Whose public, which public? The challenge for public education

Contemporary campaigns for public education rest upon an assumption that public schools are fundamental to an equitable and inclusive society. In this paper, I reflect on this presumption by exploring the inherent tensions of the meaning and practice of public' education, especially when the public' in public schooling is linked to political contestation and change in relation to the nation state. In particular, this discussion considers the ways in which the contemporary heightened racial politics of fear of Muslim radicalisation' structures the ways in which the state creates boundaries surrounding public' schooling. Here, analysis of recent governmental attempts to addresses the concern of radicalisation' in schools reveals the difficulties the nation state faces in defining what exactly is the public', and demonstrates how the politics of race and fear become overarching logics in the constitution of the Australian public'. These logics risk creating exclusions and boundaries in public schooling, which, I argue here, have repercussions for the defence and claim to public education more broadly.