ABSTRACT
In this final chapter I consider future directions for public education within the globalized market. As I have endeavoured to highlight in this book, the concept of public education is a site of struggle and contestation, and this struggle is entangled with debates across political, economic and cultural lines. In this respect, analyzing and critiquing the role of public schooling in contemporary times is critical for policy-makers and scholars, but also the public who access and utilize this institution. Clearly, many consumer-citizens continue to access traditional or historical concepts of public schooling – drawing on a social democratic lens – as an essential constituent of the social welfare state. In this chapter I seek to problematize and reify this position. I explore the limitations of public schooling in the traditional or historical sense, and particularly within the globalized and urbanized ‘ethnoscape’ (Appadurai, 1990), dominated by large-scale migration, economic and ecological instability. Traditional concepts of public schooling are limited in the context of market fundamentalism. On the other hand, this chapter proposes the hopeful potential of public schooling and how this institution may be recast within the post-social welfare context.
