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A Post‐Fordist Reworking of Australian Education: theFinn, Mayer and Carmichael reports in the context oflabour reprocessingColin Symes aa Queensland University of Technology , AustraliaPublished online: 11 Aug 2006.

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The Vocational Aspect of Education, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995

A Post-Fordist Reworking of AustralianEducation: the Finn, Mayer and Carmichaelreports in the context of labour reprocessing

COLIN SYMESQueensland University of Technology, Australia

ABSTRACT Like its counterparts overseas, Australian education has recentlybeen the subject of scrutiny and review, particularly in respect to itsrelationship to the economy and work. Concern about an economy in declineand a labour force with limited skills and educational capacity prompted anexamination into the direction of its education. To offset Australia's allegedpoor performance in these areas, a number of policy options have beenadopted which would bring schools into a closer relationship with thedemands of the workplace. In effect we are witnessing a resurgence ofhuman capital Imperatives in educational policy. But unlike itsmanifestations in the past, which contained Fordist and Taylorist elements,the new nexus which is now being forged between school and work ispost-Fordist in character.

Introduction

One of the perennial conundrums of education is the degree to which itsactivities ought to be tethered to the demands of the workplace and thelabour market. A number of factors bear on this conundrum and itsconvincing resolution depends on their appreciation. Recent policy shiftsin education the world over have resulted in a more slavish adherence onthe part of education to meeting the training requirements of industry andbusiness and have resulted in a system of schooling with strong humancapital components. This follows a period, stretching from the 1960s tothe 1970s, when educationalists were more or less free to assert theirpedagogic wills, untrammelled by the strictures of governments oremployers. The renewed emphasis on the production of work related'competencies', has once again brought into sharp relief the degree towhich the education should be influenced by the exigencies of the

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workplace. In spite of some high-minded defences of education as the lastbulwark of civilisation, which are always problematic in theirassumptions, it is the reality of schooling, from the times of itsintroduction to the present, that it has always played a significant role intraining the labour force of a nation by modernising its skill repertoire.The present debates, which have rekindled interest in old quandaries,need to be understood as part of a reshaping of the skill of the labourforce engendered by the widescale adoption of automation and patternsof labour organisation which supplant the Taylorist and Fordistarrangements of the past. In this paper it will be argued that what we arewitnessing in Australia, as in other parts of the industrialised world, is arestructuring of the school/work nexus which is as profound as any in thepast and which has taken as its primary focus the content of learning, inparticular, the sets of competencies that ought to be acquired at school asa precondition of employment. To be precise: it will be argued that thedebate about the future of schooling has been framed in terms of thehuman capital imperatives of Australia as revealed by an appraisal of thenewly styled labour processes in the light of their post-Fordistreformation. Although the terms of this debate are in large measure at thelevel of principle and have yet to have a significant impact on theconditions of schooling, the fact that it is occurring at all reinforces thedegree to which these conditions continue to be shaped by economicrather than educational imperatives.

A Working Model of Education?

The debate about the optimal relationship between work and education isa recurrent one, which seems to surface with cyclical regularity at times ofeducational crisis, which often coincide with crises in the nation-state as awhole. Periods of war or its peacetime equivalent, economic strife, areoften occasions which prompt national introspection, when debates abouteducation and its role in nation-building strategies flourish. As economicstrife often induces high levels of youth unemployment, education is oftenheld accountable as a contributor to economic decline. This oftenprovokes reflections on how education might assist to reinvigorate thecommercial and business sectors and thereby promote a more productivesociety. Such reflections resort to a number of strategies. One strategy inrecent decades is the citing of successful economies among the OECDgroup of nations and noting the degree to which their success ispredicated on an optimised balance between education and work.Germany and Scandinavia are typically named as exemplars of systems inwhich the economy and education work in close conjunction withanother, and in which the success of the former is predicated on thelatter. Lest it appear that education becomes mere preparation foremployment, caveats are added which qualify the relationship between

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education and work. The goal for any system of education is not merely atechnically efficient labour force but one that also possesses "industrialintelligence" (Dewey, 1977).

Another strategy is to pose the debate in broader philosophicalterms, centering on the purposes and goals of education as revealed in anormative framework. For instance there is an argument long canvassedby some philosophers of education, notably Michael Oakeshott (cited inWringe, 1981), who regard the strengthening of its vocational elements assubverting the true purpose of education, which centres on broader goalsthan preparation for work. This has resulted in a keen defence ofeducation against its seeming other, that is, training, which has beenportrayed as an inferior mode of education, attenuated in its cognitiveproperties and intellectual rigour which, if adopted as a substitute forproper education, could have dire consequences for the protection ofimportant cultural values. It is suggested that any connection educationshould have with work be secured through a general education - whichprovides an individual with a broad epistemological repertoire utilisablein a wide diversity of occupational circumstances. In a broader sense thisattempt to protect education from the corrupting influence of a rampantinstrumentalism is part of a philosophical tradition, idealist in origin, thathas legitimated the transcendence of the everyday on the grounds of itsparticularity and illusoriness (Bailey, 1984). Such arguments have led to adowngrading in education systems of applied forms of knowledge, whichhave never enjoyed as much status in the epistemological hierarchy astheoretical forms of knowledge.[l] Notwithstanding these philosophicalcaveats, education even in its most liberal and least vocational form hastended to provide a fecund training ground for the priesthood and thepublic service (Gaskell, 1977).

A somewhat more sanguine view of the school/work nexus is held bythose who would make work the centre of education, and to more closelyally labour with learning. John Dewey, a celebrated advocate of thisposition, saw an education so styled as the centrepiece of democracy aswell as an ideal basis for experiential approaches to learning. Herecognised that the bane of modern education was the degree to whichacademic and vocational education were set apart from another (Dewey,1937). In order to cross this artificial divide he argued that occupationsshould become a vehicle for transmitting a general education, for passingon the cultural legacy through work-related activities. This has certainegalitarian advantages in that it challenges any elite divide centred aroundthe existence of academic and practical curricula. In a similar vein,because of the centrality it has in our lives, it has also been argued thatthe study of work should itself form a major component of the curriculumof academic subjects which would entail, among other things, examiningthe struggle of the working classes, the role of trade unionism, the workethic, unemployment and the impact of technology in the workplace

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(Willis, 1984; Spours & Young, 1990). In all respects these attempts tobring the classroom closer to the processes of work share some parallelswith the socialist path in education, which was committed to thecoalescence of applied and theoretical forms of knowing and, to this end,required of its participants frequent work experience (Makarenko, 1951;Hawkins, 1974; Castles &Wustenberg, 1979).

These perspectives on how the involvement of schooling with workought to proceed, tend to overlook what is the actuality of thisinvolvement: that there are, and always have been, strong structuralcorrespondences and homologies between the ethos of schooling and thatof work. The lived reality of schooling is that through its symbolicuniverse the school has always conferred honour and virtue on work,giving it moral standing and pride of place in the life of the individual.Schools appear to have had few scruples in consigning countlessgenerations of pupils to monotonous and alienating work, often hazardousto the mind and body, or, at the other extreme, in preparing elites tocommand the professions. Through their practices and values they haveassisted in giving added force and import to the centrality of work in themoral fabric of modern society and have been singularly successful increating the impression that human worth is correlated with industry andexertion. This has served to offset any repugnance for its materialcircumstances through the assurance that all work, no matter howdemeaning, has the potential to ennoble the human condition, and that itis sloth and idleness that are morally unacceptable, that demean theindividual's existential condition. Through its manifold practices, theschool is an important moral technology assisting to legitimate andvalorise the work ethic.

Making School Work!

In fact the school/work nexus has proceeded through at least two phasesand now is embarking on another, that to be delineated in this paper. Theinitial phase, which occurred with the introduction of universal schooling,was concerned with instilling appropriate work habits, which entailedinculcating an outlook which encompassed honesty, respect for property,punctuality, time-drift, deference, industry and which was broadlycompatible with the conditions of factory labour. This entailed thedevelopment of a machine-like sensibility able to tolerate boredom andtedium, which was reflected in the predominance of drill in early modernpedagogic practice. This has to be generated because under thepre-industrial conditions of production, habits of work were not uniformlyapplied but only as required. Nowhere is this better exemplified than inthe pre-industrial attitudes to time which were laissez faire rather thanmethodical and which were improvised according to mood and fancy. Theidea of scheduling work, in opposition to a period of recreation, on a

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regular basis according to a timetable, was a product of the factory regimeand one which had to be cultivated, along with the notion that time was avaluable commodity which ought not to be wasted or squandered (Weber,1958; Thompson, 1967; Thrift, 1981). It was the absence of such attitudesin the general population, together with the widespread existence ofallegedly intemperate and profligate practices, which cast the school inthe role of a moral technology responsible for the production of adisciplined and productive society, committed to Christian values and thework ethic. As one of its important custodians, the school wasinstrumental in establishing a deference to the industrial order which,though never complete and unopposed was never of sufficientproportions to pose a significant threat to its workings. The time regime ofthe school which often interfered with that of the home, was activelyresisted, provoking strikes, mass desertion from school and widespreadtruancy (Humphries, 1984; Miller, 1986).

During its second phase, the concerns of school viz. the workplacewere extended to include the acquisition of basic skills like reading,writing and arithmetic, which were taught utilising drill methods. Thesealso contributed to the production of a compliant sensibility via suchclassrooms materials as reading books [Ahier, 1988; Taylor, forthcoming],whose contents often valorised hard work and deference to authority, aswell as gender-stereotyped divisions of labour. To this was also added, assecondary schooling became more widespread, the notion that schoolingshould produce and identify difference amongst its population. To thisend, and for reasons which will be elaborated upon later, emerged adivided curriculum: one for academic pupils and another for those ofmore practical propensity, which was often, in some national systemsincluding for a time that of Australia, manifested in different types ofschooling for these pupils and which was further divided along genderlines. To reinforce the legitimacy of the divide was the powerful engine of"psycho-technology" (Rose, 1990) consisting of IQ and other measureswhich consolidated the instances of scholastic difference and providedevidence on the numerical magnitude of their incidence. But althoughthese psychological and pedagogical regimes contributed to the characterand structure of schooling during this second phase, it is the nature ofwork which was developing along Taylorist and Fordist lines almost at thesame time, and which demanded a highly differentiated labour force,which made a more significant contribution to them. The degree to whichschools, through their credentialing mechanisms, help to sustain thedemography of occupations and regulate entrance to them, is critical tothe functioning of a modern society. Schools thus play a role in tailoringcareer aspirations to the demands of the workforce.

In essence, there are two aspects to the school-work nexus in thesecond phase of its development: the social and the cultural. For instance,the social organisation of the school has tended to reflect the social

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relations typical of capital modes of production as they were articulatedaccording to the scientific management approaches pioneered byFrederick Winslow Taylor during the 1890s. These display rigidhierarchies and strong lines of demarcation, and the school has played arole in their reproduction and regularisation. Indeed in one extremelyinfluential account of this view, that of Bowles & Gintis (1976), theseassume more importance in the creation of a compliant labour force thanthe actual content of learning. In all its sorts of ways, from the way themicropolitics of the school is organised to match the differing conditionsof work across the occupational spectrum to the way it disciplines itsrecalcitrant members, schooling is a dress rehearsal for work. At thevalues level of its operations, too, the way it valorises certain codes ofbehaviour particularly those to do with being industrious andconscientious, has also assisted to reinforce the work ethic and produceforms of subjectivity consistent with the demands of the modernworkplace.

Further to this, and at the cultural level of its practices, is the degreeto which the culture of the school matches that most fundamental ofTaylorist divides, namely, that between the class of workers concernedwith the conception of production and that concerned with its execution(Braverman, 1974; Browne, 1981; Sharpe, 1980). This separation of humanpowers for the purposes of mass production is reflected in the 'dividingpractices' of the school, especially in the organisation of the curriculumaround academic and practical forms of knowledge and the tracking ofpupils around these different curricula. The compartmentalisation ofpractical and theoretical forms of knowledge represents a direct analogueof execution and conception in the work place. In this respect the schoolplays a role in naturalising a regime of truth which is central to theoperations of a capitalist epistemology, at least in its Fordist phase, and inwhich the regime of abstraction assumes more significance than theregime of the concrete. And whereas in the one class of worker cognitivepowers were extended, in the other they were attenuated. Indeed therewas evidence to suggest that the level of learning required for much workbut particularly in the lower echelons of the workforce did not exceed thatof the primary school (Berg, 1969; Livingstone, 1987). As Poulantzas (citedin Sharp, 1980) once remarked in relation to these processes, the realsignificance of education was the manner in which it systematicallyexcluded the working class from mental labour. As a number of recentcommentators (Brown & Lauder, 1992; Young, 1993) have suggested, theeffect of such rigorous demarcation in the education system was toproduce 'low ability societies' in which there were pockets of mentalconcentration but these were confined to the elites. The remainder, whichformed the bulk of the population, languished in mindless work, theburden of which fell upon the working and minority classes, as defined interms of race, ethnicity and gender.

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The other dominant 'dividing practice' represents an extension ofFordist practices to the school. Although Fordism has been interpreted asa whole way of life, embracing patterns of consumptions as well as thoseof production (Gramsci, 1971; Harvey, 1990), in general it refers toassembly line forms of production which have been applied in othersystems of mass formation. In these, work is organised into a sequence ofprescribed operations which are distributed among an 'unthinking' labourforce, Taylor's 'executioners', who are discouraged from exercisingautonomy or engaging in teamwork.[2] Workers for the most part arelocated on a moving assembly line and are single-skilled operators, humanautomations, appendages to machines, responsible for a timed sequenceof actions of drill-like regularity and uniformity which are ever subject toscrutiny and analysis. Productive efficiency was secured through theprogressive deskilling of a larger and larger proportion of the workforce.All forms of brain work, which it was felt might interfere with efficientexecution of the production processes, were removed from the shop-floor,and confined to the management sectors of the labour force. Nor are thesereductionist approaches to manufacturing exclusive to the assembly line,for the same sorts of deskilling processes have been employed in officesand in the service industries, and in professional and cultural practiceslike teaching, architecture, sport and ballet (Murray, 1989a; Kumar, 1992).Fordism, as a social practice, has in fact been central to the operations ofmodernist society, and its prevalence further supported by protectionisteconomic policies and Keynesian welfare strategies. The economic boomof the immediate post-war period was in large measure an outcome of thiscoalescence between the interests of mass production and those of thenation-state.

Fordist practices find their echo in those of the school, whoseproductive processes are also fragmented, privatised and routinised, andconducted within a time-regime of deadlines and lessons and a valuesystem of differential rewards and deference (Matthews, 1980; Harris,1982; Inglis, 1985; Preston & Symes, 1992). Although these aspects of theschooling process have drawn criticism as counter-educational, many inthe past, particularly in the hey-day of the assembly line, were not socircumspect in declaring the factory to be an appropriate model for theschool and argued that like any 'factory' it should "build its pupils to thespecifications laid down ... [by the] ... demands of the twentieth centurycivilisation" (Cubberly, 1934). .

This industrial system of schooling though, has tended to make a rodfor its own back. For one thing, it did not produce an entirely docile labourforce, or breakdown the pockets of resistance to its hegemony in theclassroom. Pupils often subverted the regime of deference it wassupposed to engender (Willis, 1977). For another, it did not effect toeliminate attempts to generate a culturally meaningful education outsideof the boundaries of that controlled by the state. And as the population

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has become progressively more educated to a level surplus to therequirements of the labour process, so it has come to demand moremeaningful and satisfying work, which utilises the extended capacities andintelligences acquired through schooling (Gyllenhammer, 1977; Wirth,1983). The Fordist workplace has always been a site of alienation and lowmotivation, and oft times industrial sabotage, which the economies ofscale of mass production have found it increasingly difficult to absorb(Matthews, 1989; Hirsch, 1991). It was precisely these reactions to thedespotic conditions of Fordism, which led to the reorganisation of theVolvo and Toyota assembly lines into small cohorts of workersresponsible for larger proportions of the production process and whocould thereby utilise a more diverse range of cognitive capacities. Many ofthe assumptions about the intellectual demands of work, upon which theTaylorist divide was founded, were misconceived. They were basedaround the idea that because the work processes involved could not berendered explicit and shown to have a theoretical component, theytherefore must be devoid of cognitive demand and rigour. Yet the truth isthat no labour process is without a degree of unity between the head andthe hand (Sohn-Rethel, 1978). And as more sophisticated studies of thelabour process have revealed, even so-called unskilled work contains ahigh degree of skill, much of it acquired on the job, through experience,and much of it acquired through tacit processes which often transcendexplication and analysis (Davids & Myers, 1990; Scribner, 1990).

From Fordism to Post-Fordism?

What has been described represents a particular phase of theschool/work nexus which is now undergoing supersession in part becausethe processes of labour are themselves undergoing wholesalemodification in ways which demand more of workers as a whole andwhich represent an undoing of the Taylorist and Fordist paradigms.Undoubtedly changes to the world economy which began in the early1970s and which have involved the globalisation of markets andcorporations, have contributed to the need for more competitive andproductive business operations in line with 'international best practice'.One should not underestimate the significance of this as it has almostrendered the nation state an irrelevant force in the terms of theorganisation of international capital and its power to attract majorcorporations to station their industrial and business activities within it. Asignificant offshoot of this globalisation of the labour force is arguably aspatially organised form of Taylorism in which the manufacturing plantsand assembly lines of many corporations are located in the cheap-laboureconomies of the third world whilst their headquarters continue to remainin the first world (Sivanandan, 1989) or, wherever the appropriate skillcapital resides. For according to Reich (1991) it is "the skills of a nation's

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workforce and the quality of its infrastructure" that attracts corporationsto locate their executive branches in particular nation states rather thantheir low taxes or labour costs. Those nations which invest in skilldevelopment and appropriate infrastructure are the ones which willsucceed in an internationalised economy.

In conjunction with this reorganisation of the economy, newcategories and types of work have begun to emerge and dominate therestructured workforce. Of these, the most significant according to Reich,is in the sector of what he calls "symbolic-analytic services" which in theUS economy comprises 20% of all jobs, a figure which is likely to grow inthe future. The introduction of information-based technology into manywork places and the automation of assembly lines is a causative factor inthe growth of this sector of employment. It has enabled labour costs to bereduced whilst at the same time, maintaining and accelerating levels ofproductivity (Gorz, 1982, 1985). A significant feature of the domain ofsymbolic work is the degree to which it is dependent on high levels ofeducation and ongoing training, which is often facilitated throughnetworking, increasingly computer generated. One undesirable offshoot ofall these trends is the emergence of high levels of unemployment on ascale almost rivalling that of the Great Depression, particularly among theyoung. But even within what remains of the labour force, there is anemerging division between a 'core' and 'periphery' workers, which, insome respects, is analogous to the Taylorist divide. The core constitutes aset of highly credentialed workers, employed on a full-time and long-termbasis, mainly working in the symbolic-analytic service area, and who areoften over-employed, whilst the periphery comprises more disposableworkers employed on a contractual and fractional basis during times ofhigh productivity and economic boom (Wood, 1989). This 'dualisation' ofthe labour market (Hirsch, 1991) enables corporations to respond tomarket fluctuations, and build flexibility into the time regimes of workers.As we shall see, flexibility is the key vector in the dynamic of the newlabour processes.

One other significant feature of this reorganisation of productiveprocesses has been increasing tendency to move away from Fordist massproduction to niche-markets and short run productions of specialisedgoods and services. The patterns of consumption in the post-Fordisteconomy have become increasingly differentiated, and the market hasbeen customised to meet the tastes and lifestyles of particulariseddemographies. It is a product's style rather than its utility which is criticalto its marketability (Murray, 1989a). These changes in market dynamicswere prompted by a series of crises in corporate capitalism, whichstemmed from a number of quarters including the recognition that themarket for mass produced goods was saturated and beyond revitalisationeven through product innovation and product obsolescence (Roobeek,1987). Investment in the juggernaut of mass production tended to favour

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smaller industries in Japan, Germany and Italy, which were able to changetheir productive practices and tooling systems to cater for a differentiatedmarket demanding specialised goods and high quality services. Theseindustries, centred on chemicals, fashion and steel, turned the "regnantparadigm of mass production" (Piore & Sabel, 1984; Hirst & Zietlin, 1988;Webster, 1991) on its head and were able to satisfy a market in whichdiversity rather than uniformity has become a prevailing imperative. Theywere able to do so because they utilised computer assisted manufacture(CAM) and design (CAD), which reduced the costs of labour normallyassociated with the production of high quality and specialisedcommodities. Computers were also important in the degree to which theycould facilitate unity between the marketing and productive sectors ofbusiness and industry, thereby preventing over-production and waste(Murray, 1989b). The retail industry had been especially successful inso-called niche-marketing. In effect what has occurred is a renaissance ofthe 'cottage industry' approach to production where small not large-scaleapproaches are the key to productivity and where human- rather thanmachine-centred production predominates. Hence one has seen theemergence of the industrial district as an important actor in the newcapitalist formation, e.g. Emilia Romagna in Italy, of closely interactingbusinesses, often sub-contracting to one another.

But more to the point, in terms of the arguments being advanced inthis paper, was the fact that this 'productive decentralisation' was alsoaccompanied by a profound reshaping of the social relations of work, tothe abandonment of Taylorist management principles; in contrast, newprinciples were advocated which were democratic and less hierarchical,that cntred on flexible divisions of labour, in which conception andexecution were united rather than divided. These labour processes arethe very antithesis of those prevailing in systems of mass production(Piore & Sabel, 1984; Kern & Schumann, 1989; Kumar, 1992). The termpost-Fordist (see Table 0 is increasingly applied to these processes, whichrepresent a turning away from the Taylorist and Fordist logics that havethe dominated the factory and the office, and the market place for morethan half-a-century (Ogden, 1992).

It has been long recognised that such logics, which impose strongdivisions within the labour force, are dysfunctional in terms of theircapacity to maintain, let alone promote increased levels of productivity -which are more likely to be achieved in a context of co-operation ratherthan conflict and competition.[3] Teamwork has superseded the divisionsand hierarchies inherent in the Taylorist/Fordist workplace which hasflatter patterns of management and lower-based forms of decision making.At the same time, there has been a shift in the technical demands of workwhich require ongoing learning and skill extension to keep abreast of thenew machinery and the capacity for problem solving, which in turnrequires a considerable measure of autonomy. Workers are increasingly

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expected to be multi-skilled, and to be capable of so-called 'flexiblespecialisation*.

Fordlst Post-Fordist

Division between conception Unity of executionand execution and conception

Hierarchical Non-hierarchical

Individualised work Teamwork

Prescribed tasks Stochastic tasks

Autocratic Democratic

Mass production Specialised production

Single-skilled Multi-skilled

Maximal division of labour Minimal division of labour

Fragmented Integrated

Rigid Flexible

Supervision Coordination

No learning Ongoing learning

Monotonous Task variety

Deskilled Reskllled

Unimaginative Innovative

Table I. Fordist and post-Fordist work.

Many of the tasks now confronted in the workforce, are of an'indeterminate' or stochastic kind, for which it is not possible to prescribetasks, for which the skills of problem solving and the ability to anticipateproblems are necessary. They are also necessary to ensure that thetechnology involved is kept free of problems. For example, the nucleardisaster at Three Mile Island reactor was, in part, caused by thepredominance of Taylorist work arrangements, which has discouragedcommunication between workers who should have been relayinginformation about the reactor's behaviour to one another (Wirth, 1983). Itis the widespread introduction of automation and the utilisation ofcomputers which has contributed to these changes. For rather thanleading, as was feared, to mass deskilling, to a further accentuation ofTaylorism, automation, has required a more skilled labour force(Cavestro, 1989; Hirschorn & Mokray, 1982), albeit one of smallerproportions than in the past, with a different repertoire of skills whichincludes the ability to use the new machinery with alacrity and adroitness.It is the lack of these skills not their surplus which has proved theprincipal headache for industry and business coping with the increased

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adoption of automation and which has led to a rethinking of the trainingagenda. Ongoing work training has become the norm to cope with the newdiversity of tasks engendered by automation. Indeed, in 1989 theAustralian government introduced a training levy which has ensured thatmost employees are guaranteed some training on an annual basis; and toservice this in situ training many universities now provide adult andworkplace education degrees.

The reception given to these initiatives has often been ambivalent.Whereas some have heralded them as Utopian, as offering scope forworkers to realise their talents and capacities (Hall & Jacques, 1989;Mathews, 1989), others have been somewhat less sanguine arguing thattheir humane cast is mere veneer, hiding the same old exploitativerelations evident under previous regimes of work and ushering In more'intensive regimes' of capital accumulation (Bonefeld, 1991). Thepost-Fordist tag simply disguises an intensification of Fordism, in whichcapital has secured even greater control over a contracting labour forcemade vulnerable and recalcitrant by a prolonged recession. For instance,there are no signs that under the banner of post-Fordism the core valuesof capitalism have been contested (Bonefeld & Holloway, 1991). And whatprogressive regimes of work that have emerged under its aegis have beenrestricted to a small sector of the manufacturing industry, and are not atall widespread, and may never be. In many cases, the new technology hasbeen used to deskill not reskill workers, and to emphasise not remove theTaylorist divide. Indeed, as markets become more global and lessprotectionist, there would appear to be more scope for the exploitation oflabour not less (Harvey, 1990; Bagguley, 1991; Donald, 1992; Henry &Franzway, 1993). Certainly in economies like the United Kingdom wherethe imperatives of post-Fordism have coincided with the ascendancy of anenterprise culture, in which the market has sovereignty over the state, therestructuring of the labour process has been accompanied by acontraction of the public sector and a de-unionisation of the labour force.The latter in particular, has led to communication based labour relationsbased on self-entrepreneurialship in which union negotiated wage-dealsand working conditions have been replaced by enterprise bargaining.These demand special forms of subjectivity, in which the marketing of theself and the skills of self-profiling are key components of careeradvancement. In a context in which capital and labour have beenderegulated in the name of flexibility and the need to maximisecompetitive edge, schools appear to have followed suit and are in theprocess of succumbing to a value system which matches the mostdystopian aspects of post-Fordism (Ball, 1990,1993).

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Post-Fordist Education: an Australian case study

In the new world of work, the aforementioned models of learningcharacteristic of our educational systems, and which are Fordlst andTaylorist in character, are now regarded as anachronistic. A new type ofnexus between schools and work is being negotiated in a number ofcountries including Australia which, it will be argued, is post-Fordist incharacter and which has expressed itself differently from those forms ofpost-Fordist education which have emerged in the United Kingdom (Hirst,1989; Hickox & Moore, 1992). For one thing, they are grounded in anaccord politics marked by a confluence of interests between unions,governments and industry. These changes are especially evident in thepolicy redirection of Australian education that has occurred over the pastdecade. During this period there has been a marked ascendancy ofinstrumentalism which has displaced the more liberal and progressiveapproaches of the 1960s and 1970s, which placed an emphasis onindividualism and school-based curriculum development. Schools wereencouraged to assert a measure of educational independence in line withthe prevailing philosophy of progressivism current at the time. In general,at least among members of the educational community and bydistinguished members of the Labour party like Barry Jones (1982), ageneral rather than a vocational education was avowed. Indeed, thereappeared to be a marked hostility among the nation's policy makers tophilosophies of schooling which were linked to training agendas or which,in the revealing words of the influential Karmel Report (1973) favourededucation as a "credit note on the future" at the expense of its being"enjoyable and satisfying in its own right".

With the publication of the Finn, Mayer and Carmichael reports,products of policy making in the 1990s, there was a distinct shift tovocationalism, which, whilst not displacing general education as animportant curriculum frame, was re-emphasised as an important adjunctof it. This shift to vocationalism was not immediate or precipitous butfollowed a number of incremental policy shifts first apparent with Skills forAustralia and Strengthening of Australian Schools, during the second term ofthe Labour government. The shift, which is evident in a discourse logicladen with references to flexible workplace and high tech futures, waslargely orchestrated by the then Minister John Dawkins, who had takenthe portfolio of education following a spell as Minister for Finance wherehe had been subject to the influence of Treasury imperatives. As has beenconvincingly demonstrated by Michael Pusey (1991), the Treasury wasinstrumental throughout the 1980s in introducing the practices ofeconomic rationalism to all arms of government, which resulted inconditions of budgetary stringency and a demand that all governmentexpenditure was contributing in tangible ways to national recovery. Social

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justice goals were not abandoned in the pursuit of economic efficiency butrather were linked with it (Henry & Taylor, 1993; Taylor & Henry, 1994). Inthis way, the Labour government was to able protect its credentials as aparty committed to ameliorating the lot of minorities.

An ailing economy undoubtedly contributed to the powers ofpersuasion of the economic rationalists, particularly in the face of theperceived impotence of Keynesianism. Whilst Australia had enjoyedconsiderable levels of economic prosperity during the post-war period,that prosperity was heavily reliant on primary industry and was achievedat the expense of diversifying its manufacturing base, which waspermitted to languish during this period, making the economy heavilyreliant on imports, even of basic goods and services. By the mid-1980s itwas clear that primary industry was no longer a reliable source of exportdollars and that without a clear diversification of its export strategies, theAustralian economy, whose trade performance was execrable, woulddecline, to use the words of the then Treasurer, Paul Keating, into that of a'Banana Republic'! At the same time, there was a recognition that Australiawas a heavily underskilled nation, especially when compared with the"tiger" economies in its neighbourhood, and that transforming it intocompetitive manufacturing economy would require a national trainingagenda (Ford, 1984; Mathews et al, 1988; Probert, 1989). If Australia was tobe a high-tech economy it would need a high-tech education system. Thiswas reiterated in Australia Reconstructed (ACTU/TDC, 1987) which was aproduct of a union-led mission to northern Europe, examining labourpolicy and practices in relation to economic performance. It noted howthe successful economic performance of countries like Sweden, Austriaand West Germany was dependent on a corporate training strategy,co-ordinated across the industry and education sectors. Australia's ownrecord in this regard appeared lamentable and had, in the opinion of themission, contributed to its economic decline. Unless long term corporatestrategies were put in place to enhance the skill formation of the nation,Australia stood no chance of developing the 'high quality products' thatwere needed if Australia was to compete successfully in aninternationalised economy freed of tarriff restrictions. The importance ofAustralia Reconstructed cannot be underestimated, for itsrecommendations, which were endorsed by Minister Dawkins, whichinclude broad based training and educational strategies, centred onflexibility and generic skills, provide the blueprint for the educationalrestructuring of the 1990s.

Education was a particular instance of the way under the strategiesof economic rationalism the services of education underwent progressiveredeployment away from social good concerns to economic ends. Thisturn was epitomised in an extension of the responsibilities of theDepartment of Education to accommodate those of employment andtraining, with employment taking precedence in the title of this

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mega-ministry, the Department of Employment, Education and Training(DEET) a sure indicator of its importance in the mega-ministry (Birch &Smart, 1989), particularly in a context of rising unemployment. Many ofthe agencies formerly associated with the superseded ministry and whichwere responsible for fostering practices in Australian education in theprevious decade, like the Curriculum Development Council, were alsodissolved. They were replaced by a new set of agencies whose parametersand responsibilities were more clearly training and employment oriented,e.g. A National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition; Employment andSkills Formation Council; and later, the Australian National TrainingAuthority. Education was turned to the service of enhancing nationalproductivity and providing the skill requirements of a restructuredeconomy. It was increasingly regarded as an arm of micro-economicreform. The position that education occupies in acronym DEET -sandwiched between employment and training - gives symbolic effect toits position in terms of national priorities.

It is perhaps of note that these policy shifts were orchestrated byindustry and union groups, acting in consort with the Labor government,rather than educationalists who were, in the main absent from the groupsof consultants responsible for producing Mayer, Finn and Carmichael.Brian Finn worked for IBM; Laurie Carmichael was prominent in the unionmovement and was on the executive of the ACTU and was one of theauthors of Australian Reconstructed. This had outlined the need for anational strategy on education and training which accommodated theneeds of business and industry. With these corporate links between bigbusiness, government and unions, it is not surprising that the proposedreforms have been sympathetically received by most employer groups,the exception being the Business Council of Australia, and also theoppositional parties (Marginson, 1993). The only resistance to thesereforms has been expressed in some quarters of the educationalindustries, which has seen the restructuring of educational provisionaround an economic discourse as the worst kind of human capitalordering (Porter et al, 1992). Still more fervent have been someuniversities who have maintained a stolid resistance to the trainingagenda on the grounds that the kinds of learning and abstract knowledgein which universities specialise cannot be reduced to competencyformations; and that the whole movement towards alternative entryschemes and the recognition of prior learnings, which is also part of thenew vocationalism, is likely to undermine the 'liberal meritocracy' uponwhich universities are grounded (Seddon, 1992/3; Taylor & Henry, 1994).Yet, on the grounds of equity, there are clear advantages undermining thismeritocracy which has always favoured a certain style of academicism tothe disadvantage of minorities, especially in domains where there areclear skill and knowledge continuities. Via skill recognition andmulti-pathways of training, not all of them necessarily academic, there are

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now increased opportunities for example, for nurses to eventually qualifyas doctors, as the logical continuities between careers in the medicalindustry become evident. In the Australian context, these innovationsspring from several quarters, including the post-compulsory educationsector which has been cajoled into more flexible modes of trainingincorporating an articulation between the TAFE and university sectors. Ingeneral though, it is the post-Fordist shift towards deregulation andelimination of unnatural demarcations between workers that hasprompted these shifts in thinking about training.

The involvement of prominent figures from the worlds of businessand unionism in the composition of Finn, Mayer and Carmichael reports,has ensured that their recommendations respond to the perceiveddemands of the new labour processes. Thus, their prescriptions reflectthe emerging forms of work and are post-Fordist in the main - though theterm is never used, indeed, to the point of adopting a post-Fordist lexicon!The economic discourse in which education operates is clear fromCarmichael's (1992) brief vignette of the globalised economy in whichAustralia now operates where it is important that the manufacturing andservice industries become suppliers and exporters of "high quality goodsand services'1 if the current balance payment crisis is to be overcome.This will only occur if Australia is able to generate a workforce with highlevels of skill and workplace co-operation. "We must be better at solvingproblems and working together" (AVCTS). The report thus makes it clearthat learning and training are constituent elements of the economicrestructuring process. There is admittedly some rhetorical sleight of handhere which fails to countenance the broader questions about thepost-Fordist agenda, relating to the size of the work force actuallyrequired by a restructured economy and whether large corporationscould really accommodate the styles of industrial democracy demandedby a faithful adoption of post-Fordist philosophies? Indeed, given hisunion background, it is somewhat surprising that Carmichael's vision isnot tempered by a more cautionary approach to their advocacy.

The specific focus of Mayer and Finn is the post-compulsory sectorof education which, with rising retention rates, the reports attempt tostrengthen and re-articulate which they argue must provide a foundationfor a more flexible and adaptable workforce. The Finn Report (1991) statesboldly that the main concerns of post-compulsory of education are the'world of work' (YPP) and theoretical and applied studies which contain'work-related competencies'. The trajectory of the policy is thusclear: thatthe mainstream curriculum needs to be relevant to the world of work, witha distinct 'hands on focus' [YPP]. There is an implicit chastisement ofAustralian schooling, for neglecting the latter and for overlooking itsvocational obligations to the national interest. Yet it is noteworthy thatthere are constant reminders throughout Finn that it is not the intentionto abandon 'general education' but rather to fuse it with vocational

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elements, a point which is reiterated in the title of the Mayer Report,"Putting general [my emphasis] education to work". This in effectrecognises the view, clearly underpinning the new vocationalism that thelabour force needs a higher level of general education in order to broadenits cognitive repertoire to encompass problem solving and criticalanalysis. One of the underlying intentions here is to provide thefoundations of lifelong learning, which was one of the facets of Swedishsociety which the authors of Australia Reconstructed commended as a keyelement in its economic success. It has already been noted that theexpanding sectors of work are those involving symbolic analysis and themanipulation of data, be they of the numerical, pictorial or scientifickindswith which schooling has traditionally concerned itself. A purelyvocational education is insufficient in this context. Further to this is thedegree to which the Finn Report emphasises the need to minimise the"practical versus theoretical dichotomy" - which represents the veryantithesis of the Taylorised modes of curriculum organisation which havedominated much schooling. By contrast, the instrumentalism ofpost-Fordist education is supported by rigorous academic foundations.

Mayer, the second report in the trilogy, which appeared in 1992 andwhich examined the curriculum ramifications of Finn, asserts that practicemust be underpinned with knowledge and understanding. Indeed this iswhere a departure from industrial models of learning, can be observed. Inthese older models training involved the inculcation of an automated setof behaviours via "low-level drill and reinforcement". Mayer alludes to theinappropriateness of these 'hands on' approaches in the degree to whichthey eschew the 'heads on', so necessary if the 'competent performer' isto grasp the principles behind actions and thereby transfer them to othercontexts. It then specifies in more detail the key competencies that apost-compulsory curriculum related to the needs of employment will needto incorporate. It is within the competencies and the preamble whichjustifies them though, that the post-Fordist rhetoric is most manifest.

Right at its outset Mayer, for instance, provides a profile of the newworkforce in line with "world best practice" (straight from the phrasebookof post-Fordism): it is multi-skilled, flexible and adaptable; able to exercisecreativity and initiative; and is capable of being entrepreneurial and ofthinking critically - qualities which were once regarded antipathetic in theordinary worker but which in the post-Fordist climate of symbolic analysisare now seen as mandatory. It also provides a profile of the newworkplace culture which has "participative management styles, sharedgoals, multi-skilled workers and management structures". This culture canonly operate effectively if workers possess a range of technical, personaland social competencies. Interestingly, and this again marks a departurefrom the industrial model, Mayer, in spite of being enjoined by some'industry and parent groups' to do so, felt that this should not encompassqualities like 'punctuality' and 'honesty' for they do not lend themselves

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to education and training. The degree to which 'competency' features inthe new policies is a further reminder of their performance relatedorientation. In fact it is clear from the defining principles in Mayer, notwithstanding the caveats of Finn, that any general education, which placesthe application of knowledge as one of its core outcomes, is subsumed bythe requirements of the new work ethos. This is evident in the naming ofeach key competency, and there are seven of them, which always includesa present participle ('solving', 'using1) and in the degree to which the"range and the number of performance levels" identified in the reporthave been shaped and guided by existing industrial standards. 'Solvingproblems', 'using technology', 'working with others in teams' (declared anessential component of the 'workplaces of the 1990s1) and 'Collecting,analysing and organising information', which constitute four of the keycompetencies named by Mayer, reflect the demands of the post-Fordistethos and represent a distinct shift from the strongly demarcated labourprocesses, particularly in regard to the conception and execution of work,characteristic of Taylorism. These demands are also manifested in thedegree to which the Report refers to small units, information managementand multi-skilling and the extent to which the descriptors associated withthe competencies allude to post-Fordist imperatives. These highlight thedegree to which the new style of work requires initiative, autonomy, theability to articulate ideas and to network with others. The tone of theseallusions is often didactic and informative, and firmly implanted in theindicative mood of 'this is happening'.

One senses that the report is written for an audience, presumably inthe main educationalists and teachers, which is unfamiliar withdevelopments in work practices in many organisations and industrialsettings, and who might therefore be unappreciative of the rationalityunderlying the capacities prescribed. One intention of this seems to be toredress any prevailing misapprehensions about the nature of the work, forinstance, which is parenthetically defined, as a result of much lobbying, asbeing 'paid, unpaid or voluntary'; or mathematics which, contrary to itsusual image, is used 'in a variety of work activities and in everyday life'.There is a tone of didacticism in these semantic manoeuvres, whosepurpose is intended to throw new light on common practices, as when it issuggested that information as well as being textual is commonly found inwork places as spreadsheets and ledgers; or that mathematicsencompasses much more than the accurate deployment of number skills.Indeed, in the latter case, there is an attempt to de-emphasise these, andto signal that mathematics also involves estimation and approximation.The rhetorical ploy here, as it is throughout the Report, is to suggest thatthe workplace is a sophisticated epistemological site where information,knowledge and understanding are a matter of regular deployment.

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In Conclusion

It has been argued in this paper that the policy direction in recentAustralian education has been shaped by post-Fordist discourses whichare redefining labour processes and the work strategies associated withthem. These shifts in the discourse of work, which education policy hasnow adopted, have the potential to challenge the Taylorist models oflearning that have dominated the first hundred years of universalschooling. Through the new policies we are witnessing a renegotiation ofthe nexus between work and education, which has always been asomewhat subservient one. Until quite recently many policy makers andeducational commentators had regarded any education that was a "creditnote on the future" as an unacceptable distortion of the intrinsicworthwhileness of education; that education should be a period of respitefrom the concerns of work and should concern itself with providingprogrammes designed to enrich the qualitative aspects of life. As has beenargued in this paper, such sentiments were merely a rhetorical ploydisguising the actuality of schooling and the degree to which itsapproaches and curricula were framed by economic imperatives. In thecurrent climate of pragmatism, in which human capital policies havebecome orthodoxy the school-work nexus is being reinforced notmollified. Whether we like it or not, education is now seen as a "creditnote on the future", as an instrument of micro-economic reform. Many ofthe most trenchant critiques of education have been directed at such anapproach and their associated industrial and factory models of learning,which have led to inegalitarian systems of schooling, devoid of equitablepractice and designed to produce low- rather than high-ability societies. Itis ironic then, that from the point of view of a radical critique of education,there is much that is progressive in the new policies, which could result ina more humanised classroom, one which displays fewer authoritariantraits and exhibits a curriculum more consonant with reality and the workaspirations of students, and which overcomes one of the more fatal anddebilitating divisions to affect schooling, that between mental andpractical knowledge. Armed with the new policies and the curriculumframes they have the potential to unleash, there is the prospect ofregenerating the industrial patterns of learning which have been sounfriendly to countless generations of children, and replacing them withpedagogies which are genuinely modern and fulfil the needs of theeconomy and yet offer pupils the skills also to lead more fulfilling lives. Itis perhaps ironic that these profound changes have been orchestrated notby those educationalists, who have railed long and earnestly for decadesabout the defects in our schools and classrooms, but by union andbusiness interests, with the support of government, concerned to makeschooling and education more accountable to economic need. If these

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changes are carefully elaborated within the educational systems inconjunction with adequate labour and employment policies designed tomaximise opportunities for work, the credit note on the future might, inthe end, do more credit than disservice to education. If they are not, thenwe could end up with a new version of Fordist education, organisedaround core and periphery pupils, many of whom will have limitedopportunities to apply their post-Fordist skills and sensibilities.

Acknowledgements

Two 'thank yous' are in order. The first is to QUT which provided a grantfor this research. This grant enabled the author to employ CharmaineMackibben as a research assistant to whom I would like to extend mysecond thank you.

Correspondence

Colin Symes, School of Cultural and Policy Studies, Queensland Universityof Technology, Victoria Park Road, Locked Bag No 2, Red Hill,Queensland 4059, Australia.

Notes

[1] In an interesting paper, which traces the history of this particular piece ofepistemological dualism, which, in its own way, is as significant as that of themind/body one, Lynn White (1975) makes the point that the "allergy to manualoperations" has gradually become less stringent than it was when itcommenced in classical Greece, when engineers, painters, architects,physicians were all despised categories of thinkers.

[2] This followed a scheme for the manufacture of pins first proposed by AdamSmith (1970) and subsequently elaborated by Charles Babbage (seeBraverman, 1974, for details) in the nineteenth century. To give him his due,Adam Smith had some reservations about the widespread adoption of thissystem of production because of its capacity to induce stupidity andturpitude.

[3] See a study conducted soon after the Second World War, reported by Herbst(1974), at two Durham coal mines where different organisational structureswere introduced, one competitive, one co-operative.

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