Radical, critical and Marxist education in neoliberal Britain

In this paper, we evaluate, and highlight the tensions between, radical, critical and Marxist education as they have played out in British education since the Enlightenment. Our argument has several parts. First, like other Marxists, we believe that consciousness is shifted as much through engagement with class struggle as through ideas. We therefore outline the differences and continuities of these three perspectives in order to unite resistance to the extreme neoliberalism now reshaping education alongside other sectors of public and private life, in Britain and more widely. This reshaping increasingly and primarily serves the interests of the ruling elite-here and elsewhere. We further suggest that Marxist, critical and radical educators in Britain need to work together as part of an international united front to analyse class relations, mobilize workers, forge alliances and articulate a vision in and outside formal and informal educational spaces, to help build another education and world.