EDST 596A (951)
Philosophy and Educational Policy: Neo-liberalism
Summer Term 2A
July 6-24, 2020
P. Taylor Webb
The course welcomes students from all fields and disciplines, and there are no prerequisites.
PDF Poster: EDST 596A (951)
EDST 596A introduces students to the economic and political rationalities of neo-liberalism in relation to competing conceptions and practices of education policy and educational governance. The seminar begins with a historical review of neo-liberalism and then surveys contemporary neo-liberal expansions into K-12 schooling and curriculum, and higher and adult education. The seminar intersects with literatures on ‘globalizing educational policy’ (including Canada) and reviews processes and effects of educational neo-liberalism on gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, age, dis/ability, language, mobility, and class (e.g., access, knowledge). The seminar notes how neo-liberalism has constructed policy mechanisms to enforce its economic and political philosophies (e.g., rankings, accountabilities, markets), including the re-defining educational discourses related to ‘choice’, ‘freedom’, ‘performance’, ‘austerity’, and self-development or self-determination. Finally, the course examines how ideas of equity and equality have been de-politicized through educational neo-liberalism.
The course welcomes students from all fields and disciplines, and there are no prerequisites.
Topics include:
- Educational markets;
- Knowledge and academic capitalism;
- Ethnic and cultural commodifications;
- Responsibilised and entrepreneurial subjects;
- Policy networks, including public / private partnerships;
- Audit, performative, and surveillance cultures in education;
- The marketing of recognition and the privatization of difference.
Authors include (alphabetical): Michael Apple, Stephen Ball, Lauren Berlant, Wendy Brown, Pierre Bourdieu, Noam Chomsky, Bronwyn Davies, Angela Davis, Gilles Deleuze, Nancy Fraser, Michel Foucault, Milton Friedman, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, David Harvey, and Doreen Massey.
