Deschooling the 21st Century

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Alternative Learning: Deschooling, Homeschooling, and Online Education

Abstract

This paper argues that current U.S. educational reform is properly conceived not simply as a march toward intensification, standardization, and regimentation, but as product of intertwining technological, discursive, and structural events and trends capable of producing new templates for action and cultural transmission. In other words, current reforms reflect a memetic shift in the meaning, means, and purposes of “education.” As part of the argument, this paper examines a number of current popular educational memes (e.g., “Math,” “21st Century learning,” “zero tolerance”) as well as their contribution to the reconstruction of social reality and to the marginalization, “deconception,” and “paranormalization” of competing philosophic principles and arguments.

Author

• Roger C. Shouse, The Pennsylvania State University