This philosophical essay explores the purpose of educational leadership with a particular focus on where and how leaders interact with education policy. Building on the idea that the purpose of educational leadership should differ from that of business management, this paper analyzes how mechanisms of policy engineering might construct educational…

Our discussion addresses Benjamin's antifascist education through the lens of aesthetic education and Herbert Marcuse's aesthetic theory. While this theme is not explicitly discussed in Lewis' book, we argue that it is essential for understanding the full political and educational potential of what he calls "the art of straying in the…

In this paper, I critique the ideology of competition in school music using the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, including his concepts of the performance principle and "The Great Refusal," which he saw as defining aspects of what he termed a one-dimensional society. Under a one-dimensional neoliberal educational regime, as can be found in…

The author takes up Karl Marx's and Herbert Marcuse's investigations into the possibilities for expanding freedom and play. She begins with an analysis of the essential questions about labor that need attention before considering theoretical and practical attempts to render necessary work superfluous in the interests of free play. She considers…

This essay addresses behaviorism in music education and its possible connections to a kind of technicist thinking, first described by Herbert Marcuse, that ritualizes concepts and reduces them to a series of brute operations or behaviors. Labeled "technological rationalization" by early critical theorists, the mindset has potentially…

The complacent insularity of individualism provides the background against which the convivial performativity of art is conceptualized as acts of citizenship in this article. The alienated sculptural figures and figurations of Alberto Giacometti's "Piazza" are considered germane in addressing the self-centered, collective obsession with…

Freedom of expression is imperiled on today's college campuses. Citizens and educators alike are concerned about the number of shout-downs and disinvitations and their silencing effect on intellectual diversity. The use of speech codes, "safe spaces," new rules demanding "trigger warnings," and condemning…

I contrast the lenses that Norman Mailer, Herbert Marcuse, and Karl Marx bring to their analyses of social life, exploring the contributions and limits of their respective approaches. I then propose what I call a "multilectical" theoretical lens that encompasses the strengths of all three and leans on the insights of post-Marxist…

In a neoliberal moment of cultural production marked by commodification and the dominance of economic values, it is necessary to investigate the cultural, social, and aesthetic value of art. By examining Herbert Marcuse's aesthetic dimension, this article seeks to locate the political and pedagogic potential both in the aesthetics and in the…

Herbert Marcuse's concept of repressive tolerance argues that behind the justification of tolerance lies the possibility of ideological domination. Tolerance allows intolerable practices to go unchallenged and flattens discussion to assume all viewpoints have equal validity. When alternative, dissenting views are inserted into the curriculum…

The modernisation of education and other public services remains a major political objective of the current Coalition government in the UK. This paper focuses on "Tory Modernisation 2.0," a blueprint for the second stage of the public sector reform produced by the Conservative pressure group, Bright Blue. From the critical theory…

The examination of a mid-18th-century biography about a significant developer of Ojibwe and Cree-based syllabics is the starting point for an interrogation of socio-historical cultural cohesion in Canada. The textual creole of syllabics, used widely in business and commerce, provides clues to the dynamics of cross-cultural linguistics. In this…

Leading Frankfurt School theorist, Herbert Marcuse, possessed an intricate relationship with higher education. As a professor, Marcuse participated in the 1960s student movements, believing that college students had potential as revolutionary subjects. Additionally, Marcuse advocated for a college education empowered by a form of praxis that…

This article seeks to clarify the potential that Herbert Marcuse's and Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytic accounts may have with respect to the philosophy of education today. Marcuse and Adorno both share the view that psychoanalytic theory enables a deeper understanding of the social and biological dynamics of consciousness. For both thinkers,…

In this essay David Kennedy argues that children represent one vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult-child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. Following Herbert Marcuse's invocation of a "new sensibility," Kennedy argues that the…