ABSTRACT
Cultural critic and educator, Michael Apple, offers a critique of the current situation in education, in which liberalism has been displaced with neoliberalism, deeply affecting education and social policies:
. . . liberalism itself is under concerted attack from the right, from the coalition of neo-conservatives,’economic modernizers,” and new right groups who have sought to build a new consensus around their own principles. Following a strategy best called “authoritarian populism,” this coalition has combined a “free market ethic’ with a populist politics. The results have been a partial dismantling of social democratic policies that largely benefi ted working people, people of color, and women (these groups are obviously not mutually exclusive), the building of a closer relationship between government and the capitalist economy, and attempts to curtail liberties that had been gained in the past. (Apple, 2004, p.xxiv).
