Education, skills and citizenship: an emergent model for entrepreneurship in Tanzania

AbstractEducating for citizenship is most often associated with a discourse of liberalism in which knowledge, skills and values of equality, rights, justice and national identity are taught. A competing neoliberal discourse with values of self-improvement, responsibility and entrepreneurialism is now quite pervasive in educational policies and practices, shifting goals and processes of education for citizenship. In Tanzania, neoliberalism's influence is evident in the private provision of schooling and pedagogy and curriculum oriented toward skills development. Neoliberal policies have created an opening for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to fill a need by providing secondary education as well as technical and entrepreneurial skills in efforts to make graduates more employable. This paper examines how an NGO entrepreneurship education programme integrated into formal secondary education in Tanzania articulates new goals and values of citizenship. In this model, learning is tied to markets; becoming a successful citizen includes acquiring business skills; and citizenship values include economic sustainability and self-reliance. This model of entrepreneurship education produces a paradox in educational goals for citizenship in that it aims to secure rights to education and provide for material needs while it also subjects young people and schools to economic and social risks tied to flexible and unstable markets. AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Michele Schweisfurth, the Editor of Comparative Education, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. I am grateful to colleagues at the University of Minnesota who assisted with this research: Nancy Pellowski Wiger, David Chapman, Laura Willemsen, Tamara Weiss, Masanche Nkoma and Bindu Timiri. In addition, this research would not be possible without the support and involvement of staff from Fundacion Paraguaya and the schools in Tanzania.Notes on contributorJoan DeJaeghere is Associate Professor of Comparative and International Development Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development at the University of Minnesota. One area of her scholarship examines youth, citizenship and citizenship education, drawing on critical and postcolonial perspectives and critiques of globalisation and neoliberalism. Selected publications include: The making of Mexican migrant youth civic identity: transnational spaces and imaginaries, Anthropology of Education Quarterly 40, no. 3 (2010) (with K. McCleary), Critical citizenship education for multicultural societies, Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy 2, no. 2 (2009) and Citizenship as privilege and power: Australian educators' lived experiences as citizens, Comparative Education Review 52, no. 3: 357–380 (2008). In addition, she has published on issues of gender and education, drawing on critical theories of gender and justice. She is currently co-editing, with Jenny Parkes and Elaine Unterhalter, an issue on Gender Justice for the International Journal of Educational Development.