Political intervention has retarded the pace of education -- What's your view?
Has politics affected our education system?
Since independence, our education system has gone through a number of significant changes, some of which according to my opinion were necessary and some were not.
As we obtained independence, it was necessary to make some changes from the colonial education system to fit our political and economic orientation.
The Education for Self Reliance (ESR) policy booklet published in March 1967, argues that the policy aimed at re-defining the purpose of education. It aimed at eliminating colonial education system which aimed at inculcating colonial attitudes of human inequality and domination of the weak by the strong.
The ESR policies therefore, aimed at changing the elitist education system and therefore enable a wider part of the society access education. Moreover, to inculcate in people the sense of valuing work as an integral part of education.
This paradigm shift from colonial education to our own system of education seems to have strong justification.
However, there are a number of political decisions which were made during the implementation of ESR which had significant impact on our education system.
For example, mass recruitment of teachers under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme. In the name of shortage of teachers, Standard Seven leavers were recruited and given short training including distance learning or out of college to obtain basic skills and thereafter were allocated to primary schools all over the country especially in rural areas....
BY MASOZI NYIRENDA
http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/?l=54632
Has politics affected our education system?
Since independence, our education system has gone through a number of significant changes, some of which according to my opinion were necessary and some were not.
As we obtained independence, it was necessary to make some changes from the colonial education system to fit our political and economic orientation.
The Education for Self Reliance (ESR) policy booklet published in March 1967, argues that the policy aimed at re-defining the purpose of education. It aimed at eliminating colonial education system which aimed at inculcating colonial attitudes of human inequality and domination of the weak by the strong.
The ESR policies therefore, aimed at changing the elitist education system and therefore enable a wider part of the society access education. Moreover, to inculcate in people the sense of valuing work as an integral part of education.
This paradigm shift from colonial education to our own system of education seems to have strong justification.
However, there are a number of political decisions which were made during the implementation of ESR which had significant impact on our education system.
For example, mass recruitment of teachers under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme. In the name of shortage of teachers, Standard Seven leavers were recruited and given short training including distance learning or out of college to obtain basic skills and thereafter were allocated to primary schools all over the country especially in rural areas....
BY MASOZI NYIRENDA
http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/?l=54632
Here, our education system is headed by a minister of education, with advice from educators. But the minister is a politician, not an educator. For many years, politicians that make up the Cabinet of ministers agreed that a major part of the national budget should to education. Generally our education is supposed to be excellent, with the approval of UNESCO, but in reality our students did not perform well in PISA tests of reading, math and scientific literacy (2012, 2015). Perhaps educators should have more say about the education system, do you agree?
http://www.malaysiandigest.com/news/553456-world-class-education-malaysia-ranked-52nd-again-in-global-education-ratings.html
Politics not only influence but sometimes spoil the strong educational system. Here is a new policy to boost out education system. It simply ignore our own talent as our system is not sure about its talent. However, outsiders used the hire insiders.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/iits-hire-indians-from-foreign-shores-as-faculty-to-build-academic-brand/articleshow/51706333.cms?google_editors_picks=true&google_editors_picks=true
Impact of Politics and concerns with the Indian education system
India is the largest democracy in the world. India has the largest number of political parties, which take part in election campaign. In the 1996 national elections, almost 600 million people voted and an average of 26 candidates competed for each of the 543 territorial constituency seats.
Elections are held at different levels in India. The two major election levels are at national level, after which the national government is established and at state level after which the state government is established. Elections are also held for city, town and village councils.
Indian politics has different political issues. However these issues remain to be issues without any solutions for decades. Some issues are national level and some regional level. Some communities demand more economical and social rights for their communities, while others demand more autonomy for their cultures within the Indian states. Some demanded autonomous states within the Indian Union, while the others demanded to be independent from India. However, with all its problems India survives as a single state with democratic character. But a number of political problems still exist and remain unsolved in India.
Education system is undoubtedly the foundation of a nation. Education makes man civilized and therefore the country. It makes the mankind literate in ethics and moral values. If we have a well nurtured and balanced education system, then half the task of the country’s development is done. But when we look into the Indian context in India education system ,it is suffering with many issues that needs to be addressed at the earliest, we have some very big problems and thus the challenges are tougher...
By: Rashmi Rekha Borah
Please pursue the full paper from this link:
http://www.ripublication.com/ijepa/ijepav2n2_06.pdf
Actually, politics is a neutral word; it is very much needed. It has a wide range--from politics of justice and fairness to politics of hatred, opportunism and indifference. Every educational policy of a government is a political decision.
Perhaps, you mean political interference in working of educational institutions, especially of higher education. In the interest of creativity, freedom and dignity of discourse, there should not be political interference. Otherwise, it will merely lead to compliance and opportunistic elements will be happy; and no creativity. But that would also mean responsible academic administration. For this, there is a need for sagacious academic leadership in universities. Government should honestly appoint the VCs and other heads on the basis of caliber and competence, and not political convenience.
Unfavourable political economy blocks policy reform and its implementation.
The paths and outcomes of educational policies are overwhelmingly impacted by political processes and practices. Within this context, there is an overarching need to understand politics as consisting of ‘all the activities of cooperation, negotiation and conflict in the use, production and distribution of resources through the interaction of formal and informal institutions and through the distribution of private and public power’. More than 20 studies conducted across the developing world arrive at the following conclusions: patrimonialism and corruption, and elite capture, is pervasive; political parties are personalistic, there is limited political will and limited political demand for extensive reform; commitment to overarching national strategies is weak and there are very low levels of ‘stateness’ which generate politicised bureaucracies. Thus, the design and implementation of effective and conducive educational (and other) policies may be significantly influenced by the political economy within which they are made.
https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=6fGaDXGZLBE%3D&tabid=3437
Dear my colleague, Prof. Dr. Abhijit Mitra,
I thank you for your nice question for everyone, I think so! In our country in every time the political intervention has retarded the pace of education, as in epoch of dictature, communism as well as that of 25 years so that we are in freedom. I believe in near futures that will leave this age to swear new generation leadership to govern our country ... let's believe on it ...
Political intervention has retarded the pace of education -- What's your view?
Dear Abhijit,
in Germany poilitians have excelerated exponential the education systems on all levels in the last 50 years. This exceleration resulted in a dramatic retardation and a diffuse splitting. And over all we have the 16 federal states with all its ambitious littel polititians. So now a days we have a tremendous chaotic mass of education systems. And after each election the new gays change it into their colours. Incredible bad.
Peter
State education at all levels is financed and controlled by Government. Politics is in definitely, as Minister of Education is a member of a ruling party. We do have elections now. Education is one of the main promises in terms of its improvement, modernisation, better finance, ..., improvement of educational strategies at all levels, the introduction of dual education system as in Austria and Germany...
Yes politics is mayor influencer, doing sometime very bad things. Accreditation bodies are named by Government, which makes a lot of chances for corruption in education, especially in Higher Education.
Why rules change when government members change? Does this imply that the new decisions of today will be outdated tomorrow?
Having an idea may take 5 seconds. Efficiently executing the idea might take years?
Current claims about private, public, or charter schools in the education reform movement, which has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century, may also be masking a much more important call to confront and even dismantle the bureaucracy that currently cripples universal public education in the U.S. "Successful teaching and good school cultures don't have a formula," argued legal reformer Philip K. Howard earlier in this series, "but they have a necessary condition: teachers and principals must feel free to act on their best instincts.
For more information, please refer to the following link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/politics-and-education-dont-mix/256303/
I want to ask the community: Why do you seriously believe that politics and politicians should deal with the quality of your education? Why you do not want to consider that the acquisition of high-quality education should be entirely up to you? Why do you always wait for someone to teach you anything? In my view, those who are interested to get a quality education can get it from the Internet by using modern Internet Technologies. In my understanding, only self-education can bring high-quality and sustainable knowledge. I believe that acquisition of sustainable knowledge is a hard work consisting in solving a huge number of examples and tasks from different handbooks. My resume is the following: self-education, self-education and only self-education is the key to a guaranteed success.
Dear Colleagues:
I think that the influence of politics on the education system depends on the kind of political regime of each country. In the more general meaning of the word "politics", such influence is always present, because there is, at least, an "education policy". However, this policy may give the government the ability to intervene in varying degrees in the functioning of the education system. That is, educators and their institutions may be more or less free to define their own policies and strategies. "Political interference" in the strong sense of ideological and government / party control of the education system is clearly a bad thing In Argentina's universities, unfortunately, there is too much of this kind of political interference.
Hi All,
It's good to have mature students with strong political background, understand what is going around them and can discuss, analyze, and contribute to the political events. form this perspective Political has a positive influence, and participate to build the accumulated students' knowledge. On the other hand, Political intervention in high education system through parties, policies, funds etc. leads to some negative sides that affect the quality of accepted students, selected staff and academics and therefore the quality of the final output (graduates and research).
The document Strategy for Education Development in Serbia 2020 was prepared and published under the Ministry of Education of Serbia. Link follows. You may notice the photo of Prof. Žarko Obradović, PhD, Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development at the beginning of the Strategy!!!
http://erasmusplus.rs/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Strategy-for-Education-Development-in-Serbia-2020.pdf
Here is the latest news of political interference in educational system;
http://www.aninews.in/newsdetail2/story259623/iit-fees-raised-from-rs-90-000-to-rs-two-lakh.html
The policy necessarily affects the educational system, printing a national spirit to the contents and ways to educate children and influencing the formation of a unity in the background of the population of a territory. Given the above, the policy can be incorporated into the educational system values and myths that can slow the pace of scientific advancement and proper training of students, but this is not a necessity, but something that happens occasionally. The intention of power to intervene in education is not to generate a delayed and pace of educational progress, although often it fosters.
Politics and Education Don't Mix
P.L. THOMAS, APR 26 2012
A central flaw of corporate paradigms, as is often noted in popular culture, is the mind-numbing and dehumanizing effect of bureaucracy. Sometimes we are horrified and sometimes we laugh, but arguments for or against the free market may be misguided if we fail to address bureaucracy's corrosive role in the business model.
Current claims about private, public, or charter schools in the education reform movement, which has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century, may also be masking a much more important call to confront and even dismantle the bureaucracy that currently cripples universal public education in the U.S. "Successful teaching and good school cultures don't have a formula," argued legal reformer Philip K. Howard earlier in this series, "but they have a necessary condition: teachers and principals must feel free to act on their best instincts....This is why we must bulldoze school bureaucracy."
Bureaucracy, however, remains an abstraction and serves as little more than a convenient and popular target for ridicule -- unless we unpack what actions within bureaucracy are the sources for many of the persistent failures we associate erroneously with public education as an institution. Bureaucracy fails, in part, because it honors leadership as a primary quality over expertise, commits to ideological solutions without identifying and clarifying problems first, and repeats the same reforms over and over while expecting different results: our standards/testing model is more than a century old.
Public education is by necessity an extension of our political system, resulting in schools being reduced to vehicles for implementing political mandates. For example, during the past thirty years, education has become federalized through dynamics both indirect ("A Nation at Risk" spurring state-based accountability systems) and direct (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top).
As government policy and practice, bureaucracy is unavoidable, of course. But the central flaw in the need for structure and hierarchy is that politics prefers leadership characteristics above expertise. No politician can possibly have the expertise and experience needed in all the many areas a leader must address (notably in roles such as governor and president). But during the "accountability era" in education of the past three decades, the direct role of governors and presidents as related to education has increased dramatically--often with education as a central plank in their campaigns.
One distinct flaw in that development has been a trickle-down effect reaching from presidents and governors to state superintendents of education and school board chairs and members: people who have no or very little experience or expertise as educators or scholars attain leadership positions responsible for forming and implementing education policy.
The faces and voices currently leading the education reform movement in the U.S. are appointees and self-proclaimed reformers who, while often well-meaning, lack significant expertise or experience in education: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, billionaire Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee (whose entrance to education includes the alternative route of Teach for America and only a few years in the classroom), and Sal Khan, for example.
Bureaucracy bestows authority and a hierarchy on education that allows and perpetuates leadership without expertise or experience. The consequences include the two most vivid examples of why education reform has failed and will continue to fail: (1) Inexpert leadership is ideologically committed to solutions and thus implements solutions without identifying and clarifying the problems first, and (2) inexpert leadership that is in constant flux, with the perpetual changes in administrations, is apt to implement the same solutions over and over with different outcomes expected.
if academicians refuse to conduct empirical studies that will inform educational polices, politicians will always use anecdotal evidence to make educational polices so as to win political scores
Visit my old, related research question.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Have_politics_in_any_way_affected_your_career_advancement_whether_in_research_or_in_education
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