Abstract
<p>The paper discusses two different approaches to education and the way they are embedded in different discourses on education. The market-oriented approach is compared to the democratic approach. In the paper, the discourse of the European Union is considered as an example of hegemonic neoliberal discourse while the discourse produced by the Summerhill School and the Self-Managed High School of Paris is addressed as a counterhegemonic discourse. Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies scholars such as Norman Fairclough, and critical pedagogic approaches such as Basil Bernstein’s and Paulo Freire’s, it will be shown that the difference in the ways these institutions represent the social world around them have a strong influence on their discourses on what education is for and should be like. For the European Union, education is a utilitarian means facilitating the adaptation of society to the economic system through the acquisition of predefined skills, while for the democratic approach it is rather a practice developing common decision-making and empowerment through an understanding of the world as a whole.</p>
Highlights
The preliminary question that I would like to answer is why bothering with investigating the neoliberal discourse of education.My claim is that there is a project called democratic education that will provide means for learners to transform the world they live in according to their interests
I have shown that the European commission conceives education according to a purely utilitarian logic, aimed at adapting education to a world-economy of “free movement” that is taken for granted as if available for anyone provided they acquire the “appropriate skills.”
The alternative texts drawing from democratic education praxis are an optimistic break from this hegemonic neoliberal order in the sense that they step aside the discourses of meritocracy and argue for discourses of democratic participation in shaping the curriculum and the relations of interaction on a daily basis while at school
Summary
The role of education in the discourses of the EU and of alternative schooling institutions Abstract The paper discusses two different approaches to education and the way they are embedded in different discourses on education. Drawing on Critical Discourse Studies scholars such as Norman Fairclough, and critical pedagogic approaches such as Basil Bernstein’s and Paulo Freire’s, it will be shown that the difference in the ways these institutions represent the social world around them have a strong influence on their discourses on what education is for and should be like. For the European Union, education is a utilitarian means facilitating the adaptation of society to the economic system through the acquisition of predefined skills, while for the democratic approach it is rather a practice developing common decision-making and empowerment through an understanding of the world as a whole.
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