Article
Neoliberal ideology in a private Sudbury school
Policy Futures in Education
(2015)
Abstract
Educational researchers have called attention to how neoliberal ideology has profoundly and detrimentally influenced public education systems, but less attention has been paid to how neoliberalism influences private educational institutions. This article examines the influence of neoliberal ideology on education in the USA through an ethnographic case study of a private Sudbury school, Central Valley Sudbury School (CVSS), whose radical unschooling philosophy positions itself in an oppositional stance towards public schools, which it perceives to be hopelessly beyond repair. CVSS represents the permeation of neoliberal ideology in education through its very existence as a private school in the growing alternative education industry. While Sudbury practitioners positioned themselves in opposition to the neoliberal policies and practices of public schools, at the micro-level of routine interaction at CVSS, neoliberalism presented itself through discourses of meritocracy and choice, individual autonomy, entrepreneurship, and education as a private good. Such a contradiction reveals that there may be more congruence between radical unschooling philosophies and neoliberal rationality than would first appear. The article contributes additional understanding to how schools—both public and private—reproduce key ideologies of the society in which they are embedded.
Keywords
- neoliberalism,
- progressivism,
- alternative schooling
Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
DOI
10.1177/1478210315610256
Citation Information
Wilson, M. A. F. (2015). Neoliberal ideology in a private Sudbury school. Policy Futures in Education, 1478210315610256.