Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

this nationalist orientation should come as no surprise, but it constitutes a
considerable barrier to the realisation of SDG 4.7.
An enduring emphasis on national self-strengthening also implies a strongly
instrumentalist vision of education, with maximisation of national competitiveness
seen as the ultimate end of schooling. This instrumentalism is strongly evident
across most of Asia, and is related to a vision that implicitly values citizens
primarily as ‘human resources’ or ‘human capital’ for the pursuit of economic
growth. Consequently, the range of skills and competencies that schooling
systems seek to impart tends to be heavily skewed towards mathematics and the
sciences, with humanities and social sciences correspondingly neglected.
Until quite recently, this sort of economism and scientism was associated, across
much of Asia, with command economies and state manpower planning. But
The result is an approach
to schooling that
typically combines high
levels of regimentation
with intense
competitiveness,
increasingly spilling
over into the private
sector as families invest
in cram schooling
and other forms of
supplementary or
alternative provision
now schooling in most Asian societies prepares
students for the rigours of a highly competitive
labour market, in which opportunities are
determined by the competitive acquisition
of credentials, there are typically few second
chances, and state provision of key public goods
other than schooling (and often of that too) is
minimal or inadequate. The result is an approach
to schooling that typically combines high levels
of regimentation with intense competitiveness,
increasingly spilling over into the private sector
as families invest in cram schooling and other
forms of supplementary or alternative provision.
Though not captured in our coding exercise, this
context is crucial to assessing the prospects for
realising SDG 4.7 across Asia.
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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