According to Dimitriadis (2010: 71), the neo-liberal movement is pushing schools towards a “commercialisation and corporatization of education in the U.S.”. This means that schools are taking on the language of businesses. They are becoming organised to ‘produce’ qualified workers for the employment market, equipped with the relevant skills, and checked for “performance” through the use of standardised testing. Dimitriadis (2010: 77) suggests that this resembles the system of the new economy, where “bottom lines” drive the market, whether it is “stock price”, or “test scores”. Also, the idea of the privatisation of schools is discussed, where neo-liberal ideology has discouraged “big government” intervention in the management of schools. This, Dimitriadis (2010: 80) argues, neglects the “social concerns and issues” present and relevant to the people within the education system. Drawing on my personal experience, I want to point out how many aspects of schooling in Singapore resemble the “efficient” “bottom line” business logics that Dimitriadis (2010: 77) claims are becoming characteristic of schools in the U.S.
The Singapore government has always emphasized the importance of particular subjects over others, even based on the availability of subject options in secondary schools. For example, it has always been the privilege of academically excelling students to take the ‘triple science’ subject combination (Physics, Chemistry, and Biology) for the GCE ‘O’ Level examinations. While it is compulsory that everyone takes at least one humanities subject, these are not usually given as much importance as Math, Language, and the Sciences. This reflects the “testable and high stakes” subjects that Dimitriadis (2010: 80) suggests schools are focusing on as easy and well-documented methods of assessing performance. The problem with this is that it leads to the rise of “drill and skill” pedagogies and “teaching to the test” (Dimitriadis, 2010: 80).
I remember the way that teachers faced high pressure in helping their students excel in their test scores when I was in primary and secondary school. This was to be the basis on which teacher’s performance was evaluated, similar to the U.S. (Dimitriadis, 2010: 78). Also, most of the teaching involved a close reference to exam papers and questions. One excellent example was the famous ‘ten-year series’, an assessment book of the previous ‘O’ Level exam papers from the past 10 years, assigned by teachers and tutors throughout Singapore.
The policy of ‘streaming’, until recently, was implemented across the board in Singaporean schools during Secondary 3. This is essentially a categorisation of students to classes according to their academic performance, as indicated by their test scores. This tends to create heavy stigma for students in lower performing classes or even ‘less-prestigious’ schools. Also, it encourages elitism as independent and private schools are able to gain funding from parents with greater means to buy a higher quality of education for their children. This may seem like a ‘efficient’ step towards the neo-liberal ideal of the free market for education bringing the standard higher for all, but it sidesteps the issues of inequality and the problems of social justice inherent in such an arrangement.
I take Dimitriadis’ (2010) view that the government should intervene, and in a holistic way. Educational policy is not situated cleanly within the realm of schools. Instead, it is “embedded in a broader set of economic policies”, and reforming educational policy must include the reform of public policy like “affordable housing, minimum wage policy in a growing service economy, the often lack of efficient public transportation to those who must travel to far-out suburbs for jobs, etc” (Dimitriadis, 2010: 84). The spectacular downfalls of the corporate “neo-liberal darlings” in US economic history are evidence enough of the failures of such a management philosophy when it comes to policy even in education.
References
Dimitriadis, G. (2010). Lessons learned from Enron: What the business world really has to teach us. In Z. Leonardo (Ed.), Handbook of Cultural Politics and Education (pp. 71-86). Sense Publishers.
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