Bio-academic narratives and educators of the Mediterranean : an editorial introduction

Abstract

Critical accounts of education in the Mediterranean region abound, with education systems often taken to task for being too centralised, too unresponsive to needs, too élitist and too exclusive, often to the detriment of specific groups including women, and those living away from urban and coastal areas. Several accounts exist describing the way higher education has suffered from rampant massification, leading to situations which give access in name only, and to institutions which fail miserably in providing quality instruction that opens up suitable occupational pathways for graduates. Pedagogies across all educational levels have invariably been described as being too ‘magisterial’ in style and tone, smothering the student voice, and leaving little if any place for community involvement in determining curricula and social practices within the school that are meaningful and contextsensitive. To this toxic cocktail one can add the neo-liberal onslaught that has led to increasing privatisation that not only reproduces but reinforces privilege for some, and dead-ends for the rest. It is not a coincidence that the waves of popular unrest that we have seen in the region, leading to the toppling of regimes that seemed to be ever self-perpetuating, were triggered by unemployed graduates who had patiently—and at great cost—gone through all the hoops and hurdles, only to see the promises of meritocracy fizzle into thin air.