Cultural Politics And Education

Offers an analysis of the debates of right-wing proposals for change in the education system. The text presents the causes and effects of integrating schools into the corporate agenda and demonstrates who will be the winners and losers as conservatism gains in strength.

"Innovative study of the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution, using the story of rural schools. Focuses on Puebla and Sonora and the attempt by the central government to implement socialist education and to advance its nationalist agenda. Stresses the importance of negotiation among national and local leaders, teachers and peasants"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

In academia, the effects of the “cultural turn” have been felt deeply. In everyday life, tenets from cultural politics have influenced how people behave or regard their options for action, such as the reconfiguration of social movements, protests, and praxis in general.

'The Politics of Education' provides an introduction to both the political dimensions of schooling and the politics of recent educational reform debates. The book offers both undergraduates and starting graduate students in education an understanding of numerous dimensions of the contested field of education, addressing questions of political economy and class, cultural politics, race, gender, globalisation, neoliberalism, and biopolitics. Discussions work through contemporary reform debates that include some of the most widely discussed reform topics such as school privatisation, standardised testing, common core curriculum, discipline, and technology. The book covers contemporary educational debates and seriously considers views across the political spectrum from the vantage point of critical education, emphasising schooling for broader social equality and justice.

While attention has been paid to various aspects of music education in China, to date no single publication has systematically addressed the complex interplay of sociopolitical transformations underlying the development of popular music and music education in the multilevel culture of China. Before the implementation of the new curriculum reforms in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there was neither Chinese nor Western popular music in textbook materials. Popular culture had long been prohibited in school music education by China’s strong revolutionary orientation, which feared ‘spiritual pollution’ by Western cultures. However, since the early twenty-first century, education reform has attempted to help students deal with experiences in their daily lives and has officially included learning the canon of popular music in the music curriculum. In relation to this topic, this book analyses how social transformation and cultural politics have affected community relations and the transmission of popular music through school music education. Ho presents music and music education as sociopolitical constructions of nationalism and globalization. Moreover, how popular music is received in national and global contexts and how it affects the construction of social and musical meanings in school music education, as well as the reformation of music education in mainland China, is discussed. Based on the perspectives of school music teachers and students, the findings of the empirical studies in this book address the power and potential use of popular music in school music education as a producer and reproducer of cultural politics in the music curriculum in the mainland.

Why are development discourses of the ‘poor child’ in need of radical revision? What are the theoretical and methodological challenges and possibilities for ethical understandings of childhoods and poverty? The ‘poor child’ at the centre of development activity is often measured against and reformed towards an idealised and globalised child subject. This book examines why such normative discourses of childhood are in need of radical revision and explores how development research and practice can work to ‘unsettle’ the global child. It engages the cultural politics of childhood – a politics of equality, identity and representation – as a methodological and theoretical orientation to rethink the relationships between education, development, and poverty in children’s lives. This book brings multiple disciplinary perspectives, including cultural studies, sociology, and film studies, into conversation with development studies and development education in order to provide new ways of approaching and conceptualising the ‘poor child’. The researchers draw on a range of methodological frames – such as poststructuralist discourse analysis, arts based research, ethnographic studies and textual analysis – to unpack the hidden assumptions about children within development discourses. Chapters in this book reveal the diverse ways in which the notion of childhood is understood and enacted in a range of national settings, including Kenya, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom. They explore the complex constitution of children’s lives through cultural, policy, and educational practices. The volume’s focus on children’s experiences and voices shows how children themselves are challenging the representation and material conditions of their lives. The ‘Poor Child’ will be of particular interest to postgraduate students and scholars working in the fields of childhood studies, international and comparative education, and development studies.

This book pays attention to education in India as part of several overlapping stories developed along different axes: stories of dissent, contestations, appropriation and social action. It historicises the enterprise of formal education by paying attention to the numerous policy shifts. Further, it theorises the education policy discourse by analysing the ways in which education is increasingly being shaped by international/transnational knowledge production, actors and norms. Focusing on the cultural politics of education policy production, circulation and translation across different contexts, the book revisits some of the long-standing and unresolved debates on social reforms, justice, nationalism and mobility. Evolution of ideas such as mass education, national education, adult literacy and education through public-private-partnerships showcase the momentous shifts in education policy over the course of last century. Ideas, institutional and economic arrangements, administrative formulations and frameworks for implementation make frequent appearances in the cultural as well as political reading of education policy. In a departure from the traditional policy research, this work sees policy as socially and culturally constructed; connected to questions of power, context and struggle; and part of a number of processes at large.

Theory pedagogy politics : the crisis of "The Subject" in the humanities / Mas'ud Zavarzadeh and Donald Morton -- The subject of literary and the subject of cultural studies / Antony Easthope -- Post-structuralist feminist practice / Chris Weedon -- Resistance to sexual theory / Juliet Flower MacCannell -- Principle pleasures : obsessional pedagogies or (ac)counting from Irving Babbitt to Allan Bloom / Katherine Cummings -- Canonicity and theory : toward a post-structuralist pedagogy / R. Radhakrishnan -- The spirit hand : on the index of pedagogy and propaganda / Gregory L. Ulmer -- Radical pedagogy as cultural politics : beyond the discourse of critique and anti-utopianism / Henry A. Giroux and Peter L. McLaren -- Charisma and authority in literary study and theory study / Heather Murray -- Intellectual work and pedagogical circulation in English / Evan Watkins -- The university and revolutionary practice : a letter toward a Leninist pedagogy / Adam Katz.

This book introduces central assumptions that govern postmodern and feminist theory, offering educators a language to create new ways of conceiving pedagogy and its relationship to social, cultural, and intellectual life. It challenges some of the major categories and practices that have dominated educational theory and practice in the United States and in other countries since the beginning of the twentieth century. Rejecting the apolitical nature of some postmodern discourses and the separatism characteristic of some versions of cultural feminism, the contributors take a political stand rooted in concern with cultural and social justice. In so doing, these essays represent a linguistic shift regarding how we think about ethics, foundationalism, difference, and culture. The selections present a concern with developing a language that is critical of master narratives, racism, sexism, and those technologies of power in schools that subjugate, infantilize, and oppress students. The authors also develop a language of possibility that focuses on analyzing how power can be linked productively to knowledge, how teachers can construct classroom social relations based on notions of equity and justice, how critical pedagogy can contribute to an identity politics that is grounded in democratic relations, and how teachers can develop analyses that enable students to become self-reflective actors as they transform themselves and the conditions of their social existence.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.