Australian Students’ Ethical Views of Private Religious Schools in a Neoliberal Society

• In Event: Equity and Empowerment in Neoliberal Society

Abstract

The increase of private religious schools as marketized institutions raises ethical queries, including their appeal to students. Employing focus groups with Australian students, we identify ethical virtues in their views of such schooling in a neoliberal education market cultivating a conflicting ethics character seeking to respond to both collective and individual goals. Taking the virtue ethics approach, we illustrate students’ perception of such schooling as a financial enterprise contesting the virtues of justice, self-improvement, and courage. Students expressed, for example, ethical discomfort with a disjuncture between the schools’ emphasis on fee/affordability programs for greater accessibility and its paradoxical creation of unjust social divides between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’; calling for a courageous course of action ensuring equitable opportunities for all.

Author

• Ilana Finefter-Rosenbluh, Monash University