ANA MARIE C.

CALAPIT
Dependency Theory in Comparative Education
EDAD 302

Dependency theory has been an increasingly popular model for international development and
has shaped a substantial body of economic thought by explaining the obstacles to development of poor
nations. Development theory has been borrowed by writers in education as well as research workers in
Comparative Education.

I.Theory

Dependency theory argues that the world’s present state is an outcome of domination by
nations who “have” over the “ have-nots” and, within nations, by the domination of classes who “have”
over “have-nots”. An increasing number of comparativists believe that the dichotomy between the
superordinate and subordinates amounts to a powerful, globally applicable, explanatory model in
comparative education.

The world as it is supposed to exist today is explained by the concepts of center-periphery,

hegemony, and reproduction. Its is a “world empire”” as Wallerstein calls it. The unilateral exercise of
power by the center on the periphery, the hegemonic of the dependent through the systematic
reproduction in the periphery of the values of the center. Schooling is cast in an active role as
reproducing in the young those values, attitudes, and skills best fitted to serve the interest of the
dominant groups.

Both the past and the present are analyzed using the center-periphery framework. Thus, the
dominant nation begins a missionary zeal which soon transformed into explicit, unabashed
colonization. Today, this classical colonialism is replaced with a more sophisticated and insidious
colonization—that of the mind and will or from physical to mental domination. Universities,
philanthropic foundations, multilateral and national development agencies, book publishers and mass
media organizations, even the very artefacts of industrialized society such as cars and infant formula
milk, among others, are viewed as instruments of oppression.

The view claims validity as an explanation of relationship among nation-states as well as within
them. The dependency theory asserts that there is an identifiable center exploiting a periphery with a
dominant class or caste seeking to use schooling to reproduce the set of values and the system of
stratification marking its continued hegemony. To that end, some knowledge becomes certified or
legitimated as worthy, desirable and conferring status; other knowledge is neglected, ignored or even
suppressed. The people, it is argued, simply do not realize that they are living in a world of ideas and
values deliberately created to keep them in subservience. Nor do they understand the vital role played
by the schools in producing this “servitude of the mind.” The system’s success is its capacity to deceive
those who serve it into believing they are free, when in fact they have been enslaved.
 The curriculum which is the body of knowledge (cultural capital), it is argued, is selectively
organized and transmitted to students. The periphery has been lured or forced into a pernicious copying
of the curriculum of the center. Even after colonial rule, the disjunction between what is taught and
what is needed locally continues. The Languages of the colonial masters continue to provide vehicles of
instruction, communication and administration. These are the consequences of the hegemonic relations
between center and periphery, and the means of perpetuating them.

Thus, dependency theory shades over reproduction theory which itself becomes part of the new
sociology of knowledge. Therefore, the structures and the content of knowledge are viewed using this
theory as forms of poverty, power and privilege. It is but a course of natural dynamic that societies that
have developed scientific knowledge in the industrialized states to impose it on the weaker dependents.
The weaker dependent’s “inferiority” leads to establishing the stronger states superiority, and this
continues with the larger share both of the knowledge itself and the products of that knowledge. This is
the process of reproduction where the hegemony of one group over the other is extended through time
and space .

While dependency theory began as way of explaining problems of economic underdevelopment,

it has crossed educational affairs with much vigor. For instance, Neo-Marxist conflict theory, ideological
analysis, study of dynamics of social institutions, and aspects of psychological conditioning theory, have
all joined to form a world view advancing the propositions such as the coercion of students by the class-
ridden educational institution to support official ideology; the schooling is an apparatus by which the
ruling class imposes its self-serving values on the working class in order to maintain the status quo.

Within nations, as well as among nations where foreign education is imposed upon subject
nations, the dependency theorists such as Freire extended the argument by saying that even the
“oppressed are shaped into becoming ‘oppressors’ in turn, as everyone seeks to become a boss.” The
prospects for the development of real freedom and individual autonomy are poor.

Bowles and Gintis agreed—schools discipline the young in the interest of serving the existing
power structure. Accomplished via grading, competition, petty rewards and not-so-petty punishment.
The educational system dehumanizes by destroying innate originality and creativity.

Bourdieu and Passeron emphasized conflict as a threatening quality, that is—knowledge being
imposed by the schools, and this imposition is a form of violence visited by the strong (teachers,
administrators and society’s leaders) on the weak (the students) in the course of their formation.

Educational planning is condemned as a transparent device for extending and intensifying

dependency. This is viewed by dependency theorists as an ever-deepening immiseration, as resources
continue to be siphoned from the periphery into the center(s). School reform is viewed as a mere
diversion from the real business of transforming world-wide power relationships and change is unlikely
to occur without violent upheaval.

The following digest further the claims and assertions of dependency theory:
1. Dependency theory claims to be globally applicable and objective approach to understanding how
poorer nations have been victimized the unidirectional exercise of power.

2. Dependency theory views educational structures and educational content as means in order for the
center to exercise thought-control over the periphery and reproducing the constitutions for its survival.

3. Dependency theory claims that the process of thought control is so powerful that parents are
incapable of recognizing their children’s educational interest and are helpless in making a choice in the
face of an overwhelming ideological hegemony,

4. Dependency theorists tend to deny that educational reform is a way to improve the state of things
since what is needed is a violent rupture of the hegemonic power of the center.

5. Dependency theory asserts that the countries of the periphery are the victimized “good guys” and
the center are the victimizing “bad guys” since the fruit of modernization is further dependency.

6. Dependency theory claims that the greater the country’s dependency the harder it will be for the
country to establish an effective social and educational institutions.

Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein in an article entitled “Dependency Theory in Comparative
Education; Twelve Lessons from the Litereature” cited in Schriewer and Holmes, Theories and Methods
in comparative education reviewed the works of the eight authors cited below that used one or more of
the major metaphors of dependency theory: center-periphery, reproduction and hegemony.

Altbach’s The University as Center and Periphery points out that universities may be classified
as influential or dependent that is either creator or distributors of knowledge. Third world universities
including their world –famous flagship institutions continue to be at a disadvantage in the international
knowledge network. Altbach claims that they are passive rather than active and serve as agent through
which industrialized nations maintain their dominant positions in the world.

Mazrui’s The African University as a Multi-National Corporation: Problems of Penetration and

Dependency state the presence of metropolitan-based university controlling institutions on the
periphery. Mazrui draws a parallel with the activities of multinational corporation which exploit the
periphery’s resources in the interest of the shareholder in the center. The African university according to
Mazrui has two functions: to meet the colonizer’s manpower needs and to help create the products of
Western industry by remaking African values. He claims that African universities perpetuate cultural
dependency.

While both Albach and Mazrui draw the center-periphery metaphor, Albach describes at least
three inequalities among institutions –resources, ( faculty, physical and financial); activities (research,
publishing and positions in communications); and student academic quality. These inequalities may or
may not be related to dependency. Mazrui on the other hand identified three strategies that would
lead African universities and the African nations to become truly independent, serving their own rather
than other’s interest: To Africanize admission requirements, criteria for faculty requirement, and
university organization; To diversify the sources of influence away from an exclusive emphasis on
European culture, toward Africanization and “Asianization” of the curriculum; and counter penetrating
Western culture through art, craftsmanship and music.

If dependency theorists such as Albach are to be believed , the outlook of the dependent
nation is bleak. The dependent nation has been described as being caught in the toils of a powerful
world-wide network forces, in a system of exploitation, immiseration, and oppression that will not let
them go. However, Marzui in rejecting these conditions offer the possibilities of transcending this
dependent condition. And this undermines the second major metaphor of dependency theory:
reproduction.

Kelly’s work on Reproduction entitled: Teachers and the Transmission of State Knowledge: A
Case Study of Colonial Vietnam,” draw from the standpoint of “understanding of the ways in which
schooling transmit a set of ideological characteristics favourable to the maintenance of dominant groups
and helps reproduce the division of labor in society.

Educational policy in the French colony was a consistent attempt to legitimate certain specified
types of knowledge and to use the schools to reproduce the power relationships that would best serve
French interests.

However, while the case was a classic tale of colonizers giving orders through a far-reaching
system of school inspection, detailed instruction to teacher, training and selection, the Vietnamese
teachers acted independently, transmitted knowledge selectively and rejected the French version of
moral education and aspects of the curriculum that were offensive to their nationalist, cultural and class
sensitivities. Even with the most powerful political, juridical and police powers at their disposal, the
French colonizer never succeeded in its reproduction goal. The teachers who had a westernized training,
as well as those who have gone through the adapted Franco-Vietnamese schools resisted indoctrination
by establishing professional organization to nurture their Vietnamese solidarity.

The implication of Kelly’s work on the French assimilationist education policy was that the facts
contradicted dependency theory.

The work of Barrington on “Cultural Adaptation and Maori Educational Policy: The African
Connection’ describes the shift in educational policies in the 1930s from assimilationist goal toward an
education adapted to the perceived needs of the Maori people in New Zealand. More emphasis was to
be placed in the agricultural knowledge and on the survival of local culture and handicraft arts.
However, Barrington states that many Maori parents opposed this for they view it as second-rate
education for their children.

Both the Vietnam and New Zealand experiences gave no support to the dependency claim that
helpless population are manipulated by colonial authorities by reducing children, through reproduction,
to mere object of dependency. In these contrasting cases, the reproduction metaphor of dependency
theory failed to draw a distinction and thus it is a weak tool for comparative study.
 Bullivant in his article “ Cultural Reproduction in Fiji: Who Controls Knowledge/Power?”
examined the informal and formal processes “through which culture is passed on to the developing
child” by describing the political and educational relationships between the dominant Fijians and the
immigrant Indian population. He concluded that dominance is exerted more through structures—in
education, admission to higher education favours Fijians, and also in government employment.

The transactional relationship between ‘dominators’ and ‘dominated is highlighted along with
the complexities of the reproduction process was described by Bullivant. What runs counter to the
reproduction metaphor is such that the evidence of dominance is interspersed with many elements of
concession.

Bullivant cited that while Europeans are a small minority in Fiji, they and the Westernizing
agencies as the “ultimate source of hegemony in Fiji.” The strong European influence is in the “external
examination system and the need for children to learn English. This in turn play a major role in
determining what kind of knowledge may be taught at the senior academic level, and it can be
interpreted as pedagogic action and hegemonic. “ It is effectively concealed by the pretense at a
multicultural curriculum.

Bullivant also said the economy is influenced by Western ideology of capitalism. Banks,
insurance offices, airlines among others are industries that adhered to the west ideology of
consumption.

He failed to prove however that the reproduction and hegemonic metaphors using the concept
of cultural reproduction is demonstrative of the dependency theory at work in Fiji because of the highly
transactional means by which the so called dominant and dominated groups come into play.

Hegemony took center stage in three articles reviewed by Noah and Eckstein; they are Berman,
“Education Colonialism in Africa: The Role of American Foundations, post-1945; Irizarry “Overeducation
and Unemployment in the Third World: The Paradoxes of Dependent Industrialization; Sica and Prechel,
‘Political-Economic Dependency and Educational Development

Berman alleged that American Foundations are not merely rendering technical assistance but
deliberately pursue policies that benefited the givers, not the receivers. For instance, foundation
support for leading universities in strategic areas of Africa; a variety of teacher training for African
students in the United States and for training of U.S. specialists in African affairs, among others. All these
were done to enhance the prospects in Africa of the capitalist system and American interests.

Berman however failed to account that the so-called American hegemonic power failed to
establish much more maintain its ascendency in Black Africa. If indeed it was the goal of American
Foundations, then their resounding failure in Africa is noteworthy.

Irizarry approached the hegemonic metaphor in economic terms attributing the condition of
under developed countries to their economic colonization by industrial powers. He points that the
‘accelerated industrialization; that is, the creation and expansion of a modern, industrialized and
highly-productivity sector of economy’ failed to eliminate poverty, improve the welfare of the mass of
people, provide complete primary education for all, or supply trained manpower adapted to the needs
of the economy.

Irizarry asserts the primacy of economic hegemony in the determination of educational

structures and outcomes. He asserts that those countries that have developed on the basis of externally
injected capital, externally determined models of classical, colonial-type penetration, and accelerated
industrialization, have suffered characteristic distortions of their educational systems.

Irizarry, failed to show that the existence of these distortions is the particular responsibility of
hegemonic power in the form of overseas trade and the international organizations support of
accelerated industrialization.

Like Irizarry, Sica and Prechel examine the role of hegemonic economic power in shaping
educational development by “testing the empirical utility of the dependency perspective in accounting
for one important facet of international inequality, the distribution of education.” More so, they seek to
discover whether distribution of education vary systematically with the degree of economic dependency
among nations.

Sica and Prechel assemble date from 72 nations representing center, periphery, and
semiperiphery countries. Distribution was measured using enrolment ratios; “dependency” was
measured by the standard indicators of domestic capital formation, exports and external public debt;
either per kilowatt hours or GDP per capita was taken as the measure of country’s level of development.

The result stated that “level of development is very strongly associated with education
measures” at, or zero-order correlation. This finding however is usually taken to support modernization
(rather than dependency) theory. Contrary to the dependency hypothesis, degree of dependency is
usually positively correlated to educational enrolment ratios or is not statistically significant. Therefore
the ‘development of underdevelopment’ thesis is not sustained.

They concede that other results obtained in their work indicates –from one view of causality—
that education is an important element of development and that its retardation is itself a guarantee of
endless dependency. Sica and Prechel tried to make sense of statistical data which support the idea that
“the road to cultural growth is fiscal autonomy” which is a notion important in the dependency
argument. However, the figures are disappointingly weak. Thus, in the end they fall back on the plea
that “linear regression models are probably inappropriate when used to test dependency theory and
that the test for dependency thinking demands a more comprehensive methodological approach.

II. Critique

The authors Noah and Eckstein cited two criteria when assessing a genre of work for its
contribution to education: its capacity to provide persuasive explanations for a phenomena observed or
to suggest avenues for further investigation; and its utility for guiding action, that is its capacity to
inform administrators and planners and to help in policy making. Let me add a third, how a theory par
with other theories in the field toward developing a general theory of education.

The authors have gone great length in order to focus on the use that has been made of
dependency theory specifically in recent research contributions to Comparative Education by looking
into eight very informative and well executed studies.

Their conclusion that these recent works when taken singly or together were far from
validating the basic propositions of dependency theory has bases due to the variances in the basic
propositions of dependency and reproduction theory.

The works of Altbach Kelly, and Sica and Prechtel are three instances where they started with a
strong , peripheries in an international system, they are clearly central to their own societies; Kelly’s
study on the other hand, while clearly dealing in a classic case of colonizer-colonized situation, merely
demonstrated the complexities of an assimilationist education policy and the facts decisively
contradicted dependency theory. In Sica and Prectel, the authors after collating information from 72
countries identified as center, periphery and semi periphery conceded that linear regression analysis
may not be the appropriate tool in testing the validity of dependency theory with data disappointingly
weak in supporting the too important dependency canon that “the road to cultural growth is fiscal
autonomy.”

The other three studies, namely Barrington, Bullivant, and Marzui drew conclusions that where
neither here nor there as far as solid support for dependency theory.

Barrington, in fact quoted from a Maori school record which cited that Maori parents opposed
what they viewed as second-rate education for their children when New Zealand placed an emphasis on
agricultural knowledge and skill and on the survival of local culture and handicraft arts.

Bullivant’s answer to his question on who controls knowledge/power in dealing with the
hegemony metaphor of dependency theory only managed to point to westernizing agencies which
perpetuated western ideology of consumption and capitalism in Fiji. His claim that hegemony is
effectively concealed by the pretense of a multiracial curriculum was not substantiated.

Mazrui’s counter strategies offer an interesting insight on dependency theory—that nations and
culture are not really helpless as had been painted by dependency theorists. Mazrui in fact offered three
strategies to counter penetrate the west by diversifying admission requirements, teacher training and
organization; diversifying sources of influence toward an African and Asian curriculum and counter
penetrating the west with arts and music.

Among the eight authors, Noah and Eckstein noted that it was Berman and Irizarry who
maintained full adherence to dependency theory. Berman points to a powerful conspiracy of American
Foundations to assert hegemony in Black Africa when at the present scheme of things, Africa is far from
being under the rule of American “trained elite cadres maximizing internal growth and political stability
to serve U.S. interests .
Irizarry’s approach of giving primacy to economic hegemony in the determination of educational
structures and outcomes failed to show that these distortions brought about by externally injected
capital, externally determined models of classical, colonial-type penetration and accelerated
industrialization is the particular responsibility of the hegemonic power. Indeed putting the blame on
the dominant nation in their exercise of unidirectional power through economic might while it serves
the purpose of a dependency theorist is grossly misplaced. How an over emphasis on humanities and
the social sciences as a given example and the failure of a good fraction of the technically trained to land
a job relate to each other in a dependency perspective is not very clear. If there was a mismatch of
what the industry needs and what was being taught, then the dominant simply cannot exploit the
periphery anymore. The distortions in the education system because of economic hegemony simply
cannot explain or support this dependency notion.

On Noah and Eckstein twelve lessons, allow me to comment on a few of them

1. That dependency theory fosters the dubious implication that the majority of humanity are
dupes.

These are quite a strong generalist statement of what the theory is worth. It surprises me that
after starting on an academic focus and a reminder for the reader that “ in no way do we seek
to make a critique of the usefulness of the dependency theory in economics or in education
broadly defined,” the author would use words that betray their intentions. The authors based
on the first lesson that they were able to draw are clearly none believers of Dependency Theory
to start with in the first place.

2. “Neither physical nor mental colonization necessarily succeeds in blinding parents to the best
educational interest of their children,” generally holds true not because dependency theory doesn’t
work but perhaps it’s a classic case of parents protecting their young. Take for example farming which is
hard work. Would a parent ask a daughter to plough the field if there are other job opportunities that
will not be as hard but will pay well? The choice seems obvious to me.

3. Agree

4. Agree

5. Agree

6. Not necessarily, if we will require that dependency theory be able to explain satisfactorily the
failure of third world countries to achieve first world goals, perhaps we are already talking of a general
theory. I believe the usefulness of the dependency theory and other theories for that matter is their
attempt to explain something using a framework or a line of thought. Its sufficiency or its ability to
explain so many things in a convincing fashion, to me will only show its rank among the family of
theories. Indeed theories are not created equal!
7. Agree, but I would say “placing most of the blame for cultural dependency on external forces.”
But how about locally developed movies, television shows, say ”Pinoy idols “ and talent searches? They
have been adapted to local setting? Would that still be external dependency?

8. Partially agree. That’s the problem when you adapt a theory from one subject of study to another. Say
for example, when you change your mind about something, that to me is breaking the line of thought—
to me that amounts to a revolution, so when instead of having a preference for rock or pop music
enjoyed by a great majority of the population, I would listen to reggae or to Filipino folk music by matter
of choice that is going against certain trend in today’s pop culture.

9. I believe that economic dependency has some influence, say for example since you cannot afford a
four year education, the state instead of offering scholarships for baccalaureate courses, would fund
short courses and a ladderized education program because these are the jobs demanded by the
industry. I believe that this could make a good case for an interplay of economic dependency and
education.

10. Agree

11. I believe that eight articles are not enough to pass judgement whether a particular theory can
control bias in research methodology.

12. Maybe. However, there wouldn’t be that kind of a conclusion had it not been for the authors of the
eight articles reviewed by Noah and Eckstein tried substituting “new terms for old.” Adding significant
explanatory power which reflects the usefulness of a particular theory is of course always subject to
much criticism.

The authors Noah and Eckstein had made great insights on the ability of dependency theory to
satisfactory explain a phenomenon and have made wise cracks on its usefulness. It pains me no end
that after their insightful analyses, they fell short of offering an alternative theory that may help add to
the recent literature on Comparative Education. They conceded in the end that despite the weakness
inherent in Dependency theory it will remain as a popular tool for researches in comparative
education.