Public Education for the Common Good

Overview & Synopsis

The UK's neoliberal polity is undermining the very public institutions it requires to resolve its most pressing collective predicaments, in education especially, with its essential role of enabling society to learn the virtues and practices of cooperative enquiry necessary for remaking the common good. The author begins by understanding the nature of public goods and services before discussing the damage wrought by neoliberal governance. The remaking of public education, he argues, presupposes three projects: first, inaugurating public, democratic ownership of all education; second, re-imagining public service comprehensive education; and third, reconstituting democratic public participation for active citizenship in education and community governance.