Review of Michael Fielding and Peter Moss: Radical Education and the Common School (original) (raw)

2012, Studies in Philosophy and Education

Today, in education, from top to bottom, preschool through university, public and private, small and large, teachers find themselves confronted by a seemingly unquestionable new form of top down managerialism, and neoliberal corporate style of decision making. While schools have always been, more or less, venues defined by asymmetric power relations, the current situation appears to be a unique departure from that tradition. The tradition of unequal power in education, which is rooted in the principal subject positions of teacher and student, was always marked by a number of basic features that were either a precursor to or carry-over from practices that defined what would later be called democratic practice. The most important of these features is that of 'publicity,' where the relation of power unfolded in between and amongst a gathering where it could be observed, monitored, and judged. Formalized in jurisprudential terms as 'checks and balances,' this feature of publicity insured that the acknowledged and necessary power differentials (e.g., between teachers and students) were available to any and all who were present in the shared domain. Education, in this sense, was characterized as happening in the res publica, in the shared space. The notable and notorious example of the inherently public feature of education is the case of Socrates, whose indictment and subsequent condemnation was based on the perception and judgment by other citizens of his actions with respect to the younger generation of Athenian citizens. Indeed, had he undertaken his practice outside of the public domain he would not in fact have been engaged in education. What defines the current situation as a departure, if not a total break, from this tradition of publicity is the arrival of privatization as the defining feature of education. While this shift has been a slow and steady process since the epoch of Reagan and Thatcher, when the dismantling of the welfare state was a matter of routine policy making, there is reason to believe that the majority of citizens in advanced capitalist and ostensibly democratic nations now consider the twin pillars of the private sphere, the marketplace and family, to be the domains with the most legitimacy in matters of education. From this follows new implications for