ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the most frequently aired perspectives on how education is going wrong and how education ought to change. It is organized around six perspectives: neoliberal; conservative; liberal; reformist; progressive; and radical and it is followed by a discussion of what can be learnt from advocacy. Neoliberalism builds on the concept of economic liberalism – the belief in free markets that was core to the global economic and technological revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Politically those who are self-defined as Conservative are often aligned, or sympathetic, to the neoliberal position described earlier and stand on platforms that seek to extend the market in schools. The idea of extending the free market in education is often seen as privileging those with capital but J. Tooley and P. Dixon looked at private schools in the education of the poor in India, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya.
