Our research documents that the Reformation provides a canonical example of
the emergence of state capacity and public goods institutions. The new institutions
promoted economic inclusion and directly targeted welfare: they supported the
provision of education and social services and set up anti-corruption safeguards
(p. 2).
Meghnad Desai in“Public Goods: A Historical Perspective”indicates that the
discourse has developed since Samuelson wrote his classic essay:
We now recognize a larger array of goods as public goods and differentiate
among, for example pure, impure, and club goods and joint products as well as
between public goods and externalities. At the same time, we have learned from the
theory of public choice and new political economy as well as from bitter political
experience that the provision of public goods does not take place in a neutral,
politics-free public space. The issue of public or private goods is contested, as is the
larger issue of the role of the state.^2
Deasi also mentions the extension of public goods to global public goods, an
important addition to the concept when we consider the global importance of
education. As Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO puts it in her Foreword
the UNESCO’s (2015)Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good
The world is changing—education must also change. Societies everywhere are
undergoing deep transformation, and this calls for new forms of education to foster
the competencies that societies and economies need, today and tomorrow. This
means moving beyond literacy and numeracy, to focus on learning environments
and on new approaches to learning for greater justice, social equity and global
solidarity. Education must be about learning to live on a planet under pressure. It
must be about cultural literacy, on the basis of respect and equal dignity, helping to
weave together the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable
development.^3
As various commentators have pointed out the statist notion of public goods
belongs to the era of the welfare state and has been strongly challenged by those
belonging to neoliberal political economy that education is a mixed public good and
that higher education is a private good with most benefits accruing to the individual.
The neoliberals contest the welfare theory of public goods and argues that it needs
to be revisited and updated in light of current political realities. They argue from an
ideological commitment against the“big state”on efficiency grounds and from
premises concerning political individualism that wants to protect“individual free-
dom”from state interference. Accordingly, neoliberal states around the world have
introduced a set of policies designed to privatize public education systems by
various means—through the state support for private schools, the introduction of
Charter schools, establishment of student loans, the deprofessionalization of the
teaching force and its rederegulation, and through the privatization of teacher
education, among many other measures.
(^2) Seehttp://web.undp.org/globalpublicgoods/globalization/pdfs/Desai.pdf.
(^3) Seehttp://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002325/232555e.pdf.
Part V: Teacher Education as a Public Good 415