From Alienation to Solidarity: Educational Perspectives and Possibilities in Brazil and the UK

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how alienation plays out in conditions of advanced neoliberalisation in education. We discuss two examples which exemplify the depth and extent of alienation. First the attacks on critical thinking in education that have been spearheaded by the ‘School without [political] parties’ [‘Escola sem Partido’] project in Brazil. Second, the mental health crisis that is rampant among staff and students in the UK higher education. Drawing on Freire, we explore how ‘the organization of alienation’ can fuel acts of resistance and praxis which can help us reclaim education and society from the forces of the market. The examples we draw on in relation to Brazil and the UK have not yet become mainstream strategies, especially internationally, that can sustain a resistance movement in education, but they form successful local, in some cases national even, strategies that seem to be able to open new possibilities which can eventually help us find creative and effective ways to make the organisation of alienation the project for Being More that Freire envisaged.

Future tense—Reorienting higher education toward an unknown future

“…While philosophers tend to consider universities globally and abstractly, policy makers look for more tangible representations and outcomes, which are often susceptible to more localized shifts in political perceptions of education as a public good (Marginson, 2011). In their current neoliberal context, universities are treated primarily as subsidized businesses that must compete for "customers" (students and, at times, faculty) and "resources" (external funding) in order to remain viable, even vital, enterprises (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2000;Davies et al, 2006;Mendes et al, 2020). Indeed, British education scholar Stephen Ball argues that the commodification of all aspects of academic life and work is the hallmark of neoliberal academia (Ball, 2012(Ball, , 2015.…”

“…In the post-pandemic world, higher education is faced with an increasingly uncertain and super-complex future. These challenges include external pressures, such as globalization, climate change, poverty, racial and ethnic inequities, and internal pressures, such as a decrease in funding, increased competition by private education providers, a move to the recasting of "students as customers" (Mendes et al, 2020), the metrification of knowledge production (Beer, 2016), the growing precarity of academic labor (Megoran and Mason, 2020), and more. It could be said that now, more than ever, universities have to contend with a proliferation of so-called wicked problems, which require the identification and implementation of similarly complex and creative responses.…”

“…His call for a professional capacity for imagination comes at a time when that ability is perhaps most endangered. Exacerbated by the recent COVID-19 crisis, the neoliberal academy model has led to an increased sense of alienation among staff (Harley, 2017;Hall, 2018;Mendes et al, 2020), a sense of inevitability of the status quo, "futurelessness, " with decreasing agency or control over "a normalization of crisis" (Fisher, 2009, p. 1). In other words, present circumstances seem to leave little room for dreaming up a better future.…”