EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
OVERVIEW OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT AND THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN POVERTY REDUCTION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
LIONEL THAVER, OVERVIEW OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTEXT AND THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN POVERTY REDUCTION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN CAPE.
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To understand the challenges in the education system, we need to question the relationship between education and the socio- economic context from its mutual embeddedness. Further- more, we need to ask what kind of bearing it might have for understanding the role of education institutions as embedded in their socio-economic contexts.
We probe the scale and reach of education institutions in society through considering the redeployment of human and economic resources. We need to consider the extent of socio- economic deprivation and the attendant social crises to ensue the role of education institutions are expanding from the prima- ry mandate of intellectual development to encompass a wider social ambit; and thus make explicit its social embeddedness.
The synthesis of these two points and the expanded role of the education institution as social institution is firmed up in an un- derstanding that the terms of engagement is in society and not on society. On a critical note, this point of view of being in-soci- ety addresses the de-contextualisation and relative isolation of social institutions from each other even though we have shown that they are inter-connected. The conclusion reached is that in our social imaginations need to reach beyond the compart- mentalization that is our classrooms, offices or workshops and grasp the entirety of what it means to be a member of society.
The political transformation of South African society from its apartheid past to a constitutional democracy inaugurated in 1994, marks a decisive rupture in our social imaginations. With this new sensibility the political process ushered in a regulatory framework that was and is directed towards the democratization of all social institutions in its wake. Education too became imperative and evi- denced the enactment of a series of laws and policies, which in effect, seek to normalize and standardize this sector.
The appropriate policy frameworks are in place and the chal- lenge is generally accepted as lying in implementation. Towards this end, let’s take up the matter of implementation and con- sider it from the vantage point of the social dimensions involved in education institutions to consider its societal scale and depth.
What is at stake here is not only the numerical relationship, as in the size or scale of its physical dimensions, but its depth or
its volume. In speaking of volume, attention is drawn to the ex- tensive and intensive reach of education into society through its marshalling of human and economic resources. By focusing on matters of scale, we seek to open up a way to understand edu- cation sociologically; as case in point to show in which senses its significance rests and what lay at its core.
Towards this end, numerical relationships are marshalled to manifest the reach that education has in society, at the level of its intellectual reproduction by way of its volume. Of course this does not attest to the substantive problem of the conver- sion of education into economic realization in a market related engagement of a sustained type. Though, it does bring another perspective to the relation, connecting the socio-economic context to education and to economic development and pov- erty reduction.
These are the figures that struck some accord and triggered this line of thought:
In 2007, there were more than 12 million learners in the ordinary school sector. This means that on any given school day about 25%, that is a quarter of the population are potentially in school where there may be engaged in a learning experience and intellectual growth. Here all the formative minds of the youth are gathered and shaped and thus the future “collective mind” is in the process of becoming. The social scale with which we are dealing with here is far too substantial, with much too much at stake not to care, and not to be concerned about the well being of education. In reality we are dealing with something much deeper and that is the intellectual well being of society.
The same can be gleaned from drawing a relation between schooling and the economy by way of the intellectual reproduc- tion of the potential labour force available in society. To bring the point home, the schooling system released more than three hundred thousand matriculants in 2007 that variably entered higher education, full employment, casual employment, self em- ployment or unemployment. This is the average for every year since 2007 and will continue in this vein in the immediate future.
Questions are asked about the compatibility of education and the needs of the economy and these are fundamental indeed. However, we need to tread lightly here. It is well known that the narrower the relation between education and the econo- my, the greater is the danger of the obsolescence of skill sets. While Basic Education provides the basis for a career, it is not career specific or domain specific such that we may speak of cultivating the corporate citizen, etc., but rather towards the making of the condition of intellectual possibility for such choic- es. The concept grounding the relation between educational content and compatibility with the economy is taken up by way of the mutual engagements of inter-institutional relationships as an embedding in-society.
Let’s probe this relationship between education and the econ- omy by considering the intensive and extensive reach of educa- tion as social institution into the economy through how much capital is involved in order to facilitate the delivery of educa- tion to members of society. The national revenue in 2006/7 was R475.6 billion of which R105.5 billion was allocated to the education sector. Considered against R31.1 billion in 1994 shows both an expansion in the amount of capital as well as its relation to economic development or growth. The human resources required to animate this enormous social institu- tion further testifies to its sheer scale and size. There were 394,225 teachers employed at 26,065 schools to which should be added service staff, academics, researchers at universities and colleges. This is surely by any standard in South Africa a massive scale and thus of immense social volume in the extent of human resources and capital drawn on in society.
Thus, something of the scale of the enterprise of the social in- stitution of education emerges. However, this equation is not of the type one refers to as ceterus paribus (all things being equal), to the contrary we have amongst the highest rate of inequality between the rich and poor in the world. In this regard the so- cio-economic context is not checked at the gates of education institutions but is present in our learners who are caught in the grip of poverty and skewed economic development. Further- more, the socio-economic context of poverty is similarly pres- ent in many of the schools located amongst the poorer sectors of society where basic facilities and resources are left wanting.
The point being made, the project of education is intellectual development and cannot be detached from the social subjects who are the bearers of their socio-economic contexts. In those communities ravaged by poverty, illness, and unemployment learners are provided for through the National School Nutrition Programme. Note worthily, this programme reaches almost 6 million learners who experience to varying degrees such a fun- damental need as food.
It is hard to imagine that there are schools, let alone that many without such basic facilities as water of which there are over 3000 (12%), electricity over 4000 (17%), computers over 17,000 (68%) and so on. Taken together, we seem to mov- ing imperceptibly from schools as educational institutions to schools as social institutions in its broadest ambit encompass- ing not only intellectual reproduction but social reproduction of the most basic kind in matters of nutrition, health and affect, in reality an extended family. The paradox we are confronted with is that the communities in greatest need are at schools where the resource base is at its neediest.
To summarise, education as social institution is deeply embed- ded in society in as much it carries the intellectual reproduction of society in the sheer scale and volume it entails. In so doing its reaches deep into the human and capital resources of society to animate the massive pedagogic infrastructure required to provide education to members of society. In both these relations, draw- ing on society and on the state what emerged is that education is fundamentally embedded in society, yet its institutions tend to be isolated from other institutions and society.
This abstraction of education institutions and its intellectual function is being reminded of its comportment to the wider ambit of society and thus emphasis is being drawn to the use of social institution. At its core, educational institutions have been shown to be exceptionally social in its make up yet they contin- ue to function as islands. In showing the mutual embeddedness of education institutions in their socio-economic contexts and how this is mediated in schools as case in point in their expand- ed social roles begs a re-specification of how we understand the relation of our institutions to society and its reproduction.
In sum, the concept that inures itself is that we have a relation be- tween education institutions and its socio-economic context that suggests itself as being in-society and acting within society. The fundamental shift in this concept of being-in, as in say being in- business, means that one inhabits or dwells in such a world. Simi- larly, being in-society suggests that the socio-economic challenges are not outside the domain of the corporate world and hence beyond its purview, but that it is deeply immersed in our educa- tion institutions and the reproduction of South African society.
This social warrant does not admit to half-hearted interventions and piece-meal contributions but requires that all institutions get wired through their distinct modalities in taking their worlds into the schools and universities in ways that enable them to derive real experiences and thus embed their education in the world so to speak. And in this regard, the private sector has to re-imagine its relationship to the socio-economic context such that it has a bearing on the intimate connect between education and economic development which is intellectual capital.
” 24 CHAPTER 1 | INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
www.ed.org.za www.ed.org.za CHAPTER 1 | INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 25
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