourage consumerism. Both of these results will lead to a greater demand for goods and in turn, for individuals to desire greater incomes so that they can purchase more goods.  That desire will lead back to more lifelong learning in a circular positive feedback loop that feeds global capitalism. (Jarvis, 2008b).  The neoliberal faith in the free-market is clear.  The implication is also that economic growth has intrinsic value (Biesta, 2006;  N&F, 2008) and should be “…desired for its own sake, not in order to achieve something else” (Biesta, year, p. 176). LLL is positioned as an enabler of something that has unquestioned intrinsic value.

In Education and the Economic in a Changing Society, the OECD (1989) claims that “education is becoming less clearly distinct from that which is the economy” (Rubenson, 2008).  By taking a market-driven approach to LLL, the neoliberal discourse on learning is, by definition, highly interested in economics. “The contemporary efflorescence of LLL discourse is…substantially, the product of economic determinism”  (Bagnall, 2000, p. 20).  LLL is being positioned as a form of “state reason” (Olssen, 2008) whose once high ideals “…have been overtaken by the lower values of the market” (Jarvis, 2008, p. 157).   Margison (1997, p. 21) claims that LLL has been “…“framed or determined by considerations of cost and benefit as measured through the economy.  …[T]he value of education and learning are reduced to –calculated and constructed as—assessments of their contribution and cost to individual, local, national, regional or global economic well-being” (Bagnall, 2000).

With a focus on learning and education limited by economic rationality and global capitalist interests, the resulting discourse is compartmentalized, non-holistic and non-systemic.  Learning and education are limited to the commodifiable and rationalized pragmatically, signify mindless support of the forces that drive it (Wain, 2008).  In the dominant discourse, economics is seen as the primary, if not the only, orientation for LLL.  Historically, and in the humanistic model, the economic function of education has been seen as one of the functions of education (Hyland, 2007).  “It is the profit motive that drives information provision rather than the desire to pass on to the people worthwhile knowledge or even enjoyable knowledge or the knowledge the older generation with the younger ones to learn” (Jarvis, 2008) .  Hyland (2007, p. 61) claims that “notions of broad, inclusive learning tend to be submerged beneath the welter of material on skills, training and the economic aims of education and training.” Lawson (2007, p. 112) explains that in countries that have policy on LLL, there is no “…significant sign of learning for leisure or for personal development.”  Even though the WB is “cognizant” of wider aims of LLL, Rivera (2008, p. 286)  claims that “…their ultimate purpose of developing market economies cannot be denied” and he suggests that it is reasonable to act on more broad educational interests.