Education, under the neoliberal doctrine, has undoubtedly undergone multiple reforms that have led to its economisation. They have also turned education into a mechanism that intensifies the reproduction of inequalities and suppresses diversity, which only helps to perpetuate social exclusion. Despite radical criticism of neoliberalism's effect on…

Student voice has held a prominent place in the tradition of progressive and democratic schools and classrooms around the world. Once engaged it offers a chance to develop and use crucial skills for democratic living and to shape meaningful contexts for learning as students bring their own personal questions, cultural experiences, resources, and…

This article traces the development of the wartime Japanese curriculum, which was deliberately designed to implement 'Japanese' approaches to science, and its relation to the previously dominant educational approach, learning by doing. It examines the work of Shiono Naomichi (1898-1969), who served as the curriculum and textbook revision director…

In a number of more recent studies, it has been argued that an increasingly presentistic temporal regime has emerged in educational politics since the 1970s. Against this backdrop, with Sweden as an exemplar, the purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it serves to elaborate on how this presentist temporal logic in the educational field appears…

Any enthusiast of classical liberal education will be much dismayed at the current state of education in America, both in K-12 schools and our colleges and universities. In this article, the author highlights how critics of American education have neglected the issues of procedure and pedagogy--the "hows" of schooling--and he argues that…

By exploring the tensions, impacts, and origins of major controversies relating to schooling and curricula since the early twentieth century, this insightful text illustrates how fear has played a key role in steering the development of education in the United States. Through rigorous historical investigation, Evans demonstrates how numerous…

Risinghill School was one of a new type of secondary school, called a 'comprehensive', which opened in Islington, north London, in 1960, under the headship of Michael Duane. He had a cause: a clear view as to the style of school that he wished to create: it was one that was progressive, democratic and inclusive: for him, the true essence of a…

Since its inception in 1907 New Zealand's "School Journal" has provided primary schools with free good quality material to be used for a variety of purposes in the classroom. At the same time, in reflecting curriculum reforms and changing perceptions of literacy learning, it has reproduced often conflicting ideologies. This article…

This article brings the Italian activist and thinker Antonio Gramsci's theory of organic intellectualism and the Canadian historian Ian McKay's theory of liberal state-formation to bear on the "Indian Question" -- or how best to yoke Indigenous children and young people to the modern Canadian state. From the mid-nineteenth to the…

Few institutions receive more attention and more funding than our education system. And it certainly warrants that attention; after all, education plays a big part in determining the future. Reformers abound, for both higher education and the K-12 system. But they have largely missed one of the most crucial components of education, our schools of…

This article examines the career of the educationalist, Conservative politician and published writer on education and politics, Rhodes Boyson (1925-2012). As an educationalist, Boyson established Highbury Grove Boys' Comprehensive School in Islington, North London: An inner-city school which was antithetical to the wave of progressivism in the…

The article examines the most recent national-level textbook writing process in India during which activists, academics, and government bureaucrats came together to produce texts guided by a progressive vision of education. In the place of textbooks that traditionally relied on rote methods and adopted a conservative stance toward social issues,…

Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two ideologies that currently plague education. The individualistic free-market ideology of neoliberalism and the unbridled nationalistic exceptionalism associated with neoconservatism often breed a narrowed, overstandardized curriculum and a hyper-testing environment that discourage critical intellectual…

This essay reviews Atkinson's article "Dewey and Democracy" and argues that while Dewey and the social foundations classroom may indeed be important for teacher preparation, it is not in the way Atkinson suggests. Namely, I argue that Atkinson's essay has three distinct (yet interrelated) issues: his problematic oversimplifications, what…

While political theorists have elaborated on the phenomenon of neoliberal multiculturalism, many progressive educational scholars have yet to adequately theorize this nexus. Neoliberalism either remains unproblematized or, in some instances, it is imagined as a tendency that is antithetical to and incompatible with multiculturalism. This essay…