ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the contemporary role of educational systems in creating an individualised citizen and the implications for democracy. The aim here is to focus particularly on the processes of individualisation, since this concept is increasingly being used to explain young people’s attitudes to their futures. Youth cultural researchers have found that young people today employ the language of individualisation and the concepts of freedom and choice, to justify their lifestyles and decisions. There is, therefore, great interest in the ways in which individualisation is being worked on by the younger generation (cf. Furlong and Carmel, 1997; Lagree, 2002). In contrast, there appears to be relatively little sociological analysis of how individualisation has shaped the education of the male and female learner citizen, especially in relation to contemporary pedagogy.1 In this chapter, I consider the formation of new personalised learners and individualised youth cultures in the UK in light of the social theories of refl exive individualisation in late modernity, questioning whether such an individualisation process contributes to the alleviation or aggravation of social injustice.
