ABSTRACT
Despite its critical demeanour, readers can be forgiven for expecting this book to conclude on a reasonably positive note. It is generally not acceptable for authors writing on ‘applied’ social science topics to maintain a completely bleak outlook. Instead, there is a tacit presumption on the part of readers, publishers and authors that the final chapter of even the most scathing critique will rally itself with a concluding call to arms, ‘manifesto for change’ or 10-point ‘agenda for action’. Larry Cuban (2011, p. 51) refers to this as the ‘last chapter problem’, where a deliberately developed critique then needs abruptly to be “capped with a polished set of policy recommendations”. Yet, as has been reiterated across the past seven chapters, there are rarely any neat solutions to educational problems, and there are certainly very few neat solutions that involve the unproblematic use of digital technology as a ‘technical fix’. This lack of neat solutions is furthered by the nature of ideology itself. As Alexander Galloway (2012, p. vii) reminds us,
Ideology is not something that can be solved like a puzzle or cured like a disease… instead ideology is better understood as a problematic, that is to say a conceptual interface in which theoretical problems arise and are generated and sustained precisely as problems in themselves.
