Much of the literature on "critical pedagogies" has been politically and theoretically important and has helped us make a number of gains. However, it too often has not been sufficiently connected to the ways in which the current movement toward what might best be called "conservative modernization" both has altered common-sense and has transformed the material and ideological conditions surrounding schooling. It, thereby, sometimes becomes a form of what best be called "romantic possibilitarian" rhetoric, in which the language of possibility substitutes for a consistent tactical analysis of what the balance of forces actually is and what is necessary to change neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies in literacy and in the entire sphere of education. I examine the ways in which the social and cultural terrain of educational policy and discourse has been altered "on the ground" so to speak. I argue that we need to make closer connections between our theoretical and critical discourses on the one hand and the real transformations that are currently shifting educational policies and practices in fundamentally rightist directions on the other. Thus, part of my discussion is conceptual and political; but part of it will appropriately need to be empirical in order for me to pull together what is known about the real and material effects of the shift to the right in education.
PUBLIC POLICIES; CURRICULUM; CULTURE