Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

CONCLUSION
Across East Asia (as elsewhere), invocations of ‘autonomy’, ‘creativity’ and ‘critical
thinking’ should therefore not be assumed to signify any fundamental reappraisal
of dominant conceptions of knowledge, the socialising function of education, or
the authority of the state. State authorities have in general sought to foster such
qualities above all for the instrumental purpose of maximising national economic
competitiveness, rather than out of conviction of their intrinsic value. This is not
to say that educational stakeholders have been united in their instrumentalist
proclivities. Japan’s yutori kyouiku reforms, for example, initially enjoyed
broad support from both skills-focused, economistic conservatives and leftist
progressives who sought to liberate students from stultifying curricular rigidity
and intense credentialism (Arai, 2016; Cave, 2016); different groups supported
the reforms for different reasons. Liberal-leaning curriculum developers have
also sometimes emphasised economistic rationales for reforms they see as
desirable for other reasons, precisely in order to appeal to senior officials more
preoccupied with the pursuit of growth and the maintenance of control (see
Vickers, 2005, on the case of Hong Kong). But in so far as progressive objectives
thus need to be smuggled in ‘under cover’, this reflects the dominance of more
conservative political agendas.
At the same time as noting the authoritarian flavour
of East Asian curricula, it is important to acknowledge
the remarkable success of these societies in
improving livelihoods, and the contribution of
education in this respect. Green et al. (2007), for
example, take post-war Japan and the ‘East Asian
Tigers’ as their benchmark for the successful
deployment of education in pursuit of ‘strategies for
successful globalization’. These societies not only
achieved extremely rapid rates of economic growth
until the 1990s, but did so while increasing the equality
with which the benefits of growth were distributed
(mainland China and Hong Kong standing as notable
exceptions in this regard). Rates of poverty reduction
and levels of gender equality across the region were
At the same time
as noting the
authoritarian flavour
of East Asian curricula,
it is important to
acknowledge the
remarkable success
of these societies in
improving livelihoods,
and the contribution
of education in this
respect
also far better than in many other parts of Asia (especially South Asia). Policies
promoting the universality and uniformity of educational provision, especially
basic education, played a crucial role in achieving these relatively egalitarian
distributive outcomes. And those outcomes, in turn, were crucial in creating the
basis for some form of democratic transition in Japan and several of the ‘Tigers’
(China, not coincidentally, again standing as an exception — see Ringen, 2016).
Internationally, the perception of East Asia as an educational success story
has been greatly reinforced in recent years by the performance of the region’s
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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