Independensi di Kota Industri

Merapal ulang ingatan tentang romantisme “Rumah” sekitar lima belas tahun silam. Cilacap Blocked City atau yang dimaknai sebagai kota buntu. Ya, seperti kita ketahui bahwa pusat kota ini berada di pesisir selatan dan ujung paling barat Jawa Tengah. Pengaruh letak geografis ini mengakibatkan keterbatasan akses untuk mendapatkan dan berbagi informasi dengan kota-kota disekitarnya, khususnya hal-hal tentang sub-kultur anak muda. Merespon kegelisahan tersebut, sekelompok anak muda mengonkretkan ide-ide mereka menjadi sebuah gerakan kolektif sub-kultur yang mereka namai dengan Cilacap Blocked City. Berawal dari scene skateboard dan musik, Blocked City memulai aksinya di medio 2009 dengan menginisiasi sebuah acara yang mereka beri judul “Cilacap Skate-beerding Day #1 berkolaborasi dengan band seperti No Skill, Totally Skateable, XXL dan 6.00 am.  Keberhasilan acara tersebut nyatanya memantik mereka untuk melanjutkan pergerakannya, dimulai dengan “Cilacap Skate-beerding #2” yang bertepatan dengan perayaan hari Skateboard sedunia di tahun 2010, pada acara ini mereka juga merangkul beberapa band-band lokal Cilacap seperti No Skill, Standing High, Hantam Baja, Roxx Romantixx dan Candle Light Dinner. Tak berhenti sampai disitu, Cilacap Blocked City semakin bersemangat untuk membuat gigs-gigs lainnya circa 2010-2015 seperti Cilacap Independent, Cilacap Go Skateboarding Day, Narcolaptic Indonesia Tour hingga membantu launching album pertama band punk lokal bernama No Skill dengan album yang berjudul “Semangat Terpendam”. Selain itu, Blocked City berhasil menularkan semangat khas anak mudanya kepada komunitas musik lainnya. Hal ini bisa dibuktikan dengan munculnya berbagai gigs-gigs seperti Cilacap Rockinfest, dst.
Tak bisa dipungkiri, dalam perjalanannya Cilacap Blocked City sudah menjadi bagian dari perkembangan sub-kultur anak muda Cilacap pada eranya.
Melalui Rekam Skena “Ngapak” Tour, juga semangat muda, kreatif dan bersenang-senang, Barokah Kolektif hadir untuk menuturkan ulang rekam jejak Cilacap Blocked City lewat film dokumenternya. Hal tersebut yang menjadikan film ini patut kalian tonton di Cherrypop 2023 yang akan dihelat pada Agustus mendatang, respect!

Cilacap, 30 Juli 2023

Welcome To The Endemic: The Future is Work-Life Balance

Compiled by Tutus Adi Pambudi

The novel coronavirus has created unprecedented challenges that were unforeseeable two years ago. The University of Denver is bringing together experts from around the country to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on individuals, relationships, mental health and workplaces during the second annual Seeking Tomorrow’s Answers Together (STAT) Conference on January 26.

The pandemic push this to the top of employee awareness

Cindi Fukami’s research project on work-life balance start in 1980, so yes, it has been talked about for a long time. As more and more women entered the workforce, the traditional view that women’s work was to take care of the home and family started to shift. Families began to depend on two incomes, and U.S. workers were providing more hours to the labor market than any other developed nation on earth. COVID accelerated this trend and the conflict between work and life demands — both for two parent families and for single parent families — was front and center. With schools closing and day care less available, taking care of children had to be balanced with getting jobs done.

Employees without children are also affected by working from home. While work could be spread throughout the day making some activities more convenient and useful for those who prefer a flexible schedule, work also became a potentially 24/7 activity, leaving little time for personal needs. When you add in COVID’s impact on general life activities, most people had little opportunity for rest and rejuvenation.

We are looking a future in work-life balance

The word “balance” is the key. Too much of anything, even something good, can be bad! Other developed nations provide significantly more vacation time than does the U.S., as well as more benefits for working parents. In short, people want the ability to have a productive life along with a productive work life.

Employers will get benefits by supporting work-life balance for their employees

As we know for a while that naps and rest breaks taken during the workday are associated with greater productivity. In the New Deal, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act set the standard of a 40-hour work week and it has not been changed/reduced since then. It would be interesting to see if worker productivity could be the same or even greater in a 32-hour, 4-day workweek, or even in a 4-day, 40-hour work week. Again, workers in the U.S. have been working very long hours compared to other developed nations.

According to the New York Times, by April 2020, homebound working Americans were working three more hours on the job each day, replacing commutes with Zoom meetings and Slack messages. Many of those workers now report burn out. How can we create better work-life balance while working remotely?

It’s hard to know whether these early reports we are receiving are reliable and valid. I assume work hours from home were self-reported and may not be accurate. On the other hand, I don’t have a hard time believing that we worked more hours as we had nothing else to do and, during lockdown, attending meetings was the only way we could interact with other people.

Still, whatever the reason, it is clear that many are burned out and physically and mentally tired. The time has come for us to review and seek out best practices for remote work. These include logistical issues like logging work hours, providing appropriate equipment for the home office, helping parents deal with day care and schooling, and helping adult children care for elderly relatives, among other issues. And they also include work issues — every job is not well suited for remote work, and every supervisor is not equipped to effectively lead remote workers. This requires rethinking of how closely we need to monitor and control work or whether employees are capable of self-control. We would not continue to use a machine that was broken — hopefully we see our human employees to be as important as a machine

Burnout And Its Relevant Causes In the Workplace

Introduction

For many years, burnout has been recognized as an occupational hazard for various people‐oriented professions, such as human services, education, and health care. The therapeutic or service relationships that such providers develop with recipients require an ongoing and intense level of personal, emotional contact. Although such relationships can be rewarding and engaging, they can also be quite stressful.

Burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job. The three key dimensions of this response are an overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. The significance of this three‐dimensional model is that it clearly places the individual stress experience within a social context and involves the person’s conception of both self and others.

Burnout has been generally regarded as an occupational syndrome combining emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a sense of diminished personal accomplishment (Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1998; Maslach et al., 2001). Emotional exhaustion refers to the feeling of being stressed out and drained of one’s energy at work. Depersonalization reflects a state of resentful detachment vis-à-vis one’s activity and a tendency to objectify the persons connected with one’s work (e.g., students, patients, clients). Diminished personal accomplishment involves a sense of ineffectiveness and failure in the job. From an etiological standpoint, burnout has been considered a product of insurmountable job stress (Maslach et al., 2001). There is evidence, for instance, that increases in job demands (e.g., workload) and decreases in job resources (e.g., job autonomy), which can give rise to unmanageable difficulties at work, predict burnout (Schaufeli et al., 2009; Hakanen et al., 2019). A systematic review and meta-analysis of 25 prospective/case-control studies conducted by Aronsson et al. (2017) concluded that job support and workplace justice were protective against burnout symptoms whereas high job demands, low job control, high workload, low job reward, and job insecurity fostered the development of burnout symptoms. Interestingly, an even more recent meta-analysis revealed that burnout increases job stressors much more than vice versa (Guthier et al., 2020).

Although (a) insurmountable stress is best understood through the interplay between the individual and his or her environment (Goldstein and Kopin, 2007; Chrousos, 2009; Pryce et al., 2011) and (b) burnout has been suggested to involve a misfit between the person and the job (Maslach et al., 2001), it has been persistently claimed that the development of burnout was preponderantly driven by occupational-context factors, with individual-level and non-work (or general) factors regarded as non-critical to the emergence of the syndrome. Thus, Brock-Utne and Jaffe (2020) suggested that “burnout is largely a result of the policies of institutions, not a lack of stress management skills or a failure to maintain a proper work-life balance” (p. 334). According to Shanafelt et al. (2017), burnout “is primarily a system-level problem driven by excess job demands and inadequate resources and support, … not an individual problem” (p. 1828). In Dyrbye and Shanafelt’s (2016) opinion, “..factors within the learning and work environment, rather than individual attributes, are the major drivers of burnout” (p. 132). In a similar vein, Maslach and Leiter (2010) affirmed that “job variables and the organizational context are the prime predictors of burnout” (p. 728). Maslach (2003) advanced the view that “burnout is more a function of the situation than of the person” (p. 191). Maslach et al. (2001) alleged that the relationships between individual characteristics and burnout “are not as great in size as those for burnout and situational factors” (p. 409). Such claims have been widely endorsed in burnout research. Their validity, however, has been called into question on both theoretical and empirical grounds (e.g., Swider and Zimmerman, 2010; Bianchi and Schonfeld, 2016; Bianchi, 2018; Prins et al., 2019).

The tendency to de-emphasize the role of individual-level and non-work factors in burnout research is intriguing for at least three reasons. First, the importance of individual differences in burnout is rendered salient by the basic fact that, subjected to similar working conditions and obligations within the same workplace, some workers develop burnout symptoms whereas others do not (Bianchi et al., 2018). In keeping with this observation, meta-analytic studies have revealed strong true score correlations between burnout and the Big Five personality traits, most notably neuroticism (Alarcon et al., 2009; Swider and Zimmerman, 2010; You et al., 2015). Neuroticism is a broad and basic dimension of personality that captures the propensity to experience negative, distressing emotions (e.g., sad mood, anxiety, anger/hostility, and helplessness) and to exhibit the associated cognitions and behaviors (e.g., low self-esteem, inhibition of action, threat-related bias; Costa and McCrae, 1987; Brandes and Tackett, 2019; Berggren and Eimer, 2020). Neuroticism has been linked to psychopathology in general and depression and suicide in particular (Kotov et al., 2010; Hakulinen et al., 2015; Jeronimus et al., 2016; Batty et al., 2018). In a recent study, neuroticism was found to account for more variance in burnout than job-related effort-reward imbalance and social support at work combined (Bianchi, 2018). On a related note, neuroticism has been causally linked to job dissatisfaction (Rukh et al., 2020).

Second, dispositional characteristics are widely recognized to influence the way individuals construct their (occupational) reality, at both perceptual and conceptual levels (e.g., Buchanan and Seligman, 1995; Bandura, 1999, 2000; Spector et al., 2002; Proffitt, 2006). Thus, for instance, a given (work-situated) stimulus can be appraised as a stressor by some individuals and not by others (Scherer et al., 2001). Unsurprisingly, there is ample evidence that personality contributes to shaping the experience of one’s work environment in general and the perception of job strain in particular (e.g., Törnroos et al., 2013). Personality substantially predicts “subjective” (e.g., job satisfaction) and “objective” (e.g., educational attainment, occupational status, and income) work-related outcomes (Magnus et al., 1993; Roberts et al., 2003; Bleidorn et al., 2019).

Third, because difficulties encountered in non-work domains of life can affect individuals’ (coping) resources at work, it is reasonable to assume that non-occupational factors can foster the development of burnout symptoms. In support of this view, off-job activities as well as a number of other non-work factors (e.g., factors related to sentimental and familial life) have been associated with work-related fatigue and engagement (Bekker et al., 2005; ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012; Mather et al., 2014; Marchand et al., 2015; Verweij et al., 2017; Garrick et al., 2018; Müller et al., 2018; McKee-Lopez et al., 2019; Klusmann et al., 2020). Theoretically speaking, virtually any source of stress-either work-situated or not-can be expected to contribute to burnout (Bianchi et al., 2014).

The Relationship between Stress/Depression and Burnout

In terms of differentiating stress/depression from burnout, Malach-Pines (2009) establishes that they are different in the sense that job stressors are commonly characterized by strain, while job importance factors are commonly associated with burnout. Such two different aspects of the job highlight the variance between stress and burnout among employees. The finding was connected to the psychoanalytic-existential theory that assisted in the discussion of the features of stress and burnout. Regarding the study by Malachi-Pines (2009), there is no direct relationship between stress and burnout, as they emanate from the different aspects of the work.

Such information is valid because there has always been a common confusion between stress and burnout. Many people have found it difficult to set the differences clearly. However, the findings above try to indicate that stress and burnout are different in several aspects. For instance, it is worth noting that stress is commonly characterized by over-engagement, while burnout is characterized by disengagement. The second relevant difference is that emotions are blunted in burnout, while they tend to be over-reactive in stress. The third factor that validates the finding is that stress is mostly concerned with the loss of energy, while burnout is usually associated with the loss of hope, motivation and ideals among individuals. Lastly, the findings are validated by the fact that burnout only makes and individual perceive life as not worth living, while stress could terminate it prematurely.

Nevertheless, Toker and Biron (2012) tend to differ with the above conclusion by unraveling temporal relationships between burnout and depression. They conclude that a significant increase in depression would lead to similar increase in burnout and vice-versa. Accordingly, Toker and Biron (2012) disagree with such findings due to their tendency to focus on the effect of depression on burnout and vice-versa. They have not necessarily focused on the conventional differences explained using the characteristics of burnout and depression.

Organizational Factors

Organizations contribute directly to burnout among their employees through their work schedules, work environment and other motivational factors that they are supposed to give to their employees. It is obvious that the failure of organizations to offer supportive environments to employees is one of the key contributors to the increasing levels of burnout.

In the study on work demand stressors and job performance among employees, Gilboa, Shirom, Cooper, and Fried (2008) focused on some of the job stressors that are likely to lead to ambiguity. For instance, they studied relevant factors, such as environmental uncertainty, the conflict between family and work, role conflict, role ambiguity, work overload and job insecurity, and linked them to burnout among employees. They key finding of the study is that the factors affect the attitudes and the performance of employees, which translates to burnout. Gilboa, Shirom, Cooper, and Fried (2008) concluded that organizations must move forward to address such factors to avoid the increasing levels of burnout among their members of staff. They need to work consistently towards ensuring that the environment is supportive of their employees at any given moment.

Such information is valid in the sense that it highlights the key areas that employees find motivational in the course of their working. For instance, factors such as job security and work overload affect employees directly and are always likely to influence their attitudes and commitment to work. Shih, Jiang, Klein, and Wang (2013) agree that they ultimately lose interest as a result of the uncertainties of the workplace, which translates directly to burnout. More so, the practicality of the information in terms of its applicability to contemporary organizations makes it valid in explaining what employees are already going through. In fact, most organizations have failed to determine burnout among their employees with the assumption that it is laziness or the intended loss of interest in the respective duties given to employees.

A similar study supporting such view was conducted by NG and Feldman (2008), with the primary focus on the aspect of long-working hours among employees. Just like other workplace factors, the hours allocated to employees are crucial in affecting their rate of job burnout. In tandem with their meta-analysis, NG and Feldman (2008) agreed with the above findings by concluding that the hours worked had negative associations with the measures of their well-being. It implies that it denies them the opportunity to spend some time with their families and relax their minds. Therefore, they are frequently affected by burnout. The research in current article agrees with the key findings due to their focus on one key element of the negative work environment that is being discouraged on a global scale.

Lim, Kim, Kim, Yang, and Lee (2010) also agree with the above findings in their study of work-related factors that increase the level of burnout among health professionals. They also utilized a meta-analysis setting variables that play a great role in the depersonalization and mental exhaustion of mental health workers. They agree with the view that ineffective work organization and lack of supports for employees lead to increased burnout. Depersonalization is high among older women compared to younger men in the health profession. They agree with the above findings especially because they went through studies, the review of literature and meta-analysis that gave them the opportunity to investigate the contributions of negative workplace factors to workers’ performance and dedication to the job.

A related study by Hallsten, Voss, Stark, Josephson, and Vingard (2011) utilized the self-determination theory to explicate factors that might lead to long-term sickness and absence of employees from their areas of work. They observed that organizational factors, such as work overload and long hours of working, play a critical role in leading to long-term sickness and absence among employees. Most organizations keep overworking their labor force, hence, making it difficult for them to be healthy and come to their areas of work consistently. They agreed with the view that undesirable factors in the organization, such as long working hours and loaded roles for employees, are always likely to affect their performance in the long-term. As a result, it serves as a clear sign of burnout among employees. Their agreement is connected to the view that employees should be given some breathing space in the course of fulfilling their responsibilities in the organization. It should not be assumed that they are able to work for continuous hours without adequate rest.

More so, the findings by Bowling, Eschleman, Wang, Kirkendall, and Alarcon (2010) are in agreement with the findings that poor work conditions increase the level of burnout among employees. They also did a meta-analysis focusing on organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). In respect to the above findings, they concluded that the work environment and the disposition of employees are directly related to the organization-based self-esteem. O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, and Story (2011) confirm that work-related variables play a more crucial role in affecting the interest of employees in the completion of particular tasks in the best ways. They agree with the view because the work-related factors determine the focus of employees in terms of working and delivering their expected targets. Bowling, Eschleman, Wang, Kirkendall, and Alarcon (2010) state that poor work environments affect the ability of employees to continue doing similar tasks perfectly, and it is an indication of burnout.

Conclusion

Finally, most of the above researches agree on the different factors that relate to burnout. Burnout can never be ignored among employees especially those serving in demanding environments requiring frequent reviews or delivery of immediate results. According to Ford, Cerasoli, Higgins, and Decesare (2011), the most significant thing to note from the above findings is that personal characteristics, such as extraversion, agreeableness, locus of control and self-efficacy, are not related to burnout. They are independent of the burnout that employees experience in the course of performing their duties. However, high neuroticism is a clear indication of burnout among employees. The best way to differentiate burnout from stress is to use their symptoms. As much as they appear similar in some aspects, burnout results from disengagement, while stress is a cause of over-engagement. Poor working environments in terms of long-working hours, job overloads, imbalance between work and family and job pressures increase burnouts. As a result, the organizations have the responsibility of looking into such matter and solving it in the most appropriate manner by establishing appropriate work environments that give employees the opportunity to relax and associate with other people.

Understanding the Liberalization Scheme of Higher Education in Indonesia

Most of the content of this article were taken from “Kuliah Kok Mahal” book, it has been published on suluhpergerakan.org and jurnalradikal, this article has been published for educational purposed.

Written by: Panji Mulkillah Ahmad

Translated by: Tutus Adi Pambudi

 

Based on National Socio-Economic Survey (SUSENAS), Socio-Culture and Educational Module 2018, the average of total cost of the national education at the college in the academic year 2017/ 2018 reaches Rp.15.33 million. Referring to the Central Statistics Agency, Indonesian have per capita income is 56 million per year or in other words, 4.6 million rupiah per month. It means that the Indonesian citizen needs 3 (three) month more for work to be able to endure the tuition fees per year. Moreover, people must set aside about 28% of his income to be able to bear the tuition fees. It is hard to deny the fact that education is expensive.

The question is how the education can be expensive? Where did the money that paid to college for? This article will explain how the liberalization scheme in higher education in Indonesia which one of the impacts is the increasing of tuition fees.

Motive Competition and Profits

The law of higher education No. 2/ 2012 (UU DIKTI) is the basis of implementation of higher education in Indonesia. UU DIKTI is a product of Indonesia Managing Higher Education of Relevance and Efficiency (IMHERE) between Indonesia and World Bank. But, IMHERE is not only produce The Higher Educational Law (UU DIKTI). One of the most important IMHERE products is The Higher Education National Accreditation Board (BANPT). However, accreditation was known previously. But the role of accreditation becomes more detailed after it, and because of the emergence of greater autonomy in universities.  Each college becomes more popular in developing their self to get better accreditation, from C to the B, from B to the A.

This ambition to pursue is being better than develops into a desire to chase being the best. The standard of the best college is through ranking and degrees. Nowadays, we are familiar with various college rank conducted by institution. We also know the college degree and title that attempted to become a world-class college or a world-class university (WCU).

The government is actively encouraging universities to compete being best universities by ranking each year. Following are the rankings of the best universities in 2018, which are classified as the first cluster:

1. Bandung Institute of Technology
2. Gadjah Mada University
3. Bogor Agricultural University
4. University of Indonesia
5. Diponegoro University
6. Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology
7. Airlangga University
8. Hasanuddin University
9. Padjajaran University
10. Andalas University
11. Yogyakarta State University
12. Brawijaya University
13. Indonesian University of Education
14. Malang State University

In 2015, the Ministry of Research and Technology of Republic Indonesia (KEMENRISTEKDIKTI) released a document with a titled “Making Indonesian Colleges World Class”. The contents of the document have been reflected in the ambitious title of his book. KEMENRISTEKDIKTI has established policies to make universities in Indonesia being a world-class university, there are:

1. Improving the reputation of Indonesian universities towards WCU in four schemes. The program is intended for five universities which have potentials to enter the world’s rank 500 QS (Quacquarelly Symonds) versions.
2. Providing grants for world-class college improvement programs.
3. Clustering of tertiary institutions.

 

The policy of the KEMENRISTEKDIKTI to improve the reputation of Indonesian universities towards WCU in four schemes, namely:

1. Attending workshops from international conferences held by QS World University Ranking, Times Higher Education (THE), and Shanghai Jiao Tong Ranking (SJT).
2. Conducting socialization and workshops on “World University Ranking”in five Indonesian universities that have potentials to enter the world’s top 500 in the QS World University Ranking.
3. Collecting, evaluating, and presenting the data via website of five Indonesian colleges which have the potential to be ranked in the world’s top 500 according to the QS World University Ranking.
4. Monitoring and evaluating of five Indonesian tertiary institutions which have potentials to be ranked in the world.

 

The main indicators that used to measure the success of improving university reputation include several aspects:

 

1. Academic Reputation (being an active member in international associations, and international collaborative research, etc.
2. Employer Reputation (the number of graduates that worked in multinational enterprises, the important positions of graduates in the international world, etc.
3. Research and Publication (the number of international publication which have reputations, number of HKI, number of  Scopus Indexed Journals, number of citations per lecturer, etc.
4. Internationalization(the number of foreign lecturers, regular foreign students, inbound students, outbound students, etc.

 

The Indicators above are inseparable from the affects of  rating agencies such as Quacquarelly Symonds World University Rankings (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), and Shanghai Jiao Tong Ranking (SJT) which also establishes similar indicators to rate universities.

Quacquarelly Symonds is a London-based company, which is engaged in educational consulting, surveying, university ranking, and is known for their routine publication called QS World University Rankings. QS was founded in 1990 by  Nunzio Quacquarelli. QS uses 5 (five) criteria, namely:

1. Academic peer review or analysis from the academic elite community (weighing 40 percent). QS asks academics across countries about the bes universities in their fields.
2. Recruiter review, almost the same as academic peer review, it is just that the status is not fixed (weighing 10 percent).
3. The ratio of faculty students who see the quality of lectures (weighs 20 percents).
4. Citations per faculty published on an international scale (weighing 20 percent).
5. International orientation or international conversation seen at the percentage of international students and international staff, each weighing 5 percent (weighing 10 percent).

 

Times Higher Education (THE) is a weekly magazine based in London. THE was a newspaper that published from 1971-2008 called Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), and affiliated with The Times. In 2005, THE still published their publication with QS, which was named THE-QS World University Ranking. But in 2009, THE and QS separated, and then THE also joined the Thompson Reuters media corporation. Times Higher Education (THE) arrange of the rank 200 universities. Overall, assessments are calculated for each university using 13 indicators which can be classified in five categories:

1. Revenue – innovations of industrial sector; earnings from research institutes divided by teaching staff members (2.5 percent of final calculation).

 

2. Teaching – learning environment (divided into five indicators) the result of a teaching method reputation survey (15 percent); the result of doctoral ratio that compared with scholar produced from an institutions(2.5 percent); the number of staff compared to the total number of lecturers (6 percents); and institutional income compared to the number of teaching staff (2.25 percent).
3. Quotation – impacts of the research – quote: results of the university publication cited by academics in several times (32.5 percent).
4. Research – volume, income and reputation: results of a reputation survey (19.5 percent); earnings from the university research is compared with the number of teaching staff and adjusted with a balance of purchasing ability (5.25 percent); number of papers that published in academic journals indexed by Thomas Reutersper teaching staff (4.5 percent); and incomes of community research that compared with earnings of the research in the institution (0.75 percent).
5. International instruction–Lecturers and students: the ratio of international teachers compared with the domestic staff (3 percent); and the ratio of international students compared with domestic students (2 percent). [10]

 

The third is a ranking list that created by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) which is published under the name Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). There are several indicators that used by ARWU:

1. The Quality of Education: Alumni from an institution have been awarded the Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals (10 percent);
2. The Quality of Lecturers: (a) institutional teachers who have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 percent) and (b) researchers who are very often cited in 21 broad subject categories (20 percent);
3. Research results: (a) papers that have been published in Nature and Science (20 percent); and (b) papers listed in the Science Citation Index-expanded and Social Science Citation Index (20 percent);
4. Per capita performance: per capita academic performance in one institution (10 percent) is defined as the weighting of the scores of  five indicators then they divided by the number of full-time faculty). [11]

 

In Indonesia, almost all of universities are competing to reach to the top of the caste that made by ranking institutions. All of them want to enter the ranks of the world-class campus. These rating agencies, which are actually private companies (QS and THE) and even universities (SJTU) have succeeded in dictating universities in Indonesia to get their standards. Edi Subkhan in his book Critical Education states that by recognizing a tertiary institution by these institutions, a tertiary institution will gain popularity, prestige, and pride. The two things are capitals for a campus to attract prospective students, investment, donor agencies, and others to come in to the campus. [12]

KEMENRISTEKDIKTI also targets there must be 11 (eleven) universities have entered to the 500th world ranking in 2024. In 2019, five PTN (Public Universities) that must have entered to the 500th world ranking, including UGM, Airlangga University, and IPB. While for UI and ITB, Kemristekdikti targets the ranking of both of them to be ranked beyond the current rank. Meanwhile on the journey to the 2024, six PTNs that had to be come into the 500th world ranking are Unpad, Undip, UNS, UB, ITS, and Unhas. [13] In order to realize the target, the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education also gave a grant for a world-class tertiary institution improvement program to UI of 7.5 billion rupiahs and ITB of 7.5 billion rupiahs in 2015-2019. Furthermore, UGM in 2016 amounted to 10 billion rupiahs, IPB in 2018 amounted to 5 billion rupiahs, and Unair in 2019 amounted to 5 billion rupiahs. [14]

KEMENRISTEKDIKTI then explained the steps that taken for colleges that want to go to world class universities:

1. meeting the minimum standards of government in running a collage education based on UU No. 44, 2015.
2. forming a team which comprised competent and fluent in using English peoples to translating the scientific work or research that may help poor researchers in English.
3. propagating foreign students to study in local universities.
4. improving infrastructures, such as laboratory facilities and facilities that support a research and learning activities, it is a must that soon to be addressed.
5. increasing the accreditation of the study and institutional programs to obtain excellent value “A” and attending an international accreditation.
6. creating a budget allocation and seek additional source of income for financing and innovation.

 

The six points above are keys to explaining how the relationship between education cost is getting more expensive, the necessity to boost development, and competition between universities.

Darmaningtyas, et al said, would be appropriate to illustrate this scheme:

“The ranking of universities and some of these indices for universities is not just imaging capital to attract students who are lulled by image, even they themselves cannot ultimately get out of the trap of the image game, namely by continuing to try to improve the image seen from technological symbols the latest, luxury lecture facilities, easy access to transportation, financial transactions, and others. Not an increase in the substance of education and science. In many tertiary institutions, these ranks become an obsession and are pursued every year with a large amount of funds precisely for trivial matters. On the other hand, the higher the rankings obtained by a college, the higher the costs required to perpetuate the rankings, and automatically the student tuition fees rise to contribute to supporting the campus obsession to maintain the ranking. “[16]

 

A Higher Education Liberalization Scheme

 

Liberalization of higher education is not a symptom that appears without a scheme, or in other words is not a spontaneous reaction of universities in Indonesia. Liberalization of higher education is present in Indonesia through certain stages. Privatization, commercialization, and competition between higher education are not a stand-alone phenomenon. In the following, I will explain how the liberalization scheme of higher education works in Indonesia.

First, this scheme was created by institutions that are pillars of neoliberalism, namely the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO with their respective roles. The WTO’s role is to change the conception of education that was public goods (citizens’ rights) to private goods in the form of liberalized services. The IMF’s role is to encourage countries to implement austerity politics, especially reducing public subsidies including the budget for education. While the World Bank’s role is to fund projects for the government and universities to run a liberalization scheme such as the birth of the accreditation system, the BHP Law, and the Higher Education Law.

Second, the climate of competition is created so that universities compete for top rankings, the best campus titles, world-class campus titles, and obtain high accreditation. Ranking institutions and including the government set indicators for tertiary institutions to obtain the ranking, degree and accreditation. In general, the indicators set have similarities such as the number of internationally published researches, the number of citations, the number of foreign students, activeness in international activities, etc. Almost all indicators are measured quantitatively. To be able to support these indicators, universities inevitably provide all the supporting facilities and infrastructure such as laboratories, digital libraries, etc. If there isn’t, then it is held. If it already exists, it is developed. Therefore, universities always hold development. The more fierce competition is between universities, the more vigorous the construction of a campus is.

Third, massive development requires a lot of costs. To fulfill this, universities seek funding from anywhere. Because it is not enough to rely solely on funding from the government, the tertiary institutions hold various cooperation schemes with companies, to collect a large amount of funds from their own students. So far, tertiary institutions still rely on the largest income from their students.

Fourth, in order to be able to freely obtain funds, the campus is given financial management autonomy. Of all tertiary status, PTNBH forms are the most ideal in terms of autonomy. The reason is that the funds obtained by PTNBH are not considered as Non-Tax State Revenues (PNBP) so they do not need to be deposited into the state treasury (in this case the central government). The autonomy owned by PTNBH is so broad because it can establish various business entities without the need for approval and the Ministry of Finance, and hold various kinds of fees from its students. On the other hand, PTNBH can also get funding from the State Budget in the form of Legal Entity University Funding Assistance (BPPTNBH). Compare for example with BLU and the Satker whose autonomy is very limited, and all revenues are classified as PNBP. While even though the PTS has a large autonomy, it does not receive funding from the State Budget like PTN. This is why various tertiary institutions which currently still have Satker status are preparing themselves to become BLU, as well as BLU which also has ambitions to become PTNBH.

Fifth, funds collected by universities are prioritized for development (both physical and non-physical). Development is intended to support the achievement of ranking indicators, accreditation, to the degree. Achieving these indicators will enhance the reputation of a tertiary institution. This reputation will be useful to attract the interests of prospective students, investment, donor agencies, and others. The better the reputation, the more interested. Market law also applies here. Many requests, but limited availability. Prospective students fight for seats. Universities that have increased their bargaining position have become confident in raising tuition fees either by raising UKT’s or raising base fees. The funds collected are becoming more and more. Development has become more intense. Reputation is skyrocketing. That reputation is used to increase bargaining position in the market, then to raise tuition fees, then to build again, raise reputation again, and so on.

 

This higher education liberalization scheme is the reason why even if there is a good university leader as a person, he would not be able to do much to reduce tuition fees. Whoever does not follow this scheme, he will be left behind. To maintain this scheme, even university leaders can show their fascist face. In many cases, student activists who want to urge / demand a change in university policies that are not fair (eg tuition fees), are in fact reciprocated by university leaders with repression, suspension, and drop out. In Unnes, for example, there was a student activist named Julio Harianja who in 2018 was suspended by his chancellor because he had previously been active in organizing the masses and protesting the Enrollment Policy. At Makassar Islamic University (UIM), in 2017 three students questioned the status of the rector who served three terms, which then led to sanctions dropping out. Still in 2017, as many as 22 students of the University of Proklamasi ’45 were charged with dropping out only because they took action demanding transparency.

 

This liberalization scheme of tertiary education also has damaging effects on the quality of higher education in Indonesia. This was even conveyed by the World Bank in The Road to Academic Excellence:

“Pressure on the need for privatization of state-owned universities as a result of the reduced government budget has hit almost everywhere. This trend is a major factor that undermines research universities because these institutions generally engage in activities that are beneficial to society such as basic research and students get teaching from various disciplines. If a research university is forced to look at the market in paying the salaries of its teachers and various other costs, then this policy is an actual potential that will damage the quality and focus of research, thus diverting them from their previous core goals. “[17]

 

The orientation of higher education as the bearer of Tri Dharma and the mandate of “educating the life of the nation” becomes distracted by market orientation. Through the Pangkal Uang scheme, for example, the practice of buying and selling chairs is revived so that poor people are automatically eliminated by people who are able to redeem seats. At a time when large campuses were being flushed with money for development, at the same time the level of literacy of the Indonesian people was still very low. Academics are paid by companies to legitimize projects that take people’s lives and even damage the environment, with the knowledge authority they hold.

Liberalization of higher education makes universities such as fast food restaurants which can also be called McDonald’s Higher Education. McDonaldization of higher education has created its own iron cage, namely growth, quantification, and the necessity of producing as much as possible. McDonaldization of education initially started with something rational, namely campus autonomy, but ended with irrationality, such as dehumanization and a decrease in the quality of higher education. [18]

 

Bibliography

Ahmad, Panji Mulkillah, 2019, Kuliah Kok Mahal? Pengantar Kritis Memahami Privatisasi, Komersialisasi, dan Liberalisasi Pendidikan Tinggi (Edisi Revisi), Yogyakarta: Best Line Press.

Kementerian Riset, Teknologi, dan Pendidikan Tinggi, 2015, Menjadikan Perguruan Tinggi Indonesia Kelas Dunia, Jakarta.

Subkhan, Edi, 2016, Pendidikan Kritis, Kritik atas Praksis Neoliberalisasi dan Standardisasi Pendidikan, Yogyakarta: Arruz Media.

The World Bank, 2012, The Road to Academic Excellence: Pendirian Universitas Riset Kelas Dunia, Jakarta: Salemba Humanika.

Darmaningtyas, Edi Subkhan, dan Fahmi Panimbang, 2014, Melawan Liberalisasi Pendidikan, Malang: Madani.

Nugroho, Herum dkk, 2002, McDonaldisasi Pendidikan Tinggi, Yogyakarta: Kanisius.

 

[1] https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2019/07/10/berapa-rerata-biaya-kuliah-di-indonesia

[2] https://www.cnnindonesia.com/ekonomi/20190206161843-532-366859/rata-rata-pendapatan-orang-indonesia-rp56-juta-per-tahun

[3] https://ristekdikti.go.id/kabar/kemenristekdikti-umumkan-peringkat-100-besar-perguruan-tinggi-indonesia-non-vokasi-tahun-2018/

[4] Kementerian Riset, Teknologi, dan Pendidikan Tinggi, Menjadikan Perguruan Tinggi Indonesia Kelas Dunia, Jakarta, 2015, hlm 14.

[5] Ibid., hlm 51.

[6] Ibid., hlm 18.

[7] Lihat Methodology: Simple Overview, 2010. Sebagaimana disadur dari Edi Subkhan, Pendidikan Kritis, Kritik atas Praksis Neoliberalisasi dan Standardisasi Pendidikan, Arruz Media, Yogyakarta, 2016, hlm 236.

[8] The World Bank, The Road to Academic Excellence: Pendirian Universitas Riset Kelas Dunia, Salemba Humanika, Jakarta, 2012, hlm 7.

[9] Ibid., hlm 6.

[10] Edi Subkhan, Pendidikan Kritis, Kritik atas Praksis Neoliberalisasi dan Standardisasi Pendidikan, Arruz Media, Yogyakarta, 2016, hlm 247.

[11] Ibid, hlm 49.

[12] Ibid., hlm 18.

[13] Ibid., hlm 55.

[14] Darmaningtyas, Edi Subkhan, dan Fahmi Panimbang, Melawan Liberalisasi Pendidikan, Madani, Malang, 2014, hal. 105.

[15] The World Bank, Op.Cit., hlm 26.

[16] Heru Nugroho, dkk, McDonaldisasi Pendidikan Tinggi, Kanisius, Yogyakarta, 2002, hlm 17

 

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• Scenario; Merancang Peradaban

The Gender Gap in Education is Keeping Girls Out of The Driving Force of Change.

A living like in Dystopia. Women have and continue to suffer various degrees of injustices and inequalities spanning from cultural, social, economic, religious, and political matters. These negative attitudes have affected their educational opportunities. Nothing deserves more critical consideration in education than the inequality in education for boys and girls in the poorest countries around the globe (Fast Track Report, 2011). The barriers to girls’ education have been an old phenomenon in society and have proved too problematic to resolve. Their inhumane treatment dated back since human civilization (Alabi, Bahah, & Alabi, 2013). The discrimination and abuse perpetrated against women continue in society through traditional practices, stereotyping, cultural and religious beliefs which put women at risk and neglect at any level. This has manifested in a perpetual legacy and injustice in some parts of the globe. Women, in many societies, are viewed as incapable of making their own decisions as they have to rely on others to make decisions. The socio-cultural beliefs, practices, and attitude of society tend to favor the education of boys to the neglect of girls. This calls for the urgent need for the full potential of the girl-child to be developed and nurtured “in an enabling environment, where her spiritual, intellectual, and material needs for survival, protection, and development are met and equal rights safeguarded” (Tanye, 2008, p.167).

Gender theory dictates the types of roles and opportunities that individuals or groups can play as well as the influences that they will command in social institutions starting from the household to the state (Alabi et al., 2013). Alabi and colleagues observe that men and women play different roles from one culture to another, and it is yet to be established in a society in the world where women are more powerful than their male counterparts. As a human, we should emphasize that the roles that men play tend to be more respected, valued, and rewarded than that of women. In this article, I used radical feminism theory to explain the rationale behind the barriers of girls’ education. The radical feminists hold the notion that “men are responsible for and benefit from the exploitation of women as well as girls” (Alabi et al., 2013, p.58). Patriarchy is seen by feminists as a serious concern. Ideology and social system that propagates male supremacy or male power and superiority over women as natural and God given. The operating premise is that men are biologically, intellectually and emotionally superior to women. On the contrary, women are seen as feeble and rely mostly on men as a source of “protection, guidance, upkeep and general survival” (Mlama et al., 2004, p.2.). This ideology has been institutionalized through formal and informal systems, supported by ideas, beliefs, practices and culture, and sometimes force is applied. Alabi and colleagues (2013) state that patriarchy is recognized as a common phenomenon that has persisted across time and cultures. Mlama et al. (2004) assert, “A patriarchal ideology is the key factor in the structural gender inequality in most of our societies” (p.2). Radical feminists view the family as one of the sources leading to the oppression of women in society.

The Advantage of Education for Girls

The benefits of girls’ education have been well documented by research to have multiplier effects. Its impact extends beyond the individual and contribute to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and the Education for All (EFA) agenda (FAWE, 2013; Lambert et al., 2012). It is recognized as the most cost effective measure that developing countries can embark upon to improve the standard of living of their people (Lambert et al., 2012; Tanye, 2008). This is confirmed by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, at the World Education Forum in 2000 in Dakar in this statement: “No development strategy is better than one that involves women as central players. It has immediate benefits for nutrition, health, savings, and reinvestment at the family, community, and ultimately, country level. In other words, educating girls is a social development policy that works. It is a longterm investment that yields exceptionally high returns. We need those with power to change things to come together in an alliance for girls’ education: governments, voluntary progressive groups, and above all, local communities, schools and families” (para. 12). Also, girls’ education helps to reduce hunger. For instance, in a cross-country analysis of 63 countries conducted by the Brookings Institute (2011), gains in women’s education resulted in a 43 percent reduction in child malnutrition (FAWE, 2013). Again, well educated women tend to make better and effective decisions both at home and at work; and the likelihood of earning an income up to 25 percent is high on educated girls’ than uneducated, and they will invest about 90 percent in their family (FAWE, 2013). A report on one World Bank study revealed that one additional year of formal education raises girls’ wages by 20 percent, and total returns on primary education were quite higher for girls’ than boys’ (Fant, 2008). Based on the report of the Brookings Institute’s Global Compact of Learning in 2011, “low and middle-income countries lose around $92 billion each year by not educating girls to the same standard as boys” (FAWE, 2013, p.5).

The Gender Gap in Education in Indonesia

Gender inequality is one of the most serious issues of Indonesia, but the government’s rhetorical support and goals toward human rights and gender equality are yet to translate into concrete policy initiatives to address Indonesia’s serious inequality issue. At 49.7 percent, Indonesia’s women comprise almost half of the country’s population. The majority of them (66.2 percent) belongs to the productive group of 15-64 years old. With almost as many women as men in the country, one would think that Indonesian women would have the same role as men as contributors and help drive the economic progress. Indonesia’s rapid economic development has given the country pride of place as the largest economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the 16th largest GDP in the world, but it is questionable whether this has also benefited the population, especially the welfare of women.

Obtainment of higher education also reveals another aspect of gender gap, namely the geographical gap. The percentage of the population obtaining higher education the urban areas is higher than that of the rural population while still consistently showing the gender gap between that of females and males in both areas. In urban areas, 11.20% of male population complete their higher degree education compared to 10.24% females (National Census 2010). The same tendency is shown in the rural areas where 2.95% males obtain their higher education compared to 2.9% of the females. In the specific context of higher degree education, according to Thulstrup and Koswara (2001), there were only twenty five thousand people having doctoral degree in 2000 (out of the 205 millions of Indonesian population at that time), and only 15% of them were women. Various researches, for example  the doctoral thesis of Suyanto (2015) and Priyatna (2013), show that higher education and other academic ventures expose women to a more complex and complicated situation compared to that faced by their male counterparts. According to Prof. Dr. Arief Rachman of the Chief of Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO- the Ministry of Education and Culture, citing the data from the Directorate of Higher Education, only 7% of women graduating from bachelor degree continues their education to Master’s Degree, and only 3% of those obtaining Master’s Degree continues to their doctoral degree education. This clearly represents the fact that gender gap is a reality of the education system in Indonesia.

Susan Blackburn (2007), a prominent Indonesianist, argues that gender issue has not been dealt adequately in Indonesian education system. She further states that gender biases embedded in the education system in Indonesia reflect the conservative values endemic among Indonesian people. This can be translated that Indonesian women are endowed with patriarchal values and norms not only within the private domain but also in the public domain, including in their efforts to earn their higher degree education. As many have pointed out, from Queen Rania of Jordan to Malala the Nobel laureate, education for girls and women is a highly beneficial venture and its effects are long lasting; that educating a girl means empowering the whole nation. However, pursuing a higher degree education is a project that may create a lot of challenges. At times it can even be risky and dangerous. Local values that continue to establish ideas that women’s place is in the kitchen, in domestic spheres, significantly contribute to the constant unnecessary challenges to the advancement of women’s education are well-documented by many researches.

It is thus our collective responsibility to build a more women and girl-friendly education system so as more girls and women can benefit from higher education, and from education of all kinds. Collectively, highly educated women will bring advantages to human development both through their participation in public arenas and through their work in domestic spheres as wives and mothers of their children. It is high time that local values that are no longer relevant, manifested in the comments such as “no matter how high your education is, you will end up in the kitchen”, must be reevaluated and dismissed if necessary. My previous researches on mothers doing higher degree education shows that women having the support of the family strove better in undergoing their education. My other research on girls’ experience in college also shows that despite the regulations that treat girls and boys as equal, girls still face challenges and discrimination both at home and in campus prior to their entering the college and during the time of the study.

Within the world where patriarchal values sustain, ‘objective competition’ between females and males may actually be unfair. The fact is in many cases girls and women are still endowed with social and cultural duties that perceive them as secondary and inferior to men. Girls and women find themselves in constant efforts to negotiate the different positions they embody. This means the burden a girl and/or a woman carries during the time of their study is consequently more challenging, some even find it difficult to resolve.

Women’s Life in Indonesia

While the gender gap in education has narrowed, gender inequality still persists across the board, from health to employment. The gap is much worse when it comes to women’s involvement in legislative decision-making. The inequality can be considered as very severe, as many women are still caught in the stigma: their opinions are limited and left unheard, and their souls remain confined by the culture that does not liberate and appreciate the position of women. It is reported that 75 percent of women in Indonesia have faced physical and sexual violence. The first national survey by the government concerning violence against women demonstrated that 33 percent of women aged between 15 and 64 – around 26 million – claimed that they had experienced abuse.

The country ranked 88th out of 144 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Gender Gap Index after scoring poorly on economic participation, political empowerment, and education. Even though the economy has improved in the last ten years, critics say that traditional social perceptions and attitudes persist, and that women are frequently subject to scrutiny about their behavior. Indonesia’s national commission on violence against women has recorded an increase in gender-based violence, with 348,446 reported cases in 2017, a 25 percent increase from 2016. It is also found that these women most frequently encounter abuse behind closed doors, in the form of domestic and dating acts of violence, accounting for 71 percent of the cases. The cases that took place in private settings include constituted physical abuse, as well as sexual, psychological, and economic abuse. Meanwhile, out of 26 percent of cases in a public setting, the majority occurred in schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods, mostly in the form of molestation and rape.

Furthermore, it is reported that young girls are stripped of their rights in marriage decisions. Child marriages are still prevalent in Indonesia, despite efforts by the government and other entities to decrease the number. In fact, 11 percent of women were first married at the age of younger than 15. Marriage at such a young age disrupts women’s education and hinders their ability to get a better job if they later decide to enter the employment market.

Marriage does not improve their life. The Indonesian society, according to tradition, still firmly believes that men are sole breadwinners in the households. The deeply rooted patriarchal culture makes most Indonesian women stay at home or work informally. There are approximately 52.6 million households in the country, and men lead 84 percent of them. The majority of women turn to motherhood.

Conclusions

Until now, no country in the world has succeeded in eliminating gender inequality completely. Nevertheless, the hallmark of a developing country is its ability to continually change and improve. Indonesia is no exception. Despite Indonesia’s evolving economic status, its situation with inequality remains one of the worst.

I believe that if Indonesians change their negative and marginalized attitudes toward girl children access to education, consider the benefits of girls’ education as have been documented by research, with well-planned and implemented policies by the government, not just rhetoric, could ignite a revolution in girls’ education.

All layers of society in Indonesia must be well aware that the country will not be truly prosperous if inclusiveness is not the subject of change. There is a need to ensure that prosperity is felt by all groups of society, not just certain groups. Firm action is required to narrow the gap. It should start with changing the dogma about women and providing them with opportunities to move forward with the help of education, care for their rights and needs, and encouragement to actively participate in nation-building.

If the potential of Indonesian women could be boosted then these “new women” would become the driving force of change. They would certainly become the drivers of development in the country on a scale that might well surpass expectations.

On Education

Mikhail Bakunin

L’Égalité, July 31, 1869;

The first topic for consideration today is this: will it be feasible for the working masses to know complete emancipation as long as the education available to those masses continues to be inferior to that bestowed upon the bourgeois, or, in more general terms, as long as there exists any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more complete instruction? Does not the question answer itself? Is it not self-evident that of any two persons endowed by nature with roughly equivalent intelligence, one will have the edge – the one whose mind will have been broadened by learning and who, having the better grasped the inter- relationships of natural and social phenomena (what we might term the laws of nature and of society) will the more readily and more fully grasp the nature of his surroundings? And that this one will feel, let us say, a greater liberty and, in practical terms, show a greater aptitude and capability than his fellow? It is natural that he who knows more will dominate him who knows less. And were this disparity of education and education and learning the only one to exist between two classes, would not all the others swiftly follow until the world of men itself in its present circumstances, that is, until it was again divided into a mass of slaves and a tiny number of rulers, the former labouring away as they do today, to the advantage of the latter?

Now we see why the bourgeois socialists demand only a little education for the people, a soupcon more than they currently receive; whereas we socialist democrats demand, on the people’s behalf, complete and integral education, an education as full as the power of intellect today permits, So that, henceforth, there may not be any class over the workers by virtue of superior education and therefore able to dominate and exploit them. The bourgeois socialists want to see the retention of the class system each class, they contend, fulfilling a specific social function; one specialising, say, in learning, and the other in manual labour. We, on the other hand, seek the final and the utter abolition of classes; we seek a unification of society and equality of social and economic provision for every individual on this earth. The bourgeois socialists, whilst retaining the historic bases of the society of today, would like to see them become less stark, less harsh and more prettified. Whereas we should like to see their destruction. From which it follows that there can be no truce or compromise, let alone any coalition between the bourgeois socialists and us socialist democrats. But, I have heard it said and this is the argument most frequently raised against us and an argument which the dogmatists of every shade regard as irrefutable – it is impossible that the whole of mankind should devote itself to learning, for we should all die of starvation. Consequently while some study others must labour so that they can produce what we need to live – not just producing for their own needs, but also for those men who devote themselves exclusively to intellectual pursuits; aside from expanding the horizons of human knowledge, the discoveries of these intellectuals improve the condition of all human beings, without exception, when applied to industry, agriculture and, generally, to political and social life; agreed? And do not their artistic creations enhance the lives of every one of us?

No, not at all. And the greatest reproach which we can level against science and the arts is precisely that they do not distribute their favours and do not exercise their influence, except upon a tiny fragment of society, to the exclusion and, thus, to the detriment of the vast majority. Today one might say of the advances of science and of the arts, just what has already and so properly been said of the prodigious progress of industry, trade, credit, and, in a word, of the wealth of society in the most civilised countries of the modern world. That wealth is quite exclusive, and the tendency is for it to become more so each day, as it becomes concentrated into an ever shrinking number of hands, shunning the lower echelons of the middle class and the petite bourgeoisie, depressing them into the proletariat, so that the growth of this wealth is the direct cause behind the growing misery of the labouring masses. Thus the outcome is that the gulf which yawns between the privileged, contented minority and millions of workers who earn their keep by the strength of their arm yawns ever wider and that the happier the contented – who -exploit the people’s labour become the more unhappy the workers become. One has only to look at the fabulous opulence of the aristocratic, financier, commercial and industrial clique in England and compare it with the miserable condition of the workers of the same country; one has only to re-read the so naive and heartrending letter lately penned by an intelligent and upright goldsmith of London, one Walter Dugan, who has just voluntarily taken poison along with his wife and their six children, simply as a means of escape from the degradation’s of poverty and the torments of hunger (1) – and one will find oneself obliged to concede that the much vaunted civilisation means, in material terms, to the people, only oppression and ruination. And the same holds true for the modern advances of science and the arts. Huge strides, indeed, it is true But the greater the advances, the more they foster intellectual servitude and thus, in material terms, foster misery and inferiority as the lot of the people; for these advances merely widen the gulf which already separates the people’s level of understanding from the levels of the privileged classes. From the point of view of natural capacity, the intelligence of the former is, today, obviously less stunted, less exercised, less sophisticated and less corrupted by the need to defend unjust interests, and is, consequently, naturally of greater potency than the brain power of the bourgeoisie: but, then again, the brain power of the bourgeois does have at its disposal the complete arsenal of science filled with weapons that are indeed formidable. It is very often the case that a highly intelligent worker is obliged to hold his tongue when confronted by a learned fool who defeats him, not by dint of intellect (of which he has none) but by dint of his education, an education denied the workingman but granted the fool because, while the fool was able to develop his foolishness scientifically in schools, the working man’s labours were clothing, housing, feeding him and supplying his every need, his teachers and his books, everything necessary to his education.

Even within the bourgeois class, as we know only too well, the degree of learning imparted to each individual is not the same. There, too, there is a scale which is determined, not by the potential of the individual but by the amount of wealth of the social stratum to which he belongs by birth; for example, the instruction made available to the children of the lower petite bourgeoisie, whilst itself scarcely superior to that which workers manage to obtain for themselves, is next to nothing by comparison with the education that society makes readily available to the upper and middle bourgeoisie. What, then, do we find? The petite bourgeoisie, whose only attachment to the middle class is through a ridiculous vanity on the one hand, and its dependence upon the big capitalists on the other, finds itself most often in circumstances even more miserable and even more humiliating than those which afflict the proletariat. So when we talk of privileged classes, we never have in mind this poor petite bourgeoisie which, if it did but have a little more spirit and gumption, would not delay in joining forces with us to combat the big and medium bourgeoisie who crush it today no less than they crush the proletariat. And should society’s current economic trends continue in the same direction for a further ten years (which we do, however, regard as impossible) we may yet see the bulk of the medium bourgeoisie tumble first of all into the current circumstances of the petite bourgeoisie only to slip a little later into the proletariat – as a result, of course, of this inevitable concentration of ownership into an ever smaller number of hands – the ineluctable consequences of which would be to partition society once and for all into a tiny, overweaningly opulent, educated, ruling minority and a vast majority of impoverished, ignorant, enslaved proletarians.

There is one fact which should make an impression upon every person of conscience, upon all who have at heart a concern for human dignity and justice; that is, for the liberty of each individual amid and through a setting of equality for all. That is the fact that all of the intelligentsia, all of the great applications of science to the purpose of industry, trade and to the life of society in general have thus far profited no one, save the privileged classes and the power of the State, that timeless champion of all political and social iniquity. Never, not once, have they brought any benefit to the masses of the people. We need only list the machines and every workingman and honest advocate of the emancipation of labour would accept the justice of what we say. By what power do the privileged classes maintain themselves today, with all their insolent smugness and iniquitous pleasures, in defiance of the all too legitimate outrage felt by the masses of the people? Is it by some power inherent in their persons? No – it is solely through the power of the State, in whose apparatus today their offspring hold, always, every key position (and even every lower and middle range position) excepting that of soldier and worker. And in this day and age what is it that constitutes the principle underlying the power of the State? Why, it is science. Yes, science – Science of government, science of administration and financial science; the science of fleecing the flocks of the people without their bleating too loudly and, when they start to bleat, the science of urging silence, patience and obedience upon them by means of a scientifically organised force: the science of deceiving and dividing the masses of the people and keeping them allays in a salutary ignorance lest they ever become able, by helping one another and pooling their efforts, to conjure up a power capable of overturning States; and, above all, military science with all its tried and tested weaponry, these formidable instruments of destruction which ‘work wonders’ (2): and lastly, the science of genius which has conjured up steamships, railways and telegraphy which, by turning every government into a hundred armed, a thousand armed Briareos (3), giving it the power to be, act and arrest everywhere at once – has brought about the most formidable political centralisation the world has ever witnessed.

Who, then, will deny that, without exception, all of the advances made by science have thus far brought nothing, save a boosting of the wealth of the privileged classes and of the power of the State, to the detriment of the well-being and liberty of the masses of the people, of the proletariat? But, we will hear the objection, do not the masses of the people profit by this also? Are they not much more civilised in this society of ours than they were in the societies of byegone centuries?

We shall reply to that with an observation borrowed from the noted German socialist, Lassalle. In measuring the progress made by the working masses, in terms of their political and social emancipation, one should not compare their intellectual state in this century with what it may have been in centuries gone by. Instead, one ought to consider whether, by comparison with some given time, the gap which then existed between the working masses and the privileged classes having been noted, the masses have progressed to the same extent as these privileged classes. For, if the progress made by both has been roughly equivalent, the intellectual gap which separates the masses from the privileged in today’s world will be the same as it ever was; but if the proletariat has progressed further and more rapidly than the privileged, then the gap must necessarily have narrowed; but if, on the other hand, the worker’s rate of progress has been slower and, consequently, less than that of a representative of the ruling classes over the same period, then that gap will have grown. The gulf which separates them will have increased and the man of privilege grown more powerful and the worker’s circumstances more abject, more slave like than at the date one chose as the point of departure. If the two of us set off from two different points at the same time and you have a lead of one hundred paces over me and you move at a rate of sixty paces per minute, and I at only thirty paces per minute, then after one hour the distance which separates us will not be just over one hundred paces, but just over one thousand nine hundred paces.

That example gives a roughly accurate notion of the respective advances made by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Thus far the bourgeoisie has raced along the track of civilisation at a quicker rate than the proletariat, not because they are intellectually more powerful than the latter indeed one might properly argue the contrary case – but because the political and economic organisation of society has been such that, hitherto, the bourgeoisie alone have enjoyed access to learning and science has existed only for them, and the proletariat has found itself doomed to a forced ignorance, so that if the proletariat has, nevertheless, made progress (and there is no denying it has) then that progress was made not thanks to society, but rather in spite of it. To sum up. In society as presently constituted, the advances of science have been at the root of the relative ignorance of the proletariat, just as the progress of industry and commerce have been at the root of its relative impoverishment. Thus, intellectual progress and material progress have contributed in equal measure towards the exacerbation of the slavery of the proletariat. Meaning what? Meaning that we have a duty to reject and resist that bourgeois science, just as we have a duty to reject and resist bourgeois wealth. And reject and resist them in this sense – that in destroying the social order which turns it into the preserve of one or of several classes, we must lay claim to it as the common inheritance of all the world.

WELCOME TO THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS, DO YOU THINK BEING IN SCHOOL IS THE SAME AS LEARNING?

The third world countries is facing a learning crisis. While countries have significantly increased access to education, being in school isn’t the same thing as learning. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic skills like calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor’s instructions, or understanding a bus schedule—let alone building a fulfilling career or educating their children.

Education is at the center of building human capital. The latest World Bank research shows that the productivity of 56 percent of the world’s children will be less than half of what it could be if they enjoyed complete education and full health.

Delivered well, education – along with the human capital it generates – benefits individuals and societies. For individuals, education raises self-esteem and furthers opportunities for employment and earnings. And for a country, it helps strengthen institutions within societies, drives long-term economic growth, reduces poverty, and spurs innovation.

A global learning crisis

One big reason the learning crisis persists is that many education systems across the developing world have little information on who is learning and who is not. As a result, it is hard for them to do anything about it. And with uncertainty about the kinds of skills the jobs of the future will require, schools and teachers must prepare students with more than basic reading and writing skills. Students need to be able to interpret information, form opinions, be creative, communicate well, collaborate, and be resilient.

An Indonesian learning crisis

According to the Political And Economic Risk Consultant Survey (PERC), the quality of education in Indonesia ranks 12th out of 12 countries in Asia. Indonesia’s position is below Vietnam. Data reported by The World Economic Forum Sweden (2000), Indonesia has low competitiveness , which ranks only 37th out of 57 countries surveyed in the world.

The causes of the low quality of education in Indonesia include problems of effectiveness, efficiency, and standardization of teaching, in addition to the lack of creativity of educators in guiding students, curriculum that makes education be on the skids. The curriculum is only based on government knowledge without regard to community needs.

Lecturers only force the children to be master of all materials that has been curated, they never considering whether the material is in accordance with children potential or not. Finally students not develop based on their potential but as if due to compulsion.

It must be acknowledged that the majority of our students have absolutely not have purposes of what they will become, although some of them have it but it’s still not clear. So, what happens is that they learn to float and have no clear direction that is important to go to school. One important thing is our educators do not direct the children to realize their ideals, but how students can memorize all the subject matter without exception.

Change starts with a great teacher

A growing body of evidence suggests the learning crisis is, at its core, a teaching crisis. For students to learn, they need good teachers, but many education systems pay little attention to what teachers know, what they do in the classroom, and in some cases whether they even show up.

Fortunately for many students, in every country, there are dedicated and enthusiastic teachers who, despite all challenges, enrich and transform their lives. They are heroes who defy the odds and make learning happen with passion, creativity and determination.

One such hero works in the Ecoles Oued Eddahab school in Kenitra, Morocco. In a colorful classroom that she painted herself, she uses creative tools to make sure that every child learns, participates, and has fun. In her class, each letter in the alphabet is associated with the sound of an animal and a hand movement. During class she says a word, spells it out loud using the sounds and the movement, and students then write the word down. She can easily identify students who are struggling with the material and adjust the pace of the lesson to help them get on track. Children are engaged and attentive. They participate and are not afraid to make mistakes. This is a teacher who wants to make sure that ALL children learn.

But even heroes need help. We need to be sure that all teachers are motivated to do their best and that they are equipped with what they need to teach effectively.

Technology offers new possibilities for teaching and learning

Rapid technological change is raising the stakes. Technology is already playing a crucial role in providing support to teachers, students, and the learning process more broadly. It can help teachers better manage the classroom and offer different challenges to different students. And technology can allow principals, parents, and students to interact seamlessly. Millions of students are benefiting from the effective use of technology, but millions more in the developing world are not.

We know learning happens best when instruction is personalized to meet the needs and strengths of each child, individual progress is tracked, and prompt feedback provided. Adaptive technology was used to evaluate students’ initial learning level to then walk them through math exercises in a dynamic, personalized way, based on artificial intelligence and what the student is ready to learn. After three months, students with the lowest initial performance achieved substantial improvements. This shows the potential of technology to increase learning outcomes, especially among students lagging behind their peers.

In a field that is developing at dizzying speeds, innovative solutions to educational challenges are springing up everywhere. Our challenge is to make technology a driver of equity and inclusion and not a source of greater inequality of opportunity. We are working with partners worldwide to support the effective and appropriate use of educational technologies to strengthen learning.

When schools and educations systems are managed well, learning happens

Providing quality education requires building systems that deliver learning, day after day, in thousands of schools, to millions of students. Successful education reforms require good policy design, strong political commitment, and effective implementation capacity. Of course, this is extremely challenging. Many countries struggle to make efficient use of resources and very often increased education spending does not translate into more learning and improved human capital. Overcoming such challenges involves working at all levels of the system.

At the central level, ministries of education need to attract the best experts to design and implement evidence-based and country-specific programs. District or regional offices need the capacity and the tools to monitor learning and support schools. At the school level, principals need to be trained and prepared to manage and lead schools, from planning the use of resources to supervising and nurturing their teachers.

Education reform: The long game is worth it

By their nature, the payoffs from investing in education require patience and persistence. In fact, it will take a generation to realize the full benefits of high-quality teachers, the effective use of technology, improved management of education systems, and engaged and prepared learners. However, global experience shows us that countries that have rapidly accelerated development and prosperity all share the common characteristic of taking education seriously and investing appropriately.

The schools of the future are being built today. These are schools where all teachers have the right competencies and motivation, where technology empowers them to deliver quality learning, and where all students learn fundamental skills, including socio-emotional, and digital skills. These schools are safe and affordable to everyone and are places where children and young people learn with joy, rigor, and purpose.

Governments, teachers, parents, and the international community must do their homework to realize the promise of education for all students, in every village, in every city, and in every country.

Untagling an affair between Art’s and Capitalism

Capitalist crisis does not begin within art, but art can reflect and amplify its effects, to positive and negative ends. Gregory Sholette, author of the new book Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism, examines the disjunct between declarations of art’s virtue and high moralism, with the political economy of the cultural sector, whilst outlining his term ‘Bare Art’: a denuding of art’s entanglement with capitalism.

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‘Art is not a luxury, not an adornment of civilization. It is a necessity. It is one of the central purposes of civilization.’ Thus begins a recent article by David Rothkopf in the online edition ofForeign Policy magazine, a liberal-leaning policy organ of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of which Rothkopf is both the editor and CEO.  The op-ed goes on to explain that, ‘Artists lead in ways politicians, chief executives, or generals cannot. They enable us to explore the mysterious — deep within us and all around us,’ adding that ‘diplomats have found art and culture to be invaluable tools.’ But he also cautions the profound power of art is useful for political conquests including terrorist campaigns:

‘The Taliban blew up the ancient art of Afghanistan. The Islamic State did the same in Palmyra and across Syria and Iraq. Statues are toppled during revolutions. Art and artifacts that have become symbols of nations are seized or claimed almost as talismans that bring with them legitimacy or connections.’

After rightly bemoaning the recently elected US government’s desire to defund the arts, he points out that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is taking bold steps to become the world’s next cultural capital. This is an ambitious make-over proposal requiring delirious levels of infrastructure spending. This includes a new 330 million dollar Dubai Opera House, which is already boasting ticket sales outperforming New York’s Metropolitan Opera, in addition to a new Louvre museum opening in Abu Dhabi later this year and a new Guggenheim museum designed by star architect Frank Gehry. Both of these projects, together with several other museums, performing arts structures, and a branch of New York University constitute the Saadiyat Island Cultural District. Saadiyat Island is a 500 metre slab of dry desert sand, located just off the coast of Abu Dhabi, literally being terra-formed in sci-fi fashion, into what may well be the world’s largest 1% elite gated community at a cost of some 27 billion petr0-dollars.

The UAE’s costly global culture initiative recently held its grand overture. It was an impressive event billed as the ‘first Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi,’ and featured some 300 artists, arts administrators, media makers, tech leaders, and philanthropists from 80 international countries. Sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, together with support from Rothkopf’s Foreign Policy Group, it was further made possible by the UAE’s 370 Billion dollar GDP petrochemical fueled economy and inestimable savings on infrastructure costs thanks to medieval and frequently pitiless migrant labour policies. All in all, the UAE is uniquely positioned in the Middle East to take carry out such cultural world building, even though, as we shall see, the human cost of this investment is anything but aesthetic. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that Abu Dhabi’s fantastic cultural game plan is perfectly in sync with the very nature of contemporary art itself as we round the corner of the 21st Century.

According to the latest Amnesty International report, the United Arab Emirates arbitrarily restricts ‘the rights to freedom of expression and association, detaining and prosecuting government critics, opponents and foreign nationals under criminal defamation and anti-terrorism laws.’

The UAE has also been widely criticised by human rights groups for its embrace of the Kafala system in which migrant labourers, primarily from Southeast Asia, who make up 90% of the workforce, are forbidden from forming unions that would improve working conditions:

‘wages that fall far below acceptable standards in the West where such cultural industry market brands as the Guggenheim and Louvre hail from. While some recent Ministerial Decrees seek to mitigate the worst forms of labour abuses in the UAE, domestic workers are included in these untested reform efforts, and many of the 450,000 domestics are women of colour from The Philippines, Indonesia and Africa.’

It is startling therefore to read Rothkopf describe the UAE’s new Culture Summit as an exploration of how art and culture ‘can be harnessed to produce positive social change: ‘from combating violent extremism to reversing climate change, from empowering women to promoting arts education’, as well as, an effort to ‘harness the power of culture for social good internationally.’ I am not denying that the event did indeed embrace a wide range of global presenters, including many women and people of colour. But we must pause for me to point to a phenomenon I describe as ‘Bare Art’. The term refers to the stripping away of high art’s exceptional status as a human endeavour that is resistant to and autonomous from capitalist relations of production, and the socially tumultuous field of raw cultural practice that is left behind.

Riffing off philosopher Georgio Agamben’s well know phrase ‘bare life,’ ‘bare art’ is further elaborated on in my recent book Delirium and Resistance. We can get a glimpse of bare art’s actuality by considering how many hundreds of exploited migrant labourers were required to realise the UAE’s first Culture Summit, including the many who were minding the children and managing the households of the event organisers, and those tasked with constructing the spaces for performances and presentations, or preparing the banquets, and the migrant forces charged with cleaning up afterwards.

Many of these migrant East Asian, Filipino and North African subalterns find themselves deeply in debt to recruitment agencies in their home countries, even as UAE officials confiscate their passports as a precaution against escape. And whilst this invisible workforce is prohibited from seeking better working conditions, or organising amongst themselves, or speaking out against this oppression; bio-political restrictions that appear exactly opposite the freedoms enjoyed by most of the foreign guests who presented at the summit. I am not chastising the presenters so much as questioning the glaring paradoxes simply disregarded by event organisers, who, in Rothkopf’s words, see culture as the ‘most potent force for good on the planet’.

How do we even begin to reconcile the noble-sounding objectives of the Foreign Policy Group and its UAE counterparts, as opposed to the ignoble reality that makes their summit and the Saadiyat Island Cultural District possible in the first place? Or, to put this differently, what are we to make of such blatant contradictions and their transparent lack of address? I would contend that at this point in the evolution of technological communications it is simply not possible for the organisers, participants or attendees to claim ignorance of these paradoxes. In an age of ultra-accessible information overload and continuous self-promotion, the powerful and wealthy 1% –from Church officials to CEOs, philanthropic capitalists, state authorities and even their socialist apparatchik equivalents – are no longer able to resolutely roll-out the age-old narrative about the deep humanist value of art and culture. It’s a cover story that is simply no longer tenable. Even as it goes on, flimsily seeking to divert attention from the demystified exposure of high culture in a Bare Art World.

Three reasons stand out regarding these openly paradoxical conditions:

First, there is the aforementioned reach and influence of the Internet. Little effort is needed today to grasp what Walter Benjamin famously asserted over seventy years ago that, ‘there is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’ This is for anyone connected to social networks (which means virtually everyone involved in the production of high culture) is penetrated by an inescapable symptom of contemporary life that we might simply label as hyper-information awareness. We might choose to dismiss this knowledge, or possibly seek out ‘alternative facts,’ but ignoring it is not an option.

A second force behind the appearance of Bare Art is the art world’s own unrelenting self-analysis. Since at least the mid-1960s, artists have sought to expose the elitist mystification of high culture in a practice referred to as ‘institutional critique.’ As the late John Berger starkly noted in 1972, ‘Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.’ I will return to this point below by considering the work of artist Hans Haacke who is one of the architects of this procedure.

But these two determining explanations are joined today by a surprising and powerful third agency: the paradoxical demystifying role that deregulated capitalism plays within contemporary culture as an industry. Attempts by elites, as much as well-intentioned romantics, to paint high art as an evocation of humanity’s mysterious depths must come to terms with the realities of a vertiginous 56 billion dollar art market in a globally dispersed field where there are more artists, and more art works being produced, than perhaps ever before in history. And yet, much as things are with the neoliberal economy in general, this art world concentrates value amongst a small number of champions, leaving the majority to serve as its system of barely recognised reproduction and maintenance. I have in the past compared the art world’s political economy to cultural dark matter: a small, bright summit of highly visible artists whose stability is anchored by an internally marginalised and all but invisible multitude of creative producers, including the thousands of professionally trained studio artists generated by higher education. According to a new Art Basel/UBS report on the 2017 art market:

Close to half of the value of sales on the auction market came from just 1% of the artists whose work sold in 2016. Only 15% of artists had works priced in excess of $50,000, and a tiny fraction (just over 1%) had works that sold for more than $1 million.’

The report goes on to state that ‘the global share of sales from the four largest art markets in the Post War and Contemporary sector exceeded 90% by value in 2016, however they accounted for just 32% of total exhibitions,’ and that ‘despite this negative trend in 2015 and 2016, sales have advanced nearly 180% since the market recession in 2009 and have increased 51% in the decade from 2006 to 2016’. Meanwhile, the average tuition paid by MFA students in the USA is $38,000. Needless to say, the amount of debt most will have to carry after graduating is astounding for a field distinguished by its all but guaranteed unemployment. All of which seems to undercut Rothkopf’s claims about art’s imagination being the ‘most potent force for good on the planet.’ In light of high culture’s intimate kinship with, if not outright subsumption by, the global financial economy, some serious doubt must creep into these assertions, just as they did with regard to the celebratory promotion of the cultural makeover by the human-rights challenged UAE.

It is constructive to compare the marketing of art today by the Foreign Policy Group and the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, with efforts in the 1960s and 1970s by Cold-War policy makers, corporate leaders and political agencies in the United States who promoted art as a form of ideological lubrication useful for countering rebellious workers, students, women and minorities during a time of social and economic upheaval. In 1975, the artist Hans Haacke coolly and precisely exposed these mollifying intentions in a series of series of officious-looking, metal wall plaques presented as works of conceptual art. Each engraved panel is emblazoned with an actual citation in which art and culture are described as useful for covering-up the less than noble pursuits by businesses and states. Appropriately entitled On Social Grease, the work includes engraved citations by Exxon executive Robert Kingsley stating ‘Exxon’s support of the arts serves as a social lubricant. And if business is to continue in big cities, it needs a more lubricated environment. Robert Kingsley,’ and another by Chase Manhattan Bank CEO David Rockefeller reflecting on the ‘direct and tangible benefits’ that art investing provides businesses, including attracting qualified employees and improving the ‘corporate image.’

What image did Rockefeller hope to improve? Among other scandals he and his ideological ally Henry Kissinger supported the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and helped develop financial austerity measures for bankrupt nations in Latin America and New York City following its 1975 economic collapse. Later, in 1979, he convinced President Jimmy Carter to allow Rockefeller’s friend the Shah of Iran entry to the US, leading to the hostage crisis and ultimately the downfall of Carter’s presidency. In another piece Haacke cites President Richard M. Nixon remarking that, ‘the arts have the rare capacity to help heal divisions among our people and to vault some of the barriers that divide the world,’ remarkably anticipating Rothkopf’s remarks some 38 years hence, but now with regard to the unapologetically autocratic kingdoms that comprise the UAE. What has changed since then?

For one thing, Hans Haacke’s self-critical pre-Internet era art practice required a strong commitment to frequently tedious investigative research that was truly unfamiliar to the world of the visual arts at the time (as opposed say to journalism for example or art history for that matter). However, once Haacke’s findings were presented within the ‘white cube’ context of high culture these revelations generated a profound suspicion towards corporate cultural support by the liberal art world audience.  Today, the ease with which information is accessible makes these cultural contradictions simpler to demonstrate on one hand, though strangely less consequential on the other hand. The air of suspicion is still present. In fact, a thick atmosphere of ‘critique’ and even scepticism permeates high culture, as it does most disciplines and fields of activity. But this perpetual state of bad faith recedes into a background like the rush of white noise in an office building leaving the paradoxes of the art world sitting along side one another, like so many units of discrete information. The reclamation of Haacke’s legacy of exposition has required a still more engaged level of intervention, that of direct action into the museum space itself.

By no means a new phenomenon, in fact Haacke was a co-founder of Art Workers’ Coalition in the late 1960s who directly confronted New York City museum’s with demands ranging from the rights of artists of color to providing social security for art laborers by selling off the valued work of dead artists. The interventionist museum exploits of Global Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF) against the development of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; the choreographed anti-petroleum industry demonstrations of Liberate Tate who successfully forced the museum to disconnect from British Petroleum; the staged protests of Decolonize This Place against the whiteness of the art establishment; and the striking dramatic museum occupations by DebtFair and Occupy Museumswhose recent action at the Whitney Biennial collectively and publicly repudiating art student debt all testify to the revitalisation of active confrontation as the preferred form of dissent in the epoch of Bare Art.

A counter-commencement autonomous event organised by Occupy Museums at the Whitney Biennial in NYC took place on May 5, 2017 and a group of heavily indebted artists collectively argue that the Museum of Modern Art remove Larry D. Fink from its board of trustees. Fink is the co-founder and CEO of BlackRock Inc., a major global financial corporation that profits from holding student debt, as well as being on the board of New York University, and an adviser to President Donald Trump.

But now the hour seems almost too late to call out neoliberalism. Recently we’ve seen a political turn toward hyper capitalistic nationalism that has found an even more cynical use for the American Dream. Now it is wielded as rhetorical entitlement deserved only by white Americans; an entitlement that can be dispersed only when large populations who are not white are variously forgotten, targeted, ejected, killed.  The American Dream today is a wedge-producing weapon that is used to divide confuse and enrage people in order to obscure the quiet counter-revolution. This counter-revolution is taking shape as a takeover of all levers of power by billionaires. Their taking of power depends on the withering away of democratic institutions such as schools and libraries. The Art World is a comfort zone for many of these billionaires. This is the counter-revolution of the Collector Class.

The Collector Class is taking complete control of our space and time. They are remaking neighbourhoods into branded real estate-culture packages. The high-tech debt based economy converts people’s time into fixed income assets. All of this becomes capital whose form can only flow up to the top of the pyramid. In this equation art that does not perform the function of luxury asset gets weeded out. However, artists and even institutions are beginning to resist.