ABSTRACT
My purposes in this chapter are threefold. My first is to offer an account of the ways in which economics has triumphed over education and particularly equity in Australia. I will focus on recent developments in vocational education and training (VET) to tell this particular narrative showing how educating is dropping out of vocational education and how the language of macro-and micro-economic reform and markets currently holds state and commonwealth governments and VET education policy makers under its sway. My second purpose is to show how educationally and possibly economically hollow this triumph is. I will do so by pointing to some of the problems that economic reductionism helps to cause and to some of the important human matters that it neglects – particularly matters of equity and ethics. My third purpose is to offer a conceptual framework for changing the address; for attending to matters of life chances and life choices, or what Giddens (1994: 114-115) calls ‘emancipatory politics’ and ‘life politics’. The three main sections of the article are organised accordingly.
