Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

the former USSR, since the early 1990s. This is perhaps in part precisely because
of the cynicism bred by the yawning gap between Soviet ideals and reality,
although, as Brown notes (2009), by the 1970s and 1980s citizens of the Central
Asian regions of the USSR were generally more content under Soviet rule than
their counterparts in European Russia or the Baltic region.
Many observers have also noted the role played by international donors in
shaping education discourse and policy in post-Soviet Central Asia and Mongolia.
Niyozov and Dastambuev (2012) have identified three strategic interests guiding
these external actors: (i) detaching Central Asian states from the Soviet past
(i.e. securing their independence and keeping them out of the Russian orbit);
(ii) inoculating or quarantining them against the spread
of anti-Western Islamic extremism; and (iii) securing
their integration into and dependence on the global
market economy. The dichotomisation of ‘socialist’ and
‘capitalist’ systems and the outright rejection of the
former has typically informed the work of international
donors and local policymakers, clearing the ground for
the dominance of the market-oriented human capital
paradigm. In post-socialist Central Asia, education has
come to be seen primarily as a ‘private good’ rather
than a public one. As Silova (2009b) puts it, ‘education (including various types
of private tutoring) has become the last hope and the main way to advance or
maintain one’s socio-economic position as the economic prospects for those
without educational credentials deteriorate’ (p. 167).
In post-socialist
Central Asia,
education has come
to be seen primarily
as a ‘private good’
rather than a public
one
Although the coding results and the qualitative analysis indicate some lingering
influence of the egalitarian Soviet legacy at the level of policy rhetoric, the
post-Soviet social reality is one of widening inequality, which under-resourced
and increasingly stratified schooling systems are ill-equipped to counter.
Attainments in the fields of education, health care, science and equality during
Soviet rule were initially expected, after 1991, to form a strong foundation for
a swift transformation of the Central Asian states into stable, prosperous
democracies (Niyozov and Dastambuev, 2012). But even a cursory survey of the
current state of schooling across the region illustrates how widely off the mark
such predictions have proved. Instead, the Central Asian states and Mongolia
have embraced a new totalising paradigm — of schooling for the production of
marketable human resources and reinforcement of nationalist loyalties — which,
while rather different from the Soviet ideological cocktail, is no more conducive
to peace, sustainability or domestic or international harmony.
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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