In Defence of the School: A Public Issue by Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons; J. McMartin, trans. Leuven, E-ducation, Culture and Society Publishers, 2013. Pp. 155. E-book, free to download.

Abstract

Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons’ latest work, In Defence of the School (2013), is best read as part of a body of emerging scholarship that mobilises contemporary continental political philosophers – namely Jacques Rancière and Giorgio Agamben, with hints of Foucault and Derrida – in order to rethink the linkages between education, schooling, and democracy. The book is a clear continuation and expansion of the argument Masschelein and Simons introduced in their guest-edited volume of Educational Philosophy and Theory (2010), and in particular in the article they co-authored for that volume, ‘The Hatred of Public Schooling: The School as the Mark of Democracy’. The core argument being presented in this body of work is that the school, as an institution, is under attack from every side of the ideological spectrum. Whether for being ineffective and antiquated in the face of the changing markets and social requirements, or for being a mere site of social reproduction, corruption, and conservation of the status quo, schools seem to be in perennial need of reform, or are even a target for elimination. Therefore, schools are in need of advocates, and this is the role played by Masschelein and Simons. In Defence of the School is an unapologetic, passionate, loving piece of advocacy that harkens back to the origins of the school to state its essence, and the urgent need to, in some ways, go back to the basics as a paradoxical way of respecting the school’s inherent potential for reinvention.