ABSTRACT
Much of the literature on “critical pedagogies” has been politically and theoretically important and has helped us make a number of gains. However, too often it has not been sufficiently connected to the ways in which the current conservative restoration both has altered common sense and has transformed the material and ideological conditions surrounding schooling. It thereby sometimes becomes a form of what may best be called “romantic possibilitarian” rhetoric (Whitty 1974), in which the language of possibility substitutes for a consistent tactical analysis of what the balance of forces actually is and what is necessary to change it.
