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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Democratic education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_education

A discussion class at Shimer College, a democratic college in Chicago

Democratic education is a type of formal education that is organized democratically, so that students can manage their own learning and participate in the governance of their school. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with the students' voices being equal to the teacher's.

The history of democratic education spans from at least the 17th century. While it is associated with a number of individuals, there has been no central figure, establishment, or nation that advocated democratic education.

History

Locke's Thoughts, 1693

Enlightenment era

In 1693, John Locke published Some Thoughts Concerning Education. In describing the teaching of children, he declares,

None of the things they are to learn, should ever be made a burthen to them, or impos'd on them as a task. Whatever is so propos'd, presently becomes irksome; the mind takes an aversion to it, though before it were a thing of delight or indifferency. Let a child but be order'd to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has or has not a mind to it; let this be but requir'd of him as a duty, wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and see whether he will not soon be weary of any play at this rate.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book of advice on education, Émile, was first published in 1762. Émile, the imaginary pupil he uses for illustration, was only to learn what he could appreciate as useful. He was to enjoy his lessons, and learn to rely on his own judgement and experience. "The tutor must not lay down precepts, he must let them be discovered," wrote Rousseau, and urged him not make Émile learn science, but let him discover it. He also said that we should not substitute books for personal experience because this does not teach us to reason; it teaches us to use other people's reasoning; it teaches us to believe a great deal but never to know anything.

19th century

While Locke and Rousseau were concerned only with the education of the children of the wealthy, in the 19th century Leo Tolstoy set up a school for peasant children. This was on his own estate at Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, in the late 19th century. He tells us that the school evolved freely from principles introduced by teachers and pupils; that in spite of the preponderating influence of the teacher, the pupil had always had the right not to come to school, or, having come, not to listen to the teacher, and that the teacher had the right not to admit a pupil, and was able to use all the influence he could muster to win over the community, where the children were always in the majority.

20th and 21st century

Dom Sierot

In 1912, Janusz Korczak founded Dom Sierot, the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, which was run on democratic lines. In 1940 Dom Sierot was forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto and in 1942 Korczak accompanied all his charges to the gas-chambers of the Treblinka extermination camp.

Influential democratic schools

A Democratic school is a certain kind of alternative free school with a radical emphasis on students democracy and freedom to learn.

Main building of the Summerhill School

The oldest democratic school is Summerhill, in Suffolk, England, founded in 1921. The first democratic school in the United States was the Antioch School in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was founded in 1921 through Antioch College.

Sudbury Valley School, founded in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968, has full democratic governance: The School Meeting manages all aspects of the school, including staff hiring and facilities. A "Sudbury school" is now a general class of school modeled after this original.

The term Democratic Education originates from The Democratic School of Hadera, the first school in the world called a democratic school. It was founded in Israel in 1987 by Yaacov Hecht. It is a public school. The term has been embraced by alternative/open schools all over the world, predominantly following the foundation of IDEC – the International Democratic Education Conference, which was first convened at the democratic school in Hadera.

Free schools movement

In the 1960s, hundreds of "free schools" opened, many based on Summerhill. However A.S. Neill, the founder of Summerhill, distanced himself from American Summerhill schools for not successfully implementing the philosophy of "Freedom, not license." Free school movement (including many schools based on Summerhill) became a broad movement in the 1960s and 1970s, but was largely renounced by the 1980s. Progressive education and Dewey's ideals did influence them, but only indirectly for the most part.^[23]

Networks

Networks supporting democratic education include:

The Alternative Education Resource Organization launched in 1989 to create a "student-driven, learner-centered approaches to education."
The annual International Democratic Education Conference, first held in 1993.
The Australasian Democratic Education Community, which held its first conference in 2002.
The European Democratic Education Community was founded in 2008, at the first European Democratic Education Conference.
The Réseau des écoles démocratiques au Québec, or RÉDAQ, was founded in 2012 in order to sponsor the creation of democratic schools in the province of Québec, Canada.
The Alliance for Self-Directed Education launched in 2016 to make Self-Directed Education a normal and accessible option for all families.
Democracy Matters, launched in 2009, is a UK alliance of organisations promoting education for citizenship, participation and practical politics

IDEC 2005 named two core beliefs: self-determination and democratic governance. EUDEC has both of these beliefs, and mutual respect is also in their belief statement. IDEN supports schools that self-identify as democratic.

Defining principles

Democratic schools are very diverse but they can all be defined by having two key principles. In other words, it can be said that all democratic schools have these two characteristics in common:

1. Democratic governance: Meetings in which all members of the school community can participate

2. Autonomy for the students to manage their own learning process

Democratic governance

Democratic governance implies the active participation of the entire school community, including the children, in the various collective decision-making processes that define the school. This democratic management can be done in several ways. Most democratic schools make decisions based on a majority vote, while some schools seek to reach consensus and a small selection of democratic schools use Sociocracy for their governance.

Student autonomy

The level of student autonomy and the means of creating it varies widely from school to school. Democratic schools can have different pedagogy, as there are many ways to guarantee and develop student autonomy in the learning process. There are several approaches and pedagogical devices that can be implemented in line with the principles of democratic education.

Variety

Democratic education, similar to democratic government, comes in many different forms. These are some of the areas in which democratic schools differ.

Curriculum

Democratic schools are characterized by involving students in the decision-making process that affects what and how they learn. Democratic schools generally have no mandatory curriculum, considering forced learning to be undemocratic. Some democratic schools officially offer voluntary courses, and many help interested students to prepare for national examinations so they gain qualifications for further study or future employment.

Administrative structure

Democratic schools often have meetings open to all students and staff, where everyone present has a voice and sometimes an equal vote. Some include parents. These school meetings can cover anything from small matters to the appointment or dismissal of staff and the creation or annulment of rules, or to general expenditure and the structure of the school day. At some schools all students are expected to attend these meetings, at others they are voluntary.

Student autonomy

Pedagogical devices that are put into practice in various democratic schools to guarantee and develop students' autonomy in their learning process include:

Project-Based Learning: Students learn through an investigation process structured around complex and authentic issues. Students choose the theme, question or objective to direct and create their project until they reach a final output. In this way, they are the protagonists of their own learning process. Projects can be carried out individually or in groups.
Committees: Teams formed to help in the organization of the school space, in the completion of routine tasks for the health and maintenance of the community. These groups are usually formed during school meetings, according to the needs of the school community.
Study group: Are formed from themes proposed by students and/or educators. They may be questions or topics that they would like to explore. Each group usually has a facilitator or tutor who guides the study process.
Self-assessment: The student evaluates their own learning process, based on criteria defined together with the educator/tutor.
Mentoring: Each student has a mentor, who can work with each student individually or in groups. The mentoring sessions deal with the goals and aspirations of the student and issues that not only focus on academic performance, but also on the relationship with their peers, educators and family.
Study guide: A document planned by the educator to be used by the student inside or outside the school space. It aims to assist students in autonomous study, thus favoring the understanding of concepts, resolution of situations, readings, theoretical and practical deepening, among other aspects of the teaching process and learning.
Unschooling/Self-directed Education: Unschooling is an informal learning that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschoolers learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Self-directed education is education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the learner, whether or not those activities were chosen deliberately for the purpose of education.

Other

Finance: Some democratic learning environments are parent-funded, some charity-funded.Schools may have a sliding scale based on family income. Publicly funded democratic schools exist in Canada.

Age range: Age mixing is a deliberate policy in some democratic schools. It may include very young children, even babies. Some democratic schools only enroll older students.

Location: Democratic education is not limited to any particular setting. Settings for democratic learning communities include in an office building, on city streets, and in a rural area.

Theory

While types of democratic education are as numerous as types of democracy, a general definition of democratic education is "an education that democratizes learning itself." The goals of democratic education vary according to the participants, the location, and access to resources.

There is no unified body of literature, spanning multiple disciplines, on democratic education. However, there are theories of democratic education from the following perspectives:

Cognitive theory

During the practice theory movement, there was renewed interest in child development. Jean Piaget's theory of universal steps in comprehension and general patterns in the acquisition of knowledge was challenged by experiences at democratic schools. "No two kids ever take the same path. Few are remotely similar. Each child is so unique, so exceptional."

Jean Lave was one of the first and most prominent social anthropologists to discuss cognition within the context of cultural settings presenting a firm argument against the functionalist psychology that many educationalists refer to implicitly. For Lave, learning is a process undergone by an actor within a specific context. The skills or knowledge learned in one process are not generalizable nor reliably transferred to other areas of human action. Her primary focus was on mathematics in context and mathematics education.

The broader implications reached by Lave and others who specialize in situated learning are that beyond the argument that certain knowledge is necessary to be a member of society (a Durkheimian argument), knowledge learned in the context of a school is not reliably transferable to other contexts of practice.

John Locke argues that children are capable of reasoning at a young age: "It will perhaps be wonder'd, that I mention reasoning with children; and yet I cannot but think that the true way of dealing with them. They understand it as early as they do language; and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures, sooner than is imagin'd," Rousseau disagreed: "Use force with children and reasoning with men."

Humans are innately curious, and democratic education supports the belief that the drive to learn is sufficiently strong to motivate children to become effective adults.

Criticism based on cognitive theory

The human brain is not fully developed until adulthood (around the age of 25). A disadvantage of teenagers being responsible for their own education is that "young brains have both fast-growing synapses and sections that remain unconnected. This leaves teens easily influenced by their environment and more prone to impulsive behavior".

Ethics

Democracy can be valued on ethical grounds.

Cultural theory

Democratic education is consistent with the cultural theory that "learning in school must be continuous with life outside of school" and that children should become active participants in the control and organization of their community.

Research on hunter-gatherer societies indicates that free play and exploration were effective transmitters of the societies' culture to children.

According to George Dennison, democratic environments are social regulators: Our desire to cultivate friendships, engender respect, and maintain what George Dennison terms 'natural authority' encourages us to act in socially acceptable ways (i.e. culturally informed practices of fairness, honesty, congeniality, etc.).

Criticism based on cultural theory

Children are influenced by many curricula beyond the school curriculum: TV curricula, advertisers' curricula, curricula of religious communities, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, encyclopedias etc. and therefore "one of the most significant tasks any school can undertake is to try to develop in youngsters an awareness of these other curricula and an ability to criticize them…it is utter nonsense to think that by turning children loose in an unplanned and unstructured environment they can be freed in any significant way. Rather, they are thereby abandoned to the blind forces of the hucksters, whose primary concern is neither the children, nor the truth, nor the decent future of ... society."

Émile Durkheim argues that the transition from primitive to modern societies occurred in part as elders made a conscious decision to transmit what were deemed the most essential elements of their culture to the following generations. He concludes that modern societies are so complex—much more complex than primitive hunter-gatherer societies—and the roles that individuals must fill in society are so varied, that formal mass-education is necessary to instill social solidarity and what he terms 'secular morality'.

Political theory

There are a variety of political components to democratic education. One author identifies those elements as inclusivity and rights, equal participation in decision-making, and equal encouragement for success. The Institute for Democratic Education's principles of democratic education identifies several political principles,

The interaction between democratic philosophy and education,
Pluralistic education,
School administration by means of democratic procedures,
Education based on respect for human rights,
Dialogic evaluation,
Dialogic relationships, and
Critical social thinking.

Effect on quality of education

The type of political socialization that takes place in democratic schools is strongly related to deliberative democracy theory. Claus Offe and Ulrich Preuss, two theorists of the political culture of deliberative democracies argue that in its cultural production deliberative democracy requires "an open-ended and continuous learning process in which the roles of both 'teacher' and 'curriculum' are missing. In other words, what is to be learned is a matter that we must settle in the process of learning itself."

The political culture of a deliberative democracy and its institutions, they argue, would facilitate more "dialogical forms of making one's voice heard" which would "be achieved within a framework of liberty, within which paternalism is replaced by autonomously adopted self-paternalism, and technocratic elitism by the competent and self-conscious judgment of citizens."

As a curricular, administrative and social operation within schools, democratic education is essentially concerned with equipping people to make "real choices about fundamental aspects of their lives" and happens within and for democracy. It can be "a process where teachers and students work collaboratively to reconstruct curriculum to include everyone." In at least one conception, democratic education teaches students "to participate in consciously reproducing their society, and conscious social reproduction." This role necessitates democratic education happening in a variety of settings and being taught by a variety of people, including "parents, teachers, public officials, and ordinary citizens." Because of this "democratic education begins not only with children who are to be taught but also with citizens who are to be their teachers."

Preparation for life in a democracy

The "strongest, political rationale" for democratic education is that it teaches "the virtues of democratic deliberation for the sake of future citizenship." This type of education is often alluded to in the deliberative democracy literature as fulfilling the necessary and fundamental social and institutional changes necessary to develop a democracy that involves intensive participation in group decision making, negotiation, and social life of consequence.

Civic education

The concept of the hidden curriculum includes the belief that anything taught in an authoritarian setting is implicitly teaching authoritarianism. Thus civic education, if taught in a compulsory setting, undermines its own lessons in democracy. A common belief in democratic schools is that democracy must be experienced to be learned. This argument conforms to the cognition-in-context research by Lave.

Another common belief, which supports the practice of compulsory classes in civic education, is that passing on democratic values requires an imposed structure.

Arguments about how to transmit democracy, and how much and how early to treat children democratically, are made in various literatures concerning student voice, youth participation and other elements of youth empowerment.

Standard progressive visions of education as collaboration tend to downplay the workings of power in society. If learners are to "develop a democracy," some scholars have argued, they must be provided the tools for transforming the non-democratic aspects of a society. Democracy in this sense involves not just "participation in decision making," a vision ascribed especially to Dewey, but the ability to confront power with solidarity.

Economic theory

Core features of democratic education align with the emerging consensus on 21st century business and management priorities. Such features include increased collaboration, decentralized organization, and radical creativity.

Curriculum theory

While democratic schools don't have an official curriculum, what each student actually does might be considered their own curriculum. Dewey was an early advocate of inquiry education, in which student questions and interests shaped curriculum, a sharp contrast to the "factory model" that began to predominate education during the 20th century as standardization became a guiding principle of many educational practices. Although there was a resurgence of inquiry education in the 1980s and 1990s the standards movement of the 21st century and the attendant school reform movement have squashed most attempts at authentic inquiry-oriented democratic education practices. The standards movement has reified standardized tests in literacy and writing, neglecting science inquiry, the arts, and critical literacy.

Democratic schools may not consider only reading, writing and arithmetic to be the real basics for being a successful adult. A.S. Neill said "To hell with arithmetic." Nonetheless, there is a common belief that people will eventually learn "the basics" when they develop internal motivation. Furthermore, an educator implementing inquiry projects will look at the "next steps" in a student's learning and incorporate basic subject matter as needed. This is easier to accomplish in elementary school settings than in secondary school settings, as elementary teachers typically teach all subjects and have large blocks of time that allow for in-depth projects that integrate curriculum from different knowledge domains.

Allen Koshewa conducted research that highlighted the tensions between democratic education and the role of teacher control, showing that children in a fifth grade classroom tried to usurp democratic practices by using undue influence to sway others, much as representative democracies often fail to focus on the common good or protect minority interests. He found that class meetings, service education, saturation in the arts, and an emphasis on interpersonal caring helped overcome some of these challenges. Despite the challenges of inquiry education, classrooms that allow students to make choices about curriculum propel students to not only learn about democracy but also to experience it.

In practice

Play

A striking feature of democratic schools is the ubiquity of play. Students of all ages—but especially the younger ones—often spend most of their time either in free play, or playing games (electronic or otherwise). All attempts to limit, control or direct play must be democratically approved before being implemented. Play is seen as activity every bit as worthy as academic pursuits, often even more valuable. Play is considered essential for learning, particularly in fostering creativity.

Reading, writing and arithmetic

Interest in learning to read happens at a wide variety of ages. Progressive educators emphasise students' choice in reading selections, as well as topics for writing. In addition, Stephen Krashen and other proponents of democratic education emphasise the role of libraries in promoting democratic education. Others, such as children's author Judy Blume, have spoken out against censorship as antagonistic to democratic education, while the school reform movement, which gained traction under the federal initiative 'No Child Left Behind' and later under 'Race to the Top' and the Common Core Standards movement, emphasise strict control over curriculum.

Research into democratic education

A study of 12 schools in the United Kingdom by a former school inspector indicates that democratic schooling produces greater motivation to learn and self-esteem among students.
A study done in Israel indicates that the decline in interest in science that occurs regularly in conventional schools did not occur in democratic schools.
Three studies done on students of Sudbury schools in the United States of America indicate that students "have been highly successful in their higher education (for those who chose that route) and careers. They have gone on to all walks of life that are valued in our society and report that they feel advantaged because of the sense of personal responsibility, self-control, continued interest in learning, and democratic values they acquired at Sudbury Valley."
Sands School in the United Kingdom was inspected in 2013 by Ofsted was found to be 'Good' overall with a number of 'Outstanding' features. No area of the provision was found to be less than "good' and all of the Statutory regulations (the school "Standards") were met in full. This is the same outcome as the previous inspection in 2010. Ofsted observed that taking part in decision-making process developed "exceptional qualities of thoughtfulness and the ability to offer balanced arguments". Good pupil achievements were found to be a "consequence of the democratic structures". Personal development was deemed to be "outstanding" because of the exceptional impact of the democratic principles. The inspector was particularly impressed with pupils' behaviour, noting that "lessons took place in an atmosphere of mutual respect" and that "visitors were greeted with interest and impeccable manners".
Alia College in Melbourne, Australia was in the top 5 Year 9 NAPLAN for Australian schools in Reading, Writing, Grammar and Punctuation abilities.
Albany Free School, in Albany, United States has treated students with ADHD far better than surrounding schools, giving them enough play time to render medication unnecessary.

Education in a democratic society

As English aristocracy was giving way to democracy, Matthew Arnold investigated popular education in France and other countries to determine what form of education suited a democratic age. Arnold wrote that "the spirit of democracy" is part of "human nature itself", which engages in "the effort to affirm one's own essence...to develop one's own existence fully and freely."

During the industrial age, John Dewey argued that children should not all be given the same pre-determined curriculum. In Democracy and Education he develops a philosophy of education based on democracy. He argues that while children should be active participants in the creation of their education, and while children must experience democracy to learn democracy, they need adult guidance to develop into responsible adults.

Amy Gutmann argues in Democratic Education that in a democratic society, there is a role for everyone in the education of children. These roles are best agreed upon through deliberative democracy.

The journal Democracy and Education investigates "the conceptual foundations, social policies, institutional structures, and teaching/learning practices associated with democratic education." By "democratic education" they mean "educating youth...for active participation in a democratic society."

Yaacov Hecht claims that the Democratic Education, being an education that prepares for life in a democratic culture, it is the missing piece in the intricate puzzle which is the democratic state.

Training programs

Israel's Institute for Democratic Education and Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv collaborate to offer a Bachelor of Education (B. Ed.) degree with a Specialization Certificate in Democratic Education. Student teaching placements are in both regular schools and democratic schools.

Legal issues

United Nations

United Nations agreements both support and place restrictions on education options, including democratic education:

Article 26(3) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." While this in itself may allow parents the right to choose democratic education, Articles 28 and 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child place requirements on educational programs: Primary education is compulsory, all aspects of each student must be developed to their full potential, and education must include the development of respect for things such as national values and the natural environment, in a spirit of friendship among all peoples.

Furthermore, while Article 12(1) of the Convention mandates that children be able to have input on all matters that affect them, their input will have limited weight, "due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child."

Summerhill

In 1999, Summerhill received a 'notice of complaint' over its policy of non-compulsory lessons, a procedure which would usually have led to closure; Summerhill contested the notice and went before a special educational tribunal. Summerhill was represented by a noted human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson QC. The government's case soon collapsed, and a settlement was offered. This offer was discussed and agreed at a formal school meeting which had been hastily convened in the courtroom from a quorum of pupils and teachers who were present in court. The settlement guaranteed that future inspections of Summerhill would be consistent with Summerhill's educational philosophy.

Theorists

Joseph Agassi – Israeli philosopher, proponent of democracy
Michael Apple – social scientist, educational theorist
Matthew Arnold – English poet, cultural critic, wrote about education in an age of democracy
Sreyashi Jhumki Basu – American researcher, science educator, author of Democratic Science Teaching
Pierre Bourdieu – French anthropologist, social theorist
George Dennison – American writer, author
John Dewey – American social scientist, progressive education theorist
Émile Durkheim – French sociologist, functionalist education theorist
Michel Foucault – French postmodern philosopher
Peter Gray – American psychologist, studied relationship between education and play
Daniel Greenberg – "principal philosopher" among the founders of the Sudbury Valley School
Amy Gutmann – American political scientist, diplomat, president of the University of Pennsylvania
Yaacov Hecht – Israeli educator, founder of the Democratic School of Hadera, and founder of IDEC
John Holt – American critic of conventional education, proponent of un-schooling
Ivan Illich – Austrian philosopher, priest, author of Deschooling Society
Lawrence Kohlberg – American professor, psychologist, wrote about moral and democratic education
Homer Lane – American-English educator, founder of the Ford Republic (1907–12) and the Little Commonwealth (1913–17)
Deborah Meier – founder of democratic schools in New York and Boston, writer, leader of the small schools movement
A. S. Neill – Scottish educator and author, founder of the Summerhill School
Claus Offe – German political sociologist, theorist of deliberative democratic culture
Karl Popper – Austrian-British philosopher of science
Bertrand Russell – British philosopher, author of On Education and founder of Beacon House School

Early childhood education

The Developmental Interaction Approach is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach focuses on learning through discovery. Jean Jacques Rousseau recommended that teachers should exploit individual children's interests to make sure each child obtains the information most essential to his personal and individual development. The five developmental domains of childhood development include: To meet those developmental domains, a child has a set of needs that must be met for learning. Maslow's hierarchy of needs showcases the different levels of needs that must be met the chart to the right showcases these needs.

Physical: the way in which a child develops biological and physical functions, including eyesight and motor skills
Social: the way in which a child interacts with others Children develop an understanding of their responsibilities and rights as members of families and communities, as well as an ability to relate to and work with others.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Emotional: the way in which a child creates emotional connections and develops self-confidence. Emotional connections develop when children relate to other people and share feelings.
Language: the way in which a child communicates, including how they present their feelings and emotions, both to other people and to themselves. At 3 months, children employ different cries for different needs. At 6 months they can recognize and imitate the basic sounds of spoken language. In the first 3 years, children need to be exposed to communication with others in order to pick up language. "Normal" language development is measured by the rate of vocabulary acquisition.
Cognitive skills: the way in which a child organizes information. Cognitive skills include problem solving, creativity, imagination and memory. They embody the way in which children make sense of the world. Piaget believed that children exhibit prominent differences in their thought patterns as they move through the stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor period, the pre-operational period, and the operational period.

Froebel's play theory

Friedrich Froebel was a German Educator that believed in the idea of children learning through play. Specifically, he said, "play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in the child’s soul." Froebel believed that teachers should act as a facilitators and supporters for the students's play, rather than an authoritative, disciplinary figure. He created educational open-ended toys that he called "gifts" and "occupations" that were designed to encourage self expression and initiation.

Maria Montessori's theory

Maria Montessori was an Italian physician that, based on her observations of young children in classrooms, developed a method of education that focused on independence. In Montessori education, a typical classroom is made up of students of different ages and curriculum is based on the students' developmental stage, which Montessori called the four planes of development.

Montessori's Four Planes of Development:

The first plane (birth to age 6): During this stage, children soak up information about the world around them quickly, which is why Montessori refers to it as the "absorbent mind". Physical independence, such as completing tasks independently, is a main focus of the child at this time and children's individual personalities begin to form and develop.
The second plane (Ages 6–12): During this stage, children also focus on independence, but intellectual rather than physical. Montessori classrooms use what is called "cosmic education" during this stage, which emphasizes children building on their understanding of the world, their place in it, and how everything is interdependent. Children in this plane also begin to develop abstract and moral thinking.
The third plane (Ages 12–18): During this stage, adolescents shift to focus on emotional independence and on the self. Moral values, critical thinking, and self-identity are explored and strengthened.
The fourth plane (Ages 18–24): During this last stage, focus shifts to financial independence. Young adults in this plane begin to solidify their personal beliefs, identity, and role in the world.

Vygotsky’s socio-cultural learning theory

Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed a "socio-cultural learning theory" that emphasized the impact of social and cultural experiences on individual thinking and the development of mental processes. Vygotsky's theory emerged in the 1930s and is still discussed today as a means of improving and reforming educational practices. In Vygotsky's theories of learning, he also postulated the theory of the zone of proximal development. This theory ties in with children building off prior knowledge and gaining new knowledge related to skills they already have. In the theory it describes how new knowledge or skills are taken in if they are not fully learned but are starting to emerge. A teacher or older friend lends support to a child learning a skill, be it building a block castle, tying a shoe, or writing one's name. As the child becomes more capable of the steps of the activity, the adult or older child withdraws supports gradually, until the child is competent completing the process on his/her own. This is done within that activity's zone—the distance between where the child is, and where he potentially will be. In each zone of proximal development, they build on skills and grow by learning more skills in their proximal development range. They build on the skills by being guided by teachers and parents. They must build from where they are in their zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky argued that since cognition occurs within a social context, our social experiences shape our ways of thinking about and interpreting the world. People such as parents, grandparents, and teachers play the roles of what Vygotsky described as knowledgeable and competent adults. Although Vygotsky predated social constructivists, he is commonly classified as one. Social constructivists believe that an individual's cognitive system is a resditional learning time. Vygotsky advocated that teachers facilitate rather than direct student learning. Teachers should provide a learning environment where students can explore and develop their learning without direct instruction. His approach calls for teachers to incorporate students’ needs and interests. It is important to do this because students' levels of interest and abilities will vary and there needs to be differentiation.

However, teachers can enhance understandings and learning for students. Vygotsky states that by sharing meanings that are relevant to the children's environment, adults promote cognitive development as well. Their teachings can influence thought processes and perspectives of students when they are in new and similar environments. Since Vygotsky promotes more facilitation in children's learning, he suggests that knowledgeable people (and adults in particular), can also enhance knowledges through cooperative meaning-making with students in their learning, this can be done through the zone of proximal development by guiding children's learning or thinking skills . Vygotsky's approach encourages guided participation and student exploration with support. Teachers can help students achieve their cognitive development levels through consistent and regular interactions of collaborative knowledge-making learning processes.

Piaget’s constructivist theory

Jean Piaget's constructivist theory gained influence in the 1970s and '80s. Although Piaget himself was primarily interested in a descriptive psychology of cognitive development, he also laid the groundwork for a constructivist theory of learning. Piaget believed that learning comes from within: children construct their own knowledge of the world through experience and subsequent reflection. He said that "if logic itself is created rather than being inborn, it follows that the first task of education is to form reasoning." Within Piaget's framework, teachers should guide children in acquiring their own knowledge rather than simply transferring knowledge.

According to Piaget's theory, when young children encounter new information, they attempt to accommodate and assimilate it into their existing understanding of the world. Accommodation involves adapting mental schemas and representations to make them consistent with reality. Assimilation involves fitting new information into their pre-existing schemas. Through these two processes, young children learn by equilibrating their mental representations with reality. They also learn from mistakes.

A Piagetian approach emphasizes experiential education; in school, experiences become more hands-on and concrete as students explore through trial and error. Thus, crucial components of early childhood education include exploration, manipulating objects, and experiencing new environments. Subsequent reflection on these experiences is equally important.

Piaget's concept of reflective abstraction was particularly influential in mathematical education. Through reflective abstraction, children construct more advanced cognitive structures out of the simpler ones they already possess. This allows children to develop mathematical constructs that cannot be learned through equilibration – making sense of experiences through assimilation and accommodation – alone.

According to Piagetian theory, language and symbolic representation is preceded by the development of corresponding mental representations. Research shows that the level of reflective abstraction achieved by young children was found to limit the degree to which they could represent physical quantities with written numerals. Piaget held that children can invent their own procedures for the four arithmetical operations, without being taught any conventional rules.

Piaget's theory implies that computers can be a great educational tool for young children when used to support the design and construction of their projects. McCarrick and Xiaoming found that computer play is consistent with this theory. However, Plowman and Stephen found that the effectiveness of computers is limited in the preschool environment; their results indicate that computers are only effective when directed by the teacher. This suggests, according to the constructivist theory, that the role of preschool teachers is critical in successfully adopting computers as they existed in 2003.

Kolb's experiential learning theory

David Kolb's experiential learning theory, which was influenced by John Dewey, Kurt Lewin and Jean Piaget, argues that children need to experience things to learn: "The process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combinations of grasping and transforming experience." The experimental learning theory is distinctive in that children are seen and taught as individuals. As a child explores and observes, teachers ask the child probing questions. The child can then adapt prior knowledge to learning new information.

Kolb breaks down this learning cycle into four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Children observe new situations, think about the situation, make meaning of the situation, then test that meaning in the world around them.

Practical implications of early childhood education

In recent decades, studies have shown that early childhood education is critical in preparing children to enter and succeed in the (grade school) classroom, diminishing their risk of social-emotional mental health problems and increasing their self-sufficiency later in their lives. In other words, the child needs to be taught to rationalize everything and to be open to interpretations and critical thinking. There is no subject to be considered taboo, starting with the most basic knowledge of the world that they live in, and ending with deeper areas, such as morality, religion and science. Visual stimulus and response time as early as 3 months can be an indicator of verbal and performance IQ at age 4 years. When parents value ECE and its importance their children generally have a higher rate of attendance. This allows children the opportunity to build and nurture trusting relationships with educators and social relationships with peers.

By providing education in a child's most formative years, ECE also has the capacity to pre-emptively begin closing the educational achievement gap between low and high-income students before formal schooling begins. Children of low socioeconomic status (SES) often begin school already behind their higher SES peers; on average, by the time they are three, children with high SES have three times the number of words in their vocabularies as children with low SES. Participation in ECE, however, has been proven to increase high school graduation rates, improve performance on standardized tests, and reduce both grade repetition and the number of children placed in special education.

A study was conducted by the Aga Khan Development Network's Madrasa Early Childhood Programme on the impact that early childhood education had on students’ performance in grade school. Looking specifically at students who attended the Madrasa Early Childhood schools (virtually all of whom came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds), the study found that they had consistently ranked in the top 20% in grade 1 classes. The study also concluded that any formal early childhood education contributed to higher levels of cognitive development in language, mathematics, and non-verbal reasoning skills.

Especially since the first wave of results from the Perry Preschool Project were published, there has been widespread consensus that the quality of early childhood education programs correlate with gains in low-income children's IQs and test scores, decreased grade retention, and lower special education rates.

Several studies have reported that children enrolled in ECE increase their IQ scores by 4–11 points by age five, while a Milwaukee study reported a 25-point gain. In addition, students who had been enrolled in the Abecedarian Project, an often-cited ECE study, scored significantly higher on reading and math tests by age fifteen than comparable students who had not participated in early childhood programs. In addition, 36% of students in the Abecedarian Preschool Study treatment group would later enroll in four-year colleges compared to 14% of those in the control group.

In 2017, researchers reported that children who participate in ECE graduate high school at significantly greater rates than those who do not. Additionally, those who participate in ECE require special education and must repeat a grade at significantly lower rates than their peers who did not receive ECE. The NIH asserts that ECE leads to higher test scores for students from preschool through age 21, improved grades in math and reading, and stronger odds that students will keep going to school and attend college.

Nathaniel Hendren and Ben Sprung-Keyser, two Harvard economists, found high Marginal Values of Public Funds (MVPFs) for investments in programs supporting the health and early education of children, particularly those that reach children from low-income families. The average MVPF for these types of initiatives is over 5, while the MVPFs for programs for adults generally range from 0.5 to 2.

Beyond benefitting societal good, ECE also significantly impacts the socioeconomic outcomes of individuals. For example, by age 26, students who had been enrolled in Chicago Child-Parent Centers were less likely to be arrested, abuse drugs, and receive food stamps; they were more likely to have high school diplomas, health insurance and full-time employment. Studies also show that ECE heightens social engagement, bolsters lifelong health, reduces the incidence of teen pregnancy, supports mental health, decreases the risk of heart disease, and lengthens lifespans.

The World Bank's 2019 World Development Report on The Changing Nature of Work identifies early childhood development programs as one of the most effective ways governments can equip children with the skills they will need to succeed in future labor markets.

According to a 2020 study in the Journal of Political Economy by Clemson University economist Jorge Luis García, Nobel laureate James J. Heckman and University of Southern California economists Duncan Ermini Leaf and María José Prados, every dollar spent on a high-quality early-childhood programs led to a return of $7.3 over the long-term.

The Perry Preschool Project

The Perry Preschool Project, which was conducted in the 1960s in Ypsilanti, Michigan, is the oldest social experiment in the field of early childhood education and has heavily influenced policy in the United States and across the globe. The experiment enrolled 128 three- and four-year-old African-American children with cognitive disadvantage from low-income families, who were then randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The intervention for children in the treatment group included active learning preschool sessions on weekdays for 2.5 hours per day. The intervention also included weekly visits by the teachers to the homes of the children for about 1.5 hours per visit to improve parent-child interactions at home.

Initial evaluations of the Perry intervention showed that the preschool program failed to significantly boost an IQ measure. However, later evaluations that followed up the participants for more than fifty years have demonstrated the long-term economic benefits of the program, even after accounting for the small sample size of the experiment, flaws in its randomization procedure, and sample attrition. There is substantial evidence of large treatment effects on the criminal convictions of male participants, especially for violent crime, and their earnings in middle adulthood. Research points to improvements in non-cognitive skills, executive functioning, childhood home environment, and parental attachment as potential sources of the observed long-term impacts of the program. The intervention's many benefits also include improvements in late-midlife health for both male and female participants. Perry promoted educational attainment through two avenues: total years of education attained and rates of progression to a given level of education. This pattern is particularly evident for females. Treated females received less special education, progressed more quickly through grades, earned higher GPAs, and attained higher levels of education than their control group counterparts.

Research also demonstrates spillover effects of the Perry program on the children and siblings of the original participants. A study concludes, "The children of treated participants have fewer school suspensions, higher levels of education and employment, and lower levels of participation in crime, compared with the children of untreated participants. Impacts are especially pronounced for the children of male participants. These treatment effects are associated with improved childhood home environments." The study also documents beneficial impacts on the male siblings of the original participants. Evidence from the Perry Preschool Project is noteworthy because it advocates for public spending on early childhood programs as an economic investment in a society's future, rather than in the interest of social justice.

International agreements

The first World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education took place in Moscow from 27 to 29 September 2010, jointly organized by UNESCO and the city of Moscow. The overarching goals of the conference are to:

Reaffirm ECCE as a right of all children and as the basis for development
Take stock of the progress of Member States towards achieving the EFA Goal 1
Identify binding constraints toward making the intended equitable expansion of access to quality ECCE services
Establish, more concretely, benchmarks and targets for the EFA Goal 1 toward 2015 and beyond
Identify key enablers that should facilitate Member States to reach the established targets
Promote global exchange of good practices

Under Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which the UN General Assembly unanimously approved in 2015, countries committed to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education’ including early childhood." Two targets related to goal 4 are "by 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education." The ‘Framework for Action’ adopted by UNESCO member states later in 2015 outlines how to translate this last target into practice, and encourages states to provide "at least one year of free and compulsory pre-primary education of good quality." The Sustainable Development Goals, however, are not binding international law.

It has been argued that "International law provides no effective protection of the right to pre-primary education." Just two global treaties explicitly reference education prior to primary school. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women requires states to ensure equality for girls "in pre-school." And in the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, states agree that access to "public pre-school educational institutions" shall not be denied due to the parents’ or child's "irregular situation with respect to stay."

Less explicitly, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires that "States Parties shall ensure an inclusive education system at all levels."

In 2022, Human Rights Watch adopted a policy calling on states to make at least one year of free and compulsory, inclusive, quality pre-primary education available and accessible for all children. In doing so they advocated making one year of pre-primary education to be included as part of the minimum core of the right to education. They further called on all states to adopt a detailed plan of action for the progressive implementation of further years of pre-primary education, within a reasonable number of years to be fixed in the plan.

According to UNESCO, a preschool curriculum is one that delivers educational content through daily activities and furthers a child's physical, cognitive, and social development. Generally, preschool curricula are only recognized by governments if they are based on academic research and reviewed by peers.

Preschool for Child Rights have pioneered into preschool curricular areas and is contributing into child rights through their preschool curriculum.

Curricula in early childhood care and education

Curricula in early childhood care and education (ECCE) is the driving force behind any ECCE programme. It is ‘an integral part of the engine that, together with the energy and motivation of staff, provides the momentum that makes programmes live’. It follows therefore that the quality of a programme is greatly influenced by the quality of its curriculum. In early childhood, these may be programs for children or parents, including health and nutrition interventions and prenatal programs, as well as center-based programs for children.

Barriers and challenges

Children's learning potential and outcomes are negatively affected by exposure to violence, abuse and child labour. Thus, protecting young children from violence and exploitation is part of broad educational concerns. Due to difficulties and sensitivities around the issue of measuring and monitoring child protection violations and gaps in defining, collecting and analysing appropriate indicators, data coverage in this area is scant. However, proxy indicators can be used to assess the situation. For example, ratification of relevant international conventions indicates countries’ commitment to child protection. By April 2014, 194 countries had ratified the CRC3; and 179 had ratified the 1999 International Labour Organization's Convention (No. 182) concerning the elimination of the worst forms of child labour. However, many of these ratifications are yet to be given full effect through actual implementation of concrete measures. Globally, 150 million children aged 5–14 are estimated to be engaged in child labour. In conflict-affected poor countries, children are twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday compared to those in other poor countries. In industrialized countries, 4 per cent of children are physically abused each year and 10 per cent are neglected or psychologically abused.

In both developed and developing countries, children of the poor and the disadvantaged remain the least served. This exclusion persists against the evidence that the added value of early childhood care and education services are higher for them than for their more affluent counterparts, even when such services are of modest quality. While the problem is more intractable in developing countries, the developed world still does not equitably provide quality early childhood care and education services for all its children. In many European countries, children, mostly from low-income and immigrant families, do not have access to good quality early childhood care and education.

Orphan education

A lack of education during the early childhood years for orphans is a worldwide concern. Orphans are at higher risk of "missing out on schooling, living in households with less food security, and suffering from anxiety and depression." Education during these years has the potential to improve a child's "food and nutrition, health care, social welfare, and protection." This crisis is especially prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa which has been heavily impacted by the aids epidemic. UNICEF reports that "13.3 million children (0–17 years) worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Nearly 12 million of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa." Government policies such as the Free Basic Education Policy have worked to provide education for orphan children in this area, but the quality and inclusiveness of this policy has brought criticism.

Anti-imperialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-imperialism

Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic sovereign state) or as a specific theory opposed to capitalism in Leninist discourse, derived from Vladimir Lenin's work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Less common usage refers to opponents of an interventionist foreign policy.

People who categorize themselves as anti-imperialists often state that they are opposed to colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism and the territorial expansion of a country beyond its established borders. An influential movement independent of the Western Left that advocated religious anti-imperialism was Pan-Islamism; which challenged the Western civilisational model and rose to prominence across various parts of the Islamic World during the 19th and 20th centuries. Its most influential ideologue was the Sunni theologian Muhammad Rashid Rida, a fierce opponent of Western ideas, who called upon Muslims to rise up in armed resistance by waging Jihad against imperialism and re-establish an Islamic Caliphate. Through his resolution in the Second World Congress of Comintern (1920), Lenin accused the anti-imperialism of Pan-Islamists of favouring the interests of the bourgeoisie, feudal landlords and religious clerics; and enjoined fellow communists to compulsorily fight Pan-Islamism. Since then, Soviet authorities regularly employed the charge of Pan-Islamism to target Islamic dissidents for anti-Soviet activities and fomenting anti-communist rebellions.

The phrase gained a wide currency after the Second World War and at the onset of the Cold War as political movements in colonies of European powers promoted national sovereignty. Some anti-imperialist groups who opposed the United States supported the power of the Soviet Union, while in some Marxist schools, such as Maoism, this was criticized as social imperialism. Islamist movements traditionally view Russia and China as imperial and neo-colonial forces engaged in persecution and oppression of Muslim communities domestically and abroad, in addition to the U.S. and its allies like Israel.

Theory

In the late 1870s, the term "imperialism" was introduced to the English language by opponents of the aggressively imperial policies of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1874–1880). It was shortly appropriated by supporters of "imperialism" such as Joseph Chamberlain. For some, imperialism designated a policy of idealism and philanthropy; others alleged that it was characterized by political self-interest; and a growing number associated it with capitalist greed. John A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin added a more theoretical macroeconomic connotation to the term. Many theoreticians on the left have followed either or both in emphasizing the structural or systemic character of "imperialism". Such writers have expanded the time period associated with the term so that it now designates neither a policy, nor a short space of decades in the late 19th century, but a global system extending over a period of centuries, often going back to Christopher Columbus. As the application of the term has expanded, its meaning has shifted along five distinct but often parallel axes: the moral, the economic, the systemic, the cultural and the temporal. Those changes reflect—among other shifts in sensibility—a growing unease with the fact of power, specifically Western power.

The relationships among capitalism, aristocracy and imperialism have been discussed and analysed by theoreticians, historians, political scientists such as John A. Hobson and Thorstein Veblen, Joseph Schumpeter and Norman Angell. Those intellectuals produced much of their works about imperialism before the World War I (1914–1918), yet their combined work informed the study of the impact of imperialism upon Europe and contributed to the political and ideologic reflections on the rise of the military–industrial complex in the United States from the 1950s onwards.

Hobson

John A. Hobson strongly influenced the anti-imperialism of both Marxists and liberals, worldwide through his 1902 book on Imperialism. He argued that the "taproot of imperialism" is not in nationalist pride, but in Capitalism. As a form of economic organization, imperialism is unnecessary and immoral, the result of the mis-distribution of wealth in a capitalist society. That created an irresistible desire to extend the national markets into foreign lands, in search of profits greater than those available in the Mother Country. In the capitalist economy, rich capitalists received a disproportionately higher income than did the working class. If the owners invested their incomes to their factories, the greatly increased productive capacity would exceed the growth in demand for the products and services of said factories. Lenin adopted Hobson's ideas to argue that capitalism was doomed and would eventually be replaced by socialism, the sooner the better.

Hobson was also influential in liberal circles, especially the British Liberal Party. Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an enormous influence in the early 20th century that caused widespread distrust of imperialism:

Hobson's ideas were not entirely original; however his hatred of moneyed men and monopolies, his loathing of secret compacts and public bluster, fused all existing indictments of imperialism into one coherent system....His ideas influenced German nationalist opponents of the British Empire as well as French Anglophobes and Marxists; they colored the thoughts of American liberals and isolationist critics of colonialism. In days to come they were to contribute to American distrust of Western Europe and of the British Empire. Hobson helped make the British averse to the exercise of colonial rule; he provided indigenous nationalists in Asia and Africa with the ammunition to resist rule from Europe.

On the positive side, Hobson argued that domestic social reforms could cure the international disease of imperialism by removing its economic foundation. Hobson theorized that state intervention through taxation could boost broader consumption, create wealth and encourage a peaceful multilateral world order. Conversely, should the state not intervene, rentiers (people who earn income from property or securities) would generate socially negative wealth that fostered imperialism and protectionism.

Political movement

As a self-conscious political movement, anti-imperialism originated in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in opposition to the growing European colonial empires and the United States control of the Philippines after 1898. However, it reached its highest level of popular support in the colonies themselves, where it formed the basis for a wide variety of national liberation movements during the mid-20th century and later. These movements, and their anti-imperialist ideas, were instrumental in the decolonization process of the 1950s and 1960s, which saw most European colonies in Asia and Africa achieving their independence.

International context

United States

An early use of the term "anti-imperialist" occurred after the United States entered the Spanish–American War in 1898. Most activists supported the war itself, but opposed the annexation of new territory, especially the Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League was founded on June 15, 1898, in Boston in opposition of the acquisition of the Philippines, which would happen anyway. The anti-imperialists opposed the expansion because they believed imperialism violated the credo of republicanism, especially the need for "consent of the governed". Appalled by American imperialism, the Anti-Imperialist League, which included famous citizens such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry James, William James and Mark Twain, formed a platform which stated:

We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is "criminal aggression" and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government... We cordially invite the cooperation of all men and women who remain loyal to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Fred Harrington states that "the anti-imperialist's did not oppose expansion because of commercial, religious, constitutional, or humanitarian reasons but instead because they thought that an imperialist policy ran counter to the political doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address".

An important influence on American intellectuals was the work of British writer John A. Hobson. especially Imperialism: A Study (1902). Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an enormous influence in the early 20th century that caused widespread distrust of imperialism:

Hobson's ...hatred of moneyed men and monopolies, his loathing of secret compacts and public bluster, fused all existing indictments of imperialism into one coherent system....His ideas influenced German nationalist opponents of the British Empire as well as French Anglophobes and Marxists; they colored the thoughts of American liberals and isolationist critics of colonialism. In days to come they were to contribute to American distrust of Western Europe and of the British Empire. Hobson helped make the British averse to the exercise of colonial rule; he provided indigenous nationalists in Asia and Africa with the ammunition to resist rule from Europe.

The American rejection of the League of Nations in 1919 was accompanied with a sharp American reaction against European imperialism. American textbooks denounced imperialism as a major cause of the World War. The uglier aspects of British colonial rule were emphasized, recalling the long-standing anti-British sentiments in the United States.

In Britain and Canada

Anti-imperialism within Britain emerged in the 1890s, especially from within the Liberal Party. For over a century, back to the days of Adam Smith in 1776, economists had been hostile to imperialism on the grounds that it is a violation of the principles of free trade; they never formed a popular movement. Indeed, imperialism seems to have been generally popular before the 1890s. The key impetus around 1900 came from strong public disapproval with the British actions during with the Second Boer War (1899–1902). The war was fought against the Afrikaners, who were Dutch colonists who had built new homelands in South Africa. Opposition to the Second Boer War was modest when the war began and was generally less widespread than support for it. However, influential groups formed immediately against the war, including the South African Conciliation Committee and W. T. Stead's Stop the War Committee. Much of the opposition in Britain came from the Liberal Party. Intellectuals and activists Britain based in the socialist, labour and Fabian movements generally oppose imperialism and John A. Hobson, a Liberal, took many of his ideas from their writings. After the Boer war, opponents of imperialism turned their attention to the British crown colonies in Africa and Asia. By the 1920s, the government was sponsoring large-scale exhibits promoting imperialism, notably the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in London and the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition. Some intellectuals used the opportunity to criticise imperialism as a policy.^[29]

Moderately active anti-imperial movements emerged in Canada and Australia. The French Canadians were hostile to British expansion whilst in Australia, it was the Irish Catholics who were opposed.^[30] French Canadians argue that Canadian nationalism was the proper and true goal and it sometimes conflicted with loyalty to the British Empire. Many French Canadians claimed that they would fight for Canada but would not fight for the Empire.

Protestant Canadians, typically of British descent, generally supported British imperialism enthusiastically. They sent thousands of volunteers to fight alongside British and imperial forces against the Boers and in the process identified themselves even more strongly with the British Empire. A little opposition also came from some English immigrants such as the intellectual leader Goldwin Smith. In Canada, the Irish Catholics were fighting the French Canadians for control of the Catholic Church, so the Irish generally supported the pro-British position. Anti-imperialism also grew rapidly in India and formed a core element of the demand by Congress for independence.

Marxism–Leninism

In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx mentioned imperialism to be part of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production in Das Kapital (1867–1894). Much more important was Vladimir Lenin, who defined imperialism as "the highest stage of capitalism", the economic stage in which monopoly finance capital becomes the dominant application of capital. As such, said financial and economic circumstances impelled national governments and private business corporations to worldwide competition for control of natural resources and human labour by means of colonialism.

The Leninist views of imperialism and related theories, such as dependency theory, address the economic dominance and exploitation of a country, rather than the military and the political dominance of a people, their country and its natural resources. Hence, the primary purpose of imperialism is economic exploitation, rather than mere control of either a country or of a region. The Marxist and the Leninist denotation thus differs from the usual political science denotation of imperialism as the direct control (intervention, occupation and rule) characteristic of colonial and neo-colonial empires as used in the realm of international relations.

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Lenin outlined the five features of capitalist development that lead to imperialism:

Concentration of production and capital leading to the dominance of national and multinational monopolies and cartels.
Industrial capital as the dominant form of capital has been replaced by finance capital, with the industrial capitalists increasingly reliant on capital provided by monopolistic financial institutions. "Again and again, the final word in the development of banking is monopoly".
The export of the aforementioned finance capital is emphasized over the export of goods.
The economic division of the world by multinational cartels.
The political division of the world into colonies by the great powers, in which the great powers monopolise investment.

Generally, the relationship among Marxist-Leninists and radical, left-wing organisations who are anti-war, often involves persuading such political activists to progress from pacifism to anti-imperialism—that is, to progress from the opposition of war, in general, to the condemnation of the capitalist economic system, in particular.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union represented themselves as the foremost enemy of imperialism and thus politically and financially supported Third World revolutionary organisations who fought for national independence. This was accomplished through the export of both financial capital and Soviet military apparatuses, with the Soviet Union sending military advisors to Ethiopia, Angola, Egypt and Afghanistan.

However, anarchists as well as many other Marxist organizations, have characterized Soviet foreign policy as imperialism and cited it as evidence that the philosophy of Marxism would not resolve and eliminate imperialism. Mao Zedong developed the theory that the Soviet Union was a social imperialist nation, a socialist people with tendencies to imperialism, an important aspect of Maoist analysis of the history of the Soviet Union. Contemporarily, the term "anti-imperialism" is most commonly applied by Marxist-Leninists, and political organisations of like ideological persuasion who oppose capitalism, present a class analysis of society and the like.

About the nature of imperialism and how to oppose and defeat it, Che Guevara said:

imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism—and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capitals, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capitals—instruments of domination—arms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.
— Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental, 1967

Opposition to Soviet imperialism

Soviet foreign policy have been characterized as imperialist and colonialist. The nations which were part of the Soviet sphere of influence were nominally independent countries with separate governments that set their own policies, but those policies had to stay within certain limits decided by the Soviet Union. These limits were enforced by the threat of intervention by Soviet forces, and later the Warsaw Pact. Major military invasions took place in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980–81 and Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Countries in the Soviet Bloc were considered satellite states.

The Soviet Union exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. The notion of "Soviet empire" often refers to a form of "classic" or "colonial" empire with communism only replacing conventional imperial ideologies such as Christianity or monarchy, rather than creating a revolutionary state. Academically the idea is seen as emerging with Richard Pipes' 1957 book The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923, but it has been reinforced, along with several other views, in continuing scholarship. Several scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. The Soviet Union practiced colonialism similar to conventional imperial powers.

Islamic anti-imperialism

Imam Muhammad Rashid Rida was an ardent advocate of Pan-Islamist insurgency against imperialism. His teachings inspired figures like Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Abdullah Azzam

The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the rise of numerous anti-colonial and anti-imperial Islamic resistance movements across various parts of the Muslim World. These included the Jihad movement led by the Imamate of Caucasus and the Circassian Confederacy against Russian imperialism during the Caucasus Wars (1763-1864 C.E). Prominent leaders in this resistance campaign included Ghazi Mullah, Gamzat-bek, Shamil, Hajji Qerandiqo Berzeg, Jembulat Boletoqo, etc. Other major anti-imperial movements included the Padri War, Java War, and the Aceh War against the Dutch colonisation of Indonesia, Moro Rebellion against the United States, the South Asian Jihad movement of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid, Mahdist State in Sudan and the Arabian Muwahhidun that fought British colonialism, Emir Abd al-Qadir's military insurgency against French in Algeria, North-West Frontier Uprisings of the Pashtun tribes against the British Raj, Omar Mukhtar's Jihad against Italian Fascists in Libya, etc. The establishment and defense of Islamic statehood that enforces Sharia (Islamic law) based on Qur'an and Sunnah, elimination of superstitions and heterodox local practices and folk rituals, etc. were key objectives of these reform movements.

These anti-colonial movements inspired the rise of Pan-Islamism during the late 19th century; which gave birth to numerous Islamist organisations advocating anti-imperialism across the Muslim World; such as the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) and Jamaat-e-Islami. Syro-Egyptian Islamist theoretician Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865 C.E/1282 A.H- 1935 C.E/1354 A.H), a Salafi theologian greatly influenced by preceding militant Islamic revivalist movements, was an ardent opponent of European imperial powers; and he called for armed Jihad to defend the Islamic World from encroaching colonialism, complemented by a political programme to establish Islamic states which would implement Sharia (Islamic laws). He extended this anti-imperialist campaign to the theological level through the Arab Salafiyya movement; which professed the key theme of returning to the values of Salaf al-Salih. This encompassed a theological assault on Western ideological currents emanating from the principles of secularism and nationalism as well as denunciation of Western cultural imperialism.

After Rashid Rida, the mantle of Islamist anti-imperialism was spearheaded by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, South Asian revolutionary Islamist leader Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi and Egyptian Jihadist theoretician Sayyid Qutb. Mawdudi held the belief that West was in decline and that restoration of Islamic prowess was inevitable. Openly equating Western colonialism with atheism, Mawdudi called upon Muslims to rally in Jihad against the imperialist forces to regain their spiritual, cultural, economic and military sovereignty and self-sufficiency. Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian scholar influenced by both Mawdudi and Rashid Rida, took their ideas to its logical culmination; proclaiming the necessity of a permanent, un-ending Islamist revolution not only against the imperialists but also its allied regimes in the Muslim World. This revolution against the apostate regimes has to be waged as an armed Jihad by an ideological vanguard committed to establish the Islamic state and uphold Tawhid (Islamic monotheism). These ideas gained prominence and arose in influence across the Islamic World during the post World War 2 era. During the Cold War period, the Islamist intellectuals from the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e Islami also launched fervent anti-communist campaigns, ideologically critiquing socialism and Marxism and chiding leftists as agents of Soviet Imperialism.

In his book "Al Jihad Fil Islam", South Asian revolutionary Islamist scholar Abul A'la Mawdudi made a comprehensive Islamic refutation of imperialism. He argued that oppressive rulers justify imperialism in the name of progress and socio-political reforms. Describing the main features of imperialism, Mawdudi wrote:

"the basic quality of imperialism is the dominance of one particular nation or country... Thus, the doors of imperialism remain closed to people of other nationalities and for this reason, they can play no major role in running its affairs. This gives rise to the development of other faults in the system and characters of the subject nation. They develop a weakness of character, lose self-esteem and the sense of righteousness. Even if the ruling nation does not treat the subjects with outright cruelty and arrogance, their (the subject nation’s) character sinks to such a low ebb of ignobility that they become quite incapable of striving for attaining and maintaining self-rule for a very long time."
— Abul A'la Maududi, Al Jihad fil Islam

The Indian Jamaat-e-Islami Hind launched a ten-day nationwide campaign titled Anti-Imperialism Campaign in December 2009. Contemporary Jihadist movements such as Al-Qaeda, influenced by Sayyid Qutb's thought, declares itself as a "global revolutionary vanguard" waging Jihad to defend Muslims from atrocities committed by the forces of Western imperialism and its allies.

In the worldview of Egyptian Jihadist theoretician Sayyid Qutb, imperialist policies of the secular Western regimes were a continuation of their historical "Crusading Spirit". In his commentary of the Qur'anic verse 2:120 "{Never will the Jews be pleased with you, (O Prophet), nor the Christians until you follow their way..}", Sayyid Qutb writes:

"The conflict between the Judeo-Christian world on the one side, and the Muslim community on the other, remains in essence one of ideology, although over the years it has appeared in various guises and has grown more sophisticated and, at times, more insidious. We have seen the original ideological conflict succeeded by economic, political and military confrontation, on the basis that ‘religious’ or ‘ideological’ conflicts are outdated and are usually prosecuted by ‘fanatics’ and backward people. Unfortunately, some naïve and confused Muslims have fallen for this stratagem and persuaded themselves that the religious and ideological aspects of the conflict are no longer relevant. But in reality world Zionism and Christian Imperialism, as well as world Communism, are conducting the fight against Islam and the Muslim community, first and foremost, on ideological grounds... The confrontation is not over control of territory or economic resources, or for military domination. If we believe that, we would play into our enemies’ hands and would have no one but ourselves to blame for the consequences."
— Sayyid Qutb, Fi Zilal al-Quran

Liberal anti-imperialism

Sometimes liberals also oppose imperialism. However, liberal anti-imperialists are distinct from socialist anti-imperialists because they do not support anti-capitalism.

South Korean liberals have opposed Chinese and Japanese imperialism. "No Japan Movement" is related to anti-imperialist sentiment in South Korea. On August 14, 2019, seven politicians of the DPK's descendants of independence activists said at a press conference, "In the spirit of Great Korean Independence 100 years ago, let's overcome the economic invasion of Shinzo Abe's government." (100년 전 대한독립의 정신으로 아베 정부 경제침략을 이겨내자.) South Korean liberals, unlike protectionist anti-imperialists, believing that the Japanese government's actions that undermined the "free trade principle" (자유무역 원칙 or 자유무역 철칙) during the Japan–South Korea trade dispute were far-right imperialist 'economic invasion'. (South Korean liberals argue that the Japanese government caused unfair damage to the South Korean economy to avoid compensation for Korean victims of Japanese war crimes during the past imperialist Japan.) South Korean liberals also oppose the appropriation of Korean culture of the Chinese people.

Some modern liberals in the United States, including Dennis Kucinich, support non-interventionism.

Criticism

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt assert that traditional anti-imperialism is no longer relevant. In the book Empire, Negri and Hardt argue that imperialism is no longer the practice or domain of any one nation or state. Rather, they claim, the "Empire" is a conglomeration of all states, nations, corporations, media, popular and intellectual culture and so forth; and thus, traditional anti-imperialist methods and strategies can no longer be applied against them.

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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

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