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The following is the prepublication version of the introduction to the

book and to Part 1 and Part 2 of the book

1st Edition available from 3rd June 2020

inspection copy can be requested at:
https://www.routledge.com/textbooks/evaluation/9781138492981

Paradoxes of Democracy, Leadership and Education. Struggling for Social Justice in

the Twenty-first Century
By John Schostak, Matthew Clarke, Linda Hammersley-Fletcher

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
John Schostak, Matthew Clarke and Linda Hammersley-Fletcher

Part I: The Scenes of Debate: How theory opens avenues for action

2. Chapter 1: Power, Schools, Schooling and the Perversions of Democracy

John Schostak
3. Chapter 2: Towards a Society of Equals: Challenging the Neoconservative-
Neoliberal Alliance
John Schostak
4. Chapter 3: Leadership: Living with and working through Paradox
Linda Hammersley-Fletcher and John Schostak
5. Chapter 4: Democracy and education: ‘In spite of it all’
Matthew Clarke
6. Chapter 5: Inscribing Discourses of Capitalism, Co-operation and Education
on the Body and/or Mind
John Schostak
7. Chapter 6: A Crisis of Modernity? The implications for educating the public for
socially just futures
John Schostak and Andonis Zagorianakos
8. Chapter 7: From Competition to Collaboration to Cooperation?
Matthew Clarke, John Schostak and Linda Hammersley-Fletcher

Part II: The Struggle to Develop Alternatives Within the Contemporary Scenes
of Practice

9. Chapter 8: "Democratic communing schools": First notes on producing

democratic schools through communing practices
Jordi Collet-Sabé
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10. Chapter 9: Working towards a democratic home-school imaginary

Charlotte Haines Lyon
11. Chapter 10: Leadership, the Vanishing Mediator and Organisation
Linda Hammersley-Fletcher, John Schostak and Usama Darwish
12. Chapter 11: Democracy in the Classroom
Tony Leach
13. Chapter 12: Against Reconciliation: Constituent power, ethics, and the
meaning of democratic education
Noah De Lissovoy
14. Chapter 13: Populism, Democracy, Education and Freedom: Creating a world
without walls
John Schostak, Matthew Clarke and Linda Hammersley-Fletcher
15. Conclusion
16. Bibliography

Introduction
John Schostak, Matthew Clarke and Linda Hammersley-Fletcher

Schools are where the future is written. For some, what is to be written is shaped under the
glow of their preferred nostalgic past. For others, it is an imagined ‘good society’ yet to be
created. The present realities tell of other stories. There are those whose wealth enable their
futures to be clearly and comfortably mapped and those who struggle with day-to-day pressures
to make ends meet, who deal with discrimination, and face disappointment and frustration
while hoping for a better future. The future is written through the ideas, the tools and the
resources of the present. Currently, it is a present dominated by elites who draw upon neoliberal
market ideologies and neoconservative fantasies of nationalistic, pre-democratic, pre-liberal
patrician pasts that should become our futures.
This book seeks to engage those who want to find ways of challenging this
neoliberal/neoconservative dominance in educational policy and practice. This dominance can
be seen, for example, in the promotion of academies and ‘free schools’ by the English
Conservative government1, fashioned to some extent in the image of US and Swedish models

1
Academies began in 2000 as an idea by Andrew Andonis, education advisor to Tony Blair leading to the
stablishment of bout 200 academies. It was not until the conservative government of 2010 under a free market
ethic that the policy took off as a major policy drive to transform schools. Alongside this was the ‘libertarian’
idea of the ‘free school’ which enabled any independent group to apply to set up a school.
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of schooling. Such developments represent a neoliberalising agenda that forcibly brings market
processes into education with the promise of ‘driving up standards’ though increased
competition, while also harking back to and elevating the elite, traditional ‘independent’ (i.e.
fee-charging) school as the template that government schools should embrace. At the same
time, in the US, soon after his election President Trump appointed Betsy Devos – a Charter
School advocate whose billionaire family has contributed millions to the Republican party –
signalling a further strengthening of both neoliberal and neoconservative trends. This
dominance is nothing new but results from a long history of writing elite demands into the lives
of those who for them compose simply a mass to be directed, used and disposed of according
to need. The call made by Etienne de La Boetie (1552) for ordinary people to disobey and free
themselves from their ‘voluntary servitude’ to dictators still has resonance, even in the liberal
democracies of today, where the lives of the masses continue to be dependent on the decisions
of a few.
However, this book is not a naively utopian call to loosen the shackles of the market and seize
the emancipatory initiative in order to (re)create some unattainable realm of freedom and
equality. Each author is all too aware of the complicity of the academy, and indeed of all those
who enjoy some degree of privilege in the circuits of power and oppression. In this respect,
despite a shared democratic ethos, it differs somewhat from the work of UK scholars, Fielding
and Moss (2011), who advocate a return to democratic forms of educational organisation and
practice, or Benn (2012, who laments the dilution, if not the passing, of the comprehensive
school movement as a vehicle for democratic equality. But neither, on the other hand, does the
book adopt the line pursued by authors like Marsh (2011) and Blacker (2013, 2019), writing in
the North American context, who regard education as largely incapable of challenging the
political and economic conditions – indeed, they see education as irretrievably subservient to
them.
Instead, as our title suggests, we highlight the inescapable paradoxes that educators must
grapple with in their thought and practice as they seek to reconcile democracy and leadership
in education: the necessity of both structure and agency and the need to sustain an uneasy
balance between them that navigates the tricky path between governance and freedom; the
obligation to respect the sometimes competing demands of equality and liberty; the imperative
to embrace an expansive notion of inclusivity, while remaining mindful of the tendency of any
inclusive community to define itself, in ways which may be difficult for privileged insiders to
recognise, against an excluded ‘other’; and the need to address the different forms of power: as
coercive, as regulatory and as productive. Hardt, in his introduction to Negri’s (1991, pp. xi–
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xii) book on Spinoza, signals the distinction between the two Latin terms for ‘power’ (potestas
and potentia) in terms of capitalization. Thus, the powers of the individual alone are ‘power’
(potentia) and the power (potestas) that is constructed by aggregating the powers of individuals
is represented as ‘Power’. Employing these differences of usage creates some useful nuances.
Coercive Power then is a result of the aggregation of powers to dominate others. Regulatory
Power can either be a result of laws formed under the coercive gaze of an elite, or it can be
constructed through free and equal debate, or indeed, as some negotiation between the two.
Similarly, Productive Power can be the result of cooperative enterprises freely entered into by
the participants or as a result of elite forms of exploitation coercively imposed, or indeed, as
some ‘middle way’ where people negotiate under the prevailing rules of the market place.
There is a pervasive sense of being caught in the middle: between Power exercised by the State,
corporations, law enforcement, militaries and so forth on the one hand; and on the other, there
is ‘just me’ with perhaps a few friends and family – what can our little powers do against all
that? The open secret, of course, is that Power desperately needs all the little powers since it
does not exist without them. Hence, La Boetie’s question: why obey? The complexity of the
answer to this is variously explored throughout this book. As educators, researchers and simply
as members of the public we can at least work to minimise the violence wreaked by the excesses
of Power while remaining open to the creative possibilities of individuals working together to
write their futures as best they can. But can we do more?
Against the bleak background of contemporary abuses of Power, however, we also see sources
for a degree of qualified optimism in developments inspired by traditions other than the
neoliberal and neoconservative ones that currently dominate the educational agenda. For
instance, the international growth in alternative models of education, such as the co-operative
school movement, draw on democratic and egalitarian counter-discourses, capable – at least
potentially – of challenging neoliberal tropes of standards and competition and hence of
rewriting the common sense of educational theory and practice.
There is as always in every epoch a battle of ideas whose effects impact variously on the lives
of people and create an ever-present sense of urgency to deal with resulting injuries. The
chapters are thus timely in drawing on accounts and analyses from a range of global contexts,
in which our authors seek to build on these developments by exploring, critiquing and
formulating alternative possibilities. Indeed, the book offers a unique perspective in the current
juncture. The specific seeds of the book arose in 2016 and the centenary of the publication of
Democracy and Education. In this seminal work, Dewey argued for a mutually dependent
relationship linking a legitimate education system and a thriving democracy. A century on, as
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we have argued in this book, many commentators see democracy and education as having been
decoupled and both diminished and devalued as a result (Labaree, 2011; Schostak & Goodson,
2012). As Rebell (2018) puts it, our schools have by and large flunked democracy. Meanwhile,
the discourses of leadership in education have burgeoned in the late-twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, supplanting those of management to a large degree, despite the lack of any consensus
on what is understood by ‘leadership’ (Lakomski, Eacott, & Evers, 2016; Samier, 2016). This
book engages critically and creatively with these fundamentally important social, political and
educational issues. In particular, we argue that a reassessment of the relations between
education, leadership and democracy has to be engaged upon as a critical project. If democracy,
in its radical modes (e.g. Balibar, 1994, 2010; Rancière, 1999; Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 2005;
Bouton, 2007; Fraser, 2017; Rosanvallon, 2013), focuses attention on discourses of equality,
then contemporary democracies aligned with the inequalities of wealth, corporate monopolies,
elite political governance and social divides produce paradoxes or contradictions (Harvey,
2014) that cannot be easily resolved by schools and ‘educational leadership’ (Blacker, 2013).
Current notions of good educational leadership are too often those where leaders will operate
to ensure that educational organisations meet market-based goals and build a system that is fit
for purpose in a competitive, fast-paced and ever-shifting global environment (Ball, 2012).
Moreover, educational leaders are increasingly responsible for influencing and ensuring that
colleagues shift to new ways of working and thinking about education that are grounded in a
sense of markets and financial viability in ways that are affecting their morale (Evans, 2000)
and subverting their critical and professional independence. It may be, as we argue that at least
some educational leaders themselves are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the
injustices created through following a market-led agenda. However, discomfort is not enough.
Thus, although Marsh (2011) argues – as indicated in the title of his book – that, ‘we cannot
teach or learn our way out of inequality’, we adopt a more overtly political stance, rejecting a
passive view of education where educational leadership is reduced to a role of ‘delivering’ the
instructions of policy makers (c.f. Barber, 2007). Instead, we argue that democracy as a radical
lived practice offers a way of rethinking educational relations and reworking forms of
educational organisation and the discourses and practices of education to create the conditions
for young people and their communities to counter inequalities and construct alternative
approaches to living.
In order to build such a democracy, organisational forms of education have to be robust enough
to tackle a number of developments in recent decades that can be identified as potentially
undermining democracy. A non-exhaustive list of such factors includes:
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• Growing inequality in wealth and income, as highlighted by a wide range of

commentators, including the hardly radical OECD (2014), as well as prominent writers
such as Stiglitz (2012, Piketty (2014, 2015, 2019a, 2019b), Atkinson (2015), Varoufakis
(2016) and Dorling (2015, 2017, 2018);
• Declining participation and trust in democratic processes in Western and other contexts
(Mair, 2013, Brown, 2019);
• The translation in education and wider society of democratic deliberation and decision
making into techno-rational matters framed in terms of instrumentalism and efficiency
(Brown, 2015);
• Growing extremism in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere, including
religious extremism and growing support for extremist political parties (Crépon, Dézé, &
Mayer, 2015; Judis, 2016; Moffitt, 2016 Eatwell & Goodwin, 2018, Temelkuran, 2019)
• A growing sense that our ways of life are causing irreparable environmental and climate
damage that threaten the future viability of the planet (Klein, 2014).
Meanwhile, the hegemonic spread of neoliberalism has naturalised an instrumental ethic that
elevates market-based principles, techniques of measurement and evaluation, and enshrines
them as state-endorsed norms across all sectors and domains of society (Davies, 2014). This
includes education, where measures of school performance, teachers and students in relation
to targets and indicators of performance have led to a narrowing curriculum in order to
concentrate leadership resources on improving test outcomes. This, in turn, has resulted in the
decontestation and depoliticisation of education as a field (Clarke, 2012), undermining and
weakening its links to democratic politics. Yet as Dewey argued, “democracy cannot flourish
where the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly
conceived” (1963, p. 209). In this respect, recent developments raise questions about the
vitality of contemporary links between democracy and education. This raises an obvious but
complex challenge: how does education find a critical edge and the power to contribute to
positive societal change?
Following Dewey, if each school was a laboratory of social innovation, then with each
generation democracy could be increasingly embedded in everyday practice, thus potentially
revolutionizing society. However, Dewey’s optimism was increasingly replaced by pessimism
(Mayhew & Edwards, 1936) – a pessimism seemingly borne out by the limited success that
ideas and practices of democratic schooling have had in influencing mainstream schooling.
There is, nevertheless, for those who continue to be willing to engage, a substantial legacy to
inform prefigurative practices, that is, social practices and forms of organisation appropriate to
the desired more fully democratic future society (Fielding & Moss, 2011). This must be
achieved, however, against a backdrop of the decreasing need on the part of capitalists for an
educated workforce, due to advances in automation and intelligent technologies (Blacker,
2013; Elliott, 2017). This suggests that there is little, if any, scope for education to bring about
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social justice if its purpose is focused largely upon the employability of students. The great
challenge, then, is to insist on Dewey’s (1916) wider program of creating the conditions for a
democratic public that go well beyond issues of employability. For that public to be
democratically informed and enabled, each individual should be included, and their voice
counted in any decision making impacting on their life and the lives of friends, neighbours and
community. Dewey (1927) saw this as fundamental to his view of an engaged public, formed
through reflection upon the consequences of decision making. Critically, however, there is
more to a public than each individual or group promoting their own interests in response to a
conflict, siding with ‘friends’ against ‘enemies’. In this book, we explore radical forms of
democratic politics that envision futures underpinned by values of being ‘with’ rather than
antagonistically ‘against’ others.
These are not futures, however, that should be merely envisioned. They are futures we need to
enact in the here and now. Yes, paradoxically, a ‘here’ and a ‘now’ are only constructible by
comparing them with a ‘there’ or a ‘then’ as places and times to either go to or to avoid. For
that reason, each chapter of the book is both a response to a present situation – here and now –
and a future vision of the ‘good society’, the place to be created and attained as well as its
feared alternative. There is thus a practical logic of utopia and of dystopia to be mapped in
order to guide public decision making and action. In each case, there is the critical question of
the ‘truth’, or what counts as ‘truth’ for the purposes of free decision making as a basis for
persuasion and action. We argue that this question is critical to the role of education in the
formation of democratic publics who seek to guard and enhance their freedoms.

Overview of the book

In this book we argue that the organisational forms of contemporary schooling are caught up
in politically significant contradictions that theory can map, describe and analyse, and which
can also critically reveal openings within the discourses of capitalism for prefigurative
practices that offer more democratically oriented alternatives. We argue that a key
contradiction inherent in both capitalism and in contemporary schooling is the demand for the
freedom to compete, framed as synonymous with democratic freedoms for all, despite the fact
that competition requires unequal outcomes in the form of losers as well as winners (Davies,
2014). Given this context, we believe that, as Harvey urges in ‘17 contradictions of capital’,
we have an “obligation to write the poetry of our own future against the background of the
rapidly evolving contradictions of capital’s present” (2014, p. 99). Thus, we take the critical
position that a founding principle of democracy is the co-extensiveness of freedom and equality
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(Balibar 1994, 2010) and that therefore ‘the political’ moment where transitions,
transformations and changes become possible begins with the recognition of equality between
people (Baiocchi & Connor 2013). Clearly this conception of democratic education lies in
tension with the dominant focus on the role of educational leaders as the people in positions of
power, who can accommodate or dismiss the knowledge and experience of others as they
choose (Claxton et al, 2013). We thus seek to consider new approaches to leadership and power
that enhance rather than reduce democratic processes for the formation of critically active
publics.
The book interweaves the theoretical and the practical. It is divided into two parts in order to
promote the development of analysis and discussion that is designed to address the fundamental
questions: Can socially just democratic futures be realised through education? If so, how and
in what ways? How does education that strives towards greater democracy fare in a schooling
system governed by capitalist logics of individuation, competition and instrumentalism? In
what ways might Dewey’s idea of the laboratory school be reinvented to ‘write the poetry of
our own future’? Do recent developments, such as the UK’s trust and academy schools, offer
sources of optimism or do they reveal a fundamental complicity on the part of schooling with
capital and, indeed, neoliberal forms of organisation? In short, is it possible to re-think the
philosophical, social, theoretical basis of educational organisation to create the conditions for
young people to write the poetry of their own futures?
The chapters in Part 1 of the book explore theoretical frameworks and concepts that have been
developed since the publication of Dewey’s book, including the work of Jacques Rancière,
John McMurray, Michel Foucault, Nancy Fraser, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Slavoj
Žižek, as vehicles for rethinking the relationship between democracy, power and education.
We argue that educational leadership, in this context, is a Janus-faced role that might best be
reimagined as a ‘vanishing mediator’ to facilitate change from non-democratic to democratic
forms of educational relationship and practice. Part 1 thus sets the scene, presenting theory,
raising issues and questions for the chapters in Part 2 to address. To ensure and enhance
coherence, the editors have added a critically reflective commentary that links the chapters in
Part 2 with the background of the ideas and issues already elaborated and explored. The general
theme will involve inquiring into the complex relations between the global and the local as they
are experienced personally, and impact on organisations and communities. Thus, the chapters
in Part 2 of the book share diverse examples of practice, which aim to renew and reanimate the
links between education, leadership and democracy, providing models of alternatives to the
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contemporary view of education as a technology for the reproduction of neoliberal capitalism

in the twenty-first century.

Part 1 The Scenes of Power and Debate: How theory opens avenues for action
Introduction

Debate depends upon the presentation of reasons, evidence, arguments by all if it is

to succeed in producing courses of action that are satisfactory to all. One can
imagine many scenes. Some are quite small: between a couple, a few friends or
perhaps a group of around twenty. When the size of a group begins to matter about
the practicality of bringing all into discussion, a strategy like breaking the large
group down into small groups, each group coming to an agreed range of views and
arguments which can then compared in plenaries with the results of other groups.
There may be a thousand voices, but no more that a dozen different arguments. A
dozen arguments can be submitted more easily to stringent evidence based and
logical critique that a thousand vying voices. If the task is to find the range of
substantially different arguments to be made, then there is no reason why the same
process cannot be undertaken with millions of individuals, a process today that can
be facilitated through internet based digital communications technologies.
Theoretically at least, it seems possible.
But imagine another scene. Here, the reason of others does not matter. Only
the reason of ‘The Great Leader’, or at least, the reasons of a squabbling oligarchy
or some self-righteous elite matters. In such a scene, the will of elites takes
precedence over the the needs, interests, desires of the mass. The mass exist
simply to take sides and to obey their leaders. The role of obedience and thus of the
ever present potential of disobeying the masters matters. As Etienne La Boetie
(1552) wrote in his short treatise, the wonder is that people obey rather than
disobey. He described the hierarchical structure of rewards given by the masters to
their courtiers, their generals and so on downwards to the very bottom that leads
each individual to obey willingly. Those at the top, he argued, were in reality quite
small, like all people who have no superpowers to enforce their will. Rather, it was
the organisation of the willingly obedient who could be deployed to coerce, even
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kill those who disobeyed…. disobeyed what? Nothing other than the fantasy of
the power, the glory, the fearsomeness of the leader.
Imagine a third scene where the anger, the frustrations, the desperation of the
oppressed masses has been stirred up by the arrogance, the sheer insolence of the
elites who have broken the underlying rule that even tyrants must ensure that their
servants and slaves must have a certain level of security and enjoyment, otherwise
they will rise up and vent their fury. This is a turbulent state where mobs riot and
new leaders arise to lead people against old masters. It is a powerful lesson to
ruling elites who have taken their mastery for granted. New masters make new
promises to right the wrongs of the old elites. And when the places of power have
been won by the new leaders and their followers there is a choice to be made - at
least theoretically - as between adopting discourses, organisational forms and ways
of life that usher in the democratic practices that take into account the voices of all
in decision making affecting the people in their daily lives, or those that depend
upon the benevolence and will of a leader or ruling elite.
The first of these scenes, in modern terms, we can refer to as the Enlightenment
scenario. The second, we can see in the relatively stable scenarios of a well
organised and administered bureaucracy where dissent is at a minimum, or at least
relatively easily suppressed by those who are well fed and can look forward to
stable if not rising levels of quality of life. The Western powers largely enjoyed
such a period following the revolutions of the eighteenth century with increasing
moves towards democratic-like freedoms and technological advancement that both
disciplined the masses and gave increasing numbers of them access to ever wider
ranges of consumer products and services. The third, is a period of rising
discontent, protest, populism and revolution. What starts as a small protest can
grow quickly into a major movement of protest. The ruling powers will attempt to
suppress it. However, if, in their arrogance or self deluding fantasies, they do not
respond to appease at least some of the major demands of the protestors, then the
movement to overthrow starts to become inevitable and can happen very quickly as
with the fall of the soviet empire symbolised in the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is at
this point that an apparent levelling takes place. That is to say, the great invincible
power of the Leader is stripped away and he or she - but mostly he historically -
stands no taller, no more powerful than any other individual. It is this moment that
Rancière refers to as the political. It is the moment at least partially glimpsed when
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each individual sees that the previous arrangements of power have collapsed and
that in this moment no one person is greater than any other person. Lefort (1988)
sees it as the empty place of power. That is, the place of power that had once been
occupied by the tyrant, the monarch, the ruling elite has collapsed leaving no one
individual able to dominate it. The choice then is either to fill it with some new,
‘better’ leader; or, to leave it empty. For Lefort the work of democracy is to ensure
that the place of power remains empty. But this can only be done if forms of
organisation and procedures are established that ensure no one person or ruling
group can permanently occupy the place of power against the wishes of the people.
In each scene, theory functions differently. In the Enlightenment scenario,
theories freely arise and are freely contested in order to derive various forms of
‘truth’. There are those that are supported by all possible observations. These are
essential or universal truths, like those of mathematics and logic. They provide
guidelines for reason. However, reason about what? The early computer
programmers term GIGO - garbage in, garbage out - is as true as it is for
programming logic, as it is for mathematics and statistics. It is here that other
forms of truth-making become critical. What do we know about the real world?
How do we know that unicorns don’t exist but kangaroos do? There is an obvious
answer perhaps to a ludicrous question, but it becomes more problematic for large
numbers of people when the key terms are replaced by ‘god’ and ‘evolution’. The
search for evidence that provides ‘reasons’ for the existence of something begins
the process of distinguishing what is real from what is not and that which is based
on empirically grounded reason from views based on faith or the say so of
‘authorities’. It is here that the methodological doubt introduced by Descartes
proved so revolutionary and so threatening to the powers based on faith and belief
in the superiority of some over others. On the one hand, using one’s own
intelligence to form opinions and knowledge about the world places the power to
think and act within one’s self. However, as Spinoza argued, through the
aggregation of the power to think and test out evidence and arguments within
processes of debate there is a greater likelihood of coming to an understanding of
what is real and what is universally true. Hence, by ensuring that freedom is
always in association with equality, there can be no domination by one individual
or group over others in the processes of debate, decision and action. For him,
democracy was the way to ensure this. There was then, at least theoretically, the
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threat of the possibility of organisations developing based upon the equality of free
intelligences. How then could this be prevented by those whose power, privilege
and wealth was threatened?
Crudely, when moves towards democracy became irresistible then those who
wanted to preserve or establish reasons to maintain their privileged positions had to
find ways to corrupt democracy. The question then was how to fill democracy’s
‘empty place of power’ with enduring forms of organisation that privilege some
over others yet preserve the appearance of people making choices. Each chapter of
this section addresses aspects and issues related to these scenes of power and
debate where either democracy is enhanced or it is weakened or indeed suppressed.
Schostak opens with the ways in which Power inscribes its discourses of mastery over the
powers of individuals through the processes of schooling. He does this by drawing upon the
4 key Lacanian discourses of the master, the university, the hysteric and the analyst. The
argument is that these discourses pervert contemporary democracies and are too often
underpinned rather than challenged by the mainstream forms of schooling. However, as a
counter to such discourses, in Chapter 2, Schostak draws upon the idea of the society of
equals as a key aspiration underlying the democratic ideal that has been diluted by
conservative elites. There is then the potential for contradictions to be experienced in
everyday lives in terms of a yearning for freedom alongside the enjoyment of winning but
where losing has harmful consequences for people’s lives and engenders resentment. How
teachers respond to such issues is taken up in Chapter 3 by Hammersley Fletcher and
Schostak in their combined exploration of the paradoxes of leadership that leads to a
continual sense of juggling or negotiating ways through the conflicts. This, in itself, can be
dispiriting. However, through engaging schools in critical reflection and research alongside
building networks across schools change can begin to take place. There is thus, as Clark
argues in chapter 4 the possibility of democracy and education in spite of it all. He draws
upon Lacanian approaches to ‘enjoyment’ and ‘fantasy’ to explore the lure of neoliberalism
and its impacts socially, politically and in education. Creating counter-discourses to the
neoliberal fantasy that underpins the contemporary capitalist project is part of the ongoing
project of democracy.
This theme is continued by Schostak in Chapter 5 through his reading of Lacan’s approach
to the discourse of capitalism and its impacts upon the discourses of education and
democracy. He suggests that to overcome the capitalist fantasies require an escape from the
discourses of the master. It is not enough to keep search for a great leader of the left. That
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only returns us to subjection to yet another master. Discourses of democracy and of

education that are rooted in a principle of equality being co-extensive with freedom offer that
chance to escape towards the society of equals envisaged in Chapter 2. In Chapter 6
however, it is argued by Schostak and Zagorianakos that modernity is split between those
currents that technologise and submit the world to ‘reason’ and competition; and those that
employ reason to create the economic and political conditions that are capable actualising the
common good. This split generates on-going crises. In these crises of modernity,
unfortunately, democracy has long been playing a losing game. The co-authors in Chapter 7
draw upon the arguments of the previous chapters to inquire more deeply into the competing
logics of competition and collaboration in creating and maintaining inequalities and seek a
more socially just future in the logic of democratic forms of cooperation. Overall then, the
chapters of Part 1 analyse, critique and explore counter theoretical frameworks to those that
underpin capitalist forms of market competition and the infrastructures that impose elite
dominance.
It is broadly argued that the effective public required by radical forms of democracy rather
than the phantom public manufactured by contemporary forms of liberal market democracy
should take its inspiration from a Spinozan-like society of equals and the early aspirations of
the cooperative movement to developing democratic, socially just futures.

Part 2 Introduction: The Struggle to Develop Alternatives Within the Contemporary

Scenes of Practice

There is as yet no new born political, economic and social order and the struggle to fulfil
even the spirit of a democratic society of equals is wrought with conflict. Yet struggles
towards a more free and equal way of living together persist. There are, putting Friedman’s
infamous statement to work against him, ideas lying around that can be picked up and used
by people frustrated with the contemporary scenes of authoritarian, antidemocratic and
dehumanising practices. It may be the case as Brown (2019) suggests that neoliberalism is in
ruins, yet as an idea it continues zombie-like (Quiggin 2010) to stalk the places of privilege,
wealth and power drawing upon the energies of angry, frustrated, disillusioned communities
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deploying right-wing populist moves to create the crises where ruthless and reckless
opportunism thrives (Davis 2018).
Yet, ranged against this are the energies too for a different world, one where voices count.
They can be heard most dramatically from the street protesters pitched against the armoured
riot police who are the visible frontiers between the demand for the new and its resistance by
those in power. However, there are more subtle frontiers where the same struggle to make
change takes place. These are in the places of work, the home and the community whenever
a voice is raised against some exploitative, unfair, and demeaning practice, form of
organisation and discourse. John Dewey worked at this frontier in his writings and through
his short-lived but eternally inspiring laboratory school. He responded to Lippmann’s (1927)
cruelly accurate description of the state of the democratic public with his own book, The
Public and its problems (Dewey 1927). Here he saw the potential emergence of the public in
every consequence of a decision made by someone that harmed the well being of another.
For him the public was a pragmatic response to problems experienced. In effect a political
and judicial infrastructure arises as a consequence of representing and responding to the
complaints of those who demand that their problems be addressed. However, if we go
further, as did Dewey, then the whole education system is such a response where through the
agency of individuals creative solutions to problems mingle with curiosity to discover how
things work, how to realise an imaginative idea, how to organise with others to fulfil projects.
Embryonically at least, education is the ground through which new scenes of action and ways
of living together can be born. How then may schools provide the infrastructure to enable
education?
The essential relationship in education is not between a teacher and a pupil as in schooling
and training but between individuals who see in themselves and each other their intelligence.
It is this latter relation that was developed by Jacotot and discussed by Rancière (1991) in his
book the The ignorant schoolmaster. This ignorance is the ignorance of intelligent actors
who realise that it is through a sharing of the skills, knowledge, insights, imaginative
creations of each, then all benefit and new possibilities for knowledge and ways of living can
be born. Education then is itself born in the realisation of the co-equal intelligence of all
thinking, debating, creating, exploring, discovering, critiquing, deciding and acting together.
The infrastructure for doing this is initially very simple. Each individual is able to associate
with any other individual. It may arise as friendship or in the perception of each person
facing a common problem that can best be solved or an interest that can be best developed by
working together.
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The dynamism of freely engaged associations can be perceived as a threat by authorities.

Carefully constructed barriers between the classes, the sexes, gender and sexual orientations,
‘races’, ethnicities, nationalities, belief systems and cultures can be subverted with a smile, a
handshake, a project in common. The idea of the cosmopolitan that arises from a notion of
free association, the rootless individual who is a citizen of nowhere is as dangerous to the
jealous guardians of national identity today as it was when Diogenes in the times of ancient
Greece, claimed he was a citizen of the world. Yet, it is through free association that the
power of multiple perspectives brought to bear upon experience, problems and uncertainties
can turn unknowns into new possibilities for understanding and for living together peacefully.
The infrastructure for a critically aware public then begins very simply in the potential for
everyday acts of debate and working together.
How that potential is shaped and assembled into persisting forms of organisation depends
upon the circumstances faced by individuals in their everyday working and life situations.
Faced with hostile environments, precarious working conditions, authoritarian management,
and the constraints imposed by external policy makers, requires a degree of courage, fortitude
and perhaps a good dose of bloodymindedness. Yet the first steps are not necessarily big,
beginning with the act of listening then taking seriously what is being said and bringing this
to a wider conversation about what to do to resolve a situation of concern. Moving beyond
being the sympathetic ear is less easy of course. However, it lays the groundwork for the
development of shared opinion. Nevertheless, shared opinions are ineffective without an
infrastructure for evaluating those opinions, then taking and implementing decisions.
Infrastructures already exist in places of work and communities. But they are not necessarily
accommodating to viewpoints that challenge the status quo. Indeed, much management
practice is about ensuring compliance to policy and thus resists challenges. This, as explored
in chapter 3 creates a sense of paradox for those who both believe in the necessity of
achieving policy goals but also believe in the desirability of democratic relations and critical
debate as a basis for effective decision making and practice. Yet, there are always those who
are concerned to engage in education in spite of it all (see chapter 4). And to those, the next
chapters are dedicated.
Collett in chapter 8 begins with the idea of the commons applied to schools, placing it in
the context of the struggle between neoliberalism and democracy. He takes the Dewey
dictum that freedom is not a gift to be handed down but something to be won. In order to do
this he wants to place the democratic nature of education at the centre of political debate. In
doing this he explores the different kinds of ‘truth’ produced by the discourses of
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neoliberalism, neoconservatism and the ‘democratic commoning school’. This latter he sees
as the co-construction of a school by self-governing individuals. As such it can become the
model for any form of social organisation. As a first step out side the school walls, the idea
of what a school is to be for within a community, requires the engagement of parents. And
this is what Haines Lyon explores in chapter 9. Using laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) critical
discourse theory she analyses how parents align or refuse to align with the discursive
construction of the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ parent. In each case, the voice of the parent is contained.
How then can it be asserted? Such assertion confronts the overwhelming power of the
prevailiing neoliberal/neoconservative forms of state organisation. She finds hope, however,
through her action research with staff and parents where democratic work could be
undertaken in their ‘microrealities’.
Similarly, to use Haines Lyon’s term, it is in these microrealities constructed through face
to face relationships where the idea of the leader, the teacher and researcher as ‘vanishing
mediator’ can work to facilitate change. This concept was first raised in chapter 3. The
question for Hammersley-Fletcher, Schostak and Darwish in chapter 10 is how to build the
discourse and the practice of the vanishing mediator as an agent of change into the
organisation itself and across a network. It is itself a paradoxical relation to hold. Both like
and unlike the analyst in Lacan’s discourses, the role is to listen, not to impose, but unlike the
analyst to challenge and let go of the reins progressively until the role is required no more.
Letting go is hard for leaders and for followers who feel safer being led and given permission
to take initiatives. Yet, as Hammersley-Fletcher’s work shows, despite many issues there
comes a point when confidence increases and the leader is no longer required. It is at that
point when debate takes over from command and evidence takes the place of delivering
instructions. It is the point when hierarchies are at least suspended and mutual support comes
from horizontally formed relations both inside and outside the school. The quality of the
relations between staff is critical to developing more democratic forms of decision making.
This can then extend to teacher-student relations.
Leech, in chapter 11 explores in more detail the teacher-student relation drawing on
Buber’s dialogic philosophy that privileges the I-thou relationship in order to enhance
democratic agency. The task, as Leech sees it, is to create mutual dialogue between teacher
and student in a way that evokes Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘third space’, the space
‘between binary descriptors of difference’. How such a space is built is discussed through
vignettes and conversation that focus on how participants feel as they begin to hear what in
other more traditional spaces of authority and deference would not have been said. In such a
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space the democratic appears as the defences begin to fall away enabling a greater inclusivity
of differences to be voiced.
It is at this point that Lissovoy’s move to the ‘multitude’ makes an important contribution
to democratic education. Rather than seeking the reconciliation of differences and
disagreements to generate some fantasy of unity, the object is to push beyond by, in
Rancière’s terms, being faithful to the dissensus (1999, 2010). In doing this he picks up on
the ambiguity at the heart of ‘power’. As in the distinctions made in chapter 7, Lissovoy
draws attention to the distinctions between potentia and potestas. This enables a distinction
between the potential of individuals (potentia) and the institutionalised power (as an
aggregation of individual potentials/powers, potestas). The argument then can be made that
constitutive power resides with the multitude, not with the institution. The power of the
institution falls when the multitude no longer recognise its power to command obedience.
What kind of educational process is required to get to this point? Lissovoy responds with his
strategy of a ‘pedagogy of longing’ that ‘presents to students what has been refused, and
invites them to remember their need for and commitment to it.’

And finally the co-authors return to the scene of populism picking up on the key themes of
the chapters in order to explore some final implications for a world without walls.