Dave Hill

Books, Banks and Bullets: Controlling Our Minds — The Global Project of Imperialistic and Militaristic Neo-Liberalism and its Effect on Education Policy:

This article focuses on global trends in education policy during the current epoch of imperializing, militaristic, neo-liberal global capital. It is based on an analysis that global capital, in the form of dominant US multinational capital, together with its client governments, uses the repressive and ideological apparatuses of the state to advance its interests, and to marginalize, terrorize, weaken, or kill those who stand in its way. What we are seeing is class war from above — war by national and global capitalist classes against national and global working classes. The author identifies global and national characteristics of the ideological and repressive state apparatuses that impose (broadly neo-liberal) educational and wider social, cultural, economic, and fiscal policy as part of the hegemonic activity of US-led global neo-liberal capital. In particular, he examines the repression of critical thought and oppositional activity within the sites of teacher education, schooling, and university/higher education — the compression and repression of critical space in education today.

Critical Teacher Education, New Labour, and the Global Project of Neoliberal Capital

The first part of this article contextualises ‘education reform’ – the restructuring of education and teacher education – within the global and national requirements and demands of Capital in the current epoch of global neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The second part analyses developments in teacher education in England and Wales under both Conservatives (1979–97) and New Labour (1997–2006) and the extent of continuities between the two. These developments have resulted in the detheorised, non-egalitarian and technicist state of teacher education in England and Wales, with its marginalisation of issues of the social contexts of education, and issues of equality/inequality. These silences work to produce teachers more fit to develop children and young adults fit for the purposes of Capital. The third part sets out a series of progressive egalitarian policy principles and proposals that constitute an egalitarian manifesto for education and for critical teacher education and critical pedagogy, very distinct from both the Conservative and New Labour policies, and calls for critical transformative egalitarian education.

Between Postmodernism and Nowhere: The Predicament of the Postmodernist

This paper counters Blakes (1996) claim that educational neo-Marxism ‘died’ in the 1970s through demonstrating that there has been a substantial output of neo-Marxist educational writings since 1980. Blake also promotes postmodernism as a resource for rejuvenating educational theory. The paper demonstrates that postmodernism is inadequate as a basis for rethinking educational theory and for forging a radical educational politics.

Games of Despair and Rhetorics of Resistance: postmodernism, education and reaction

In the first part of the paper, we begin by attempting to establish the parameters of the eclectic concept of postmodernism. We then evaluate what have been described as two different strands of postmodernism; postmodernism of reaction’ and postmodernism of resistance’ and conclude that, while there are clear differences in intention and in emphasis, the ‘two postmodernisms’ have too much in common to be thought of as separate discourses. Next, we try to identify some key problems with postmodernism per se. Our central argument is that, contra the postmodern rejection of the metanarrative, a Marxist analysis still has most purchase in explaining economic, political, social and cultural changes and current developments in capitalist societies. We argue that postmodernist analyses in general, in their marginalisation and/or neglect of the determining effects of the relations of production, are essentially reactionary. While noting a range of problems with postmodernism, we focus on its methodology and on it...

Social Class and Education

Introduction In this chapter I discuss the relationship between social class, society and education. The perspective adopted is Marxist, In Part One, I discuss social class and how it is measured. In Part Two, I present some of the main concepts of Marxist social class analysis. In Part Three, I relate these concepts to education, referring to the work of Bourdieu, Althusser, Bowles and Gintis, and recent work by Duffield and her associates. In Part Four, I differentiate between two types of Marxist analysis — Structuralist neo-Marxism and Culturalist neo-Marxism.

Marxist state theory and state autonomy theory: the case of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education

Abstract In recent times, there have been a number of critiques of Marxist and neo‐Marxist analyses of the state and education policy. These have drawn on postmodernist, ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ and state autonomy perspectives. While the postmodernist and ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ approaches have attracted critical response, to date, the state autonomy perspective has, to our knowledge, gone unchallenged. To address this theoretical lacuna, this paper analyses one writers attempt, via an historical case study, to uphold state autonomy theory by detailing the ongoing relationship between one quasi‐state agency and the practice of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education. We argue that there are serious conceptual weaknesses in this latest attempt to apply state autonomy theory to educational policy analysis. The arguments in the case study under consideration are seriously compromised by a basically flawed hypothesis, a misrepresentation of contemporary (neo‐) Marxist education policy analysis and by a fail...

The citizen as 'individual' and nationalist or 'social' and internationalist? What is the role of education?

This paper opposesthe view of the individual enshirined in. Thacherism the private persorr in the mardet) and its accompayning ideology of nationalism in favour of social critizenship, collective empowerment and internationalism is then focusses on education, with particular reference to teacher education; on the one hand, as it is currently used to foster com positive individualism and nationalism and on the other, as a potential for encouraging social citizenship, cooperation and internationalism.

Resistance Postmodernism: Emancipatory politics for a new era or academic chic for a defeatist intelligentsia?

In this paper, we attempt an evaluation of what has been described as ‘postmodernism or resistance’. We conclude that, while there are clear differences in intention and in emphasis between it and what has described as ‘postmodernism of reaction’, the ‘two postmodernisms’ have too much in common to be thought of as separate discourses. It is more accurate, we suggest, to think of a continuum, with ‘postmodernism of reaction’ at one end and ‘postmodernism of resistance’ at the other. While one end of the continuum is peopled by reactionaries, engrossed in ‘games of despair’, the other is composed of defeatist ex-socialists, engaged in a rhetoric of left posturing.

Class, Neoliberal Capitalism in Crisis, and the Resistant and Transformative Role of Education and Knowledge Workers

This chapter calls for transformative activism by education and other cultural workers—teachers, lecturers, journalists—in order to develop an economically just economy, polity, and society.