ABSTRACT
Schooling has long been central to debates concerning public morality, the construction of national community and the maintenance of knowledge traditions. These debates are inextricably connected to the defence and understanding of mass schooling as a public good, with justified governmental financial support. Indeed, despite transnational moves towards the privatisation of education, schooling remains strongly within governmental purview precisely because it acts as a key site of citizenship-making. Most recently, schooling has been at the centre of so-called ‘culture wars’, in which curricula, pedagogy and even schooling administration have been subject to intensive neoconservative criticism on the basis that schools are failing in their purpose as an institution of the nation-public. This chapter examines these criticisms and considers their repercussions for understanding the associated – if at times contradictory - processes of privatisation in schooling. It does so by examining recent debates in Australia surrounding the meaning and practice of nationhood, family and sexuality. I suggest contemporary neoliberal trends surrounding privatisation and commercialisation in education must be understood in relation to broader debates focused on the character of schooling, and ultimately of the nation state and the citizen self.
