This article explores some features of an international ‘third
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traditions of communal life and the belief in autonomous agency –
traditions which motivate individual participation in society and underpin liberal
conceptions of education.The article uncovers some of the hopes and aspirations of
third way discourse by examining the work of one of its leading proponents, Anthony
Giddens, and reviewing related social policy implementation in the United States,
Britain and especially New Zealand. The following are argued as problematic for
education: the nature of ‘community’ that underpins commitment
to third way values; the way in which individual subjectivity is shaped in response
to that community; and the diminishing of the social space in which such changes
might be meaningfully critiqued. With a particular focus on New Zealand's
policy environment, the article argues that third way is an intensification of
neoliberalism under the rhetoric of social democracy, and concludes with a vision of
a different kind of third way – not a singular path to a predefined
destination, but a journey that embraces difference and antagonism as an essential
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