ABSTRACT
The purposes of educational administration are taken for granted as being those of adjusting the individual to the society or economy, or both. A critical educational theory of administration would be committed to ensuring that technical, practical and emancipatory interests were considered with regard to each of these message systems. Teachers are resistant to the privatisation and marketing of education, for quite good reasons. The role of educational administrators in protecting such space against the encroachment of technocratic consciousness is vital to the process of social evolution through mutual learning. A critical theory of educational administration would have precisely such a goal. The problem is a central and crucial one for education, because education is fundamentally concerned with the construction of meaning and identity—that is, with psychological and cultural processes. Education must produce a more skilled workforce and impose tighter social discipline so that the economy can be more competitive.
