How Globalization Can Cause Change

7/28/2019 How Globalization Can Cause Change

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LEONARD J. WAKS

HOW GLOBALIZATION CAN CAUSE FUNDAMENTAL

CURRICULUM CHANGE: AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT. Globalization, unlike 20th century social and economic developments, will

cause fundamental rather than merely incremental educational change. Globalization

refers to a complex of technological and economic factors including the global spread

of communication technology networks, and the global integration of product and labor

markets.

I argue that (1) there is a powerful new alliance among elites and educational con-

sumers for fundamental change; (2) globalization destabilizes the internal processes of

school organizations that constrain fundamental change, motivating educators to innovate;

(3) globalization erodes the institutional categories of public discourse that hold stand-ard school practice in place, allowing a shadow institution of non-standard educational

agencies to form; and (4) new synthetic visions of educational institutions in better accord

with models of rational action in networked environments, are being formulated; and (5)

these are now guiding a convergence of piecemeal innovations towards a fundamentally

transformed institutional pattern.

I. GLOBALIZATION AND CURRICULUM CHANGE

The field of educational change has until recently concentrated on schoolsand school systems as units of analysis, glossing over macro-forces driving

change at the institutional level. But scholars in the field now acknowledgethe need to extend their reach. In the Introduction to the Pushing theBoundaries of Educational Change section of the International Handbookof Educational Change, editor Andy Hargreaves argues that by extending

and deepening our understanding of educational change beyond the bound-aries of what is usually addressed in the field (we) can really strengthenhow we think about change and deal with it in action (p. 283).

In the introduction to the Handbooks chapter on Globalization and

Educational Change (Wells et al., 1998) the editors add: there is nogreater context for educational change than that of globalization, norno grander way of conceptualizing what educational change is about

(p. 322). But in that chapter Wells and her co-authors acknowledge upfront that few educational researchers or theorists have attempted to makeconnections between the economic, political and cultural dimensions ofglobalization and the policies and practices of education (p. 343). Thus

Journal of Educational Change 4: 383418, 2003.

2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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they aim merely to provide a broad overview of interpretations of global-ization and their implications for education, leaving it to other scholars tothink more carefully . . . about globalization . . . (and the) various ways

it affects the educational change process (p. 344).In this paper I discuss the impact of globalization upon curriculum

change, arguing that unlike earlier social and economic developments,globalization will cause fundamental rather than merely incremental

change. This topic is not as narrow as might initially be thought becausefundamental curriculum change has implications not merely for subjectmatter selection, but also for instructional methods, technology utilization,organization and administration.

As the term globalization is vague and contested, it will be usefulin this introduction to situate my argument within the field of competinginterpretations of globalization before considering its fundamental impacton curriculum change.

1. Globalization

I will be using the term globalization as a carry-all term referring to

an interacting complex of forces including (a) an economic dimension,comprised of a rise in the ratio of cross-border trade and direct foreigninvestment to total economic activity, and global integration of productmarkets increasing competition between providers from different nations,

as well as (b) a technological dimension, the spread of global communi-cation technology networks. Globalization in this sense has resulted ina reorganization of trans-national enterprises: large, vertically organizedfirms have been transformed to global business networks of downsized

flagship firms, small supplier firms, competitor firms, government agen-cies, and universities.1 To enhance competitiveness, many American firmshave re-engineered their work systems to include worker participation incross-functional teams using knowledge and information in novel ways

for rapid response to global opportunities. Telecommunications networkshave enabled this shift, and have also spread to homes, generating newopportunities for home-based enterprise, learning, and consumption. Thesechanges, I will argue, constitute powerful forces for curriculum change.

There is widespread agreement that globalization in the indicated senseis taking place, though commentators differ about its extent, variability andsocietal consequences. Wells et al. (1998) divide these commentators into

four groups, three of which agree that globalization is a significant drivingforce of change, though they differ on the predictions and evaluationsthey make of its societal effects. For them Neo-liberals such as MiltonFreidman see globalization in terms of open markets. Because goods and


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FUNDAMENTAL CURRICULUM CHANGE 385

financial assets are sold on an open global market, nation states have lostcontrol of their economies and the power to control the value of theircurrencies. This decreased power of the state will, in their view, remove

economic inefficiencies, resulting in economic growth and consequently,greater prosperity. They prescribe that public education be privatized viacharter schools, voucher programs, or out-sourcing of educational servicesto private, for-profit firms to take advantage of market efficiencies.

Liberal progressives such as Robert Reich (1992) agree that globaleconomic liberalization will result in efficiencies in both the public andprivate sectors. But they contend that it will also result in social inequalitiesand environmental destruction unless economic liberalization is accom-

panied by international agreements protecting basic social, political andenvironmental rights. They seek to strengthen public education to preserveeducation as a universal right, but they also seek to reform it so that it mayprovide occupational skills relevant in the global economy. Thus they also

support charter schools as one way of using market mechanisms to supportthese school reforms.

Neo-marxists such as Stanley Aronowitz, agree that globalizationgenerates social inequalities. But they are skeptical about the efficacy ofaction by the liberal state to ameliorate these, and seek instead to challenge

the global capitalist order and its state apparatus through direct actionorganized by trans-national alliances of labor and human rights activists a Seattle approach to resisting globalization. In education some neo-marxists advocate critical pedagogy to encourage the resistance of youngpeople and the formation of personal identities specific to their ethnic,gender and class positions. Some also support charter schools, where

workers and ethnic minorities can gain control over the education of theirchildren and break the pattern of social reproduction through schooling.

A subtle tension in the neo-marxist position is worth noting. On theone hand it rejects the progressive faith in ameliorative social actionby the liberal state. On the other, its educational program (criticalpedagogy, charter schools), like those of neo-liberals and liberal progres-

sives, depends on the existence of spaces for ameliorative action withinthe states educational machinery. In any event, commentators from right,center, and left all have positive things to say about charter schools.

The fourth group in the framework of Wells et al., the realists, have

presented a skeptical or carefully qualified view about globalization, eitherdenying that it has significantly expanded in the recent period (Hirst &

Thompson, 1996), or emphasizing that it is an uneven process playing outdifferently in different kinds of nation states and regions. Brown, Green

and Lauder (2001), for example, demonstrate how the different histories


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and institutional forms of different societies shape distinct education,training, and labor market responses. They conclude that there is no simpleglobal convergence of education and training, or of labor markets, among

different kinds of nation states. They grant, however, that global forces arepressing many other societies to move closer to the liberal society modelof the U.S. and U.K. Realists are not tied to prescriptions for education;their research studies are conducted on descriptive and theoretical planes

distanced from policy and practice.The definition of globalization embedded in my argument is suffici-

ently broad to be shared by neo-liberals, progressives and neo-marxists; Ialso accept the realist qualification that globalization, even in this broad

sense, is playing out differently in different societies. Consequently, animportant qualification, reflected in the articles title, is that as my argu-ment is drawn primarily from American materials, it applies most directlyto the American situation and that of other liberal societies including

the United Kingdom. But it retains relevance for those societies whoseeducation and labor market regimes are moving in this liberal direction.

2. Curriculum change

My contention is that globalization can cause fundamental, as opposedto merely incremental, curriculum change. Curriculum refers in the firstinstance to the knowledge and information content of formal education

and its translation into teachable subject matter. For Smith, Stanley andShores (1957) curriculum represents a sequence of potential learningexperiences . . . set up in the school for . . . disciplining children andyouth in group ways of thinking and acting. For Good (1959) it stands

for the overall plan of content or. . .

materials of instruction the schoolshould offer the student by way of qualifying him for graduation orcertification or the entrance into a professional or vocational field. ForTanner and Tanner (1980) it means the planned and guided learning

experiences and related learning outcomes . . . under the auspices of theschool. These standard textbook definitions all point to three logicalcore elements of the curriculum concept: (1) predetermined subject mattercontent, presented in a (2) planned sequence of experiences, leading to (3)

certifiable completion.But the definitions also tie curriculum to features of its institutional

context. All refer to (4) the institution of schooling, within whose struc-

tures some social actors have the capacity to issue the authoritativeprescriptions of scope of content, the sequence of learning, and criteriaof completion implied in the three core elements. Curriculum thus impliesinstitutionalized and prescribed learning. As Goodson puts it, the bond


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between curriculum and prescription was forged early (Goodson, 1997,p. 13). Reid goes further, claiming that regulation, uniformity, hierarchywere there from the start . . . these were the features that gave curriculum

its identity as something different from teaching and learning (Reid,1999, p. 36). Finally, two extrinsic or contextual notions are implied: (5)socialization in the thought and action of a group (usually the nation), and(6) allocation of social benefits: access to favorable social and occupational

positions upon completion.The field of curriculum has for the most part conceived curriculum

makers as rational actors who organize subject matters in a deliberatesequence to achieve societal goals and objectives; this conception is

embedded in the curriculum paradigms advanced by such leaders asFranklin Bobbit and Ralph Tyler. Elements (1)(3) have thus dominatedattention; curriculum has been understood in terms of technical effi-ciency, the rational adjustment of curricular means to learning ends. In this

technical view curriculum change is a two-stage process: (a) changes inthe goals and objectives of society as perceived by elites are brought tobear upon curriculum makers, who then (b) adopt new means of shapingand sequencing subject matters to adjust them better to the new ends.

But recently the field of curriculum has been influenced by an

institutional trend affecting many social science disciplines. Institutionalapproaches emphasize that social actors are embedded in institutionalenvironments that define the meaning of their situations, establish rules(explicit or tacit) of appropriate action, and thus shape or constrain action.The institutional research program thus involves a tendency to abandonor qualify models of social action in which agents employ unbounded

rationality in the technical adjustment of means to ends (see Rowan &Miskel, 1999).2

There is a growing consensus that an adequate understanding of thecurriculum change process will have to draw upon both political-economiccomponents to explain the pressures elites impose upon curriculum makingat the boundary of the educational institution, and institutional compo-

nents to explain how the institutions internal processes respond to thesepressures. The work of Larry Cuban, Ian Westbury, and William Reid hasbeen important in shaping this consensus.3

For Cuban (1992) political actors are responsive to pressures from

economic and social elites who are in turn responding to broad changesin economic and social life. To maintain public support and legitimacy,

educational leaders must demonstrate responsiveness to the needs ofsociety, as represented by elites and imposed by public opinion and

legislation. To do so they must be perceived as promoting educational


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change. But while they can directly forge a change in what Cuban callsthe intended curriculum of a school or system, their directives are onlyloosely coupled with day to day curriculum delivery in classrooms, called

by Cuban the taught curriculum. School principals, department chairsand grade leaders depend on the day-to-day support of teachers. Teachersin turn must negotiate day-to-day interactions with students to maintaincontrol and effectiveness; teachers cannot push students beyond the limits

they establish in striving for their own multiple ends. Thus on Cubansinstitutional model, curriculum change does not result from curriculummakers adjusting new means to new ends. Rather, change results as elitesapply pressures at the boundary of the school institution that are buffered

by school leaders, and resisted or transformed by teachers as they negotiatetheir roles with students.

Curriculum is seen here as embedded in an institutional contextconsisting of rules for how physical space is organized, time is allotted

to tasks, and subject matters are translated into teachable topics. Theserules constitute what Cuban calls the institutional grammar of schooling.This notion sets up his key distinction between incremental and funda-mental curriculum change. Incremental changes correct deficiencies orimbalances in existing practice, making it more effective without altering

its basic organizational features, its standard grammar. Fundamentalchanges, by contrast, seek to alter the grammar, the standard organizationalways of doing things. Fundamental change is not concerned merely withintroducing new curricular means and ends, however significant, but, asnoted earlier, with introducing new institutional rules that establish neworganizational patterns, new configurations of space and time utilization,

new roles and authority relations (Cuban, 1992, p. 218).Cuban provides support for this distinction by analyzing change

processes during the progressive and cold war eras, and his case studiesprovide useful comparisons with our era of globalization. Progressivereformers sought to introduce active, problem-based learning in projectsgrounded in conditions approximating those of real life. Cold war

reformers promoted new science curricula with advanced content andproblem-solving of the sort engaged in by real scientists. Both reformsaimed at fundamental change because they involved significant changes ininstructional content and method that required complementary changes in

roles assigned to teachers and pupils.On Cubans account, while economic and social changes were the

primary external factors driving these changes, school practitioners playedthe role in both cases of softening, selecting and modifying the larger


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changes, fashioning a fit between the external changes and the existingcontours of the system of schooling (Cuban, 1992, p. 232). The proposednew forms of learning that required transformed roles for teachers and

students never took hold. Instead, demands for rational management inthe progressive era and enriched disciplinary content in the cold warera led to a broad adoption of standardized tests that, instead of funda-mentally changing the curriculum, locked in defining features of the

school grammar: discipline-based, text book based teaching of standard-ized curriculum content geared to the test items, and courses linked tocollege admission requirements.

Standard textbooks, achievement tests, and college admission require-

ments formed an institutional array surrounding the curriculum thatbecame ever more solid locked in and inflexible. This solidification ofthe external context, its conversion from a responsive environment to afixed and rigid set of constraints, has been captured in Westburys oft-

quoted phrase: curriculum is an idea that becomes a thing. Reid (1999),drawing on the formulations of Meyer, adds the twist that this thing overtime itself becomes a new idea, a set of shared curriculum categoriesor meanings, deeply entrenched in the public mind, that dictate the termswithin which education as a public concern may be discussed. Education

comes to mean the standard curriculum practices: e.g. science educationcomes to mean standard school and college courses in science disciplines.4

It is a central insight of institutional theory of curriculum that theenclosure of curriculum within an inflexible institutional environment, andthe generation of fixed terms and meanings for discussion of education,create an institutional exoskeleton preventing fundamental change.

For Cuban, the progressive and cold war era reforms achieved merelyincremental, not fundamental change. There were changes in the intended

curriculum, the official theory of what the curriculum was about. But theactual patterns of curriculum organization and teaching stayed more orless the same. New curriculum content was introduced, enhancing thelegitimacy of the system by demonstrating its capacity for change. But

the changes remained superficial meager modifications of the contentsin the same old bottles (Cuban, 1992). Cuban (1990) argues that thisprocess has been repeated again and again and again and will continueto obstruct fundamental change.

Bidwell and Dreeben (1992) offer a parallel analysis of curriculumchange processes from the colonial era to the middle of the nineteenth

century, when the current institutional pattern took shape, and projectconclusions similar to Cubans to the present and foreseeable future:


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Curricular content is revised, new ways to teach are proposed, and different boundaries

between levels of schools are established. Nevertheless, the basic structure of schools,

as organized around interchangeable content-based subjects, has remained remarkably

durable . . . In the United States the results of the processes of institutionalization . . . have

been in place for more than a century and it is not easy to foresee substantial changes inthem (p. 360).

The question addressed here is whether globalization can unleash change

factors sufficiently powerful to overturn this grammar of interchangeablecontent-based subjects?

II. THE CONDITIONS OF FUNDAMENTAL CURRICULUM CHANGE

I argue that globalization can cause fundamental change. It will be usefulto consider what sort of argument might sustain this sort of claim. It is one

thing to argue that fundamental changes are necessary to bring curriculumpractice into alignment with new patterns of knowledge production and

utilization in the workplace to make the curriculum technically effi-cient; this would be a forceful argument that fundamental change should

occur. But it is quite another thing to argue that fundamental changes can

actually occur. Institutional theory has so far emphasized the persistence

of established patterns of schooling despite technical inefficiencies andexternal pressures for change; it has accentuated the factors constraining

fundamental change. But fundamental change sometimes occurs. TheRoman Empire and the Soviet Union both collapsed, and institutionaltheorists must be able to account for such events by specifying conditions

under which existing institutions are destabilized and new institutions can

emerge5 It would be foolish to insist that entrenched curriculum patternssimply cannot disintegrate, or that fundamentally different ones cannotemerge.

Fortunately, identifying the major constraints to fundamental changeis tantamount to specifying the conditions for fundamental change; theremoval of the constraints is equivalent to the establishment of the changeconditions. In the remainder of this section I consider four constraints

which must be removed for fundamental change to take place. In thefollowing sections I argue that these constraints are in fact being removedin the process of globalization.

Constraint 1. Powerful elites generally support entrenched

practices and are sustained by them. Fundamental change thusrequires that external elites withdraw this support and join withcritical masses of citizens to form a powerful constituency forchange.


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On the one hand, not all reforms call for fundamental change. Theback to basics reforms of the 1970s, for example, demanded merely thestrengthening of features of the entrenched pattern that had been weakened

by progressive reforms. The cold war reforms called for discipline-basedcontent, increased tracking by ability groups, and even more bureaucracyin school organization. Except for changes in teaching-learning methodsin classes for the brightest children, the cold war reforms called for merely

incremental change.More to the point, even calls for fundamental reform are rarely

supported by sufficiently powerful constituencies to forge a new con-sensus. The progressive education reformers demands for fundamental

change were supported by influential intellectuals and social leaders, butwere opposed by corporate and political elites as well as many tradi-tional educators. In the inevitable political end game of negotiation andcompromise, advocates of fundamental change had to yield the more

fundamental features of their program and settle for incremental change.Fundamental change cannot occur unless powerful elites withdraw supportfrom the status quo.

Constraint 2. Internal school processes are capable of bufferingexternal pressures by elites for change. Fundamental change

thus requires destabilizing the internal processes buffering theschool from external pressures, motivating internal actors toinnovate.

Internal responses to external pressures for change generally bufferpressures for change. Practitioners within the institutions soften, select

and modify proposed changes and fashion a fit between them andexisting contours of practice. But despite these stabilizing behaviors,internal processes may nonetheless be affected by the very same factors asare exerting pressure at the organizational boundary. For example, teaching

may encounter new levels of student resistance, due to changing studentperceptions of connections between schooling and expected careers.Teachers coping patterns may become ineffective as student motivationto cooperate wanes. Both students and teachers responding to external

changes may discover themselves ripe for innovation.

Constraint 3. The entrenched pattern is held in place by bothits forming of tight linkages with other institutions, and its

generation of fixed ideas for discussion of appropriate prac-tice in public consciousness. The two processes generate atight institutional exoskeleton that holds the pattern in place.Thus fundamental change requires erosion of this institutional


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exoskeleton removal of external props and wearing away offixed public ideas that lock in the status quo.

Standard text books, achievement tests and college admission require-

ments all prop up standard operating procedures and place a straight-jacket upon the terms of public discourse about education. But over timeinnovations coming from either the grass roots or elites and can loosen

these constraints, creating room for further, more radical, experimenta-tion leading to more enduring change. In a turbulent world, when e.g.,assumptions about cognitive requirements for the workplace are beingturned upside down, teachers and curriculum leaders can experiment, and

administrators can make system adjustments, without arousing as muchopposition from parents and citizens anxious that their kids wont beprepared for college or wont be getting a real education.

Constraint 4. Visions of change and innovative practices intro-

duced by reformers are generally fragmented. Fundamentalchange requires a setting forth of more coherent visions ofcurriculum organization, that are consistent with emergingpopular models of rational action. Such visions can bring previ-

ously unconnected innovations together into a cohesive newpattern of standard practice.

A lot of experimentation produces only experimental particles floating

around the core of established practice. For the particles to converge toform a fundamentally changed practice, a synthetic vision a mentalmodel linking new conceptions of subject matter units, administrative divi-sions, funding patterns, personnel credentials, lines of authority must be

advanced by credible leaders.My argument for fundamental change is that (1) globalization is

creating a powerful external alliance for fundamental change. (2) Itis destabilizing school participation and classroom interaction, and (3)

weakening the external props holding the system up, promoting moreroom for legitimate experiments which are now forming a shadow institu-tion with its own practices and ideas. Finally, (4) credible leaders areformulating new coherent visions of a new curricular organization towards

which these shadow innovations may converge, one that is in harmonywith the changing social reality. Therefore the conditions for fundamentalcurriculum change are now falling into place.


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III. GLOBALIZATION, WOR K, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING AND

EDUCATION

Earlier I distinguished between the globalization of markets and theglobalization of information networks, and noted that these were comple-mentary components of globalization. In this section I trace the linesof force connecting these dimensions of globalization to organizationalrestructuring, the emerging American occupational structure, knowledgeproduction and utilization in the workplace, and finally to learning andeducation.

1. Globalization of markets and global competition amongmulti-national enterprises

The Imperial powers laid the groundwork for a system of global trade

in the nineteenth century, but competition for resources and marketsengendered conflicts. The first world war slowed down the globalization

process. The current stage of economic globalization began after WorldWar II, when the economies of Europe and Asia were shattered by the warand the United States had surplus capital for investment. In the preceding80 years abundant natural resources, large domestic markets, a stronglegal structure for contracts and patents, and an ideology of progress

through science and technology had propelled the growth of Americanfirms utilizing mass production methods.

After World War II the world economy was in a state of chronicunder-supply, and American firms faced little competition in international

trade. They increased their direct foreign investments, creating subsidiariesthroughout the world making mass produced products for global markets a process that generated the slogan America makes and the worldtakes, and the idea that globalization meant Americanization. Underthese non-competitive conditions American firms could set world pricesfor mass-produced goods, and could secure labor cooperation by passingalong some part of their excess profits to unionized industrial workers aswages and benefits above world levels.

American direct foreign investment grew from $2.9 billion in 1960 to$27 billion by 1990. But by the 1970s European and Asian economies hadrecovered sufficiently to compete with American firms on a global scale.Foreign direct investment in the United States, a meager $364 million in

1960, had by 1990 expanded to $48 billion, as foreign-owned companiescompeted for a market share in the large and affluent domestic Amer-ican economy (Milberg, 1994). In 1960 1.3% of American GDP was


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produced by foreign firms, while by 1990 they were producing 8.4% ofGDP (Karier, 1994). European and Asian firms competed successfullywith their American counterparts in global markets on the basis of both

price and quality.American firms responded to this competition during the 1970s and1980s by initiating aggressive anti-union practices, by out-sourcing lowskilled manufacturing jobs to reduce wages, and by greatly expanding low

wage service sector industries. The AFL-CIO, which represented 30% ofthose employed in the non-farm sector in 1954, represented fewer than12% by the 1990s. More than 90% of the new jobs in the Americaneconomy in the 1970s and 1980s were in the service sector, while manufac-

turing suffered a net loss of almost 1 million jobs (World Book KnowledgeSource). Firms also demanded trade protection measures, governmentloans, and reductions of federal corporate taxes as well as state and localsubsidies.

Despite these measures, they continued to lose domestic and globalmarket share, and productivity remained stagnant (Milberg, 1994); theannual rate of productivity growth, which had exceeded 4% in the post-war period dropped to 1.1% in the 1970s and 1980s (Appelbaum et al.,2000, p. 227). Americans experienced a severe crisis of competitiveness.

2. The competitiveness crisis and education: Two periods of excellencereforms

Economic and political elites blamed the crisis on the low skill levelsof American workers, and by implication, on the poor performance ofthe American educational system. A 1980 report showed that Amer-ican students were performing below those of the top group of nations,including such major global competitors as Japan, South Korea, andGermany on tests of math and science achievement. In response, elitespressed for educational change to make Americans competitive with the

low-wage, high skill workers in developing nations.6 The first phase ofwhat came to be known as the excellence reform movement, began withthe distribution of the national blue ribbon report, A Nation at Risk. Inclear and dramatic language, the report stated:

Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged pre-eminence in commerce, industry, science,

and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors around the world . . . What

was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur . . . other (nations) are matching or

surpassing our educational attainments (p. 5).

The report linked our competitive crisis to the alleged failure of the educa-tional system, lamenting that in international comparisons on 19 academic


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tests, American students were never first or second, and in comparison withother industrialized nations, were last seven times (p. 8).

The recommendations of the report were touted as revolutionary but

in Cubans terms they were merely incremental, even conservative. Theyproposed an intensification of the academic curriculum: more requiredcourses in science, mathematics, and computer literacy and impositionof world class standards monitored with standardized tests. No changes

were proposed in the basic organizational format of curriculum beyondmaking wider use of computers in instruction.

Many states issued their own excellence reports and adopted the recom-mendations of A Nation at Risk. But the results were disappointing.

There were changes in the intended curriculum, but day to day practicedid not change very much. The reforms had taken place without partici-pation by, and consequent ownership of, the recommendations by teachersand community leaders; they were opposed by many credible public educa-

tion leaders (e.g. Ernest Boyer, Harold Howe), by teachers groups, and byminority group leaders fearing that higher standards would be used toexclude them.

A second phase of the excellence reform movement started in themid-1980s, when reformers responded to the indifference of teachers

and community members by granting a degree of professional autonomyand parental influence through site-based management and school choice.The community emphasis brought many educational and minority groupleaders into the alliance for change. At this stage the public policydiscourse continued to stress excellence, defined largely in terms ofacademic standards and test scores. And new educational technolo-

gies were still key ingredients, though in this second phase of reformtechnology was no longer to be imposed in a top-down fashion; teachers

were assigned responsibility for selecting specific uses based on trainingin technology utilization.

Despite the initial focus of excellence reforms on student perfor-mance, test scores have not changed much. Fifteen years after A Nation

at Risk research showed essentially flat achievement and long-standingacademic problems in U.S. schools (Murphy & Adams, 1998, p. 441).

But market competition between schools was now also touted as amajor new engine of change As the consensus for reform grew, diverse

social groups, including ethnic minorities, feminists, environmentalists,Roman Catholics, and high-tech professionals added their support for

choice. Some of these groups were much less committed to excellence defined in terms of standards and standardized tests than the initial

reformers. As a result, choice became less exclusively tied to enhancing


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academic achievement, and increasingly linked to the theme of promotingdiversity.

School Choice thus became a contradictory policy aimed both at

achieving common goals and at letting different groups seek their ownquite different goals. This phase of educational reform directed changeefforts away from the mainstream system, with consequences to bediscussed later.

3. The global spread of information networks

What we now refer to as the Internet was begun in the late 1960s

as the ARPA-net, a U.S. defense network that accepted its first inter-national connection in 1973. Meetings between ARPA and the NationalScience Foundation led in the 1980s to the building of NSF-net, linking

American scientists and academics, in 1986, and the closing of ARPA-

net in 1990. In the early 1990s digital information networks began tospread rapidly throughout the globe. The first commercial Internet ServiceProvider opened for business in 1990, and the World-Wide Web was intro-duced at CERN in 1991, the same year in which many foreign countries

were connected to NSF-net. The next year the World Bank went on-line,followed by the White House and United Nations in 1993 (Howe, 2001).

The growth of the World-Wide Web and its commercial use werephenomenally rapid in the mid 1990s. In June 1993 there were 130 web

sites, of which only 1.5% had dot.com domain names. By the end of1993, 4.6% of the 623 sites were commercial; by the end of 1994 18% ofthe 10,000; by 1995 50% of the 100,000; and by the end of 1996 over 60%of the 650,000 sites (Gray, 1997).

The driving forces of the growth of digital networks included therapid technical advances and price declines in computer chips, satellites,and fiber optic cables which facilitated growth in television, telephony,FAX, and the Internet, turning the information grid into a seamlessly

integrated resource, the biggest machine ever made (Dizard, 1997, p. 1).Electronics replaced automobiles as the worlds largest industry, and tele-communications technologies and their peripherals became the largestshare of the electronics product sector (Dizard, p. 7). Software supplanted

hardware as the key to global information convergence, and became thefastest growing sector in the global economy, with the market value ofsoftware firms expanding from $663 billion in 1994 to $1.8 trillion in 1996.

By 1995 digital networks were penetrating American homes. NSF-net once again became a research network, while AOL, Prodigy, andCompuserve offered popular Internet services for families. (Howe, 2001).Since that time the growth of the Internet has continued. At the end of 2001


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the Internet was growing in the United States at the rate of two millionusers a month. 143 million Americans were on-line (54% of the popula-tion), an increase of 26 million in 13 months. Schools and colleges were

on-line, and 75% of 1417 year olds and 65% of 1013 year olds wereInternet users (NTIA, 2002). The increase in tele-workers and home-basedconsultants enabled more families to consider home schooling.7

4. Economic and technical convergence: Business networks and networkenterprise

By the mid 1980s many American business leaders were realizing that their

main competitive strategies cost cutting, trade protection, tax breaks andsubsidies, were not preserving their share of domestic or global marketsor improving productivity. Their customers wanted high quality products,

customized features, consistent on-time delivery, and short lead times, and

these could not be provided merely by cutting costs or improving massproduction methods.

The spread of information networks facilitated a further re-engineer-ing or organizational restructuring of vertically integrated multi-national

corporations in the early 1990s. American and European firms, in competi-tion with Asian counterparts sharing and coordinating strategies, resourcesand competencies in their network structures Japanese keiretsu, Koreanchaebol, and Chinese family networks came to realize that they too

must compete as business networks. Rapid product development cycles,technology diffusion, proliferation of quality producers, and diversity ofmarkets, have forced major firms increasingly to collaborate with theirglobal customers, suppliers, and selected competitors (Rugman & DCruz,

2000). Large, vertically integrated firms were broken apart, and non-coreaspects of their businesses were sold off. Many professionals in the legal,accounting, information services and other departments were either laidoff, or left the firms voluntarily to work as knowledge workers in small

partnership firms or as independent consultants, taking advantage of thewider availability and lower costs of network technologies.8

As early as 1983 Turoff and Hiltz (1983) had observed that theemerging information and communications technologies were making

the notions of centralization and decentralization largely outmoded, asvertically integrated bureaucratic hierarchies were giving way to struc-tures based on fluid networks by means of which connected workers

could join ad hoc groupings formed around specific projects. Grosse andKujawa (1988) spoke of the new multi-national enterprises as inter-national contractors, relying not upon subsidiaries but joint ventures,licensing or servicing contracts. These meta-national firms, unlike the


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398 LEONARD J. WAKS

traditional trans-national firms rooted in a distinct home country, do nottake knowledge from the corporate center in the U.S., Western Europe,or Japan, incorporate it into a product, and ship it to markets in less

developed areas. Rather, they draw upon knowledge (in the form of publictechnical and managerial knowledge, experience and insight, and marketintelligence) from employees and network associates all over the world,via in-person and electronic links, to shape products rapidly for the highly

differentiated global markets (Doz, Santos & Williamson, 2001).9

5. Globalization and workforce re-organization

The formation of global networks and network enterprises to compete inglobal markets has brought about changes in workforce organization in allsocieties. But as Brown, Green, and Lauder (2001) demonstrate, different

societies have employed different competitive strategies.10 The primary

contrast is between nations like the U.S. and U.K. with a bi-polar skilldistribution, able to leverage advantages of both high skilled elite workers

and low cost producers, vs. high skill societies like Germany and Japan,seeking to leverage the advantages of their wide skill distribution (p. 144).For the latter, the education and training problem is maintaining cuttingedge skills throughout the work force. For the former, this problem doesnot arise, as large segments of the workforce are excluded from skilled jobs

(p. 162). In this section I consider this bi-polar skill and income distribu-tion, consisting of knowledge workers and skilled production workers, vs.routine workers.

Knowledge workers

Peter Drucker originated the term knowledge worker in the 1960s, torefer to workers holding diplomas from technical institutes and univer-sities. He based this idea on the rapidly growing proportion of diplomaholders in the advanced economies, and the increasing inputs from these

workers.11 Today, however, the term knowledge worker refers more to amind-set adjusted to the smart work space of the network enterprise thanto holders of specific diplomas or bearers of discipline-based scientific ortechnical knowledge.

The primary capabilities of such workers are knowing how to access,interpret, and apply new knowledge and information to add value to anorganization. They see themselves as professionals, but are not limited

by narrow professional identities; an intellectual property lawyer, forexample, may define himself as a problem-solver in the media industry.They are time-sensitive, oriented to working on specific projects withtime deadlines. In this regard they function, when employed, more like


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independent professionals than like salaried employees. They are learning-oriented, because their unique human capital derives from continuouslearning in their professional endeavors. Although each project is time-

bound, the knowledge work process does not end with the project, becausethe worker must integrate the lessons learned to enrich and refine histacit knowledge. They apply knowledge to knowledge to create newknowledge and information that can combined and permuted to create

new products or services (Castels, 1996). The knowledge and informa-tion created throughout the process are converted by the processes of theknowledge management system into documents available for knowledgere-use. Even when working for the same employer they play different

roles in different projects, as members of different teams. They identifymore with professionals in the network than with other employees in thefirm. Because network technologies are widely available in work centersand homes, these workers have fewer incentives to remain permanently

employed; they are increasingly working as contractors in similar projectsfor different companies rather than as employees.12

Network enterprises depend upon continuous accessing of globallydistributed knowledge and information by such workers. It thus needssystems for sensing this mass of information, selecting what is needed and

converting it into inputs for new products and services. The knowledgework space is frequently a smart environment, with smart machinesprogrammed with expert systems providing immediate inputs for rapidlearning; constantly improved hyper-media including on-line data basesand search engines that make needed information immediately available,with continuously expanded and up-graded libraries of real-time network-

specific knowledge, provided by members of the network for so-calledknowledge re-use. Firms in the network employ digital knowledge

management systems, including software tools for the management ofinformation by individual workers, such as the programs created by IBMsLotus division and Microsofts Digital Dashboard.13 Some systems alsoinclude programs that can automatically integrate fax, phone, voice mail,

e-mail, graphics, video and audio throughout the system into digital docu-ments that can be indexed and analyzed and further operated upon, andeven translated into foreign languages to create yet more documents, ad

infinitum. This process known as integrated messaging Because of their

use of such knowledge management systems, network organizations arealso sometimes called alert organizations.

Grantham (2000) projects a continuing disintegration of the corpora-tion and growth of the network of flexible small companies and freelance

workers. He sees an evolution over the next five years toward a team of


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400 LEONARD J. WAKS

teams approach in which workers come together, blending interdisci-plinary skills focusing on a particular project, completing the project, thendisbanding the team as each of its workers move on to other projects. The

most important asset in the process is no longer the production capital butthe knowledge that moves with the workers from one project to another.Knowledge workers relate in a new way to the means of production,becoming a knowledge class.

High skill production workers

In the environment of business networks, innovations in the organizationof production workers have also become increasingly common (Appel-baum et al., 2000, pp. 34). American managers had been borrowing

quality circles off-line, after-the fact discussions among workers andmanagers to improve production processes from the Japanese. But bythe late 1980s the term became unfashionable as this sort of give and

take came to be seen as only one element in a total management system.Quality circles were supplanted by total quality management (TQM)

systems attending to customer satisfaction, employee input, close linksto suppliers and customers, management by data. TQM was geared toimprove inventory management, just-in-time delivery, statistical qualitycontrol, and systematic problem-solving, including follow-up assessment

and the dissemination of best practices throughout the system.The late 1980s also saw modest introduction of more substantive forms

of worker participation, in the form of self-directing work teams that makeand implement decisions without top down control. The term process

re-engineering has been used to refer to such innovations. Other terms

includecontinuous improvement systems and high-performance worksystems. Employee participation of all forms grew but workers in self-directing work teams remained a small minority in 1990, when among

6.5 million workers in companies responding to a survey, 1.2 million(20%) were involved in quality circles but only 300,000 (5%) in self-directing teams (Levine, 1995, pp. 37). Since then, many firms haveintroduced at least some self-managing teams. Lawler compared Fortune

1000 companies in 1987 and 1995, finding that the proportion reportingsome use of these teams increased in that period from 28% to 68% A1995 survey conducted by the Bureau of the Census and the University ofPennsylvania found that 13% of non-managerial workers in their sample

were placed in self-managing teams (Appelbaum et al., 2000, pp. 910).

Productivity growth, stagnant since the early 1970s, increased to 2%,bolstered by the rapid growth of manufacturing productivity (Appelbaumet al., 2000, p. 228).


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The spread of digital information technologies converged in the 1990swith these workplace organization practices. Information technologies arefundamentally different than earlier innovations. Information-based tools

are highly malleable. They are re-programmable; the same equipment canperform a wide variety of functions. They reduce re-tooling time, andcreate opportunities for economies of scope. They have a built-in capacityfor data collection and analysis, to support decision-making (Ducatel,

1994, pp. 14; Appelbaum et al., 2000, p. 14).Overall, there has been an increase in skills needed in the workplace as a

result of the adoption of information technologies and worker participationpractices. In firms adopting these techniques skills sets shift from manual

and craft skills to higher level cognitive skills including abstract reasoning,because the workers are removed from the physical processes of movingand making. They are system controllers, who must be able to programand maintain their machines, as well as to interpret the data read-outs that

the machines produce, which often requires some grasp of the conceptsupon which these messages are based. Information technologies fit bestin workplace situations where workers and managers cooperate directly inproduction processes and expertise across multiple functional specialtiesis available, that is, in flatter, multi-functional teams (Ducatel, 1994, p. 4;

see also Ostroff, 1999). Workers in these teams require additional softskills in communication and group decision making.

Appelbaum et al. (2000) studied the impact of workplace systemscombining worker participation with high skills and training onproductivity and worker earnings. In the high performance work systems(HPWS) front line workers participate in gathering and analyzing informa-

tion, and hence require both information processing and communicationsskills (p. 8); HPWS also require workers to become familiar with and

carry out a wider range of tasks, to develop better interpersonal andbehavioral skills, to take on supervisory and coordination functions, and tointeract effectively with other workers and managers (p. 208). Appelbaumet al. found that HPWS had a positive effect on performance in each of the

industries studied (p. 129); HPWS organizations were significantly morelikely to have high value added products, reduced costs, high perceivedquality of products, lower inventory costs and more rapid inventory turn-overs (p. 159). The workers in such organizations earned significantly

more that those in traditional production contexts (p. 223).But Cappelli and his co-authors (1999) noted that despite the benefits

of such forms of organization in particular market segments, the advan-tages of mass production using low cost labor have remained strong in

other segments of American industry. Some successful firms have retained


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402 LEONARD J. WAKS

lower cost methods, while others have aimed at improved quality, productdiversity, and rapid turn-around time. American producers, in comparisonwith their foreign competitors, have moved more slowly toward high skill,

high performance systems, because the larger scale of American produc-tion accommodates mass production, and long-established traditions oftop-down management have been difficult to change.

The bi-polar structure of the American workforce

The overall result has been a widening division between high skillsand low skills segments in the American manufacturing sector. RobertReich (1992) divided future workers into three categories: highly skilledsymbolic analysts who access, combine, and permute knowledge and

information to create new products and services, and relatively unskilled,low wage routine production workers and in-person service providers. Theabove analysis suggests a somewhat different categorization: elite knowl-

edge workers providing professional services, high skill workers organizedin information-rich, high performance workplaces, and providers of

routine, low skill production and in-person services. The routine workercategory contains a high proportion of women, minorities and recentimmigrants (including illegal aliens). Unlike routine industrial workers ofthe 1950s, a large proportion of todays routine workers work in temporary

or part time contingent work without union protection, job security orhealth and pension benefits.14 From 1970 to 1992 the total payroll oftemporary employees rose an astounding 3000% (Weinbaum, 1999). Ahigh school diploma thus no longer provides American students a ticket

to a decent job with benefits. With welfare rolls and transfer payments

declining, and permanent jobs for unskilled unionized workers in themanufacturing sector disappearing, more Americans are now groupedtogether in an expanding working poor class.

6. Workforce re-organization, learning, and education: Failure of thestandard curriculum

The class situations of knowledge and routine workers differ from thoseof former managerial-professional and industrial workers, the typical

clients of American schools and colleges in the industrial era. Thosedestined for knowledge work and high skill production work and theirfuture employers understand that the established curriculum grammar

does not provide the human capital for knowledge work. To point tothe most obvious contradictions: students remain individuated in schoollearning, but graduates are expected to work in groups. Students learncognitive routines sorted into distinct subject matter disciplines, and are


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taught by professionals with discipline-specific credentials, but graduatesare expected to connect and permute materials from multiple disciplines innon-routine ways. Schools present subject matter in an orderly sequence,

unconnected to real world applications, but graduates must acquire andprocess information just-intime for immediate use.15

John Dewey (1976/1910) argued that educators must consider how thecontent and mature organization of knowledge grows out of the practical

demands of social life, and how that content is used, tested, and modi-fied in its actual use. The series of curricular activities gradually mustapproximate mature knowledge-in-use just as the young people them-selves gradually approximate maturity in their life roles and consequent

knowledge needs.16 Cole (1990) showed that schooling employing thestandard curriculum grammar is a specific learning environment thatproduces a specific sort of learning in which memory, classification, androutine verbal-logical problem solving plays a large role. Snow and his

associates17 have shown that the learning associated with the standardcurriculum grammar is linked to crystallized, not fluid knowledge.Students undergoing the standard kind of curricularized learning mayefficiently acquire information and rote cognitive routines, but this issimply not the sort of learning needed by the high skilled workers in

todays global network economy.

IV. FROM GLOBALIZATION TO FUNDAMENTAL CURRICULUM

CHANGE

This leaves the question whether the American educational institutioncan respond to this technical inefficiency in standard curricular schoolingpractices, by instituting fundamental curriculum change. I argue that

constraints to fundamental change are being removed, that a powerfulalliance for change, a disruption of mainstream practice, a shadow educa-tional institution built from innovations, and a coherent vision of a newsystem, are now forming.

1. There is potentially a powerful alliance for fundamental change

In the late industrial period, despite intellectual critiques and periodicincremental reforms, no constituency for fundamental change existed.

Secondary education was the gateway to full participation in society,allocating positions in the workplaces of industrial society. Some graduateswent on to college and professional or managerial careers. Others wentdirectly into the industrial workplace, earning union wages and enjoying


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404 LEONARD J. WAKS

job security, health insurance, and pension benefits. Even those excludedfrom equal participation viewed the school as the gateway, and fought forequal educational opportunity. Capital, the working class, and even the

excluded poor thus achieved a working consensus on the form and contentof education. The battles were over access.Today the potential for change exists, in a powerful alliance of

corporate capital, middle class managerial, professional and industrial

knowledge workers, and the working poor. The corporate sector wants asteady supply of knowledge professionals and high skill workers. It has notbeen satisfied with the products of mainstream education. The excellencereforms have left it skeptical about the possibility of reforming established

schools through the political process. Instead, it is either imposing its owneducational projects upon the schools through partnerships involvinghigh-tech academies, or providing counterpart experiences in its corporateuniversities.18

Highly skilled production workers and professional knowledge workerswill demand educational opportunities for their children connected withthe new economy. Suburbanites pressure for school change: more Internetconnections and more problem solving in groups. Many appear contentwith the current pace of change, sensing that their communities have

the will and resources to make necessary curriculum adjustments overtime. But few middle class parents remaining in the cities, regardlessof their ethnic group, have much remaining hope for school reform.Some are demanding school choice, both to avoid having their kidsplaced in schools serving the working poor, and to provide them withknowledge and skills for contemporary workplaces. Some are opting for

private or parochial schools and they support vouchers; others are choosingcharter schools, hoping that they will attract middle class families and

academically motivated students. A rapidly increasing number among theknowledge professional group are now home-schooling their children.

The working poor no longer believe that the established schools canprovide access even to dignified working class status. The academic

achievement of their children is frequently insufficient for subsequenttraining for knowledge or high skill production work. Their childrenappear stuck at the bottom of the social ladder, their life chances deteriorat-ing rather than improving. They are at risk for crime, incarceration or

self-destruction. There is increasing support among the working poor forcharter schools and voucher programs.19

These groups have yet not forged a consensus on the direction of educa-tional change. But there is movement in this direction. Right now they

are demanding a variety of new schools from aviation and African-


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centered to zoo-based schools and the charter framework is well adaptedto this diversity. But the social movements motivating some of these firstgeneration charter schools are losing steam, because they have lacked

coherent programs for economic and social renewal. An inner city African-American child, for example, may feel better in an African-centeredschool, but the African curriculum content will not supply the knowledgeand skills needed for entry into high skill or knowledge work.

These skills in information technology, but also in ill-structuredproblem-solving and decision-making, communications and group rela-tions provide the common denominator amidst todays curriculumdiversity, and hence the predictable convergence point for durable curricu-

lum content innovations.

2. Globalization destabilizes the internal processes of school

organizations that constrain fundamental change, motivating

educators to innovate

Here I focus on tensions in classroom relations between teachers andstudents, and on school participation rates, to demonstrate the existence of

new internal stresses motivating mainstream teachers and administratorsto embrace innovation.

Children from all social groups are becoming less docile in the networksociety. Students in the late industrial period, between World War II and the

1970s, did what was needed to maintain their school statuses, as these wereseen as the only pathways to expected adult statuses. Through the diffusesocialization processes of the school, community, and home, studentslearned about the entitlements and penalties associated with conforming to

or deviating from student roles. The vast majority of young people in thelate industrial era conformed to the expectations of society and completedsecondary school. School credentials were a major determinant of futurelife chances, but they bore only a loose relationship to actual learning.20

The taught curriculum was a negotiated compromise: teachers main-tained a professional self-image by moving learners through appropriatesubject matter, while students completed enough assignments to maintaintheir student statuses.

Tracking by ability groups provided future managerial and professionalworkers a curriculum track for college preparation skills and academicorientations. It gave future industrial workers a general diploma demon-

strating that they had completed an academically undemanding but sociallyand emotionally laborious course of study marketed as vocationally appro-priate. The diploma showed that they could be punctual and persevering,and could adjust to their expected class status. Their grades and test


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406 LEONARD J. WAKS

scores did not greatly affect access to industrial jobs but their diploma did.Although social class accounted for different school attitudes and perform-ances of middle and working class kids, both groups had motivations to

cooperate sufficiently to complete high school.Schools and colleges play a different role in todays allocation ofoccupational opportunities. One can increasingly succeed in the neweconomy without any diploma, and one can also fail even with plenty of

formal education of the wrong kind. Formal education remains a pathwayto knowledge work, but only one and it comes without guarantees. BillGates and Steve Jobs (without college diplomas) are poster boys of knowl-edge work. Hanging out with other geeks, teaching yourself soft-ware

programs, taking a certificate course sponsored by a corporation, obtaininga high-tech job or apprenticeship all provide better social and technicalskills than the school curriculum.

This fact changes the relationship between the curriculum and the

knowledge acquisition of future high skill workers. There is a reportedshortage of adult workers with cutting edge skills (Ewing, 1999) butan abundance of high school kids with them. Corporations and govern-ment agencies are now hiring them. The Department of Defense recentlychanged its recruitment policies to enable its vendors to recruit teen-

agers without diplomas (Dunn, 1999). Cisco Systems sponsors systemsengineering certificate programs in over a thousand secondary schools(and conducts parallel programs all over the world). The four semester,280 hour network academies are now found in all fifty states.21 Defensecontractors get many systems engineers directly from such programs.Future high skill workers are now forced to consider the opportunity

costs of even secondary education. Even high school drop outs willgain further educational and work opportunities as corporate university

programs expand.Jon Katz (2000) reports that many of the brightest school students are

now profoundly contemptuous of formal education. Katz refers to thediscovery by tech savvy kids that their skills can lead to high-wage jobs,

as the Geek Ascension. Kids with technical know-how grasp that thecorporations need them and will hire them even if they have to lurethem to leave high school. So these kids want to learn very much butthey want high tech skills and will not subject themselves to empty school

routines. Teachers constrained by the established curriculum may proveincapable of coping with their demands. And more of these young people

are simply dropping out to take advantage of the growing opportunities forhome-based learning, a point I discuss below.


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Future routine workers see no path from school completion to satisfyingadult roles. The educational system has failed most of them. Some enter-tain hopes of bright futures as high tech engineers or physicians, but most

sense that such futures are closed. Vocational education must become like the Cisco academies a daunting academic challenge or it will onlyprovide a path to dead-end jobs. Young people in de-industrialized regionsknow this they are increasingly hopeless and prone to self-destructive

activity. Their school peers are other disadvantaged kids, and they are notin general a positive influence upon one another. There is a new genre ofbooks about such youngsters, from Cold New World (Finnegan, 1998) to

Eight Ball Chicks (Sikes, 1997).

We havent figured out how to do much for them. Many districtshave established alternative programs for difficult kids. The Clintonteam pushed boot camps for the hard core cases. Supt. Hornbeck ofPhiladelphia considered outsourcing them to computer-monitored facili-

ties managed by for-profit corporations, with a curriculum deliveredentirely through computer-assisted instruction. Such panopticon schoolsmay provide the control to protect society from these kids and to protectthem from one another and themselves. But it would appear to preparethem only for life in high tech prisons.

Until we have a plausible story to tell these youngsters about howschooling can secure their futures, we can hardly expect them to participateand cooperate. Teachers will have an even harder time coping with them.They will act out often violently before they drop out or fail theirstandards-based graduation exams. Their parents have withdrawn theirfaith in public schools; hence the support for charter schools and voucher

programs among the working poor.

3. Globalization is eroding the institutional exoskeleton the props and

rigid categories of public discourse holding standard school practice

in place. A shadow institution is taking shape alongside of the

mainstream institution

The first phase of excellence reforms aimed to intensify the standard

academic curriculum and raise test scores. District leaders embraced thesereforms to demonstrate their openness to change. But far from promotingfundamental change, they locked in the standardized tests and other props

that constrained change (Cuban, 1992). The second phase gave rise toa variety of schools with different curricula and instructional methods.Because of their very diversity, charter schools have weakened the holdof standard curriculum ideas, and have been difficult to square with the


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408 LEONARD J. WAKS

external props such as textbooks, standardized tests and college entrancerequirements keeping the standard curriculum in place.

Now, in the networked learning innovations of the 1990s, technology

and diversity have been combined and permuted into a dizzying arrayof new curricular and organizational forms. In the process, reform hasbecome more and more at odds with the established curriculum pattern.The Internet connected the classroom and individual learners to vast

libraries of materials. Teachers are now able to form new hyper-learningunits and adjust them to each learner or learning group. They canlink auxiliary materials and access to information providers for use bystudents in unpredicted ways. Corporations are making complete certifi-

cate programs available on-line in schools. Tech savvy students canconstruct their own curricula units from just-in-time elements, placingnew limits on teacher control. More significantly, parents can download avariety of curriculum materials from CD-ROMS or the World-Wide Web

and by-pass the schools entirely.In the 1970s home schooling was a fringe practice, and those who

engaged in it had to suspend their faith in the deeply entrenched collectivefaith in schooling. Today that faith is rapidly eroding, as home schoolinghas become legal in every state. According to the best available esti-

mates, about 15,000 school aged children participated in home schoolingin 1972, 300,000 in 1988, and between 1 million and 1.2 million in1997, a 400% increase in the last decade. Surveys paint this portraitof home school families: they are 98% white, 97% married. The maleparents are disproportionately drawn from the professional/technical andmanagerial/administrative categories, which have experienced much of the

transition to the network form of enterprise.22

Learning experiences in the networked home fit surprisingly well

with the knowledge and skill needs of those in the more advantagedworking groups. Nancy Landes (1996) children, Kathie (age 11) and Brian(age 13), for example, participate in the math olympiads, the NationalGeographic Geography Bee, Global Challenge (a current events contest),

and the National Student Research Centers annual science journal, takeart lessons at the art museum, and run a family mid-day dog walking busi-ness (Lande, 1996). When they first heard about the National GeographicGeography Bee, the children had only four days to prepare. Kathie booted

up the Geosafari software program and started to memorize countries,capitals, resources and cultures (Lande, p. 11). But her father, a home-

based professional who serves as the computer consultant for the family(p. 14), prompted the kids to go on-line to find geography materials. Brian

kept a notebook of research, a binder of materials culled from on-line


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bulletin boards, web pages and email, that permitted him to synthesizethe skills he has learned at home computer communications, note taking,research, media, and reference materials (p. 20). The children have won

the Geography Bee, published their short stories in national publications,had their science research project accepted for publication in the NationalResearch Center journal, and sold art work through a childrens art broker:perfect training in the skills needed by todays knowledge workers.23

Home schooling, like charter schooling, is wearing away the collectiveAmerican faith in standardized curricular learning. In a comprehensivesociological study of home-schooling, Stevens (2001) has recentlyconcluded that the fact that so many sensible parents share this utter

lack of faith in the public schools and their keepers signals an educationallegitimacy crisis whose breadth and depth have yet to be fully measured.24

In sum, charter schools, network academies, corporate universities, andhome schooling have been bolstered by the spread of both network enter-

prises and computer networks. They now constitute a shadow institutionalongside the mainstream educational institution, providing legitimacyfor alternative ways of organizing learning and allocating occupationalopportunities.

The mainstream institution, under severe pressure from political leaders

of both parties, has responded by initiating a new round of excellencereforms, based on national educational standards, standards-based instruc-tion, and standardized tests. The national standards respond to the longingsof conservatives for tradition and order. They can be used by politicians ofall stripes to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of mainstream public schools,in order further to undermine their legitimacy, and provide indirect support

for charter schools, which have been touted by politicians, if not by theirdiverse clients, as means of improving test scores. This support further

weakens the mainstream system.The standards movement is certainly visible today, but my argument

suggests that it, like earlier reforms, tends to lock the current practice inplace, and thus cannot respond to the diverse contemporary needs fueling

the growth of the education shadow institution. Although an evaluationof Arizonas charter schools, for example, showed that these alternativeschools performed no better than mainstream schools on standardizedtests, state leaders declared the charter reform a success because of its

wide popularity among citizens across the political spectrum.25 Regardlessof their academic performance as measured by tests, charter schools are

valued by diverse constituencies, and politicians who try to close them willpay a price. The indirect and paradoxical support for charter schooling


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410 LEONARD J. WAKS

provided by the standards-based education movement may be its mostlasting legacy.

4. Globalization is now generating new synthetic visions of education inaccord with current ideas about rational action. These visions are

now guiding a convergence of recent innovations towards a new

institutional pattern

Reid (1999) offers a model of the curriculum change process involving fivephases: (1) external social change, forging (2) new groupings of interestedpublics with new needs, who (3) place new pressures on the educational

institution, leading to (4) experimentation with various innovations linkedrhetorically to the constituencies, providing means whereby (5) viableinventions and the constituencies served by them can form stable and

coherent identities. So far I have traced the first four phases. 26 We are

now entering stage (5), a social construction process in which educatorspromoting the innovations, and their new constituencies (corporate andgovernment leaders, knowledge and high skill workers, the workingpoor), are negotiating new developments in both the innovations and the

categories within which they are discussed as topics of public concern. Inthis process the innovations are being reconstituted to fit a new mainstreameducational institution to replace the old one.

Until now the innovations mentioned have merely offered alternatives

at the margins of the mainstream system. They do not in themselvesconstitute fundamental change. But they are tailor-made for the externaland internal pressures educators now face. Networked hypertext curriculafit expectations of future knowledge and high skill workers. Networks

of deregulated schools parallel business networks with partners thatcan adapt rapidly to change. In the 1990s credible spokesmen haveescalated fundamental denunciations of schooling and the prospects foreducational reform.

Chubb and Moe (1990) argued in a Brookings report that the publicschool system had proven unreformable. The very means of publiccontrol legislation, governance by elected boards, civil service employ-ment of teachers were fundamentally incompatible with effective

education. Bimber (1994) spoke in a RAND report of a decentralizationmirage. He argued that relaxing a few regulations and mandates cannotlead to fundamental change because various elements of policy funding,

staff credentialing, staff development and allocation are highly inter-dependent and none can change significantly if others are held constant.Bimber concluded that reform will require far more sweeping changes inschool governance than school boards, teachers unions, or superintendents


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have been willing to contemplate. Murphy and Adams (1998), afterreviewing the failed excellence reforms, asked pointedly at what pointwill continuing need (for change) and available technology encourage truly

radical system redesign, where educational reform may no longer revolvearound schools (p. 441). Bickman (1998) complained that Cuban wasstuck in a grammar of schooling that has remained constant for the pastcentury . . . the only way out is to . . . completely rewrite the grammar of

schooling (p. 75).27

Talk of the system being un-reformable, needing sweeping changesand radical system redesign, is now a commonplace of public discourse.Leaders speak openly about making end runs around the system. Steve

McCallion, a director of research and design in Portland, Oregon, says

One of the biggest challenges we face is to break up the lock of the existing interest

groups that tie up existing systems. Whether theyre teachers, school administrators, or

other groups, powerful established interests spend billions of dollars to deliver the kind ofeducation system we currently have. Weve got to find a way to end run those groups and

. . . reach the critical masses. Until we do both, changing the system is any fundamental

way is going to be very difficult.28

McCallion depicts the battle for educational change as raging betweensociety represented by an alliance of business leaders and the masses,against a powerful establishment of school teachers and administrators.This is a far cry from George Counts image of teachers and administrators

daring to ally themselves with the masses to fight the business establish-ment and build a new social order. But the plausible ring of this line pointsto new alliances forming new visions.

Hill (1997) recently proposed a design for school organization that

parallels the new corporate network model: a network of partner educa-tional service providers around a down-sized flagship district coordinat-ing center. In Hills plan the individual schools will no longer be unitswithin a bureaucracy but distinct organizations, with their own missions,

core technologies, budget and spending authority (p. 498). The centralschool authorities will not run schools, but only perform irreduciblypublic functions: e.g., providing authority for taxation, distributing funds,informing parents of available choices and facilitating transfer between

schools.This multi-provider model makes generous room for educational

innovations. It establishes a mechanism for public accountability absent

from voucher plans. It provides a local control mechanism to coordinatethe diverse schools available to community members. With a littletinkering around the edges it could permit the public authority to runschools, if they could compete against other providers. Hill offers his


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412 LEONARD J. WAKS

proposal for metropolitan schools. Many districts may wish to retaintheir district schools as flagship providers supported by a range of otherpartner providers offering niche educational services. Aspects of this

pattern had already been consolidated in Congress and State legislatures bythe late 1990s, and it now provides a convergence point for contemporaryinnovation, a lodestar of a new curriculum organization.

POSTSCRIPT, 2002

In 2002 control of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania schools was trans-ferred to the School Reform Commission by the states Republicangovernor, acting under legislative authority. In mid-April, the Commission

assigned 42 schools to a diverse group of organizations, including twolocal universities and a large number of private sector educational service

providers. The Commission announced its commitment to a multipleprovider model based on the principles of charterization, privatization,

and management by educational service corporations. The New YorkTimes called the Commissions initiative the largest reorganization inAmerican educational history.29

NOTES

1 The flagship five partners model is developed in Rugman & DCruz (2000).2 Seminal articles of Meyer (1977, 1978) and Meyer & Rowan (1978) are viewed as

setting forth a new institutional paradigm in educational studies.

3 See Cuban, 1984, 1990, 1992; Tyack & Cuban, 1995; McKinnon & Westbury, 1975;Westbury, 1973; Reid, 1999.4 This idea parallels Ivan Illichs notion of institutionalized schooling obtaining a radical

monopoly over socialy legitimate learning (see Illich, 1971).5 For further discussion see Rowan & Miskel, 1999, p. 380.6 For a discussion of American performance on international comparisons of science and

math achievement, see Baker, 1997.7 See Qvortrup (1998), for a recent review of home-based tele-workers.8 Karen Vander Linde, partner in charge of learning services at Price Waterhouse

Coopers business process outsourcing group, one of the fastest growing units at Price

Waterhouse, claims that firms are outsourcing their knowledge professionals so that when

they work on projects as partners they can compel the employees to adopt appropriate

knowledge work attitudes and alleviate the transition to a networked, e-learning environ-

ment (PR NewsWire, 2001). Albert & Bradley (1997, p. 10) however, claim that knowledgeprofessionals are more frequently leaving employment in large firms voluntarily, to take

advantage of the greater discretion, flexibility, productivity and enhanced income derived

from operating as a consulting professional. The terms necessity entrepreneurs and

opportunity entrepreneurs are used to distinguish those who start their own firms after


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being laid off from those who initiate their firms voluntarily to take advantage of entre-

preneurial opportunities.9 In March 2000 both the New York Times and USA Today ran cover stories spotlighting

Fast Company, the trendy new magazine that has captured the spirit of network enterprise.

10 According to Brown, Green and Lauder (2001), the United States and United Kingdomhave adopted high skilllow skill strategies, with high skilled professional elite knowl-

edge workers and a wide spread of skill levels and incomes in the working population.

Germany has maintained a high skill strategy, with relative income and skill equality for

domestic workers; low skill jobs are confined to foreign guest workers and high levels of

unemployment are accepted. Japan has combined a high skill workforce strategy with

long working hours and labor discipline.11 Druckers insight has been verified by the growing number of college graduates in

skilled production jobs (Holusha, 1995) making the distinction I am suggesting between

knowledge professionals and skilled production workers fuzzy.12 These characteristics of contemporary knowledge workers are reported by Disney

(2001); Seang (2001); and Seebach (2001).13 Microsoft unveiled its vision to enable the knowledge worker in 1999, reorganiz-

ing its operations into four customer groups: IT managers, knowledge workers, software

developers, and consumers. Bob Maglia, previously in charge of applications software,was re-assigned to the division targeting knowledge workers (Taft & Glascok, 1999).

Lotus introduced products for its Domino Notes platform incorporating such concepts as

locating appropriate people and resources through directory services and aggregating

information from diverse sources. The management literature at the turn of the century has

identified knowledge sharing as among the major issues facing the global corporation,

and has begun to explore best practices for knowledge sharing (Verespej, 1999, p. 10;

Comedu-Kirschner, 2000, p. 8). Knowledge management has entered a new phase in

the late 1990s, in which instead of merely training existing workers to use knowledge

assets, jobs are re-designed from scratch to assume knowledge work processes. A detailed

chronicle of knowledge work in many sectors is chronicled in Cortada (ed.) (1998).14 See Sassen (1994), for a more detailed account of the jobs in the service economy and

their role in the workforce of todays global cities.15

Shukor (2001) maintains that the standard curriculum (in Malaysia) is based aroundspoon feeding and an exam-oriented school environment, and adds that the entire

system needs major tweakings if not a complete overhaul (p. 17) to produce knowledge

workers. Commenting on the Malaysian governments smart school initiative, Shukor

comments that computers are just tools, and the real problem is freeing students to think

and make decisions.16 Dewey is worth quoting at length on this point. He says there is all the difference in

the world whether the acquisition of information is treated as an end in itself, or is made

an integral portion of the training of thought. The assumption that information that has

been accumulated apart from use in the recognition and solution of a problem may later on

be, at will, freely employed by thought is quite false. The skill at the ready command of

intelligence is the skill acquired with the aid of intelligence (HWT, p. 163).17 Cited in Rowan & Miskel, 1999, p. 377.18 On the rapid growth and operating principles of corporate universities, see Meister

(1998). Their threat to the mainsteam tertiary sector is discussed by Nurden (1999).Authers (1999), discusses their crucial role in creating

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How Globalization Can Cause Change