ABSTRACT
There can be no doubt that the education system needs to be flipped. The ongoing top-down micro-management of education has created a situation that is bad for teachers, bad for students and bad for education itself. But flipping the system is one thing; deciding in which direction it should be flipped is quite another. In this chapter I take up the latter question, exploring whether education belongs to parents, to pupils or to teachers. I argue that the question cannot be to whom education belongs, but that we rather need to ask on which terms anyone can lay claim to ownership of education. I indicate the limits of parent power, particularly when parent power becomes redefined as choice in neo-liberal markets. I indicate the limits of pupil power, arguing that education can never be about giving students what they desire, but always needs to provide time and space for interrogating such desires, perhaps to bring new desires into play. And I indicate the limits of teacher power, particularly highlighting some of the ways in which teachers’ claims for professional agency—such as in terms of learning or evidence—actually work against the very point and purpose of education. All this is framed as case for education as a public concern, if, that is, we are willing to continue to connect education to the wider ambition of living together in plurality in a peaceful, sustainable and democratic way.
