Education and the Politics of Interruption: Does the Right Always Win?

Education has become a crucial site of struggle in multiple nations of the world. Education and the Politics of Interruption examines how governments, schools, educators, communities, and parents have become central figures in the conflicts between authoritarian coalitions and progressive educational and social movements. In recent years, educators around the world have experienced increasingly influential and powerful attempts by the right to ban books from classrooms and libraries, silence diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, control what and whose knowledge is taught in classrooms, and push policies that defund public schools, increase the pressure for marketization, and assert “parental choice.” This book describes ongoing alliances and organizing efforts across the globe that work to build and defend critically democratic educational policies and practices amid the growing rightist ideological and legislative influences. It provides substantive critical analyses of conservative and authoritarian agendas in education, exposes the social and educational costs of these agendas, and documents the ongoing struggles against them. In the process, it broadens our understanding of how people can defend and expand critically democratic schooling and cooperate across differing ideological agendas. This volume will be important reading for critical educators and for scholars and students of Critical Education, Curriculum Studies, Education Politics and Policy, Social Justice, Sociology of Education, and Comparative Education.

Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. He is also Distinguished Professorial Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK and elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Iana Gomes De Lima is Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Luis Armando Gandin is Professor of Sociology of Education at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.