ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that both the “crisis in education” and the education establishment’s responses to ensuing reform efforts should be understood in relation to fundamental cultural changes that have transpired in the last thirty years in the United States and other Western, industrial societies. It argues that the rise of the therapeutic school has played a significant role in the perceived crisis in contemporary education. The chapter discusses the rise of the therapeutic culture, the subsequent construction of the therapeutic school, and also examines whole language’s emergence in response to mounting public criticism of education. In short, then, although the past twenty years have seen quite extensive and comprehensive legislative and policy initiatives aimed at redressing the consequences of the rise of the therapeutic school, results thus far are, at best, mixed. Before turning to therapeutic discourse in education, per se, it is important to briefly examine liberation therapy’s several core assumptions, as they are articulated in its advocates’ discourse.
