ABSTRACT
Schooling and politics are inseparable. Schools are shaped by the wider economic, political and social context which is reflected in education policy and legislation that delineates what education is and constrains what schooling can be. In turn schools become sites where these wider economic, political and social issues are played out through organizational structures and systems, the curriculum and pedagogy and the subjectivities available to teachers and students; where educators and students are managed, monitored, compared and held accountable; and where normative understandings of schooling and its subjects are sedimented. And schools are also sites where abiding inequalities are made and remade, even as these become the focus of policy interventions. Schooling, then, is shaped and constrained by the prevailing politics of the moment; it is fundamentally political even if the politics of education are often opaque or taken as the normal state of affairs. After 30 years of neoliberal government in the world’s wealthiest nations, a neo-liberal consensus has been established globally and neo-liberal values and approaches to government have proliferated and become entrenched. Education has been a key site for this neo-liberal reform and education systems, values, content and goals are now firmly shaped and constrained in these terms. Yet there is discontent with the current education landscape – from employers bemoaning inadequately prepared employees and parent-‘consumers’ finding that the ‘choice’ they have been promised does not result in their choices being realized, to students disillusioned with schooling and fully aware that it may well not lead to the future opportunities that it claims to offer. This suggests a continuing, if altered, place for radical and critical traditions in education. While education might be captured by neo-liberalism, possibilities for change remain – we should not give up on education.
