A type of introduction

WB. Yeats and Meditations on a Time of Civil War

Come build in the empty house

The bees build in the crevices Of loosening masonry, and there The mother birds bring grubs and flies. My wall is loosening; honey-bees,

Come build in the empty house of the state. We are closed in, and the key is turned On our uncertainty; somewhere A man is killed, or a house burned, Yet no clear fact to be discerned: Come build in he empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood; Some fourteen days of civil war; Last night they trundled down the road That dead young soldier in his blood: Come build in the empty house of the stare. We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart's grown brutal from the fare; More Substance in our enmities Than in our love; O honey-bees, Come build in the empty house of the stare.

Fear and trembling?

The velocity of social, cultural and technological change. ‘All that is solid melts into air’

Increased social inequality and major power imbalances

Rise of xenophobia and racism

On the verge of ecological disaster?

Beyond pessimism?

Limits of cultural pessimism and catastrophismNeed “to match the new economic and socio-political

dislocations and configurations of our time with the startling realities of human interdependence” (Said, 1994, p. 410).

Ron Barnett (2013) asks how can encourage each other, both as individual educators and as a field a whole, to “leap beyond the familiar” (2013, p. 15). Imagination, he argues, can help us to do this “has a power to see into things, to feel into things, to be at one with things anew to produce a new understanding of the object of imagination” (2013, p. 25).

The pulse of freedom

Critical and realist analysis: explanatory depth and emancipatory potential.

Close attention to what is happening now and why.

Imaginative exploration of possibilities and contradictions (Barnett, 2013; Bhaskar, 2005).

Historical dimension crucial (Benjamin, 1992).

Identify dominant and emergent tendencies.

Debate the adequacy, scope and depth of various proposals “to develop a coherent and credible theory of alternatives” (Wright, 2010, p.20).

Neoliberalism: history and claims

Neoliberalism: from obscure neologism to catch all term. But it does have a clear genesis, history and readily identifiable characteristics. It is an elite project of economic, political and cultural reform which emerged in early 1970s and has since become some of the dominant ideas of the age.

Main claim very familiar indeed: extending the reach of markets in all areas of social life will maximize individual freedom and choice and create wealth. Extraordinary faith in competitive markets

The emergence of a new architecture of power

Facilitated by advances in technology. Adapted in a wide range of socio-historical contexts (Harvey, 2005).

New networks of power- state-market/state- transnational bodies/state and corporations. Deregulation, privatisation, free trade agreements etc.

Financialisation: wealth extraction through financial speculation (Mellor, 2011: Sayer, 2015). Involves individuals, households, financial and non-financial firms (Lapavitsas, 2013). Flows of capital, ideas etc.

Sustained attack on collectivist institutions of the working class, groups making claims on the commons, and reined in ‘excessive’ demands of social movements (Harvey, 2005; Wainwright, 1994).

Neoliberalism and its discontents

1. Weakened social solidarity, encouraged competitive individualism, increased precarity and widened social inequality (Harvey, 2010; Standing, 2009).

2. Consolidation of elite power in terms of wealth and capacity to influence decision making (Dorling, 2015; Sayer, 2015).

3. Austerity and polycrisis (Coulter, in press; Douzinas, 2012).

Public pedagogy and educational reform

Neoliberalism as public pedagogy (Giroux, 2004).Marketisation (Ball, 2007). Education as a new frontier

made to follow “the calculating and objectifying logic of economy” (Vandergehe, 2014, p. 285). Student as debtor. Educational institutions as entrepreneurial.

Language, practices and values of ‘New managerialism’ (Lynch et al. 2012) saturate educational institutions. Student as client. Educator as performer.

Counting what counts: Use of outcome based qualifications systems has mushroomed from 20 to 120 in twenty years (Allais, 2014, p.2). The aim of these reform to make education more ‘relevant’ to immediate needs of the economy and significantly this is presented and justified as being ‘learner centred’ and anti-elitist.

A pinched educational imagination

Questions about the purpose and value of education are being ignored and we have become preoccupied by “technical and managerial questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, not what these processes are for” (Biesta, 2010, p. 2).

Diminished our sense of how educational work relates to broader social issues and also skates over the complex, multilayered reality of learning.

Restricts our capacity as educators and citizens to think of the future in an open way.

The limits of neoliberalism

A failed project: not kept its own promises, effect on general well-being and inability to address global challenges (Sayer, 2015).

An impossible project: ‘stark utopia’ (Polanyi, 2001). underpinned by a threadbare and unrealistic conception of human beings.

A contested project: Over the past twenty years and far more emphatically in the past eight years inequality and the global ‘democratic deficit’ have become truly global themes (Della Porta 2013, Wainwright, 2011) .

Legitimation crisis

General contours: increase in social and economic inequality, winnowing of a sense of possibility in society and education.

Taken a specific political form - corrosion of liberal democracy (Alheit, 2005; Della Porta, 2013; Honneth, 2012; Wainwright, 2011) which relied on:

1. Political parties that could mobilise communities and shape collective identities.

2. The nation state appeared as clearly bounded and a credible theatre of political power.

3. State committed, however minimally, to reducing social inequality.

4. Wide availability of opportunities for individual projects of self-realisation

Specificities of contestation

Hilary Wainwright (2011) notes when ‘old institutions fail, people invent’. Emerging conception of democracy ? Participation and deliberation across a wide variety of public spheres. This ‘thick’ version of democracy thus seeks the participation of citizens in decision making outside the bounded and tidily defined arenas of traditional politics. Moving towards a society in which citizens have “equal, effective possibility of participating in legislating, governing, and judging, and in the last analysis, in instituting society (Castoriadis, 2010, p 3).

Organic link with education (Apple, 2013; Tett, 2002; Zibechi, 2012 inter alia).

Capacity for organisation, planning and communicative exchange across local, national, transnational, continental and global fora of learning enhanced by new social media.

Lessons learnt: education for freedom

Equality: as founding assumption, practice and ultimate goal (Baker et al., 2009; Freire, 1972; Ranciere, 1991).

Thick notion of democracy: an experimental form of social cooperation (Dewey, 1916) in which institutions evolve and change. Seek out and break down social, cultural and economic barriers to participation. Importance of deliberation, contestation and difference.

Space of recognition in two senses- shared concerns, political deliberation, praxis but also as unfinished, vulnerable beings (Freire, 1972; Kittay, 1999; Honneth, 2012)

Knowledge- negotiated and explored collaboratively and collectively. Search for limits and contradictions in practice with emancipatory intent (Engestrom, 2001; Wainwright, 1994) .

Border crossing- between communities, educational institutions and movements

Freedom: freedom as desire and topic for exploration. More realistic ontology based on interdependence and autonomy

Practical implications and reflections

Maximal and minimal implicationsInstitutionsValues and purposeCurricula Educator –student relations

Alheit, P. (2005). Challenges of the postmodern 'Learning Society'; A critical approach. In A. Bron, Kurantowicz, E. Olesen, H. & West, L. (Ed.), 'Old' and 'new' worlds of adult learning (pp. 389-407). Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Naukowe DSWE.

Allais, S. (2014) Selling out education: National Qualifications Frameworks and the neglect of knowledge. Rotterdam: Sense.

Apple, M. (2013) Can education change society? Milton Park, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Barr, J. (2008) The stranger within: on the ideas of the educated public. Rotterdam; Taipei: Sense.Baker, J., Lynch, K., Cantillon, S. & Walsh, J. (2009). Equality: from theory to action (2nd ed.). Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan.Balibar, É. (2002). Politics and the other scene. London: Verso.Ball, S. J. (2007). Education plc: understanding private sector participation in public sector education. London:

Routledge. Barnett, R. (2013) Imagining the university. Abingdon; Oxon: Routledge. Bhaskar, R. (2005) The possibility of naturalism: a philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences.

E-library: Taylor and Francis.Bhaskar, R. (2008) A realist theory of science. London; New York: Verso.Bloch, E. (1985) The principle of hope. Oxford: Blackwell.Benjamin, W. (1992). Illuminations. London: FontanaBiesta, G. (2010) Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics and democracy. Boulder; CO:

Paradigm. Castells, M. (2009) Communication power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castoriadis, C. (2010) A society adrift: interviews and debates. New York: Fordham University Press. Coulter, C. (In press) Austerity Ireland. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Della Porta, D. (2013) Can democracy be saved? Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan. Dorling, D. (2015) Injustice: why inequality still persists. London: Policy Press

Douzinas, C.(2013) Philosophy and resistance in the crisis. Cambridge: Polity Eley, G. (2002). Forging democracy: the history of the left in Europe, 1850-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity- theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki Orienta-Konsultit. Engeström, Y. (2001). A new introduction to Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki

Orienta-Konsultit. Finnegan, F. (2008). Neoliberalism, Irish society and adult education. The Adult Learner: The Irish Journal of Adult and Community

Education, 45-67. Finnegan, F. (2014). Embodied experience, transformative learning and social change: notes on a theory of social learning. Paper read at

ESREA Interrogating transformative processes in learning and education network, Athens, 28th July. Finnegan, F., Merrill, B. & Thunborg, C. (eds) (in press). Student voices on inequalities in European higher education: challenges for policy

and practice in a time of change. London: Routledge. Freire, P. (1970). Cultural action for freedom. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Educational Review.Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Giroux, H. A. (1992). Border crossings: cultural workers and the politics of education. London: Routledge.Giroux, H. A. (1999). Vocationalizing Higher Education: Schooling and the Politics of Corporate Culture. College Literature, 26(3), 147-

161.Giroux, H. A. (2000). Stealing innocence: youth, corporate power, and the politics of culture New York: St. Martin's Press.Giroux, H. A. (2001). Public spaces, private lives: beyond the culture of cynicism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Giroux, H. A. (2004). The terror of neoliberalism. Aurora, Ont.: Garamond Press.Greene, M. (1995) Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Grummel, B. (2007). The ‘Second Chance’ Myth: Equality of Opportunity in Irish Adult Education Policies. British Journal of Educational

Studies, 55(2), 182-201. Graeber, D. (2013) The democracy project. London: Penguin. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Harvey, B. (2012). Downsizing the community sector: Changes in employment and services in the voluntary and community sector in

Ireland, 2008-2012. Dublin: ICTU. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: an enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Neoliberalism: what is in a word?

Neoliberalism: from obscure neologism to catch all term. But it does have a precise meaning:it is an elite project of economic, political and cultural reform which emerged in early 1970s and is remains dominant.

Main claim very familiar indeed: by extending the reach of markets in all areas of social life will create wealth and maximize individual freedom and choice. Extraordinary faith in competitive markets

A new architecture of power

Developed and adapted and in wide range of socio-historical contexts (Harvey, 2005).

New networks of power- state-market, state- transnational bodies, state and corporations – deregulation, privatisation, free trade agreements etc.

Sustained attack on collectivist institutions of the working class and attempt to rein in ‘excessive’ demands of ‘new’ social movements (Harvey, 2005; Wainwright, 2011)

Financialisation: wealth extraction through financial speculation (Mellor, 2011: Sayer, 2015). Involves individuals, households, financial and non-financial firms Kapavitas.

Consequences and discontents

1. This project has weakened social solidarity, encouraged competitive individualism, increased precarity and widened social inequality (Harvey, 2010; Standing, 2009).

2. Cumulatively effected a major consolidation in elite power in terms of wealth and capacity to influence decision making (Dorling, 2015; Sayer, 2015).

3. Austerity and polycrisis (Coulter, in press; Douzinas, 2012).

Public pedagogy and educational reform

Neoliberalism as public pedagogy (Giroux, 2004).Education as a new frontier made to follow “the calculating

and objectifying logic of economy” (Vandergehe, 2014, p. 285). Marketisation (Ball, 2007). Student as debtor. Educator as entrepreneur.

Language, practices and values of ‘New mangerialism’ (Lynch et al. 2012) saturate educational institutions. Student as client. Educator as performer.

Counting what counts: Use of outcome based qualifications systems has mushroomed from 20 to 120 in twenty years (Allais, 2014, p.2). The aim of these reform to make education more ‘relevant’ to immediate needs of the economy and significantly this is presented and justified as being ‘learner centred’ and anti-elitist.

Challenges and unanswered questions

1. Leaving old ideas behind: the limits of learner centredness.

2. Leaving old habits behind: ambition and vision but with greater modesty.

3. Need to develop stable institutions and research networks

4. Developing local and transnational curricula moving towards an ‘ecology of knowledges’.

5. Will these spaces and alliances be capable of challenging neoliberalism?

A narrow and pinched educational imagination

Questions about the purpose and value of education are being ignored and we have become preoccupied by “technical and managerial questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, not what these processes are for” (Biesta, 2010, p. 2).

This has diminished our sense of how educational work relates to broader social issues and also skates over the complex, multilayered reality of learning.

Restricts our capacity as educators and citizens to think of the future in an open way.

Some conclusions and dep

Democratic adult education developed in minimal and maximal versions in relation to student- educator relations, curricula and pedagaogy.

Major issues:1. Leaving old ideas behind ? the limits of andragogy and

experiential knowledge alone. 2. Leaving old ideas behind ? Relentless critique without

soklu3. Need to develop stable institutions and research networks4. Developing local and transnational curricula moving

towards towards an ‘ecology of knowledges’.5. What sort of alliances and collectives are capable of

challenging neoliberalism?

Imagining anew

Specific critical realist understanding

Close attention what is happening now and why

Historical formation of education.

Explore possibility and contradictions

Towards future orientated debate in which we discuss the adequacy, scope and depth of various proposals that we can really begin “to develop a coherent and credible theory of alternatives” (Wright, 2010, p.20).

Neoliberalism: what is in a word?

Neoliberalism: from obscure neologism to catch all term. But it does have a precise meaning. It is an elite project of economic, political and cultural reform which emerged in early 1970s and is still dominant.

Main claim very familiar indeed: by extending the reach of markets in all areas of social life will create wealth and maximize individual freedom and choice. A faith in competitive markets

Key features of neoliberalism

Facilitated by changes in technology. Adapted and developed in wide range of socio-historical contexts.

New networks of power- state-market, state- transnational bodies, state and corporations – deregulation, privatisation, free trade agreements etc.

Sustained attack on collectivist institutions of the working class and reined in ‘excessive’ demands of new social movements (Harvey, 2005; Wainwright, 2011)

Financialisation: development of new mechanisms of wealth extraction based financial speculation (Mellor, 2011: Sayer, 2015). Involves individuals, households, financial and non-financial firms Kapavitas.

Medium term impact

1. Compression of space and time (Harvey, 1989).2. This project has weakened social solidarity,

encouraged competitive individualism, increased precarity and widened social inequality (Harvey, 2005, 2010; Sayer, 2015; Standing, 2009).

3. Cumulatively the neoliberal era has seen a major consolidation in elite power in terms of wealth and capacity to influence decision making (Dorling, 2015; Sayer, 2015).

4. Has led us into an era of austerity and polycrisis (Douzinas, 2012).

Public pedagogy and educational reform

Neoliberalism as public pedagogy (Giroux, 2004).Marketisation (Ball, 2007). Education as a new frontier

made to follow “the calculating and objectifying logic of economy” (Vandergehe, 2014, p. 285).

Language, practices and values of ‘New mangerialism’ (Lynch et al. 2012) saturate educational institutions. Spread of consumer culture; students as clients etc..

Counting what counts: Use of outcome based qualifications systems has mushroomed from 20 to 120 in twenty years (Allais, 2014, p.2). The aim of these reform to make education more ‘relevant’ to immediate needs of the economy and significantly this is presented and justified as being ‘learner centred’.

A narrow and pinched educational imagination

Questions about the purpose and value of education are being ignored and we have become preoccupied by “technical and managerial questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, not what these processes are for” (Biesta, 2010, p. 2).

This has diminished our sense of how educational work relates to broader social issues and also skates over the complex, multilayered reality of learning.

Restricts our capacity as educators and citizens to think of the future in an open way.

Democracy: the new fault line

A failed project: in terms of its own promises, effect on general well being and addressing key global challenges

An impossible project: ‘stark utopia’ (Polanyi, 2001). as underpinned by a threadbare and frankly unrealistic conception of human beings.

A contested project: Over the past twenty years and far more emphatically in the past eight years inequality and the global ‘democratic deficit’ have become truly global themes.

Clearing some ground in thinking about democracy

Democracy can mean a great many things. Normative, empirical, and ideological uses of the word. Can refer to constitutions, procedures, institutions and ethics.

A vast and untidy field: to go deeper need to clear some ground .

Deliberation

participatory and liberal

Four conceptions of democracy

--------------------------------------------------------------- Majority vote Deliberation

____________________________________Delegation Liberal Liberal &

deliberative

Participation Radical & Participatory & participatory deliberative

From Della Porta (2013)

Liberal democracy

Always fractured and contested but remained hegemonic when:

1. Political parties could mobilise collectives and communities and shape identities.

2. The nation state remained a clearly bounded and credible theatre of political power.

3. State committed to, at least at a rhetorical level, to reducing social inequality.

4. Perceived freedom and resources available for individual self-realisation

(Alheit, 2005; Della Porta, 2013; Honneth, 2012; Wainwright, 2011)

education is of course linked to these things

A ferment of creativity and emerging solutions?

As Hilary Wainwright (2011) notes when ‘old institutions fail, people invent’. To striking degree spread across the world of experiments and initiatives linked to participatory and deliberative conception of democracy. Move toward deliberation across a wide variety of public spheres. This ‘thick’ version of democracy thus seeks the participation of citizens in decision making well outside the bounded and tidily defined arenas of traditional politics The ultimate goal is to move towards a society in which citizens have “equal, effective possibility of participating in legislating, governing, and judging, and in the last analysis, in instituting society (Castoriadis, 2010, p 3).

This is also a movement in which new forms of democratic education are being developed across the world (Apple, 2013; Tett, 2002; Zibechi, 2012 inter alia).

Democracy is therefore seen as an ethical, political and practical project. It is perhaps useful to think of this form of democracy as open-ended and as a set of practices and ideas that call for “perpetual work of self-correction” (Ranciere, 2007, p 42).

As Dewey (1916) suggests this means democracy is above all an experimental form of social cooperation in which institutions evolve and change. Within the terms I have outlined here an integral part of this work of deliberation and self correction is to seek out and break down social, cultural and economic barriers to citizens’ full participation.

A major task for any participatory democracy then is to “identify the ways in which existing social institutions and social structures impose harms on people” (Wright, 2010, p. 11). On the other hand this also requires careful deliberation on how, with finite resources, a society can allow for ‘the expansion of the “capabilities” of persons to lead the lives they value- and have reason to value’ (Sen, 1999, p. 18).

This work, I believe, is impossible without a multidimensional conception of equality which explores how access to cultural and economic resources and valued social practices contribute to human development (Baker et al., 2009). As feminists have long argued this means fully acknowledging the centrality of love, solidarity and care for social well-being and seeking to identify and foster the social and institutional arrangements that support and enhance these things (Kittay, 1999; Lynch et al., 2009).

One other point should be noted: establishing equality and democracy as mutually dependent principles does not mean effacing difference or always seeking consensus. Rather an open, experimental, dialogical form of social organisation needs a high level of “disagreement and conflict” (Douzinas, 2013, p,114).

Learning democracy?

All explicitly learning spaces, organically linked to progressive social movements calling for greater levels of equality in power and resources

Despite overheated rhetoric about new technologies it is also clear that capacity for organisation, planning and communicative exchange across local, national, transnational, continental and global fora of learning is much enhanced (Castells,2009).

Illustrative examples Brazil, Rojava, Mexico, Spain. Highlander, Climate camps, World Social Fora, Social Centres, Campaigns, Philosophy in Pubs

Different scales, levels of continuity and success. Inside and outside formal institutions, both state funded and completely autonomous. At all educational levels and for all ages.

Still emergent and many difficulties and challenges not least in developing a genuine ‘ecology of knowledge’ which is commensurab le with

Part of a longer history

Shared core characterisitics

Presumption of equality (Freire Horton, Ranciere) democracy learnt and retested

Egalitarian processes and goals with not to Taps a desire for freedom is expanded through collaboration

and collective effort fminisim Knowledge is fallible and contingent and critical knowledge

only produced through problem posing. Engestrom (2001, p. 2) calls this ‘expansive learning’ and

argues that very rich forms of reflexive learning “begins with individual subjects questioning the accepted practice” and the tools, concepts and practices are there which allow it to “gradually expands into a collective movement or institution”.

Many sided – various needs and concerns Relies on wider vision

Changing paradigms

Alheit (2005b, p. 391) describes the expansion as part of historical compromise which was based on

 a somewhat unusual alliance between social-democratic

reformism and capital’s drive to modernise both itself and society. What one side envisaged as an emancipatory opportunity for personal growth, especially for the working classes, was seen by the other side as the benefits of having the wide-ranging skills that were considered essential to remain competitive.

This is over but many of ideas and expectations are embedded in social democracy

Practical implications

Maximal and minimalNew forms of accountabilityNegotiated curriculaSearch for expansive momentsIntersection community and educational

institutions

Relating this to formal education past and present

These type of movements have reshaped education before (Carnoy & Levin, ).

Can be linked to earlier debates and experiments

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