ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which schools and their teachers have been hitched—not always successfully—to the accumulation project as small competitive units within the national and global economy. The divisions between schools and the economic sphere have considerably weakened with the penetration of corporate capital into hitherto inaccessible aspects of the workings of the school. The chapter argues that many schools have—in some cases reluctantly and in other cases willingly—increasingly become transformed into 'fast schools'. It outlines key aspects of the new terrain of struggle for teachers—the challenge of the global economy and the emergence of the schooling market as a means of promoting not only the efficient production of workers and consumers but as a practical articulation of the state's political capacities. Teachers increasingly find themselves balancing a series of acts on high stakes wires: between the old commitment of welfare and service and the new commitment oriented toward the enterprise and entrepreneurialism.
