The left and the right in educational policy-making

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the main issues of the New Right, primarily freedom of choice and the market mechanism, have had a direct consequences on the perception of education on the part of policy makers, politicians, and social philosophers. Sociologists like Apple (1993a, b),Ball (1990, 1993),Brown (1992) and others have been analysing the links that exist between New Right philosophy and the new education policies in the West, particularly in Britain and the USA. Ball, for instance, notes that 'the market, as a policy alternative to 'public monopoly education', is clearly the education policy flavour of the decade across the Western world.' (1993: 3). Apple writes that 'no matter what political party is in the White House, this is a time of rightist resurgence in education' (1993a: 9). We should also not that New Right think-thanks, like the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, have special sections within them which focus on education, and have published an impressive amount of literature on this field.