Engaging and Transforming the Discourse of Neoliberalism in Education: A Possibility for International Solidarity

Abstract

This article narrates my experience conducting a two-week, intensive professional development workshop on curriculum planning in Bolivia in the summer of 2003. Based upon this experience and the reflections emerging from my encounter with Bolivian educators, it explores the theoretical possibilities of postcritical analysis for curriculum design across national borders. The analysis presented in this article specifically argues that looking at curriculum design from a postructuralist perspective will help educators in Bolivia to better understand the ideological implications of curriculum design and, therefore, to develop a curriculum design that is more conscious of the dangers of the technocratic model pervasive in neoliberal societies. The article further argues that this theoretical perspective can help educators in Western countries to create collaborative models with non-Western countries based on solidarity rather than on a traditional, colonial model, in which countries like Bolivia play the role of the passive "receiver" of our knowledge.