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Frigotto, G. (Ed.)
(1998). Educação e Crise do Trabalho:
Perspectivas de Final de
Século (Education and the Crisis of
Work: Perspectives at the End of the Century). Petropolis,
Brazil: RJ: Vozes.
230 pp.
ISBN
85-326-2027-2
Reviewed by Cesar A.
Rossatto
The University of Texas
at El Paso
August 18,
2002
Educação e Crise do Trabalho:
Perspectivas de Final de Século is a
collection of voices with an underlying Marxist intonation that
seeks to interconnect various social agencies and to challenge
understandings of the historical determinants which explain
social, economic, cultural and unequal or excluding educational
systems. At the same time, the book searches for constructions
of social/socialist alternatives of egalitarian character and
solidarity. The rationale of these alternatives is a desire to
amplify the public democratic spheres as accessible to various
social classes, the establishment of a less polarized class
system, the enhancement of rights to both basic education and to
formal technological and professional training, and the right of
all citizens to health care, culture and entertainment,
retirement, access to work and dignified salaries. In the
context of these intertwined factors, Educação e
Crise do Trabalho: Perspectivas de Final de Século
examines the relations of the world of production and
reproduction of human life and its formative and educational
processes. It offers analysis and perspectives, and focuses on
the central basic reality of developed and underdeveloped
capitalist countries such as Italy (Europe), Mexico and the U.S.
(North America), and most particularly Brazil and/or Latin
America. The experience of globalization in these different
nations and continents is, of course, markedly different. For
developed countries it is easier to cope with economic transition
and change, whereas for countries in the process of development
many of these same changes can be literally catastrophic.
In short,
the central point stated in the book is that industrialization in
these countries that have not yet fully transitioned to a
globalized and industrialized economy is the exclusive luxury of
an economically dominant portion of the world’s population,
to the exclusion of the majority of its inhabitants. The authors
state that the continuity of capitalist paradigm only survives
concomitally with the destruction of the environment, destruction
and sterilization of labor and the increase of globalizing
exclusions. In other words, globalization concentrates and
diminishes jobs, by excluding professionals in most of the world
and by amplifying unequal paces of economic and cultural
development. Therefore, one of the central actions proposed by
the authors is the formation of counter-hegemonic projects. If
on one hand the educational system fosters schooling the central
goal of which is mere employability or vocational training, then
new demands must be made for an education that prepares
individuals to face new and unpredictable situations in the
contemporary, technological, and non-static work force. Because
the rationale of the present hegemonic, neoliberal politics of
corporate power is to foster an era of a labor force restrained
from its normal functions, then only the flexible employability
fostered by individual competence can guarantee the success of
world labor relations; unfortunately, the current socio-economic
dictates of the globalized economy deny the majority of the
world's population the opportunity to gain this sort of
individual competence through education and opportunity. In this
sense, the metaphor “free market” is a contradiction,
because in reality it is not free to everyone; it is a systematic
structure that privileges a few in positions of power or economic
advantage, perpetuating their access to the means of economic
prosperity at the cost of all others' access to those
means.
Thus,
according to the authors there must begin an urgent and necessary
dialogue between professionals of different capacities and areas
of expertise to rethink theories of education within a more
holistic approach, with views and understandings of global
perspectives. The objective of a modern pedagogy is to
understand the complex process of humanization to best assist the
“educatee” (student) in this trajectory. To educate
according to the book is nothing else than to humanize, to walk
towards emancipation, to a responsible autonomy, to subjective
moralities and ethics. If the techno-vocational education
promoted by neoliberalism and globalization is dehumanizing, then
the counter-hegemonic pedagogical theory and practice must be
determinate to assist the educatee in becoming more
human.
At the end
of the century in Brazil, education had increased the
accessibility to the school clientele, but at the same time
degenerated the pedagogical methods and lowered the quality of
the education, in a process mirrored in the U.S. by the rampant
move towards standardization. In other words, this process has
given the people the way to school, but has systematically denied
them quality education. It made it far easier to obtain a
college degree, but also devalued those degrees by diluting the
content of the educational process in the name of expediency.
This process thus reduced the efficiency and the employability of
the work force. The ideology upon which this phenomenon is based
asserts that investment in human capital permits underdeveloped
countries to develop themselves autonomously, and provides
individuals within these countries guarantees of better
employment, more productivity; in this way, the neoliberal
discourse states, the populations of underdeveloped countries are
given more opportunity for upward socio-economic mobility. Thus,
today formal education and personal qualifications are situated
as elements of competitive advantage in the labor pool and
productive restructuralization and employability.
Before
presenting my critique let me state the insightful contribution
of this book. Without doubt, it must be said that when
confronted with the neoliberal discourse of corporate enterprise,
we have never had a greater or more acute need than we do now for
the development of a critical analysis of that discourse,
especially in the context of current corporate corruption and
scandals. In this sense this book sheds new light on
understandings of that discourse and its consequence to humans
and the environment. It offers alternative solutions in the
struggle against the pragmatic neoliberal discourse of expediency
that limits education to training, standardization, and
dehumanization. For countries in Latin America and Central
America, for instance, globalization has had an even more
devastating impact than what its citizens suffered during
colonization (Chomsky, 1999). In particular, the economic
collapse of Argentina illustrates that the country and its
citizens are still in middle of a major crisis. In other
countries companies are forced to lay off hundreds or thousands
of employees (especially after September 11) as a consequence of
the so-called "globalization of the economy” and “war
on global terrorism,” as if such economic brutalizations
are the only alternatives to the problems faced by the economy,
rather than a deconstruction of the dictates of the market.
Brazil already has twenty percent unemployment and the population
is forced from without to accept and undertake a given economic
and social reality. The masses are alienated and manipulated to
believe these are unquestionable realities when in reality
corporate power is going from bad ethics to evil. With
established agreements such as NAFTA the clear consequence is
that dominant groups’ interests have fewer barriers in
their exploitation of working classes and are less challenged in
their promotion of capitalistic, neoliberal ideology. Thus, this
book proposes the possibility of counter-hegemonic opportunity
for freedom by changing an oppressive reality for a better one.
Ultimately, say the authors, the populations still have choices
to counter act.
Nevertheless, structures and paradigms, not
merely human choices,
are the central causes of disenfranchisement, deprivation, and
oppression. The power of the market, corporate power, has become
the central dominating force of all social endeavors. Hundreds
of thousands of people dislocate themselves from place to place
in search of employment following the movements and relocations
of industry, and usually the corporations move where productivity
and profit can be maximized through the maximal exploitation of
labor and the environment. They move where the labor unions are
weak and the citizens less organized, where the government does
little to protect people or the environment. On the other hand,
the people find themselves at the mercy of transnational
corporate power which dictates economic policy and allocates
resources to best fit its own interests and convenience (Chomsky,
1999). New inner cities or shantytowns are formed, composing an
agglomeration of people rather than well planned communities. In
the end, the thousands of people in these communities are exposed
to horrifying living conditions and health consequences.
Besides the human rights element that all of us ought to defend,
these and other issues also are concerns not only at local level
but also at the global level as well.
I would
like to point out that the corporate state force has considerable
influence on human nature and culture, as if it is an almighty
enterprise where humans are forced to surrender their self will,
power, and destiny. It has become a powerful entity that denies
people the ability to best assert their local collective beliefs,
goals, and control the directions of their economic affairs and
interests. Usually it is the working class and peasants that
become an easy target to the transnational state exploitation.
They are the majority labor population, the most impoverished and
in the assembling work frontlines. In other words, this is
impact of the corporate enterprise on human culture. What
globalization proposes is that human fate be subjugated to
corporate interests through a process of training towards
automatization rather then an education towards citizenship,
creativity and critical thinking; entire generations are induced
to conform to a given standardized schooling. Yet these
corporations don’t play allegiance to the country they
“visit” or exploit.
Thus, this
book addresses an important and relevant aspect of capitalism and
briefly of patriarchalism within the context of the pro-market
neoliberal paradigm of globalization; nevertheless it fails to
analyze the racial aspects of exclusion and inclusion. The book
states that its intent is to look at an ample perspective that
qualifies and explains the historical social, economic, and
cultural reality embodied in an unequal and exclusionary
educational system, yet the effects of whiteness in this context
are very pertinent in such broad analysis of hegemonic structures
of education and labor force perspectives.
For instance, one
question that could and needed to be asked is who are the
excluded, or who benefits from the globalization and
neoliberalism? Studies done in Brazil just as in the United
States assert that even among the poorest, the persons of dark
skin color are most likely to be on the bottom, in contrast to an
almost exclusive white majority in position of privilege,
revealing a vital need for an analysis of racial inequality
(Cunha, 1988).
According to Allen,
(2001) the class-focused Marxist discourse is inadequate, at
least when dealing with race relations, because most of those who
identify themselves as Marxist scholars tend to be white. He
states that there is a need to balance out white Marxist
discourse with critical race theory. In other words Marxist
critiques fall short when “balancing out” class,
race, and gender discourses by focusing mainly on class, erring
to see race and gender as a greater totality of oppression. In
this sense if this book would make this analysis it would close
the gap of seeing the issue of exclusion not only from a class
perspective but also from a racial one and a more thorough gender
one.
Evidently
since this book was written in 1998 and very little has changed
since then, with the exception of worsening the reality after the
September 11 historical mark, and since critical race theory is a
very new theory that is yet to be widely spread, it is understood
that new developments are taking place. In Brazil for instance,
the dissemination of a new awareness about the implementation of
affirmative action is becoming a reality even while sadly in the
U.S. it is slowly fading away. Nonetheless, since many scholars
state that capitalism has been global since its inception with
European colonization, whiteness or white privilege or
internalized racism has also been the major hegemonic oppressive
structure (just like patriarchalism); indeed, European
imperialism and its contemporary analogue of economic
globalization can be actually called the globalization of white
supremacy (Allen, 2001). In this sense the book’s address
of capitalism's failures and crises of education and labor can
also be understood within this context of the globalization of
white supremacy. Even though this book is worthwhile reading
because of its insightful contribution to current understandings
of globalization of the economy, capitalism's pitfalls, and
neoliberalism, globalization and labor crises should be equally
important as the deconstruction of whiteness and
patriarchalism.
References
Allen, R. L. (2001).
The globalization of white supremacy: Toward a critical
discourse on the racialization of the world. Educational
Theory. Fall, Vol. 51, number 4.
Chomsky, N. (1999).
Latin America: From colonization to globalization.
Australia: Ocean Press.
Cunha, L. A. (1988).
Educacao, Estado e Democracia no Brasil.
[Education, State and Democracy in Brazil]. Sao Paulo: Tabela
1-5, PNAD, 1988.
About the Book Author
Gaudêncio Frigotto is
professor in the Graduate
School of Education at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil. He is the author of numerous books and
articles.
About the
Reviewer
Cesar Augusto
Rossatto is an Assistant Professor at the University
of Texas at El Paso. He teaches courses in critical pedagogy,
critical multiculturalism, social justice, sociology of
education, and Social, Historical, and Philosophical
Foundations. He is committed to activism, dialectic, and
dialogical education and praxis for the liberation of
disenfranchised groups. He is also well versed on Paulo Freire's
work, critical temporal theory, social context of education,
organizational politics, and urban education with deep
familiarity with U.S. and Latin American cross-cultural issues,
Brazilian culture in particular. His main research interests are:
The U.S. and Mexican border within the context of Globalization
and Neo Liberalism, social relations and Brazilian identity
formation in Florida and its implications to schooling, the
phenomenon of fatalism and optimism in contrast with social
classes’ differences, the application of critical pedagogy,
and the effects of whiteness in Brazil and in the United States.
Some of his publications include: Transformative
optimism: Engaging Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of
possibility. (Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, Forthcoming
book); Social Transformative Pedagogies: Grass root and
popular schooling in Brazil. Childhood Education International
Journal. Fall 2001; The Freirean legacy: Educating for
social justice. (Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. 2002); The
whiteness experience in contrast with racial conflicts: Studies
of Brazilian and U.S. American realities (A co-authored
book chapter, which was published in Brazil, December 2000).
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