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NEOLIBERALISM AND
EDUCATION SYSTEMS IN
CONFLICT
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
PART I
Challenges of Markets, Poverty and Privatization 11
2 Challenges of School Principals and Teachers in Private
Schools: Comparison of Two Cases in the Middle East 13
Deniz Örücü and Khalid Arar
3 Neoliberal Challenges in Public Schools in
Hong Kong:An East Asian Model? 29
Paula Kwan, Benjamin Yuet Man Li and Trevor Tsz-lok Lee
4 Principals’ Leadership Tensioned by Market Pressures
in Chile 42
Romina Madrid Miranda, Claudia Córdoba Calquín
and Catherine Flores Gómez
5 Policy–Practice Decoupling: Education Inspection
Reform in China 56
Meng Tian and Xianjun Lan
6 Issues in Pre- and Primary School Education in
Rural Turkey:Teachers’ Experiences and Perspectives 74
Ecem Karlıdağ-Dennis and Zeynep Temiz
PART II
Challenges of Immigration, Conflict
and Social Injustice 133
10 Educational Administration Challenges in the
Destabilised and Disintegrating States of Syria
and Yemen:The Intersectionality of Violence, Culture,
Ideology, Class/Status Group and Postcoloniality 135
Eugenie A. Samier
11 Commonalities in Schools and Education
Systems Around The World Shifting from
Welfarism to Neo Liberalism:Are the Kids Okay? 151
Alison Taysum and Carole Collins Ayanlaja
12 Doing Social Justice Leadership in Challenging
Circumstances: Principals’ Perspectives 166
Rinnelle Lee-Piggott, Dyanis Conrad-Popova
and Dennis A. Conrad
13 How Leaders of Outstanding Muslim Schools in England
Interpret Islamic Educational Values in a Neoliberal
Climate:“British Values”And Market Competition 183
Fella Lahmar
Concluding Remarks:The Global/Local Nexus of School
Challenges Under Neoliberal Policies:What Next? 199
Khalid Arar, Deniz Örücü and Jane Wilkinson
Index 206
3.1 Location of Hong Kong with respect to the Pearl River Delta 31
3.2 Government educational expenditure in 2000–2017 38
5.1 Policy–practice decoupling analytical framework 57
5.2 Education inspection structure in District A 65
11.1 Taysum and Collins Ayanlaja’s education systems’
Framework for Leadership, Logic and Language for
Happiness and Peace 162
12.1 Principals’ social justice leadership practices targeting
socioeconomic disadvantage 174
Editors
Khalid Arar, PhD is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy
at the School Improvement Doctoral Program, College of Education, Texas
State University and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Leadership in
Education and Middle-East regional editor of Journal of Education Administration and
History and a member of the editorial boards, Journal of Education Administration,
Leadership and Policy in Schools, International Journal of Educational Management,
Higher Education Policy, Applied Research in Higher Education. Member of UCEA
Center for the Study of International School Leadership. For the past two
decades, he conducted studies in the Middle East, Europe, and North America
on the issues of equity, diversity, and social justice in K-12 and higher education.
His recent books include Migrants, Refugees and Global Challenges in Higher
Education (Peter Lang Publishing, with Kussai Haj-Yehia, David Ross, and Yasar
Kondakci); Education, Immigration and Migration: Policy, Leadership and Praxis for
a Changing World (Emerald Publishing, with Jeffrey Brooks & Ira Bogotch);
Turbulence, Empowerment and Marginalization in International Education
Governance Systems (Emerald Publishing, with Alison Taysum), and School
Leadership for Refugees’ Education (Routledge).
Contributors
Carole Collins Ayanlaja as an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Educational Leadership, educates and elevates adult learners through delivery of
interactive hybrid instruction that prepares professionals for a career in teacher
leadership and service as principals and superintendents. Her professional career
spans over two decades of combined public school teaching, school leadership,
district leadership, and university teaching. Her instructional aim through
delivery techniques and content amplifies equity and inclusive practices in
Educational Leadership. An internal lens that propels her research is an agenda
that focuses on the influence of racial, social, economic, and cultural conditions
on family and community engagement with schools, student outcome, and
issues of leadership and governance. Her methodological approach is rooted in
constructivist and interpretivist paradigms. She is equity driven and promotes
respect, opportunity, and access for all.
Fella Lahmar holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham and is a Fellow of
the Higher Education Academy. She is the Course Leader for the MEd Islamic
Education: New Perspectives programme at the University of Bolton, UK. Prior
to that, she worked as a Research Associate at the University of Nottingham
examining the complexities of international/transnational Higher Education in
different contexts. She publishes in the field of Islamic education theory and
practice.
Benjamin Yuet Man Li is a Research Associate at the Hong Kong Centre for
the Development of Educational Leadership at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong. His research interests are school innovation, school governance, and
school administration.
Corine Rivalland is a lecturer in Early Childhood and Equity and Social Justice
Education in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. Her research focus
addresses alternative theories of child development and equity and social justice.
Her work aims to contribute to the early childhood educational research with the
view of implementing more equitable and socially just early childhood teaching
and learning practices. She is a full member of the Child and Community
Development research group, a Research Fellow of the Collaborative Research
Network (Excellence in Research in Early Years Education) and Monash University
representative on the Department of Education and Early Childhood Advisory
Board.
informed and ethical leadership, logic and language of equity (see alisontaysum.
com). Alison is a committed Christian who, first, loves God and second loves
humans with or without protected characteristics of the Equality Act, 2010
(Equalities and Human Rights Commission 2010). For Christians, all other
rules hang upon these two.
differently in say China than in say Chile. As such, the history, postcolonial situ
ation, politics, culture, geopolitical positioning, and place in the global economy
mediate the expression of the neoliberal in the national systems dealt with.
The introduction to the collection uses the verb “imprinted” to describe the
way this global phenomenon of neoliberalism touches down or is translated in
these different nations. Whatever word is used, we must acknowledge that there
are global, national, and local actors (individuals, groups, organisations) involved
politically in this seeming hegemony of the neoliberal. The neoliberal has been a
political project pursued by certain interests desiring to roll-back the egalitarian
achievements of Keynesian welfare statism.
As the collection illustrates, the impact of the neoliberal in education has
been through the restructuring of the state (new public management and net
work governance), through privatisation and marketisiation and explicitly in
schooling through the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). Yet, just
as with the broader neoliberal political framing, GERM manifests in different
ways in different national systems of schooling, and there are as well resist
ances to it. While policy discourses in schooling now might flow globally, their
national and systemic manifestations are divergent and play out in different ways.
Furthermore, while global education policy discourses (e.g. GERM, a human
capital construction of the purposes of schooling, test-based accountability) flow
into national and local systems, they manifest in multiple and variegated ways
and are always rearticulated as they move to affect leadership and pedagogical
practices in schools. The nation-state has been affected by such global flows,
the globalisation of the economy, and global hegemony of the neoliberal, but it
remains important, but now works in different ways.
The collection was put together before the impact of the COVID-19 global
pandemic, which has strengthened the rise of nationalisms and ethno-nationalisms
in the face of neoliberal globalization. This emergence has been clearly manifest
in President Trump’s America First, Make America Great Again slogans, in Brexit
and in the rise of populist right wing governments across the globe (see Lingard,
2021). The pandemic has strengthened these new worrying nationalisms. Yet
within nations, the US being a good case in point, the neoliberal remains domi
nant. This right-wing ethno-nationalism is a regressive, reactionary politics of
resistance to the neoliberal and will achieve nothing for the poor and disadvan
taged. It is clear, though, that effective responses to the pandemic demand
effective local, global and national politics. This collection argues similarly in
respect of the depredations of the neoliberal on schooling and resistances to them.
There needs to be a multiscalar politics of opposition and resistance to the
neoliberal generally and specifically in schooling. Education International,
the global federation of teacher unions, is important in such politics, but so is the
work of leaders in national school systems and in local schools, the focus of
this collection.
The focus of the neoliberal has been on continuous economic growth and as
such this focus neglects the effects of this ideology on our natural world in this
period of climate emergency, the age of the Anthropocene. The endangered
state of our planet and of all species must be an acknowledged context of moral,
politically aware and progressive educational leadership today. A central critique
here of the neoliberal is its erroneous and dangerous assumption of the infinite
nature of resources. In stark contrast, there needs to be acknowledgment of
the finite nature of our resources and consideration of how that anti-neoliberal
observation needs to be put into effect in schooling, specifically in relation to
environmental and sustainability education, but also more broadly, including in
leadership practices (Rappleye & Komatsu, 2020).
For me, the significance of this collection on school and system leadership in
this time of the neoliberal is that it stresses the deep morality and acute politi
cal awareness necessary for effective, progressive and socially just leadership in
schooling at this moment. It also documents the vastly different conditions under
which such leaders work in different parts of the world. We also must acknowl
edge that the concept of social justice needs to be continually rethought, recon
ceptualised; as Nancy Fraser (2013) has so persuasively argued, globalization has
significant implications for how we conceptualise and rethink, as well as enact,
social justice today. Furthermore, the reconstitution of the concept in reductive
ways in many schooling systems though a test constructed concept (social justice
as the strength of the correlation between a student’s social class background and
test results) also needs to be retethered to a conceptual frame.
This collection does what many of the voluminous number of books on lead
ership, and indeed on educational leadership, fail to do: that is, acknowledge
that effective leadership work is moral and political. This is why it has been
a (confronting) pleasure to write this Foreword. The book proffers confront
ing accounts of the impact of the neoliberal, but these accounts also provide
insights that make hope practical rather than despair convincing in respect of
challenging the neoliberal in progressive ways and reconstituting more socially
just schooling.
Bob Lingard
Emeritus Professor, The University of Queensland
Professorial Fellow, Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education
Australian Catholic University
References
Bourdieu, P. (2008). Political Interventions: Social Science and Political Action. London:Verso.
Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis.
New York:Verso.
This book examines the direct and indirect challenges posed by neoliberalism
faced by schools and educational systems across the globe. It does by drawing
on the voices of researchers and practitioners. As the defining political and eco
nomic paradigm of our age (Apple, 2006), neoliberalism has shaped the current
educational landscape; spread its global education reforms or GERMs (Sahlberg,
2012); and re/formed the work of school leaders and teachers through the rede
fining of education as a commodity and private good within a market economy
(Ball, 2013; Blackmore, 2016; Fuller, 2019).
Within this frame, this book offers a critical view of the contemporary edu
cational leadership challenges that are faced by schools and systems across the
globe when dealing with neoliberal discourses, policies, and ideologies. It aims
to answer the following questions:
there are changes in power in the government. They draw on evidence from
23 groundwork Case Studies from China, England, France, Israel (Arab per
spective), Italy, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Russia, United
States (Higher Education perspective), Egypt, Finland, Greece, Israel ( Jewish
perspective), Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Germany, Hungary, Guyana,
India, Pakistan, and the US (K-12 perspective). The authors delve into the com
monalities in schools and education systems around the world, shifting from
welfarism to neo liberalism while questioning whether the “kids are ok.”
In Chapter 12, we are informed about undertaking social justice leadership in
challenging circumstances in Trinidad and Tobago in schools with diverse popu
lations. Rinnelle Lee-Piggott, Dyanis Conrad-Popova and Dennis A. Conrad present
a tapestry of the nature of the socioeconomic challenges faced by three primary
and three secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago, sharing their perspectives
on their social justice leadership practices within an educational landscape of
historical inequity. We read about how principals face a myriad of challenges
where they must engage in practices to facilitate student success, essentially tar
geting “symptoms” of socioeconomic challenges.
Finally, in Chapter 13, Fella Lahmar presents us with the leadership challenges
faced by an Islamic School in the UK, which has to interpret “British” educational
values under neoliberal market dynamics, and the contradictions that ensue. She
examines changes to policy, considering how neoliberal ideals of market competi
tion are shaping and reshaping the education system in Britain and how leaders
enable the alignment of their interpretation of “Islamic educational values” with
an Ofsted “outstanding” rating alongside parental market demands for “Islamic
schooling.” She expands on the challenges of change and diversity for Muslim
school leaders working within both educational policies’ enablers and constraints,
parental demands and the broader socio-political context. Twelve contributions
from different parts of the world exploring different contexts provide us with deep
insights into the various challenges faced by education professionals and schools
operating within various manifestations of neoliberal ideologies. Challenges are
manifest in a variety of forms in policy, leadership, and praxis and contextual ele
ments trigger or alleviate the varied issues that ensue.
As we add the finishing touches to this book, in April 2020, the world strug
gles with the unprecedented health crises of COVID-19, which has/will have
dramatic consequences for social, political and economic systems. The schools
and systems presented in this book are already in lockdown, and we can antici
pate that they will face newer challenges in finances, delivery of education,
access, equity, social justice, and adverse forms of surveillance. These will defi
nitely be the subject of investigation for researchers. We are witnessing how one
tiny virus can damage the “holy” idea of neoliberalism and weaken humankind.
We anticipate the challenging school circumstances portrayed in this book are
now likely to be exacerbated by this global pandemic.
We hope you enjoy this book and that it contributes to a larger conversation
on the imprint and challenges for schools and their systems posed by neoliberal
ism in local and global terms. In the end of the book, you will find our conclud
ing thoughts providing a holistic look at the challenges, strategies, policy, and
practice reflected in the chapters towards building a glocal perspective.
References
Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, god, and inequality. Bristol,
PA:Taylor & Francis.
Ball, S. J. (2013). Foucault, power, and education. New York, NY: Routledge.
Blackmore, J. (2016). Educational Leadership and Nancy Fraser. London, England: Routledge.
Fuller, K. (2019). “That would be my red line”: An analysis of headteachers’ resistance of
neoliberal education reforms. Educational Review, 71(1), 31–50.
Sahlberg, P. (2012). How GERM is infecting schools around the world? Retrieved from https://
pasisahlberg.com/text-test
Neoliberalism has reinvented the notion of the individual citizen within the
nation state into a particular form of competitive self-interest that moves beyond
national boundaries (Blackmore, 2016, p. 6). Neoliberal economic theory has
come to dominate bipartisan responses to economic globalization in most
Anglophonic Western Democracies that were affected by the rapid processes
of de-industrialization as fast mobile global capital sought cheaper labor in Asia
and South America (Apple, 2012). Whereas some western economies adopted
structural adjustment policies to maintain their global competitive advantage,
structural adjustment was also imposed as an economic experiment by inter
national monetary bodies such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the
World Bank, and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development). Structural adjustment, an economic orthodoxy of the right wing
in the United States, advocated deregulation of financial and labor markets,
reduction of state welfare expenditure, privatization of education and health,
and small government (Blackmore, 2016, p. 6). The hegemony of neoliberal
ism along with its inequitable effects has subsequently reshaped the project of
compulsory education and compounded the challenges schooling systems face.
The implications of this movement raise key questions for us as educators,
for example: What is the purpose of education in a neoliberal economy? What
happens in regard to issues of equity, equality, and diversity?; What are the
implications for the broader goals of education beyond the market?; How do
schools and systems respond?; Who suffers the most from these reforms?; and
finally, how do school leaders and teachers survive, if at all? The project that
is this book emerged out of such questions and discussions with colleagues. In
this respect, we aim to contribute meaningfully to a larger conversation around
how neoliberal values and ideals are variously imprinted into diverse educational
spaces and practices and the challenges experienced at school or system-level
across the globe. To achieve this goal, we have sought to uncover first the vari
ous and unique challenges facing schools and second to understand the strategies
and practices employed by key actors within these schools or systems as they
variously navigate through a dominant global neoliberal agenda to better cater
for the needs of their students and societies.
measures changed labor educators (Milner & Stevenson, 2019), and socioeco
nomic deprivation.
Regardless of the direct or indirect outcomes of a neoliberal agenda (Rizvi
& Lingard, 2010), the ideologies that underpin it have created major challenges
within education systems and schools locally and globally (Gross, 2020). We
do not blatantly claim that neoliberalism is the only driver behind the challenges
encountered by schools, but its impact in shaping school systems globally is evi
denced through a range of research (Apple, 2006; Ball, 2012), particularly in
terms of the new challenges it poses for schools and systems (O’Donoghue &
Clarke, 2019).
of challenges. Hence, our previous research has examined the forms that challeng
ing school circumstances may take, particularly in terms of their global and local
neoliberal imprint (Arar, Kondakci, & Taysum, 2019).
The most direct challenges that schools face are poverty and its conse
quences such as inequity, deprivation, and issues in regard to accessing school
ing. Research has highlighted that high levels of poverty distract from a school’s
ability to improve student achievement (Rumberger & Palardy, 2005; Ylimaki,
Jacobson, & Drysdale, 2007). Students living in poverty often experience poor
nutrition, inadequate health services, and higher rates of illiteracy and criminal
behavior, which in turn can result in high rates of student transience, absence,
and indiscipline (Ylimaki et al., 2007). These circumstances inevitably lead
to lower achievement and other problems experienced by students in poverty.
Given that schools are the main means of survival for underprivileged and/or
initially low achieving students (Scheerens & Bosker, 1997), the effectiveness of
schools is particularly critical for such students. Other challenges include major
differences in the quality of schooling experienced in rural and isolated areas,
as well as the issues experienced by migrant and indigenous populations (Arar,
2020; Ezzani & Brooks, 2019; Mulford et al., 2008). Globally, regardless of their
contexts, schools are already challenged with League Tables (MacBeath et al.,
2007), international examinations, performativity and uncertainty (Ball, 2000),
and with neoliberal market policies in the form of exogenous or endogenous
forms of privatization (Ball & Youdell, 2008; Blackmore, 2016).
Another group of challenges are indirect outcomes, which mostly accompany
one or more of the direct challenges noted above. Wars, political upheavals, and
socioeconomic crises, especially in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, have led
to unprecedented numbers of displaced peoples (Arar, 2014; Arar et al., 2020;
Arar, Brooks, & Bogotch, 2019; Banks, 2017; Dryden-Peterson, 2016; Hatton,
2017; Waite, 2016) around the world, which directly impact the education sys
tems of host countries. While statistics vary, by 2019, an unprecedented 70.8
million people around the world had been forced from home. Among them
are nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of
18 and in need of education (UNHCR, 2019). In this respect, schools and
their education systems face major challenges with the increasing numbers of
refugee students (Arar, 2014; Arar, Örücü, & Ak Küçükçayır, 2018; Wilkinson
& Kaukko, 2019).
In this respect, the needs of societies, schools, and children are endless and
diverse (Arar et al., 2019; Brooks & Watson, 2018; Ezzani & Brooks, 2019).
Thus, major challenges that educational policy-makers and practitioners face
include developing sustainable improvement in schools facing challenging cir
cumstances according to their specific contexts. Determining “the right sort of
ingredients, mixed to suit the contexts and circumstances of individual schools”
(West, Ainscow, & Stanford, 2005, p. 77) locally and globally is critical.
role ( Jacobson, 2011) realizing the purpose of schooling and meeting the needs
of students and society across diverse contexts. However, this is a form and spirit
of leadership that recognizes a broader understanding of education, beyond nar
row definitions of school improvement as defined by league tables and national
and international testing regimes (English & Papa, 2018; Waite & Bogotch,
2017; Wilkinson, 2017).
Thus, a critical point for educators facing varied challenging circumstances is
how to cultivate the necessary skills, dispositions, values, and actions for dem
ocratic citizenry among their students (Waite & Arar, 2020). As such, there is
a growing scholarly interest on the leadership in schools facing extremely chal
lenging circumstances (Ahumada, Galdames, & Clarke, 2015; Bush, Joubert,
Kiggundu, & van Rooyen, 2010; MacBeath et al., 2007; Smith & Bell, 2014),
particularly in terms of the critical and ethical practices necessary to transform the
undesirable features of schools and societies into desired ones (Blackmore, 2016).
Critical and ethical practice, in this respect, requires a wider perspective
of leadership in schools (Gross, 2020). In order to deal with such undesirable
features such as racism, classism, and sexism in educational practice; prejudice
against particular religious or regional groups or those with a range of disabili
ties, social and intellectual disadvantages, criticality, and ethics need to operate
in a way that brings about a transformation of culture and social relations within
the school. It also requires considerable social skills of advocacy, intergroup
relations, team building, and inspiration without domination (Grace, 2000, p.
238). A critical-democratic engagement with education is essential to realize the
authentic purpose of education (Portelli & McMahon, 2004). This is particularly
the case in terms of the impact of neoliberal education policies, which include
the instrumentalization of teachers, dehumanizing of students as classrooms are
turned into spaces of performance and efficiency with no space for any genuine
engagement with social problems, political issues, or cultural critique (Portelli
& Konecny, 2013). It is the spirit of this critical-democratic engagement with
education that underpins the formation of and contributions to this book.
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case study. Journal of Educational Change, 15(3), 281–301.
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Challenges of Markets,
Poverty and Privatization
Introduction
The current move toward privatization of educational provision at global level
is predominantly the outcome of neoliberal policies (Apple, 2006; Blackmore,
2016). Neoliberal education policies have major implications in the public sphere,
as well as for schools, educators, and even students in terms of the commodifi
cation of education from a public good to a private good (Apple, 2012; Burch,
2009). These policies and broader trends place teachers and school principals in
a critical state, dealing with a variety of subsequent challenges that arise while
performing their jobs in different countries.
Privatization is defined as “the shift from government provision of functions
and services to provision by the private sector” (Priest, 1988, p. 1). In education,
it is conceptualized as any move that generates control of different aspects of the
education system that is transferred from the public (central or local government)
to private authorities (private or companies) (Belfield & Levin, 2002). Over the
past two decades, the privatization of education has become a widespread phe
nomenon, affecting most education systems and engendering a consistent increase
in private school enrolment globally (Ball, 2009; Burch, 2009; Verger, Fontdevila,
& Zancajo, 2017). However, it is a context-sensitive process necessitating appro
priate policy mechanisms that may produce many and different policy outcomes
(Tooley & Dixon, 2006; Verger et al., 2017). The neoliberal tendencies evident
in privatization processes generate a variety of personal and professional pressures
for general directors, school principals, and teachers who work for private schools.
Fuller (2019) asserts that neoliberal reforms have been spread by Edu-business, the
publication of international comparison data (PISA) and a transnational leadership
package colonizing professional practice across the globe. These are the solid forms
that we witness in everyday discourse. On the other hand, privatization of schools
can act as a means to open up democratic and autonomous opportunities in some
contexts, where the government control is high and strict.
Thus, as there are obvious differences in the forms of privatized education
adopted in Turkey and Israel, a comparative study of the struggles and challenges
facing educators and school principals due to privatization of education can pro
vide a rich source of information in order to understand these issues. The pre
sent study, therefore, draws on the conservative modernism of Apple (2006) and
the power/knowledge discussions in privatization processes by Ball (2013), to
explore, compare and contrast the neoliberal challenges faced by private school
teachers and school principals in Turkey and in Arab schools in Israel. Herein, as
the term private school has different meanings in different contexts (, we need
to clarify the type of private schools we explored in our contexts. These are the
ones founded by private enterprises/individuals and dependent on users fee, hav
ing to attract and retain student enrollments.
Conceptual Background
Neoliberalism has been a dominant force shaping education policy (Sattler, 2012).
Privatization, as the practical aspect of neoliberalism, involves the commercializa
tion of education; namely, the application of market rules transforms the percep
tion of education as a fundamental inalienable civil right, which can ensure the
provision of equal opportunities, into a perception of education as a need that
can be provided by those with capital and can only be acquired by those who can
afford to purchase it (Blackmore, 2016; Carnoy, 2016; Darling-Hammond, 2010).
Researchers have explored why and how education privatization has become
popular in a broad variety of settings in the light of cultural and economic con
texts (Apple, 2006; Ball, 2013; Rooks, 2017). For example, Verger et al. (2017)
have identified six different paths toward education privatization involving fre
quently associated circumstances, mechanisms, and courses of action leading to
privatization from a political economy stance. These six paths toward privatiza
tion are listed by the authors as (1) education privatization as a state reform, (2)
education privatization in social democratic welfare states, (3) scaling up privati
zation through reforms, (4) privatization by default in low-income countries, (5)
historical public–private partnerships in education, and (6) privatization along
the path of emergency (Verger et al., 2017, p. 11). Private schools in Turkey and
Arab private educational provision in Israel fit into one of the path above as out
lined in the contextual information provided later in this chapter.
Given these multiple paths toward privatization, Apple’s (2006) proposition
that there are complex configuration of interests shaping the educational pol
icy and reforms around the world further explains the ideologies behind the
“Oh, he’ll never know unless he’s a mind reader. Somebody to sort
of observe him at work. I’ve already had him checked out physically.”
“Have to be. He’s got a duodenal ulcer and there’s a danger of high
blood pressure when he’s older; otherwise he’s in fine shape.”
“Just practical. I had to learn everything the hard way. I was kicked
around by some mighty expert kickers in my day.”
I checked his flow of reminiscence. “Tell me about Cave and Iris.”
This was the secondary mystery which had occupied my mind for
several days. But Paul did not know or, if he did, would not say. “I
think they’re just good friends, like we say in these parts. Except that
I doubt if anything is going on ... they don’t seem the type and she’s
so completely gone on what he has to say....”
She ran from the room. He pushed the bar away from him and it
rolled aimlessly across the floor, its bottles and glasses chattering.
Paul looked at me distractedly. “He’s in jail. Cave’s in jail.”
Five
1
Last night the noise of my heart’s beating kept me awake until nearly
dawn. Then, as the gray warm light of the morning patterned the
floor, I fell asleep and dreamed uneasily of disaster, my dreams
disturbed by the noise of jackals, by that jackal-headed god who
hovers over me as these last days unfold confusedly before my
eyes: it will end in heat and terror, alone beside a muddy river, all
time as one and that soon gone. I awakened, breathless and cold,
with a terror of the dying still ahead.
After coffee and pills, those assorted pellets which seem to restore
me for moments at a time to a false serenity, I put aside the
nightmare world of the previous restless hours and idly examined the
pages which I had written with an eye to rereading them straight
through, to relive again for a time the old drama which is already, as I
write, separating itself from my memory and becoming real only in
the prose: I think now of these events as I have told them and not as
they occur to me in memory. For the memory now is of pages and
not of scenes or of actual human beings still existing in that baleful,
tenebrous region of the imagination where fancy and fact together
confuse even the most confident of narrators. I have, thus far at
least, exorcised demons, and to have lost certain memories to my
narrative relieves my system, like a cancer cut whole from a failing
organism.
The boy brought me my morning coffee and the local newspaper
whose Arabic text pleases my eye though the sense, when I do
translate it, is less than strange. I asked the boy if Mr. Butler was
awake and he said he had gone out already: these last few days I
have kept to my room even for the evening meal, delaying the
inevitable revelation as long as possible.
After the boy left and while I drank coffee and looked out upon the
river and the western hills, I was conscious of a sense of well-being
which I have not often experienced in recent years. Perhaps the
work of evoking the past has, in a sense, enhanced the present for
me. I thought of the work done as life preserved, as part of me which
will remain.
Then, idly, I riffled the pages of John Cave’s Testament for the first
time since I had discovered my name had been expunged.
The opening was the familiar one which I had composed so many
years before in Cave’s name. The time of divination: a
straightforward account of the apparent wonders which had
preceded the mission. No credence was given the supernatural but a
good case was made (borrowed a little from the mental therapists)
for the race’s need of phenomena as a symptom of unease and
boredom and anticipation. I flicked through the pages. An entire new
part had been added which I did not recognize: still written as though
by Cave but, obviously, it could not have been composed until at
least a decade after his death.
I read the new section carefully. Whoever had written it had been
strongly under the influence of the pragmatic philosophers, though
the style was somewhat inspirational: a combination of a guide to
popularity crossed with the Koran. A whole system of ideal behavior
was sketched broadly for the devout, so broadly as to be fairly
useless though the commentary and the interpretive analysis of such
lines as: “Property really belongs to the world though individuals may
have temporary liens on certain sections,” must be already
prodigious.
I was well into the metaphysics of the Cavites when there was a
knock on my door. It was Butler, looking red and uncomfortable from
the heat, a spotted red bandana tied, for some inscrutable reason,
about his head in place of a hat.
“Hope you don’t mind my barging in like this but I finished a visit with
the mayor earlier than I thought.” He crumpled, on invitation, into a
chair opposite me. He sighed gloomily. “This is going to be tough,
tougher than I ever imagined back home.”
“I’ll say! and the old devil of a mayor practically told me point-blank
that if he caught me proselyting he’d send me back to Cairo. Imagine
the nerve!”
“Maybe it is their country but we got the truth, and like Paul Himmell
said: 'A truth known to only half the world is but half a truth.’”
“Oh no. I was finished when you came. I’ve been studying for several
hours which is too long for an old man.”
“You may be right. But our instructions are to go slow. Still, I didn’t
think it would be as slow as this. Why we haven’t been able to get a
building yet. They’ve all been told by the Pasha fellow not to rent to
us.”
“We used to play cards quite regularly. I haven’t seen much of him in
the past few years but, if you’d like, I’ll go and pay him a call.”
“We have kept off the subject of religion entirely. As you probably
discovered, since the division of the world, there’s been little
communication between East and West. I don’t think he knows much
about the Cavites except that they’re undesirable.”
“Poor creature,” said Butler, compassionately.
“But mark my words before ten years have passed they will have the
truth.”
“Thanks for those kind words,” said Butler, flushed now with pleasure
as well as heat. “Which reminds me, I was going to ask you if you’d
like to help us with our work once we get going?”
“I’d like nothing better but I’m afraid my years of useful service are
over. Any advice, however, or perhaps influence that I may have in
Luxor....” There was a warm moment of mutual esteem and
amiability, broken only by a reference to the Squad of Belief.
“Of course we’ll have one here in time; though we can say,
thankfully, that the need for them in the Atlantic states is nearly over.
Naturally, there are always a few malcontents but we have worked
out a statistical ratio of nonconformists in the population which is
surprisingly accurate. Knowing their incidence, we are able to check
them early. In general, however, the truth is happily ascendant
everywhere in the really civilized world.”
“You certainly have been cut off from the world.” Butler looked at me
curiously, almost suspiciously. “I thought even in your day that was a
common expression. It means anybody who refuses willfully to know
the truth.”
“That must be it,” I said. “I don’t suppose in recent years there have
been as many lutherists as there once were.”
“Forty years ... that was the time of all the trouble,” I said.
“Not well,” I said. “I was seldom in the United States. I’d been digging
in Central America, in and around the Peten. I missed most of the
trouble.”
“You seem to have missed a good deal.” His voice was equable,
without a trace of secondary meaning.
“I’ve had a quiet life. I’m grateful though for your coming here;
otherwise. I should have died without any contact with America,
without ever knowing what was happening outside the Arab League.”
“I’m sure it will. By the way, I brought you the new edition of Cave’s
prison dialogues.” He pulled a small booklet from his back pocket
and handed it to me.
“Thank you.” I took the booklet: dialogues between Cave and Iris
Mortimer. I had never before heard of this particular work. “Is this a
recent discovery?” I asked.
“Recent? Why no. It’s the newest edition but of course the text goes
right back to the early days when Cave was in prison.”
“Amen,” I said.
“I’m an old man,” I said hastily. “You must recall I was brought up in
the old Christianity. Such expressions still linger on, you know.”
“Of course, many times, but since my health has been good I’ve
been in no great hurry to leave my contemplation of those hills.” I
pointed to the western window. “Now I should hesitate to die until the
very last moment, out of curiosity. I’m eager to learn, to help as much
as possible in your work here.”
“Well, that of course is good news but should you ever want to take
his way let me know. We have some marvellous methods now,
extremely pleasant to take and, as he said, 'It’s not death which is
hard but dying.’ We’ve finally made dying simply swell.”
“In that department, never! It is the firm basis of our truth. Now I must
be off.”
2
And so John Cave’s period in jail was now known as the time of
persecution, with a pious prison dialogue attributed to Iris. Before I
returned to my work of recollection, I glanced at the dialogue whose
style was enough like Iris’s to have been her work. But of course her
style was not one which could ever have been called inimitable since
it was based on the most insistent of twentieth-century advertising
techniques. I assumed the book was the work of others, of those
anonymous counterfeiters who had created, according to a list of
publications on the back of the booklet, a wealth of Cavite doctrine.
The conversation with Cave in prison was lofty in tone and seemed
to deal with moral problems. It was apparent that since the task of
governing is largely one of keeping order, it had become, with the
passage of time, necessary for the Cavite rulers to compose in
Cave’s name different works of ethical instruction to be used for the
guidance and control of the population. I assume that since they now
control all records, all original sources, it is an easy matter for them
to “discover” some relevant text which gives clear answer to any
moral or political problem which has not been anticipated in previous
commentaries. The work of falsifying records, expunging names is, I
should think, somewhat more tricky but they seem to have
accomplished it in Cave’s Testament, brazenly assuming that those
who recall the earlier versions will die off in time, leaving a
generation which knows only what they wish it to know, excepting of
course the “calculable minority” of nonconformists, of base
Lutherists.
Cave’s term in prison was far less dramatic than official legend,
though more serious. He was jailed for hit-and-run driving on the
highway from Santa Monica into Los Angeles.
I went to see him that evening with Paul. When we arrived at the jail,
we were not allowed near him though Paul’s lawyers had been
permitted to go inside a few minutes before our arrival.
Iris was sitting in the outer office, pale and shaken. A bored
policeman in uniform sat fatly at a desk at the other end of the office,
ignoring us.
“They’re the best lawyers in L.A.,” said Paul quickly. “They’ll get him
out in no time.”
“I wasn’t with him.” She shook her head several times as though to
dispel a profound daydream. “He called me and I called you. They
are the best, Paul?”
“We ... we don’t know yet. He hit an old man and went on driving. I
don’t know why; I mean why he didn’t stop. He just went on and the
police car caught him. The man’s in the hospital now. They say it’s
bad; he’s unconscious, an old man ...”
“Any reporters here?” asked Paul. “Anybody else know besides us?”
“But we’ll get back at those bastards,” he said grimly, not identifying
which ones he meant but waving toward the city hidden by the
Venetian blinds of his office window.
I asked for instructions. Cave had, the day before, gone back to
Washington to lie low until the time was right for a triumphant
reappearance. Iris had gone with him; on a separate plane, however,
to avoid scandal. Clarissa had sent various heartening if confused
messages from New York while Paul and I were left alone to gather
up the pieces and begin again. Our close association during those
difficult days impressed me with his talents and though,
fundamentally, I still found him appalling, I couldn’t help but admire
his superb operativeness.
“I’m going ahead with the original plan ... just like none of this
happened. The stockholders are willing and we’ve got enough
money, though not as much as I’d like, for the publicity build-up. I
expect Cave’ll pick up some more cash in Seattle. He always does,
wherever he goes.”
“It’s funny since the truth he offers is all there is to it. Once
experienced, there’s no longer much need for Cave or for an
organization.” This of course was the paradox which time and the
unscrupulous were bloodily to resolve.
Paul’s answer was reasonable. “That’s true but there’s the problem
of sharing it. If millions felt the same way about death the whole
world would be happier and, if it’s happier, why, it’ll be a better place
to live in.”
I would not have confided this to Paul even had I in those days
thought any of it out, which I had not. Though I was conscious of
some fundamental ambivalence in myself, I always felt that should I
pause for a few moments and question myself, I could easily find
answers to these problems. But I did not pause. I never asked
myself a single question concerning motive. I acted like a man
sleeping who was only barely made conscious by certain odd
incongruities that he dreams. The secret which later I was to
discover was still unrevealed to me as I faced the efficient vulgarity
of Paul Himmell across the portable bar which reflected so brightly in
its crystal his competence.
“To hell with that stuff. You just root around and show how the old
writers were really Cavites at heart and then you come to him and
put down what he says. Why we’ll be half-there even before he’s on
TV!” Paul lapsed for a moment into a reverie of promotion. I had
another drink and felt quite good myself although I had serious
doubts about my competence to compose philosophy in the popular
key. But Paul’s faith was infectious and I felt that, all in all, with a bit
of judicious hedging and recourse to various explicit summaries and
definitions, I might put together a respectable ancestry for Cave
whose message, essentially, ignored all philosophy, empiric and
orphic, moving with hypnotic effectiveness to the main proposition:
death and man’s acceptance of it. The problems of life were always
quite secondary to Cave, if not to the rest of us.
“I wonder if that’s wise, Iris seeing so much of him. You know he’s
going to have a good many enemies before very long and they’ll dig
around for any scandal they can find.”
“Oh, it’s perfectly innocent, I’m sure. Even if it isn’t, I can’t see how it
can do much harm.”
“For a public relations man you don’t seem to grasp the possibilities
for bad publicity in this situation.”
“Is good. But Cave, it appears is a genuine ascetic.” And the word
“genuine” as I spoke it was like a knife-blade in my heart. “And, since
he is, you have a tremendous advantage in building him up. There’s
no use in allowing him, quite innocently, to appear to philander.”
And of course that was it. I had become attached to Iris in precisely
the same sort of way a complete man might have been but of course
for me there was no hope, nothing. The enormity of that nothing
shook me, despite the alcohol we had drunk. I was sufficiently
collected, though, not to make the mistake of vehemence. “I like her
very much but I’m more attached to the idea of Cave than I am to
her. I don’t want to see the business get out of hand. That’s all. I’m
surprised you, of all people involved, aren’t more concerned.”
“You may have a point. I suppose I’ve got to adjust my views to this
thing ... it’s different from my usual work building up crooners and
movie stars. In that line the romance angle is swell, just as long as
there’re no bigamies or abortions involved. I see your point, though.
With Cave we have to think in sort of Legion of Decency terms. No
rough stuff. No nightclub pictures or posing with blondes. You’re
absolutely right. Put that in your piece: doesn’t drink, doesn’t go out
with dames....”
“You talk just like my analyst.” And I felt that I had won, briefly, Paul’s
admiration. “Anyway, you go to Spokane; talk to Iris; tell her to lay off
... in a tactful way of course. I wouldn’t mention it to him: you never
can tell how he’ll react. She’ll be reasonable even though I suspect
she’s stuck on the man. Try and get your piece done by the first of
December. I’d like to have it in print for the first of the New Year,
Cave’s year.”
“I’ll try.”
“By the way, we’re getting an office ... same building as this. The
directors okayed it and we’ll take over as soon as there’s some
furniture in it.”
“Cavites, Inc.?”
“We could hardly call it the Church of the Golden Rule,” said Paul
with one of the few shows of irritability I was ever to observe in his
equable disposition. “Now, on behalf of the directors, I’m authorized
to advance you whatever money you might feel you need for this
project; that is, within ...”
“That’s a good boy. Eye on the main chance. Well, we’ll see what we
can do about that. There aren’t any more shares available right now
but that doesn’t mean.... I’ll let you know when you get back from
Spokane.”
I agreed, secretly pleased at being thought in love ... “in love,” to this
moment the phrase has a strangely foreign sound to me, like a
classical allusion not entirely understood in some decorous,
scholarly text. “In love,” I whispered to myself in the elevator as I left
Paul that evening: in love with Iris.
3
We met at the Spokane railroad station and Iris drove me through
the wide, clear, characterless streets to a country road which wound
east into the hills, in the direction of a town with the lovely name of
Coeur d’Alene.
She was relaxed. Her ordinarily pale face was faintly burned from the
sun while her hair, which I recalled as darkly waving, was now
streaked with light and worn loosely bound at the nape of her neck.
She wore no cosmetics and her dress was simple cotton beneath the
sweater she wore against the autumn’s chill. She looked young,
younger than either of us actually was.
“He’s very busy getting the New Year’s debut ready. He’s also got a
set of offices for the company in Los Angeles and he’s engaged me
to write an introduction to Cave ... but I suppose you knew that when
he wired you I was coming.”
Iris smiled. “Paul’s not obvious. He enjoys laying traps and, as long
as they’re for one’s own good, he’s very useful.”
“How is Cave?”
“I’m worried, Gene. He hasn’t got over that accident. He talks about
it continually.”
“That doesn’t prevent them from suing. Worst of all, though, would
be the publicity. The whole thing has depressed John terribly. It was
all I could do to keep him from announcing to the press that he had
almost done the old man a favor.”
Iris nodded, quite seriously. “That’s actually what he believes and the
reason why he drove on.”
“Except that the old man might regard the situation in a different light
and, in any case, he was badly hurt and did not receive Cave’s gift of
death.”
“Now you’re making fun of John.” She frowned and drove fast on the
empty road.
“You mean the ... the gift as you call it should only be given
voluntarily?”
“Exactly ... if then, and only in extreme cases. Think what might
happen if those who listened to Cave decided to make all their
friends and enemies content by killing them.”
“Well, I wish you’d talk to him.” She smiled sadly. “I’m afraid I don’t
always see things clearly when I’m with him. You know how he is ...
how he convinces.”