ABSTRACT
We are living at a time of rapid global socio-economic and cultural changes in a period of late capitalism (Harvey, 1989; Giddens, 1990; Jamieson, 1991). These changes, such as de-industrialisation, feminisation of local labour markets and the diversification of family forms, are contesting and fragmenting traditional lifestyles. Alongside this, education as a post-war representation of the modernist project, involving comprehensive re-organisation, child centred pedagogy, antiracism and anti-sexism underpinned by a belief in universalism, collectivism, humanism, rational progression and social justice, is being destabilised by this emerging socio-economic uncertainty. For example, fundamental changes in the relationship between the reward structures of the school and the labour market seem to be leading to great confusion among large sectors of male and female students concerning the purpose of school in preparing them for occupational and social destinies (Stanley, 1989). However, education continues to be a social and cultural refuge for the projection and temporary resolution of English social anxieties, as media representations of school standards are portrayed as national exemplars of the social, moral and economic standards. At the same time, schools are actively involved in the production of these anxieties. Current controversies around boys’ under-achievement and middle class students’ disaffection are shifting concern away from social minorities to a re-examination of social majorities, with the implication that we are no longer sure about the purpose of education. This may be read as part of a broader social and cultural interregnum that we are presently experiencing. As Rutherford (1990, p. 23) proposes:
We are caught between the decline of the old political identifications and the new identities that are in the process of becoming or yet to be born. Like Laurie Anderson’s ‘urbanscape’ in her song ‘Big Science’ the imagery traces of the future are present, but as yet have no representation or substance.
