ERIC Number: EJ1184977
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0141-9072
EISSN: N/A
Education and Democratization: Moving beyond the Service of Goods to Write the Poetry of the Future
Clarke, Matthew
Scottish Educational Review, v49 n2 p42-55 2017
2016 marks the centenary of "Democracy and Education", in which Dewey argued for the mutually dependent relationship linking a legitimate education system and a thriving democracy. A century later, it seems, democracy and education have been decoupled, with both undermined by developments such as growing inequality, declining participation and trust in democratic processes, technorationalism that reframes political issues in terms of efficiency, and growing political extremism. Meanwhile, recent years have seen the increasing grip of market-based principles and techniques of measurement and evaluation as stateendorsed norms across various sectors and domains of society, including education, reflecting an instrumentalism Lacan described in terms of 'the service of goods'. Against this background, this paper draws on resources from political and psychoanalytic theory to rethink and reanimate the links between education and democracy, thereby encouraging and emboldening educators to, in David Harvey's words, "write the poetry of their own future".
Descriptors: Democracy, Education, Psychiatry, Politics, Neoliberalism, Futures (of Society), Resistance (Psychology), Fantasy
Scottish Educational Review. School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ, Scotland, UK. e-mail: ser@stir.ac.uk; Website: http://www.scotedreview.org.uk
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A