Learning as Development

Rethinking International Education in a Changing World

Daniel A. Wagner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781136294518
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología del desarrollo

Learning is the foundation of the human experience. It begins at birth and never stops, a continuous and malleable link across life stages of human development. Disparities in learning access and outcomes around the world have deep consequences for income, social mobility, health, and well-being. For international development practitioners faced with today's unprecedented environmental and geopolitical pressures, learning should be viewed as a touchstone and target for those seeking to truly effect global change. This book traces the path of international development work—from its pre-colonial origins to the emergence of economics as the dominant discipline in the field—and lays out a new agenda for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, from early education through adulthood. Learning as Development is an attempt to rethink international education in a changing world.

Part I
Development

1
International Development

Izel: The Legacy of Colonialism in Yucatan

Twenty-five-year-old Izel grew up during a time of high hope in central Yucatan. In his grandparents’ time, the area was still recovering from the “Caste Wars,” a 50-year rebellion for Yucatan’s independence. The Mayans lost that war, but Izel’s parents, hoping to give their children a better life than previous generations had known, worked hard to educate Izel and his five siblings. They supplemented their peasant farming income by making hammocks that his mother sold in the nearby town of Ticul, accessible by motorcycle on a rutted road. His father had some schooling and learned enough Spanish to eventually get a job as an assistant garage mechanic. Izel managed to graduate from high school, and his hopes were understandably high when rumors began circulating that wealthy businessmen were coming to Yucatan to build deluxe hotels on the Caribbean shore—what would eventually become known as the Riviera Maya, near some of the great ruins that are now major international tourist sites. Many young men with high school educations, like Izel—especially those who spoke good Spanish—expected to find hotel jobs and make enough money to buy homes in their villages. When Izel traveled to the area in search of work, he discovered that the full-time jobs were instead taken by Spanish-speaking mestizos who had come from big cities in Mexico, could speak English, and were familiar with the ways of the gringos who frequented the hotels. With his hopes dashed, Izel remained in Ticul, despondent, taking odd jobs and hoping for other economic development projects that might favor Mayans.

Contemporary international development originated with European colonization, a reality that has influenced economic development efforts for centuries, both directly and indirectly. For Izel, the results are direct and visible. The skills he learned in high school were helpful, but clearly not sufficient. Local jobs are scarce, and those created by international investments (such as the Riviera Maya resorts) have passed him by, much as they did for his parents and grandparents. While Izel can use his skills to make hammocks or buy and sell products in the local market, his options are limited as long as more lucrative jobs are given to outsiders.

A complex web of forces is responsible for the barriers that Izel faces. Job opportunities are influenced by social class, race, and geographical location—a foundation that was laid partly through a history of domination and colonization, and partly due to the limits of a rural Yucatecan education. One of the biggest challenges in international development work today is trying to understand the weight of this colonial history and its bearing on people around the world. There are real forces of social and economic power that benefit some and oppress others. History shows us that one of the best ways to combat these discriminatory and oppressive forces is through learning and education—in other words, a more knowledgeable citizenry.

Colonialism and Early International Development

Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and other legendary global explorers of the 15th century were among the first European practitioners of international development. Through their famous voyages, these early explorers exposed indigenous peoples to European ways—to their values and conventions, and also to their diseases, military arms, and global politics. Those who followed the early explorers added profit, power, and religious faith to the numerous motives for their colonial conquests.

Over the next several centuries, colonial empires—most prominently British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, but also Russian, Japanese, Turkish, German, American, and others¹—sought to carve up the world’s land masses and impose their will and economic systems upon local populations. These pre–World War II powers were deeply involved in what was often explicitly referred to as “development work.” This primarily involved the imposition of Western norms while extracting both natural and human resources.² The original empire builders thought they were bringing the benefits of “civilization” to ignorant “savages” in traditional societies.³ They were conquerors and colonizers by design (see Box 1.1), seizing land and people. At the same time, the colonizers attempted to replace what they viewed as pagan beliefs and superstitions with their own religious and cultural heritage, in order to reproduce the “civilized world” in a foreign land. A classic example is that of the British Raj—one of the many legacies of the British rule in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.⁴ This practice would later be termed the “white man’s burden,”⁵ or the presumed responsibility of Europeans.

From the start, empire building was fraught with conflict and social turbulence. Even today, many of our global and regional conflicts stem directly from these endeavors.⁶ For the most part, the colonizers failed (or chose not) to understand and legitimize local beliefs, values, and ways of life. The moral views of the conquerors were framed and supported by the notion that privileged and technologically advanced societies had a right, and even a duty, to dominate the less fortunate around the world.

Box 1.1 What is Colonialism?

Colonialism is the subjugation by physical and psychological force of one culture by another—a colonizing power—through military conquest of territory. … Colonialism has two forms: colonies of settlement, which often eliminate indigenous people (such as the Spanish destruction of the Aztec and Inca civilizations in the Americas), and colonies of rule, where colonial administrators reorganize existing cultures to facilitate their exploitation (such as the British use of zamindars to rule the Indian subcontinent). The outcomes are, first, the cultural genocide or marginalization of indigenous people; second, the extraction of labor, cultural treasures, and resources to enrich the colonial power, its private interests, and public museums; and third, the elaboration of ideologies justifying colonial rule, including notions of racism and modernity.

Source: McMichael (2011, p. 17)

Following World War II, liberation movements rose up to throw off the mantle of colonialism, but often left in place the colonial organization and ideologies that allowed local elites to continue exploiting the poor.⁷ In this way, some of the most harmful aspects of the colonial era were carried over to post-independence governments. Even with the increases in global economic development over the last half-century, there remain significant inequities across many dimensions of life in the developing world.⁸

Given this troubled past, several questions arise. To what extent are current development policies free from these earlier historical actions, or rather based upon them? Can Western countries, which still provide the bulk of international development aid today, be trusted with designing development activities? How do current development practices compare with the quests for political power from decades and centuries past? Although there are no perfect answers, these questions are addressed throughout this volume. For now, it is important to remember that international development today bears significant legacies from its colonial past.

Bretton Woods and the Origins of Economic Development

Contemporary development efforts can be traced to the Bretton Woods Conference in July of 1944. This historic gathering, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, laid the groundwork for the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the wake of World War II (see Figure 1.1). Delegates from the 44 Allied nations⁹ attending this landmark meeting used terms such as “economic prosperity” and “economic take-off” to indicate how the rich nations of the world should help other nations prosper economically (especially those recently devastated by the war; and later on, those that remained poor).¹⁰ Ingrained in this mandate was the assumption that poor nations should become more like the countries that were represented by the attending delegates.¹¹

Figure 1.1 John Maynard Keynes (right) and Henry Morgenthau, the US Treasury Secretary, at Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, to Lay the Foundation of the International Monetary System

Source: Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The views of economic historian Walter Rostow can be discerned in the decisions made that fateful summer in New England. Rostow argues, in The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, that in order for countries to become “developed,” they must move beyond their traditional economies and adopt a modern economic framework—one necessarily connected to a globalized economy. As the subtitle of his book makes clear, Rostow was writing at a time of decolonization and national liberation movements, which the US government perceived as potential Communist threats.

Rostow identified five main stages of economic growth: (1) traditional society; (2) pre-conditions to economic take-off; (3) take-off; (4) the drive to maturity; and (5) developed society (or society of high mass consumption).¹² Development moves linearly, in his view, toward an end state in which all people of the world presumably share the resources and advancements that development made possible.

This theoretical and prescriptive framework gained strong support during the half-century following WWII, and played a role in the establishment of a new world order. The economic engines of the time, the drive to rebuild after a crippling world war, and the nascent optimism at the war’s end, gave rise to impressive economic growth in some parts of the world. The nations that “took off”—Rostow’s notion that countries’ economies can take off like airplanes with the aid of outside forces, then, once “in the sky,” manage on their own—eventually included the so-called “Asian tigers.” These are the economic powerhouses of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—to which were added Brazil, Russia, India, and China (also known as the BRICs).¹³ Economists with this mindset view economic growth as a rising tide that lifts all boats.¹⁴

More than a half-century later, Rostow’s theory remains a strong influence in the development field. This is not so much because the data support Rostow’s stages, but rather because there seem to be few good alternatives, other than to assume that hard work and good inv...