Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

We are currently witnessing important transformations in what education is for in how it is to be carried out, and in who will benefit the most from these transformations. The ultimate effect of many of these "reforms" will be to exacerbate existing inequalities. The question underlying this article is, How are these inequalities justified publicly? The author provides a suggestive analysis of one of the strands of such logics of justification. In the United States and many other nations, a major strand that surfaces time and again involves the use of moral and biological logics to explain widespread social and educational inequalities. A good deal of the focus of this article will be on the uses of these arguments-such as those crystallized in Herrn stein and Murray 's The Bell Curve-to support conservative policies in education and the larger society.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Apple, M. W. (1993). Official knowledge. New York: Routledge.

Apple, M. W. (1995). Education and power (2nd ed.). New York: Roudedge.

Apple, M. W. (1996). Cultural politics and education. New York: Teachers CoDlege Press.

Apple, M. W. , & Beane, J. A. (Eds.). (1995). Democratic schools. Washington, DC: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Arnot, M. (1991, April). Feminism, education, and the new right. Unpublished paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.

Bernstein, B. (1990). 7he structuring of pedagogic discourse. New York: Routledge.

Burdell, P. (1996). Teen mothers in high schools. In M. W. Apple (Ed.), Review of research in education (Vol. 21, pp. 163-208). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Coontz, S. (1988). The social origins of private life. New York: Verso.

Coontz, S. (1992). The way we never were. New York: Basic Books.

10.

Fraser, N. , & Gordon, L. (1994). A genealogy of dependency. Signs, 19, 309-336.

11.

Hernstein, R. , & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve. New York: Free Press.

12.

Honderich, T. (1990). Conservatism. Boulder, CO: West view.

13.

Hunter, A. (1987). 7he politics of resentment and the construction of middle America. Unpublished paper, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

14.

Hunter, I. (1994). Rethinking the school. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwim.

15.

Katz, M. (1989). 7The undesigning poor. New York: Pantieon.

16.

Kincheloe, J. , & Steinberg, S. (Eds.). (1996). Measured lies. New York: St. Martin's Press.

17.

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities. New York: Crown.

18.

Lewis, J. (1991). Back to the future: A comment on American new right ideas about welfare and citizenship in the 1980s. Gender and History, 3, 326-336.

19.

Omi, M. , & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

20.

West, C. (1993). Race matters. New York: Vintage.

21.

Whitty, G. (1997). Creating quasi-markets in education. In M. W. Apple (Ed.), Review of research in education (Vol. 22, pp. 3-47). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

22.

Whitty, G. , Edwards, T. , & Gewirtz, S. (1993). Specialization and choice in urban education. London: Roudledge.

Justifying the Conservative Restoration: Morals,Genes,and Educational Policy

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References