Le nouvel ordre éducatif mondial. À propos de l'ouvrage dirigé par Christian Laval et Louis Weber "Le Nouvel Ordre éducatif mondial"

Alain Michel discusses here the book Le Nouvel Ordre éducatif mondial (Paris: Nouveaux Regards and Syllepse, 2002), edited by Christian Laval and Louis Weber. The book was produced by IRHESC (Institut de recherches historiques, économiques, sociales et culturelles), the research body linked to the FSU (Fédération syndicale unitaire), the dominant education trade union in France.
The book examines the views put forward by the four main international organizations concerned with education (the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the European Commission ) and concludes that, basically, the problem with most of them is their excessive “economism” and the trend to greater reliance on market forces in education.
While acknowledging that the analysis is sound, Alain Michel goes over the arguments offered and contests this criticism, stressing that ultimately “accepting the need to manage the public sector better using the tools of evaluation, management and guidance at different levels of decision-making […] does not mean selling one’s educative soul to the devil of unbridled utilitarianism”.