сп. Критика и хуманизъм | кн. 57, бр. 2/2022 | Bulgarian Education: Trapped in Inequalities
водещи броя: Майя Грекова и Мила Минева, кн. 57, бр. 2/2022, с. 164, ISSN:0861-1718
Contents
* Изданието е достъпно на английски език.
Preface
Hidden Justifications of Educational Inequalities
Education and Inequalities: Problem Nodes and Public Speakers, Bulgaria 2017–2020
Abstract:
This article is based on discourse analysis and secondary analysis of data from research conducted under the project Educational Inequalities and Social Opportunities. Strategic Objectives of the Reforms in Bulgarian Secondary Education and Practical Results. The first part outlines the problem nodes in the relationship between education and inequality as found in the secondary analysis and the quantitative modules of the study. The second part examines how these problem nodes are addressed in the discursive strategies of the actors who speak publicly on the topic.
The dominant public discourse on education, crisis in education, and educational reform in Bulgaria has been found to be what we have called ‘project-entrepreneurial’. It essentially responsibilizes families, identifying them as being responsible for their children’s educational achievement by forming their educational ‘motivation’. However, different strategies are conducted through this dominant discourse. It is employed by public and administrative actors when speaking about the need to reform the Bulgarian school system. This discourse is also employed by actors from the field of business who, however, responsibilize the school system through the construct of ‘adequacy to the needs of business and the labour market’. This discourse is also employed by NGOs whose missions are oriented towards positive discrimination. The different strategies amplify the effects of the dominant discourse as follows: students are measured on the basis of intellectual achievements which the dominant discourse reduces to educational motivations formed in the family. This supports and legitimizes a process of ever earlier selection of children based on intellectual achievement, and serves to show desirable families that the school cherry-picks its children and to legitimize the reproduction of cultural capital.
In the competitive environment in which they are placed, schools behave completely adequately and rationally – the successful ones become even more successful, while the unsuccessful ones occupy a vacated niche, that of social welfare. In this way the Bulgarian school system, while producing and reproducing inequality, still counteracts social exclusion.
Keywords: educational inequality, intellectual achievement, cultural capital, school competition, social vs educational function
‘Good’ Education as a ‘Club Good’: The Unequal Worlds of Bulgarian School
Abstract: On the basis of data from a field study carried out under the research project Educational Inequalities and Social Opportunities. Strategic Objectives of the Reforms in Bulgarian Secondary Education and Practical Results, financed by the Bulgarian National Science Fund at the Ministry of Education and Science, this article problematizes 1) the basic structural mechanisms of institutional organization of the current system of Bulgarian school education which are a precondition for education to reproduce and deepen social inequalities instead of emancipating young people from their social origin, as well as 2) the ideological formulas that legitimize them. In conclusion, 3) I formulate options for resolving the problem of inequalities in education at the level of the system and at the level of the actions and interactions of social actors within it.
Keywords: educational inequalities, school education, educational poverty, principle of homogeneity, evaluation disparity
Education Is Simply Sidestepping Them, Or, Everyday Strategies for Legitimizing Educational Inequalities
Abstract: This article attempts to trace the tension between two visions of education in Bulgaria, namely education as a right and as a competitive resource. The article begins with an analysis of the relevant legislation and goes on to discuss its practical effects, reconstructed through fieldwork conducted under the project Educational Inequalities and Social Opportunities. Strategic Objectives of the Reforms in Bulgarian Secondary Education and Practical Results, financed by the Bulgarian National Science Fund at the Ministry of Education and Science. The author’s main thesis is that the two visions of education are in practice mutually contradictory. The analysis shows how certain social groups employ education as a distinctive and competitive resource and succeed in imposing their own interests on public policies. By responsibilizing families and fomenting ‘moral panic’ about ‘difficult children’, these groups legitimize educational inequalities, gradually undermine the idea of education as a mechanism for ensuring equal opportunities, and minimize the chances of implementing public policies oriented towards education as a right in Bulgaria.
Keywords: education, equal opportunity, competitive resource, moral panic, public policies
Social Inequalities Reloaded: ‘Quality of Education’ Concept Adapted to Social Environment
Abstract: This article compares the normative visions of quality of education (of the World Bank, OECD, UNICEF, UNESCO, and Bulgaria’s Pre-school and School Education Act – PSEA) with the everyday perceptions of respondents working in Bulgarian education, and with their assessment of the quality of education in different types of schools in Bulgaria. The study’s (qualitative research conducted in 2018) conclusion is that there is no connection between the declared objectives of the PSEA, which unite the modern and humanist visions of international documents, and actual practice. This is due to two reasons. The first reason has to do with the fact that while the normative visions are informed by the humanist-holistic notion of education, the practical view of education is driven solely by economic considerations. The second reason comes from the actual state of affairs in Bulgaria: quality education is thought of and implemented as ‘special profile’ education that takes into consideration pupils’ family and social environment (the ethnic group and social status of parents, the place of residence, ‘the street’). Respondents shared the following views on the relationship between school education and pupils’ subsequent life trajectories: Pupils attending a rural (often Roma) primary school (or a school in a poor neighbourhood) go on to vocational high schools and low-skilled jobs on the local market. Pupils attending an elite primary school have private tuition and go on to elite high schools, higher education and high-skilled jobs on the national or global market. These two extreme varieties of educational and life trajectories presuppose social homogenization of pupils because they attend schools that are determined by and conform to their social environment. The social environment predetermines the school and the future life trajectory of children, and the school is just a tool for reproducing social inequalities. This situation inherently blocks the normative vision of children’s equal access to quality education in Bulgaria.
Keywords: quality of education, values-based and instrumental functions of education, social inequalities, social environment, social mobility
Public Policies Sidetracked
‘Inclusive Education’: From Regulation to Implementation
Abstract: According to the Pre-school and School Education Act (2016), ‘“[i]nclusive еducation” is the process of understanding, accepting and supporting the individuality of each child or pupil and the variety of needs of all children and pupils’. In place of various strategies and programmes for integration, inclusion, etc., there is now an Act decreeing the need for equal access to education for every child, attention to the individual characteristics of each child, and overcoming the stigmatization of differences between children in the name of achieving ‘integration’ of them all. It turns out, however, that even in the Act the focus has been shifted to removing the obstacles to learning, while in its actual implementation the integration/inclusion of all children has been completely forgotten.
Keywords: Roma children, children with special educational needs, discrimination at school, Pazardzhik
Delegated Budgets and Educational Inequalities
Abstract: Several consecutive waves of the PISA study have shown that Bulgarian students have the lowest scores in the EU in reading, mathematics, and science. The main problem of the Bulgarian education system is that it is one of the most polarized in Europe. The school network in the country is socially stratified. This article attempts to reveal the role of delegated budgets (the main mechanism for financial redistribution in the Bulgarian education system) in the process of stratification and increasing inequalities. For the purposes of this analysis, data from two types of empirical sources are used: data from a questionnaire survey of students, and qualitative data from interviews with school principals and focus group discussions with teachers. The findings of the analysis show that the marketization of education, which began with the introduction of delegated budgets in Bulgaria in the mid-2000s, has led to increasing inequalities and stratification of schools. It is argued that at least two parallel economic logics have emerged in different strata of the Bulgarian education system, which is due to the fact that schools operate in heterogeneous social contexts. The two different economic rationalities have momentous consequences. In the top tier of schools, those with high educational outcomes and prestige, competition leads to provision of higher-quality education and a variety of new learning opportunities. In the bottom tier of schools, those with low prestige and low educational outcomes, competition works on a very different principle from that in ‘elite’ schools. The economic-educational rationality there is towards lowering formal and practical internal requirements for students, ‘pushing’ students up to Grade 12 for financial reasons.
Keywords: educational inequalities, sociology of education, school stratification, social inequalities
Expanding Research Approaches
An Intersectional Approach to Educational Inequalities
Abstract: Within the framework of a strictly defined intersectional analysis of simultaneous negative impacts, very few Bulgarian sociological studies have taken into account the effects of class, ethnicity, and gender. This article introduces the concept of intersectionality, which has been underused in Bulgarian sociology but can be useful in explaining multiple inequalities. It aims to theoretically distinguish the cognitive potential of the different approaches to the complex set of inequalities that are included in the concept of intersectionality: on the one hand, intracategorical, anticategorical, and intercategorical, and on the other hand, structural and political. The purpose is to demonstrate their empirical applicability in analysing specific situations of multiple exclusion and deprivation in terms of educational opportunities. The article interprets results of international comparative empirical studies that apply the concept of intersectionality in exploring fairness of educational opportunities and the role of participation in adult learning, which is an important mechanism for reducing the negative effects of multiple inequalities.
Keywords: intersectionality, class, gender, ethnicity, educational inequalities
Researching Education through Actor-Network Theory
Abstract: This article presents Actor-Network Theory and its application in researching the education system in terms of introduction of information communication technologies, education standards, and education reforms. Through a desk study, it highlights the theoretical basis through which the process of reforming education is analysed, as well as the impact of standards on the curriculum. The main conclusions are that when considering the introduction of technologies in the educational process, it is of particular importance to perceive them as symmetrical actors within the network that possess agency similarly to human actors. Networks, their constant dissolution, formation of new networks and change, are a prerequisite for the analysis of the reforms taking place in any system, in particular in the education system. Standards should not be understood as a stable unchanging basis through which to assess students, but rather as fluid and changeable as the network they are part of.
Keywords: Actor-Network Theory, standards, reforms, education, technologies
Looking Ahead
Imagining One’s Future: Bulgarian Students’ Horizons and Aspirations
Abstract: This article deals with the topic of Bulgarian students’ aspirations and motivation, and their ideas about their path to success in life and work. Based on an analysis of open-ended questions from a survey conducted among students in grades 8 and 11 in four municipalities in Bulgaria, major differences in young people’s future orientation are outlined. The main dividing lines in the future plans of students from different types of schools are identified. The differences in students’ dreams and intentions are contextualized within research on aspirations understood as capacities and as bound to the social environment, not as strictly individual ideas and desires. The article also comments on the risks involved in interpreting differences in styles and horizons of dreams, which are related to the ‘cruel optimism’ of efforts to overcome the low aspirations and weak motivation of underprivileged social groups.
Keywords: students’ aspirations, futurity, sense of future, inequality