Towards a Progressive View of Aid, Development, and Education - Steven J. Klees Reply

Oct 15, 2026

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A scholarly reply by Steven J. Klees addresses debates in Current Issues in Comparative Education, emphasizing a progressive perspective on aid, development, and education. The reply argues that the progressive view is shaped through sustained struggles over theory and praxis and is grounded in a confluence of critical theories focused on marginalization, inequality reproduction, and the contradictions within dominant systems. It challenges how Brehm and Silova portray progressives as similar to neoliberal or liberal paradigms, clarifying that progressives prioritize equality, critical pedagogy, and collective agency to confront inequality.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages7

Reading Time18 min

AccessFree to download

Towards a Progressive View of Aid, Development, and Education

Beyond Economics

Capitalism and Development

Reply Towards a Progressive View of Aid, Development, and Education Steven J. Klees University of Maryland Ifeel honored and privileged that to solicit responses to my article the editors of Current Issues in Comparative Education decided in this volume (Klees, 2010) and that the responses were by such thoughtful and well-regarded scholars. While there are areas of disagreement, I find that our disagreements are much less important than our commonalities. I try to detail both in my reply, but I focus on how my respondents and I share what I call a progressive perspective – eventhough none of them choose that particular label to describe their point of view. The meaning of a progressive perspective necessarily reflects a struggle over theory and praxis. It is constantly being formed and re-formed. The debate in this issue is part of that struggle. Beyond Economics Brehm and Silova’s (2010) intriguing “radical reimagination” of aid argues that the “central discourse on international aid has been dominated by” economists’ viewpoints and that my paper is no exception. In my paper, I did not have space enough to do more than a thumbnail sketch of the neoliberal, liberal, and progressive perspectives I used to frame the discussion of aid, education, and development. The progressive perspective, which I favor and which formed the basis for my recommendations, is not an economics perspective1 but a remarkable confluence of interrelated critical theories and perspectives that cross disciplines and applied fields, including: dependency, world systems, critical, neomarxist, economic reproduction, cultural reproduction, resistance, feminist standpoint, gender and development, socialist feminist, critical race, queer, intersection, critical postmodern, poststructural, postcolonial, and critical pedagogy. And this does not include all the related critical theories within each social science and applied field. I am not saying that these theories offer identical perspectives, just that they share essential commonalities with respect to addressing the two major questions social theories face: “How do we understand our social world?” and “What can we doto change it?” In terms of understanding the world, most fundamentally, all these theories focus on marginalization. They see the world as composed of systems and structures that maintain, reproduce, and legitimate existing inequalities. From these perspectives, inequalities are not system failures but the logical consequence of successful system functioning. In terms of what to do, while most of these theories recognize that reproduction is pervasive, they also agree that there are serious challenges to reproduction. Thereis general agreement that those challenges have two interrelated sources. One is that the systems and structures that dominate are not monolithic but are pervaded by contradictions, such as that between the stated value of political democracy and the reality of economic authoritarianism, or that between the stated value of human equality and the reality of systematic inequity and discrimination. The other is a belief in human agency, in that oppression can be recognized and fought individually and collectively (see Klees, 2008b, for more details) . Brehm and Silova paint a picture of the progressive paradigm as no different than the neoliberal or liberal. To the contrary, most progressives would agree with the important points Brehm and © 2010 Current Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Current Issues in Comparative Education 13(1), 56-62 Towards a Progressive View of Aid Silova make in their article. For example, they argue that equality must be the starting point for anew aid relationship, but: [similar] to conservative efforts of education reform, critical pedagogy continues to see inequality as ‘a taken-for-granted, even obvious state of affairs tobe confronted by the right mixtures of pol

FAQs

What is the core focus of Klees’s reply in this issue?

Klees outlines and defends what he calls a progressive perspective on aid, development, and education, emphasizing shared commonalities with respondents despite differences in labeling.

How does Klees connect progressive theory to action?

He frames the progressive perspective as a struggle over both theory and praxis that is continually formed and re-formed, with debate serving that ongoing struggle.

Why does Klees disagree with Brehm and Silova’s portrayal of progressives?

He argues that they overstate similarities to neoliberal or liberal paradigms and mischaracterize progressives’ stance on equality and on the role of education, empowerment, and participation.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by OmBimo