ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of neoliberal policies and practices on education, paying particular attention to questions of exclusion. Important to this discussion is an examination of the manner in which economic inequality, the politics of coloniality and practices of exclusion within education have historically functioned to perpetuate the privilege and power of the wealthy and powerful. Through engaging with a global coloniality of power, as proposed by theorists writing in the Latin American tradition, epistemological issues are raised with respect to their legitimating force in the hegemonic interplay of economic control, authoritarianism, control of the public sphere and ideological beliefs and values perpetuated within schools. In particular, neoliberal education reform is examined with respect to market-place interests of corporations driving policy reform—both domestic and global—in ways that amplify economic exploitation, political disempowerment, cultural domination and destruction of the planetary ecosystem.
