Can critical pedagogies interrrupt rightist policies?

Educational Theory

Volumn 50, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 229-254

  Apple, Michael W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041734390     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2000.00229.x     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Geoff Whitty, "Sociology and the Problem of Radical Educational Change," In Educability. Schools, and Ideology, ed. Michael Flude and John Ahicr (London: Halstead Press, 1974), 112-37.
2. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
3. Herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995).
4. John Rury and Jeffrey Mirel, "The Political Economy of Urban Education," In Review of Research in Education, 22
5. Michael W. Apple (Washington, DC: American Educational Researeh Association 1997), 19-110
6. Kenneth Teitelbaum, Schooling for Good Rebels (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996) and Steven Selden, Inheriting Shame (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).
7. Michael W. Apple, Official Knowledge, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000) and Michael W. Apple Cultural Politics and Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996).
8. Richard Hormstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: Free Press, 1994)
9. Joe Kincheloc, Shirley Steinberg, and Aaron Greeson, eds., Measured Lies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).
10. Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, 22-41.
11. Stuart Ranson, "Theorizing Educational Policy," Journal of Education Policy 10 (July 1995): 427.
12. David Gillborn, "Race, Nation, and Education," Institute of Education, University of London, 1997, p.2.
13. Gary McCulloch, "Privatising the Past," British journal of Educational Studies 45 (March 1997); 80.
14. E.D. Hirsch, The Schools We Want and Why We want Have Them (New York: Deubleday, 1996).
15. McCulIoch, "Privatising the Past," p.78.
16. John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets, and American Schools (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution) and Geoff Whitty, "CreatingQuasi-Markets in Education," in Apple, Review of Research in Education, 3-47.1990
17. David Gillborn, "Racism and Reform," British Educational Research Journal 23 (1997): 357.
18. Michael W. Apple, Power, Meaning, and Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 9) and Michael W. Apple, Teachers and Texts (New York: Routledge, 1988). Of course, there has been a considerable amount of literature on the question of "clarity" in critical educational writings, with contributions on both sides made by Burbules, Giroux, Lather, Gitlin, myself, and a number of others. My own position on this is that such a debate is essential and that while there is a danger in sacrificing theoretical elegance and the richness and subtlety of language in our attempts to be clear, there is still a good deal of arrogance and truly sloppy and merely rhetorical writing within the multiple communities of critical educational work. Obviously, there is a need to respond to complexity, but there is also a need not to marginalize sympathetic readers.1999
19. Gillborn, "Racism and Reform," 353.
20. Herrstein and Murray, The Bell Curve and Hirsch, The Schools We Want and Why We Don't Have Them.
21. Roger Dale Quoted in Inn Mentor, Yolande Muschamp, Peter Nicholls, Jenny Ozga, with Andrew Pollard, Work and Identity in the Primary School (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1997) 27.
22. Mentor, et al., Work and Identity in the Primary School, 27.
23. Whitty, "Creating Quasi-Markets in Education," 58.
24. Chubb and Moe, Politics. Markets, and American Schools.
25. Sally Power, David Halpin, and John Fitz, "Underpinning Choice and Diversity," In Educational Reform and Its Consequences, ed. Sally Tomlinson (London: IPPR/Rivers Oram Press, 1994), 27.
26. Whether there have been significant changes in this regard given the victory by "New Labour" over the Conservatives in the last election is open to question. Certain aspects of neoliberal and neoconservative policies have already been accepted by Labour, such as the acceptance of stringent cost controls on spending put in place by the previous Conservative government and an aggressive focus on "raising standards" in association with strict performance indicators. See, for example, David Gillborn and Deborah Youdell, Rationing Education (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000).
27. See Power, Halpin, and Fitz, "Underpinning Choice and Diversity" and Gillborn and Youdeli, Rationing Education.
28. Stephen Ball, Richard Bowe, and Sharon Gewirtz, "Market Forces and Parental Choice," In Tomlinson, Educational Reform and Its Consequences, 39.
29. Mark Oissen, "In Defense of the Welfare State and of Publicly Provided Education," Journal of Education Policy 11 (May 1996): 340.
30. Hall, Howe, and Gewirtz, "Market Forces and Parental Choice," 19.
31. We need to be clear that marketized systems in education often expressly have their conscious and unconscious raison d'etre in a fear of "the Other" and often are hidden expressions of a racialization of educational policy. Sec the discussion of the racial state in Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York: Routledge, 1994) and the analyses of race and representation in Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, eds., Race, Identity, and Representation in Education (New York: Routledge, 1994) and Cameron McCarthy, The Uses of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1998).
32. Bourdieu, Distinction.
33. Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz, "Market Forces and Parental Choice," 20-22.
34. Michelle Fine and Lois Weis, The Unknown City (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998) and Michael Dunier, Sidewalk (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999).
35. Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) and David Swartz, Culture and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
36. Apple, Teachers and Texts and Apple, Official Knowledge, 113-36.
37. Geoff Whitty, Sally Power, and David Halpin, Devolution and Choice in Education(Bristol, Pa.: Open University Press, This book will be cited as DCE in the text for all subsequent references.1998 12-13.
38. Olssen, "In Defense of the Welfare State and Publicly Provided Education,"
39. See also the discussion of managerialism and the state in John Clarke and Janet Newman, The Managerial State (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997).
40. This is discussed in greater detail in Michael W. Apple, Education and Power, 2d ed. (New York Routledge, 1995).
41. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, Debbie Epstein and Richard Johnson, Schooling Sexualities (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1998); and Sue Middleton, Disciplining Sexualities (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998).
42. Among the best work here is Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989) and Nancy Fraser, justice Interruptus (New York: Routledge, 1997).
43. Gillborn and Youdell, Rationing Education demonstrates this clearly. What is also important here is the fact that this has consistently happened even in the face of overt attempts to use such policies to alter existing inequalities.
44. Hugh Lauder and David Hughes, Trading in Futures (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999). 2.
45. Lauder and Hughes, Trading in Futures, 101.
46. Petter Aasen, "What Happened to Social Democratic Progressivism in Scandinavia? Restructuring Education in Sweden and Norway," Unpuhl. paper. Department of Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, 1998.
47. On the issue of a racial contract that underpins nearly all social arrangements in our kind of society, see Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). I am drawing as well on Benedict Anderson's position that nations are themselves based on "imagined communities." See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities(New York: Verso, 1991).
48. See, for example, the analysis of the gender dynamics surrounding neoliberal policies in Madeleine Amot, Miriam David, and Gaby Weiner, Closing the Gender Gap (Cambridge: Polity Press, The ways in which neoconscrvntivc policies act on and through the politics of sexuality and the body as well are nicely described in Epstein and Johnson, Schooling Sexualities.1999
49. Amy Stuart Wells, et al, Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform (I Los Angeles: UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, 1999).
50. Jeffrey R. Henig, Rethinking School Choice: Limits of a Market Metaphor (Princeton: Panceton University Press, 1994), 222.
51. See especially the discussion of the role of the state in this in Bourdieu, The State Nobility.
52. Loic Waequaint, "Foreword" To Bourdieu, The State Nobility, xiii.
53. Bourdieu, The State Nobility, 273.
54. Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz, "Market Forces and Parental Choice," 24.
55. Mentcr, et al., Work and Identity in the Primary School, 8.
56. Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, 22-41.
57. Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz, "Market Forces and Parental Choice," 23.
58. Power, Halpin, and Fitz, "Underpinning Choice and Diversity," 38.
59. Ranson, "Theorizing Educational Policy," 436.
60. Ranson, "Theorizing Educational Policy," 437.
61. Richard Hatcher and Barry Troyna Quoted in Ranson, "Theorizing Educational Policy," 438.
62. Philip O'Hear, "An Alternative National Curriculum," In Educational Reform and its Consequences, ed. Sally Tomlinson (London: IPPR/Rivers Oram Press, 1994), 66.
63. Catherine Gipps and Patricia Murphy, A Fair Test(Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1994), 204.
64. Basil Bernstein, The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse(New York: Routledge, 1990
65. Basil Bernstein, Pedegogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity (Bristol, Pa.: Taylor and Francis, 1996
66. Apple, Official Knowledge, 61-88.
67. J. Evans and D. Penney, "The Politics of Pedagogy," Journal of Education Policy 10 (January 1995): 27-44.
68. Ting-Hong Wong and Michael W. Apple, "Rethinking the Education/State Formation Connection," Unpublished manuscript.
69. Terri Seddion, "Markets and the English," British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1997): 165-66.
70. Allan Luke, "Series Editor's Introduction" To Jay Lemke, Textual Politics (Bristol, Pa.: Taylor and Francis, 1995), vi-vii.
71. Rethinking Schools is one of the best examples of the ways critical academics, elementary/middle/high school teachers, students, and community activists can work together in non-elitist ways. Information can he obtained from Rethinking Schools, 1001 E. Keefe Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53212, USA. for or faxes, the number is 414-964-7220. The website is (June 2000).
72. Michael W. Apple and James A. Beane Democratic Schools(Washington: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1995).
73. Translations of this volume have been or are due to he published in Japan, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Spam Portugal, and elsewhere. A Commonwealth edition for the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and other nations has also recently appeared. See Michael W. Apple and James A. Beane, eds., Democratic Schools: Lessons From the Chalk Face(Buckingham: Open University Press, Thus, it is clear that providing critical answers to the pressing issues of "What do I do on Monday ?" is seen as crucial in a number of nations.1999
74. Apple, Teachers and Texts and Apple, Power, Meaning, and Identity.
75. Dennis Carlson and Michael W. Apple, "Critical Educational Theory in Unsettling Times," InPower/Knowledge/Pedagogy, ed. Dennis Carlson and Michael W. Apple (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 1-38.
76. Henry Giroux., Border Crossings (Routledge, 1992), 219.
77. One of the clearest discussion of the ethical and political dilemmas of doing critical theoretical and empirical work with due recognition of the importance of connecting this work to the lived culture of social actors in their everyday lives can he found in Michelle Fine and Lois Weis, The Unknown City, See also Carlson and Apple, Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy.w264-88