Understanding and Interrupting Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism in Education

Abstract

In this article I describe the ideological strategies of neoliberal and neoconservative educational reforms on the educational systems of the North and West. The principal strategies entail the labelling of culturally and economically disenfranchised communities through media and political debate in ways that shift responsibility for their educational marginalisation to both teachers and these communities themselves. The goals of educational systems are then recast in narrowly economic terms that call for market-based reforms. Democratic educational reform is examined as an alternative, with specific examples from Brazil and the United States.