Education is not an unchanging social mechanism; it is rather something which changes according to historical conditions. Before the 1960s, education in the Western world was mainly accessible for the upper classes of society and wasn’t regarded as a public good. After decades of resistance it transformed into a public good, though mainly as an complement of the market. Especially within the current neoliberal ideology, education is seen as an investment which should prepare the customer-student for the needs of the market. Thus the way education is organized corresponds to this ideology.
But through history there have been many ideas and experiments about the role of education and its function in society, think of Freire’s problem-posing education, the Soviet model of education or Krishnamurti’s educational paradigm. In this reading group session we will discuss some of these paradigms in order to understand the different perspectives on education and its role in society.
Homework:
- Karl Marx – Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas
- Henry A Giroux – Can Democratic Education Survive in a Neoliberal Society
- J-Krishnamurti-Education-and-the-Significance-of-life
This is session 5 of the KSU Reading Group on Education in the Age of Neoliberalism: http://
