He subsequently worked at the Department of Trade and Industry, the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council, the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals and the Higher Education Quality Council. [...] Gary Gerstle’s recent, and comprehensive account of the ‘rise and fall of the neoliberal order’ describes it as a rejection of the New Deal’s Keynesian belief in the power of an assertive state to govern the economic system in the public interest. [...] The essence of Gerstle’s argument – and the political significance of what is a magnificent historical analysis – is that in the second decade of the twenty-first century the neoliberal political order collapsed, brought down by the long-term consequences of the economic crisis of 2007 to 2009 and the challenges it posed for political parties of both left and right and for political philosophy. [...] As well as confirming the earlier conclusion that neoliberal policies had caused, or at least greatly contributed to, the post-1970s rise in inequality and poverty, this analysis suggested that they were the main reason for the slowing of the Western economies after the mid-1970s (including through the weakening of the trades unions and the reduction in real wages) and the much greater incidence o. [...] Neoliberalism in education, therefore, persistently draws attention to the underachievers, the ‘at risk’, the non-performers, the pockets of poverty, the bad schools, the bad families, the under- motivated, the excluded, the failures.
- Pages
- 52
- Published in
- United Kingdom
