k-punk
Spectres of Mark
Choice, as everyone knows, is the endlessly bleated mantra amongst the political class now (despite most polls showing that the public have no interest whatsoever in having a 'choice' of hospitals, schools, etc).
The emphasis on choice reveals the extent to which not so much a methodological individualist as a familial ontology has an unchallenged grip on the political imagination now. The family is a unit of such unimpeachable ethical probity that no one in party politics dare not to cheerlead for it, still less even think about questioning or - God forbid - criticizing it.
Hard to recall, but the assumption that education should be about 'parental choice' was once a contested and controversial doctrine. Its disappearance into the taken-for-granted background of the current administrative regime is further evidence that, while Thatcher fought the war, it is Blair who has won it. What Thatcher had to struggle to impose, Blair has normalized. But the idea that parents' interests, which tend by definition to be the acquisitive interests of their own clan, should be coincident with the social interest is a telling equivocation. That's because the whole category of the 'social interest' has disappeared - since it is straightforwardly assumed now that there is no such thing as society and that what passes for the social is simply an aggregation of families and individuals.
Needless to say, the ideology of choice is oddly self-refuting. If everyone had a choice, presumably no-one would choose to have their child in a 'failing' school. So choice in reality means choice for the middle classes and no choice for everyone else. Something borne out by the depressing statistics about working class access to higher education this week.
The emphasis on choice reveals the extent to which not so much a methodological individualist as a familial ontology has an unchallenged grip on the political imagination now. The family is a unit of such unimpeachable ethical probity that no one in party politics dare not to cheerlead for it, still less even think about questioning or - God forbid - criticizing it.
Hard to recall, but the assumption that education should be about 'parental choice' was once a contested and controversial doctrine. Its disappearance into the taken-for-granted background of the current administrative regime is further evidence that, while Thatcher fought the war, it is Blair who has won it. What Thatcher had to struggle to impose, Blair has normalized. But the idea that parents' interests, which tend by definition to be the acquisitive interests of their own clan, should be coincident with the social interest is a telling equivocation. That's because the whole category of the 'social interest' has disappeared - since it is straightforwardly assumed now that there is no such thing as society and that what passes for the social is simply an aggregation of families and individuals.
Needless to say, the ideology of choice is oddly self-refuting. If everyone had a choice, presumably no-one would choose to have their child in a 'failing' school. So choice in reality means choice for the middle classes and no choice for everyone else. Something borne out by the depressing statistics about working class access to higher education this week.