The Safetyfication of Education : Neoliberalism, Psychopolitics and the End of Critical Education

Abstract

This open access book examines the dominance of safety discourses in education and its connection with neoliberalism. Over the past few decades, the term ‘safety’ has become silently but increasingly pervasive in educational debates worldwide. This book problematises this pervasiveness and analyses both its historical origins and practical implications. The first part of the book investigates how ‘safety’ became a problem of educational concern in the Anglophone world and its link with the development of neoliberalism. The second part is based on an ethnographic study, funded by the Spencer Foundation, which explores the safety practices of four secondary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand, a country at the vanguard of ‘Third way’ educational policies. The findings show that while safety discourses provide an avenue for discontent teachers and students to channel their aspirations of social justice, efforts to create safe learning environments often contribute to the depoliticization/psychologization of social issues and the reinforcement of neoliberal logics of mental optimisation and choice. The book concludes with a call to move away from safety discourses and a tentative way forward that builds upon the contradictions of these discourses. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Spencer Foundation.