ABSTRACT
Education systems are so inextricably linked to political and economic frameworks that to question their validity or purpose can feel risky, negative and futile. The maintenance of the hegemonic system can appear to be more important than transforming lives through learning, leading to Freire's 'problem of power'. This chapter examines the political pressures that impact on the process of education and use transactional analysis as a method for working with the often-conflicting demands that educators encounter. Formal education, and its accompanying schooling systems, is now an accepted human activity across the globe, and as such it is inevitably integrated into political and governmental thinking and structures. The hegemonic tradition of formal education, laid down in childhood, can also have a strong influence on adult education programmes, in that both students and trainers often have expectations of the learning situation and programme which are based on their experience of school.
