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The Politics, Sociology and Economics of Education pp 15–43Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Politics, Education, and Paradigmatic Reconceptualism: US Critical Theory in the 1990s

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Abstract

Within the general context of the US educational ‘system’, this contribution answers three questions: What are some recent and significant trends in critical social science or radical educational theory on social structure, culture, and individual or group behavior? Do these trends (such as ethnographic research and everyday politics) coincide with any current US developments in political science, socialization, and education? Is there any prospect that critical educational studies will have a significant impact on curriculum, research, or theoretical formulations in American political science, education, and/or socialization? We discuss such trends and draw relevant conclusions. In this chapter, ‘critical’ educational theory refers to a diverse group of radical democratic, New Left, neo-Marxist, and reconceptualist critics of both classic and social ‘liberal’ and ‘neoconservative’ concepts of schooling (that is, opposed to those espousing what Tomas Englund (chapter 15) describes as their ‘patriarchal’ and ‘scientific/rational’ discourses on education).

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Authors
  1. Russell F. Farnen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Connecticut, USA

    Russell F. Farnen (Professor of Political Science) (Professor of Political Science)

  2. University of Wuppertal, Germany

    Heinz Sünker (Professor of Social Pedagogics) (Professor of Social Pedagogics)

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© 1997 Russell F. Farnen

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Farnen, R.F. (1997). Politics, Education, and Paradigmatic Reconceptualism: US Critical Theory in the 1990s. In: Farnen, R.F., Sünker, H. (eds) The Politics, Sociology and Economics of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25752-2_2

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