Abstract
Neoliberal policies in education are not only the source of privatization, segregation, and spatial injustice, but they also interfere with the construction of subjectivity. As they progress through their schooling, learners gradually integrate neoliberal norms and values (competitiveness, efficiency, flexibility, independence, etc.), generating the need to adapt to globalization and enhancing the sense of socio-spatial inequalities. In this paper, we will investigate the effects of ultraliberal and neoliberal policies on rural areas in southeastern France (Hautes-Alpes department), but also the resistance enacted by educators that can be placed in opposition to neoliberal values and norms. More specifically, we will consider transformative learning and care ethics that can be capable of recognizing how these values live within learners and how to transform them, to thus take care of ourselves, others, and the Earth.
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Notes
- 1.
Interview for Sunday Times, 3 May 1981.
- 2.
Each year, the academy publishes a reference document collecting the main data for pupil populations. These data have been available online since 2017: https://www.ac-aix-marseille.fr/publications-et-statistiques-121703 [accessed 24 February 2022]. For more historical research, there are the archives of the School Inspection Office in Hautes-Alpes which traces the evolution in educational structures with a long-term vision (1908–2013): https://archives.hautes-alpes.fr/archive/fonds/FRAD005_Inspection_academique
- 3.
See the report of the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies: INSEE References, 19/11/2019: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/4238409 (accessed 14 July 2022).
- 4.
Law n° 2019-828, 6 August 2019: https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/loi-de-transformation-de-la-fonction-publique; https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000038889182/ (accessed 24 February 2022).
- 5.
In this sense, many recent press surveys show a massive increase in teacher resignations in France. See for example: Le Monde, 22/11/2021: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2021/11/22/les-demissions-d-enseignants-un-phenomene-en-expansion_6103110_3224.html (accessed 14 July 2022).
- 6.
Initiated in the 1970s by Jack Mezirow for adult education, the field of transformative learning is defined as a “process” aimed at constructing and appropriating a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of lived experience (Mezirow, 2000). It is thus a question of transforming ways of perceiving, knowing, thinking, feeling, and acting as well as the principles and values that condition them. According to O’Sullivan (1999), this work of transformative critique complements a reformative critique (focused on institutions) to radically restructure the assumptions of the dominant culture (paternalism, competition, etc.).
- 7.
What we call here the process of subjectivation is the primary work on the Self that leads subjects to know themselves, to care about themselves, and to bring about a mode of attention to their own experience. This attention to oneself is a fundamental gesture for becoming a fully autonomous and sovereign subject (Fleury, 2015), capable of resisting all possible forms of subjugation (entertainment, alienation, voluntary servitude, guilt). Far from producing an egocentric narcissism, on the contrary, the process of subjectivation opens up to relational concerns to deep understanding of our interdependence, well summed up by Yves Citton inspired by Arn Naess: “entities do not exist outside the relations that constitute them” (2014: 165).
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Barniaudy, C. (2023). The Way Out Is Also in: Educators Committed to Transformative Learning and Care Ethics as a Means of Resisting Neoliberal Policies (Hautes-Alpes, France). In: Mary, K., Nafaa, N., Giband, D. (eds) Geographies of Globalized Education Privatization . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37853-9_7
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