The Racialized Discourse of Learning Loss: Disaster Capitalism and the Simulacrum of Practical Research in Education

• In Event: Posthumanism, Feminism, Critical Theory

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the racialized discourse of learning loss has functioned as the justification for disaster capitalism—the extraction of private profit from the public purse in the wake of a crisis. We begin by summarizing the history of learning loss as a focus of practical research from its origins in the late 1960s through the appearance of COVID-19. We then use critical discourse analysis and critical race hermeneutics to work through the literature of learning loss as an example of the racialized discourse of disaster capitalism in education, demonstrating how the research proceeded through the stages of Baudrillard’s simulacrum, the resulting interventions intensifying the privatization of public education and the resegregation of U.S. schooling.

Authors

• Richard C. Miller, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Katrina Liu, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Zhiyong Zhong, Minzu University of China