ERIC Number: EJ1069767
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1857
EISSN: N/A
Education as Spectacle
Thwaites, Trevor
Educational Philosophy and Theory, v47 n9 p904-917 2015
Global economic and advanced capitalist agendas have taken on ideological dimensions that are flat, precise and which assert "undeniable" facts. These agendas are gradually shaping a society and its education based on consumerism and a global economic order which is "not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle … goals are nothing, development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself". In this paper, I argue, in line with Debord, that teachers' work has moved from being predominantly controlled by technicist accountability and pedagogical conformity to become a form of decentred labour. Teachers' work has been transformed into the role of spectator, one who is destined to simply monitor events in the classroom and in technologized environments, caught between the economic world view and student consumer desire. In such a view, the teacher can do little more than watch while education, subjugated to economic dogma and digitized appearances, presents life as a spectacle of accumulation and desire.
Descriptors: Social Systems, Economic Factors, Teacher Role, Educational Philosophy, Ideology, Information Technology, Teaching Methods, Accountability, Electronic Learning, National Curriculum, Ownership, Political Influences, Global Approach, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New Zealand
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A