Public Education in an Econocracy
Is there hope in fighting in the neoliberal agenda for education? Is there a chance of pushing back against a one-dimensional, market driven approach toeverything, one that most certainly includes education?
An answer lies in Paul Carr and Brad Porfilio’s, The Obama Education Files: Is There Hope to Stop the Neoliberal Agenda in Education? This article has been around since 2011. I just stumbled on to it, and it goes a long way in helping to understand some of the underlying forces that are working to dismantle public education- and the bigger picture of how these forces are working to dismantle anything labelled “public.”
The article rests on the assumption that, “The political economy of democracy must, we argue, foreshadow any serious discussion of the role of education in contemporary times.”
And what is the current state of this “political economy”? The authors refer to this as an “econ-ocracy,” a word which another scholar defines as “…a society where economic efficiency take precedence over all other policy decisions…” A very fitting definition.
So the context for political decision making occurs within a neoliberal econocracy, which means that the primary value that determines anything is Public Education in an Econocracy | educarenow: