‘...If Radical Education Is to Be Anything More Than Radical Pedagogy’

This paper offers an indignant analysis of a purportedly radical education discourse that neglects the work of radical teachers who work in primary and secondary schools. By radical education I mean approaches in education and teaching that seek to address the roots of political, economic and social problems. I attach the term 'discourse' to 'radical education', to draw attention to the power and political interests representing this arena of education theory. It enables me to focus on the ways that what is said about radical education, relate to networks of meaning, images and cultural categories that have their own history and conditions of existence.' This essay is provoked both by my uneasiness with the fashioning of curriculum theory as it relates to radical education, and my sensitivity to its variance from my own experience as a diffident 'minority' school girl and as a feminist high school teacher.