Quite a few school district administrators, and even more people who are not educators but are kind enough to offer their advice about how the field can be improved, have emphasized the need for "21st-century schools" that teach "21st-century skills." However, this is not enough, particularly now that some adversaries (in other words, people who…

This article presents the author's brief comment on Hisham B. Ghassib's "Where Does Creativity Fit into a Productivist Industrial Model of Knowledge Production?" Ghassib (2010) takes the reader through an interesting history of human innovation and processes and situates his theory within a productivist model. The deliberate attention to…

Surmounting a national--indeed global--recession in the wake of war is not new to America or its leaders. Born out of one of the nation's darkest moments of the 20th century were bold initiatives to empower those who served their country as well as all who sought to enter the American middle class. The GI Bill of Rights was one such measure, as…

KIPP KEY Academy in Washington, D.C. North Star Academy in Newark. Roxbury Prep in Boston. Amistad Academy in New Haven. These, and perhaps two hundred other high-performing schools nationwide, are the bright lights of the charter school movement. Despite social and economic disadvantages, their students not only trounce their district peers on…

This paper argues that the neoliberalization of education in England, begun in the 1980s, is having profoundly harmful effects on the lives of individuals and society. Neoliberalism represents a shift away from the post-war social democratic notion of universal "citizenship" rights/identities toward a system of individual consumer…

Three years into the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, there has been considerable discussion regarding education for sustainable development (ESD) at a policy level, yet very few countries and communities have moved to integrate ESD into their educational curriculum. In this article we argue that the conceptualization and…

This article explores the history of human capital in the United States in relation to scholarly study of the private economic returns to higher education. The focus of this study is the private economic returns to subbaccalaureate education in two-year community and technical colleges. This article argues that although there are some beneficial…

Since the late 1990s there has been a fundamental shift in the way schooling and even education as a whole is evaluated. From this new perspective the education system would seem to be interpreted as a sub-system of the economic system and thus subservient to it. Decisions on education matters seem to have become determinant for individual…

Industries in developing countries could counterbalance the western monopoly on higher education by investing more in research at local universities and consequently improving the local human resources talent pools and the overall world rankings of the local universities. What is more, with the perceived lack of necessity for university faculty…

This paper argues that under the influence of neoliberalism the role of schooling has been narrowly redefined as helping students to gain the knowledge and skills to "get a job". Drawing on the recent policy pronouncements of the new Rudd Labor Government in Australia, the paper examines how the advocates of human capital theory have…

As large as Finland is small, as rich in natural resources as Finland is not, bordered by smaller, peaceable nations to the north and south and large oceans to the east and west, nobody has ever come to America and forced its people to rename and reorganize their colleges and universities--or, for that matter, to do anything else. Americans are…

Not long ago, most academic insiders felt confident in saying, "the faculty 'are' the university." The faculty may still be the university, but who are the faculty? From public community colleges to private research universities, America has created the most powerful machine for the development of human capital in the history of the world. Yet an…

This paper argues for a mild perfectionism in applying Amartya Sen's capability approach for an education transformative of student agency and well-being. Key to the paper is the significance of education as a process of being and becoming in the future, and education's fundamental objective of a positively changed human being. The capability…

The author argues for the importance of social capital effects being taken into account in assessing the effects of family literacy programs, and literacy programs generally. Focus upon short-term effects such as test scores, which can be considered as assessments of human capital, does not serve literacy education well. It would be helpful to…

The Indian State has been demonstrating its unwavering commitment to private capital and its neoliberal offensive. The education and health sector reflect its anti-people orientation along with other anti-working class measures such as the doing away with old pension scheme, privatisation of airports, neglect of farmers resulting in over 1.5 lakh…