Policy Press
Three Plurality: the idea and reality of choice
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Helen M. Gunter
Abstract
This chapter considers the continued dominance of the private over the common purposes of education. It focuses on access to a school and examines what this means for plurality. Notably, through the deployment of the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity, it gives prime attention to the demand side and how deregulation by the state means that parents have been offered ‘choice’ in the public system through schemes such as vouchers. The practices involved in offering and responding to the exercise of a preference for a ‘good’ school place is enabled through a form of depoliticisation by colonisation of globally networked market ideologies. Instinctively it seems that vouchers are enabling of plurality, but the chapter show how parental choice mechanisms are primarily rhetorical, by facilitating and strengthening segregation as a form of biopolitical distinctiveness.
Abstract
This chapter considers the continued dominance of the private over the common purposes of education. It focuses on access to a school and examines what this means for plurality. Notably, through the deployment of the Education Policy Knowledgeable Polity, it gives prime attention to the demand side and how deregulation by the state means that parents have been offered ‘choice’ in the public system through schemes such as vouchers. The practices involved in offering and responding to the exercise of a preference for a ‘good’ school place is enabled through a form of depoliticisation by colonisation of globally networked market ideologies. Instinctively it seems that vouchers are enabling of plurality, but the chapter show how parental choice mechanisms are primarily rhetorical, by facilitating and strengthening segregation as a form of biopolitical distinctiveness.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iv
- Acknowledgements v
- Biography vii
- Thinking politically: challenging public education 1
- Action: professionals learning to labour 25
- Plurality: the idea and reality of choice 47
- Natality: the opportunity to do new things 69
- Promising: school diversity and competition 91
- Responsibility and judging: producing and using numbers 113
- Forgiving: the end of public education 135
- Thinking politically again: the conditions for public education 157
- References 179
- Index 217
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iv
- Acknowledgements v
- Biography vii
- Thinking politically: challenging public education 1
- Action: professionals learning to labour 25
- Plurality: the idea and reality of choice 47
- Natality: the opportunity to do new things 69
- Promising: school diversity and competition 91
- Responsibility and judging: producing and using numbers 113
- Forgiving: the end of public education 135
- Thinking politically again: the conditions for public education 157
- References 179
- Index 217
