ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explains the pedagogies of repression in terms of the politics of austerity that expand the neoliberal restructuring of the public sphere. He discusses the expression of the turn to repression in education with a focus on the recent celebration of "grit" coinciding with the post-crisis politics of austerity. The turn to grit in educational reform comes at a moment of not only worsening pressures on labor and unprecedented inequalities in wealth and income but a growing consciousness of the utter failure of the promise of school for work. The author employs the conceptual tools of social and cultural reproduction theory to partly explain the rise of repression in education in the era of austerity. He emphasizes that new educational policies and practices are targeting the bodies and minds of both students and teachers for new forms of control.
