Challenging the System? - Softcover

Forsey, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593115784 ISBN 13: 9781593115784

Publisher: Information Age Publishing, 2006

Synopsis

The book is written with great clarity, and a strong awareness of the importance of the school's social milieu. Forsey cuts through the mealy mouthed official rhetoric of "education for all" and shows the massive, continuing influence of social class inequalities in Australian society. Class interests shape not only this school but the whole education system around it, public and private. Ravina High is seen as a "good school" largely because of its comfortable middle-class catchment.

About this title

Synopsis

Based on extended, intensive fieldwork in an Australian high school, Challenging the System illuminates issues faced on a daily basis by teachers and educational administrators in many parts of the world. Forsey highlights the tensions arising between neo-liberal emphasis on individual school communities as the engine for competitive excellence in education, and the need for those responsible for running public education to maintain some degree of equity across the whole system. He shows that reforms based purely on market forces are not only undesirable, they are imposible to achieve. Governments do not want to lose control of highly significant cultural and political systems, nor can they stray too far from at least appearing to support the egalitarian ideals purportedly underpinning modern democracies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Information Age Publishing
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1593115784
• ISBN 13: 9781593115784
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208