Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Ignorance Evolves
- 2 Breaking Out of Ignorance, 1945–80
- 3 Market Forces and Ignorance in the 1980s
- 4 Redistributing Ignorance in the 1990s
- 5 Bog-Standard Schools and Academies, 2000–10
- 6 Weirdos and Misfits, 2010–20
- 7 Ignorance in Covid/Post-Covid Schooling, 2020–21
- 8 Conclusion
- References
- Index
6 - Weirdos and Misfits, 2010–20
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Ignorance Evolves
- 2 Breaking Out of Ignorance, 1945–80
- 3 Market Forces and Ignorance in the 1980s
- 4 Redistributing Ignorance in the 1990s
- 5 Bog-Standard Schools and Academies, 2000–10
- 6 Weirdos and Misfits, 2010–20
- 7 Ignorance in Covid/Post-Covid Schooling, 2020–21
- 8 Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
The era of market triumphalism has come to an end … the most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not just an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets into spheres of life where they don’t belong.
Michael Sandel, What Money Can't Buy, 7
Boris Johnson's Chief Advisor issued a call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ to apply for jobs in Downing Street as plans to shake up Whitehall went into overdrive.
Rayner & Sheridan, “Weirdos and misfits for Whitehall”
Another busy decade from 2010 for global capitalism, education and me, none of us doing too well by the end of it. I joined the council of a further education college for four years and also joined a limited company of four of us to keep the local library open. I had an emeritus grant from the Leverhulme Foundation to study “low attainers in a global knowledge economy”, which let me visit schools and colleges in England, New York, Los Angeles, Malta, Finland and Germany, with conferences to talk about it all in Istanbul, Portugal, Holland and Chicago. Still more writing, including a book with Danny Dorling, Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire (2020). In this we noted that England had led the way out of the European Union and onto a downward spiral in world trade and respect, and that national identity was up for grabs again as it slowly dawned that there was no empire to loot any more. In 2013, along with a hundred other education professors, I was called a Marxist “actively trying to prevent children from getting the education they deserve” by then education secretary Michael Gove. He was keen on promoting democratic values that he claimed were “British” but along with his adviser, Dominic Cummings, seemed to have promoted some dodgy values himself. As a good sauvignon-blanc socialist I stood as a Labour candidate in a local council election and got 13 per cent of the votes in a very Tory village. My admiration for people actually working in schools increased, but incredulity grew as the White Papers, Acts and guidance from what had reverted to the DfE further entrenched a hierarchical, divisive and increasingly corrupted education system.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ignorance , pp. 121 - 146Publisher: Agenda PublishingPrint publication year: 2022