Educating the National Citizen in Neoliberal Times

Trans Inst Br Geogr

NS 28 387–403 2003ISSN 0020-2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2003

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan

Katharyne Mitchell

The paper is a broad, comparative investigation of shifts in the educational rhetoric and policy of three countries over the past two decades. Using England, Canada and the United States as case studies, I argue that the spirit of multiculturalism in education has shifted from a concern with the formation of tolerant and democratic national citizens who can work with and through difference, to a more strategic use of diversity for competitive advantage in the global marketplace. This shift is directly linked with and helps to facilitate the entrenchment of neoliberalism as it supports a privatization agenda, reduces the costs of social reproduction for the government, and aids in the constitution of subjects oriented to individual survival and/or success in the global economy.

key words

multiculturalism citizenship education neoliberalism

Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA email: [email protected]

revised manuscript received 18 July 2003

Introduction

If the Western citizen of the nineteenth centurywas a member of a consolidating nation, thecontemporary citizen of the twenty-first centuryis a member of a deterritorializing state.

1

How wereand are these citizens

educated

to be members oftheir respective communities? What is the relation-ship between state formation, economic organiza-tion and educational systems? How is this relationshipchanging in the contemporary neoliberal moment?And how are these fundamentally geographicalqueries? These are the central questions guidingthis paper, questions I believe to lie at the heart ofany understanding of how citizen-subjects areconstituted as members of a particular democraticcommunity.

My central premise is that national, publicsystems of education are currently under siegein many advanced industrial nations because ofprofound shifts in the social organization of theeconomy, and because of the altered spatial rela-tionship of individual states to new global eco-nomic regimes. Flexible systems of accumulation,

interlinked and interdependent with the processesof globalization and neoliberalism, have vastly alteredthe state’s relationship with economic actors andinstitutions, and at the same time have produced anew dynamic between the state and its citizenry.

2

In particular, contemporary shifts in the spatialdynamics of capital accumulation have had a strongimpact on state practices and national narratives ofcitizenship and how children should be educatedto be members of a democratic community (Torres1998; Mitchell 2001).

Recent changes in the philosophy and practiceof national education systems have taken manyforms, but my focus in this paper will be on theshifting discourse of multiculturalism and on thegrowing pressures for greater educational stand-ardization and accountability. In multiculturaleducation there has been a subtle but intensifyingmove away from person-centred education for all,or the creation of the tolerant, ‘multicultural self’,towards a more individuated, mobile and highlytracked, skills-based education, or the creationof the ‘strategic cosmopolitan’. The ‘multiculturalself’ was one who was able to work with and

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through difference, and conditioned to believe inthe positive advantages of diversity in constructingand unifying the nation.

3

The ‘strategic cosmopoli-tan’ is, by contrast, motivated not by ideals ofnational unity in diversity, but by understandingsof global competitiveness, and the necessity to stra-tegically adapt as an individual to rapidly shiftingpersonal and national contexts.

4

These changes inthe philosophy and practice of multiculturalism ineducation, and in educational policy in general,I believe, are related to the new imperatives ofglobalization as perceived by neoliberal politiciansand educators.

5

Those pushing a neoliberal agendain education stress global competitiveness, thereduction of the (publicly financed) costs of educa-tion, and of social reproduction in general, thenecessity for greater market choice and accounta-bility and the imperative to create hierarchicallyconditioned, globally oriented state subjects – i.e.individuals oriented to excel in ever transformingsituations of global competition, either as workers,managers or entrepreneurs.

6

A comparative examination of these questionsusing three different case studies allows me totrace the genesis of public education in differentlocations and conduct an archaeology of the gen-eral relationship of national education systems tostate formation and economic change. In choosingEngland, the United States and Canada as my casestudies, I am indicating the widespread natureof change, but also showing the ways in which cul-tural differences remain strong, and spatial varia-tions are crucial.

7

The work is intended as a broad,comparative synthesis of contemporary trends inWestern-based education systems rather thanan in-depth examination of each nation’s educationpolicies or the contexts in which these policies arechanging. Although I argue that a general shift isoccurring in many Western nation-states, exactlyhow this shift plays out is greatly dependent onthe individual state’s historical and geographicalpatterns of educational development.

The shifting spaces of citizenship

In order to understand the constitution of a citizenin any given age, it is important to conceive of theoverall process of citizenship formation as onethat is shifting, contested and profoundly spatial(Turner 1986; Marston and Mitchell 2003). Inthe medieval period, for example, a citizen was,by definition, an inhabitant of a city or town; his

location as a townsman conferred on him civicrights as a ‘free’ man.

8

A few centuries later, thecitizen was understood to be a free member ofa state or commonwealth. In both of these earlyusages, the citizen was one who was specificallydefined through his location in space – initially asa member of a town, then later as a member ofa state.

If there was a move in citizenship formationfrom the city to the national scale during theperiod of nation building, what are the contempo-rary spaces of citizenship formation, as nations arede-consolidating? What is the new scale of citizen-ship, and how are citizens constituted within andby it? State deterritorialization raises questionsabout the contemporary formation of a democraticsociety, as the processes of democratic participa-tion within communities formerly defined by adistinct, national territory, are rapidly changing. Forexample, a citizen’s right and duty to participate ina

national

democratic system is one of the primaryconceptual understandings of citizenship in mostWestern nations. The idea of democracy, here, refersnot just to the opportunity to vote, but to be anactive political participant within that system,and to work responsibly for the improvement ofthe community. The

spatial

component of citizen-ship is relevant because of the connection betweendemocratic participation in the physical and socialenvironment, i.e. the community, and the implicitunderstanding of ‘community’ as ultimately anational one.

9

Even theorists of radical democracyrely, at least implicitly, on the nation as the ultimatespace of final determination.

10

What happens then to the concept of democratic,

national

citizens when the nation no longer con-tains those citizens, when the citizens are increas-ingly ‘trans’-national, and the nation itself istightly networked with others in a global systemof social, political and economic interdependency?For example, many denizens of contemporaryEuropean communities are incorporated into thepolitical structures of those societies and exercisevarious rights and duties associated with politicalparticipation, without holding any formal citizen-ship status (Soysal 1994, 3). Further, the state’sability to provide the protective rights and benefitsassociated with this status may be selective orfragmented, with degrees of protection related to eco-nomic considerations such as migrant remittances,rather than to actual physical membership withinthe state’s territorial community.

11

Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times

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Currently, many states no longer recognize the‘natural’ citizenship rights and obligations of com-munity membership based only on the principlesof blood or territory. The nuanced meanings andbenefits of citizenship have become far more con-textual and flexible than this, depending ratheron the importance of global economic indicators,as well as the different levels of power of variousstate sectors at different moments in time (Castlesand Davidson 2000). This strategic flexibilitydisrupts long-standing ideals and norms of whatcitizenship, especially with respect to both nationformation and political participation, is all about.As citizenship inexorably moves between scalesin different historical and geographical moments,from a local to a national, supranational or transna-tional set of positionings and back again, the beingand becoming of a citizen as an active participantin a democratic community, shifts. How that citi-zen should be disciplined by the various appara-tuses of the state alters in tandem. For example,is it more important for citizen-subjects to learnto work with and get along with others, especiallythose who are perceived as different, in order toaid in the formation of a national community? Or isit more important for a citizen to become a globallyoriented economic player, one able to work with,but also around the deterritorialized, highly flexi-ble nature of individual states’ constructions ofcitizenship? The answer, I believe, has to do withthe relationship between state formation and theglobal economy at a particular moment in timeand space.

The question I’d like to pursue here, then, is theinstitutional practices through which citizens areconstituted as members of these constantly rescalingcommunities. How are these citizens formed andreformed through time? How do they, in Althusser’sphrasing,

learn the ‘rules’ of good behaviour – the rules ofmorality, civic and professional conscience, and of course,the respect for the socio-technical division of laborand rules of order established by class domination?(Althusser 1971, 132)

Democratic communities, I argue, are formed andmaintained largely through various institutionsof governance and practices of governmentality –the development of modern forms of disciplinarypower by the state and other institutions thatproduce rules, norms and understandings basedon their knowledge and power about different

populations (Foucault 1991). I believe that theinstitution that is perhaps the most crucial inboth the formation and maintenance of democraticcommunities (through the creation of subjectsinterpellated through the liberal values and normsof the modern nation) is the institution that is oftenthe

least

studied in academia: the institution ofeducation.

12

In this institutional venue, the newmodel of the strategically cosmopolitan citizen isclearly of growing relevance.

The schooling–society nexus

Although the general scholarship on the relationshipbetween schooling and governance is fairly thin,there have been a number of useful theoriesconcerning the links between systems of nationaleducation and national economic formations. Themain tenor of this work from the 1970s relatedprimarily to examining how systems of publiceducation were developed and maintained largelyfor the purpose of sustaining capitalist systemsof accumulation. In essence, the work probed theclassic question of the relationship between productionand social reproduction, using Marxist categoriesto define and articulate the ways in which theinstitution of national systems of public educationwas deeply imbricated in capitalist formation overtime.

While the early work in this vein sought to makea direct link between the timing of industrializationand the rise of national systems of education inseveral nation-states during the nineteenth cen-tury (e.g. West 1975; Sanderson 1983), later empiri-cal work indicated that what was actually taught inthe early classrooms could not be linked directlywith the kinds of skills that were becoming increas-ingly desirable in the industrial workforce.

13

Thusthe most obvious linkage between the rise of indus-trial capitalism, and the ‘training’ of a new workforcethrough the emerging systems of national publiceducation, was not clearcut.

A second wave of thought regarding the articu-lation between education and the economy empha-sized the reproduction of the social conditions ofcapitalist labour rather than the actual productionof capitalist labourers. In this literature, schoolingwas depicted as a key controlling mechanism,which could ameliorate some of the social illsassociated with the rise of industrial capitalism. Asa tool of social management it had the capacity tolegitimate inequality, defuse explosive class relations

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associated with the productive process, and deliverthe ‘appropriate’ societal norms and expectationsto the society’s future workers (Bowles andGintis 1976, 10). In other words, as an institutionintimately involved in the reproduction of con-sciousness, education was a key mechanism used bydominant elites to achieve a certain type of subor-dinate consciousness which aided in the mainte-nance of an unequal system of class relations (seealso Katz 1971). Although agreeing with the funda-mental assertion of a connection between educa-tion and the production of an unequal class system,a number of other scholars eschewed the structur-alist tone of these arguments, and sought to find abalance between the structuring forces of the econ-omy, and the agency of individuals and groups inasserting their own socio-cultural positions (Willis1977; Apple 1979; Carnoy and Levin 1985).

In work beginning in the 1990s on the schooling–society nexus, a number of scholars began to exam-ine the role of education in

state

formation, arguingthat the previous privileging of economic consider-ations led to a general neglect of the crucial roleof the state in instituting and maintaining nationalsystems of education. In a large comparativestudy, Andy Green (1990) linked the developmentof nineteenth-century education systems to thegeneral development of the modern state, especiallyits relationship with its citizen-subjects. Greenargued that modern education systems in Europeand North America were an important means forfurthering state development with respect to itsmercantilist aims and its training programmesfor bureaucratic positions and state manufacturingprojects. Perhaps even more importantly, however,national education systems were an integral tool increating political loyalty, operating to develop,manage and sustain the types of myths and narra-tives of the nation crucial to its initial and ongoingunification (see also Weber 1976; Gellner 1983).

In the past decade, there has been an even moreconcerted effort to link the development of educa-tional systems and the process of state formationin numerous countries worldwide, including Asia(e.g. Hill and Fee 1995; Wong 2002). Much of thisresearch has focused on the ways in which incipientnational educational systems were an integralpart of broader political struggles over the makingand remaking of state citizens and their social iden-tities. State schooling was not just about the crea-tion of a literate population or a trained workforce,but was implicated more generally in the creation

of a particular kind of state subject – one schooledin the norms and proper codes of behaviour relatedto national citizenship.

Further, the project of schooling served primarilyto uphold the existing power structures withinthe nation-state. By various practices of authority,categorization, regulation and subjectification, publicschools became sites through which a bourgeoissocial order was inscribed and perpetuated throughtime. In countless, often minor and seeminglyinsignificant technologies of regulation and control,national education systems normalized unequalrelations of power, and served to solidify therule of dominant classes, mediate class systemsand colonize civil society. For example, practicesrelating to the formation of categories, such as thecategory of the truant, or to public announcementsand inspections such as public exams, report cardsand announcements of behavioural deficiency orlack of proper comportment, subtly but relentlesslytransformed children into ‘schooled’ subjects of thestate. These incipient technologies of power were acrucial aspect of state building, as well as instru-ments of bourgeois hegemony (Curtis 1988). Thusthe educational ‘project’ was far greater than mereschooling itself, but rather encompassed the crea-tion of social identities, the maintenance of powerrelations, and the reorganization of the relationshipbetween a capitalist economic formation, the stateand its citizen-subjects.

Although educational historians have investigatedthe shifting practices of individual states throughtime, few have looked at state formation in spatialterms, and none have investigated state formationin spatial terms other than the nation. In nearly allwork in education theory, the nation is written as amethodological endpoint, and the development ofeducational systems is related strictly to the events,practices, meanings and contexts of the individualand bordered, territorial state. Educational historiansforeground the temporal/historical developmentof the state, the shifting

political

moments andprocesses which affect education for nationalcitizenship, but they have neglected to take intoaccount the concept of citizenship in relation toterritory.

We need to examine the ongoing

spatial

produc-tion, disintegration and interlinkages of the stateterritory over time, interlinkages which have greatimplications for national education systems, bothwith regard to its philosophical underpinningsand its practices. In the contemporary moment,


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schooling and school change is linked not just withchanges in the nature of (national) labour–capitalrelationships or to the internal formation of thenation-state, but also with spatial changes relatedto the state’s connections with the global economy,including the globalization of production andconsumption, the transnationalization of migration,and the ‘spatial splitting’ of modes of productionand social reproduction.

14

Most state formationwork looks at education within a discrete nationalterritory. But the contemporary processes ofglobalization and neoliberalism have put newpressures on the state from scales without andwithin the nation, and thus the education of nationalcitizens in connection with both state formationand political economy, must now be consideredwithin this global framework.

Multiculturalism in education

One of my main interests in multiculturalism is inthe ways that it, as a concept, has been put into theservice of the liberal state. Although it has playeda different role in each of the Western states thathave adopted it as either an official, encouragedor merely tolerated philosophical framework, as ageneral concept it has had a significant impactin nearly all school systems in Western Europe andNorth America in the last three to four decades(Parker 2002a; Schiffauer

et al.

forthcoming). Whatideological work does the concept do, and why is itcurrently being devalued and transformed in thecontext of increasing global and neoliberal pressureson national education systems?

Multiculturalism functions as a key nationalnarrative of coherence and unification in countrieswith a large immigrant population. The essenceof the nation

is

difference, and what makes thestate strong and legitimate is its ability to unifythese differences in a single project, that of nation-formation. The state engages in this projectthrough its regulations of individual and (carefullydelineated) group rights, such as evidenced in thephilosophy and practice (and legislation in theCanadian case) of multiculturalism. For Canada inparticular, multiculturalism is an official state doc-trine that has allowed an uneasy truce to be formedbetween the original two colonizing powers, theBritish and the French. It also represents an effortto inculcate immigrants into a national ‘mosaic’,wherein difference is professed to be welcome andeven advantageous to the state (Kobayashi 1993;

Mitchell 1993). For Canada, and to a slightly lesserdegree for the US and England, the concept ofmulticultural citizenship serves as an example of thetolerant and munificent liberal state, ever willingto open its doors to outsiders, and to accept andprotect cultural difference (see Taylor 1994; Kymlicka1995). It is part of a broader narrative of liberalismand the freedom of the individual, and throughthis narrative, it serves to ‘perform’ the liberal stateand create a sense of a unified, tolerant and coherentnation, despite the multiple differences evident inthe population of its citizenry.

Secondly, multiculturalism operates as a funda-mental institutional and conceptual tool giving thestate an enhanced ability

to control

difference (Asad1990). As a conceptual apparatus, it allows thestate to set the terms of the ‘difference debate’. Theseterms are highly individual: they are concernedwith individual rights and preferences – the rightto choose and display difference with respect toindividual identity. Cultural pluralism is encour-aged, but only so long as the included groups followcertain rules, and are willing to be containedwithin the strict parameters of liberalism, that is, to‘accept’ liberalism as a fundamental philosophicalstarting point (see, for example, Appiah’s 1994critique of Taylor 1994). And while group differenceis acceptable for ‘cultural survival’ (e.g. in the caseof the Québécois), it is only acceptable in certaincarefully circumscribed times and spaces (e.g. withinthe province of Quebec).

Third, multiculturalism aids in the exportationof liberalism, and hence capitalism, abroad. Forexample, the philosophy of American pluralism inthe 1930s and 1940s was framed as an extensionof equality of opportunity to all members of thenational body. This extension was crucial in justify-ing the expansion of liberalism overseas duringthese years. Without the language of inclusion (e.g.for those who were previously disenfranchisedwithin the system, such as African-Americans),American criticism of fascist dictatorships inEurope and Asia would appear hypocritical, andwould impede the exportation of liberalismand the market overseas. In his study of colour anddemocracy in the American century, for example,Singh (1998, 475) showed how the ‘moral status ofAmerican nationhood and the status of Blacknationality’ were inextricably intertwined duringthe decade of the 1940s. It was only with a morejust society at home that the United States couldclaim the rhetoric of a ‘civilizing’ mission abroad.

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The democratic impulses behind the early formula-tions of multiculturalism were thus clearly linkedwith America’s ‘world-ordering ambitions’ of thattime (Singh 1998: 475–9; see also Mitchell 2001).

In the field of education, multiculturalism drawsdirectly from this Deweyan nationalist legacy.Multicultural education in liberal, Western societiesis concerned with the creation of a certain kind ofindividual, one who is tolerant of difference, but adifference framed within certain national parame-ters and controlled by the institutions of the state.The subject interpellated through multiculturalismin education believes that cultural pluralism is good,or at least necessary, for national development,and is able to work with others to find sites ofcommonality, despite differences.

All of these understandings of how multicultur-alism functions vis-à-vis the state, especially withregard to the most effective constitution of a nationalcitizen and national identity, have a certain logicwhen implemented within a nation format. Bothprogressives and conservatives have found commonground in the utilization of multiculturalism asa containing metaphor for ‘difference’ within thecommunity, although with different opinions asto the relative advantages or disadvantages ofretaining the concept through time. But both groupsbegin with the assumption that the communityin which citizens are formed is a national one, andthat citizens will be regulated and disciplinedby the state. What happens when the community isno longer necessarily a national one, and the state’sinterest in disciplining populations and regulatingthe actions and relations between actors is notbased on a territorial population, but rather on amuch larger, supra-national scale?

I believe that multiculturalism was able tooperate effectively as a conceptual philosophy in theservice of state formation during a certain kind ofeconomic regime or period of capital accumulation,that of high Fordism.

15

During this time, in manyWestern nations such as the US, Canada andEngland, the economy grew rapidly but was relativelyprotected from outside competition. The relationsbetween capital and labour were regulated throughvarious mechanisms of state control, and an inter-ventionist, developmental or welfare state tookoff to varying degrees in numerous nations (cf.Aglietta 1979). At the same time, immigration fromnon-Western countries, especially from Asia into theUnited States and Canada, and from the Caribbeaninto England, increased rapidly, disturbing the

image of a dominant norm or narrative of culturalnationalism implicit in all three nations (Castlesand Miller 1998).

Multiculturalism, in this context, could operateeffectively as an instrument of state formation ona number of levels, including serving as a nationalnarrative of coherence in the face of immigrant‘difference’, as a broad technology of state control(of difference), and as one of many capillaries ofdisciplinary power/knowledge concerning theformation of the ‘well-schooled’ subject educatedin liberal tolerance and willing to work for nationalunity within this philosophical framework. In allof this, but especially in the constitution of nationalcitizens able and willing to work

through

difference

for

the nation, multiculturalism was a strategicpartner in the growth and expansion of a Fordistregime of accumulation around the world.

However, with the decline of Fordism, and therise of contemporary transnational lives and neo-liberal pressures in the past two decades, this typeof state subject has become increasingly irrelevant.There is no longer much need for the multiculturalsubject interested in working towards harmonyacross the differences of race or class, one able tofind points of convergence in the general spirit ofa nexus of production and consumption benevo-lently regulated by the state. The spirit of harmoni-ous accumulation, for the capitalist, the worker andthe nation, is gone, and the multicultural self is nolonger the ideal state citizen. Further, multicultur-alism has always carried the risk of creating cultur-ally relativist citizen-subjects, those who no longerhold a strong orientation to a central authority,such as the state, but rather perceive morality inthe world as endlessly variable and hence, subjectto negotiation.

This particular form of multiculturalism is thusincreasingly perceived by contemporary neoliberalpoliticans as either irrelevant or negative as a polit-ical philosophy, and is now being undermined ineducational systems in a number of liberal democ-racies. It is rapidly being replaced with a meaner,harder logic of competition on a global scale, andof a strategic, outward-looking cosmopolitanism.In the following section I provide three case stud-ies, from Canada, the US and England to back upmy claims. I believe we are now at a point ofincreasingly virulent attacks on the spirit of demo-cratic multiculturalism in education. This shiftaway from the multicultural self is playing out andwill continue to play out differently in each of


393

these three countries. But there is an overall logicand general trend that goes hand in hand withthese states’ moves toward a neoliberal politicalframework in the context of an increasingly laissez-faire global economy.

The Canadian system

Canada’s system of public education was developedprimarily in the period between 1840 and 1870,and was part of a deliberate strategy by politicalliberals to forge a new political nationality(McDonald 1978). Although there was little formalopposition to the expansion of a national system,the differences in language and religion betweenthe two colonizing powers led to major divisionsin the form and content of educational curriculaand pedagogic philosophies. The deep divisionsplayed out in the formation of distinct educationalregimes between the provinces, as well as in a generalgeographic decentralization of the educational system(e.g. Wilson

et al.

1970).The

British North America Act

of 1867 (now the

Constitution Act

) united the colonies in a federalsystem under the British Crown, and gave theprovincial legislatures exclusive jurisdiction to makeeducation-related laws. This early provincialindependence increased the already broad dif-ferentiation among all of the provinces in terms oflanguage of instruction, secularism and denomina-tionalism, as well as in the more general attitudetoward the political philosophy of liberalism itself.Despite these ongoing differences, however, afairly broad consensus developed over time vis-à-vis the benefits of liberalism and the schooling ofchildren in political liberties and civic obligations.Quebec and Newfoundland remained the hold-outs in this regard, representing the most divergentpositions from this otherwise fairly broad liberalhegemony (Manzer 1994).

Although the system was decentralized and therewere some large variations among the provinces,the galvanizing force behind most educationalpolicies and practices was the broad understandingthat public schools were crucial institutions inshaping the incipient national character. AsCanadian identity consolidated in the nineteenthcentury, the national education system was put towork to manipulate, mold and otherwise inculcate,‘the state of the public mind’.

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Egerton Ryerson,the linchpin of educational reform in Ontario (andwidely influential throughout Canada) in the mid-

nineteenth century, firmly believed in the power ofeducation to create model Canadian citizens andpatriots who could be depended on to uphold thestatus quo and support the state in times of crisis.As he put it, through its emphasis on moral andsocial behaviour, public education was essential increating ‘safe’ citizens.

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The general tone of educational policy from itsdevelopment in the nineteenth century through themiddle of the twentieth century, reflected a politicalliberalism that was premised on the overridingbelief that individual opportunity and equal accessto education, coupled with a strongly hierarchicaland divided system of occupational classes, wouldbenefit both the socio-economic order and stateformation. Industrial expansion, state formation andnational character development could all be accom-modated within the broad tenets of liberalism,despite the provincial variations based on differinglanguage and religious denominations.

Beginning in the post-war period and gainingground in the late 1950s and 1960s, however, adifferent strand of liberalism began to hold swayamong a number of educational authorities. Thisnew framework, what Manzer (1994) terms ‘ethicalliberalism’, drew intellectual sustenance from theideas of philosophers such as John Dewey, whohad long argued for a greater focus on the develop-ment of each individual to his or her fullestpersonal potential through educational programmesgeared to the ‘real-world’ situations of plural,communicative democracy. Ethical liberalism wasa broadly humanistic philosophy emphasizing thespecific differences and needs of each individualchild, and tailoring the system of schooling tofulfilling those needs. Further, it was broadly inclu-sive, providing special opportunities for talentedor challenged children, but also bringing studentsconsidered ‘different’ back into a mainstreamlearning environment. In this educational frame-work, a single type of education could neveraccommodate all of the different variations of stu-dent needs and learning styles, and thus it behovedthe authorities to provide a highly differentiated,flexible and forgiving system, one wherein eachperson could reach personal fulfilment in whateverpath he or she might choose. One of the primaryfeatures of this mode of learning was the funda-mental acknowledgement of the wide scope ofdifference within human society, and of the necessityto embrace this difference through daily interactionin the schools, as well as in the society at large.

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Although borrowing from the English liberal tra-dition of John Stuart Mill, and the American tradi-tion of Dewey, the framework of ethical liberalismbecame a quickly established force in Canadianeducational circles, and achieved some degree ofhegemony in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s.As with Dewey’s pronouncements on democraticcitizenship in America, ethical liberalism in Can-ada quickly became bound up with a strongnationalist agenda. During the 1960s, Canada expe-rienced rapidly increasing immigration fromnon-European regions of the world, and was alsorocked by violent expressions of dissent fromQuebec, culminating in the Quiet Revolution(see Behiels 1985). At the same time, First Nationsgroups began to organize and make claims forcultural rights, land and economic reparations forhundreds of years of suppression at the hands ofthe dominant colonial powers. The promotion ofethical liberalism or multiculturalism was quicklywrapped in the mantle of ethnic tolerance, andutilized as part of a newly stylish cultural pluralismthat was intended to placate the immigrants, theFrench and ‘the natives’, all in one fell swoop.

The tolerant Canadian state, held together bynarratives of unity with and through difference,was a key touchstone of multiculturalism in educa-tion. During this period, students were taughtthat the Canadian cultural mosaic was a definingfeature of Canadianness, and that multiculturalismwas the superior method for the integration ofimmigrants, especially in comparison with the‘melting pot’ strategy of their southern neighbour(Lipset 1990). The concept of multiculturalismcontained, as a foundational core, the belief that work-ing with and through cultural difference was a keyto participatory democracy, and that local commu-nities must maintain their autonomy and distinc-tive traditions in order for this democracy to work(Manzer 1994). A key geographical component ofethical liberalism thus took shape in the advocacyof a continued

decentralization

of educational policyand practice. Decentralization would allow formore egalitarian decision-making and a greaterinclusion of difference, and thus extend the multi-cultural and democratic mantle nationwide.

At the same time as this educational frameworkwas extended, the Fordist period of capital accu-mulation took shape in Canada in the 1960s and1970s as the state increasingly regulated businessand extended social services to a wider group ofcitizens. The Canadian welfare state grew rapidly,

expanding in areas such as national health care,public housing, unemployment insurance, care ofthe indigent, children and the elderly, and anumber of other venues (Banting 1987; Moscovitchand Albert 1987).

Although multiculturalism in education waswidely accepted and implemented through mostof the national system in the 1960s and 1970s, itwas always opposed by rival theories whichforegrounded greater structure, standards andtraditional methods of teaching. The proponentsof greater standardization in education began aconcerted attack on ethical liberalism in the late1970s, and beat back some of the innovations of theprior two decades. By the late 1980s and early 1990s,both policy and practice in education reflecteda shifting (though still highly contested) moodof politicians and administrators towards a newframework of educational ‘excellence’, perceived tobe more appropriate for facing the pressures andchallenges of the new global economy. These shiftsaccompanied a large-scale attack on the rhetoricand practices of welfarism in Canada, and therapid entrenchment of neoliberal policy through-out the 1990s.

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A key component of this entrench-ment was a shift in the role of government awayfrom the direct provisioning of social services, andtowards the position of social contract management(Jenson 1989).

In the late 1980s, two major reports on publiceducation were published, both of which expressedcriticism of the current system (Radwanski 1987;Sullivan 1988). These two reports were cited exten-sively by business interests and federal agenciesin the following years as ‘proof’ that the nationalexperiment in multiculturalism was a failure, thatpublic schools were in decline, and that Canadianstudents were rapidly falling behind their peersin crucial areas such as maths and science. In onesection of the Radwanski report, the link betweeninvesting in a new kind of education and creating anew kind of work force was blunt and categorical.He wrote:

Education has long been recognized as an importantcontributor to economic growth, of course – but now ithas become

the

paramount ingredient for competitivesuccess in the world economy. (Radwanski 1987)

He went on to conclude that child-centrededucation (or education for the multicultural self)was no longer a relevant educational framework,given the new kinds of technological needs and


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employment possibilities of the global economy(cited in Manzer 1994, 214).

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The struggles over educational priorities andphilosophies mounted throughout the 1990s, withprovinces often establishing a particular kind ofprogramme based on one philosophy or another,only to reverse it a few years later based either ona change of government or a change of heart. In1991, the Progressive Conservative government,under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, attemptedto direct educational administrators towards amore skills-based curriculum, especially in thefields of science and technology, and away fromthe more ‘unstructured’ learning environmentsof multicultural classrooms.

20

Although this earlyattempt to influence the provinces in the realm ofeducational policy was not particularly successful,it was accompanied by a constant rhetoric that thepublic schools were ‘failing’, which had the desiredeffect of producing anxiety among parents, andhence the ongoing possibility for a major reorgani-zation of the system.

Throughout the 1990s the antagonists of ‘ethical’multiculturalism formed institutions that counteredmulticultural ideology with a constant refrain of‘excellence’, ‘accountability’ and ‘global competi-tiveness’, which they juxtaposed negatively withthe current educational system.

21

In the classroomitself, opponents of person-centred educationdemanded an externally established curriculum,frequent testing, mandated letter grades, quantita-tive accountability standards and a ‘back to basics’method of teaching. In recent years, these demandshave frequently been backed by both provincialand federal legislation mandating more standard-ized testing across all grades, as well as greateraccountability measures for students’ academicperformance and for systems of public schoolfinancing.

22

Alongside these philosophical and practicalchanges, there has also been a strong shift in thegeography of control over the schools themselves.Beginning in the 1990s, nearly every province inthe country reduced the number of school boardsthat were active in educational decision-making.

23

Overall, this change reflects a sharp transition fromthe decentralized pattern of the educational systemevident since its inception in the nineteenth century,to a far stronger degree of centralized control bythe provincial administration. In Ontario, thismove was accompanied by legislation in 1998which shifted school board control over financing

(through the imposition of educational propertytaxes) to provincial control.

24

These changes reflectnot just a loss of local autonomy and control, but adirect threat to the practical workings of proce-dural democracy, which, as discussed earlier, relieson a decentralized system for egalitarian decision-making and greater inclusiveness.

Public education in England

A national system of public education did notdevelop in England until late in the nineteenthcentury. Even at this relatively late date, theimplementation of the system was weak, with littlefinancing set aside for public education, and withno unified central authority to monitor its progressor development. As a result, national educationdeveloped slowly and sporadically throughout thecountry and remained highly stratified betweenpublic and private systems. There was littleuniformity of curricula or methods or teachertraining between different schools, no integratedpolicy of admissions or fees or examination systems,and no coherent plan for the linkages betweenelementary, secondary and higher education.Up until quite recently, there was no educationalconstitution, a minimal parliamentary role ineducation, and little sense of a unified or integratednational system (Green 1990).

These divergent policies and practices werereflected most conspicuously in the deep andongoing divide between public and privateschools. In a manner similar to the United Statesand Canada, the national system of education inEngland served to reproduce and legitimate domi-nant class relations. But unlike the other two coun-tries, public education was not called upon to assistin state formation either through the constitutionof properly disciplined national subjects orientedtowards a newly unified national identity, orthrough the actual process of coordinating andcontrolling educational development. It was notuntil the postwar decades that the institutionof education began to play an active part in theongoing development of the English state.

In the 1950s, immigration from non-Europeanregions, particularly from the Caribbean, began torise (Castles and Miller 2001). During this time, theeducation system remained strongly monoculturalin orientation, stressing the English language andcultural mores, and advocating complete assimila-tion to the ‘British’ nation-state. By the late 1960s,

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Katharyne Mitchell

however, alongside the rapid development of astrong interventionist state, assimilationist policiesbecame more contested, and the philosophy ofmulticulturalism in education began to assume amore dominant role. In articles and governmentreports of this period, there is evidence of anemerging consensus on the importance of allowing‘difference’ to be expressed in schools (e.g. trousersor hijab for Muslim girls, or turbans for Sikh boys).The public recognition of different immigrantcultures began to be encouraged through the publicsphere of public schools, where children couldlearn about one another and learn to accept, andeven celebrate, cultural diversity (Gill

et al.

1994;Schiffauer

et al.

forthcoming).Within a decade, however, this type of multicul-

turalism came under increasing pressure from theconservative right, for supposedly exacerbatingracial divides and contributing to a decline ineducational standards. For a time, progressiveadministrators and educators were able to direct theprevailing multicultural sentiments into a stronger‘anti-racist’ educational campaign, especially fol-lowing a 1979 report by the Rampton Committee,which described the devastating impact of racismon black schoolchildren. But these efforts were tobe short-lived. With the election of Margaret Thatcherin 1979, and the concerted shift away from thewelfare state policies of the previous era, the grow-ing multicultural and anti-racist hegemony of theprevious two decades began to be dismantled.

25

In 1988 the government unrolled its

EducationReform Act

(ERA) which, though continuing to expressa rhetoric of tolerance, effectively elided the earlierreport’s anti-racist and multicultural language. TheERA of 1988 introduced three major changes tothe educational system, all of which rapidly movedthe educational system in a neoliberal direction.The first was a shift to a school-based system offinancial management, away from the control ofthe generally more progressive Local EducationAuthorities (LEAs). The second was a provisionfor schools to ‘opt out’ of LEA control and become‘grant-maintained’ schools, receiving funding directlyfrom the central government. The third change wasthe development of a national curriculum.

Although packaged as a move towards greaterdecentralization, in effect these three reformsmassively increased central control over both thestructure and organization of the local authorities,and over the individual schools themselves. Theintroduction of a national curriculum effectively

gutted the possibility for further multiculturaleducational initiatives in education, since all schoolswere now forced to adopt the same curriculum,which was based on the concept that all childrenhad the same opportunities, rights and access, asall others.

26

The standardization and homogeniza-tion of the curriculum facilitated the possibilityfor more standardized tests, which soon followed.As with the neoliberal shifts in education in theUnited States and Canada of the same time period,the language in which these reforms were pro-moted revolved around three key words: ‘choice’,‘excellence’ and ‘accountability’. They were alsoaccompanied by the same insistent drumbeat of thedecline and failure of public schools and the neces-sity to reform them in order to meet the challengesof the new world economy.

The transition to school-based financial manage-ment was part of a broader neoliberal strategy atthe start of the third term of Thatcher’s Conserva-tive Party government (re-elected in 1987), whichemphasized the restructuring of local authorityservice provision. As noted by the British Council,the overall approach of this government was to‘encourage contracting out of the delivery of serv-ices to the private sector, though responsibility forsecuring and managing the services has remainedin the public sector’.

27

This form of privatization wasextended to a wide range of services in additionto education, and represented a strong shift to akind of governmental system of contract manage-ment. In addition to weakening the LEAs (andother local authorities considered too ‘progressive’,such as the Greater London Council), this formof private contracting controlled by the centralgovernment facilitated the hiring of outside teachersfrom the commonwealth countries, who werebrought in to aid in the weakening or destructionof powerful (and progressive) teacher’s unions, andwho could, at the same time, be paid considerablyless than teachers with British citizenship.

Thus, although still greatly contested and withuneven effects felt across the country, there was ageneral change in the philosophy of public educa-tion in England in the late 1980s, as well as someimportant policies, which moved education fordemocratic citizenship away from the short-liveddominance of ‘ethical liberalism’. Even during itshigh point in the 1970s, the philosophy of multicul-turalism remained focused on individual ethnicdifference within a liberal, nation-based and capitalistframework. Nevertheless, it did contain the notions


397

of individual fulfilment, person-centred educationand the value of cultural difference for democraticcitizenship, some of the hallmarks of ethical liberal-ism. These ‘quaint’ ideals were rapidly squelchedwith the rise of the Conservative Thatcher govern-ment, and have remained buried despite the victoryof a Labour government in the mid-1990s.

In 1997, for example, Prime Minister Blair allowedthe establishment of government-funded, faith-based schools.

28

This legal and publicly fundedseparation of ethnic groups out of the educationalmainstream marks the wholesale retreat from aDeweyan logic of cultural pluralism in the class-room as the foundational core of proceduralist anddemocratic citizenship for the nation. At the sametime, David Blunkett, Blair’s first minister of edu-cation, made it clear that the market would drivefurther changes in education: ‘I make no apology forplacing higher education at the heart of the pro-ductive capacity of the knowledge driven economy’(cited in Rutherford 2002). And Peter Mandelson,then minister of trade and industry, said in aspeech, ‘Knowledge and its profitable exploitationby business is the key to competitiveness’ (cited inRutherford 2002).

29

Like the preceding government,the mantra of Labour remains the ideal of globalcompetitiveness and the strategic use of pluralismfor an international corporate agenda.

Education in the United States

In general there was fairly widespread support ofthe concept of public education in the United States,and the major struggles involving educationaldevelopment and expansion revolved around thedegree of local vs state control, rather than over theideology of common schooling itself. The earlyschools developed locally, often out of previouslyestablished private or religious schools, and thenational system remained highly decentralized fordecades. Over time the autonomous, district schoolsbecame absorbed into a centralized system of townschools, but the highest level of supervision orcontrol remained at the state level, with little or nofederal intervention through the mid-twentiethcentury (Green 1990).

Public education grew alongside an expansivecapitalism in the mid-nineteenth century and tiedin with national narratives of social mobility, per-sonal freedom and the opportunity for individualsto become active entrepreneurs within a dynamiccapitalist system. Children were schooled in the

ultimate liberty of the individual, but also in the‘proper’ mode of operating as upright and moralcitizens within the (national) community. Moraldiscipline ‘became increasingly associated withschooling’ and this moral schooling became tar-geted more and more towards an internalizationof discipline by the students themselves (Kaestle1983, 67). The link between the inculcation of aproperly socialized moral citizen, and the inculca-tion of work habits and beliefs beneficial to thedevelopment of capitalism was strongly apparentthroughout this early period (see also Bowles andGintis 1976).

At the same time, however, the constitution ofthe model capitalist worker and entrepreneur wasonly one aspect of schooling which interested theadvocates of public education. Immigrant childrenwere also the subject of intensive interest, andthere was a concentrated drive toward assimilatingminority cultures into a common Anglo-Protestantculture. Reformers were interested in ‘civilizing’the heathen immigrants and training them to becomeintelligent American citizens. This involved sepa-rating immigrants from their ‘inferior’ culturalmores and habits brought with them from the oldcountry, and educating them as to the superiornorms and narratives of their new nation, aswell as to the great advantages of the Americaneconomic system and mode of government.

It was not until the decade of the 1960s that thephilosophy of pluralist democracy, or multicultur-alism, began to attain some degree of dominancewithin the United States. A number of federaleducation laws were passed in the 1950s and 1960swhich guaranteed at least some degree of accord-ance with the liberal values of equal access. Theseincluded the

National Defense Education Act

of 1958and the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act

of1965, both of which expanded educational oppor-tunity for the poor and increased federal financingin selected areas. In general, the legislation and theSupreme Court decisions of these decades showedan interest in questions of equity, and in the accessto educational opportunity for all Americans,rather than a narrow concern with educationalstandards.

30

In the schools themselves, ‘moveabledesks’ became the norm rather than a deviation,and a Deweyan-inspired emphasis on child-centredlearning and differentiated curricula and methodsof teaching and learning was widely accepted.These incipient reforms, however, soon cameunder bitter attack.

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Katharyne Mitchell

With the election of the conservative Republicanpresident Ronald Reagan in 1980, a neoliberal erawas ushered into American politics, and its effectsbegan to be felt in education almost immediately.

31

Responding to an executive summons for a reporton the state of education in the United States, theNational Commission on Excellence in Educationdelivered, in 1983, a scathing indictment of publiceducation entitled,

A Nation at Risk: The Imperativefor Educational Reform

. This official report, the firstof a long series of government reports and procla-mations attacking public education, began with adiscourse of public schools as failing. It followedwith an anxiety-producing narrative of a nationallack of competitiveness in comparison with othernations, caused primarily by poor educationalpreparation. Picking up on this theme, some com-mentators even suggested that American schoolswere to blame for the country’s declining predomi-nance in the international marketplace (Aronowitzand Giroux 1985, 200). The ongoing refrain of thereport, and many others which followed, was themassive failure of the educational system to preparestudents for employment in the changing worldeconomy. For example, in the report of the EconomicGrowth Task Force in the same year, it was statedthat public schools ‘are not doing an adequate jobof education for today’s requirements in theworkplace, much less tomorrow’s’ (Task Force onEducation for Economic Growth 1983, 23).

These reports were accompanied by the awaken-ing voices of neo-conservatives, who sensed theshifting winds of the debate. In addition to addingto the constant refrain of public school failure andthe need for higher standards and more attentionto the ‘important’ subjects such as maths, scienceand high technology, conservative educators andadministrators began to lead a concerted attack onthe philosophy of multiculturalism itself. The quoteby Chester Finn below, taken from an academicjournal of 1982, is representative in this regard:

The sad fact is that for close to two decades nowwe have neglected educational quality in the name ofequality. Trying to insure that every child would haveaccess to as much education as every other child, wehave failed to attend to the content of that education.Seeking to mediate conflict and forestall controversyover the substance of education, we begin to findourselves with very little substance needed. Striving toavoid invidious comparisons among youngsters wehave stopped gauging individual progress by testing . . .Hesitant to pass judgement on lifestyles, cultures and

forms of behavior we have invited relativism into thecurriculum and pedagogy.

32

The statement invidiously suggested that themulticultural practices of the past few decades (i.e.the lack of judgement on lifestyles and cultures) ledto the overall weakening of academic ‘excellence’in the school system. As Aronowitz and Girouxpointed out, the statement bolstered the positionthat ‘greedy/single-minded group(s)’, i.e. thosewith ‘different’ needs from the mainstream, forcedthe curriculum away from attention to the ‘basics’and dragged down the ‘normal’ students and thenation with them (1985, 4). Even more than this, thestatement manifested one of the deepest fears ofneo-conservatives concerning multiculturalismin the classroom, the fear of ‘relativism’, or adeclining orientation to a central, all-knowingauthority such as a teacher or a state.

At the state level, the mantra of ‘excellence’began to pervade educational discourse from pre-kindergarten classes through the university, andthroughout the 1990s various kinds of ‘accountability’and ‘excellence’ measures were introduced inevery state and at every grade level.

33

In the stateof Washington, for example, state-wide standard-ized tests are now required of all public schoolchildren in Grades 4, 8 and 11, with expansion toannual testing proposed for the future. Further,because of shrinking funding in the state, thecurrent governor recently proposed to drop socialstudies from this now critical state-wide test, indi-cating an even stronger emphasis on the remainingsubjects: maths, science and reading. Because ofthe increasing pressure on public school teachersto ‘teach to the test’, dropped subject areas willquickly cease to receive attention. Thus civicseducation, or the study of citizenship, democracy andgovernance (in addition to history and geography),will quickly become ‘irrelevant’ as subjects of study.These themes, of course, form the heart of ethicalliberalism and the constitution of the democraticcitizen.

George Bush’s,

Education Reform Act

of 2002,‘No Child Left Behind’, was the most sweepingfederal-based reform since the 1950s. In his speechoutlining this new Act, Bush invoked the now familiarrefrain of public schools as failing – especially withrespect to preparation for the ‘changing world’. Hesaid,

The quality of our public schools directly affects us allas parents, as students, and as citizens. Yet too many


399

children in America are segregated by low expectations,illiteracy, and self-doubt. In a constantly changingworld that demands increasingly complex skills fromits work force, children are being left behind.

34

Tellingly, the word ‘segregation’ in this speech nolonger refers to racial and class separation causedby racism and poverty, but rather to ‘cultural’values which are holding unspecified groups ofchildren back. The ‘answer’ to the problem of lowachievement is in the erasure of difference, andassimilation to the norms and codes of American‘excellence’.

The 2002

Reform Act

encourages states to raisestandards, and will hold schools accountable forimproving student achievement. This accountabilityis to be achieved with federally mandated testingto ensure that

all

schools are held accountable forstudent achievement, and with federal fundingdirectly linked to test-based levels of achievement.In Bush’s speech, and in the

Reform Act

itself, thelanguage of multiculturalism, democracy, citizenshipand personal fulfilment is completely absent. Inthis neoliberal vision of education, educating achild to be a good citizen is no longer synonymouswith constituting a well-rounded, nationally oriented,multicultural self, but rather about attainment ofthe ‘complex skills’ necessary for individual successin the global economy.

Conclusion

Multiculturalism is a touchstone of liberalism inmany Western states and it has been a stronglypromoted concept in educational policy for severaldecades. Currently, however, the conceptual basisof multiculturalism is being transformed. Why andhow the contemporary processes of globalizationand neoliberalism are producing this fundamentalshift with respect to citizenship education in general,and multiculturalism in particular, formed thesubject of this paper.

The rationale for the development of nineteenth-century systems of public education was stateformation and economic development within theenlightenment ethos of modern liberalism. In most‘modern’ states during that epoch, the introductionof a national education system was a bold andcalculated effort to introduce children to a particularway of thinking and working and to a particularway of belonging to the nation at the same time.But this membership and this way of belongingwas predicated on a very distinct and bounded

national space, and also acted reciprocally toproduce and consolidate that space.

For the past century, it was assumed that thecitizens of any particular civil society would beconstituted and contained within this nation-stateformat. But this assumption is no longer valid. In aperiod of global interaction and interdependency,where communities are frequently defined bytheir economic practices and networks across andoutside of

the national space, rather than throughsome form of territorially bounded and geographi-cally delineated cultural lineage, citizenship forma-tion has been irrevocably transformed, and childrenare now being educated for citizenship in newkinds of ways.

Historians of education have shown that theuneven rise of national education systems wasrelated to state formation, particularly with respectto the advancement of social cohesion and nationalidentity. In this regard, multiculturalism was auseful tool of state integration and territorialconsolidation in the West, and became a dominantrhetoric with the advance of Fordism in themid-twentieth century. In this period, the idea ofthe possessive individual of economic liberalismbecame a more rounded, more completely formedmulticultural self – with great possibilities forself-fulfilment and personal development withinethical liberalism. The Fordist state, involved inshoring up labour, stimulating demand, expandingcivil society and generally encouraging newways to be a proper citizen-consumer, facilitatedand was facilitated by this kind of educationalsystem.

In recent years, however, there has been farless confidence or interest in the ability of educa-tion to perform the development functions ofsocial solidarity, democratic citizenship and nationalidentity. Multiculturalism, as an educationalphilosophy, has begun to move to a more strategicform of utilizing culture for economic purposes,and away from a sense of individual fulfilment andof the necessity of forming bonds of social andnational cohesion. Although multiculturalismhas always been strongly linked with capitalism, itwas once also accompanied by the spirit of theethical self – the necessity to work with and throughdifference and to find harmonious solutions toproblems in a democratic process. These nationalnarratives are now in the process of shifting awayfrom multiculturalism and towards a sense of indi-vidual patriotism and strategic entrepreneurialism.

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Katharyne Mitchell

With a declining sense that working with differ-ence is an important strategy of national unifica-tion, many states have begun to allow or evenencourage the ‘separation out’ of different groupsfrom the public educational system.

35

This incipientbreakdown is increasingly accompanied by a grow-ing interest in transnational citizenship narrativeswithin the framework of global capitalism. Modernforms of ‘economic’ or civil liberalism work wellwith this new type of strategic multiculturalism, asthey are all associated with national interlinkagesand the extension of the citizen-subject acrossborders and into other state territories. The newstrategic cosmopolitan serves as a nodal agent inthe expanding networks of the global economy. Heor she is the new, superior footsoldier of globalcapitalism. Meanwhile, the heretofore crucial narra-tives of national coherence and unity have beensupplanted by narratives of individual patriotism.This has already infiltrated the educationalsphere of the United States, as evidenced by theintroduction of ‘patriotism’ legislation in Oklahoma,Nebraska and Colorado, the renewed observanceof the daily ‘pledge of allegiance’ and by the manypronouncements of conservative educationalcritics, like Lynne Cheney, who write extensively onthe subject of how to teach patriotism in schools.

36

In the context of the contemporary disintegrationof multilateralism and internationalism, this brandof individualism and unreconstructed nationalpatriotism will most likely spread to other nationsand become the new educational hegemony ofthe twenty-first century, if teachers, parents andcitizens are complacent in the face of these changes.This is one of the many crucial struggles thatwe must concern ourselves with in this currentmoment of danger.

Acknowledgements

Research in this paper was supported by a SpencerFoundation grant. I would also like to thank WalterParker and Sue Ruddick for their helpful comments onearlier drafts. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 I am using the term ‘deterritorializing’ somewhat looselyhere to describe an era wherein state practices regularlystretch across borders, particularly with respect to thedisciplining of ‘subject’ populations overseas.

2 This new dynamic involves the constitution of the

neoliberal subject through various processes ofgovernmentality. For a classic overall analysis of theseprocesses see Nikolas Rose (1990 1999). For an investi-gation of subject formation of the wealthy in the era offlexible accumulation, see Ong (1999). For interestingwork on the constitution of flexible transmigrantlabourers, see Rouse (1991) and Kearney (1991). Thebest discussion of the rise of flexible regimes ofaccumulation remains Harvey (1989).

3 The formation of this type of subject position is basedon what educators call the ‘Deweyan’ model. For ageneral introduction to Dewey’s philosophy as it per-tains to education, see Dewey (1924). For a discussionof Dewey’s influence on contemporary educationalphilosophy, particularly the issues around pluralism anddemocracy, see the work of Walter Parker, especiallyParker (2002a 2003).

4 There is, of course, a strong class distinction betweenthose who are able to exercise personal choice inadopting a strategically cosmopolitan subject position(e.g. business school students), and those for whomrapid adaptation to and awareness of changing globalcontexts (strategies often associated with cosmopoli-tanism, see Ulf Hannerz 1990) is a defensive tacticutilized, though often unsuccessfully, when threatenedwith redundance. Thanks to Sue Ruddick for encour-aging me to be more explicit about these distinctions.

5 See the chapters in Ravitch and Viteritti (2002) for a goodsampling of neoliberal discourse as it plays out in theeducation field. See Parker (2002b) for a liberal demo-cratic critique of this trend in educational philosophy.

6 See Sue Roberts (2003), for a discussion of the constitutionof the ideal type global manager in the era of globalization.

7 I should underline here as well the Anglo-Americanbias of these three case studies, which all exhibit somesymptoms of the American Business Model (ABM)form of neoliberal enframing. Also, the changes thatare now being proposed and contested are playing outquite unevenly

within

each national territory. Despitethe caveats related to the difficulties inherent in macro-level comparative analysis, however, I still believe thatthe

general tenor of my critique

holds for most liberalWestern democracies now in the thrall of neoliberalsystems of governance.

8 These civic rights were gender specific, as only mencould become citizens at this time.

9 Both Dewey and Habermas, for example, in widelydivergent theoretical articulations of democracyand citizenship, assume that the nation is the finalendpoint for procedural democracy. On Dewey, seeMitchell (2001); on Habermas, see Calhoun (1992). SeeWimmer and Glick Schiller (nd), for a discussionof the widespread and ultimately limiting reliance onwhat they call ‘methodological nationalism’ by mostcontemporary scholars.

10 See, for example, Matthew Sparke’s (forthcoming)theoretical elaboration concerning the implicit national


401

framing of agonistic democracy in the work of Laclauand Mouffe (1985).

11 In some cases, these remittances provide a tremendousand much needed source of revenue for the state,thus providing a substantial incentive for the state tointercede in the protection of these ‘overseas’ citizens.See, for example, the work of Sarah Mahler (1995).

12 There are, of course, a number of important exceptions,including the work of Andy Green, Michael Apple, HenryGiroux, Martin Carnoy, Michael Katz and Joel Spring.

13 See Green (1990), Goodlad (1979) and Hochschildand Scovronik (2002) for discussions of the empiricalinconsistencies and mixed findings in some of thisearly theoretical work.

14 See Mitchell

et al

. (2003) for a fuller analysis of thisconcept.

15 Fordism is periodized here as the late 1940s throughthe late 1970s. For a discussion of some of the featuresof Fordism, as well as its decline, see Harvey (1989)and Amin (1994).

16 The quote is by nineteenth-century educationalsuperintendant of Ontario, Egerton Ryerson, as citedin Manzer (1994, 76).

17 The two quotes are from Egerton Ryerson, ‘Report ona System of Public Elementary Instruction for UpperCanada’ in Hodgins J G ed

Documentary history ofeducation in Upper Canada, 1791–1876

(28 vols, Toronto,1894–1910), vi: 200. Cited in McDonald (1978, 98). Seealso Curtis (1988).

18 There is now a large literature on the decline ofwelfarism and the rise of neoliberalism in Canada.A good study of the former is Rekart (1993). See alsoAkerman and Granatstein (1995), Ruggie (1996) andArmitage (1996). For a discussion of neoliberal policychanges in the financial industry in Canada, seeTickell (2000). For a discussion of the Free TradeAgreements (CUFTA and NAFTA) and their linkswith neoliberalism, see Clarkson (1993).

19 Following these ‘official’ reports, a number of prov-inces began to follow suit with similar types of reportsand campaigns, e.g. the Ontario Premier Council’sreports:

Competing in the New Global Economy

in 1988;and

People and Skills in the New Global Economy

in 1990;and from the Economic Council of Canada,

A Lot toLearn: Education and Training in Canada

(Ottawa Minis-ter of Supply and Services Canada 1992). See also theNew Brunswick, Commission on Excellence in Education,

Schools for a New Century

(Fredericton: Commissionon Excellence in Education 1992). These reports anddocuments and the kind of policy shift they implyare insightfully analysed by Ronald Manzer (1994,212–37).

20 See, for example, the consultative paper put togetherby various federal ministers, Canada, ProsperitySecretariat,

Living Well . . . Learning Well

(Ottawa:Minister of Supply and Services Canada 1991).

21 Two examples from British Columbia include: ‘Teachers

for Excellence in Education’ and ‘Society for theAdvancement of Excellence in Education’. The latterorganization, which was established as a charityin 1996, commissions research reports and articlesrelated primarily to the ‘failings’ of the currentsystem, the necessity for greater school choice andthe importance of accountability in education.

22 See, for example, the numerous reports from theOntario Ministry of Education and Training from1997, e.g. ‘Excellence in education: Ontario’s planfor reform’, on the Canadian Educational Policyand Administrative Network (http://www.cepan.ca/rrnew/sg/educational_reform.htm).

23 See Ontario, Ministry of Education, Ministry ofTraining, Colleges and Universities, ‘Backgrounder:Education Reform and Finance in Other Provinces’,13 January 1997 (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/nr/97.01/res-tbe.html).

24 For a detailed description of both the amounts and theorganization of all of the provincial and state fundingsystems in Canada and in the United States, see theindividual reports prepared by the Education FinanceStatistics Center of the National Center for EducationStatistics available on the US Department of Educationweb site (http://nces.ed.gov/edfin/state_finance/stateFinancing.asp). My information on Ontario isgarnered from the ‘Ontario’ report prepared by theEducation Finance Branch, p. 1 at the same URL.

25 For a general analysis of the Thatcher government’sattack on welfarism in England and the introductionand expansion of neoliberalism, see Hall (1988) andPierson (1994).

26 This ‘national curriculum’ represented the first majoreffort to standardize and homogenize what is taughtin the public schools.

27 British Council, ‘Public Sector Reform in Britain’(http://www.britishcouncil.org/governance/manag/reform/psref11.htm).

28 Roman Catholic and Church of England schools havebeen government funded for many years in Britain,but these schools are widely attended by children ofall faiths. Further, Blair’s decision facilitates the sepa-ration out of religious groups, such as Muslims andSikhs, who are more readily perceived as ‘different’within the context of Anglo-Protestant hegemony indefining British culture and society (e.g. see Gilroy 1987).

29 See also the National Skills Task Force final reportfrom June 2000, which proposes ‘a new national skillsagenda intended to develop the UK as a high-skill,high-value-added “knowledge economy” in the21st century’. The Task Force was set up by Blunkettin 1997. (http://www.eiro.eurofound.ie/2000/10/Feature/UK0010196F.html).

30 The 1954 court case,

Brown v. Board of Education ofTopeka

, was undoubtedly the most important of these.31 For more general analyses of the Reagan/Bush neoliberal

era and its ongoing effects on privatization and declining

402

Katharyne Mitchell

welfarism, see Joe and Rogers (1985), Pierson (1994)and Peck (2001).

32 Chester Finn, ‘A Call for Quality Education’,

AmericanEducation

( January–February 1982), p. 32. Cited inAronowitz and Giroux (1985, 4). Finn served as assist-ant secretary of education in the Reagan cabinet.

33 For a great discussion of the current use of the word‘excellence’ and its obliteration of any form of criticalreasoning, see Bill Readings (1996). For a discussion of thecontemporary changes in schooling in the last decadeand their philosophical and practical implications, seeGiroux (2001).

34 From a speech given by George Bush in January 2002.35 In addition to the separation out of Britain’s faith-

based groups, both Canada and the US now allow forseparation from the public-school mainstream throughthe establishment of government-funded ‘charter’ schools.

36 For example, Colorado Bill 02-136 was introducedinto the Colorado Senate and approved in 2002. Thisbill was titled, ‘A bill for an act concerning the teachingof a unit on patriotism in each public school in the state’.The summary stated: ‘Requires each public schoolin the state to teach, in each grade level offered in theschool, an age-appropriate unit on patriotism, includ-ing but not limited to a discussion of the rights, privi-leges, and responsibilities involved with United Statescitizenship and a historical review of what it means tobe an American.’ I am indebted to Annie Wiberg-Rozaklisfor finding this bill and bringing it to my attention.

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Educating the National Citizen in Neoliberal Times

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