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2004 6: 226Advances in Developing Human ResourcesPhyllis M. Cunningham

Critical Pedagogy and Implications for Human Resource Development

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10.1177/1523422304263430 ARTICLEAdvances for Developing Human Resources May 2004

Cunningham / CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND HRD

Critical Pedagogy andImplications for HumanResource Development

Phyllis M. Cunningham

The problem and the solution.When confronted with work-

place learning, personnel in human resource development

(HRD) tend to concentrate on internal processes,techniques to

manipulate behavior (performance), and yield to pervasive and

often pernicious accountability schemes that trivialize learning.

The standpoint of this article is to take a macro-historical viewcontextualizing the worker, the organization, and the entity

(capital) into an accountability framework that privileges quality

of life of citizens above commoditization and fast capitalism.

Keywords: critical pedagogy;capitalism;social dimension of learning;

politics of learning

What is our ultimate concern as educators wherever we practice our craft?

This is for many of us a central question. For it is on that concern that we

build our philosophy and our commitment. It is what keeps us from concep-

tualizing what we do as merely technique and ourselves as technicians. The

primary concern for any educator is to seek a better society as defined by itsparticipating citizens. This seems so patently clear that it is difficult to see

how we have gotten so caught up in disregarding the obvious.

The human being is more than an economic being; we are social, aes-

thetic, cultural, sexual beings, and we have many selves, many intelli-

gences, and many rationalities. There is more to life than work that has been

commoditizedand is defined by commodities. In fact,if we look critically at

our lives, we realize that we even must be programmed to desire these com-

modities and other desires must be obliterated in the process and made dor-

mant so that we become one-dimensional (Marcuse, 1964), responding pas-

sively to media manipulation (Haymes, 1995).

There is a growing literature critiquing Western society as rationally

gone mad or, put another way, push rationality to its extremes and you

become irrational (Briton, 1996; Collins, 1998; Hart, 1992). This was whatthe Frankfort school saw when it critiqued the enlightenment. For the

Advances in Developing Human Resources Vol. 6, No. 2 May 2004 226-240DOI: 10.1177/1523422304263430Copyright 2004 Sage Publications

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enlightenment, which had the promise of bringing a robust high civilization

through science and technology, also brought the dark efficiency and effec-tiveness of tyrannical Nazi concentration camps on the right and Stalins

gulagson theleft. In Germany, human beings were put on theassembly line.

One of the first human resource development (HRD) research experiments

occurred in thisdehumanizing environment (Nabb, 2002),underscoring the

importance of answering the why as well as the how question.

There are three purposes for this article. The first is to make explicit the

importance of the social dimension of learning. It will be argued that learn-

ing is dialectic between the personal and the social dimensions; that is to

say, persons are framed by and embedded in their social structures, and

social structures are constructed and shaped by persons. Therefore, an indi-

vidual cannot be understood or conceptualized outside of his or her social

and political context. The second purpose is to move from this social analy-

sis of learning to the historical and legal development of training that hasensued over the purpose of education in the workplace, using mainly

Schieds (2001) historical description of the roots of HRD as well as

Millons (2003) legal analysis of corporate personhood. The final purpose

of this article is to refer to the macro forces within globalization and link

worker education to the building of civil society.

Learning and Developing Human Resources

Is Not Simply an Individual Activity

Phyllis, you know what this training in industry is all about dont you? . . . Its about con-trolthats what its about. (Steven Treffman, doctoral student, University of Chicago, 1969)

MonicaLee (2001)provideda typology of four gradientswhen sherefuses to

defineHRD. She calls HRD devised by ownersas a shaping gradient because

owners are shaping the workers and controlling them. She contrasts that to the

emergent gradient as one in which workers are in charge and in which very

different outcomes might occur than in the shaping gradient. Lee goes on to

point out that HRD is complex, and depending on your philosophythe why

questiontherearedifferent approachesand different activities and verydiffer-

ent discourses going on. In sociological terms, there is both a manifest and a

latent function to training, thus Treffmans astute observation. If one wishes to

shape workers, one turns to psychology.

Rubenson (1989) argued that North American adult education has been

psychologized. By that,he means that thepracticeof adult education, which his-

toricallycentereditself incivilsocietyas a voluntaryactivityand could be foundin citizen actions and on the edge of social movements (and in the labor move-

ment), has been transformed into a field based on the analysis of the individual.

In fact, Rubenson argues that

C u nn i ng h am / C R IT I C AL P E DAG OG Y A ND H RD 2 27



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the psychological domination of adult education in North America prevents a serious and muchneededpenetrationof the theoreticaland empiricalproblemsposed in the two questions:Towhatextentdoes education make societybetter by makingit more egalitarian andto what extent doeseducation legitimize and even enhance, existing social and economic inequalities? (p. 66)

This author is inagreementwith Rubenson,preferring to think of theindivid-

ual as biography. By this, meaning that the very notion of individual is socially

constructed; that is, an individual is contextualized in thehistory, culture, and

social fabric of the society in which he lives. This personal biography intersects

and interacts with social structures. In thinking of a person as biography, the

authors intent is to avoid the limitations of constructivist psychology (i.e.,

Candy, 1991) or social interactionists (i.e., London, 1964), in which thefocus is

stillon theindividual(Cunningham, 1998),wishing neither toprivilege theindi-

vidual nor the structures but to see both in a dialectical relationship. For it is the

education of adults as it occurs in social movements in relationship to social

structures that is the basis of the critical pedagogy of adults (Briton, 1996; Col-lins, 1991; Hart, 1992; Newman, 1994; Zacharakis-Jutz, 1988).

To understand this fetish of individualizing, we have to see that biogra-

phycapturesthe concept that a personis distinct notonly because of biology

but because of history and the social/polit ical constructions of race, gender,

and social class in which he was born. It is at these intersections that we find

the complex person. But in North America, we have championed a disem-

bodied individual who is made central to our politics and our educational

conceptualizations. We act as though individuals have no debt to their social

groupbutwhere do individuals find their culture, their values, their ethics,

their meaning in life if it is not from their group?

It is the group-society that is constructed by individuals and then

becomes a force to shape the very individuals that constructed it. Thus,

looking out at our environment and naming it and giving meaning to it ishow we construct ourselves socially, and it is these social constructions that

become our reality and then these constructions in turn affect who we

become (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

Shain (1994) wrote that in North America, a dilemma developed in regard to

moral issues as to the

preeminence to be awarded the publics needs over those of the individual, the protection ofnonconformingindividuals or ethnic or religious minorities, the best means of fostering humanflourishing and the appropriateness of public ethical intrusions into the self-regarding behaviorof the individual.

Each ofthesetwo patternsof thought,one communal andthe otherindividualistic,[theolderone] was a localistic oral culture based on face-to-face relations while the newer one wasabstract, general, and based on the written word. The first pattern was popular while the otherwas based on a formal tradition in the custody of elites. (p. 147)

One can see that Adam Smiths ideas have strongly influenced one form of

adult education called HRD. For Adam Smith, charity was a weakness, not

strength. For him, it was not love but ambition and self-seeking effort that was a

228 Advances for Developing Human Resources May 2004



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humans leading virtue. He believed that individuals should fend for themselves

and have the freedom to enjoy whatever their initiative and hard work earn(Watt, 1989, pp. 16-17). This was their contribution to society, and it was

assumed that there were no powerful social structures shaping socialactivity. In

other works, social mobility in an idealized society replaced the idea of social

change (Moghaddam, 1997, p. 105).

Dewey (as quoted in Watt, 1989), more than 80 years ago, criticized the

domination of large corporations over the economy and its efforts on mak-

ing workers private and egoistic: An economic individualism of motives

and aims underlies our present corporate mechanisms, and undoes the indi-

vidual (pp. 102-103). Dewey (1916) distinguished between ideological

individualism, characterized as egoism privileging the wealthy with the free

development of the individual within a sense of community. Deweys cri-

tique of individualism included moral grounds: Moral individualism is set

up by the conscious separation of different centers of life. It has its roots inthe notion that the consciousness of each person is wholly private, a self-

enclosed continent, intrinsically independent of the ideas, wishes, purposes

of everybody else (p. 297).

If one critiquesself-directed learning, level playing field, educationas an

equal opportunity role sorter, and niched learning, these may unduly

emphasize individual in its rawest sense. Several years ago at the national

meeting of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education

(AAACE), there were two major general session speakers: First, a human

resource (HR) person from Sprint described todays workplacecomput-

ers in your car, at home, in the office, on the lapcheck indo you have a

jobcheck daily. Are you efficient?if not, goodbye, and if yes, how can

you become more efficient? She argued that you are an individual and you

should recognize that the employers responsibility is to increase your

productivity, not to give you a job.

The second speaker spoke of a new industry being created to help indi-

viduals market themselves in case they were pink slipped. It was a career

counseling service. Be ready in case you are fired. Keep preparing for a new

position. This was unbelievable. The uncritical nature of those presenta-

tions modeled a too frequent response of adult educators. Uncritically, edu-

cate workers to thenew workplace. Our primary goal in education is to make

productive workers or, in HRD-ese, its all about performance (Swanson

& Arnold, 1997). These were the major messages for educators at a national

conference. In the field of HRD, practice is typically viewed as a process

for developing and unleashing humanexpertise through organization devel-

opment and personnel training and development for the purpose of improv-ing performance (Swanson & Holton, 2001, p. 4). Learning is subordinate

to performance.

The newest buzzwords picked up at that AAACE conference were

high-performance culture and portability. High-performance culture




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meant uncritically making morewidgets faster and with quality, and porta-

bility was a new way of letting workers know that they are unimportant tothe employer because any skills learned on the job are yours and are porta-

ble. So if we can keep the workers eye on her individual skills portabil-

ityshe wont be upset with being a contingent worker, a just-in-time hire,

an objectof right sizing, or wonderingwhy shehas an ulcer because of being

technologically wired all day. After all, she is storing up free human capital

every day at the employers expense.

Martin (2000) argued that there are two discourses of citizenship that

dominate current adult education policy and practice; one sees the adult

learner as worker or producer and the other sees her as consumer or cus-

tomer. Both are economic interpretations with adult education seen as a

commodity. Martin rejects this interpretation as being too narrow and

argues that it must include active citizenship and social inclusion.

This myth of individualism permeates education at the workplace per-haps more strongly than in any other form of adult education. It has isolated

the worker for even in team learning, the independent variable is perfor-

mance. Thus, the language is instrumental, the central reasons for coopera-

tion are economic, and if there are personal payoffs, they are incidental or

accidental. This is not learning for living, it is learning for economic survival

for avoiding the pink slip or the downsizing.

Summary and Implications

Theimportant questionsbecome: What does it mean to be a worker? How

do we acquire our skill s? How do we feel about what we do or make? How

do we feel about what we know? Clearly, where scientific managementseparated knowledge about work from the worker, the workplace became

populated with skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers. A systematic

de-skilling of the worker occurred so that in 2004, we may have so effi-

ciently de-skilled the workplace that we can increase efficiency without

employing workers. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves if we should continue

de-skilling. Why not leave tacit knowledge alone? We have yet to see

whether the jobless economic recoverycontinues with the economic indica-

tors rising but not the employment rate. Or we can think seriously about a

30-hour workweek and start educating for leisure.

Wycliff (2003) suggested that we work toohard (or toomuch) as Americans.

We should relax more. Clearly, we vacation less than any other industrialized

country. But Wycliff is arguing that leisure is important by quoting Thoreau:

Actually thelaboringman hasnot leisurefor a true integrityday by day; he cannotafford to sus-tainthe manliest relations to men; his labor wouldbe depreciated in the market. He hasnot timeto be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorancewhich his growthrequireswho has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously




7/16

sometimes,and recruit himwith ourcordials, beforewe judge of him. Thefinest qualities of ournature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only the most delicate handling. (p. 21)

Whatever the case, surely we need to think anew.


Is Not Solely for Organizational Productivity

Schied (2001) built a critical historical analysis of present-day HRD by

examining three themes: (a) Taylorism and the emergence of corporate

training, (b) the capitulation of labor at the bargaining table post World War

II, and (c) the hegemonic grip of human capital theory on the practice of

HRD. In these three themes, Scheid searches for the origins and social

forces that forged the social structures that frame training today, thus allow-

ing us to move to a macro analysis of workplace learning.Taylorism and scientific management supported by the growth of tech-

nology allowed control to move from the worker to the manager. Schied

(2001) has credited Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne studies as legitimizing

human relations and providing us conceptually with workers as flawed by

their psychological needs and their personal situation or as Schied sug-

gests, there are no robust collective autonomous union voices in solidarity

now we have an individual worker in deficit. Industrial psychology came

into being and the manipulation of individual workers by what Monica Lee

(2001) calls the shaping gradient is standard operating procedure (SOP).

Schied (2001) noted that following World War II, theunions were at their

greatest strength and shared involvement in many aspects of running the

shop floor, including training in some industries. In short, labor sought and,

in some instances, co-managed the industry. Co-management did not occurpermanently, however. Rather, because of complex social forces, unions

accepted dramatic increases in wages, strong pension plans, and health and

vacation days in exchange for giving up their demands around co-manage-

ment (p. 130). Training reverted to the personnel function and over the

years it has become a tool for shaping and controlling workers behavior in

more and more seductive and sophisticated ways. Motivating workers

became the new goal, and interpersonal skills training and human technolo-

giesbecame the means. Thisorientation fitwell withhuman capital theory.

Human capital theory is the myth that equates a direct positive relation-

ship of years of education to lifetime earnings and work productivity in the

general population without any direct evidence to support this thesis. It

appeared to hold true for White males in the United States in the sixties

when there were numerous class, racial, and gender discriminations ineffect relative to who got jobs. It has been shown not to hold true in numer-

ous othersituations (Baptiste, 1994; Berg, 1970; Freeman, 1976). However,

theperception of reality is often as good as reality when it comes to develop-




8/16

ing public or even corporate policy. So we constantly train workers for jobs

that may or may not exist. If the worker remains unemployed or is down-sized or right sized, this is most often perceived to be the workers prob-

lem, not the fact that there may not be enough jobs out there for the workers

who are trained.

Human capital theory undergirds notonly educationin theworkplace but

also education within schools, colleges, and universities. The corporatizing

of schools speaks to the vocationalization of the curriculum in which much,

if not all, of learning is geared toward earning. Production rules the class-

room not only in the content that is taught but in the processes that are used

(Collins, 1983, 1991). Martin (2000, p. 9) described the new world for us as

narrowly conceived with economist forms of vocationalism and compe-

tence; one in which we are forced to operate in an educational market place

in which knowledge becomes commodified and credentializedand in

particular, its workers are subjected to the rigors of the new managerialism,enforcing an accountants view on which we know the cost of everything

and the value of nothing. To sum up, we are in danger of becoming the com-

pliant purveyors of merely useful knowledge (i.e., knowledge that is con-

structed to make people productive, profitable, and quiescent workers) as

distinct from the active agents of really useful knowledge (i.e., knowl-

edge that is calculated to enable people to become autonomous and, if

necessarydissenting citizens).

Welton (1995) captured the tension of danger and opportunity with his

notion of the lifeworld as a site of contradictory possibilityemancipatory

learning or routine domestication. He applies Habermass notion of

lifeworld and civil society as an endangered species to opportunities for

lifelong learning; the fate of critical education is tied to the fate of the

lifeworld. Habermas views the fundamental problem of social theory as

knowing how to connect the system and the lifeworld (Welton, 1995, p.

141). Habermas believes that theprimarythreat to humankindand society is

not economic exploitation or political ideologies but rather the encroach-

ment of bureaucratic systems in social relationships, which will make it lose

its characteristic human quality and become formalized. Civil society is

under siege because of the desiccation of the political public sphere

(Welton, 1995, p. 144; see also Holst, 2002).

Schied is persuasive in demonstrating from the shop-floor perspective

how the struggle has brought us to the present-day arrangements whereby

educators uncritically not only mis-educate on the shop floor, metaphori-

cally speaking,but alsohave developed a humanistic linguistic code to mask

its true aim. Martin (2000) and Welton (1993, 1995) moved the analysis tothe community, civil society, and the commons. This brings us to the legal

critique that takes a differenttact because it questions who is part of thecon-

tract legally at the point of production.




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The corporate personhood analysis is a legal approach to question the

legitimacy of shareholder primacy or wealth maximization. The argumentstarts with thequestioningof thelegal statusof a corporation.Is thecorpora-

tion an entity, an aggregate of person, a natural entity (a person), or a set of

contracts? All these definitions have been argued, according to Millon

(2003), in different historical periods. The entity concept opened up

legally the notion that shareholder primacy and wealth maximization was

illegitimate because there were social costs incurred that were legitimate.

These socialcosts also hada claim on profits such as employeelayoffs,plant

closings, poor working conditions, environmental pollution, and financial

restructuring. In fact, in the thirties, citizenship theorists substituted a pub-

lic notion of corporate law, based on the public effects of corporate activity

which applied a much richer notion of obligation than a unitary duty to

shareholders (p. 11).

These ideas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) were countered byproperty rights claims, but according to Millon (2003), the issue of

personhood was side-stepped. A corporation cannot be a person and, at the

same time,property. So it is notstrangeto seethe CSRargument resurfacein

the sixties and again in the seventies with Ralph Nader but with a different

argument. The concerns remain, but the argument is now to federalize cor-

porate lawnot to make good citizens but to control Goliaths.

More recent analysts prefer to argue nexus of contracts and undermine

the corporate person as legal fiction. The contractarians would like to dis-

pose of moral obligation, but clearly, even individuals that enter into con-

tracts have obligations to one another. Some communitarians argue that

nonshareholders rely on fair dealing and thus there is a moral obligation on

shareholder primacy. Thus, contractarians and communitarians face off on

normative arguments just as those arguing corporate personhood. Millon

concludes that the question of corporate personhood remains too indetermi-

nate; his solution is to stay with personal obligation within contracts, thus

holding persons who makedecisions responsible for both shareholder inter-

ests and negotiated nonshareholders/social interests.


A broad analysis of the evolution of HRD in the United States helps us to

understand the limitations of analyzing HRD as performance because it is

clear that (a) there are other legitimate interests in the contract besides

shareholdersincluding workers, the community, the environment; (b)

both the manifest and latent functions of training can be made clear and

options on the type or gradient of HRD one wishes to offer could be put on

the table; and (c) the importance of externalities to the analysis of work and

education are made clear and become tools to interrogate oppressive condi-




10/16

tions. One sees that it is simplistic to buy into the notion that it is only those

who put up the financial capital that have dibs on the ROI. There are severalinvestors who have invested in the process, and the worker, the community,

and the environment are legitimate investors. We need to start thinking that

way.


Takes Place in Broad Social Cultural Contexts

The World Bank, International Monetary fund (IMF), the World Trade

Organization(WTO), and the G8 (sevenof the worlds richest countriesplus

Russia) have become household words in North America. Forced out of

more than 50 years of relative obscurity, the power brokers from rich coun-

tries, which formerly have privately strategized the fate of unrepresented

poor countries, must now operate in the open. Furthermore, their agendas

are not only being analyzed but they have been changed. No longer is profit

maximization for the favored few or structural adjustment requirement for

debtor nations the dominant concerns. Now, debt relief, environmental

issues, disease control, and poverty are also on the agenda for discussion

and for action.

Who put these new items on the agenda? Who brought these activities of

financial institutions controlled by wealthy nations out into the sunlight for

inspection? It began with the WTO meetings in Seattle and continued with

thousands of uninvited protesters from dozens of social movements travel-

ingwherever theG8, World Bank, IMF, and WTO met. Most recently, it was

Cancun. It was in Seattle that the Turtles and the Teamsters challenged

both the state and the markets legitimacy. Now labeled collectively asthe anti-globalization movement, these thousands of movement members

called the globalization agenda into question. Old and new social move-

ments educated the public with their knowledge created through their col-

lective critical analysis. This is education from the bottom up (Arato &

Cohen, 1984). But is it a losing battle? Why is this challenge in the streets?

Whyisnt italso going on insidethe workplace? This is therelevant question

for us.

If we conceive of macro social structures consisting of the state, the mar-

ket, and civil society, clearly the market appears to be in control. If we

assume that the state has the responsibility to protect and provide a quality

of life for its citizens and that one of its functions is to regulate the market,

we realize that we have a problem. The robust concept of lifelong learning

put forth by UNESCO in 1970 has been gutted of its emancipatory potentialto essentially have one goaldevelopment of human capital (Rubenson,

2001). We note that globalization has weakened state sovereignty and that

neo-liberal policy (structural adjustment) demands that the state shrink its




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social welfare and social benefits and that the state be in competition with

other sovereign statesin a race forthe bottom. That is to say, to lure privateinvestment, states compete in offering better tax incentives, lax environ-

mental regulations, and weaker labor laws for workers. These activities, for

the most part, promote and strengthen corporations (the market) while col-

lateral damage is done to the environment and the resources of the state.

Accordingly, civil society becomes even more important. It is this motley

collection of voluntary associations, clubs, not-for-profit organizations, and

social movements that is theone collective force that can provide the balance to

offset the intrusive power of both the market and the state on the citizenry.

Hoagland (2001) commented on the point that there is a limit to market forces,

as follows:

The authentic backlash they (the protestors) have helped spark is a reaction against the compla-

cent andgreedy version of globalizationthat hasbeen widelyhypedand sold in themarketplaceof ideas and goods. Criminals and charlatans have joined capitalists in taking advantage of theeras greater flowof trade,capital, and technologyacross national borders.Internetservices turnout to be handy tools, not value-changing spreaders of prosperity and peacefor better and forworse, destiny is not an inevitable product of market force alone but also of human intent andwill. (p. 25)

The process of globalization is as old as colonialism but has recently been

intensifiedby themobility of capital andlabor to transcendnational boundaries.

The impact of the so-called free trade policies and economic theory that privi-

leges the market has strongly affected education. Qualitatively, it has

corporatized not only workerseducation but also the formal schooling system

and its curriculum into a market orientation (Press & Washburn, 2000) with a

disposableor rotatingworkforceand theeconomicsqueezing (structural adjust-

ment) of educational and social safety nets from the public sector. Where is the

curriculum for citizenship? Where do the schools promote social goals? What

educational effort is placed on what the individual owes to society? Our

response to these questions is that rarely do our modern schools or does HRD

educate for either citizenship or social responsibility. We have corporatizedpub-

lic schools and universities in form and function. We pay very little attention to

civil society, concentrating our resources instead on serving the market. Obvi-

ously, it is not in the interest of the corporations to have an independent critical

workforce, much less an independent critical citizenry mobilized into a strong

civil society. Such a situation would balance off the distribution of power not

only in the workplace but also at global forums as well.

Thesepressureson formal education forceprogressive adult educators to

the nonformal and informal approaches to education provided in social

movements(Cunningham, 1989). Here is where onecan link theimportanceof communicative rationality and the recapturing of our lifeworlds from

the devouring technical rationality imposed by the market. Economic activ-

ity must be subdued if it attacks the commons, the social fabric, the commu-

nity. The appropriate goal for economic activity is to build community, not




12/16

privilege, for individuals. Social justice has to be as important as economic

growth. The question is: Can it be done in the workplace?Finger introduced the idea of learning our way out through social move-

ments. He started a debate in North America on how knowledge-oriented

societies bring about change. He saw new socialmovements as purveyors of

new knowledge (Finger & Asun, 2001). Because Finger discarded moder-

nity and focused on personal transformation, he evoked considerable criti-

cism (Holford, 1995; Spencer, 1995; Welton, 1993). However, he deserves

our appreciation for drawing the fields attention to the poverty and narrow

vision of formal adult education. He reminded us of our roots, whereby

adult educationwas aboutdemocratic social change not simply tooling up

workers. The current high interest in lifelong learning is related to global-

ization. Still, globalization is an unexamined concept by many adult

educators.

However, persons such as Welton (1995) and Spencer (1995) haveargued that those in HRD are not exempt. There is no permanent rapproche-

ment until those in HRD engage in critical pedagogy in the workplace as

should their colleagues in academe.

Globalization is defined in many ways. A simpledefinition is that it is the

compression of time and space aspects of social relations as well as the

intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole. The most direct

result of globalization is the race to the bottom itself, the reduction in

labor, social, and environmental conditions that results directly from the

global competition between states for jobs and investments. And who is in

chargedriving the bargaining? It is the marketthe chair maker or the

sneaker producerlooking for more profit. The direct result of this compe-

tition is a lowering of average wages (a decline of 15% in the United States

since 1973), slashing of social benefits (subsidized housing, education,

health care, economic safety net), temping of the workforce, and longer

hours for the worker. We have environmental degradation, exponential

growth in greenhouse gases, and overharvesting of national resources in the

name of profit and power. Finally, the accumulation of debt causes the

money that is earned to be spent on debt reduction rather than consumption,

investment, and development (Brecher & Costello, 1994).

Among some of the aspects of globalization noted by Brecher, Costello, and

Smith (2000, pp. 2-4) are:

1. Production: In the seventies, corporations expanded their factories intolow-wage countries. Currently, the U.S. offshore production is 3 timesthe total value of all American exports.

2. Finance: More than$1.5 trillionflows daily across international borders.Private financial flow to developing countries grew from $44 billion in1990 to $256 billion 7 years later, a 480% increase. New terms such asfast capitalism, casino capitalism, and turbo capitalism were coined tocapture this activity.




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3. Change in global institutions: TheWTO, IMF, and theWorld Bank have

enlarged their powers and through their policies accelerated the global-ization process. Debtorcountries in theSouth paid creditors in theNorth$6.5billion in interest and$6 billion in principlepaymentspermonth,asmuch as the entire Third World spends on education and health.

4. Diminution of the sovereignty of the state: Capital mobility underminesthe regulation of corporations; environmental and social protection hasbeen weakened; and neo-liberal ideology encouraging privatization,deregulation, open markets, deflationary austerity and the dismantlingof the welfare state were accepted or imposed on governments all overthe world.

Among this litany of how multinationalcorporate powers seeminglyoperate

without restraint, there have been a number of corporate breakdowns in the

United States: ENRON, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, and most recently, the

New York Stock Exchange, the top-of-the-line regulatory agency. Huffington

(2003) reported that the nonpartisan coalition of state taxing authorities, theMultistate Tax Commission, released its studystating thatcorporate tax shelters

hadcost states$12.4 billion in 2001. Companiessheltering their assetsoverseas

drain another $70 billion from the federal tax treasury. And fast capitalism con-

tinues its egoistic, individualistic journey. One can only stand back, amazed.


Can we as adult educatorsworking most closely with thecorporate world

ignore these facts? It is argued here that our vision should be one that would

attempt to learn our way out, not to promote performance to an entity.

We need to educate workers on globalism, both from above and below.

Workers need to be aware of their history and what is going on in labormovements in other countries. We could certainly do a better job in univer-

sity HRD curricula. It would be interesting to know how much labor history

or labor education is taught in HRD curricula. To what degree are students

made aware that many corporations are greedy and impossible places for

principled educators to work? How are HRD personnel helped to gain tools

for critical analysis?

Conclusion

Learning in the workplace is not about technique; it is about philosophy.

No one in HRD can escape the broader questions as to why they are educat-

ing workers and what is the function of training in the workplace. Issues of

powershould be central in thecurriculum,and it startsby challenging share-holder primacy as the only legitimate investor in the workplace. Workers

andthe public interest arealso at thetable as legitimate partakers. We arenot

egoistic disembodied contractarians. We are human beings whom all have

lives outside of the workplace with families and in the community. We can




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be educators who refuse to learn from history, deniers of global facts, pro-

crastinators that hope the problem will go away, but inevitably the situationwill confront us. It seems it is time for a critical turn in HRD.

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