Abstract

Global economic and advanced capitalist agendas have taken on ideological dimensions that are flat, precise and which assert "undeniable" facts. These agendas are gradually shaping a society and its education based on consumerism and a global economic order which is "not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle … goals are nothing, development is everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself". In this paper, I argue, in line with Debord, that teachers' work has moved from being predominantly controlled by technicist accountability and pedagogical conformity to become a form of decentred labour. Teachers' work has been transformed into the role of spectator, one who is destined to simply monitor events in the classroom and in technologized environments, caught between the economic world view and student consumer desire. In such a view, the teacher can do little more than watch while education, subjugated to economic dogma and digitized appearances, presents life as a spectacle of accumulation and desire.

Citation

Thwaites, T. (2015). Education as Spectacle. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(9), 904-917. Retrieved August 11, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/158737/.

This record was imported from ERIC on November 3, 2015. [Original Record]

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Keywords

• Accountability
• Economic Factors
• Educational Philosophy
• electronic learning
• Foreign Countries
• Global Approach
• Ideology
• information technology
• National Curriculum
• ownership
• Political Influences
• Social Systems
• Teacher Role
• teaching methods