Neutrality in Education and Derrida's Call for "Double Duty"

Abstract

A number of scholars have declared that if “the political neutrality of [schools, education, and] school curriculum was a commonplace assumption in the pre1970s,” it is obvious that it is no longer the case to anyone who cares to look at the development of education in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, many authors express a general consensus that the fates of society and education are tightly intertwined. Richard Brosio reports that “from the time of Horace Mann and the‘common school’ crusade of the 1840s, schools have had to deal with the conflicting imperatives of democracy and capitalism.” Effects of this conflict on education have been recorded through the years. Brosio confirmed that “the complex relationships between the school system and the larger host society have been described and analyzed quite effectively by educational historians, philosophers, and sociologists.” Yet attempts at exclusions of various types are reported regularly.