Reversing the Marketization of Education: (Re)Framing the Historical Goals of Education in Opposition to Neoliberal Education Reform

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Discourse Analyses of Market-Based Education Reforms

Abstract

Educators, scholars, and activists who oppose market-oriented education policies have recast the notion of ‘choice’ in education in support of community control and public investment policies. How do arguments that resist marketization and privatization by using the language of choice fit within the history of arguments over American education? The use of ‘choice’ language in opposition to market-oriented reforms can be understood as an effort to re-center the ‘liberation’ goal of education alongside historical goals of education that emphasize its ‘public’ benefits. I review and extend Labaree’s (1997) argument about the historical goals of American education, in order to present a framework that coherently situates anti-marketization arguments that use the language of ‘choice’ within the historical goals of American education.

Author

• Jeremy Lee Singer, Wayne State University