The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND), and IBON Foundation recently launched a new book entitled “Mula Tore Patungong Palengke (From the Tower to the Market): Neoliberal Education in the Philippines.” A forum on the neo-liberal approach to education, attended by academics, students, and civil society representatives, followed the launch.

The neoliberal education system “promotes a selfish and individualist ideology that weakens the feeling of a shared national interest” and perpetuates a social system that protects the interest of the market. This, more or less, is the message of a new book published by IBON Foundation, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), and the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND) that was launched at the University of the Philippines on June 27, 2007.
 
A compilation of critical essays on neoliberal education, “Mula Tore Patungong Palengke (From the Tower to the Market): Neoliberal Education in the Philippines,” highlights how neoliberal policies such as privatisation and deregulation turns service-oriented institutions, including universities, into profit-oriented ones in the name of globalisation.

“The commercialisation of education does not only happen in Asia but in other parts of the world as well,” says one of the book's contributors, Jonabelle Vidal Asis, an instructor at the Sociology Department of the University of the Philippines.

“This is not a natural trend,” Asis added, “but rather an imposition that comes with the current globalisation processes.”

Selected essays from the book also offers prospects for change towards a transformative kind of education. It prompts educators to recognise and analyse the marketisation of the current education system believing that from such awareness can begin a critical and vigilant education sector.

“The neoliberal approach to education is just a symptom of a greater problem we face. You have to link this with the larger struggles in the social movements in order to come up with the alternative or solution,” Asis said.