We are grateful to Sue Winton for helping us deepen our thinking around what leading against neoliberalism and privatization entails and making connections between ideas that are important to us.
By: Sue Winton
While you may not know the term neoliberalism, you’re probably familiar with this ideology’s beliefs about how the world should be organized. The popularity of this set of ideas started to grow in Canada in the 1980s, and today policies and practices reflecting them are widespread around the world. A key neoliberal idea is that economies and societies should be organized like a free market. Put another way, it means that people, organizations, and businesses should be allowed to compete for success with limited government involvement. The role of governments, according to neoliberalism, is to create new markets and help them thrive through policies that support market conditions, attitudes, and behaviour (Brown, 2006). Examples in the business sector include removing or reducing controls over banking, capital movement, corporate taxes, and trade (Connell, 2013). Many governments have also cut public spending to encourage economic growth (Viens, 2019). These policies have helped create markets that operate internationally, and many governments try to ensure their businesses and citizens can compete successfully in the global economy. In this context, the primary task of schools is to prepare young people for this competition by fostering skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will be useful in the workplace.
A related core belief of neoliberalism is that individuals should be able to pursue their interests and make their own choices without government interference. This idea ignores the reality that choices are always limited and that some people have far fewer choices than others. Relatedly, neoliberalism holds individuals - not governments - responsible for meeting their needs (and those of their family) and for ensuring their success (Brown, 2019). From this perspective, an individual’s failure is the result of their poor choices rather than unfair policies, structural inequalities, racism, sexism, or other societal factors. This view reinforces the popular idea of meritocracy, that is, the belief that people who work hard deserve their success and are entitled to enjoy its benefits.
An additional key (and associated) idea of neoliberalism is that the public sector should be more like the private sector. Governments encourage the shift towards becoming more private-like – that is, privatization – in different ways. One strategy is to create markets. In education, markets call upon students and their families to choose between different providers of education, and public dollars follow the students to their selected school. Policies that create education markets often rest on the idea that this approach will improve public schools by forcing them to compete for students (and their funding). Enabling families to choose the school they believe is best for their children also reinforces the idea that individuals, not governments, are responsible for their success and failure. Government and school board policies to support education markets include: public funding of private schools and homeschooling; the removal of school catchment areas; and the introduction of charter schools, virtual schools, and specialized schools and programs (e.g., Arts-focused schools, the International Baccalaureate).
A second group of policies that encourage the public sector to be more private-like are those that introduce practices common in the business world. These practices emphasize standards, performance measures, and accountability, and in public education, they include standardized curricula, large-scale assessments, graduation rate targets, fee-for-service, and public school rankings.
In addition to creating markets and introducing private sector values and techniques, privatization also occurs through policies that encourage private actors (including parents, businesses, non-government organizations, philanthropists, and foundations) to take on roles once provided by governments. In education, these responsibilities include funding schools, teaching, writing curriculum, training educators, and making education policy. Policies that encourage these shifts include fundraising for public schools, sharing costs through public-private partnerships (also called PPPs or P3s), and enrolling tuition-paying students from outside Canada. Some policies allow businesses to benefit financially from their involvement in education by allowing them to promote and sell educational services or products in schools.
Policies based on neoliberal ideas affect how people work, understand themselves, and relate to others. Individuals judge their value, and that of others, in economic terms. Financial wealth and job status are viewed as indicators of an individual’s success or failure, and people work relentlessly to secure their futures and that of their family.
In education markets, for example, principals shift from their school’s educational leader to its manager of compliance with government policies. Those leading schools in low income communities apply for grants and solicit donations from charities, philanthropists, and businesses to make up for funding shortfalls. In areas with multiple education options, administrators have to become marketers as they compete against other schools and districts for students and the dollars they bring. Teachers lose their ability to respond to students’ needs when they have to teach a tightly prescribed curriculum that aligns with the standardized tests their students write. Subjects that are not clearly linked to workplace preparation or required for university admissions are devalued – if not defunded entirely. Parents and other caregivers feel obligated to fundraise for underfunded public schools and look for other ways to acquire advantages for their own kids – even at the expense of other people’s children. And while public schools have always served both personal and social outcomes, neoliberalism shifts the emphasis towards prioritizing individual benefits over collective ones.
Leading against neoliberalism and privatization is challenging. It requires that leaders push back against the idea that people’s value is determined by their labour and instead, embracing them as complex human beings with emotional, spiritual, physical, and cognitive dimensions. It invites people to slow down and seek pleasure with others. Leading against neoliberalism and privatization means promoting cooperation over competition and prioritizing collective benefits over individual interests. It involves engaging in activism, calling out policies that promote inequity, and demanding that governments actively pursue a just society. Lastly, leading against neoliberalism and privatization requires believing an alternative future is possible.
Questions for Reflection
- How do neoliberal ideas show up in different parts of your life?
- In what ways do your beliefs about society, success, and yourself align with those of neoliberalism?
- What changes have you observed in health, education, higher education, and other public sectors? Have they made these systems more like the private sector? If so, how?
- What are some big or small ways you can resist neoliberalism and privatization in your life?
References
Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization. Political Theory, 34(6), 690-714.
Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press.
Connell, R. (2013). The neoliberal cascade and education: An essay on the market agenda and its consequences. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2), 99-112.
Viens, A. M. (2019). Neo-liberalism, austerity and the political determinants of health. Health Care Analysis, 27(3), 147-152.
Additional Recommended Resources:
Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/
Gautreax, M. (2015). Neoliberal education reform’s mouthpiece: Education Week’s discourse on Teach for America. Critical Education, 6(11). http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/185228
Karim, A., & Sanchez, J. (2024). The colour of privatization: A CUPE report on the impacts of privatized and for-profit services on Indigenous, Black, and racialized workers and communities. https://cupe.ca/sites/default/files/colour_of_privatization_report_en.pdf
Rogers, P., & Grant, N. E. (2024). “Data my ass”: Political rhizomes of power and the symbolic violence of neoliberal governance and privatization. Critical Education, 15(2), 37-51.Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform. Teachers College Press.
Panelist Bios
Dr. Sue Winton is the York Research Chair in Policy Analysis for Democracy and Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University. Her research examines policy advocacy, influences, and enactment. She is the Director of the Public Education Exchange, a SSHRC-funded project designed to create and share knowledge about education privatization (www.pexnetwork.ca).
Yvonne Kelly is a dedicated social worker with both a BSW and MSW, who has spent the past 36 years working primarily in community-based settings. Her career has been focused on supporting diverse and low-income communities, often through projects involving close collaboration with schools across the GTA. Currently, Yvonne serves as a Community and Partnership Developer in the Inclusive School and Community Services Department at YRDSB, where her portfolio emphasizes the intersections of poverty. Her work covers vital areas, including student nutrition, youth homelessness, the impacts of poverty, and classism, as well as how these and other forms of discrimination intersect to impact students’ success in education and life. Beyond her full-time role, Yvonne is deeply engaged in the advocacy for affordable housing, rent control, and amplifying voices with lived experience. She is a founding member and co-chair of the Affordable Housing Coalition of York Region. Outside of her advocacy work, Yvonne enjoys time with her family, including her five children, four grandchildren, and a supportive life partner.
Paul Gorski is a dedicated father, gardener, community builder, and educator. He is the founder of the Equity Literacy Institute, an organization committed to fostering institutional and systemic transformation in schools rooted in the principles of equity and justice. With a long-standing career as an activist and author, Paul focuses primarily on racial and economic justice within educational institutions. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky, with his daughter Mattie.
Deena Ladd has been organizing for decent work in sectors of work dominated with low-wages, violations, precarious and temp work for the past 30 years. She has worked to support and develop grassroots training, education and organizing with groups such as the Fight for $15 and Fairness Campaign, Decent Work and Health Network, the Migrant Rights Network as well as the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. Deena is one of the founders and Executive Director of the Toronto Workers’ Action Centre. The Workers’ Action Centre organizes to improve wages and working conditions with low-waged workers, migrants, women, racialized and immigrant workers in precarious jobs that face discrimination, violations of rights and no benefits in the workplace.
Kearie Daniel is a visionary leader and advocate transforming the landscape for Black families in Canada. As the founder and Executive Director of Woke Mommy Chatter, a platform amplifying Black motherhood stories, and co-founder of Parents of Black Children (PoBC), she has spearheaded initiatives addressing systemic racism and inequities in education. With a background in healthcare communications and child welfare advocacy, Kearie has implemented groundbreaking systems navigation programs to support Black families. Now leading the Black Women’s Institute for Health, she focuses on reducing health disparities faced by Black women and girls. Kearie’s dedication to equity, storytelling, and community empowerment continues to inspire transformative change.
Erika Shaker is the Director of the National Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Director of the CCPA Education Project, and editor of the popular education magazine Our Schools / Our Selves. For almost three decades she has researched, written about, and spoken on a number of education-related issues: privatization, commercialism, education funding, social justice education and democracy.
