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Comments on the paper “Voices/political networks and a global neoliberal curriculum”

by Stephen J. Ball , present Keynote address to the 4th International Conference on
Curriculum Policies and Practices - Difference in Curriculum Policies
November 10 to 13, 2009
Universidade Federal da Paraíba
João Pessoa – Paraíba - Brazil

Jefferson Mainardes

First of all, I'd like to thank Prof. Stephen Ball for the care that he has taken in
producing a text that addresses aspects that are extremely relevant and closely related to
the Brazilian reality. Undoubtedly, his text encourages us to reflect upon - and to try and
understand – the changes that we have witnessed in the field of education during the last
few years, especially with regard to current educational policies, with their implications
for change in curriculum policies and practices1.

Being coherent to the train of thought that characterises his researches and
publications, in that text Prof. Ball presents a critical and well-founded analysis on the
following topics: national institutes becoming linked to transnational agencies whose
strategic role is to promote and spread neoliberal ideas; the relations between the public
and the private and the tenuous line that separates them; the process of commodification
that have been incorporated by education networks, universities and schools.

In his text, Ball shows evidences, establishes relations, and provides concrete
examples of the many ways in which neoliberalism and global influences can affect
curriculum. Nevertheless, he doesn’t present closed conclusions, prescriptions or
recommendations. In that text, as in the case of others, he wants people to think and
conclude by themselves. In a personal interview (Sept 11th 2007), Balls says:

“So I have come very often to avoid, kind of, closure in things, that I’m saying, partly
for that reason, partly because I don’t want to come to conclusions that people can then
carry away with them and say ah okay – not jumping to conclusions – in fact in the
book I didn’t want to write any conclusions, the publishers asked me to write the
conclusion, so, but partly doing that is that is because I want people to make their own
conclusions, to do their own thinking, but also I think that social analysis is always
partial, is always inadequate, social analysis is always a failure in many ways. All that is
possible are some useful insights, some small bricks in the wall, some small pieces of
strategic knowledge, -- yeah, pieces and bits – and if you can offer some sensible bits
and pieces, then I think that is helpful and strategically useful.”

By having such features and purposes, the mentioned text raises several
reflections on the global/international and national contexts, and it also provides us with
important tools to reflect on some of the educational policies that have been

1
It is important to highlight that some of the issues pointed out by Ball have also been discussed by a
number of Brazilian researchers (Adrião et al, 2009; Oliveira, 2009; Peroni et al, 2009; Silva and Souza,
2009).
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implemented in Brazil in the last years, as well as on the impact that such policies have
had in curriculum policies. Specifically, I will try to establish some relations between
Prof. Stephen Ball’s text and the Education Development Plan (PDE), including the
growing acquisition and adoption, by the public education networks, of textbooks
prepared by the private sector.

The Education Development Plan was presented on March 15 th,2007, and was
officially released by MEC in the same year on April 24 th. It gathers a series of actions
with the intent to contribute to the improvement of education quality. It is interesting to
point out that the PDE was strongly prompted by the movement called “All for
Education Commitment”2, which is conducted by businessmen and representatives of
banks and non-governmental organisations. This movement defined five goals to be
reached until 20223. A very meaningful point is that some members and institutions
belonging to the three institutes mentioned by Ball (Millenium, Liberdade and Liberal)
are also part of the board of directors of the “All for Education” movement. The
relations between this movement and the Ministry of Education seem to be close. An
example is the fact that a lot of news and information available on the website of the
movement is related to actions and data from the Ministry of Education.

Many authors have been trying to perform a critical analysis of the PDE (e.g.
SAVIANI, 2009; FERREIRA, 2009). In general, these authors indicate the existence of
relevant actions, but also call into question and criticise some important aspects4, such
as:
a) the predominance of a concept of education that gives priority to numerical
results, by means of the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB), the Prova Brasil
and the Provinha Brasil (national exams for Primary Education students);
b) the lack of continuity of the policies, especially because the PDE barely took
into account the National Plan for Education (PNE), released in 2001;
c) the tendency to consider the failure of education as just a managerial issue
(GRACINDO, 2007). Due to these features, Ferreira (2009) shows that the plans,
programmes and projects implemented by the current government are incongruous and
“fed on by antagonistic perspectives regarding the project of a popular and democratic
society” (p. 265).
The processes of commodification and the managerialist model have already
been deeply analysed by many authors that have researched the English educational
system (e.g. GEWIRTZ, 2002; BENJAMIN, 2002; BALL, 2005). Gewirtz (2002)
explores the consequences of the managerialist model for the parents’ participation, the
teachers’ work, and the curriculum. She shows that the stated aims for the revised
2
The “All for Education” movement was released on September 6th, 2006, and is composed of
representatives of large companies, banks and non-governmental organisations. The relation between the
PDE and the “All for Education” movement is admitted by the Federal Government itself. In the
definition of the PDE, we can find the following: “The All for Education Commitment gave impulse to
this large social mobilisation” (BRASIL, 2000-).
3
The goals defined by the “All for Education” movement, and which should be reached until 2002, are
the following: Goal 1 – every child and youngster from 4 to 17 years old must be in school; Goal 2 –
every child must be literate until 8 years old; Goal 3 – every student must learn according to their grade;
Goal 4 – every youngster must have finished secondary education until 19 years old; Goal 5 – larger and
well managed investments in education. An analysis of this movement can be found in an article by
Martins (2009).
4
Saviani (2009) considers that the Plan represents an important step towards facing the problem of basic
education quality, but in its actual format “it still doesn’t provide any guarantee of success” (p. 41).
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national curriculum include the economistic, instrumentalist goals of equipping students

for their future lives as ‘workers’ and ‘consumers’ and ‘preparing them for the next
steps in their education, training and employment. Furthermore, she points out a series
of implications of the reform for the curriculum by identifying the existence of many
tensions between the authoritarian neoliberalism of the New Labour and its apparently
humanist tendency5 such as: Benjamin (2002), after carrying out a research on the
inclusion of special needs students in regular schools, concluded that the normative,
competitive and unsustainable standards agendas defined by the United Kingdom’s
Department of Education, as well as the national exams, are very intransigent barriers
for the students’ learning and participation, thus putting them into a situation of
exclusion inside the system that affirms that it is moving towards inclusive education.
Ball (2004), in a study on the process of commodification of education in England,
presents some analyses on the impact of commodification on children and parents, on
social relations and on knowledge. Regarding the students, Ball explains that:

Markets of course have two sides - consumption and production -

and the education market is no exception. I want to suggest that
the operation of the state market in schooling, with its endogenous
privatisation, also provides clear evidence of another kind of
commodification of the child. The demands of competition, the
'information' provided by League Tables, pressures from the state
for performance improvement and target-achievement and per-
capita funding, in a period of spending constraints, work together
to create local 'economies of student worth'. In effect schools
compete to recruit those students, most likely to contribute to
'improvements' and 'performance', the easiest and cheapest to
teach, and most likely to contribute to the attraction of others like
them. As many Headteachers seem ready to admit, the best way to
improve your school and thrive in the performative culture is to
change your intake.
If you want to improve the performance of your school get control
of your admissions. (South London Comprehensive Headteacher).

In this economy, some children then are of high value, are 'value-
adding' and much sought after, others, of low value, who 'add
negative value' (Kenway and Bullen 2001 p. 140) are, where
possible, avoided. Students and their parents are, in effect,
producers of the exchange value of the institution (Kenway and
Bullen 2001 p.137). The parent 'is expected to work hard at
making their children work hard (p. 138). The child becomes a
means to an end - a thing; valued for their value-added or
stigmatised by their costliness. Thus, girls carry higher value than
boys on the whole in the education market (Ball and Gewirtz
1997). (BALL, 2004, p. 6)
5
Some examples are: a) contributing ‘to the development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge
and understanding pf the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’ diverse society and the
local, national, European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of their lives’; b) enabling ‘pupils to
think creatively and critically, to solve problems and to make a difference for the better’; c) helping them
to be ‘caring citizens capable of contributing to the development of a just society’; and d) enabling ‘pupils
to challenge discrimination and stereotyping’ (GEWIRTZ, 2002, P. 175) .
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Although it’s still not possible to evaluate the impact of the IDEB, of the
national exams, and of the emphasis on the attainment of results and goals, the studies
cited here can serve as important alerts on the necessary follow-up of the outcomes and
consequences of such policies.

Along the time, the stimulus given by the government to the increase of the
IDEB and the performance of students in national exams (in the different stages of
Brazilian Education) can influence curriculum decisions in different ways and
intensities in each context. An example is the fact that some education networks have
chosen to define the ‘learning expectations’, ‘learning capabilities’, ‘ability matrices’ or
‘lists of objectives to be reached at the end of each year or cycle’. Even though the
proposals of some education systems include issues related to concepts of methodology
and evaluation, in practice the ‘learning expectations’, ‘ability matrices’ or ‘lists of
objectives’ seem to be highlighted, since they seem to be safer paths that could provide
better statistical results. By using this example, I don’t mean that the definition of
educational objectives is a bad thing. On the contrary, I think it’s essential that there is a
consensus on the basic contents to be effectively learnt by students during the schooling
process. Nevertheless, what can be put into question is the degree at which these
learning expectations or ability matrices can (or cannot) lead to the reproduction of
pedagogical practices that are homogenising, classificatory and exclusionary.
Overcoming this scenario depends upon a series of actions and orientations that is far
beyond the centralising definition of quantitative goals or expectations.

I believe that it is also important to point out the need to reflect more on the
process of commodification and privatisation that has happened through a growing
number of public education systems (specially municipal ones) that have acquired
textbooks from large networks6. Paraphrasing another analysis by Ball (1994)7, what we
have noticed in practice is that both students and teachers need to adapt to materials and
textbooks rather than materials and textbooks being developed based on the context of
students, teachers and the real conditions of public schools. We need to call into
question how much these textbooks have (or haven’t) led us to the construction of
processes of meaningful learning and to the construction of more egalitarian
classrooms, where all the students can learn, regardless their features and needs.

Finally, I’d like to point out that Prof. Ball’s text allows several reflections and
inquires. In some way, the reflections presented by him make us understand the political

6
See, for example, Adrião et (2009).
7
According to Ball (1994), some policies change some of the circumstances in which we work; they
cannot change all the circumstances. To Riseborough (1992, quoted by Ball, 1994), “in a detailed analysis
of the policy responses of one primary headteacher, draws our attention to the importance of ‘secondary
adjustments’ in teachers’ engagement with policy: ‘teachers can create, through a repertoire of individual
and collective, “contained” and disruptive strategies, an empirically rich underlife to policy intention’ (p.
37). Generally, we have failed to research, analyse and conceptualize this underlife, the secondary
adjustments’ which relate teachers to policy and to state in different ways. We tend to begin by assuming
the adjustment of teaches and context to policy but not of policy to context. There is a privileging of the
policy maker’ reality. (Ball, 1994)
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networks and voices that are hegemonic – because they are powerful and more
attractive to the maintenance of the capitalist system. However, we cannot forget to
mention that, parallel to the hegemonic voices, there are the voices of teachers,
researchers, managers, publishing channels, which don’t give up their commitments
towards the construction of an egalitarian and democratic society. For this reason, such
people are not afraid of understanding education in the opposite direction of the
hegemonic models, or even of looking at these models and their material consequences
with criticism. In the same way, we could not forget to mention the importance of
educational projects that search for building alternative paths to the neoliberal and
managerialist models.

I wish all of you can benefit from all the discussions of this IV Colloquium.

Referências

ADRIÃO, T.; GARCIA, T.; BORGHI, R.; ARELARO, L. Uma modalidade peculiar de
privatização da educação pública: a aquisição de "sistemas de ensino" por municípios
paulistas. Educação & Sociedade, Campinas, v. 30, n. 108 , p. 799-818, 2009.

BALL, S. J. Education reform: a critical and post structural approach.

Buckingham: Open University Press. 1994.

BALL, S. J. Education for sale!: the commodification of everything?: the annual

education lecture, 2004. Electronic resource available on
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/05/16/42/lecture-ball.pdf

BALL, S. J. Voices/political networks and a global neoliberal curriculum. Keynote

address to the 4 th International Conference on Curriculum Policies and Practices -
Difference in curriculum policies, November 10 to 13, 2009, Universidade Federal da
Paraíba, João Pessoa – Paraíba – Brazil.

BENJAMIN, S. The micropolitics of inclusive education: an ethnography.

Buckingham: Open University Press, 2002.

BRASIL. O que é o Plano de Desenvolvimento da Educação? Disponível em

<http://portal.mec.gov.br/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=378
>. Acesso em: 20 out. 2009.

GEWIRTZ, S. The managerial school: post-welfarism and social justice in education.

London: Routledge, 2002.

GRACINDO, R. V. Notas sobre a educação básica no PDE. Retratos da escola, Brasília,

n. 1, 2007. Disponível em:

<http://www.cnte.org.br/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=701&Itemid=
146>. Acesso em: 21 out. 2009.
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FERREIRA, E. B. Políticas educativas no Brasil no tempo da crise. In: FERREIRA, E.

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MAINARDES, J; MARCONDES, M. I. . Entrevista com Stephen J. Ball: um diálogo

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Educação”. Práxis Educativa, Ponta Grossa, v. 4, n. 1, jan./jun. 2009. Disponível em:
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