Authoritarianism and education

Abstract

This journal has thus far avoided focusing on the discussion of the effects of politics in education. Politics is a given in education. It tends to reflect the ideology of a dominant party about how and what students learn. The effects of the space race in the 1960s on curricula in Western nations exemplify. Politics today is different, much more existential and angrier, and it portends significant epistemological changes in education and in society itself.

Politics and education have always walked together, but the relationship has risen to new intensities. Educators have struggled for several years now to adapt to increasingly authoritarian pressures from political forces. Social scientists need to respond to these heightened realities and focus more intensely but impartially on how political dynamics affect the future of education.

I specifically address movements that are shifting Western society, in particular from liberal democracies to totalitarian governments. The movement is arguably most evident in the United States but is also strong in European nations (e.g., the Red Ladies in England or neo-Nazi-ism in other European countries). Liberal democracy is characterized by the rule of law rather than the preferences of people in power, by checks and balances that ensure such rule, and universal suffrage. Such societies are liberal because they emphasize the rights of individuals and the primacy of human welfare. Authoritarian governments emphasize the opposite, the subjugation of the rule of law and human welfare to preferences for power and control.