The standard narrative of the “neoliberal university” contains an important blind spot: it fails to see that neoliberalism harbors within itself a distinct pedagogy. This paper unpacks and interrogates the pedagogics of one strand of neoliberalism – namely, Gary Becker’s Human Capital Theory. In Becker we witness – long before the forces of neoliberalism encounter the university (with its own pedagogical institutions) – a radical reworking of microeconomic theory, one that remains thoroughly imbricated with a theory of teaching, learning, and the school. This paper argues that efforts to resist neoliberalism require a pedagogics of unlearning in the very simple sense that any challenge to neoliberalism depends upon a prior unlearning of the neoliberal theory of education.

Samuel Chambers Talk & Q&A at 'Pedagogics of Unlearning' Conference, 2014

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Samuel Chambers Talk & Q&A at 'Pedagogics of Unlearning' Conference, 2014

Gareth Stack