ABSTRACT
The year 1974 is a suitable date to identify as marking the commencement of a significant shift in the definition of the career of teaching and the place of the education system in our society. It was the year of local government reorganization; of two fiercely fought general elections in the aftermath of the miners and power workers strikes and the three day week; and it was the time of a growing awareness of the economic consequences of the oil price rises. From that year the economic crisis was mirrored in the changes of available resources for education by the decreasing ability of teachers and educationalists to define the use of these resources, and in their declining status vis-à-vis the economic and political structure of society. The most significant variable in this change, I suggest, has been the increasing overt politicization of education. This paper seeks to sketch the logic inherent in the development of the current situation of teachers and schools first by identifying the larger political context in which the education crisis is manifest; second, by relating some of the consequences for and strategies of teachers in coping with their changing position; third in identifying some unintended consequences and possible space for alternative developments which the contradictions of the present government policy are generating; and lastly to place the tensions identified in the educational field within a wider and crucially important political debate.
