Democratic, Dissensual, Educational Publics and Pedagogic Rights

• In Event: Learning for Social Change and Accountability: Critical Perspectives in the Age of Privatization

Abstract

In this paper we link the work of Basil Bernstein (a sociologist of education) and Jacques Rancière (a polemicist and radical philosopher). Why? From very different starting points and for different reasons each scholar is concerned (at least in part) with the ongoing failure of education to live up to its promise. Each scholar poses questions about public education (more strongly Bernstein), and democracy (more strongly Rancière). Yet they are radically opposed on the basis of their work. Our project then as we have worked through Bernstein and Rancière is to develop proposals for how public education might be constituted through dissensus (Rancière) and pedagogical rights (Bernstein).

Authors

• Stephen Heimans, University of Queensland

• Parlo Singh, Griffith University