ABSTRACT
Basil Bernstein argued that democratic access to abstract, theoretical knowledge matters because society uses it to conduct its conversation about what it should be like and the kinds of values and norms that it should have. He argued that access to knowledge is associated with social power because society uses it to think the ‘unthinkable’ and the ‘not-yet-thought’. Equitable access to knowledge is a question of distributive justice and central to democratic society. Education is aimed at realising this normative ideal as the main way in which people are provided with access to knowledge and learn how to use it. However, as Bernstein (2000: xix) explains, this ideal is far from realised:
Education is central to the knowledge base of society, groups and individuals . . . like health, [it] is a public institution, central to the production and reproduction of distributive injustices . . . Biases in the form, content, access and opportunities of education have consequences not only for the economy; these biases can reach down to drain the very springs of affirmation, motivation and imagination. In this way such biases can become, and often are, an economic and cultural threat to democracy.
