Neoconservatism English-Style: Back to the Future with Remoralizing Voices for Education?

Abstract

This articles addresses the conservative dynamics of ‘neoconservatism’ in the field of education with particular reference to possible complementarities between the ‘voices’ of two, seemingly alternative public intellectuals. These dynamics are conceptualized as part of what is, in social realist mode, enmoralization, a term coined to specify part of the structures and processes of realizing morale, by which remoralization works in this context to ‘neo’ conservative effects. Here, the post-postmodernist rediscovery of the moral and the ethical, the remoralization agenda, works to TINA by supporting the morale of the fatalism of capitalism. In the context of Blairite New Labour education policy, this ideology critique suggests ways in which neoconservatism articulates neoliberalism where agendas are set to prioritize authority over equity and social justice and to foreshorten the search for radical alternatives for policy futures.