Neoliberalism
President Reagan was quoted in one of his speeches highlighting the pivotal role education would play in achieving the American dream. He stressed the importance of education as a pillar upon which success would be built and likened the role of education in society to that of a family. Since then, however, the world has developed, and every other country has invested in its education system bring forth competition in every sector. The stiff competition is bearing fruits with countries like Germany, Japan and South Korea, among others producing best products in the world overtaking the US in technological fields such as car manufacturing and other machines. The US has for long been at the helm in the machine industry but is gradually losing the upper edge in such sectors.
Neoliberalism began in the 1970s intent on reforming the education sector by making funds meant for educational purposes portable. Neoliberal reformists in the education sector view privatizing of education as the means of achieving recovery (Rury, 2015). Neoliberals have introduced reforms that have entirely changed the way schools operate in educating the students as well as being responsible for bringing in professionalism in the education sector. Privatization of public schools has brought with it new fields to equip trainers in education and the administrators in the education sector. Since then, there have been more calls for the neoliberal education system to be rolled out through the US regardless of the class, race or economic capabilities.
Equity implies that everyone has equal opportunity to be afforded the same treatment and that we are all under the law regardless of one’s colour, gender or economic class. Social justice, on the other hand, is an extension of equity consisting of equal rights for all regardless of class, gender or social class. The neoliberal form of education promises to bring equity in the education sector so that the same knowledge offered at Silicon Valley trickles down to other schools across America (Rudd & Goodson, 2017). A shift to a neoliberal education system that allows for the school of choice is thus, inevitable. Recently, under the neoliberal education, Trump’s administration has been rooting for a voucher system that provides for a student withdrawing from a public school to use their share set aside by the government to undertake online classes or homeschooling.