Deschooling from above

Abstract

The concept of deschooling has been making a comeback, after having been largely written off by the mainstream education research community in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, it is not just anti-capitalist radicals who are rediscovering the appeal of deschooling, but political and economic elites as well. This article traces some of the central claims and practices of this elite-led movement – that we call ‘deschooling from above’ – in current attacks on universal higher education, projects to deschool professional and technical training and an abandonment of past commitments to universal compulsory schooling. The authors argue that all of these trends need to be situated within the broader context of the unravelling of the education fix of the previous era of global (neoliberal) capitalist restructuring.