Neoliberalism and Power in Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
Neoliberalism and the Control of Teachers, Students, and Learning
2000
Over the last several decades, education in the United States has undergone a profound transformation as control over schools shifted first to the state and then the federal government. In the not so distant past, students attended the school to which they were assigned, learned from teachers who used and adapted the school's and district's curriculum, and were evaluated based on teacher prepared assignments. Now, students often ostensibly choose which school to attend (although advantaged students have significantly more choices than others), and learn from teachers who teach what they think will be on the state's standardized tests. These changes reflect policymakers' greater faith in markets and competition than in teachers and students. However, data from the United States show that rather than improving education, the reforms have harmed academic achievement and increased educational inequality (see Hursh, 2008). These reforms have come about, in part, because o...
Neoliberalism and Education Reform
2007
[Winner of the 2008 “Critic’s Choice Award” from the American Educational Studies Association] This book has two primary goals: a critique of educational reforms that result from the rise of neoliberalism, and to provide alternatives to neoliberal conceptions of education problems and solutions. A key issue addressed by contributors is how forms of critical consciousness can be engendered throughout society via schools. This means paying attention to the practical aspects of pedagogy for social transformation and organizing to achieve a most just society. Each contributor offers critical examinations of the pragmatics of pedagogy and organizing for social transformation. It is the editors hope that the analysis of neoliberal educational reform provided in the chapters will contribute in multiple ways to the programs of critical scholars, educators and activists working for education and schools that serve the broad interests of the public and against capitalist educational practices. Contents: Foreword, Richard A. Brosio. Introduction, E. Wayne Ross and Rich Gibson. Neoliberalism and the Control of Teachers, Students, and Learning: The Rise of Standards, Standardization, and Accountability, David W. Hursh. No Child Left Behind, Globalization, and the Politics of Race, Pauline Lipman. Education and the New Disciplinarity: Surveillance, Spectacle, and the Case of SBER, Kevin D. Vinson and E. Wayne Ross. The Ideology and Practice of Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Education of American Immigrants, Gilbert G. Gonzalez. Neoliberalism and the Perversion of Education, Dave Hill. Schools and the GATS Enigma, Glenn Rikowski. A Marxist Reading of Reading Education, Patrick Shannon. Paulo Freire and the Revolutionary Pedagogy for Social Justice, Rich Gibson. The Unchained Dialectic: Critique and Renewal of Higher Education Research, John Welsh. Marketizing Higher Education: Neoliberal Strategies and Counter-Strategies, Les Levidow. Critical Pedagogy and Class Struggle in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization: Notes from History's Underside. Peter McLaren Author Index. Subject Index.
Neoliberalism inside two American high schools
Neoliberalism inside two American high schools, 2015
This article examines ‘neoliberalism’ inside two American public high schools. The work of one leading critical theorist, Mark Olssen, is explained and examined. Particular attention is paid to Olssen’s concepts of ‘homo economicus’ and ‘manipulatable man.’ It is concluded that Olssen’s theories on neoliberalism accurately describe developments in public education in the West since the early 1980s. It is also believed that his theories could benefit from a study that ‘looks inside the black box’ and reveals what neoliberalism looks like inside schools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 teachers and two principals at two public high schools in the American state of Louisiana. Analysis reveals that an educator’s sense of professional autonomy relates to students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. That is, educators at poor schools tend to have dramatically less freedom from local school boards than educators in non-poor schools.
Pedagogy of the Impossible: Neoliberalism and the Ideology of Accountability
This article analyzes the ideology of accountability in contemporary education within the context of neoliberalism and its reconstruction of social relationships on the basis of the market, competition and efficiency. Drawing on contemporary critical philosophical accounts, it argues that the scholarship on education and accountability has not fully registered the way that ideology in neoliberalism works through modes of fantasy and enclosure, inhering not only in perspectives and understandings, but also in procedures, rituals and structures of subjectivity. Analyzing the political logic of test-based accountability, and taking up several specific examples of its reorganization of curriculum and assessment, the article challenges the tendency within educational theory to understand ideology in education according to the Gramscian model of hegemony and proposes a reconceptualization of accountability's ideological effects. In particular, it shows that the tradition of understanding ideology in schooling in terms of the production of 'common sense' overlooks the ideological force in contemporary education of the procedures themselves of standardized assessment and scripted curriculum. The article concludes with a consideration of the implications of this analysis for critical teaching in the context of the constraints created by test-based accountability systems.
Neoliberalism in the classroom: The political economy of school reform in the United States
Since the idea of charter schools took hold in the 1990s, the school reform movement in the United States has expanded rapidly. Ideologically defending itself in the name of school choice and accountability, in reality the movement focuses on dismantling school boards in favor of direct mayoral control and allowing private companies to supply school services. Recently a spate of documentary films - most notably Waiting for Superman - have carried the ideological message to greater swathes of the American public. This paper argues that the US school reform movement is radically regressive, led by an economic elite, and essentially at odds with the democratic civic and political role of a public school system.
Handbook of Philosophy of Education, 2023
Neoliberalism is an approach to social policy, now globally influential, that applies market approaches to all aspects of social life, including education. Charter schools, privately operated but publicly funded, are its most prominent manifestation in the U.S. The neoliberal principles of competition, consumerism, and choice cannot serve as foundations of a sound and equitable public education system. Neoliberalism embraces socio-economic inequality overall and in doing so constricts any justice mission its adherents espouse in virtue of serving a relatively disadvantaged student population, as charter schools often (by no means always) do. It constricts educational justice by (1) embracing a “human capital” approach as the primary good of education, (2) creating educational inequality through (unofficially) selecting a relatively advantaged segment of the disadvantaged demographic it serves, (3) denying the effect of poverty on educational performance, and (4) devaluing its students’ familial ethnic cultures.
Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict
2020
Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict: Exploring Challenges Across the Globe explores how neoliberal values are imprinted onto educational spaces and practices, and by consequence, fundamentally reshape how we come to under stand the educational experience at the school or system level. Countries across the globe struggle with the residual effects of increased accountability, choice/ voucher systems, and privatization. The first section of the book discusses the direct imprint of neoliberal policies on educational spaces. The next section examines the more indirect outcomes of neoliberalism, including the challenges of inequity, access, violence, racism, and social justice issues as a result of neoliberal ideologies. Each section of the book includes case studies about education systems across the globe, including Britain, Middle East, Turkey, United States, China, and Chile written by international contributors. Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict is essential reading for educators, scholars, and faculty of educational leadership and policy globally.
Neoliberalizing Educational Reform
Pointing the Way to a More Socially Just World is the foreword for the this book. You can also read Educational Reform in the Age of Neoliberalism, the first chapter of Keith Sturges' book here.