Education Under the New Modernisers: an agenda for centralisation, illiberalism and inequality?

This article surveys changes at the economic, philosophic, social and political levels to argue that a new agenda for educational policy is taking place in the western world, particularly in the UK and the USA. Driven by the needs for a high tech rather than a low wage economy, by perceived breakdown in the social fabric of society (partly as a consequence of previous New Right policies) and with an underpinning argument at the philosophic level which argues for a new orientation to the conception of the nature of moral thinking, this article argues that what is emerging is an approach to education based upon the notions of communitarianism and character education. Whilst such an approach has the potential to re-invigorate individuals' sense of responsibility to their communities, as well as provide a greater sense of meaning and direction to policy aims, it is argued in this article that it also has the possibility of centralising decision making, of increasing the likelihood of illiberalism towards minority beliefs and of neglecting present needs of the underprivileged. It concludes by suggesting that whilst many of these ideas originated in the USA, paradoxically they are likely to have their greatest effect in the UK