Apple critically examines current trends in educational policy and draws on the issues of gender, class and economic pressure implicit in the battle for control of the curriculum.

The Politics of the Texbook analyzes the factors that shape production, distribution and reception of school texts through original essays which emphasize the double-edged quality of textbooks. Textbooks are viewed as systems of moral regulation in the struggle of powerful groups to build political and cultural accord. They are also regarded as the site of popular resistance around discloding the interest underlying schoolknowledge and incorporating alternative traditions.

Despite the vast differences between the Right and the Left over the role of education in the production of inequality one common element both sides share is a sense that education can and should do something about society, to either restore what is being lost or radically alter what is there now. The question was perhaps put most succinctly by the radical educator George Counts in 1932 when he asked "Dare the School Build a New Social Order?", challenging entire generations of educators t...

Since 1979, Ideology and Curriculum has been a path breaking statement on the relationship between cultural and economic power in education. The new edition of this now classic text has been updated by celebrated author and activist Michael W. Apple to include a full new chapter on the book’s lasting critical agenda in the context of the contemporary conservative climate. A new substantive preface introduces the fourth edition, reflecting on earlier arguments and developments from...

In his seminal volume first published in 1982 Michael Apple articulates his theory on educational institutions and the reproduction of unequal power relations and provides a thorough examination of the ways in which race-gender-class dynamics are embedded in, and reflected through, curricular issues. This second edition contains a re-examination of earlier arguments as well as reflections on recent changes in education.

Postmodernism has become the orthodoxy in educational theory. It heralds the end of grand theories like Marxism and liberalism, scorning any notion of a united feminist challenge to patriachy, of united anti-racist struggle, and of united working-class movements against capitalist exploitation and oppression. For postmodernists, the world is fragmented, history is ended, and all struggles are local and particularistic. Written by internationally renowned British and American educational th...

The Struggle for Democracy in Education extends the insightful arguments Michael W. Apple provided in Can Education Change Society? It provides detailed examinations of both local and system-wide struggles around conflicting versions of democracy. Grounded in a key set of ethical and political responsibilities for those who care deeply about education, Apple and his co-authors interrogate conflicting models of democratic education, one interested in the common good and th...

The State and the Politics of Knowledge extends the insightful arguments Michael Apple provided in Educating**the "Right" Way in new and truly international directions. Arguing that schooling is, by definition, political, Apple and his co-authors move beyond a critical analysis to describe numerous ways of interrupting dominance and creating truly democratic and realistic alternatives to the ways markets, standards, testing, and a limited vision of religion are now being ...

First published in 1987, this research provides insight on the political economy of schooling and includes an analysis of power as they operate both within and outside of schools in the construction of class and gender relations. This is part of a series of volumes that have begun to enquire into the relationship between the curriculum and teaching that is found in our formal institutions of education, and unequal power in society.

The essays in this volume explore the educational implications of unsettling shifts in contemporary culture associated with postmodernism. These shifts include the fragmentation of established power blocs, the emergence of a politics of identity, growing inequalities between the haves and the have-nots in a new global economy, and the rise in influence of popular culture in defining who we are. In the academy, postmodernism has been associated with the emergence of new theoretical perspect...

Education cannot be understood today without recognizing that nearly all educational policies and practices are strongly influenced by an increasingly integrated international economy. Reforms in one country have significant effects in others, just as immigration and population tides from one area to another have tremendous impacts on what counts as official knowledge and responsive and effective education. But what are the realities of these global crises that so many people are experienc...

First published in 1982, this collection of essays provides an analysis of education’s contradictory role in social reproduction. It looks at the complex relations between the economic, political and cultural spheres of society, both historically and at the time of publication, and hones the wider range of debate in on education.This volume will be of interest to those studying sociology and equality in education.