Education Policy and the Political Right

The Burning Fuse beneath Schooling in the US, UK and Australia

Grant Rodwell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000516234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Policy

This work attempts a comparative description and analysis, focusing on the US, the UK, and Australia on the topic of the Right, educational policy, and schooling. It adopts as its underlying theme the burning fuse in tracing the topic back to Joseph de Maistre a Rightist who fled revolutionary France to seek safety in the company of Tsar Alexander I's Russian Empire. Here, he had much to say about school education, not for all, but rather the "deserving" social elite.During the past three or four decades in the US, the UK, and Australia, the Right has been remarkably successful in amassing political power. And in doing so, the right of politics in these countries has reshaped school educational policy and practice, a necessary step in securing the future of the Right as a political force. Moreover, even during the years the Right has been on the opposition benches in these countries, such has been the strength of their political force that governments of the Left have acquiesced to much of their school educational policy.A pioneering effort, this book asserts that to understand school educational policy in the third decade of the 21st century, we need to comprehend the politics of the Right. This book will be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students interested in Education Studies, Theory and Policy, and International and Comparative Education.

1 Defining and describing the Right

DOI: 10.4324/9781003185956-2

Introduction

The Right has been a dominant political force in many countries at least since the French Revolution, where in one of the greatest upheavals in modern history, it soon found itself on the back foot. Of course, right-wing politics didn’t begin here, but it did gain prominence and a label we continue to use. No doubt right-wing politics can be traced back to Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, and even Ancient Egypt.

Joseph de Maistre was one such Rightist who fled revolutionary France to seek safety—and a secure income—in the company of Tsar Alexander I’s Russian Empire, where he had much to say about school education, not for all, but rather the deserving social elite. Here, he kept a burning fuse alight for his cause, which soon was rekindled in post-Napoleonic Europe, developing many iterations during the coming centuries.

Of course, the Right has not always been to the fore in elections. For example, the results of the 2019 European Parliamentary elections were merely an aberration, and any disappointed Rightest could look to the US where conservatism, republicanism, Trumpism, and Trumpeteers were breaking new ground and rolling out considerable new school educational policies, many of which justified the Joseph de Maistre burning fuse metaphor. Right-wing politics in the UK followed suit in 2019 with Boris Johnson riding in on the back of Brexit. While in Australia in the same year, with the Left accusing the Right as being “knuckle draggers” and “cave dwellers” Scott Morrison led his (conservative) Coalition to a third-term victory with an increased majority, and school educational policy and practice, courtesy of the burning fuse ignited by de Maistre and his ilk so many centuries ago was assured.

Insuring a cross-fertilization of ideas, and lending support for resource mobilization theory (RMT)—of course, including school educational policies and practices—by the second decade of the 21st century, an increased transnationalizing of the Right has been apparent: “the future… belongs to the… brave” declared the organizers of one such right-wing international conference held in Sydney following the uplifting victories of the Right in the US, the UK, and Australia.

Another section of this chapter, and connected to RMT, are the right-wing think tanks/political lobbyists organizations in the US, the UK, and Australia, formulating and spreading ideas and strategies, and cultivating networks for free market and classical liberal ideas. In this chapter, we learn how the Right set the pace in this regard.

Moreover, this chapter also provides an overview of the Right and school education policy and practice. We learnt these are ideals and policies, dominated by neoliberalism and a select regard for globalization—and often, actual school educational practices—are common to the US, the UK, and Australia. All this assuredly signals that burning fuse continues strongly ablaze.

There are, however, extremes amongst the Right, and to this end this chapter looks to the topic of the Right and the reality and myth of One Nation. But while One Nation may be a myth—of sorts—in the US and the UK, in Australia, they are an extreme powerful political force with much to say about school educational policy, with the media being very responsive to what they voice. Certainly, the Australian Coalition (conservative) Government continually needs to look to support from the One Nation in the Senate in order to pass much of the Government’s legislation.

In this chapter, we also look to the ways in which the rise of the Right might be explained in reference to moral panic theory and risk-society theory. Aided by a compliant media, and usually very responsive to risk-society thinking, members of the Right can orchestrate moral panics for their own political ends. Moreover, often school education is a direct target for these moral panics, especially as seen in terms of risk society.

Finally, this chapter looks to the Right and RMT, as we attempt to understand its success. Again, here were can trace commonalities across the US, the UK, and Australia. We complete the chapter with some comparative conclusions.

What is the Right? Joseph de Maistre’s burning fuse

First used during the French Revolution (5 May 1789–9 November 1799), the political term “right-wing” was a custom that began in the Estates General of 1789 when liberal deputies of the Third Estate (commoners) generally sat to the left of the president’s chair, contrasting with the nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sitting to the right. In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Old Regime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side.

Arguing for an authoritarian form of conservatism amongst the rightists, Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) was a major figure, a French polemical author, moralist, and diplomat who, after being uprooted by the French Revolution in 1789 became a great exponent of the conservative tradition. He became a distinct exemplar of the right-wing institution and its influence on school educational policy and practice. There is a burning fuse linking his thoughts and career with much of what today is considered the Right. And from here that same burning fuse continues to school education policy in the US, the UK, and Australia, where our focus is set for this book. Of course, it also continues to do so in many European Union (EU) countries, Scandinavia, and in other places such as New Zealand and Canada.

Studying with the Jesuits, and then moving to a career in politics and the Swiss diplomatic corps, de Maistre spent much of his career in the court of Tsar Alexander I where his right-wing ideology was developed further as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia seemingly tossed the old order on its head, in his path reshaping Europe from its slumbers. A devoutly religious Roman Catholic, for de Maistre, both the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars were obvious religious outcomes for the sins of the times. The nation’s future lay with the correct education of its youth, and down through the centuries he would not be the only advocate from the Right to arrive at such a conclusion.

As if a 21st century climate change denier such as Donald John Trump, de Maistre staunchly opposed “the progress of science,” and those writers who ideologically intertwining these beliefs with the liberal beliefs and empirical methods of philosophers such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and John Locke (1632–1704). His life and writings also provide a link with modern-day enthusiasts of such school educational programmes from the Right as privatization, found amongst some of the contemporary enthusiasts. He defended the various popes and their role in the Spanish Inquisition, here supporting absolutism with a demanding logic (Editors, n.d.). Renowned French progressive thinker and educationalist theorist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, might call for an education inspired by Nature for all children, and therefore with the state benefiting, but de Maistre argued authority in politics and society should derive from religion, and any conclusions drawn from science should be eschewed. There is some symmetry here with contemporary members of the Christian Right. de Maistre insisted, however, this religious authority must ultimately lie with the pope. The mission for school education was only too clear, and from 1811–1812 he wrote with wit, sarcasm, rhetoric, and overstatement advocating extensively on national education in Russia and empire.

A religious-moral education—not scientific instruction—was needed in Russia and empire, and this must be through a religious-moral classical education, rather than utilitarian schooling. Most significantly, de Maistre stressed not all Russians needed school education. With an education, serfs would only become confused and resentful, even revolutionary. To this end, the Society of Jesus should enjoy freedom of education within the empire (Edwards, 1977, 68).

de Maistre’s influence with Tsar Alexander I warned with the 1812 Napoleonic onslaught into Imperial Russia. To varying degrees, however, these ideas permeated right-wing education policy through to the present—Joseph de Maistre’s burning fuse.

Popularized by the growing influence of the media, by the mid-20th century, the concepts of “left-wing” and “right-wing” politics had entered the vernacular of mainstream in the US, the UK, Australia, and virtually every other Western country. Generally, the left-wing is characterized by an emphasis on ideas such as liberty, equality, social equity, fraternity, human rights, progress—whatever that might be—reform and internationalism, while for the right-wing there’s an emphasis on notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, individualism, individual rights, reaction, and nationalism (Heywood, 2015, 119). Political scientists and other analysts regard right-wing politics as including Christian democrats, conservatives, right-libertarians, neoconservatives, imperialists, monarchists, fascists, reactionaries, and traditionalists. This, however, is a political spectrum continually undergoing change, with new splinter groups with political voice taking shape, such as the Christian Right, about which this book devotes a separate chapter. Here, the chapter describes the movement’s extraordinary rise to power, what they seek from school educational policy, and a response to mandated COVID-19 legislation such as the public wearing of face masks and mandated vaccinations, public health issues impacting school education policy and practice.

Of course, many readers will note feminism belongs to the Right as well as the Left. Indeed, a number of significant political movements—including feminism and regionalism—do not fit precisely into the Left-Right spectrum, although nationalism often is regarded as a right-wing doctrine, many nationalists favour egalitarian distributions of national resources.

Since its birth, right-wing politics has gone through five distinct historical stages:

1. the reactionary Right sought a return to aristocracy and established religion;
2. the moderate Right distrusted intellectuals and sought limited government;
3. the radical Right favoured a romantic and aggressive nationalism;
4. the extreme Right proposed anti-immigration policies and implicit racism; and
5. the neo-liberal Right sought to combine a market economy and economic deregulation with the traditional right-wing beliefs in patriotism, elitism, and law and order.

Students of the Right in the US, the UK, and Australia have a rich field to till. In 1955, when Seymour Martin Lipset contributed an insightful article in The British Journal of Sociology, Dwight Eisenhower republicanism was in sway in the White House, Winston Churchill’s was in 10 Downing Street, and Robert Menzies (conservative) Coalition were in the sixth year of its record 23-year hold on The Lodge in Canberra—a political state similar to that which I describe in the year 2020.

Lipset (1922–2006) is himself an enlightening figure in a study of the Right. He was an American sociologist whose major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in a comparative perspective, an ideal reflected here. He was a socialist in his early life when he contributed the above-mentioned article in The British Journal of Sociology, but later moved to the Right, and was often considered a neoconservative (McGovern, 2010, 29).

Lipset (1955) reminded us of that burning fuse to which I have earlier referred. For Lipset (Lipset, 1955, 178), “Eisenhower’s policies in the White House have certainly not reduced the needs of radical right groups for political action, for scapegoatism.” Indeed, nor did Eisenhower reduce Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “desires to capitalize upon popular issues to maintain power and prestige in the general body politic” (Lipset, 1955, 178). Consequently, Lipset (Lipset, 1955, 178) wrote: “as a result, the radical right is now forced to struggle openly with the moderate conservatives, essentially the Eisenhower Republicans (who in large measure represent established big business). This is a fight it cannot hope to win…”

Seymour Martin Lipset died in 2006, ten years short of Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping victory. It’s a pity, because he may well have wished to reflect and re-evaluate on what he wrote in 1955 in memorable contribution to The British Journal of Sociology:

It is extremely doubtful that the radical right will ever secure more power or influence than it has in the past. It has reached its optimum strength in a period of prosperity, and a recession will probably cripple its political power. It cannot build an organized movement.

(Lipset, 1955, 208)

The renowned American sociologist further considered policies which would have lasting effects on American life, for example: “the heightened security programme, political controls on passports, political tests for school teachers, and increasing lack of respect for and understanding of the Constitutional guarantees of civil and juridical rights for unpopular minorities and scoundrels” (Lipset, 1955, 208).

Indeed, that burning fuse from the Right affords fascinating subject matter for research vis-à-vis its impact on school educational policy, “political tests for school teachers” aside.

Lipset was on target when he predicted: “And if the cold war and prosperity continue, the radical right, although organizationally weak, may play a decisive role in changing the character of American democracy” (Lipset, 1955, 208). Here, the big change was in the organizational prowess of the right in later decades. Perhaps, insights into RMT (about which this chapter later will have greater detail) may have sharpened his prediction had it been formulated when he wrote the article. He, how...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Defining and describing the Right
• 2 The Right, the rise of the influence of neoliberalism, and globalization in school education policy
• 3 The Right, government school fiscal austerity, and school education policy
• 4 The Right and the privatization of school education
• 5 The rise of the Christian Right and its role in school education
• 6 The Right and the media shaping school education policy
• 7 The Right and religious freedom in schools
• Conclusions: Bringing it all together
• Index