Free Education for Everyone, Everywhere

“Education is not for Sale!” A few years ago no banner at a student’s demonstration, no leaflet calling for a strike at a university, would have been without this slogan. And although this country does not see as many demonstrations and strikes around issues of education nowadays as it did in years before, the swift sell out of education remains, on an international level, a focal point of debate and criticism where ever current education policies are being discussed.

In Italy, students from schools and universities, as well as their teachers, take to the streets to protest Berlusconis plans for massive cuts in educational budgets and his plans to exclude children from education based on racist grounds. In Greece students are on the barricades to protest against the introduction of tuition fees, and in Chile students from schools and universities are protesting against a planned reform of the educational system. And wherever there is protest, the main demands are the same: no privatisation of education, no social selection, free access to education, for all.

Education for all – what exactly does that mean in times where whole educational systems are increasingly being restructured along purely economical lines? At the 32nd BUKO we will examine this question more closely. We will take a critical look at the changes taking place worldwide. In this it is our aim to make visible internationalist and emancipatory approaches to, and perspectives in, education, and to discuss projects that go beyond the logic of utilisation and market positions. 

The strictly hierarchic school system in this country systematically produces inequality, and every discussion about education at schools centres around the question of how to continue with it. The German school system knows, beyond elementary schools, four different kinds of school: Secondary General School, Intermediate Second School, Comprehensive School and Grammar School. In recent years ‘educational standards’ have been established, and the number of school years required to get the leaving certificate needed to attend university have been reduced from 13 to 12. Students, teachers, but also parents find themselves under increasing pressure. More and more they have to teach, or see themselves or their children being taught, according to the requirements of the market. But the problems start even earlier; the foundations for inequality in education are laid even before school. Early childhood education seems to be the magic word nowadays. Children are to be prepared for the rat race even at home and in their nursery schools.

In the late 1990s, a reorganisation of academic programmes was started in Europe, introducing bachelor and master study programmes everywhere. Students now finish their studies much earlier than before and thus enter the labour market earlier. In 2000, at a meeting in Lisbon, the European heads of state agreed upon a joint programme for universities that aims at turning Europe by the year 2010 into ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economic area of the world’. Victims of such a development are, among other things, all academic programmes that tend to not show up in a cost-benefit calculation based on code numbers. 

Fees for education have long been introduced in many countries of the world. Hardly any one seems to question the fact that you are being asked to contribute privately to your own or to your children’s education. But such a development leads to further exclusion of people from precarious social and economical circumstances. Parallel to the introduction of fees for education, the state reduces expanses in the educational sector, thus further legitimising the necessity for private investment and the spread of so called Public Private Partnership. As a result nursery schools, schools and universities are more and more being turned into institutions of repression that aim at getting people fit for the market.

But not only the various fields of education are subject to a fundamental change of meaning. The same is true for the definition of the term education itself. Currently we can still locate education in an area of conflict between usability (for the market) and an emancipatory claim to personal development. But usability seems to win over. Each of us is currently being asked to transform information into knowledge, and render it useful, even faster, even better, even more effectively. The predominant credo demands that we ourselves manage – under constant pressure from the rat race of competition – our own increasingly flexible living and working conditions. We are being forced to act as the managers of our own labour. The individual, with its longing for self- determination and self- development, is fast becoming a romantic figure, the collective movements for emancipation the stuff utopian novels are made of.                       

The aim of BUKO 32 will be to find progressive approaches to the question of the future of education. Current struggles in this area seem, at the moment, to be of a rather defensive nature. Apart from analysing the current situation at, for example, German universities and schools, we will introduce ideas for education from countries of the global South, as for example autonomous projects for education in Chiapas or the concept of Educación Popular. What further emancipatory alternatives are there beyond institutionalised education? We have invited activists from Italy and Greece who fight against privatisation of education, and we will offer a platform for networking around activities like the education strike of 2009. On the construction site ‘Education’ at the BUKO 32, we want to discuss how to defend ourselves against a sell out of education and how to strengthen emancipatory forms of learning.

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