ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the development and influence of neoliberal ideological commitments on the nature and aims of education and education policy. The broad characteristics of neoliberalism such as unfettered free-market thinking, radical individualism, and privatization have become the common sense of schooling with implications for epistemology and education policy, for teacher education, and for everyday life in classrooms. Its negative effects include a reduction in the scope of knowledge and understanding that is primarily focused on the needs of business. Policy efforts to prepare globally competitive workers tend to narrow the complexity of learning to simplistic formulas that promote the crude transfer of information from teacher to student. The external development of content becomes the curriculum within amplified accountability structures exclusively dependent upon performance on high-stakes competitive testing. Standardized national content reinforces traditional teaching models of transfer while dismantling the need for deliberative models of critical thinking and questioning necessary for civic participation in a liberal democracy. Neoliberalism obscures the vision and value of education as a public good for the growth and development of democratic society while branding it as a private market commodity for the labor needs of industry and the whims of consumers.
