Choice, Public Education, and the Movement for Reproductive Justice: A Call for Coalition Building

• In Event: Analyzing Education Policy Discourse

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of choice and its different social, political, and economic functions in political debates about the value and nature of public education but aims to extend these discussions beyond critiques of neoliberalism to include a consideration of choice as it relates to reproduction. The central argument presented is that an analysis of the language of choice in relation to reproductive politics reveals the ways that attacks on public education are interconnected with attacks on reproductive justice and, further, that it is essential for those organizing to resist these attacks to see their work as similarly interconnected and to build coalitions across these spaces.

Author

• Caitlin Howlett, DePauw University