How Can a Teacher's Professional Integrity be Sustained Given the Neoliberal Pressures on School Leaders Today?

Introduction

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Neoliberalism is an ideology that presently permeates every facet of society. Neoliberalism refers to an economic and political ideology that advocates against intrusive government policies in the domestic market. The philosophy places great emphasis on free-market approaches that entail fewer restrictions on businesses. The focus is on maintaining state involvement at a bare minimum. It is quite perturbing, however, that the same concept that supports autonomy from intrusive government practices has been manipulated over time to limit the independence that it purports to promote. The outcome is a myriad of neoliberal pressures that make it problematic for teachers to practice their profession with the requisite professional integrity. For instance, while teachers have the penultimate professional mandate to ensure the welfare of their students, they have to limit their teaching to the confines permitted to further capitalist interests. The purpose of this paper is to offer an in-depth analysis of what impact neoliberalism has had on education practices across the country. To be precise, the discussion tackles the history of the philosophy, its application in contemporary society, and how it manifests in terms of neoliberal pressures that limit teachers from sustaining their professional integrity. The analysis establishes that it is problematic to sustain professional integrity given the magnitude of neoliberal inhibitions imposed on school leaders and teachers. Even so, the paper explores a suite of pragmatic steps that educators are applying or need to implement to achieve optimal integrity in spite of the extant neoliberal pressures. The measures include engaging in activism to advocate for greater autonomy, departing from the undue focus placed on standardised assessments, and generating an enriching curriculum coupled with the delivery of a well-rounded education.

The Rise of Neoliberalism

The term neoliberalism captures the impulse to transform everything into a business, define all societal aspects from the purview of markets, and render public services private. The liberal used here alludes to the orthodox libertarian economics that is attributable to Adam Smith and the Chicago School. Harvey (2005, p. 2) defines neoliberalism as a model of political-economic policies that proposes that humanitys welfare is best achievable by freeing up entrepreneurial acumen and freedoms in a setting that strengthens private property rights coupled with free trade and markets. In essence, neoliberalism places great emphasis on the significance of free markets and maintains, in spite of all irrefutable proof to the contrary, that market-based solutions are the best response to all manner of crises. Neoliberalism gained much traction during Margaret Thatchers administration. Prior to the advent of this ideology, Keynesianism governed economic policy after enabling nations to regain their footing following the failure of capitalism. After World War II, Keynesian policies gained traction as the government strived to maximise social welfare as enshrined in noble goals such as poverty relief and full employment. Novel public services sprouted in every industry and the government unabashedly implemented safety nets. At the time neoliberals were seen as both irrelevant and extreme, as their policies cast a not so formidable shadow to populism, protectionism, socialism, and in particular Keynesian economics (Verhaenge, 2014).

Keynesian economics holds that government involvement in monetary and market policy along with spending by the public sector to resolve the issues inherent to capitalism. However, this trend changed in the 1970s following the onset of economic crises and as Keynesian policies fell apart prompting the adoption of neoliberal notions. Governments warmed up to neoliberal policies as adherents saw it as the best chance of triggering optimal recovery. Margaret Thatcher took power and spearheaded even greater neoliberal reforms such as massive tax cuts for the wealthy, limiting the power of trade associations, advancing outsourcing, creating competition even for public services, privatisation of public companies, and deregulation. The collapse of Keynesian economics and the arrival of economic contraction, inflation, instability of exchange rate, underinvestment, and capital flight that spanned several years boosted neoliberal thinking. The onset of the economic downturn in the 1970s created room for Chicago School adherents to lobby for the abandonment of Keynesian economics in favour of free market policies. Critical to neoliberal economics was the need to limit public spending (except defence), reduce taxes, privatise government enterprises (including health, schools, and prisons), and deregulation. Other pertinent suggestions included de-unionisation as well as financialisation, which refers to a shift from manufacturing and industry to market speculation, particularly conducted using abstract derivative tools.

Unlike the Keynesian model, the role of the government under capitalism is to simply create and maintain an environment that is well-suited for property ownership and free trade. For instance, the government can give the surety of the integrity and quality of the countrys currency (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). It also had the mandate to establish the defence, military, legal, and police structures that are appropriate to secure individual rights and guarantee the optimal functioning of markets, even if this necessitates the use of force (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). Other than that, it is the governments responsibility to privatise public services. If markets are absent, in key areas such as healthcare, education, water, land, environmental protection, and social security, then it befalls the government to create the markets, by state action if need be (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). The proponents of neoliberalism posited that creating markets in such key sectors would be beneficial in terms of fuelling economic growth. Additionally, stiff competition would act as an appropriate check within the industries, thus, ensuring that quality and pricing standards remained satisfactory for the benefit of the consumers. The government should, however, not try to venture beyond these tasks and keep its involvement in the market at a bare minimum (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). The assumption here is that the government does not possess adequate information or data to second-guess market signals such as prices (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). In any case, influential interest groups will inexorably distort as well as bias government interventions, especially in democratic systems, to favour their own interests (Barnett, 2010, p. 3). Today, neoliberal policies are highly deployed and mobilised by left-wing political activists and academics (Larner, 2006, p. 450).

The end of the Second World War came at a time when citizens were advocating for equal rights across the country. Women fought for equal rights in education, domestically, at work, and politically. Workers, on their part, strived to have better pay and working conditions and rallied together to strengthen their initiative. Governments and corporations responded by developing policies that limited personal liberties and the workers power to negotiate for better terms. These efforts yielded policies that fostered economic prosperity coupled with high corporate profits. In essence, neo-liberal regulations were a stark contrast from Keynesian policies that majored on achieving general societal welfare rather than meeting the interests of a select few. Neo-liberal policies majored on extensive economic deregulation, the liberalisation of trade, the supremacy of the financial sector rather than commerce or manufacturing, and public sectors dismantling (including health, education, and social welfare). Even international organisations such as the IMF and World Bank encourage governments to adopt economic policies that prioritise economic prosperity along with property rights at the expense of personal liberties and overall societal welfare.

The scale of economic growth registered after the application of neoliberal economics does not match the Keynesian era, but the wealthy minority benefited considerably. As a result, wealth disparities grew exponentially as the bourgeoisie began to favour restrictive education policies to drive their capitalist interests and keep the masses engaged in work in pursuit of the penultimate goal of owning property at some point. The income and wealth gap that narrowed during the Keynesian era began to rise rapidly as trade unions lost their voice, taxes for the rich reduced, rents rose, deregulation, and privatisation of even the most fundamental services including education. The privatisation of basic public services ripped the social safety net endeavours. Governments overregulate citizens and yet choose to deregulate corporations. From the current vantage point over four decades since the execution of this far-reaching experiment, it is now evident that neoliberalism was a glum failure. Even so, the government continues to extrapolate the same ineffective ideology and apply them to every sector, including education. The outcome leaves a lot to be desired given the adverse impact it has on the freedom of educators to practice their profession perfectly and in accordance with pertinent ethics codes.

The Impact of Neoliberal Policies on Contemporary Educational Standards

The adherents of neoliberalism set out to remake the world, and education, even the world of education (Robertson, 2008, p. 2). Over four decades after the far-reaching adoption of neoliberal policies, the neoliberal utopia remains elusive, as the ideology that soon fell under the manipulation of a select few continues to cause substantial carnage in its wake, and the education sector is not an exception. The reality is that decades of neoliberal policies, privatisation, and free-market forces have already taken their toll as the unrelenting pressure to achieve is now normative (Verhaeghe, 2014, para 1). As Robertson (2008, p. 2) so tersely articulates, out with the collective and welfare; in with the individual and freedom. The supposed freedom was a mere illusion as individualism became entrenched in literally every societal facet. In essence, this tectonic change has transformed the public discourse concerning learners and teachers along with the educational policies pursued by and executed by the government, precisely through the NCLB (Robertson, 2008, p. 2). More precisely, it has altered the conditions of knowledge production, along with the spaces and sites for claims-making around education (Robertson, 2008, p. 2). It is remarkable to take notice that neo-liberalism diminishes the individual autonomy that it purports to promote, as evidenced in the increasingly intrusive way that governments control the lives of teachers and students. Neo-liberalism typically entails a critique of intrusion by the state into peoples lives, but is seen to foster the deployment of the same policies that it opposes.

This situation begs the question of why the same ideology that permits independence in the economic realm cannot have the same result in education. The only response to this is that the government and capitalists are either fostering systems that inhibit choice and personal autonomy as a way of manipulating the system to work in their favour only or merely acting under an erroneous assumption. The latter position is highly unlikely. Today, education is undergoing incremental transformation to match the competitive goals th...