Ivana Milojevic PHD Thesis 12 August

FUTURES OF EDUCATION:
FEMINIST AND POST-WESTERN CRITIQUES

AND VISIONS
Ivana Milojevic
BA Hon. (Belgrade)
School of Education,
The University of Queensland
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland.
2002
STATEMENT
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the work presented in this thesis is original,
except as acknowledged in the text. The material herein has not been submitted in whole or
in part, for a degree at this or any other university.
Ivana Milojevic
July 2002
ABSTRACT
In this thesis, I argue for the re-conceptualisation of futures thinking in education. I
also call for epistemic changes in how the future in general and educational futures in
particular are commonly understood. The way the future is conceptualised among educators
is often problematic. It is taken for granted and rarely explicitly and critically explored. The
result is that the future remains uncontested, the discourse controlled and managed by
dominant social and cultural frameworks of meaning. The transformation of educational
structure, process and content becomes almost impossible. To contest the future and create
alternative futures, critical futures thinking is crucial as it helps us recognise that every
approach to educational change is based on an underlying image of the future.
In the thesis, I explore hegemonic and alternative visions of and for the future. I also
explore the civilisational and gendered frameworks of desired futures. That is, I map the way
in which the perceived (historical, present and future) ‘reality’ changes depending on the
underlying worldview and civilisational, cultural and gender priority.
The dissertation is in two parts. Part One provides a historical and theoretical
overview and contextualises the inquiry. It also contextualises and historicises the current
dominant educational model, view of the future and approaches to time. Part Two maps the
discourse of the futures of education. It defines hegemonic, counter and alternative
educational futures discourses. Both parts consist of three chapters.
Chapter One provides the research framework. Postmodern, feminist and postcolonial
theoretical frameworks inform my inquiry. Poststructuralism and critical futures research are
the methodological approaches I use to analyse images of social and educational futures.
Chapter Two develops the futures context. The purpose of this chapter is to
contextualise and historicise the current futures and utopian discourse. It suggests that what is
considered utopian and what are considered real futures probabilities or possibilities are, in
fact, political constructions. Labeling of other images of the future as utopian is used as a
means to de-legitimise them. In addition, in this chapter, the movement from a singular
notion of ‘utopia’ to dystopia as well as to heterotopias and eutopias is traced. This chapter
also analyses the role of futures and utopian thinking in education, arguing that utopian and
futures thinking have become marginalised.
Chapter Three traces the historical futures discourses in education. The chapter
provides an alternative reading of educational history, one which incorporates different
civilisational approaches to time. Instead of theorising all historical educational practices
Futures of Education
solely from within the western approach to time, non-western historical educational practices
are theorised from within their own frameworks. Chapter Three focuses on showing the
connections between various approaches to time—for example, linear or cyclical—visions of
the future and educational practices. An alternative historical reading—focused on Feminist,
Indigenous and Indian—is given in order to provide the background and epistemic context
for current views of educational futures. These approaches become resources for the
alternative visions of education developed in later chapters.
Chapters Four, Five and Six map the discourse of the futures of education as well as
investigating how particular texts functions as ‘desire’. Chapter Four discusses dominant
futures and utopian visions. These are the Globalised and WebNet vision of the future with
the corresponding globalised and cyber model of education. In this chapter, I argue that
‘taken for granted’ futures visions are also utopian. That is, although they argue for the
realistic discourse of the ‘imminent future’, they are also constituted by desire and
imagination, about what is hoped for. These desires and hopes are, however, firmly based on
western and patriarchal worldviews. Hegemonic futures visions succeed in capturing public
imagination because they ‘make the most sense’ from within our current social structures and
dominant worldview.
Chapter Five outlines numerous alternatives to both the current dominant educational
model as well as to hegemonic futures visions. It then further analyses in detail three
exemplary alternatives. These dissenting futures are: (1) feminist alternatives; (2) the
recovery of indigenous traditions; and (3) spiritual alternatives. These three exemplars are
selected because they foundationally challenge the assumptions and preferred visions of the
hegemonic ‘regimes of educational truths’. That is, I argue that these three exemplary
alternatives most deeply challenge patriarchal and western assumptions about what
constitutes knowledge, history, future and ideal education.
In Chapter Six, the conclusion, I compare hegemonic, counter and alternative
educational futures discourses. I argue for the introduction of critical futures thinking in
education and for the imagination of an educational eutopia that can help create inclusive,
multicultural, gender balanced, holistic, ecologically and socially sustainable future societies.
FUTURES OF EDUCATION:
FEMINIST AND POST-WESTERN CRITIQUES AND
VISIONS
Villemard, “A l’Ecole” (At School), Visions de l’an 2000, (Visions of the year 2000), (1910).
Chromolithograph, Bnf, Departement des Estampes et de la Photographie.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW 1
Chapter One: Research Framework..........................................................................1

1.1 Introduction......................................................................................................1
1.2 Contextualising the Inquiry .............................................................................4
1.3 Methodological Approach .............................................................................22
1.4 Chapter Outline..............................................................................................26
Chapter Two: The Futures Context .........................................................................28

2.1 A Selective History of Futures Thinking.......................................................28
2.2 Definitions and Histories of Utopia ...............................................................39
2.3 From Utopia to Dystopia: Is Utopia Dead? ...................................................45
2.4 From Utopia to Heterotopias and Eutopias ...................................................52
2.5 Colonisation of the Future and the Power to Define .....................................56
2.6 Futures and Utopian Thinking in Education..................................................84
Chapter Three: Historical Futures Discourses in Education..................................94

3.1 Introduction....................................................................................................95
3.2 Eurocentric and Patriarchal Bias in Educational History..............................97
3.3 Civilisational Approaches to Time ..............................................................107
3.4 Dreamtime and the Eternal Now: An Alternative History of Indigenous
Education.......................................................................................................................110
3.5 The Cyclical Future: An Alternative History of ‘Oriental’ Education........120
3.6 The Linear Future: The Victory of the West ...............................................131
3.7 Conclusion: Where to from Modern Education? .........................................144
PART TWO: MAPPING THE DISCOURSE OF THE FUTURES OF EDUCATION 157
Chapter Four: Dominant Futures and Utopian Visions........................................166

4.1 Introduction..................................................................................................166
4.2 The Globalisation Discourse........................................................................171
4.2.1 The globalisation discourse and its impact on education .....................172
4.2.2 The approach to time and the vision of the future ................................180
4.2.3 The globalised world and education: utopian and eutopian versions ...188
4.2.4 The globalised world and education: dystopian version.......................191
4.3 The Information Technology ‘Revolution’ .................................................198
4.3.1 New technologies and their impact on education.................................199

4.3.2 The WebNet vision of the world ..........................................................207
4.3.3 The information society and cyber education: utopian and eutopian
versions ......................................................................................................................212
4.3.4 Information society and cyber education: the dystopian version .........221
4.4 Causal Layered Analysis: Contextualising Global Dreams and Nightmares
.......................................................................................................................................227
4.5 Conclusion: The ‘Truth’ of the Future.........................................................236
Chapter Five: Alternatives to the Mainstream Discourse .....................................238

5.1 Introduction..................................................................................................238
5.2 Exemplar One: Feminist Alternatives .........................................................240
5.2.1 The approach to time and the vision for the future...............................244
5.2.2 Educational visions ...............................................................................258
5.2.3 Summary: Causal layered analysis of feminist alternatives .................266
5.3 Exemplar Two: Recovery of Indigenous Traditions in Education..............271
4.3.3 Summary: Causal layered analysis of the Indigenous alternatives.......301
5.4 Exemplar Three: Spiritual Education ..........................................................305
5.4.3 Summary: Causal layered analysis of spiritual education....................348
Chapter Six: Conclusion........................................................................................355

6.1 Defining Hegemonic, Counter and Alternative Educational Futures
Discourses ......................................................................................................................355
6.2 Towards Educational Eutopia ......................................................................372
Bibliography ..........................................................................................................381
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Tables
Table 4.1: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures: the
Globalised world 229
Table 4.2: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
WebNet vision of the world 230
Table 4.3: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational

Futures: Globalised education 231

Futures: Cyber Education 232
Table 4.5: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words:
Globalised World and Education 233
Interconnected World (WebNet) and Cyber Education 233
Table 4.7: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Causal Layered
Analysis: Globalised World and Education 234
Analysis: Interconnected World and Cyber Education 235
Table 4.9: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Globalised World 235

WebNet World 236
Table 5.1: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
Partnership Society 267
Table 5.2: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational Futures:
Gender–balanced education 268
Table 5.3: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words:
Partnership society, gender–balanced education 269
Table 5.4: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Causal Layered
Analysis: Partnership society, gender–balanced education 270
Table 5.5: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Partnership society, gender–balanced education 271
Table 5.6: Indigenous and western epistemology and ontology 299
Table 5.7: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
Indigenous Renaissance 302
Table 5.8: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational

Futures: Indigenous educational alternatives or visions 303
Table 5.9: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words 304
Table 5.10: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Causal Layered
Analysis 304
Table 5.11: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction

304
Table 5.12: Chakras as an evolutionary system 322
Table 5.13: Varna (caste) as an evolutionary system 324
Table 5.14: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
Spiritual Society 351
Table 5.15: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features Educational Futures:
Spiritual Education 352
Table 5.16: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words:
Spiritual society and education 353
Table 5.17: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features— Causal Layered
Analysis: Spiritual society and education 354
Table 5.18: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Spiritual society and education 354
Table 6.1: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: approaches to time 360
Table 6.2: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: vision of the future and of
education 360
Table 6.3: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: social utopias and
dystopias 371
Table 6.4: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: educational utopias and
dystopias 373-374
Table 6.5: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: social and educational
eutopias 374
Figures
Figure 1: Futures of education—Hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses 158
Figure 2: Futures of Education—Hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses 160
Figure 3: A holistic approach for developing teaching activities 282

PART ONE: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
Chapter One: Research Framework
Image from The Futurist (1988, 22(6), front cover).
1.1 Introduction
Every imagined future has its past, just as every historical moment has its own
vision of the future. (Thacker, 2001)
This thesis analyses multiple educational futures. The subject of this thesis is not to
investigate what education in the future is going to be like. Nor it is to determine what
education should look like in the future. Instead, I investigate multiple discourses about the
future in general—the social future—and the educational future in particular. I argue that
various societies and communities have their own ‘regimes of educational truths’,
assumptions and preferred visions. I also argue that some of these regimes—‘truths’,
assumptions and visions—have become hegemonic, such that the guiding image of the future
is considered inevitable and uncontestable. These regimes have become a privileged ‘space’
where power and knowledge interlock to inform contemporary policies and actions.
Knowledge about the future or even futures is like any other knowledge, “rooted in a
life, a society, and a language that [has] a history” (Foucault, 1973, p. 372). As we cannot
know something which has not yet happened, this knowledge about the future comprises
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ideas, assumptions, images and visions as well as the investigation of causalities that bring
the logical consequences of certain events and trajectories. Individuals, communities and
civilisations all have their own ‘futures knowledge base’; that is, the way they see and
understand time, as well as their own assumptions and visions about the future. These are
neither universal nor ahistorical as they vary through space and time. However, in our current
world there are also many commonalities and similarities. For example, there is hardly any
geographical or psychic space left that is not being imprinted with both western modernist
views of progress and development, and western educational models. Still, various local sites
all have their own ‘regimes of truth’ about social and educational futures; that is, they are not
free from exercising their own hegemonic future visions. However, this thesis focuses on the
manifestation of hegemonic visions of the future that imprint on the global space and
alternatives that contest this hegemony. Hegemony is here used in terms of Gramsci’s notion
designed to explain how a dominant class (or social group) maintains control by, as Lewis
(1990) describes it:
. . . projecting its own particular way of seeing social reality so successfully
that its view is accepted as common sense and as part of the natural order by
those who in fact are subordinated to it [Jaggar, 1983, p. 151] . . . In this
respect, hegemony is accomplished through an ongoing struggle over meaning
not only against, but for the maintenance of, power. (p. 474)
In this thesis I assert that current hegemonic futures visions have originated within the
western intellectual tradition and as such perpetuate a mono-civilisational hegemony. The
western intellectual tradition is also intimately coupled with the systematic exclusion of
women in the process of discourse formation, including the futures discourse. Therefore, I
argue that current hegemonic futures visions also perpetuate patriarchy.
Some critical educational futurists, such as Richard Slaughter (1993, 1996a, 1996b,
1999), David Hicks (1994, 1998), David Hicks and Catherine Holden (1995), Francis
Hutchinson (1996) and Elise Boulding (1990), define the hegemonic view of the future in
terms of its technological orientation, unbridled linear progress, and its exclusion of the
Other— women, traditional cultures and nature. I share these authors’ concerns and beliefs
and agree that hegemonic visions of the future are built upon a technocratic and pan-
capitalistic worldview, as well as on historical worldviews that promote hierarchies and both
direct and structural violence. Developing on the work of these futures researchers, my
inquiry focuses primarily on the western and patriarchal imprint on the dominant futures
visions. Therefore, in the search for counter-discourses and alternatives to those of the
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mainstream I focus on alternatives developed outside and on the margins of the western
paradigms as well as within women’s movements. Most of those visions also offer
alternatives and counter-discourses to technocratic visions of the future, as well as to those
futures visions that are based on various forms of violence. But what sets the alternative
visions that I investigate apart are their own priorities and agendas that provide specific
counter and alternative narratives. These counter and alternative narratives—identified in this
thesis as feminist or ‘women’s’ and ‘non-western’, or those that have developed on the
margins and outside of the west, and their priorities and agendas—represent the main focus
of my inquiry.
Although my research will take the form of critique and deconstruction, it will also
attempt to move from “criticism to substantive vision” (Giroux, 1989, pp. 37,59). I will
articulate and discuss already existing visions of the future of education, particularly those
developed within a feminist and ‘post-western’ context. I here understand post-western
alternatives as those that are moving away from both western and their own local hegemonic
discourses. In doing so they are actively engaged in a ‘dialogue of civilisations’. I describe
and discuss these alternative educational discourses not in order to provide a blueprint for the
future, but rather in order to ‘open up the future’ and create a space from which we can
rethink the present.
While I question mainstream discourses and images of the future of education, as well
as counter-discourses, I also take as a guiding assumption for my research that epistemic
changes do not just mirror changes within society, but help bring about new resolutions,
policies and actions. Or, alternatively, discourses can help maintain existing hierarchies. This
research itself is part of a discourse formation. Bringing many different, excluded, pseudo or
partially included, directly or structurally invisible groups and perspectives into the future of
education discourse and debate, has the potential to interrupt and disturb mainstream
discourse. The most important aspect of the articulation of alternative social and educational
futures discourses is to destabilise a hegemonic vision and question its monopoly on the
future. In doing so, alternative visions provide cultural, social and political sites of resistance
that, while drawing inspiration from the future, are firmly located in the present. The
description of dissenting futures and educational counter-narratives is important, as such a
description helps to show that “these alternatives can be as ‘real’ as our reality” (Halbert,
1994). Thus, while my research is theoretically driven, it intends to have real impact on our
daily social, political, economic and personal lives. As Michel Foucault wrote:
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I think that a rigorous, theoretical analysis of the way in which economic,

political, and ideological structures function is one of the necessary conditions
for political action, insofar as political action is a way of manipulating and
possibly changing, drastically disrupting, and transforming structures.
(Foucault, quoted in Eribon, 1989, pp. 166-167)
Like any other discourse formation, my thesis is also selective, partial, subjective and
value based. My research is based in a strong value commitment to seeing current
educational practices change and become more in tune with the needs of future generations
and alternative future societies. I see education as one of the crucial means for bringing about
social change, societies that are more inclusive of ‘the Others’ and provide a better quality of
life for ‘all’. In addition, I believe that we have agency in creating the future, that we do not
need to become the passive recipients of social and educational trends.
1.2 Contextualising the Inquiry
My thesis is influenced by three distinctive and overlapping theoretical approaches:

postmodernism, feminism and postcolonial theory. After reviewing postmodernism—by
discussing the ways in which it informs my inquiry—I then explicate what I regard as the
main issues for my research that are raised at the intersection of postmodernism, feminism
and postcolonialism.
As Stjepan Mestrovic (1999) has noted, it is difficult to provide any ‘neat’ definition
of postmodernism, since “[t]hose readers who seek a precise definition of postmodernism fail
to comprehend the irony that they are seeking a modernist version of a phenomenon that is
fundamentally ambiguous” (p. 48). However, this ‘phenomenon’ is most often referred to as
either a new historical and cultural era or as a new worldview and theoretical perspective.
The reference to postmodernism as a new stage in history that comes after modernism
promotes a decisively modern classification since it implies a uni-linear history and a uni-
linear view of historical progress. Such a worldview has, however, been challenged by
postmodernism’s take on multiple histories. So from the ‘postmodernist perspective’, if we
can say this at all, we cannot talk about postmodernism as a historical epoch or even as a
unified cultural movement or theoretical stance. Instead, there are many postmodernisms as
well as various strands within postmodern theory. Postmodernism is therefore not a tightly
packaged ‘system’ of ideas, but rather multiple challenges and critiques of numerous
concepts central to the modernist western intellectual tradition.
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Lyotard (1993) used the word postmodern to describe “the condition of knowledge in
the most highly developed [italics added] societies” (p. xxiii). What he assumes under this
category are societies that have entered the ‘postindustrial age’ or, more concretely,
industrially ‘overdeveloped’ states in Europe and North America. “Simplifying to the
extreme” (ibid., p. xxiv), Lyotard defines this ‘postmodern’ condition of knowledge as
incredulity toward modernist meta-narratives. This is one important aspect of postmodernism
because it represents a critique that “rejects Enlightenment totalizing theories and cultural
stories which, as framed in modernist narratives, explained the world from a centred and
privileged position[s]” (C. Luke, 1998, p. 23).
This scepticism towards modernist meta-narratives has lead postmodernists to
question modernist attempts to totalise and unify a heterogenous and diverse world, attempts
that are either based on ‘laws of nature’ or ‘laws of history’. Instead, postmodernists argue
for multiple sites from which the world is perceived and theorised. Postmodernism argues for
“multiplicity, difference, heteroglossia and specificity” (ibid.). Furthermore, postmodernism
argues against any notions of ‘objective reality’ and ‘objective truth’ that can be discovered
through ‘reason’ and correctly applied methods of scientific inquiry.
It is arguable whether the philosophical strand of postmodernism is in the process of
transforming the western academic world and the way the western intellectual tradition is
used to perceive categories such as knowledge, world, truth, facts, reality and language.
However, while most of the academy and its disciplines remain firmly grounded in modernist
paradigms, the influence of postmodernism is becoming more and more visible in the area of
educational theory and the sociology of education. The impact of postmodernism on the
humanities and social sciences has been, argue Amanda Coffey and Sara Delamont (2000, p.
8) “considerable, profound and, for some, traumatic”. Being firmly rooted in the tradition of
modernism and the Enlightenment, the educational system became one of the first
‘casualties’ of postmodernist inquiry.
Ever since Michel Foucault (1977) reconceptualised schools as institutions of
surveillance, discipline and control, and aligned them together with factories, armies and
prisons, postmodernist scholars have questioned education’s role in continuing and
enhancing the modernist project. Most importantly, postmodernism has abandoned a
positivistic search for ‘facts’ as constitutive of knowledge, and has challenged the modernist
belief that knowledge is in itself inherently emancipating and liberating. Rather, knowledge
is seen as ‘constructed’ rather than ‘discovered’ and is also seen as a method of surveillance
and discipline. For Foucault, truth is not “the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted
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solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves” (Rabinow,
1984, p. 72). Truth is never outside of power or lacking in power. Instead, it is “a thing of
this world” (ibid.). Therefore, each society has its own “regimes of truth”, its general
“politics of truth” which in effect are a type of “discourse which it accepts and makes
function as true” (ibid., p. 73). What counts as knowledge to be included in the curriculum is
not so much the result of ‘objective evidence’ but of negotiations between various social
groups.
Some of these groups have more power than others to ‘negotiate’ the curriculum, and
what is accepted as knowledge usually serves their own group interests. Foucault (1977) has
argued strongly that knowledge and power cannot be separated and that knowledge embodies
the values of those groups that have enough power to create it, legitimate it and distribute it.
Important for this thesis are the questions that such a view of truth, reality and knowledge
raises: What is considered legitimate knowledge? And what is “disqualified as inadequate …
[and] … located low down on the hierarchy” (p. 82)? What regimes of truth are subjugated?
How is education itself situated in various discourses? How is education constructed in
alternative futures? What are the current struggles for hegemony and the production of
meaning between and among various groups and individuals based upon? Whose values,
production and interpretation of meaning have become dominant?
The work of postmodern thinkers, and particularly Michel Foucault (1972, 1977,
1980, 1986; Rabinow, 1984) is crucial for my thesis in that postmodernism challenges
conventional framing of how the future is given and understood. By uncovering and giving
voice to multiple histories, postmodernism has opened up the possibility of understanding the
future differently. In particular, it has promoted a shift from predicting the future to
deconstructing the future (which discourses are privileged, for example) and offering
genealogies of the future discourses which show that none of these ‘futures’ are inherently
inevitable. Any particular future is the consequence of a multitude of factors— many of
which are constantly being ‘negotiated’.
So, instead of attempting to predict the future—as most corporatist, educational and
state planning ventures attempt—or leaving the future to ‘utopian’ studies (that is, as not
important to the construction of the present), postmodernism enables analysis of the ways in
which the notion of the future circulates in contemporary discourse. From a postmodernist
perspective, the future becomes one more meta-narrative that needs to be made
problematic—a contested arena. For example, Jean Baudrillard (1994) explores how the Year
2000 has functioned in modernist discourses. He deconstructs its pre-eminence by arguing
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that “[e]veryone remains aware of the arbitrariness, the artificial character of time and
history. And we are never fooled by those who call on us to hope” (1994, p. 8).
Postmodernism thus relocates the future as contested space. It does so by unpacking
the epistemological assumptions behind any particular notion of the future, arguing that
reality is socially constructed: it is made not given. Through genealogical analysis (tracing
the discontinuities of a discourse), the postmodernist perspective allows us to show that
claims for a particular future are not universal but historical, the victory of one present over
other present, of one discourse over other discourses. This is important for my thesis, as I
investigate which social and educational ideas about the future have come to be accepted as
‘the future’, and which are constructed as ‘utopian’ or ‘irrelevant’. Which social and
educational ideas have become dominant, hegemonic futures discourse? And which are the
possible sites of marginal, counter and alternative discourses? Another important question—
developed in Chapter Two—is how the future itself is constructed. What counts as a realistic
discourse about the future, and what is considered utopian? What are the main categories
used to give the future intelligibility?
The postmodernist perspective also allows us to introduce the notion of ‘the cost’ of a
particular future. That is, how specific ‘truth’ claims of what the future will be like or should
be like (predictions and preferred futures) privilege certain interests. Such interests are not
just class interests, as argued by the neo-marxists, but also civilizational interests (which
cosmologies or worldviews dominate) and epistemological interests (which ways of knowing
come to be hegemonic). These predictions and preferred futures directly influence not only
our future but our present as well. In this thesis, I argue that the cost of privileging certain
futures is especially high for disadvantaged social groups, who often lack financial, energy
and time resources, as well as the superior social, economical or cultural positioning
necessary to control the discourse. Historically, these social groups have not had the power to
define. Of course, for Foucault (Ramirez, 1984), power is not something some social groups
have and some do not. Rather, power is pervasive and represents a system of conflicting
interests and epistemologies. Power is not only “juridical and negative” but also “technical
and positive” (p. 62). He continues:
If power were anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no,
do you really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold
good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on
us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces
pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse. (p. 61)
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Power thus defines and creates the future, including the futures of education.
What interests Foucault is power at the point where it is implemented, as “power
exists only when it is put in action” (Foucault, 1982, p. 219). In this thesis I argue that the
creation of futures ideas, images and visions is one such place where power is put into action.
This usually means the creation of hegemonic visions for the future—naturalisation and
normalisation of a particular vision for the future that is promoted by the dominant social
groups. Hegemony does not allow space for plurality of truths and realities and thus prevents
a more equal representation of various social groups’ interests and worldviews.
Postmodernism, on the other hand:
. . . emphasises plurality of ethnicities, cultures, genders, truths, realities,
sexualities, even reasons, and argues that no one type should be privileged
over others. In its concern to demolish all privilege, postmodernism seeks a
more equal representation of class, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity
and culture. (Sardar, 1998, pp.10-11)
Foucault's view of power is often criticised for being “too general and diffuse to be
politically threatening” (McPhail, 1997, para. 65). But others argue that his concept of power
is actually more radical and revolutionary (ibid.). By formulating power as a ‘possession’ of
economic and cultural elites, the traditional view of power actually ‘cements’ power
relations; that is, the critique becomes another system that disempowers. If power is
everywhere and is also creative, it can be utilised for positive change as well. While Foucault
“does not deny that there are individuals and organisations that rule over other people” (ibid.,
para. 29), he also argued that resistance was possible because:
. . . the process of normalization was never complete. He suggested that
knowledge is never fully co-opted and that there will always be subjugated
forms of (power/)knowledge that can be used to resist prevailing and
hegemonic forms of (power/)knowledge. (ibid, para. 31)
This discussion about power and about the existence of hegemonic ideas and visions
about the future raises issues of resistance, social change and transformation. Here lies one of
the main tensions between postmodernism on the one hand, and feminism and postcolonialist
theory—which are the other two theoretical approaches informing my inquiry—on the other.
The theoretical and political issues raised at the point where these three theoretical
approaches meet are extremely diverse and complex. Here, I will only discuss what I see to
be three main issues for my research. The first is related to the expression or lack of
expression of desired visions for the future. The second is related to the postmodern
8
destabilisation of meta-narratives and its implications for social transformation. The third
issue is related to finding an ethical position from which to evaluate ideas and visions about
the future.
The first issue refers to the postmodern tendency to deconstruct without
reconstructing, creating alternative visions. Most postmodernists, “in the tradition of Foucault
. . . generally refuse to offer a vision of the future” argues Fendler (1999, p.185). Unlike
modernists, they believe that offering a vision “such as providing a solution, ideal or utopian
hope . . . would set limits on possibilities for the future” (ibid.). In addition, they believe that
offering a vision of the future means “to assume a position of political authority (intellectual
as center)” which is a position that is generally declined on “ethical grounds” (ibid.). This has
led Frederic Jameson to assert that “postmodern culture no longer has the capacity to imagine
the future” (Wolmark, 1999, p. 232). Such “incapacity to imagine the future . . . the atrophy
in our time of what Marcuse has called the utopian imagination” (Jameson, 1982, p. 153) is:
. . . not owing to any individual failure of imagination but . . . [is] . . . the
result of the systemic, cultural, and ideological closure of which we are all in
one way or another prisoners.
According to Jean Baudrillard (1991), “the end of metaphysics, the end of fantasy, the
end of SF [sci fi]” has happened because “the era of hyper-reality has begun” (1991, p. 311):
It is no longer possible to manufacture the unreal from the real, to create the
imaginary from the data of reality. The process will be rather the reverse . . .
to reinvent the real as fiction, precisely because the real has disappeared from
our lives. (ibid.)
Postmodernism, therefore, seem to be “a nihilistic cluster of philosophical
perspectives which are built upon a sense of finality rather than of beginnings” (Hughes,
1994, p. 8). Postmodernism cannot account for, or help us:
. . . transcend through analysis, the concrete inequities which fundamentally
structure our society, our ways of thinking about this, and our visions of ways
to make things better . . . the epistemology and political theory of
postmodernism involves the surrendering of any hopes of analysing the
structural causes of oppression or even understanding them . . . These
processes [of marginalisation and oppression] can place a closure on our
imaginations, or visions of a more equal future, and our respect for viewpoints
or analyses which are not supportive of the status quo. (ibid. pp. 7-8)
9
This view of postmodernism is arguable. Some authors (e.g., Siebers, 1994; Doll,
1995) claim that postmodernism has indeed developed a vision for the future. According to
these authors, the postmodern vision is mostly characterised by its focus on heterogeneity,
multiplicity, difference and equality (not of sameness, but of differences). Differences
include sexual differences—which is why utopian desire and postmodernism are often
defined “in some connection to sexual happiness and the human body” (Siebers, 1994, p. 10).
Siebers actually furthers his argument by claiming that postmodernism is in essence a utopian
philosophy:
What postmodernism wants is what has been lacking, which is to say that
postmodernism is a utopian philosophy. Utopianism demonstrates both a
relentless dissatisfaction with the here and now as well as bewilderment about
the possibility of thinking beyond the here and now. Utopianism is not about
being “no where”; it is about desiring to be elsewhere. Postmodernists, then,
are utopian not because they do not know what they want. They are utopian
because they know that they want something else. They want to desire
differently. (1994, p. 2-3)
Similarly, Bill Doll argues that the postmodern utopian vision takes on a new frame
which can be called “post-liberal” as it refers to its “move beyond individualism” and focuses
on the “ecological, communal, [and] dialogical” (Doll, 1995, p. 96). The postmodern vision
is born from “our own collective, creative imaginations” rather than from a “firmly set, a
priori ideology” (p. 89). It is a vision built on doubt and irony, a vision that recognizes its
own limits and the centrality of the dialogic process and dialogic community (pp. 89-11).
The two positions—that postmodernists generally refuse to offer desired visions for
the future, and that postmodernism has indeed developed a desired vision for the future—are
not mutually exclusive. This leads to one of the main arguments that I make in this thesis.
Whether they are explicitly stated as such or not, various visions for the future are already
informing present discourses, as well as our present actions and decisions. People’s
behaviour today is affected by their particular desired vision for the future. This behaviour
can equally, of course, be informed by undesired futures visions. But while the latter
motivation is mostly ‘reactive’, the former is mostly ‘pro-active’; that is, it is largely based
on not only resistance, but also creation. This is why I consider the postmodern reluctance to
explicitly state desired visions of the future to be problematic. The expression of desired
visions for the future is one place where the possibilities for social transformation are a
means by which we can ‘put power into action’. As Sardar, Nandy and Inayatullah—futures
10
researchers informed by postcolonial theory—argue, “dissent has to go beyond mere protest”,

and must formulate alternatives “from the perspective of the excluded, exploited,
disempowered, and the marginalised” (Sardar, 1999, pp. 142-143). Those who dissent, argues
Nandy, become neither players nor counter players but are engaged in “a different game
altogether, a game of building an alternative world” (Nandy, in Sardar, 1999, p. 146).
Postmodern reluctance to articulate alternatives is problematic from a feminist
perspective as well. Feminism has always been not only about the critique but also about the
“construct” (Gunew, 1990), of constructing “an alternative” (Hughes, 1994, p. 17). It has
both engaged within the “negative or reactive project . . . of challenging what currently
exists, . . . criticizing prevailing social, political and theoretical relations” (Grosz, 1990, p.
59) and posing alternatives and strategies. Feminism cannot afford to remain “simply
reactive, simply a critique” because in doing so it would ultimately affirm “the very theories
it may wish to move beyond” (ibid.):
To say something is not true, valuable, or useful without posing alternatives
is, paradoxically, to affirm that it is true, and so on. Thus coupled with this
negative project, or rather, indistinguishable from it, must be a positive,
constructive project: creating alternatives, producing feminist, not simply anti-
sexist, theory. Feminist theory must exist as both critique and construct.
This thesis is not only an investigation and deconstruction of hegemonic educational
discourses of the future, but it is also an inquiry of discourses that ‘play a different game
altogether’ and thereby create alternative visions. As these alternative discourses are often
labeled ‘utopian’, and utopian is commonly understood as irrelevant and naïve, I also offer,
in Chapter Two, an historical analysis of current utopian discourses. There, I suggest that
what is considered utopian is not only socially and historically constructed but politically
constructed to de-legitimise alternative futures. Defining utopian in this way—as irrelevant,
bound to fail, naïve—is one way of discounting dissent. However, in discussing utopianism I
am indebted to postmodernism for the following insight:
. . . the realisation of utopias, and the envisioning of still further utopias [is] an
endless process—an endless, proliferating realisation of Freedom, rather than
a convergence toward an already existing Truth. (Rorty, quoted in Doll, 1995,
p. 89)
But, given that postmodernism refuses to offer visions of desired futures, I consider it
limited as an alternative exposition of what can be. Therefore, I use feminist and postcolonial
theory to address this limitation.
11
Dissent, of course, is more important for historical ‘others’ who have not yet reached
‘the end of history’. Both feminist and postcolonial theory provide tools for ‘imagining
differently’. As social movements they offer programs for social change and are inherently
oriented towards the future. Feminists, especially, are often explicit about their desired
visions for the future, as evident from the large corpus of feminist utopian writing. To accept
postmodernism as a hegemonic discourse when it comes to the future would mean
continuous deconstruction rather than expression, and building, of desired futures from the
perspectives of various social groups. As each group statement can always be contested by
another particular subject, a postmodern desired vision can possibly only be developed at the
individual level. But even there, an individual can be fractured into many selves that may
conflict rather than balance each other. Feminist and postcolonial theory provide tools for
envisioning desired futures from particular social groups’ perspectives. These groups have
historically been excluded from creating a futures discourse that challenges the materialism
of the current Eurocentric and androcentric present. Investigation of women’s and non-
western alternative social and educational discourses is therefore central to destabilising this
hegemony.
The second point of tension between postmodernism and feminism and
postcolonialism is related to the postmodern destabilisation of meta-narratives. If we were to
implement postmodernist deconstruction on postmodernism itself, this would involve asking:
“Who is to benefit from the deconstruction of the term ‘Woman’? Whose interests are served
within postmodern theory” (Schwartz, 2001, para. 5)? As Fox-Genovese (1986) argues:
Surely it is no coincidence that the Western white male elite proclaimed the
death of the subject at precisely the moment at which it might have had to
share that status with the women and peoples of other races and classes who
were beginning to challenge its supremacy. (p. 134)
A similar point is made by Somer Brodribb (1992) who argued that “postmodernism
is the cultural capital of late patriarchy” (pp. 7–8). This position is also summarised by Nancy
Hartsock, who then raises crucial questions:
Somehow it seems highly suspicious that it is at the precise moment when so
many groups have been engaged in nationalisms which involve redefinitions
of the marginalised Others that suspicions emerge about the nature of the
subject, about the possibilities for a general theory which can describe the
world, about historical progress. Why is it that just at the moment when so
many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to name
12
ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just then the
concept of subjecthood becomes problematic? Just when we are forming our
own theories about the world, uncertainty emerges about whether the world
can be theorized. Just when we are talking about the changes we want, ideas
of progress and the possibility of systematically and rationally organizing
human society become dubious and suspect? (Hartsock quoted in Moon, 2001,
para. 57)
And more importantly, how can we motivate for political action if there was no ‘firm’
identity from which to launch both the critique and the alternatives? How could women
mobilise against patriarchy if there was no such thing as ‘woman’s experience’ of patriarchy?
If the sites of resistance are always local, how can we mobilise against the global system
which patriarchy clearly is? If the categories such as ‘woman’ or ‘black’ or ‘Asian’ are
dissolved, on which grounds can we develop dissent to androcentric and Eurocentric visions
for the future? And how can we even talk about ‘women’s’ or ‘non-western’ visions of the
future; how are they intelligible?
Postmodernism, even though it is highly useful as a theoretical framework in
deconstructing hegemony, also has civilizational costs. The impact of postmodernism has
been devastating for the futures of the non-west, argues Ziauddin Sardar (1998). For him,
postmodernism “kills everything that gives meaning and depth to the life of non-western
individuals and societies” (p. 14). In a world without “Truth” or “Reason”—or any other
grand narrative such as “Morality”, “God”, “Tradition” and “History”—there is nothing that
“can remotely provide us with meaning, [and] with a sense of direction” (ibid., p. 10). He
further argues that postmodernism is firmly rooted in both colonialism and modernism and is
about “appropriating the history and identity of non-western cultures as an integral facet of
itself, colonising their future and occupying their being” (p. 13). While postmodernism is
often seen as promoting pluralism and giving representation to the marginalised, Sardar
argues that it is even more successful than modernism in “silencing the Other”:
Alterity (along with other euphemisms signifying the Other or the non-west)
is a key postmodern term. Postmodern relativism embraces the Other, making
alterity far more than just the representation of all non-western cultures and
societies. Alterity is the condition of difference in any binary pair of
differences; there is even alterity within the self. Thus postmodernism avoids,
by glossing over, the politics of non-western marginalisation in history by
suddenly discovering Otherness everywhere, and arguing that everything has
13
its own kind of Otherness by which it defines itself. While this proves the
triumph of the postmodern thesis that everything is relative, it is incapable of
suggesting that anything is in some distinctive way itself, with its own history.
The postmodern prominence of the Other becomes a classic irony. Instead of
finally doing justice to the marginalised and demeaned, it vaunts the category
to prove how unimportant, and ultimately meaningless, is any real identity it
could contain. (ibid.)
But other authors argue that the questioning of meta-narratives and the identity of
‘others’ can also be liberating and enabling. For example, as bell hooks (2001) writes:
The critique of essentialism encouraged by postmodern thought is useful for
African-Americans concerned with reformulating outmoded notions of
identity. We have too long had imposed upon us from both the outside and the
inside a narrow constricting notion of blackness. Postmodern critiques of
essentialism which challenge notions of universality and static overdetermined
identity within mass culture and mass consciousness can open up new
possibilities for the construction of self and the assertion of agency. (para. 10)
In its refusal of binary differences—such as, for example, man–woman, culture–
nature, subject–object, and mind–body—the postmodernist perspective allows the theoretical
incorporation of many differences and many hybridizations that exist within current, past and
future social realities and possibilities. Even more important is that the postmodern
perspective also discourages theorising differences in terms of hierarchies. This can be
liberating for those groups and individuals whose difference has historically been seen as
inferior, for example, women, blacks, disabled, homosexuals, and so on. Indeed, Saeed Ur-
Rehman (2002), in his critique of Sardar’s work, argues that Sardar’s binary of west/non-
west creates a negative politics in the non-west by reinforcing feudal relations there. The
west, too, must be seen in its multiplicities and not as an overarching immovable structure.
Of course, the west—its cosmological codes, the template that constructs divisions of self–
nature, self–other, for example—is hegemonic, and others see themselves through its gaze.
To attempt to resolve the apparently irresolvable conflicts, many authors have taken Spivak’s
(1985) notion of ‘strategic essentialism’ to argue for a politics of identity that challenges
hegemony while remaining aware that any type of essentialism is dangerous. The best way to
understand strategic essentialism is to “see it as an appropriation of the notion of essentialism
by oppressed groups” (Arnold, 2002). Strategic essentialism differs from concepts of
traditional essentialism in, firstly, the “essential attributes” being defined by the group itself,
14
rather than by outsiders trying to oppress the group (Arnold, 2002, para. 3). Secondly, in
strategic essentialism:
. . . the “essential attributes” are acknowledged to be a construct. That is, the
group rather paradoxically acknowledges that such attributes are not natural
(or intrinsically essential), but are merely invoked when it is politically useful
to do so. Moreover, members of the group maintain the power to decide when
the attributes are “essential” and when they are not. (ibid.)
Still, as essentialism is a philosophy that subscribes to the belief that certain groups of
people (certain races) have essential characteristics, qualities, failures, properties or aspects,
Spivak warns that, if uncritically employed, it could be destructive and addictive. The misuse
of the concept of strategic essentialism means that “less ‘scrupulous’ practitioners ignore the
element of strategy, and treat it as simply ‘a union ticket for essentialism’” (Kilburn, 1996,
para. 8). This point by Spivak is extremely important. Still, through the critical application of
the term ‘strategic essentialism’, oppressed groups can gain a “powerful political tool”
(Arnold, 2002, para. 3). Thus, terms such as ‘non-west’, ‘west’, ‘women’ and ‘men’ are used
to create a politics of identity to challenge hegemony, all the time aware that reification is a
real danger, and essentialising terminology must be abandoned once the structure begins to
crack.
We thus do not necessarily need to adopt an ‘either/or’ perspective. The postmodern
questioning of meta-narratives, essentialism and binary thinking is important, but so is a
feminist and postcolonial reliance on large-scale narratives that are crucial for developing a
politics for change. Certain modernist narratives of equality, justice or even women’s and
non-western perspectives and experiences still have an important role to play. While it is
important to contextualise the inquiry and question grand theories, it is also important:
. . . to retain some form of large-scale theorising in order to understand the
systematicity as well as the diversity of women’s oppression. . . Both large-
and small-scale narratives are required as one will counteract the distorting
tendencies of the other. (Fawcett and Featherstone, 2000, p. 13)
Such a balance between large and small scale narratives addresses the tendency of
large scale theorising to transform into:
. . . quasi meta-narratives, while larger contextualising accounts help prevent
local narratives from devolving into simple demonstrations of ‘difference’.
(Fraser, 1995, p. 62)
15
While in this thesis I discuss women’s and non-western educational alternatives to the
hegemonic discourses, I do so fully aware that these alternatives are the result of a particular
historical and political context. For example, the category of indigenous exists only in the
context of colonization. Indigenous people in colonized lands have not thought of themselves
in these terms, but as members of particular smaller social groups (for example, as the Murri
of Australia, or the Lakota of North America). These categories cannot be frozen as
independent of time and place. But they could be used in dissenting ways: for example, to
discuss educational alternatives within their own frameworks, ways of knowing, concepts
and categories as well as inherited histories. This both disturbs the (western/patriarchal)
hegemony as well as creating alternatives in their own right, as expression of particular
group’s ‘futuribles’ (de Jouvenal, 1996a) or ‘imaginaire’ (Appadurai, 1996).
As this thesis is built on the claim that the future has already been colonised, and
identifies the west as one of the colonisers, I will continue using the category of the non-west
as one possible site for de-colonisation of the future. The category of the non-west is even
more problematic than the category of women. In my thesis, I investigate social and
educational alternatives developed by authors who think about the future (and present) within
different cultural and civilisational contexts, for example, Indic and Indigenous/Aboriginal.
These two non-western cultures are as diverse between themselves as they are different from
‘the west’. In addition, they represent only some possible sites in which the future is thought
of differently. These sites are chosen because of their exemplary ability to articulate
alternatives to the present global world order. While not all sites of resistance are chosen,
those that are included are done so because they challenge the west's foundational
epistemological assumptions of the nature of space–time, of the future and of education.
They are no more than some possible sites of subversion and resistance. Acceptance of
umbrella term such as non-west is problematic because the term implies a binary opposition
between the west and the multiple identities and hybridities that are understood as the non-
west. In addition, such terms join together these diversities and hybridities and inevitably
simplify them. It is also problematic, as Gayatri Spivak and others warn, because of its
potential to romanticise difference (reverse ethnocentrism), seeing the ‘natives’ as a reservoir
of goodness and/or an endless source of information. But the term is still important for this
thesis, and in light of the absence of more adequate terminology in current social sciences
academic discourse, I will continue using ‘non-west’ strategically, as a useful but also
transitional concept.
16
The third issue that I raise here is related to the danger within postmodernism of
ethical discourse closure. As Carmen Luke (1998), writes:
The postmodern rejection of meta-narratives, totalized knowledges and a
universal subject . . . [and the] turn to specifity . . . to a universe of different
but allegedly equal voices, perspectives and experiences—runs serious
theoretical and political risks. Most crucial is its potential to undermine,
indeed eradicate, any political and ethical grounds from which to claim the
authority of moral, social or legal norms. View and voices from everywhere
are potentially views and voices from nowhere. In other words, without
normative benchmarks, which criteria can we invoke to distinguish between
morally defensible and indefensible positions? (pp. 24-25)
If we lose ethical ground from which to judge ideas and visions about the future how
can we debate and discuss between ‘desired’ and ‘non-desired’ visions? Can we ever
ascertain that some ideas and visions about the future are more ‘dangerous’ than others? If all
voices are ‘equal’, does that not represent the return to the ‘value-free’ social inquiry, which
postmodernism has always been eager to critique?
One example of the dangers associated with the abandonment of ethical grounds from
which to ‘judge’ and ‘evaluate’ futures discourses is Baudrillard’s unwillingness to “imply
any kind of value judgment whatsoever” when analysing a particular science fiction text
(Baudrillard, 1991, p. 319). Implying value judgment or the “moral gaze—the critical
judgmentalism” is, Baudrillard argues, “still a part of the old world’s functionality” (ibid.).
He claims that he cannot judge a particular future described in the science fiction text he is
analysing, and say whether this future is “good or bad” (ibid.). This is so even while that
particular text provides a particularly bleak future and an account of a:
. . . mutating and commutating [future] world of simulation and death, . . . [a]
violently sexualized world totally lacking in desire, full of violent and violated
bodies but curiously neutered, this chromatic and intensely metallic world
empty of the sensorial, a world of hyper-technology without finality. (ibid.)
Baudrillard’s analysis provides a supposedly value-free and objective “fascination
[italics added] with scars, orifices, desireless and violent sexuality” argues Katherine Hayles
(Hayles, 1991, p. 323), and, as such, it is “dangerous” (ibid.). When it comes to description
and analysis of hyper-real techno-bodies, “Baudrillard is celebratory and his . . . prose
impassioned” (Hayles, 1991, pp. 321 and 327). So, while Baudrillard claims that he is not
17
putting a value judgment on certain future images, he is, in fact, while never explicitly
acknowledging it, promoting particular future visions.
However, while Baudrillard argues that the limits between the real and unreal are
erased because “the era of hyper-reality has begun” (Hayles, 1991, p. 322), this concept does
not erase the limits between the real and unreal; instead, “it only erases them from our
consciousness” (ibid.). The only way to avoid a value judgment or this “moral gaze” that is
for Baudrillard a part of “the old world”, is to think of a techno-body that Baudrillard
champions “always as an object” which is “never lived as a subject” (Hayles, 1991, p. 322).
Thus, while for Foucault, power must be chased so that it has nowhere to hide (Shapiro,
1992), Baudrillard hides behind the alleged objectivity of ethics. He refuses to enter the
contested spaces of the ethics of the future. For Hayles, what brings back the issue of a
“moral gaze” is pain, or:
. . . the lived sense and imagined feeling of the human body not merely as a
material object among others, but as a material subject that bleeds and suffers
and hurts for others because it can bleed and suffer and hurt for [it]self.
(Hayles, 1991, p. 329)
The ethical position that is behind my inquiry, and on which I will base my judgment
of futures ideas and visions, is similar to that of Hayles. In the concluding chapter (Chapter
Six), I will ask which educational discourses are promoting futures that have higher chances
of being more ‘painful’ for larger populations, especially for marginalised ones. If
educational models promote hierarchies and competition, what kind of implications does that
have for the future? Which futures are ‘taken for granted’ in those educational discourses and
why? And at what cost? Most significantly for creating different futures: Which educational
discourses, have the potential to bring the future in which ‘the pain’ might be less? Among
the questions that I raise in my thesis is not whether it is the hegemonic or alternative futures
discourses that is more ‘true’, nor which is more likely to materialise in the future, but which
discourses are more relevant for the creation of peaceful, multicultural, gender-balanced and
economically and ecologically sustainable future societies. These categories tend to represent
the preferred future in women’s and many non-western movements. One of the key feminist
epistemological principles is that there is no ‘value-free’ research and that it is therefore
important to explicitly state the ethical position that underlies the inquiry (Cook and Fonow,
1990; Eichler, 1985). The values of justice, equality, peace, benevolence and concern for the
welfare of humankind and all living beings are foundational even in changing times that
destabilise the ‘old’ systems of meaning and seeing the world.
18
Both feminist and postcolonial theory provide a strong value perspective that informs
my inquiry. As a movement, feminism has the goal of “the liberation of women . . . [and the]
reorganization of the world upon a basis of sex-equality in all human relations . . .”
(Kramarae and Treichler, 1985, p. 158), and is committed to “struggling against racial,
sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression” (ibid.). As a theory, feminism provides a basis for
understanding patriarchal domination in most areas of women’s lives, and a perspective that
can “affect the world politically, culturally, and spiritually” (Bunch, 1983, p. 250).
Postcolonial theory also provides a basis from which to address western colonisation at all
levels: political, economical, and cultural. This perspective is based on a desired vision of the
future that is heteregenous, diverse, ‘multicoloured’—a future in which a true ‘dialogue of
civilisations’ takes place, what Ashis Nandy (1993) has called, a Gaia of civilizations.
Both theoretical positions address issues of the current cultural hegemony of
traditional social sciences and what is historically considered as knowledge. One of the major
contributions of feminist theory is in exposing ‘objective’ knowledge as influenced by the
interests and worldview of the dominant gender. Within feminism, education is seen as a
major institution for the reproduction of gender inequality; in both feminist fiction and
feminist theory educational institutions and processes are transformed. Feminists have started
this transformation with a critique of, for example, ‘hidden curricula’, the fragmentation of
knowledge into discrete specializations, the lack of topics of interest for women, and the
exclusion of women’s perspectives (e.g., Spender, 1980, Stanworth 1983, Deem 1978,
Belenky et al., 1986). One of the major areas of feminist dissent has been the development of
Women’s Studies that attempt not only to address previous injustices, but also to develop
knowledge and education by women, about women, and for women. While Women’s Studies
have in many ways become ‘diversity ghettoes’, feminist inquiry has in general resulted in a
Kuhnian paradigm shift. In this thesis, I investigate feminist writings on the futures of
education and alternative educational models developed within feminism. As noted
previously, I also discuss alternatives informed by particular non-western epistemologies and
ontologies, which, in turn, also inform visions of the future that differ from the hegemonic
one. I suggest that these areas have produced numerous dissenting educational and social
visions and are important sites from which mainstream futures educational discourse can be
destabilised.
Postcolonial and feminist theory share a common objective of changing existing
power structures and disrupting the patriarchal and western system of intellectual discourse.
While feminism focuses on patriarchy, postcolonial theory directs its critique against the
19
cultural hegemony of European knowledge (Amin, 1989; Ashcroft et al., 1995; Barker et al.,
1994; L. Gandhi, 1998; Mongia, 1996; Moore-Gilbert, 1997). It exposes the universality of
claims that are connected to one-civilisational epistemological framework and reasserts non-
western categories.
Postcolonial theory also provides a counter-discourse. It is, in significant part, built
around two important concepts: the concept of ‘otherness’ and the concept of ‘resistance’.
The category of the Other is central to the western intellectual philosophical tradition.
Western civilisation has been built in part through the process of ‘othering’—nature, women,
non-western peoples. The dualism between the ‘other’ and the ‘self’—civilisation, men,
western peoples—has been categorised in hierarchical terms. The process of othering does
not only help to create shared identity and cohesion among dominant social groups. More
importantly, dominant social groups create concepts of otherness within the context of
structural and direct violence and repression of these others. The repressed other is
represented in negative terms, for example as un-civilised, un-educated and irrational (L.
Gandhi, 1998). The other is also often described as the abbreviation of the norm, as abnormal
or unessential. For example, the division between the west (rational, civilised, ordered,
masculine) and the ‘non-west’ (irrational, barbaric, chaotic, feminine) defines the Other (non-
west) in both negative terms and in opposition to the norm (L. Gandhi, 1998).
Postcolonial theory shows how such thinking contributes to the oppression and
colonisation of people of colour and how western concepts of the Other (e.g., ‘Orient’,
‘Black Africa’) totalise and essentialise ‘other peoples’. It recognises that:
. . . colonial discourse typically rationalises itself through rigid oppositions
such as maturity/immaturity, civilisation/barbarism, developed/developing,
progressive/ primitive. (L. Gandhi, 1998, p. 32)
For my thesis, postcolonial and cultural studies are especially relevant in understanding the
mechanisms of western cultural power and domination of western images of the future.
Postcolonial theorists offer a different future by rereading the past. Postcolonial
futures thus seek to transform the non-west within the categories of the non-west. They
question the power of the west to define what is seen as real, truth, progress, development,
history, even time.
In the Indian context, various authors, such as, for example, Sri Aurobindo (1872-
1950), Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895-1985), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (b. 1911 or 1918), P. R.
Sarkar (1921-1990) and Sri Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926) have developed their own educational
theories that have inspired or directly created alternative educational models. However, the
20
views of these authors are largely absent from mainstream educational discourses and their
educational praxis is not well known. Is this because their models are flawed or is it because,
since they use categories of the Other, they are not intelligible to hegemonic educational
practices? As part of subjugated knowledge, located low on the hierarchy in our global
world, the impact of these authors on the futures of education debate is marginal. In this
thesis, I describe these educational theories and practices to show in what ways our current
educational discourse is dominated by a Eurocentric, western worldview, and how
mainstream discourse is not only gendered, but also westernized. I also question the
potential, as well as the limitations, of these educational discourses to develop a ‘better
world’, a future different from the one that is colonised by both patriarchy and the west.
While I use postmodernism as my main theoretical structure, it too is considered
problematic. To negotiate these problem areas—issues concerned with stating desired visions
of the future; issues of strategy, strategic essentialisms; and issues of ethics—I employ
feminist and postcolonial theory.
To conclude, postmodernism has opened up the spaces for ‘desiring differently’ and
has challenged traditional views of knowledge, education and the future, including the
desired, utopian ones. The very idea of pluralistic, alternative futures as opposed to ‘the’
future (that is always singular) is, indeed, postmodern. But while postmodern theory is
effective in offering critical analysis of futures discourses, it cannot replace other theoretical
perspectives and approaches, particular those that do not refuse to offer directions,
‘solutions’, ‘ideals’, and ‘utopian hope’. At the same time, postmodernism has also
influenced a transition from singular ‘utopia’ to more contested categories such as
‘heterotopia’ and ‘eutopia’. I discuss this in Chapter Two where I provide a historical and
theoretical overview of the futures field and utopian thinking. The Foucauldian notion that
everything is ‘dangerous’ and that we cannot create a knowledge that is not influenced by
power relationships, demands the development of alternatives that are made out of clay rather
than cement. It also demands that we stay ever vigilant, as today’s utopias often become
tomorrow’s nightmares (Nandy, 1987). This position advocates resistance as “a way of life
rather than a one-off event” (McPhail, 1997, para. 65) and leads “not to apathy but to a
hyper-activism” (Foucault, quoted in McPhail, 1997, para. 65). Deconstruction of
mainstream future educational discourse and investigation of alternative discourses is
important, but so is the ethical evaluation of such futures visions. In this respect, feminist and
postcolonial perspectives and value positions are invaluable for my thesis.
21
I now more closely discuss the methodological approach I use and the main questions
that I ask in my thesis.
1.3 Methodological Approach
My inquiry is based on feminist, critical futures and postcolonial and poststructural

methods which deconstruct texts by asking which perspectives are privileged, what
categories are silenced and what the dominant modes of knowing implicit in a discourse are.
They problematise accepted reality. I thus use methods developed within the poststructural
framework, such as deconstruction, genealogy and critical discourse analysis in order to
investigate how particular ideas and images about the futures of education have become
dominant—the accepted norm—and thus now frame what is possible. In this section I outline
the aspects of deconstruction and critical discourse analysis which shape the questions I ask.
But, while I am eclectic in my methodological approach, I base my inquiry mostly on causal
layered analysis—a critical futures research method derived from poststructuralism. This
research method I review at length.
Deconstruction is crucial in the postmodernists’ effort to destabilise meta-narratives.
One reading of deconstruction is that it represents a disclosure of how a text “functions as
desire” (Derrida, 1984, p. 124). Deconstruction includes “demystifying a text, tearing it apart
to reveal its internal, arbitrary hierarchies and its presuppositions” (Rosenau, 1992, p. 120).
While deconstruction has been attacked because of its ‘philosophical skepticism’ and
‘linguistic nihilism’, I use it to show that current futures and educational discourse do not
emerge from some quintessential, universal and objective grounds. I look for what has been
omitted within particular discourses on the futures of education. In doing so, I intend to
expose the social construction of the dominant discourse and the assumptions that underlie it.
The aspects of deconstruction that I use in my thesis can best be summarised by Derrida (in
Olsen, 1991, pp. 121-141):
Deconstruction questions the thesis, theme, the positionality of everything . . .
We have to study the models and the history of the models and then try not to
subvert them for the sake of destroying them but to change the models and
invent new ways of writing—not as a formal challenge, but for ethical,
political reasons.
Along with deconstruction I use critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysis
is understood as a:
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. . . type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social
power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted
by text and talk in the social and political context. (Van Dijk, 2001)
Critical discourse analysis aims to “understand, expose and ultimately resist social
inequality” (Van Dijk, 2001). It sees discourse as historical, but also as a form of social
action (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, pp. 271-280). The main questions asked from this
position include:
How do (more) powerful groups control public discourse? How does such
discourse control mind and action of (less) powerful groups, and what are the
social consequences of such control, such as social inequality? How do
dominated groups discursively challenge or resist such power? (Van Dijk,
2001)
What concerns me in this thesis is how contemporary western society, which is
increasingly global, puts “into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses”
(Foucault, 1980, p. 69) concerning education and the future. Foucault argued that discourses
are not divided between “accepted discourses and excluded discourses, or between the
dominant discourse and the dominated one” (ibid., p. 100). They can be both “an instrument
and effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a
starting point for an opposing strategy” (ibid.). Various social groups can use the same
discourses for their diverse strategies. For example, the globalisation discourse can be used to
both justify “new Right ideologies of market liberalism and social conservatism”
(Blackmore, 2000, p. 135), or demands for a more inclusive and multicultural world. This
discourse can inform both those who demand the return to ‘good old fashioned’ values in
education, or those who demand that the curriculum should be radically transformed and
more inclusive.
In this thesis I investigate how various “discursive elements . . . come into play in
various strategies” (Foucault, 1980, p. 100) and create hegemonic, counter and alternative
educational/futures discourses. The questions my thesis aims to answer are: What constitutes
normative narrative in educational futures discourse? What are dominant images of the future
of education? What impact do dominant images of the future have on educational discourses?
I then attempt to locate counter and alternative discourses that are outside the norm. While
my initial and functional hypothesis is that feminist and non-western ideas and images about
educational futures are outside the dominant discourse, there is also enough evidence to
challenge this hypothesis. The question thus becomes whether feminist and non-western
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ideas and images about educational futures are becoming part of the mainstream discourse, or
does the mainstream discourse still exclude these positions and worldviews? And if they are
slowly making inroads into the mainstream discourse, would that also make them the norm,
what accounts for them?
Causal layered analysis is a futures research method which enables analyses of how
data within various discourses are contextualised, interpreted and located in “various
historical structures of power/knowledge—class, gender, varna [caste] and episteme (the
critical)” (Inayatullah, 1998a, p. 816). Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) complements
methods that focus on the horizontal spatiality of futures discourses, such as scenarios,
backcasting, and emerging issues analysis. It focuses on the vertical dimension of futures
studies (ibid., p. 815) and takes a layered approach to the future (Slaughter, 2002a), moving
from popular futurism to problem oriented studies of the future to epistemological critique.
These four levels, as developed by Sohail Inayatullah (1998a), are:
1) Litany—consists of the description, the visible characteristics of the issue. The
trends and problems that are often exaggerated and used for political purposes, they are part
of the public debate.
2) Social cause—qualitative interpretation of data and economic, technological,
cultural, political and historical systemic factors are explored.
3) Discourse/Worldview—focuses on finding deeper social, linguistic, temporal,
cultural structures and the discourse/worldview that supports them.
4) Myth/Metaphor—consists of deep stories, collective archetypes, the not so
apparent and obvious dimensions of the problem under inquiry.
As part of critical futures studies methods, causal layered analysis asks what layers of
understanding are missing from conventional trend analysis (linear futures). This method
seeks to explore the politics of knowledge and meaning nested in conventional statements of
the future. It intends to go beyond the litany of statements (e.g., the Internet will
revolutionize education) by asking what are the social, economic and political causes and
factors that create revolutionary change in pedagogy. Moreover, it asks who has access to
power, in this example, to the Internet. At a further level, issues of worldviews and
discourses (e.g., feminist, non-western) are explored. For example, in what ways is the
Internet a representation of instrumental rationality? How does it privilege sense-based
education and avoid knowledge that comes from spiritual modes of learning? At an even
deeper level, constitutive myths and metaphors are explored. For example, is education
mainly about the speed of access to information, or is education predominately about inner
24
transformation, as with spiritual education? Is the purpose of education mainly to control,

achieve and compete, or is its purpose mainly the improvement of the self (as in eupsychia)
or society (as in utopia)?
The fourth level of analysis—the level of metaphor and myth—is particularly useful
when analysing visual images and fictional approaches to the future. It assists in unpacking
the meta-stories that organize meanings—the unconscious emotional dimension of the future.
In this thesis, I present visual images of the future, society and education. They are presented
not just to augment the text, but are central to understanding the text of the futures of
education.
Thus, using the critical and layered methodological approach, I seek to first map and
describe the dominant hegemonic visions of the future. I then unpack these visions by
focusing on the underlying concepts of time and the worldview. The implications for
education are inferred from these general social futures. Alternative visions are also mapped
and unpacked, and the educational implications deduced. These alternatives are described in
detail to allow one to enter the different spaces they create.
More specifically, the main questions I ask in my thesis are:
(1) What are the hegemonic visions of the futures of education?
(2) What are the alternative visions of the futures of education?
(3) What is the underlying societal vision of the future for each of these educational
discourses?
For the five educational discourse about the future—global, cyber, feminist,
indigenous and spiritual—that I analyse, I ask as well the following specific questions: (1)
What is the underlying vision of the future? (2) What is the utopian promise? (3) What are
the dystopian dangers? (4) What is the educational eutopia offered? (5) What is the
worldview and approach to knowledge? (6) What is the epistemology? (7) What is the
educated subject? (8) What is the educational content? (8) What is the educational process?
and (9) What is the educational structure? The key words for each future are also presented.
Along with these questions, causal layered analysis is used to unpack each educational
discourse about the future. The questioned are answered and summarised in table form in
Chapters Four and Five.
To summarise, my methodological approach is inclusive of methods developed within
a poststructural framework, such as deconstruction, genealogy, critical discourse and causal
layered analysis. These methods are largely inclusive of feminist research methods and
approaches developed within postcolonial theory. Causal layered analysis in particular
25
enables research that “moves up and down . . . layers of analysis” and is thus “inclusive of
different ways of knowing” and of perspectives from different levels (Inayatullah, 1998a, p.
815). It enables the asking of questions that unpack the future being offered and facilitates
comparative analysis. Essentially, this is mapping the particular future, describing its main
features at the litany level, then focusing on the deeper worldview levels, as with the nature
of time and the utopia and dystopia offered. CLA also includes the unpacking of the
foundational story of the future.
1.4 Chapter Outline
While this chapter has focused on the theories that inform my research and the
methodological perspective taken, Chapter Two develops the futures context. It does the
following: (1) provides a history of the future; (2) overviews approaches to thinking about
the future; (3) proposes a typology of utopian and dystopian thinking; and (4) investigates the
role of futures and utopian thinking in the education field.
Chapter Three investigates the connections between general visions of the future and
educational practices throughout history. I first deconstruct the Eurocentric and patriarchal
bias in educational history. Then, I offer an alternative history of indigenous, ‘oriental’ and
western education. The main criterion for deconstruction and reconstruction in these
exemplars is the underlying approach to time, of which the approach to the future is but one
part. The alternative history provides the background and epistemic context for the views of
dominant view of educational futures developed in Chapter Four, and the alternatives
developed in Chapter Five.
Chapter Four investigates two dominant futures and utopian visions. These are the
image of a globalized world, and the complementary image of the networked cyber society. I
analyse these visions by focusing on (1) their approach to time, (2) the underlying utopian
and dystopian narratives, and (3) their vision of education. Causal layered analysis is used to
identify the social cause, the discourse/worldview and the myth/metaphor for these two
visions.
Chapter Five overviews alternative educational futures. Three exemplars are
presented in detail. These are: (1) feminist alternatives; (2) the recovery of indigenous
traditions; and (3) spiritual alternatives. The structure of analysis is similar to that in the
previous chapter. I analyse these alternatives by focusing on (1) their approach to time; (2)
their underlying vision of the future; and (3) their vision of education. Causal layered
analysis is used to map and identify the layers of reality that constitute this future.
26
Chapter Six concludes the thesis. In that chapter, I focus on the relative merits of
hegemonic and alternative visions in terms of creating peaceful, multicultural, gender-
balanced and economically and ecologically sustainable future societies.
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Chapter Two: The Futures Context
Image by Irving Buchen (2000). “ A Vision for Education”. The Futurist 34(3), front cover.
2.1 A Selective History of Futures Thinking
In this chapter, I present a history of the futures and utopian discourse. First, I locate
my theoretical position within the long and diverse history of inquiry about the future. Next, I
suggest that what is considered utopian and what are considered real futures probabilities or
possibilities are in fact social, cultural and historical constructions. This notion is developed
through a genealogical gloss of current utopian discourses wherein I trace the movement
from a singular notion of ‘utopia’ to dystopia as well as heterotopias and eutopias. Finally, I
explore the connections between futures and utopian thinking and/in educational discourses.
David B. Barrett (1996, p. 1021) locates the origins of ‘futurism’ at around 47,000
BC. For him, futurism began with the emergence of divination by mediums, oracles or
augurs. These were consulted in order to learn about future events (Barrett, 1996). More
recent futurism dates back to the origins of astrology, around 3300 BCE in Mesopotamia
(ibid.). Astrology attempts to predict destinies of individuals, groups, or nations through
interpreting the influence of planets and stars on earthly affairs (ibid.). Throughout history,
various methods for predicting the future have been used: haruspication, bibliomancy,
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alectryomancy, cartomancy, clairvoyance, oneiromancy, ichthyomancy, palmistry, and so

on.1 Some of our ancestors left behind material artifacts that testify to such efforts: for
example, the Babylonian Enuma Any Enlil, devoted to celestial omens; the Chinese I Ching,
or ‘Book of Changes’; the pyramids of Egypt; the Indian theory of Mahayugas; the Delphic
and Sybylline oracles; and the Mayan and Aztec temples. Others did not attempt to predict
the future. Rather, they did not separate the category—the future—from ‘the eternal now’.
What they left behind are not material artifacts from which we can learn about their own
views about the future. Rather, they left local environments in almost original condition. This
testifies about their own views on time and the future, as well as about their own efforts in
this regard. Current futures studies, however, did not rise from this tradition. It is firmly
based within the western intellectual tradition and has emerged from within the western
epistemological framework.
The conception of time and the future exists in every known society (W. Bell, 1994).
The practice of divination, rites of passage (transitions to future social roles), agricultural
planning, seasonal migrations, development of calendars, all testify that “conceptions of time
and future exist—and have existed—in human consciousness everywhere” (ibid., p. 3). The
future is “an integral aspect of the human condition”, because “by assuming a future, man
makes his present endurable and his past meaningful” (McHale, 1969, p. 3).
Although the conception of time and the future exist universally, they are understood
in different ways in different societies. Eleonora Masini (1996, p. 76) argues that there are
three main representations of time. The first representation is:
A variation of cyclical motion, as in the enclosed circle of life and death in
living organisms, or of night and day in cosmic time. This representation is
well reflected in the Hindu and Buddhist ‘cosmic eras’ (kalpa) which are
delimited by mythological events in time periods through which all beings
continue ad infinitum. The cycle is represented by a snake. In this conception
we see the future as part of an unending continuum. The future is part of life
1
Haruspication: examining reflections in the entrails of sacrificial animals in ancient Rome;
bibliomancy: opening a book at random and reading a chapter in search of insight into the future;
alectryomancy: using a chicken to pick up seeds scattered in front of letters arranged in a circle; cartomancy:
e.g., Tarot; clairvoyance: ‘second sight’; oneiromancy: dream messages; ichthyomancy: studying fish
movements; palmistry: studying unique feature of each individual’s palms to tell about the person and her/his
future. Many other methods were developed, for example, sortilege or ‘casting of lots’, geomancy (interpreting
marks on the earth), pyromancy (looking into fire) and use of omens and oracles of various kinds (Parker,
1988).
29
and death. Naturally this influences one’s perspective of the future: there is
little reason to despair or to strive to achieve. (ibid.)
The second representation is based on the Graeco– Roman and the Judaeo– Christian
conception of time:
Founded on the idea that all people are the same in relation to God. Time is
perceived to be a trajectory towards something more, towards
accomplishment. In this representation time is symbolized by an arrow; the
future is better than the present and the past and may be in contradiction to the
historical present, as in utopia. The possibility of the future being worse than
the past or present is out of the question. This is the conceptual base of
“progress” . . . the time of scientific and technological development, where
every success has to be bigger and better than anything in the past or present .
. . (but) this concept of time and the future is being challenged by
environmental barriers and barriers emerging from its own frame of reference.
(ibid.)
The third representation has been developed by “Vico and others and was more
recently extended by Ervin Laszlo” (ibid., p. 77). According to this representation:
Time is a spiral, an evolutionary process of world civilization giving a
structure to spatial and temporal events ranging from the natural to the social,
that develops over time. (ibid.)
These three basic metaphors for time—circle, arrow and spiral—influence the type of
futures thinking and the very understanding of the future across cultures. Sohail Inayatullah
writes:
Different visions of time lead to alternative types of society. Classical Hindu
thought, for example, is focused on million– year cycles. Within this model,
society degenerates from a golden era to an iron age. During the worst of the
materialistic iron age, a spiritual leader or avatar, rises and revitalizes society.
In contrast, classical Chinese time is focused on the degeneration of the Tao
and its regeneration through the sage– king seen as the wise societal parent.
(Inayatullah, 1996a, pp. 200–201)
What is missing from Masini’s discussion on the three main representations of time is
an understanding of time as ‘non– flowing’, as part of ‘eternal now’, or as ‘Dreaming’. Such
understanding of time has been present among some indigenous societies, for example,
among North American and Australian Indigenous peoples. I come back to the issue of
30
various understanding of time among diverse civilisations in Chapter Three, where I discuss
historical futures discourses in education.
Having western and some eastern societies in mind, Masini further argues that while
some cultures have focused on development and progress of the society, others have focused
on the development of the self—an “accomplishment of the ideal person” (Masini 1996, p.
77). Views of time and the future have practical implications for individual and social lives.
For example, different views of time and the future have contributed to some societies (for
example, those based on the Judeo– Christian tradition) developing in accordance to the
expansion principle, and some (for example, many indigenous societies) in accordance to the
conservation principle. Thinking about time and the future is an integral part of cultural and
civilisational wordviews, which in many ways determines particular directions, decisions and
choices that are made.
During the last 500 years, with the help of the expansion principle that was intrinsic
to capitalism, colonialism, and the way ‘progress’, ‘development’ and ‘time’ were seen and
defined, the ‘victory’ of western models of civilization has occurred. This hegemony of
western civilisation has also meant the implementation and imposition of western concepts of
time (time being linear) and the future globally (for example, the idea of ‘millennium’), and,
as we will see in Chapter Three, western models of education. Futures thinking thus became
linear, concerned with progress and with ways for controlling the future. ‘Science’, including
‘social sciences’, developed within this context.
The emergence of ‘modern futures studies’ in the second half of the 20th century
occurred in the context of global divisions into the ‘First’, ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ Worlds, and
within a 5,000 year long cycle of patriarchal domination within western civilisation
(Gimbutas, 1991; Eisler, 1987). As I stated ealier, the history of modern ‘futures studies’ is
firmly based on this western intellectual tradition. Edward Cornish claims that it was not the
Delphic oracle but “ancient Greece's logographoi, the first men who could be called
historians, [that are] the very distant ancestors of the modern futurists” (Cornish, 1999,
Chapter 4, para. 2). Edward Tenner argues that futurism in the present sense was born “in the
ferment of the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries” (Tenner, 1998, p. 59).
Others argue that ‘futurologists’ had to wait for the disappearance of the worldview
that created eschatologists (people concerned with the end of the world, the last judgment)
(Lothian, 1995). This required that the European medieval ‘obsession’ with Heaven and the
after-life had to be replaced with a focus on improving earthly conditions and an
understanding that the social order is not ‘fixed’ or already preordained in Scripture (Lothian,
31
1995; Tenner, 1998). In addition, the concern with individual futures that dominated
divination and fortune telling had to be replaced with a focus on social futures.
According to Richard Slaughter, it was the “combination of science, technology and
war [that] fuelled the popular imagination in 19th century Europe” (Slaughter, 1996a, p. xxv).
Until WWII, futures thinking existed in the West as literary expression (speculative fiction,
e.g., that of Jules Verne), and political advocacy (e.g., social prophets Charles Fourier, Henri
de Saint-Simone, Robert Owen, Edward Belamy) (Tenner, 1998). Most authors link the
genesis of modern futurism to works of 19th and 20th century European and American authors
such as H. G.Wells, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee,
and more recent works by authors such as Alvin Toffler, Donella H. Meadows and
associates, Daniel Bell, Herman Kahn, E. F. Schumacher, Frederik Polak, and Bertrand De
Jouvenel (Masini, 1993a; W. Bell, 1994, Slaughter, 1996a; Wagar, 1996).
Illustration 2.1
Albert Robida vision of the 1950’s in Le Vingtieme Siecle (1883): “videophones link the continents, a
family watches on large-format, wall mounted flat-screen television while correspondents on
camelback report guerilla wars from North Africa” (Tenner 1998:63). “Robida in 1880’s anticipated the
portable electronic camera, the flat-screen, home-theater TV, and live video news coverage” (Tenner
1998:63).
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From the end of the 19th to the late 20th century, futures thinking in the west has moved from
a focus on utopianism to one of ‘scientific’ prediction (see Illustrations 2.1 and 2.2). In the
20th century, future studies “developed rapidly under the pressure of war and anticipated war,
the need for military and commercial strategies, and the growing perception of what the Club
of Rome aptly called ‘the global problematique’” (Slaughter, 1996a, p. x). North American
future studies originated from “the techniques and interests of strategic planning” and
European future studies followed a more “cultural” orientation. (Moll, 1996, p. 15–27). But
in both regions, futures studies have recently “taken on new roles such as networking and
encouraging public participation in social decision– making” (ibid.).
Illustration 2.2
The future rarely turns out it is imagined to be. Predictions are almost always wrong, as these two
images of the year 2000 show us. The above “City of the Future”, is an illustration from the 1930s,
showing what was believed then to be the city of the year 2000 (Lorie, 1995, back cover page). On
the next page is a picture of a woman taking an aerotaxi from her apartment’s balcony through the
33
cluttered skies of Paris in the year 2000—as seen in a 1890 drawing by cartoonist Albert Robida, who
this time ‘got it wrong’ (from The Focus, January 1995).
The 1960s and 70s were “a golden age for futures studies” (Dahle, 1996, p. 127;
Moll, 1996, p. 19). By the 1970s, “organized futurism grew rapidly” and “the institutional
side of futures research had taken what remains its present shape” (e.g., World Future
Society, World Futures Studies Federation) (Tenner, 1998, p. 66). The new social
movements, especially environmental movements, have broadened the futures field, which
had previously been dominated by “a few big North American think– tanks serving military
and related industrial goals” (Dahle, 1996, p. 127). Although the most famous futurists still
dealt mainly with trends (e.g., Daniel Bell’s ‘post-industrial society’, Alvin Toffler’s ‘future
shock’, John Naisbitt’s ‘megatrends’), the focus in futures studies started to shift towards the
choices between alternative futures, ‘world problematique’, processes of change, desirable
futures, and cultural issues.
In the 1980s and 90s many futurists moved from global thinking to institutional
development. The limits of materialistic culture and the rationality of the Enlightenment, as
explored in the human consciousness movement, also led to discussions on the futures of
values, and the parameters of post-industrial society.
In the past ten years, futures studies has taken a more critical perspective, focused less
on what the future will be like, or even the range of alternative futures, than on what is
missing in particular visions of the future. While Edward Tenner (1998, p. 58) argues that the
base of current futurism still remains pragmatic (consulting and popular writing), among
academics, and following the social sciences in general, the quest is for a more balanced
study of the future. This ‘quest’ is driven by futurists who are far less committed to
34
corporatist and scientific interests and far more sympathetic to multicultural concerns, such
as what groups are likely to be excluded if certain futures come about.
Illustration 2.3
‘Prediction’ is still one of the main methods used within futures studies: the front page of The Futurist,
January–February 1996.
35
Illustration 2.4
Still gazing at the crystal ball: “A Magical Mix” by Tom Cross, in Executive Excellence: The Magazine
of Leadership Development, Managerial Effectiveness, and Organizational Productivity, Australian
Edition, 17(8), August 2000.
Still, future studies is generally dominated by forecasting and scenario planning,

especially in the corporate world (see Illustration 2.3 and 2.4). Current governments also
engage in futures thinking, mostly in the arena of public policy or studies that set national
goals (for example, the Malaysia 2020 Vision). At the same time, however, there is a slow
but significant shift from futures studies as a business tool to strategically manage the future,
to futures studies as a framework for social emancipation. This particular approach is shared
by critical, feminist and non-western futurists. The last group is particularly concerned with
‘decolonising’ western time and future images, and with developing “dissenting” (Nandy,
1999, p. 227) futures alternatives. These perspectives are also partly based on non– western
traditions of futures thinking which were, until recently, absent from ‘modern futures
studies’.
36
Richard Slaughter divides the current futures field into: (1) futures research
commissioned by corporations and governments, which is generally “analytical and
quantitative” and involves sophisticated, time consuming and costly methods; (2) futures
studies, which are more academic and combine consulting with teaching and popularization;
and (3) futures movements that promote social innovation (Slaughter, 1996a, pp. 94– 95).
Sohail Inayatullah divides the discourse of the future into three separate but interrelated
dimensions: (1) predictive/empirical; (2) cultural/interpretative; and (3) critical/post–
structural (Inayatullah, 1990). He argues that the first approach simply reinscribes the present
even while it claims to ‘predict’ the future. The second approach, while “significant in
expanding the discourse of the future across cultures, relativises the future at the expense of
politics” (ibid., p. 115). The third approach, “by historicizing and deconstructing the future,
creates new epistemological spaces that enable the formation of alternative futures” (ibid.).
More recently, Inayatullah has argued for a fourth approach, that of anticipatory action
learning, in which the future is re-created by stakeholders through a shared and deep process
of questioning. (Inayatullah, 2002). Peter Moll also classifies the methods and orientation of
European and American futures studies into: (1) extrapolative (prognosis, planning,
technological, and economic forecasting); (2) normative (utopian and imaginative thinking,
visioning, considering social and cultural dynamics); and (3) pragmatic (considering
economic, social and political realization, means of participation and empowerment) (Moll,
1996). According to Moll, the extrapolative approach sees the future as “quantifiable”, while
in the normative approach “futures are mainly qualitatively different”, and in the pragmatic
“the future can largely be shaped by human activity” (ibid., p. 18). Michael Marien’s
classification (2002, pp. 269– 271) includes six main categories of futures– thinking: (1)
probable futures; (2) possible futures; (3) preferable futures; (4) present changes; (5)
panoramic views; and (6) questioning all of the above. In addition, he has recently argued
that futures studies should not be seen as either a “multi– field”, or even a “very fuzzy multi–
field” (ibid., p. 263). Rather, he perceives it in terms of “disconnected bits– and– pieces, of
widely varying quality” (ibid.). This corresponds to the current state of the social sciences
within ‘the postmodern condition’. Others, however, disagree with Marien’s position,
asserting that futures studies indeed is a single field, but one that is constantly changing and
growing (see Slaughter, 2002b).
With all their differences, modern futurists movements are, however, forming a
coherent philosophy and epistemology. Although there are many different terms for future
studies (e.g., ‘futures studies’, ‘the futures field’, ‘futures research’, ‘futuristics’,
37
‘futurology’, ‘prospective’, ‘prognostics’, ‘forecasting’, ‘futuribles’) that reflect different

philosophical, theoretical and methodological orientations, there are several main
assumptions that most futurists share.2 The key philosophical assumptions behind modern
futures studies—the multidisciplinary and systematic field of inquiry of probable, possible
and preferable futures—are:
• The future is not predetermined and cannot be ‘known’ or ‘predicted’.
• The future is determined partly by history, social structures and reality, and partly
by chance, innovations and human choice.
• There is a range of alternative futures which can be ‘forecasted’.
• Future outcomes can be influenced by human choices.
• Early intervention enables planning and design, while in ‘crises response’ people
can only try to adapt and/or react.
• Ideas and images of the future shape our actions and decisions in the present.
• Our visions of preferred futures are shaped by our values.
• Humanity does not make choices as a whole, nor are we motivated by the same
values, aspirations and projects. (De Jouvenel, 1996a; W. Bell, 1997; Cornish,
1999; Masini, 1993; Slaughter, 1996a; Fletcher, 1979; Amara, 1981).
Given that the future is not predetermined, and that we cannot really study something
which has not yet happened, every study of the future is “strictly speaking, the study of ideas
about the future” (Cornish cited in Wagar, 1996, p. 366). It is an inquiry, or “the study of
possibilities that are plausible in terms of present– day knowledge and theory” (Wagar, 1996,
p. 366).
This thesis is located within the tradition of critical futures studies which does not
attempt to ‘predict’ the future, but asks how current predictions, images and ideas about the
future influence decision and policy making today. My approach is both “cultural/
2
For example, ‘futurology’ is more oriented towards trend analysis and extrapolation, and many of its
practitioners still believe in the ‘neutral’ role of the scientist who “merely stands aside and describes and
predicts our near or distant future” (Milojevic, 1996, p. 22). On the other hand, ‘futuribles’ and ‘futures studies’
focus on the range of alternative futures. The term ‘futuribles’ indicates “the complex of possible alternative
futures” and is widely used in Europe (de Jouvenel 1967, cited in Masini 1993a, p. 56). Similarly, ‘futures
studies’ indicates that there is more than one future to be studied. It is mostly used by futurists influenced by
critical theory and poststructuralism, who understand futures studies to be critical, value driven, emancipatory,
and able to contribute to the creation of preferable futures. Futures studies in this sense is as much an “academic
field as it is a social movement”, and is more concerned with creating instead of predicting the future (ibid.).
For discussion of the futures of futures studies, see the recent special issue of Futures, 34(3-4), 2002, edited by
Richard Slaughter.
38
interpretative” and “critical/post– structural” (Inayatullah, 1990), as well as “normative” and

“pragmatic” (Moll, 1996). In terms of the categories proposed by Marian (2002), my
approach is based on analysis of ‘possible’ and ‘preferable’ futures, as well as on
‘questioning’. In addition, I will also argue for ‘the recovery of the utopianism’: not in terms
of offering a blueprint for the ‘perfect’ society, but in terms of its potential to offer
alternatives to the present order and promote social innovation (Slaughter, 1996a).
Discussion of such social and educational alternatives is crucial, not so much for formulation
of ‘right’ answers, but rather for the destabilisation of undebated and imposed projects for the
future.
2.2 Definitions and Histories of Utopia
While we might assume that utopias are not relevant to us, in fact, we daily live the
many utopian and dystopian visions of the past. Utopian thinking, or prescriptive and
improved imagined states of collective and/or individual being, has been to some extent
responsible for many successful and unsuccessful social experiments. Given the extent of
scholarship on the histories of utopias and utopian thinking, and the similarity of their
content, it can be argued that there is a general consensus as to what constitutes utopia and
what does not. As influential utopian historian Krishan Kumar (1987, p. vii) writes:
One is bounced through the ancients—the biblical prophets, Plato and the
Greeks; hurried throughout the Middle Ages, with a glance at Augustine;
served up More, Campanella and Bacon as a substantial dish; then finished off
with the nineteenth– century socialists: often with a coda which proclaims or
laments the death of utopia in our own century.
Which literary texts are included as utopia ultimately depends on how ‘utopia’ or
‘utopian’ is defined. Kumar (ibid., p. 3) argues that “modern utopia—the modern western
utopia invented in the Europe of the Renaissance—is the only utopia”. He rejects all claims
of universalism, such as George Orwell’s assertion of the “constancy and consistency of the
utopian vision” (ibid., p. 2). Or, as Orwell wrote:
The dream of a just society which seems to haunt the human imagination
ineradicably and in all ages, whether it is called the Kingdom of Heaven or the
classless society, or whether it is thought of as a Golden Age which once
existed in the past and from which we have degenerated. (Orwell quoted in
Kumar, 1987, p. 2)
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Similarly, Kumar disagrees with George Kateb (quoted in Kumar, 1987), who also
speaks of utopianism as the:
. . . system of values which places harmony at the center’ of individual and
social life, and asks: ‘Is not this the vision of utopianism through time; is not
this the substance of the longings of common humanity? Is not utopianism the
moral prepossession of our race’ (p. 425).
So, for Kumar, there is no such thing as a “classical” or a “Christian utopia”, utopia
being “a distinctive literary genre carrying a distinctive social philosophy” (Kumar, 1987, p.
3). Such a definition has led Kumar to conclude:
But, firstly, utopia is not [italics added] universal. It appears only in societies
with the classical and Christian heritage, that is, only in the West. Other
societies, have in relative abundance, paradises, primitivist [italics added]
myths of a Golden Age of justice and equality, Cokaygne– type fantasies,
even messianic beliefs; they do not have utopia. (ibid., p. 19)
Kumar’s definition is problematic as it uses western categories to describe the
multiplicities of the non– west. This excludes the possibility of discussion and debate
incorporating any notion of non– western utopias. However, adopting a definition that would
limit utopianism to “traditions of intellectual practice in Europe and America” (Collins, 1998,
p. 560) is a common practice within western thought. As Collins (ibid.) points out, the
argument holds in reverse—concerning South Asian categories and the European tradition—
but it is rarely made in terms of: “what a shame Europe knows no Purana-s! But at least we
can recognize texts there which have puranic elements” (ibid.). Kumar not only excludes the
non–west, but his theory of utopias, as might be expected, excludes the long history of
western feminist utopianism, with only a few feminist authors mentioned in passing.
Attempting to provide a more inclusive definition of utopia, both Ruth Levitas (1990)
and John Carey (1999) speak about the necessity of “desire”. Levitas thus rejects “all
restrictive definitions in terms of form, function or content of utopias”, and suggests that “the
essential element (is) desire—the desire for a better way of being” (Levitas quoted in Collins,
1998, p. 556). John Carey (1999, p. xi) similarly states that “[t]o count as a utopia, an
imaginary place must be an expression of desire. [And] to count as a dystopia, it must be an
expression of fear”. Such a definition enables a more inclusive history of utopianism, as seen
in Carey’s Book of Utopias in which he includes an Ancient Egyptian poem from 1940 BCE,
a poem by Tao Qian dated ACE 400, as well as numerous writings by women (Carey, 1999).
40
However, defining utopias in terms of ‘desire’ is problematic. For example, from a

Buddhist point of view, writes Steven Collins (1998):
If Levitas’ definition is applied to nirvana, the English word “desire”
immediately runs afoul of Buddhist distinctions between (i) unwholesome and
de-meritorious Craving (tanha) or Attachment (upadana), (ii) forms of desire
(kama) which can be meritorious and wholesome but which still operate with
the samsaric world of Conditioning Factors, and (iii) the aspiration to nirvana,
which must be or become free of Craving and the Corruptions even to discern
the real nature of its object, let alone attain it. (p. 556)
So, although Levitas’ definition is “usefully nonexclusive”, it is also “too broad, and
too imprecise when mapped onto Buddhist categories” (Collins, 1998, p. 556). Therefore,
Collins argues that other definitions of utopias are more relevant for an exploration of
Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities. In his work, ‘utopia’ is intended in two ways. First, in
a general, everyday sense, “to point in an overall manner to Buddhist versions of what the
Oxford English Dictionary calls ‘a place, state or condition ideally perfect in respect of
politics, laws, customs and conditions’” (ibid, p. 293). Second, he attributes to it a more
specific meaning, as one of five different types of ideal society: the Land of Cockaygne,
Arcadia, the Perfect Moral Commonwealth, the Millennium and Utopia proper. The latter
classification has been developed by J.C. Davis (1981), who distinguishes utopia and four
alternative types of ideal society by the way in which they deal with the “collective
problem”: “the reconciliation of limited satisfactions and unlimited human desires within a
social context” (p. 36). The main characteristics of these five diverse categories follow.
The land of Cockaygne tradition was strongest in late medieval Europe, but its themes
have been expressed from ancient times and in many cultures (Davis, 1981, p. 20). It was
basically “a dream world for the laboring classes, allowing them to conceive of a paradisaical
retreat into a land of physical, as opposed to spiritual or intellectual, pleasures” (Hollis, 1998,
p. 42). In this world, “the paucity of satisfaction is solved by imagining a superabudnace of
them” (Collins, 1998, p. 294). In sum, it is a world of “instant gratification, of wishing trees,
fountains of youth, rivers of wine, self–roasting birds, sexually promiscuous and ever–
available partners” (ibid.; Davis, 1981, pp. 8–9).
Arcadia is about “harmony between man and nature” (Davis, 1981, p. 22), and the
desire for satisfaction is “tempered through moderation” (Hollis, 1998, p. 14). Originally
describing a specific place in Greece, and championed particularly by Hesiod, it was later
revived by Renaissance humanists, e.g., Jean-Jacques Rousseau (ibid.).
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The Perfect Moral Commonwealth tradition accepted the social arrangements and
political institutions then existing (e.g., monarchy, Christian church) (Davis, 1981, p. 27).
Society is then made harmonious by “the moral reformation of every individual in society,
and hence of every class and group” (ibid.). The perfect moral commonwealth “idealises
man”, but also assumes “a change in the nature of man, his regeneration, and hence in the
nature of men’s wants” (ibid, pp. 38, 37).
The Millenium focuses on the ‘second coming’, a process rather than an outcome of
achieving an ideal society. What is at issue is ‘perfect form of time . . . rather than a perfect
form of society’ (Davis, 1981, p. 31). This is done, not through human effort, but by some
kind of supernatural intervention, deus ex machina, God, messiah (Jewish), matteyya
(Buddhist) or avatar/bodisathwa (Hindu). But a human’s fate is decided by his or her
previous actions (e.g., during cataclysm as believed by Christians, or by their karma, as
believed by Buddhists and Hindus). Closely related to the idea of 'The Millenium is
Messianism, “a religious movement that involved an activist, usually revolutionary, agenda
for change in society” (Hollis, 1998, 148). Examples of messianism can also be found in
many religions around the world, such as in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and
nature religions (ibid.).
Utopia proper takes humans and nature “as they are, wicked and inadequate” and
imposes the solution through the imposition of a particular order, or system of social
organization and control (Collins, 1998, p. 295). The prime aim is “not happiness, that
private mystery, but order, that social necessity” (Davis, 1981, p. 38). Utopias are sometimes,
but not always, given the form of literary fiction (ibid.) Such utopias are concerned to project
a total social environment and are preoccupied with detail (ibid.). The aim is not merely to
improve, but to perfect. Therefore, totality, order and perfection could be considered to be
cardinal characteristics of the utopian form (ibid.). The systems of social organization
therefore inevitably become “bureaucratic, institutional, legal and educational, artificial and
organizational” (Collins, 1998, p. 295). It is precisely these qualities that have led many,
especially in 20th century, to see such a society as “exactly the opposite of ideal, as a
dystopia” (ibid., p. 295).
Using the above mentioned classification, Collins explores pre-modern Pali
(canonical Buddhist texts) and their promises of “multiple felicites, including the ultimate
kind, nirvana” (ibid, p. 39). Apart from nirvana, which offers “the most all–embracing and
secure resolution of suffering, defeating it conceptually, in the broadest, most abstract and
ultimate way”, Buddhism offers numerous other felicities—heavens, earthly paradises,
42
Metteya’s millennium, the Perfect Moral Commonwealth of a Good King, and so on (ibid., p.
110).
According to Collins, if utopia is understood in a ‘strict’ definitional sense there are
no non–western equivalents to such ‘utopias’. That is, if utopias are defined as an “. . .
imagined human society of the normal productive and reproductive kind where social
problems are solved collectively, that is by the reorganization of society and its institutions,
by education, by laws and by sanctions” (Davies quoted in Collins, 1998, p. 557).
For Collins, this represents:
…a sign of good sense on the part of Buddhism, and other traditional
ideologies in South Asia: for this kind of ideal society all too often ends,
perhaps inevitably ends—and sometimes also begins—as a dystopia of
regimentation and the increasingly strict imposition of discipline. (ibid., p.
557)
This is not to say, however, that non–western traditions have not developed
alternatives to the present order or imagined blueprints for the ideal individual or collective
state of being. As Collins (ibid., p. 560) argues:
Philosophy or Utopianism in English very often do refer, in a genre–specific
and self-conscious sense, to traditions of intellectual practice in Europe and
America, for which precise counterparts outside the west scarcely ever exist . .
. [but it is also] . . . true—unsurprisingly if one starts from the presumption of
a shared humanity—that these styles of thought and cultural production are
readily visible elsewhere.
Supporting this view, Qingyun Wu (1995, p. 10) writes on the subject of Chinese
utopias and utopianism that “[s]cholars generally agree that China has three major schools of
utopian thought: Daoist (Taoist) Utopianism, Confucian Datong (which has been translated
into Grand Union, Great Harmony, or One World, in English), and Buddhist concepts of
paradise”.
Outside (or on the margins) of the west there are also ‘hybridities’ resulting from the
fusion of native culture and traditions with western utopian concepts. An example of such
hybridisation is the existence of Native American Utopias where “Native Americans
developed utopian ideas by blending their own traditions with the ideas of Western
civilization” (Hollis, 1998, p. 169). In his Utopian Movements, Hollis argues that:
The most enduring Western influences among non–Western peoples have
been Christianity and socialism. Thus many utopias in Africa, Asia, the
43
Pacific and the Americas can be connected either to millennialism or

messianism. Whenever socialism impinged upon non–Western societies, it
was refashioned to suit the local conditions. Nonetheless, the non–Western
utopias are both fascinating and instructive about the evolution of those
societies, and they demonstrate that the ideal of utopia is not limited
ultimately by place or peoples. (ibid., p. xiv)
To limit the utopian, as Ernst Bloch (1986, p. 15) wrote as early as 1940:
. . . to the Thomas More variety, or simply to orientate it in that direction,
would be like trying to reduce electricity to the amber from which it gets its
Greek name and in which it was first noticed. Indeed, the utopian coincides so
little with the novel of an ideal state that the whole totality of philosophy
becomes necessary . . . to do justice to the content of that designated by
utopia.
For Bloch, utopia represents the expression of hope, a hope that “is not taken only as
emotion, as the opposite of fear”, but more essentially as “a directing act of a cognitive kind”
(ibid., p. 12). Seen in this light, as the expression of hope, rather than a particular (western)
literary genre, it is impossible to limit utopia to the experiences of one civilisation. The more
recent histories of utopias (e.g., Hollis, 1998; Carey, 1999) acknowledge this and are
therefore more inclusive of non–western traditions. However, given the global scope of
available histories, attempts for greater inclusion of non–western traditions are still
embryonic.
To return now to defining terminology, ‘utopia’ is understood to mean both
‘nowhere’ or ‘no–place’, and a ‘good place’, or ‘perfect place’. Most commonly, it is
understood as an idealistic but unrealistic vision of the future. ‘Dystopia’ on the other hand,
means ‘bad place’, while eutopia literally translates as a ‘good place’. While John Carey
(1999, p. xi) argues, “strictly speaking, imaginary good places and imaginary bad places are
all utopias, or nowheres”, in this thesis I distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ places. In
addition, I distinguish between utopias, seen in the positive sense as desired and presumably
good or perfect places, dystopias, or bad places, and eutopias, as good but not perfect places.
It is clear that any discussion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ assumes particular ethical position. The
ethical position that I assume while using these terms is explicitly stated in Chapter One. In
addition, I investigate prescriptive and improved imagined states of both collective and/or
individual being, as the former is, in general, more prevalent in the west and the latter outside
of the west. Here, I follow current implicit or explicit utopian ideas and debates about what
44
constitute ‘good’ future societies. In addition, as education has always been the utopian
measure par excellence (Hertzler, 1965, p. 292, see Illustration 2.5 for example), I
particularly focus on debates that investigate the role of education in helping achieve such
vision/s. I contrast this approach to more ‘reactive’ views on what the role of education
should be. This predominantly means that the role of education is not to help create, but
rather to help students adapt to particular futures. This I further discuss in the chapters that
follow.
Illustration 2.5
Every community, utopian or not, needs the children to survive and continue its existence. However,
the utopian ideals such as children rights, concern about futures generations that are not yet born and
universal education have not been universally present throughout the history and among diverse
societies and civilisations. Children’s Hour at the Oneida Community of Free Lovers (Corbis-
Bettman), from Hollis, 1998, front cover.
2.3 From Utopia to Dystopia: Is Utopia Dead?
In the 20th century western world, historical developments in relation to utopias have
been marked by the emergence of a distinctive dystopian genre, prevalence of dystopian
images in the media and discussion on the “end of utopia” (Marcuse, 1970). Dystopian
visions take two basic forms: being a description of “a place or condition in which everything
is as bad as possible”, or taking the form of anti–utopias (Jennings, 1996a, p. 211). In the first
45
form, dystopias play the important role of emphasizing “the serious problems that may result
from deliberate policies, indecision and indifference, or simply bad luck in humanity’s
attempts to manage its affairs” (ibid.). As anti–utopias, dystopias are “satirical or prophetic
warnings against the proposed ‘improvement’ of society by some political faction, class
interest, technology, or other artifact” (ibid.). In this latter sense, dystopias can “poison our
outlook on the present, or even prompt us to give up trying to do better” (ibid.). Or as Bloch
(1986) wrote:
The future dimension contains what is feared or what is hoped for; as regards
human intention, that is, when it is not thwarted, it contains only what is
hoped for. Hope, superior to fear, is neither passive like the latter, nor locked
into nothingness. The emotion of hope goes out of itself, makes people broad
instead of confining them, cannot know nearly enough of what it is that makes
them inwardly aimed, of what may be allied to them outwardly. The work of
this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is
becoming, to which they themselves belong. (pp. 3–4)
But, as Jennings (1996a) further argues, it is important to take a critical view of both
dystopian (based on fear) and utopian (based on hope) visions and balance the need to
“prepare for the worst with a desire to achieve the best” (p. 212).
However, the 20th century has been marked by the prevalence of dystopianism in its
anti–utopian sense. The standard critique of utopia “maintains that utopia is not only
unrealistic and impractical but dangerous” (Hudson, 2000, p. 4). This is because it has the
capacity to encourage human beings to “give vent to totalist adolescent psychological states”
and provide “an illusory basis for human action” (ibid.):
According to this critique, utopia is a form of subjectivism which ignores the
fact that we cannot reshape the world in our own image. It is irrational in its
refusal to acknowledge objective reality, immature in its inability to realise the
limited nature of the possible, and irresponsible in its failure to understand the
role of fallibility in the realisation of the good. (ibid.)
And although this “standard critique of utopia” recognises that “there are different
kinds of utopias, and that utopianism can adopt a scientific as well as Messianic guise”
(ibid.), it still maintains that “[a]ll utopians err in preferring the fulfillment of ideal
representation to the mundane improvements which are possible in their time. It also faults
utopians for opting for maximal value orientations” (ibid.).
46
Dystopian images have now become prevalent in the media, both in fiction and
especially in the news, where images of “natural disasters, accidents, crime, war, disease,
social injustice . . . convey a picture of a world where nothing works—in short, dystopia
now” (Jennings, 1996a, p. 212). A recent article in Time (Hughes, 2000, pp. 84–85) is typical
of negative attitudes towards utopia which have developed at this particular time in western
history. The author of the article argues that utopia is necessarily about failure, because its
subjects are “the fallacies and delusions of human hope” (ibid., p. 84). Hughes (p.84) also
argues that “utopia means conformity, a surrender of the individual will to the collective or
the divine” and, as such, Utopia is basically for “authoritarians and weaklings”. In this
article, both nazism and communism are linked with 19th century utopian experiments, and
while some might think “that to be deprived of a life in Utopia may be a loss, a sad failure of
human potential” this can be the case only until they “consider how unspeakably awful the
alternative would be” (ibid., 85). In sum, Hughes claims that utopias are social experiments
and ideas which do not succeed and are, inherently, totalitarian. In regard to whether utopias
succeed or do not succeed, Hertzler (1965, p. 266) offers different view to the one Hughes
represents: “Not all of any of the utopias has been realized, but as much of them have been,
as is the case in any improvement scheme”.
Illustration 2.6
“Declaration of the Rights of Man”, Niquet Le Jeune, Paris, Chez l’Epire, 1789, image at
www.nypl.org/utopia Although “no places”, much of utopian elements have been realised (Hertzler,
1965) as yesterday’s utopia often becomes today’s social philosophy (Polak, 1973).
47
Similarly, Fred Polak (1973) has argued that yesterday’s utopia often becomes
today’s social philosophy (see Illustration 2.6):
Many utopian themes, arising in fantasy, find their way to reality. Scientific
management, full employment, and social security were all once figments of a
utopia–writer’s imagination. So were parliamentary democracy, universal
suffrage, planning, and the trade union movement. The tremendous concern
for child-rearing and universal education, for eugenics, and for garden cities
all emanated from the utopia. The utopia stood for the emancipation of women
long before the existence of the feminist movement. All the current concepts
concerning labor, from the length of the work week to profit–sharing, are
found in the utopia. Thanks to the utopists, the twentieth century did not catch
man totally unprepared. (pp. 137–138)
Hughes’s second argument, that utopias eliminate individualism and are inherently
totalitarian, has often proved to be accurate. But this argument, however, takes the value of
individualism as an unchallenged category and assumes its unquestioned superiority over
collectivism. Such a ‘common sense’ universalistic approach to individualism has been
challenged (e.g., by both postcolonial theorists and feminists). In addition, the argument that
utopias eliminate individualism also discounts the fact that the very idea of ‘individual
freedom’ is in itself a utopian concept.
While most arguments that explain the emergence of anti–utopian dystopia in the 20th
century concentrate on failed utopian social experiments, the emergence of totalitarian
societies and two world wars in Europe, it could also be argued that the current dystopianism
represents reflective realism. Darko Suvin argues that for most of the planet, dystopia is a
reality (Suvin, 2000). For Suvin (2000), the most appealing utopia is:
Diametrically opposite to present–day capitalism without a human face (or is
it showing its real face now that it fears communism no longer?), that is, a
type of relationships between people using the stupendous productivity
developed by capitalism to ensure a by now quite possible life of dignity for
each human being. Dignity means first & foremost getting rid of the totally
unnecessary starvation, epidemics, druggings, and other brainwashings
enforced by the war of each against each, breaking out into innumerable small
wars (such as in the streets of many U.S. cities) and medium wars between
states.
48
Whatever the reason for the increase in anti–utopian sentiment, it is interesting that it
appeared at the time when, due to capitalism and technological advances, almost “any form
of the concrete world, of human life, any transformation of the technical and natural
environment is a possibility” (Marcuse, 1970, p. 62). What numerous utopians dreamed in
the past—for example, societies where abundance is the norm—has materialised in so-called
‘post–scarcity society’ in the west. It could then be argued that some societies finally live in
the “utopia now”:
The greatest irony of the concept of Utopia is that people are still searching
for it when, at the dawn of the 21st century, most citizens of the world’s
industrial democracies are already living in one. If we could communicate
with even the wealthiest people who lived much before 1900, and told them
we live in a time when even ordinary people have clean clothes and houses,
nutritious food and potable water, the freedom to quit any job we dislike, the
ability to hear symphonic music and watch dramas without leaving home, and
vehicles to transport us anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, who can
doubt that they would cry out, ‘you live in paradise!’? (Anonymous, 2000, p.
12)
A similar argument was offered by Marcuse (1970) some thirty years ago. He
believed that we (western societies) have reached “the end of utopia” as a revolutionary goal:
Today, we have the capacity to turn the world into hell, and we are well on the
way to doing so. We also have the capacity to turn it into the opposite of hell.
This would mean the end of utopia, that is the refutation of those ideas and
theories that use the concept of utopia to denounce certain socio-historical
possibilities. (p. 62)
However, that we can have ‘utopia now’ through technological innovation does not
solve the problem of the impossibility of realising many simultaneously diverse and
competing utopias. While the ideal of utopia is universal, particular utopias, utopian images
and movements are always influenced by the particular cultural and civilizational traditions
within which they are developed. What is seen as ‘utopia’ by one social/cultural group can be
considered as ‘dystopia’ within different social and historical contexts, and/or by different
social and cultural groups. At any given time there are competing utopian and dystopian
visions that are constantly being negotiated, locally and globally. In that process, not every
social group has the opportunity to exercise equal power within local and global societies and
contribute towards the ‘universalisation’ of utopian ideals. Thus, certain utopian visions are
49
always privileged, and privileged social groups get the opportunity to define what becomes
the dominant image of the future. Fred Polak has argued that, although utopian visions are
usually created by the intellectual elite, “the utopia is really on the side of Don Quixote and
not Don Carlos” (Polak, 1973, p. 172) (see Illustrations 2.7 and 2.8). That is, dominant social
groups have seen the realisation of their utopian vision so they can afford to abandon the
utopian in favour of ‘continuation of the present’ futures.
On the other hand, disadvantaged social groups are usually interested in disturbing the
status quo. They might be more interested in the creation of alternatives to the present order.
In that sense, in our highly hierarchical world, there will always be a social group in need of
utopia—as an expression of the hope that the future can, indeed, be different.
Illustration 2.7
Although partly influenced by western utopian ideals, “virtually all comparisons with Western ideas fail
to comprehend the uniqueness of the Gandhian utopia” (Hollis, 1998, p. 87). Development of non-
western utopias is important in opening up the future, and part of social transformation. What we can
imagine we can create—including “alternative” and “dissenting” futures (Boulding and Boulding,
1995). Image from Hollis, 1998, p.86.
50
Illustration 2.8
Martin Luther King, addressing the gathering at the march on Washington for jobs and freedom where
he delivered famous “I have a Dream” speech, 1963, Image retrieved from
http://www.life.com/Life/mlk/mlk06.html
Because dominant social groups have a greater capacity/more power to control the
discourse, they propagate the idea that it is their own vision for the future—as the
continuation of the present—that is more realistic. Political projects in favor of disadvantaged
social groups are labeled ‘utopian’, in a sense which implies their impossibility. In short,
dominant social groups claim that any break from the realistic present and realistic future is
utopian, and by definition, unrealistic, naïve and impossible. This is because it is in the
interests of these dominant social groups to define alternative futures to be unrealistic, naïve
and impossible. By labeling these visions that challenge their domination utopian view,
powerful social groups express their own desires, their own desirable futures. Mannheim
(1936) made this argument long ago: “The representatives of a given order will label as
utopian all conceptions of existence which from their point of view can in principle never be
realized” (Mannheim, 1936, pp. 176–177). As did Polak (1973):
In common usage, and even among the majority of the intelligentsia, the
utopia is considered imaginary, dangerous, and misleading . . . Of the many
aspects hidden under the one concept of a utopia, one aspect, its imaginary
quality, has stamped its mark on the whole and thus distorted it. (p. 162)
While discussing mainstream/hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses it is
important to first de-mask alleged ‘realistic’ futures that are championed by dominant social
groups. That is, these futures should be seen as emerging from particular utopian discourses,
rather than from some universal and neutral space. For example, capitalism and economic
globalisation in many ways continue a particular tradition within the west. This tradition
focuses on expansion, unlimited supply of material goods and successful control of natural
51
and biological processes. At the myth level, this is the idealised future image of The Land of
Cockaygne, which was particularly popular in medieval Europe (Hollis, 1998). The Land of
Cockaygne is the land of milk and honey, the ‘golden age’ where the nature provides
abundant resources and the magic porridge bowl never empties. It is the land of unlimited
consumption, limitless choice, and ever increasing growth and progress. Another dominant
image of the future, that of a technologically advanced information society, is also located
within a particular western tradition of “discovery, exploration, colonization and
exploitation” (D. Bell, 2000, p. 697). For example, cyberspace is routinely referred to as a
‘new world’ or a ‘new frontier’, even a ‘new continent’, whose conquest and settlement is
often compared to the conquest and settlement of the ‘New World’:
A typical example comes from Ivan Pope, editor of the British cyberspace magazine
3W, who described cyberspace as “one of those mythical places, like the American West or
the African Interior, that excites the passions of explorers and carpetbaggers alike”.
Similarly, the headline for a cover story from the San Francisco–based cyberpunk journal
Mondo 2000 declared simply, “The rush is on! Colonizing Cyberspace” (Wertheim, 1999, p.
296).
And second, parallel to unveiling utopian elements within hegemonic futures
discourses it is also important to discuss alternatives—as equal to hegemonic ones and not as
inferior or naïve. That is, both should be seen as equally valid discourses about the future, as
simultaneously real, imaginary, utopian, desired and feared.
However, at the beginning of the 21st century hegemonic discourse labels as ‘utopian’
only images and visions that counteract the capitalist, technological, patriarchal and western
civilisational project for the future. This project is perceived to be ‘realistic’ as it entails the
continuum of the present realities, no matter how harmful they are to a local and global
society or particular social groups. Articulation of alternative eutopian visions is therefore
important in opening up the future and breaking down common assumptions of what is
‘immanently’ going to happen. Development of alternatives to the present, coming from the
perspective of the disadvantaged groups, is one of the important strategies in both rethinking
the present and developing informed decisions for the future.
2.4 From Utopia to Heterotopias and Eutopias
Heterotopia can literally be translated as other or diverse place. It is a term used by

postmodern thinkers to note imaginary ‘places of otherness’. This term was partially
developed by Michel Foucault in his article “Of Other Spaces” (1986). Foucault (1986, p. 22)
52
argues that while the great obsession of the nineteenth century was history, “the present
epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space”:
We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the
epoch of the near and far, of the side–by–side, of the dispersed. We are at a
moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life
developing through time than that of a network that connects points and
intersects with its own skein. (p. 22)
The space in which we live, Foucault further argues, is a heterogenous space. To
depict this heterogenity, Foucault has introduced the term heterotopia, to describe places that
are “absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about”, and also as a
way of contrasting them to utopias, which are “sites with no real place” (ibid., p. 22). He
argues that probably in every culture and every civilization such ‘real places’ do exist and are
formed in the very founding of society. They are “[s]omething like counter–sites, a kind of
effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found
within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted (p. 22).
Such a conceptualization of heterotopias is extremely important in every pluralistic
society—and every society is always in essence pluralistic—as it can open up the possibility
of developing alternative discourses. The term heterotopia thus focuses on both the
multiciplicity, as well as current ‘yes–places’ and ‘somewheres’ where otherness is enacted.
But for Foucault, heterotopias are not resources that can be used to create alternative futures.
This is because, for Foucault, the function of heterotopias is not in creating the future but in
creating “a space of illusion that exposes every real space”—a distance from the present
(ibid., p. 27). Their function is in creating “a space that is other, another real space, as
perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled”
(ibid.). Such an approach to heterotopia leads Foucault to conclude that it is the ship that is
“the heterotopia par excellence”—as the boat is a “floating piece of space, a place without a
place, that exists by itself” (ibid.). Other heterotopias include brothels, colonies, festivals,
museums, libraries, gardens, rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, retirement homes,
boarding schools, honeymoon trips, or cemeteries. Therefore, anything that is “perfect”,
“meticulous” and “well arranged” can legitimately be called heterotopia, because it is not
clear in which ways cemeteries, retirement homes, prisons, and hospitals are “exposing every
real space”. Are not retirement homes, prisons and hospitals real places for their inhabitants?
Foucault’s heterotopias and heteropologies are “frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent,
incoherent” argues Edward Soja (1996, p. 162). They seem “narrowly focused on peculiar
53
microgeographies, nearsighted and near–sited, deviant and deviously apolitical” (ibid.). In

Foucault’s descriptions, Mannheim’s and Marcuse’s upward striving social groups and
classes, Polak’s ‘positive’ image of the future or any notion of ‘progressive’ social projects,
are conspicuously absent. At the same time, as Soja (1996, p. 162) notes, Foucault’s
heterotopias are also “the marvelous incunabula of another fruitful journey into Thirdspace,
into the spaces that difference makes, into the geohistories of otherness”.
The importance of Foucault’s term heterotopias lies in his insistence on the plurality
of spaces of otherness. While ‘classical’ utopian thinking was preoccupied with uniformity,
order and singularity of truth, postmodernism, as developed in the previous chapter, is
characterised by attempts to include diversity and chaos, defining reality as the sum of
everything that exists (Siebers, 1994). Heterotopias could then be seen as the sum of
numerous utopias which negotiate their own futures visions within the actuality of that space.
What characterises heterotopias is a vision that recognizes its own limits (Doll, 1995, p. 89).
Rather than being built on certainty, as was the case with the modernist visions, utopia
becomes reconceptualised to include flexibility, questioning, and the work in progress.
The ideal of the creation of ‘perfect societies’, inhabited by ‘perfect’, ‘rational’,
‘selfless’ humans, excluding ‘real people’ and including only the right, ideal, utopian types,
has by now been abandoned. Among others, Robert Nozick has argued that a universally–
shared utopia is not a real possibility (Nozick in Nandy, 1987). Therefore, the first task
ahead, argues Ashis Nandy (1987, p. 4) is to engage in dialogue of visions: “At a time when
most visions are struggling for survival, a dialogue of visions must first be a statement
against uniformity”.
No dialogue is possible with a utopia that claims “a monopoly on compassion and
social realism”, or presumes “to be holding the final key to social ethics and experience”
(ibid, p. 11). The criteria by which a utopian vision should be judged should not be so much
what is done in its name, but “its ability to sanctify accountability and self-exploration” (ibid,
p. 7). Utopias therefore need to build conceptual components which sanctify self-doubts,
openness and dissent.
The shift from understanding utopias as ‘perfect societies’, to utopias that are marked
by self-doubt and questioning is implicit in the increased use of the term eutopia. This terms
implies that while it is not possible to create perfect societies, we could still hope to create
better ones. Such societies may not be perfect, but could represent improvements on the past
and the present. Such understanding and reconceptualisation of the term utopia is implicit in
work of western feminist utopians, claim Bartkowski (1989), Sargisson (1996) and Halbert
54
(1994). According to these authors, the main role of feminist utopias is not to provide
blueprints for the perfect polity, but to describe alternatives to patriarchy. Lucy Sargisson
(1996) argues that feminist utopias are critical of approaches that emphasize perfection. They
are spaces for speculation, social dreaming, subversion and critique, intellectual expansion of
possible futures, and expression of a desire for different (and better) ways of being. It is not
uncommon within contemporary feminist utopian literature and theory, Sargisson further
points out, to find descriptions of several worlds, sometimes contrasting—none perfect
(Sargisson, 1996).
The reconceptualisation of utopia as pluralistic heterotopias and imperfect eutopias is
important because it implies that no utopia holds ‘the final solution’. While the utopia might
be dead in our present time, the need for heterotopias of diversity and eutopias of
improvement is still very much alive. As Ashis Nandy (1999) argues that it is the
responsibility not only of intellectuals but of all citizens to continue to incorporate futures
perspective in order to:
Respond to the world around them meaningfully, not only for their own sake
but also for the sake of their children and grandchildren (and to) defy and
subvert the ‘inevitable’ in the future, which is only another name for a
tomorrow that dare not be anything other than a linear projection of yesterday.
(p. 232)
Illustration 2.9
“Women played a key role in the great religious revivals of the early nineteenth century, as is
suggested by this 1829 lithograph of a camp meeting” (Foster, 1991, p. 121). Hollis (1998, p. 69)
argues that, “Female equality in a utopian setting appeared first among the eighteenth-century
Shakers who—in addition to practicing celibacy—implemented spiritual equality, though they retained
a patriarchal leadership”.
55
2.5 Colonisation of the Future and the Power to Define
Historically, non–western peoples have been excluded from the development of the
western utopian project. Women were excluded as well, but to a lesser degree (see
Illustration 2.9). It was assumed, and still is, that non–western societies could not develop
images of advanced future societies because they themselves were ‘pre-industrial’ and ‘pre-
modern’. The colonization of knowledge by the dominant (western) perspective has thus lead
to a view of the future defined mostly by three pillars: (1) the capacity of technology to solve
all problems; (2) linear progress as the underlying mythology; and (3) the accumulation and
expansion of material goods as the main goal of civilization. This has resulted in looking at
the future as “a single, dominant by myopic projection” (Sardar, 1999):
The future is little more than the transformation of society by new Western
technologies. We are bombarded by this message constantly from a host of
different directions. The advertisements on television and radio, in newspapers
and magazines, for new models of computers, cars, mobile phones, digital and
satellite consumer goods—all ask us to reflect on how new technologies will
transform not just our social and cultural environments but the very idea of
what it is to be human. ( p. 1)
Similarly, since women’s ‘place’ was defined by patriarchy to be in the private
sphere, women’s contributions to the future were primarily limited to the personal domain.
But there is a “profound ambiguity” when it comes to women and the future, argues Elise
Boulding (1983, p. 9). On one hand, women’s historic roles have been those of:
Stewards and conservers of resources for their families, as nurturers, fending
off the effects of change as much as possible to preserve a space of tranquility
for those in their care. They are therefore seen as conservative, cautious,
unwilling to take risks, and as needing to be protected from the vicissitudes of
larger social processes. (ibid., p. 9)
On the other hand, women are “the womb of the future in every society”, continually
preparing in their minds for future possibilities and anticipated needs (ibid.). Women were
excluded from public sphere, but, Boulding (1976) further argues, every woman with
responsibility for the household became a “practicing futurist” (p. 781). Since the advent of
patriarchy, women, in general, were forced into the private spaces of society. This is one of
the reasons they experience the world somewhat differently from men; they have dreamt
from other places and thus dream other spaces. ‘Futurism’ that women developed is different
56
from “the manipulative futurism of planners” (ibid.). What Boulding believes sets them apart
is that:
[w]omen’s futurism is the futurism of the Tao, the way, rather than the
futurism of projected end states. In its idealized form it involves an attunement
to cosmic processes which makes action seemingly effortless because it is
based on the intersecting realities and potentials of the individual and the
social order. It is not a heroic futurism, overcoming all obstacles, but a gentle,
listening futurism, moving with the sun, the moon, the tides and the seasons of
the human heart. (ibid, p. 9–10)
But, because since the invention of patriarchy it was predominately men who were ‘in
charge’ when it came to ‘controlling the future’, they are still seen as creators and leaders of
everything that is ‘new’, radically different and progressive. The belief that it is men who
create the future is also cemented in widely accepted symbolic language, as can be seen in
the representation of women and men (Milojevic, 1998, p. 88). Looking at the male symbol,
which is also the symbol of Mars, Greek god of war, we can see that its main characteristic is
a pointed arrow that aims upwards. In a similar way, this is how trends and movements
towards the future are represented on diagrams. The dominant metaphor of the future,
illustrating the future understood as a linear progression from the past and present, is also that
of an arrow. Symbolic language for women—that of Venus—is, on the other hand,
represented by the circle and a cross that is firmly rooted to the ground. While the circle in
each symbol is in the same position, the cross in women’s sign indicates that the essence is in
the body, the arrow in men’s symbol indicates transcendence and action (ibid.).
Patriarchy is thus everywhere, as Mary Daly (1978) proclaims: “even outer space and
the future have been colonized” (p. 1). One example of this is futures studies itself. To give a
more concrete example, just one look at futures studies can make us conclude that “the only
relevant futurists in the world are a handful of old, white, American men” (Dator, 1994, p.
40). This, of course, has significant influence on debates within the futures field (see
Milojevic, 1998; 1999, pp. 61–63), as well as on the overall view of what constitutes the
future. As can be seen from images in Illustrations 2.10, 2.11 and 2.12, it is predominately
the (white) man who has created past and present and who will continue to create the future.
Illustration 2.10 is particularly indicative of an hegemonic view of time, past, present
and future, the view that allegedly describes ‘objective’ and ‘universal’ human experience.
This theme is consistent throughout: it is clearly identifiable in both the ‘official’ futures field
57
as well as in more popular futures imaging. What such ‘future’ imaging does not change are
existing social hierarchies in general, and gender relationships in particular.
Popular imaging in science fiction is another example of this (Illustrations 2.13, 2.14,
2.15 and 2.16). Gendered and race hierarchies remain implicit in what is to be desired, as in
‘fainted blonde maiden’ (Illustrations 2.13 to 2.16). The heroes, as well as ‘the Others’
(aliens, monsters) have therefore at least one common denominator. (White) women remain
objects upon which technological development is to be practiced (Illustrations 2.17, 2.18 and
2.19). Alternatively, they are to be replaced by technological (‘birthing machines’, ‘sexy
robots’ and cyborgs) altogether (Illustrations 2.20, 2.20a, 2.21, 2.22 and 2.23). (White) men
continue to dominate, (white) women are to be ‘saved’ (Illustration 2.24) or to remain in
men’s background (Illustrations 2.25 and 2.26). The technological promise to ‘liberate
modern women’ (Illustration 2.27) is increasingly questioned (Illustration 2.28). But what is
rarely questioned in popular futures imaging are existing gender roles as defined by
patriarchy (Illustration 2.10, 2.29 and 2.21 to 2.23). Women are to remain ‘passengers’ on the
‘Spaceship Earth’ and in vehicles that orbit it (Illustrations 2.30 and 2.31).
Baby-making machine: A French pro-nationalism poster from 1906, in New Internationalist, 303 (July
1998, p.27).
58
59
Illustration 2.10
Cosmic Evolution by Robert McCall, Foundation for the Future logo.
wwww.futurefoundation.org
Illustration 2.11
60
Illustration 2.12
61
Illustration 2.13
Image from Ackerman, F. (1997, front cover).
62
Illustration 2.14
1972 Image from Ackerman (1997, p. 22).
63
Illustration 2.15
Image from Ackerman, F. (1997, p. 39).
64
Illustration 2.16
1938 Image from Ackerman, F. (1997, p. 111).
65
Illustration 2.17
1939 “Neoplastic will give you, without risk, a perfect body”. Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p. 69).
66
Illustration 2.18
1954 “An android of rare perfection”. Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p. 73).
67
Illustration 2.19
1938 “Being from the future will throw humans into a time trap”. Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p.
117).
68
Illustration 2.20
1920 “The Mother-machine”. Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p. 66).
69
Illustration 2.21
1988 “Sexy Robot”, by Hajime Sorayama.
Illustration 2.22 and 2.23
1988 “Sexy Robot”, by Hajime Sorayama.
70
Illustration 2.24
1951 “A real hero will always save the interstellar pin-ups”. Image and Comment from Canto & Faliu
(1993, p. 140).
71
Illustration 2.25
1936 Flash Gordon, “archetypal conquering hero of the future”, Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p.
142).
72
Illustration 2.26
The Matrix movie, video tape front cover.
73
Illustration 2.27
1924 “Domestic appliances will liberate the modern woman”. Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p. 44).
Illustration 2.28
March 16, 1998, Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald Magazine, front cover.
74
Illustration 2.29
1955 “A beautiful lady being cared for by her hairdresser–beautician–robot in the year 2000”. Image
and text from Canto & Faliu (1993, p. 52).
75
Illustration 2.30
1958 “Paris-London by jet-powered aero-cab”. Image from Canto & Faliu (1993, p. 61).
Illustration 2.31
1948 “Buble-top car”. Image from Brosterman (2000, p. 31).
76
Interestingly while Illustrations 2.30 and 2.31 are recognised as ‘futuristic’, they also
bear a remarkable resemblance to desired gender relationships from the 1950s (Illustration
2.32). This ‘futuristic imaging’ has both failed to accurately ‘predict’ the speed of change and
technological development (that is, we are yet to see ‘flying cars’), but even more so the
dramatic influence of late 20th century women’s movements. As seen earlier (e.g.,
Illustrations 2.10 to 2.12), this ‘dramatic influence’ seems to have passed by some in the
futures field who keep futures locked within ‘traditional’ history and the traditional approach
to futures; the approach that has consistently excluded women.
Illustration 2.32
Image from Clute (1999, p. 214).
In popular imaging, women have recently seemed to ‘toughen up’, if only to adapt to
the dystopian futures created within the context of patriarchal and other hierarchies
(Illustrations 2.33 to 2.37). They have become more muscular and stronger, but the need to
dominate ‘the Other’ has remained. This domination of the Other is seen in further set of
‘futures’ images (Illustrations 2.38 and 2.39). It is still the same type of image, dystopian,
violent, brutal, that is immediately recognisable as a futures’ image. The question is, why
would most people not be able to recognise an image portraying the emerging ‘Gaian
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paradigm’ (Illustrations 2.40 and 2.41) as also being a futures’ image? What are the criteria
used to distinguished a ‘futures’ from a ‘non–futures’ image? Why is it only technological?
And, most importantly, whose interests are best served by such colonisation of the future? As
I have suggested earlier, the criteria used to define the future are technologism, linearity and
materialism. Social innovation, cyclicity and spirituality are not seen as futuristic, but as
other.
Illustration 2.33
78
Illustration 2.34 Illustration 2.35
79
80
1993 Judge Dread, Image from 2000AD comic, 18th September 1993.
81
Illustration 2.40
1988 illustration by Finger Prince. Image from In Context: A quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture,
Special issue on “Transforming Education”, No.18, inside front cover.
82
Illustration 2.41
1985 Illustration by Deborah Koff-Chapin, from In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable

Culture, 12, front cover.
83
As argued earlier, the end of 20th century has been marked by both prevalence of the
dystopian genre and the prevalence of what are seen to be ‘realistic’ discourses about the
future. In addition, the idealism of the 60s and the 70s seems to have been replaced by the
materialism of the 80s and 90s. The current discourse of the future therefore remains
dominated by technological/scientific, uni-civilisational and androcentric worldviews. Two
mainstream visions of the future that dominate are the image of a ‘post-industrial’,
‘information society’ and the image of a globalised, pan–capitalist world. Cyber–utopia is
seen as realistic, and so is the utopia of free and open markets. Both are promoted as the main
ways forward and have become hegemonic images of the future. They form ‘rationalistic’
and ‘realistic’ futures discourse where discussion about the desired is taken out of the
equation. Instead, realistic futures subtly promote implicit assumptions about the nature of
the future society (high–tech, globalised) and impose these views on other futures discourses.
All other discourses about the future are made to adjust to and negotiate with these, arguably,
most likely futures. In addition, these alternatives are virtually unknown and rarely debated.
Examples include the ‘popularity’ of Elise Boulding’s vision of a gentle/androgynous
society, Riane Eisler’s partnership society/gylany or Sri Aurobindo’s ‘the coming of the
Spiritual Age’ as compared to the ideas of ‘post–industrial’ and ‘information’ society.
However, as argued by Foucault and discussed in Chapter One, this process of
colonisation, or normalisation of particular dominant views, ideas and images is never
complete. While cyber utopia still dominates, it is important to stress that, approximately
since the 1960s, many previously excluded social groups, such as people of colour and
women, have started to vocalise their own utopian visions. These utopian visions imagine a
future multicultural, partnership–oriented and ecologically sustainable society. This I further
discuss in Chapter Five. At the same time, the hegemonic discourse has since proclaimed that
these utopias are ‘unrealistic’ and that utopia herself is dead. This too is telling of the overall
colonisation of the future, or at least, of the attempts by dominant social groups to colonise
and define it.
2.6 Futures and Utopian Thinking in Education
Futures and utopian thinking in education has, in general, paralleled the developments
described above. Here, we can distinguish between three influential traditions, between
utopianism, ‘futurology’ and critical futures studies.
The idea that education, as well as other social institutions, can be transformed
rationally and in ways that “enhance human wellbeing and happiness has a long and
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controversial history” (Wright, 1999, para. x). In one of the rare books that explicitly focus
on the connection between utopias and education, Howard Ozmon's Utopias and Education
(1969) has argued that utopian thought played an important part in influencing educational
thought in the west. He points at ways in which utopian thought has influenced education in
the past, and also asserts that utopians have, by and large, placed a high priority upon
education (Ozmon, 1969). In addition, “most utopian writers not only have a high regard for
education but are educationists themselves” (ibid., p. x). That education has always been
utopian measure par excellence (Hertzler, 1965), Ozmon (1969, p. ix) explains by stating
that:
[As utopians believed] . . . that the great social problems of a society cannot
be solved without changing the entire structure of the society within which
these problems reside . . . they saw a twofold necessity for education, first, for
the purpose of educating man to the need for great and important changes, and
secondly, they saw education as a vehicle for enabling man to adjust to these
changes.
However, this utopian sentiment has, in western thought, always been in
‘competition’ with alternative approaches towards social change that has put an emphasis on
reform rather than radical transformation. These two streams are well summarised by Wright
(1999):
On the one hand, radicals of diverse stripes have argued that social
arrangements inherited from the past are not immutable facts of nature, but
transformable human creations. Social institutions can be designed in ways
that eliminate forms of oppression that thwart human aspirations for fulfilling
and meaningful lives. The central task of emancipatory politics is to create
such institutions. On the other hand, conservatives have generally argued that
grand designs for social reconstruction are nearly always disasters. While
contemporary social institutions may be far from perfect, they are generally
serviceable. At least, it is argued, they provide the minimal conditions for
social order and stable interactions. These institutions have evolved through a
process of slow, incremental modification as people adapt social rules and
practices to changing circumstances. The process is driven by trial and error
much more than by conscious design, and by and large those institutions
which have endured have done so because they have enduring virtues. This
does not preclude institutional change, even deliberate institutional change,
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but it means that such change should be piecemeal, not wholesale ruptures
with existing arrangements. (para. 4)
To complicate matters further, these two approaches to social change have also
always existed within a context in which education has primarily been an instrument of social
control. As Foucault’s work so clearly demonstrates, the structure and organisation of
schooling firmly locate bodies and minds in place. By the teaching of particular knowledge
and skills that is based on educational regimes of truth, a particular subject is always
developed on the basis of these normalising regimes. The governed subject becomes the self-
regulated subject, therefore successfully fulfilling “the practical needs of schools, businesses,
and society as a whole for discipline and order” (Cromer, 1997, p. 118). As a result, “systems
that had been developed by reformers to restructure society were adopted by society to
maintain the social order” (ibid.).
Educational institutions, practices and discourses are therefore torn between demands
to, on one hand, create and respond to social change, and on the other, maintain the status
quo. Still, all these demands are informed by particular futures discourses. While this is more
obvious in the case of demands that more explicitly engage with social change, even
demands and desires for maintaining the status quo depend on projection of the current
system as a desirable vision for tomorrow. But as educational discourse in the present
historical moment is “organized around a totalizing principle in a paradigm that is called
‘analytic’, ‘rationalist’, or ‘scientific’” (Fendler, 1999, p. 170), utopianism is, in general,
considered ‘passe’. This ‘scientific’ and ‘rationalist’ approach can be traced back to
modernism, as well as to Marx’s invention of ‘scientific socialism’. As early as 1949, Martin
Buber had argued that the reputation of ‘utopia’ sank in value predominately because Karl
Marx used it as a weapon “in the fight between Marxism and non–Marxian socialism” (in
Ozmon, 1969, p. v). That his thought had all the elements of the utopian (including its
dystopian down fall) is now rarely contested. But Marx:
. . . used this concept to differentiate between his scientific socialism and what
he felt were the dreamy abstractions of others. The opposing faction was thus
labeled by Marx as ‘utopian’. To a large extent, Buber adds, this fight between
the Marxists and the non-Marxists has conditioned our understanding of the
world today. (Ozmon, 1969, p. v)
Utopia was thus ‘attacked’ from both left and right, by radicalists and conservatives
alike (though for different reasons). Both the fulfillment of some utopian dreams as well as
failed utopian experiments contributed in much the same direction, towards the abandonment
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of utopia. But while utopia has been officially abandoned, until very recently, both Left and
Right still relied on “modernist notions of progress to justify their theoretical, empirical, and
political strategies” (Popkewitz, 1998, p. xiii). This has been done without reflective
examination and with “almost missionary zeal” in order to obtain the ‘salvation’ of the
masses through education (ibid., p. xiv).
As discussed earlier, the latest attack on utopianism has come out of postmodernism.
The few utopian elements left in, for example, critical pedagogy, are to be abandoned and/or
replaced by “philosophical negativism”, which is seen as a “precondition for the development
of a nonrepressive critical pedagogy” (Gur-Ze’ev, 1998, p. 463). As the recent debate
between Ilan Gur-Ze’ev and Peter McLaren (1998) illustrates, the possibility of the very
project of a critical pedagogy—emancipation through critical reflexivity—has been
challenged (Biesta, 1998, p. 450). McLaren (1998, p. 434) therefore argues for a ‘provisional
utopia’ aimed at counteracting the globalization of capitalism and neoliberalism that “work
together to democratize suffering, obliterate hope and assassinate justice” (p. 434). He
believes that critical and multicultural educators need to renew their commitment to the
struggle against exploitation on all fronts and bring a vision of critical pedagogy that is anti-
racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic, and centers around meeting the basic needs of human
beings for survival and wellbeing in the struggle for a socialist democracy. In addition,
critical pedagogy must articulate its politics with a profound respect for the lived experiences
and standpoint epistemology of the oppressed. McLaren's vision for the future of education
includes schools as sites for the production of both critical knowledge and sociopolitical
action, providing students with both a language of criticism and a language of hope. These
languages should then be used to prepare students to “conceptualize systematically the
relationship among their private dreams and desires and the collective dreams of the larger
social order” (ibid., pp. 460–461). Such schools would:
. . . need to foster collective dreaming, a dreaming that speaks to the creation
of social justice for all groups, and the eventual elimination of classism,
racism, sexism, and homophobia . . . New generations of students must be
capable of analyzing the social and material conditions in which dreams are
given birth, and are realized, diminished, or destroyed. More importantly,
students need to be able to recognize which dreams and which dreamers are
dangerous to the larger society, and why this is the case. (ibid., p. 461)
McLaren’s neo-Marxist revisioning of critical pedagogy is made problematic by Gur-
Ze’ev (1998, p. 463), who believes that all current versions of critical pedagogy “function as
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part and parcel of normalizing education and its violence”. For Gur-Ze’ev (ibid.) the ‘positive
utopianism’ that still exists within current critical pedagogies that challenge the present
philosophical, cultural, and social reality is their “main weakness”. In his vision of counter–
education, “no room exists for a positive utopia” (ibid.), and philosophical negativism is a
precondition for the development of a non-repressive critical pedagogy. According to Gur-
Ze’ev, at the heart of his project is the possibility and the nature of a non-repressive
pedagogy. He critiques Freire (1998) because of the dangers associated with “noncritical and
automatic preference for the self-evident knowledge of the oppressed over that of the
oppressors” (Gur-Ze’ev, 1998, p. 469). Such self-evidence of ‘the people’, or any social or
cultural group, has a terroristic potential, and can open the gate to totalitarianism as earthly
heaven. Consequently, Gur-Ze’ev does not provide a particular vision of the future of
education. He believes that instead of showing the way, the only thing a non-repressive (and
non-violent) pedagogy can do is to “issue an invitation to set out on the journey” (Biesta,
1998, p. 505). Critique in this sense is “a prayer that cannot change the world, but allows
transcendence from it”, concludes Gur-Ze’ev (1998, p. 486). According to him, this is the
only “nonrepressive form of hope possible in such an educational project” (ibid.).
These two positions illustrate well the current state of utopianism in education.
Utopianism has not completely disappeared, but it has been marginalised and is no longer a
‘legitimate’ discourse. On one hand, McLaren’s call for ‘revolution’ and his reverence for
‘guerilla tactics’ is highly problematic. Compared to those that advocate a gentle evolution
(Eleonora Masini) focusing not on the end results but on ‘the Tao, the way’ (Elise Boulding),
McLaren’s suggested strategies remain locked in masculinist/ patriarchal approaches to
social change. His approach remains in the tradition of Karl Marx— who appropriated
women’s experience of childbirth to argue for the revolution as ‘a midwife of history’ as a
means for bringing about the new order, for replacing the old already ‘pregnant’ with the
new. On the other hand, McLaren’s call for a ‘provisional utopia’ remains relevant for social
groups that desire different social and educational futures. Using Lewis Mumford's (1922)
typology, these ‘provisional utopias’ are not “utopias of escape” but predominately “utopias
of reconstruction” (p. 15). Such strategic utopianism remains aware of the possible
totalitarianism of ‘positive utopias’, and of the dangers associated with having a closed
vision. But without some sort of future envisioning what remains is a situation in which:
Hardly anyone talks about educational utopias anymore. We seem to be too
caught up with test scores, basic skills, teacher burnout, school violence, and
so-called excellence to be concerned with visions of what our schools really
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could be at their best. The early 1970s gave rise to exciting books like George
Leonard's Education and Ecstasy and John Mann's Learning to Be, which
painted fantasy pictures of futuristic schools that educated the total spectrum
of human capability. In Leonard's book, children used computer–assisted
technology to interact with humanity's rich collection of symbol systems.
Mann's book described a utopian school where children attended "empathy
classes" and simulated trips to Mars. Just 20 years later, some of these
fantasies seem laughably outdated, whereas others are just now being realized.
In their time, however, these books revealed a freshness of vision and an
unabashed impulse to explore the heights of possibility in education. We just
don't seem to do much exploring in this hardheaded era. (Armstrong, 1996,
para. 2)
As some sort of “a resolution”, Armstrong then proposes bringing together “the
idealism of the 1970s with the materialism of the 1980s and 1990s” to produce utopian
schools “grounded in the here and now” (ibid., para. 3). This grounding is possible by both
retaining “a sense of hope and optimism while yet staying present to global threats on a daily
basis” (Hicks, 1998, p. 225). While the grounding may not be possible within ‘deconstructive
postmodernism’ which leaves us “without any possibility for a new story” (ibid., p. 227),
hope can not only be retained but has “. . . a central role to play in revisionary
postmodernism, not in the shallow sense of merely hoping that things will improve but in the
accessing of deep sources of inspiration” (ibid.).
It is, however, not the role of educators to “campaign on behalf of a particular interest
group or scenario”, argue Beare and Slaughter (1993, p. 106). Rather, a more fundamental
task needs to be attended to, “that of building perspectives about the future into everything
we do” (ibid.). Thinking ahead, analysing visions and views of desirable futures, and
“negotiating and exploring new and renewed understanding about our present cultural
transition beyond the industrial era” (ibid., p. 105) remains central to incorporations of
futures studies in education. However, while acknowledging the need to build futures
perspectives into all educational practice, I argue that educators need to campaign on behalf
of a future based on the principals of gender partnership, peace making, multiculturalism and
ecological sustainability. I argue this partly from a value–laden ethical position, partly from a
preferred future and partly because of the enormity of the civilizational crisis humanity faces.
The campaign, however, is to focus on paradigmatic, epistemic change, rather than
McLaren’s ‘guerilla tactics’.
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As is the case with futures studies in general, futures in education take both the
approach of ‘futurology’ as well as that of ‘critical futures studies’. While there are
approaches that focus on educational trends and prediction (e.g., Hostrop, 1973; Withrow,
Long and Marx, 1999), critical futures studies aim to engage with the future by helping “both
students and teachers to develop skills of foresight, . . . the ability to anticipate and be more
pro-active to change” (Hicks, 1994, p. 3). However, “pop–futurism”(Slaughter, 1993, p. 842)
that focuses either on limited or ‘mega’ trends is increasingly seen as problematic.
Hutchinson (1996, pp. 26–27) argues that this is because, first, predicted futures reinforce the
taken–for–granted, by not challenging major currents of scientific, technological and
economic determinist thought and thus “perpetuate assumptions that the most worthwhile
kinds of knowledge are those derived from the models and methodologies of positivistic
science” (ibid.). Secondly, “predictive or extrapolative techniques invest the future with a
spurious objectivity” as places to visit with some sort of presence ‘out there’ (Gough, 1989,
p. 54). And thirdly, “. . . predicted futures in education may be self-fulfilling prophecies.
They may involve colonising assumptions about pedagogical and curricular imperatives in
schools and other educational institutions” (Hutchinson, 1996, p. 28).
The message communicated through education thus becomes that “all children should
be taught to cope . . . with future shock [and] the pattern of change dictated by technological
innovation” (Morgan, quoted in Hutchinson, 1996, p. 28). Such an approach leaves no space
for either ‘provisional’, ‘strategic’, ‘reconstructive’ utopias, or for ‘nonrepresive forms of
hope’. Rather, education becomes ‘part of the problem’, a means by which ‘colonisation of
the future’ is achieved.
A number of authors—such as Richard Slaughter, Headley Beare, David Hicks,
Catherine Holden, Jane Page and Francis Hutchinson—argue, however, that critical futures
studies remain crucial for education. The focus is not on the future “misconstrued as an
‘empty space’ . . . [but] . . . as an active principle in the present” (Slaughter, 1998, p. 39). The
role of futures in education, therefore, is to “help develop individual and collective foresight”
(ibid., p. 40) as well as to counteract the negative, uni-dimensional and gender-stereotyped
images of the future promoted by popular culture (Hicks & Holden, 1995, p. 18). These
negative images and descriptions draw heavily upon “conventional, often stereotypical,
science fiction imagery of the future” (Page, 1996, p. 126). Both young people’s and adults’
images of the future “are generally based on over-simplified sterotypes acquired through the
process of socialisation” (Hicks, 2001a, p. 232).
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But, while one of the central roles of education is to prepare young people for the
future (Hicks & Holden, 1995, p. 3), exploration of the future remains a neglected issue in
education (Hicks & Holden, 1995; Beare & Slaughter, 1993; Page, 2000; Gough, 1990).
Educators are “frequently told that they hold ‘the future’ in their hands” (Slaughter, 1996b, p.
152). During the last decades of the 20th century educators were also often told that “the
young people they are dealing with are ‘the citizens of the twenty-first century’” (ibid.). At
the same time:
The education system has not, to date, responded well to the challenge of
applying futures issues in pre-school to secondary educational curricula. This
is partly attributable to the lack of an awareness on the part of most educators
of the methodologies and philosophical orientations of futures studies. This
gap in the educational knowledge base means that most educators do not
possess the critical frameworks necessary to analyse perceptions of the future
and to convert these concerns into practical learning experiences. In order to
remedy this situation, futures researchers will need to continue the long-term
objective of disseminating information about the discipline of futures studies
across educational settings. (Page, 2000, p. 42)
That is, in education, it is still the past that is “evidently of much greater interest than
the future” (Slaughter, 1996b, p. 138). How futures discourse functions in education has been
discussed in an excellent study by Noel Gough (1990). Gough’s study is important because it
has:
. . . drawn attention to the manner in which educational researchers and
policy-makers pay frequent lip service to the importance of preparing students
for the future without, however, seriously addressing this as an objective in
their curricula and in their methodologies. (Page, 2000, p. 42)
Gough convincingly argued that futures in Australian educational discourse are often
conceived in terms of (1) tacit inferences, (2) token invocations or (3) taken for granted
assumptions. For Gough (1990, p. 298), this is problematic because conceptualising futures
in such ways may be “disempowering” and allows “education in Australia to be vulnerable to
forces of economic and technological determinism”. In addition:
The difficulty with tacit futures is that they can represent anything from
deliberate caution through timidity to outright ignorance . . . Token futures
serve little more than a ritualistic function in educational discourse. Taken-for-
granted futures reinforce the status quo, in many cases by attempting to use
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education as an agency in colonising technologically and economically

deterministic futures. (ibid., p. 308)
This has been the case not only in Australia, argues Slaughter (1996b). Rather, “the
vast majority of education systems throughout the world lack anything approaching a
substantive futures perspective” (ibid., p. 152). Similarly to Gough, Beare and Slaughter
(1993, pp. 102-105) argue that this is problematic for several reasons:
First, wherever it lacks a futures dimension, education takes on a repressive
character. That is, it elevates a concern for the maintenance of knowledge
structures (and therefore power structures) over other human concerns. To
render the future invisible, not worthy of discussion or study, is to strip away
much of human significance in the present . . . Second, education for whole
persons needs a futures dimension. The implicit model of personhood which
we have inherited from the industrial era overlooks this and much else besides
. . . And third, as they are currently constituted, educational curricula tend not
to offer a critical purchase on the underlying causes of the world
problematique. They actually contribute to the problem when they
unthinkingly reproduce an obsolete worldview.
I return to some of the points made by Hicks, Page, Gough, Beare and Slaughter in
my concluding chapter (Chapter Six).
To summarise, this chapter presented a history of the futures and utopian discourse in
order to locate my theoretical position within the long and diverse history of inquiry about
the future. I have suggested that what is considered utopian and what are considered ‘real
futures’ are in fact social, cultural and historical constructions. I have also explored the
connections between futures and utopian thinking and educational discourses and argued that
both utopian and futures thinking have become marginalised. I have surveyed arguments by
several authors—who focus on futures education—on why is this problematic. I return to this
issue in Chapter Six.
The following chapters show that futures thinking consistently underlines educational
discourses. Chapter Three focuses on historical futures discourses in education. In this
chapter, I explore the engagement of various futures discourses with education that has
existed throughout history. I particularly focus on ways in which the western and patriarchal
power to define has created particular discourses when discussing educational histories. I
argue that the hegemonic view of time and the way desired futures are seen are implicit in
creating particular historical educational practices and discourses. Although my thesis is
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about current discourses on futures of education, I first focus on educational history because
the development of multiple, and alternative, educational histories is one way to approach the
issue of multiple, and alternative, educational futures. The main focus of my inquiry then
switches from historical to contemporary futures and educational visions and practices.
Chapters Four and Five thus focus on current debates in regard to educational visions for the
future.
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Chapter Three: Historical Futures Discourses in Education
Clockwise from top left: Indian Goddess of Learning (Mookerji, 1960, facing p. 373); Islamic science—
students studying astronomy (Sardar & Malik, 1994, front cover); Religious Christian education
(Cubberley, 1920, p. 150); and Learning by observation and doing (Carpi, 1980, p. 17).
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3.1 Introduction
. . . why study the history of education at all? After all, it’s all dead, gone,
finished—what is important lies in the future . . . The history of education is
boring, arid, defunct. Such as it is, it were better forgotten (Simon, 1983, p.
65).
In this chapter, I relate the image of time to educational models, asking what the
implications of worldviews are for education. I do this through an analysis of the worldviews
of indigenous civilizations, classic Indian civilization and modern western civilization.
Indigenous and Indian examples are used as a civilizational contrast to the western—which is
generally seen as the endpoint of evolution, rather than as a particular stage that will be
supplanted by the multiplicity of the ‘postmodern’, or transformed through a return to the
‘pre-modern’. I spend some time in developing the epistemic structure of these educational
alternatives. The implications for women and others excluded is analysed as well. These
implications are further developed in Chapter Five, where I focus on alternatives to the
hegemonic educational model— the feminist model of education, the recovery of the
indigenous model and the spiritual model. Thus, this chapter is essential for building the
framework for the analysis of the dominant model and emerging alternatives.
Why study the history of education, especially in a thesis that deals with educational
futures? The history of education appears to be a ‘dead field’. Few books over the last
decades have been dedicated to the topic of broad educational histories.3 However, only a
few decades ago there was still great enthusiasm to sum up millennia of educational practices
and ideas into one concise narrative. This is evident from the number of books published on
educational history in the 1960s and 70s (e.g., Castle, 1961; Laurie, 1970; Curties &
Boultwood, 1963; Meyer, 1975; Ulich, 1968, Nakosteen, 1965).
The abandonment of broad historical narratives is perhaps one of the ‘successes’ of
postmodernism, and part of a general shift from grand narratives to micro histories. As the
next section shows, these broad educational histories were indeed in many ways “boring, arid
and defunct” (Simon, 1983, p. 65), as well as extremely problematic because of their
3
This seems to have been the case with the discipline of history in general. For example, in his The
Killing of History Keith Windschuttle (1996) argues that the whole discipline of history has been ‘murdered’ by
literary critics and social theorists. It is thus suffering from ‘a potentially lethal attack’, mostly from postmodern
relativism which denies that truth and knowledge about the past are possible (Windschuttle, 1996, p. 2).
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underlying politics. But the study of educational history, or histories, remains important.
First, this study is crucial for a better understanding of our present movement. It is through
the study of these ‘old’ texts that we can understand the discourse behind particular
educational praxis, such as, for example, the discourse behind the global imposition of a
western modernist educational model. Second, the study of how these texts both ‘function as
a desire’ as well as exist within a particular worldview/cultural story is necessary so that their
alleged universalism and objectivism can be unmasked. And thirdly, it is by understanding
the geographical, civilizational and political context of the writers of these hegemonic
histories that space opens for the telling of ‘another story’.
The following section investigates educational history’s canon, or hegemonic
educational history, that has been, and to a large extent continues to, predominate. In the
discussion of the Eurocentric and patriarchal bias in educational history, I predominately
deconstruct the text, arguing that it is informed by a particular western/patriarchal
understanding of time and history as well as future. Using this approach, I offer an alternative
gloss of educational history. I argue that historically a connection between the particular
approach to time, vision for the future and educational visions and practices can be found.
Thus, as suggested by causal layered analysis, the worldview level of civilization (type of
time and vision of the future) informs the dominant educational system, which then informs
the day-to-day lived realities. By challenging the worldview, we can begin to see alternative
educational systems.
However, the connection between the image and the educational system should not be
seen in firm deterministic terms, but rather, in terms of Polak’s (1973) work on how the
image of the future informs particular actions of the day. Furthermore, by developing
alternative histories, there is no suggestion that they are the ‘final story’, that historical truth
has been discovered. These alternatives, too, are part of the practice of the ‘construction’ and
‘reconstruction’ of reality, but are undertaken from a current perspective—in this case, from
the approaches of postmodernism, feminism and postcolonialism. As argued by Nakosteen
(1965, p. 13), history is always:
. . . a study of ourselves, our problems, our hopes and dreams, our failures and
successes, our joys and anxieties. So conceived, history becomes in a wider
context the study of [hu]man[s] in the present sense and in the present tense.
In addition, as argued by Depaepe (1998, p. 16):
Because we are biologically situated in a specific spatial (social and cultural)
and temporal (historical) context, we can do nothing other than look from a
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specific standpoint at what lies behind us. And since time always further blurs
(and ultimately even erases or wipes out) the past, this looking–back
unavoidably implies a ‘reconstruction’ that attempts to recover ‘how it really
was’ . . . This ‘re-construction’ inevitably has the character of a ‘con-
struction’ . . . in the studying of history, we ourselves construct the story of
what is past.
The investigation of alternative histories is important because they function as
resources, as possibilities for the creation of alternative futures. Thus, through destabilizing
hegemonic histories, we can also destabilize hegemonic futures. Another crucial point I make
here is that educational practices are not a mere consequence of technological development
within a particular society, civilisation and historical phase, as conceived in mainstream
educational history. Rather, these practices are always about what a particular
society/culture/civilisation considers to be important. Educational practices are also about
achieving a particular, desired future, and are not merely a by-product of the technological
development of an era. In fact, the belief that educational practices merely reflect ecological
and technological developments of a society and civilisation is in itself, distinctively western.
3.2 Eurocentric and Patriarchal Bias in Educational History
In an analysis of ‘generalist’ educational histories, one can easily find that the main
approach used is the systematisation and cataloguing of educational practices, ideas and
‘great’ educational philosophers and reformers according to strict chronological order. The
writing is focused more on the presentation of facts than on interpretations and the meanings
given to these facts. Of course, while allegedly broad, general and universal (as shown by
their titles), these histories are mostly concerned with the educational history of the west.
Non-western educational history is only sporadically reviewed in “the context of ancient
civilisations” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2001), or, alternatively, in the context of
‘comparative education’. Some non-western educational histories, such as the history of
medieval Muslim education, are, however, more frequently treated because of their “impact
upon western education” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2001). But while exiled from generalist
educational histories, non-western education histories do represent a corpus of their own, as
accounts of Ancient Indian Education (Mookerji, 1960; Altekar, 1957), or histories of
Japanese (Kaigo, 1968), Chinese (Kuo, 1972) or Muslim (Shalaby, 1979) education attest.
This corpus is, of course, much more limited, occasional and highly specialised. And,
perhaps most importantly, very few non-western educational histories are available in
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English. The general knowledge production in the west privileges those that are located
within it, which is not in itself a problem; Mandarin speaking theorists living in China, for
example, might equally be ‘privileged’ by companies that publish books in Mandarin. The
problem, however, lies in the generally one-directional movement from west towards non-
west. As argued by, for example, Philip Altbach (1987, p. xii), there is “the gulf” between:
. . . the power and influence of the major central nations of the Western
industrialized world which produce knowledge and the vast hinterland of
consuming nations of the Third World, many of which are hardly part of the
[international] system at all . . .
While Altbach's analysis is here focused on the Third World, the general principle of
uni-directional movement is true for the west and non-west. Within such a movement it is
western authors that almost always remain both generalised and localised experts. They are
both experts on ‘general’ education and, as well, authorities on, for example, ‘Chinese’
education. The writings of Chinese authors, on the other side, either remain unavailable in the
current ‘global’ language, or, alternatively, are translated many decades later. This perhaps
helps explain why the above mentioned non-western educational histories are all ‘dated’.
And it explains why it is still Mookerji’s (though seminal) text that is used to study
traditional Indian education, almost fifty years after it was originally written. Finally, when
non-western authors write on universal issues, their work is bracketed as the Chinese or
Indian perspective. Western authors are rarely labeled by their tradition.
In addition to the general invisibility of non-western perspectives in all these broad
educational histories, there is also a silence surrounding the issue of women’s engagement
with educational practices and discourses. Except for Maria Montessori, women are always
objects of educational histories, never subjects. In available educational histories the issue of
gender is discussed as a separate and specialised entry, usually under the rubric of ‘the
education of women’. This theme focuses mostly on how women used to be, are and should
be educated rather than on how they did/do educate. In sum, ‘human’ experience is
predominately based on men’s experience of education while women’s experiences and
engagement with education are either invisible or marginalised.
Thus, western history and discourses are generalised and universalised, while non-
western discourses are located within specialised categories. When it comes to women, there
is no equivalent to either generalised and universalised educational histories, or non-western
educational histories. That is, women’s educational histories are defined as either histories of
exclusion or as a special entry within broader, general histories. However, feminists and
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women futurists have provided alternative readings of broad social histories (e.g. Miles,
1993; Eisler, 1987; Boulding, 1992). Feminist scholars in the area of education have
particularly focused on how “men controlled education . . . [how] they prevented women
from learning, and then condemned women because they were ignorant” (Spender, 1982, p.
9). I discuss this alternative reading of history from a feminist perspective in Chapter Five.
As discussed earlier, Eurocentrism is evident in generalised educational histories in
definitions of the universal and the particular, and in relation to the issues of authorship. But
what might be most relevant for the argument I make in this thesis is that the chronological
content is also dominated by particular understandings of time, which are firmly based in
western intellectual history. That is, time is understood as movement from the past towards
the future which is again defined in a very specific way, as progress or development. This, in
turn, maintains and further creates a persistent theme in western mainstream discourses: the
future is the one created in the west (by an intellectual male elite) and the only choice for
‘others’ is to progress towards this particular future. Non-western histories are either silenced
or superficially included within this particular discourse. For example, the most common
organisation or structuring of educational ideas and practices from the past follows a general
western chronology in the way progress and development are conceptualised. Other historical
cultures and educational systems are forced to fit into a western “artificial divisions of history
as early, middle, and present” (Nakosteen, 1965, p. 4). In practical terms, this means that
education is firstly divided between primitive and civilised people. Then, early civilisations
of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China are explored in generalist terms until the appearance
of the Helenistic Civilisation. After that, more attention is paid to the Greeks whose
contribution is discussed in detail. This is because Greeks are seen as “the beginners of
nearly everything, Christianity excepted, of which the modern world makes its boast”
(Castle, 1961, p. 11). As Castle further eloquently puts it:
Certainly the Greeks were the first real educators of our western world. No
history of education can neglect them; for they were the first western people to
think seriously and profoundly about educating the young, the first to ask
what education is, what it is for, and how children and men should be [italics
added] educated. (Castle, 1961, p. 11)
In this particular paragraph Castle asserts that the Greeks are the first ‘real’ educators
of our western world. In all of the educational histories reviewed this is only contested by
Nakosteen (1965). Nakosteen's main disruption of the hegemonic canon is in his extension of
the conventional time frame, challenging the history of origins. That is, in a place usually
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reserved for ‘the Greeks’—as the sole beginners of ‘western’ civilisation—Nakosteen

discusses the Indian educational system, arguing that Indian educational influences upon the
Middle Eastern nations and upon Greeks were substantial (Nakosteen, 1965, pp. 19–20).
More recently, Martin Bernal has, “since the early 1980s, been arguing that the civilization of
classical Greece has deep and important roots in Afroasiatic cutlures” (Reagan, 1996, p. 5).
More problematic than erasing earlier influences on western civilisation, is that not only are
the Greeks seen as the first real educators but as the originators of civilisation itself. Western
civilisation is equated with the civilisation—a civilisation that developed through stages and
reached its peak in the current stage of modernity. Modernity is then defined according to
western understandings of history, that is, as the present, which is also often seen as the
highest and the most rational historical moment in the development of (western) civilisation.
According to this narrative, modernity arose out of philosophical debates in the west and
because of particular western inventions: scientific, economic, theoretical and cultural. As
such, it follows a strict chronological order and makes a radical departure from the pre-
modern past. While non-western civilisations are recognised for their early contributions, the
advent of modern (western) civilisation annuls their further development by default. In
educational histories the cultural developments of so-called ‘early’ educational systems (such
as Chinese, Hindu, Persian, Hebrew and Egyptian) are therefore treated “as though their
cultural developments terminated with the beginning of the Christian era” (Nakosteen, 1965,
p. 4). This approach becomes especially confusing, argues Nakosteen, when the advanced
stages of educational systems such as those of India, Persia, Egypt, or Judea are surveyed as
“though they constituted the primitive beginnings of Western educational traditions”
(Nakosteen, 1965, p. 4).
As indigenous education is perceived to belong to the earliest stages of human
history, which are by definition, simple and undeveloped, the mainstream discourse assigns a
particularly limited and inferior place to traditional indigenous education. At the beginning of
the 20th century, mainstream Eurocentric discourse on indigenous education was an account
of “non-progressive education (among) savages or nature peoples” (Graves, 1909). This
particular discourse within Eurocentric educational histories reflected a particular view of
time and the future that was culturally and temporally specific. That is, education practices
within traditional indigenous societies were judged not in connection with the indigenous
approaches and understanding of time but exclusively in connection to western ones. This
resulted in an understanding and labeling of indigenous education as undeveloped, inferior
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and simple. In its early phases, some hundred years ago, the narrative on traditional
indigenous cultures and education read:
‘One set of savages is like another’, said Samuel Johnson, and this dictum of
the eighteenth-century sage has stood the test of modern investigation. The
government, customs, and mentality of all savages have proved to be
strikingly similar in their simplicity and crudity. When the human race is yet
in its intellectual infancy, which it seems to be in the case of all primitive
peoples both of the present day and the past, society is found to be on a
comparatively simple basis, and there is little differentiation of thought or
occupation . . . [The savage’s] social organisation is undeveloped, he is
absolutely incapable of abstract thought, his religion is superstitious and
crude, his occupations are largely limited to securing the products of nature
that are at hand, and the education he receives is imitative and fixed . . .
Because the life and thought of savages are so crude and undeveloped,
histories generally give little or no account of the educational process among
the most primitive peoples. (Graves, 1909, pp. 8–19)
Although generally undeserving of much space within educational histories, savage
education, Graves (1909, p. 13) argues, is still “worthy of some consideration” because:
. . . the very simplicity and uniformity of the organisation, method, and
content of savage education, by constituting an instructive contrast to later
complexities, and affording a means of interpreting them, form a natural
starting-point for studying the history of education. (Graves, 1909, p. 13)
Writing at about the same time, S. S. Laurie (republished 1970) contests this view.
For Laurie, since the savage is lacking in ethics, there is nothing he can offer the world:
In a historical survey we can afford to ignore the vast variety of tribes which
are still in a savage state, and which, either by innate incapacity for
development, or by the force of irresistible external circumstances, have risen
little above the beasts that perish. The human possibilities of such tribes may
be, in germ, as high as those of many more favoured races; but this is
doubtful. They labour to acquire skill in getting food by the exercise either of
bodily vigour or successful cunning, and they cherish the virtue of bravery in
warding off the attacks of others like themselves. As they have, however, no
political or ethical ideal, they can have no education in the sense in which we
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use the term in this book. They can teach us nothing [italics added] (Laurie,
1970, pp. 2–3).
A similar approach is taken by F. V. N. Painter (1908). While “fortunately for
mankind” education in some form or other is as old as our race, ‘progress in education’
follows ‘general human progress’ and so:
Following the course of human progress, the history of education naturally
divides itself as follows: I. The Oriental countries, including China, India,
Persia, Palestine, and Egypt. II. The ancient classical nations, Greece and
Rome. III The Christian education of Europe and America, which is divided
into—(1) the period before the rise of Protestantism and (2) the period after
that great movement. (Painter, 1908, pp. 9–10)
While among all peoples “barbarous as well as civilized” each generation has
received some special training for their subsequent career, this was often done in “a very
defective and one-sided way” (Painter, 1908, p. 3). Naturally, when the state of civilisation
was in general “low”, education has correspondingly been “narrow and imperfect” (ibid.).
“The beautiful world of science and art” remains “undreamed of” (ibid.). His classification
therefore takes no account of “uncivilized peoples”, because “. . . education with them
consists almost exclusively in training the body for war and the chase. Their education is thus
too primitive in its character to bring it within the scope of our present undertaking” (ibid., p.
10).
Such an approach to educational history, as seen in work of early 20th century writers
such as Graves, Laurie and Painter, remains a consistent theme throughout the century. James
Mulhern’s A History of Education: A social interpretation (1959, p. iii) is indicative of the
mainstream classification of societies and cultures that prevails in the 20th century western
(and colonial) discourses. Mulhern first defines progress as “the adaptation of man to his
changing environment” (Mulhern, 1959, p. 10), and then distinguishes between three “clearly
differentiated types of society—primitive, Oriental, and Western” (ibid.). He argues that the
main difference between primitive and Oriental cultures is in the greater flexibility of
Oriental cultures, their greater mastery over the physical environment and their higher level
of overall progress:
Primitive peoples, living in a natural environment whose operations they did
not understand, and in an imaginary environment which they themselves
created, and fearful of these real and imaginary enemies, opposed all material
and spiritual changes . . . But, into primitive life and society change came,
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usually, it seems, after a long period of fixity . . . Thus, driven upward [italics
added] probably in the main by a changing environment, men found,
eventually, a new mode of social life, new certainties and new security in the
larger social unities of Oriental nations . . . Whenever or however the change
to the Oriental social level first occurred, the dawn of history finds that man
has definitely passed far beyond [italics added] his primitive social
beginnings. (Mulhern, 1959, pp. 3–16)
Naturally, educational practices were also different among primitive and Oriental
peoples. The main difference is seen to be whether education was conscious in its aim or not:
. . . As in primitive, so again in Oriental times the folkways were passed on
from generation to generation by education in one form or another, but on this
latter level the process, in its formal aspects at least, was unlike that of the
primitives, a clearly conscious one, directed generally by a privileged priestly
class, which was the strong right arm of a political despot who was regarded
and worshiped as a god. (Mulher, 1959, p. 15)
Still, both primitive and Oriental cultures are seen as inferior to the western
civilisation that emerged later. For writers like Mulhern, the main achievement of western
civilisation is that it had discovered the values of individual liberty, individual intelligence,
and individual initiative on which the foundations of modern democracies have been
established (Mulhern, 1959, p. 15). Reflecting another dominant theme in the west, Mulhern
argues that both primitive and Oriental societies are deficient in this respect. While among
primitive peoples there is only an occasional individual—usually an extraordinary warrior—
who enjoyed a measure of personal liberty, in Oriental societies liberty became the privilege
of a small fraction of the population. The small fraction was usually a political and religious
aristocracy—but even among them, “the minds even of the priests of the ancient Orient were
uncritical and submissive” (Mulhern, 1959, p. 20). Education is seen as crucial in continuing
modernity and ‘modern democracies’, which will continue only so long as they:
. . . continue to provide an education which will develop in their citizens a
critical, forward looking, vigilant attitude. “Eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty”, and in thoughtful, intelligent planning for the future lies the promise
of a better world tomorrow [italics added]. (Mulhern, 1959, p. 20)
As I have previously argued, it was the particular western understanding of time,
progress and development that influenced colonial educational discourses and policies. As
can be seen in many of the passages quoted above, the futures discourse was used in a
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particular way, usually to chronologically ‘theorise’ non-western cultures as uneducated, and

non-western educational practices as somehow deficient. What is implied is, therefore, that
non-western cultures are in a serious need of real (western, modernist) ‘education’. Some
parts of these discourses remain extant in our so-called post–colonial world. For example, a
hundred years after Graves and Laurie so eloquently expressed the mainstream western views
on indigenous cultures at that time, western chronology and the reading of history still
dominate. For example, in an otherwise decent as well as thorough account of educational
history by Encyclopaedia Britannica currently available on-line, the distinction between
education within primitive and civilised cultures is still drawn. Brian Simon’s The State and
Educational Change: Essays in the History of Education and Pedagogy, published in 1994,
also includes only western educational history. In fact, although using a generalised title,
Simon’s book is almost entirely concerned with English and British educational history. This
is not an accident, but a product of the worldview that equates western with universal. The
worldview creates the system of knowledge which then defines what is to be included and
not included in scholarship. The non-west is not included as it is has nothing to offer.
Another recent example of Eurocentrism is Amelie Oksenberg Rorty’s (1998)
Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives. This account continues the traditional
Eurocentric approach by beginning with Socrates’ and Plato’s ideas on education and
finishing with an article on “Civic education in the liberal state”. Out of thirty-three chapters,
only two deal with education that exists on the margins of the western paradigms (Shi’ite’s
education in Qom and traditional Yeshiva’s education in Israel). In addition to the culturally
inappropriate spelling of Qu’ran (as Koran) in her introductory essay, Rorty locates Islamic
and Jewish educational practices at the very end. Their inclusion is contingent on their
specialisation and location as the Other. In another article, Rorty clearly describes education
of Shi’ite Mullahs and traditional Yeshiva’s education of interpreters of the Torah and the
Talmud as arising from “other [italics added] philosophic traditions” (Rorty, 1998). But the
choice of articles that describe educational discourses based on these “other philosophic
traditions” is rather odd. While the majority of articles in Philosophers on Education assign a
space for individual western philosophers, the articles that deal with Islamic and Jewish
education describe specific educational practices that occur in one place (Qom) or within a
system (Yeshiva’s education). There is no explanation for these particular choices and one
can easily remain puzzled about where and what exactly Qom and Yeshiva are—as these
categories are neither contextualised nor explained. Rorty’s account is, however, in line with
previous works on a similar subject by other authors, albeit she includes two articles that
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describe education of the Other. Adolph Meyer’s selection in his Grandmasters of

Educational Thought (1975) also begins with Socrates and Plato (and finishes with Dewey).
Surprisingly, Meyer’s account also ignores Maria Montessori, the only women for whom the
space in historical reviews on educational ideas and theories is usually reserved. Another
example of western bias is Yves Bertrand’s recent overview of Contemporary Theories and
Practices in Education (1995). For example, Bertrand acknowledges that one particular
approach in education—‘spiritualistic theories’, and spiritualistic visions of the world—stems
from both western (Platonism and Neo-Platonism) as well as non-western (Hinduism,
Taoism, Zen) philosophies. But, within this tradition, he chooses to discuss the work of
Abraham Maslow, Willis Harman, George Leonard and Constantin Fotinas; Bertrand
acknowledges that these authors were variously influenced by particular non-western
philosophies but does not actually discuss any of the non-western authors within this
tradition.
Since my thesis is concerned with broadening the educational ‘canon’, I discuss in
detail the work of numerous non-western authors that are located within this theoretical and
philosophical approach. This is done in Chapter Five, in a section on spiritual education.
Lastly, even those that attempt to destabilise many of the ‘givens’ in educational histories
sometimes remain locked within particular (western, hegemonic, linear) understandings of
time. For example, Patti Lather’s (1991a, 1991b) work is done in a context of
feminist/postmodern theorising that attempts to destabilise previous modernist meta-
narratives, including those about ‘progressive’ pedagogies of both the Left and the Right.
What remains unquestioned is the linear time frame by which Lather divides history into
‘pre-modern’, ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. Pre-modern is, according to Lather (1991b, pp.
32–33), based on the “feudal economy”, with the view of history “static, divinely ordered”.
Modern, on the other hand, exists within the “Industrial Age”, with a view of history that is
“linear, progressive change–teleological”. The inevitable trajectory is thus “ignorance –
enlightenment – emancipation”; this being based on doctrine of eventual secular salvation via
human rationality, especially science (Lather, ibid., p. 32). The postmodern era is based on
the “Information Age”, the age of nuclear power and micro-electronic global capitalism. This
view of history is “non-linear, cyclical, indeterminate, discontinuous, contingent” (ibid., p.
33). The postmodern focus is on “the present as history, the past as a fiction of the present”
(ibid.). It is, however, not clear, given the linearity of the pre-modern, modern and
postmodern stages, how Lather’s “charting postmodernism” is anything but linear, modern?
Lather is, of course, aware of this, but she lacks any other tools (such as an understanding of
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the various civilisational approaches to time) to disturb this “teleological linearity” (ibid., p.
34).
There are, however, two more recent and important attempt to include non-western
educational traditions when discussing educational history. One is Timothy Reagan’s Non-
Western Educational Traditions: Alternative Approaches to Educational Thought and
Practice, published in 1996. The other is Globalization and Educational Rights: An
Intercivilizational Analysis by Joel Spring, published in 2001. These two books break with
the tradition of ‘comparative education’ in that they take broader units of analysis. While
most comparative education overviews do so in the context of particular nation states, both
Reagan and Spring discuss various non-western traditions within civilisation frameworks. In
addition, they both (to a greater or lesser degree) incorporate insights from feminist theory.
Most importantly, both texts imply that non-western traditions are ‘still alive’ and relevant
for educational futures. That is, instead of relocating non-western traditions in the ‘reservoir
of backward’ (pre-historic, pre-modern, ‘early’, ‘simple’, etc.) practices, they locate them as
part of a global human heritage. Reagan’s and Spring’s work may be telling of an important
analytic shift that is beginning to occur in our globalised world. I would argue that this
analytic shift needs to go beyond the modernist nation–state and incorporate, a perhaps less
detailed, but still the more meaningful, civilisational approach. Such a shift could be an
important first step in ‘renegotiating’ past, present and future realities, that is, in negotiating
both the history and futures of education and current educational policies and practices. It is,
perhaps, this ‘civilisational approach’ that can act as a bridge between ‘large–scale’
generalist theorising on educational history, and ‘small–scale’ narratives that focus on highly
localised educational practices. As discussed by Fraser (1995, p. 62) in Chapter One (section
1.2.), this balance is needed to prevent both the formation of quasi meta-narratives that
universalise the particular, and potential distorting tendencies of small–scale narratives such
as emphasis on ‘the representative/factual’ at the expense of the ‘meaningful’. Of course,
such an analysis needs to be done in a context where western history is not a default
measurement of ‘progress’ and other historical classifications. I discuss this in more detail in
Chapter Five, while analysing approaches that provide alternative interpretations of time,
history and the future.
To sum up the preceding discussion, 20th century educational histories define
educational practices in line with the general organisation of history as a linear progression
from primitive, savage states toward more the civilised and modern. This particular project
excludes both non-western peoples and women as having any import in the past and any say
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on the future. Postmodern, feminist and postcolonial theorists have challenged this exclusion.
The result of their critique has not been, however, the writing of more balanced grand
narratives, but an abandonment of macrohistorical writing altogether. Educational histories
are now usually highly localised. They exist within a particular, usually short, time frame and
narrow geographical space. At the same time, educational histories that still attempt to
incorporate broader historical periods are currently very rare. When written, they are still
produced within paradigms hardly touched by feminist and post–colonial deconstruction.
However, rewriting of general educational histories is crucial if we are to both recover
futures lost by exclusion and create new, balanced, peaceful, sustainable futures. Recovering
the past does not mean lamenting those parts of tradition that were also damaging to non-
dominant social groups, rather it means using the past as a resource to create new futures.
Until these general educational histories are rewritten, transforming the current curriculum
will be nearly impossible since the exclusionary western template will remain defining. The
litany—the day to day curriculum practices of education—will remain unchanged.
One question that remains, assuming a paradigm shift does occur, is what to do with
these histories. If not rewritten, at least they have to be ‘removed’, argues Heather Moorcroft
(1997, p. 74). In the light of “the wealth of excellent material now available”—on
partnership, peace, multicultural and environmental education—that libraries can acquire,
perhaps some of the older materials should “have no place in public and school libraries”
(ibid.). Academic libraries, on the other hand, need to keep a record of the past, because by
“weeding out such materials, we would be wiping the slate clean in a way that would be
historically deceptive” (ibid.). But, Moorcroft (ibid.) also suggests that alternative strategies
may be used to deal constructively with this “offensive material”. For example, these texts
could be reclassified under ‘colonial writing’ or warning stickers could be placed on some
material, depending on what local indigenous (and other ethnic) communities would find
appropriate (ibid.). One problem with this approach, however, is that almost the entire library
stock could then be located in the ‘western, colonial, patriarchal’ section and librarians would
never tire of placing warning stickers! Rewriting of broad educational histories to better
reflect our present theoretical and social movement would then, perhaps, be something that
could be more easily done.
3.3 Civilisational Approaches to Time
The following sections investigate connections between the civilisational approach to

time and the future, and particular educational practices of the past. That is, I re-construct
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educational histories by asking how different ideas about time and the future inform
particular historical educational discourses. The first understanding of time that I discuss
represents an understanding of time as part of an all-encompassing and eternal present. This
understanding is based on alternative indigenous histories. I particularly focus on the
understanding of time that exists within the traditional Aboriginal4 worldview. The second
exemplar is an understanding of time as cyclical. Such an understanding of time has been
present in both western and non-western societies. However, I particularly focus on a cyclical
understanding of time that exists within the traditional Indian episteme. And thirdly, I discuss
more the recent linear understanding of time and its impact on educational ideas and
practices. I argue that this particular understanding of time has become hegemonic. As I
discussed earlier, it was this hegemonic understanding of time that informed and still informs
generalised educational histories. But, in the next section I suggest that the linear
understanding of time that informs current mainstream discourses on education does not
necessarily describe ‘objective’ reality, as is assumed. Rather, it is a cultural and social
phenomenon, created within a particular civilisational framework. As such it creates
discursive spaces for the creation of some educational futures and not others. Creating other
models of educational futures requires that the linear framework be contested. This issue I
further discuss in Chapters Four and Five.
The previous division of three various approaches to time does not mean that the
linear concept of time is exclusively western, cyclical inclusively eastern and eternal time
exclusively indigenous. Temporal structures should not be essentialised. Barbara Adam
(1995, p. 29), in particular, warns about social construction of ‘other’ time, based on a
division between ‘them’ and ‘us’. The recognition that the experience of time is integral to
human existence, but that the way we perceive and conceptualize that experience varies with
cultures and historical periods, underpins all studies of ‘other’ time (ibid.). These,
anthropological, historical or sociological studies recognise that “the meanings and values
attributed to time are fundamentally context–dependent” (ibid.). But they also “dichotomize
societies into traditional and modern ones in which the time perception of the former is
constructed through its opposition to the dominant image of ‘our Western time’” (ibid.).
‘Other time’ thus becomes the “frozen present of anthropological discourse” (ibid., p. 30).
4
Hereafter, the word ‘Aboriginal’ refers to Australian Aboriginal people or individuals. Similarly,
where the word ‘Indigenous’ appears, it is also used to refer to a specific indigenous person, people or custom.
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The main problems with this are that ‘alien’ time is “commonly explicated in terms of what it
is not, and that the existing dualistic models of ‘own’ and ‘other time’ are fundamentally
flawed” (ibid., p. 30). But any analysis of ‘other time’, concludes Adam (ibid., p. 31) is also a
“simultaneous commentary on ‘our time’”. Thus, what is important to mention here is that
each of the three civilisations that I analyse understands, or has understood at some point,
that all three ‘times’ are inherently interwoven together. The concept of time can only be
derived from the concept of change, composed observationally and relationally (Prasad,
1992; Lippincott, 1999). Experiences of linear and cyclical movements, as well as feelings of
eternity, are all universal human experiences. Most importantly, this division does not imply
in any way that ‘cyclical’ and ‘eternal time’ are only to be found in previous historical
periods. As I will argue in Chapter Five, many alternatives, in fact, base their current
educational visions on these ‘traditions’ rather than on linear ones. In that sense, both cyclical
and eternal time can still be found, or, alternatively, can still be ‘reinvented’ or
‘reconstructed’ to suit our present issues and dilemmas. Time is thus a resource—not an
independent variable—to be used to create other futures. Some of the alternatives do exactly
that: use different approaches to time to argue for a new (even a meta) narrative about the
future. This is discussed in more detail in Chapters Five and Six.
It is also important to stress here that although various experiences of time are indeed
based upon universal human experiences, the way in which time is experienced is also
“profoundly influenced by theories or beliefs about the nature of the world” (Morphy, 1999,
p. 265). It is both this experience of time as well as a particular ontology, that have always
influenced education in a particular way. Though rarely explicit, ‘teaching time’ has always
been part of a ‘hidden’ curriculum. Both current educational practices as well as all
educational visions for the future significantly incorporate this hidden curriculum.
Investigation of these culturally specific curricula is important in disturbing alleged
objectivity of a particular understanding of time, as well as future. The discussion that
follows is predominately about investigating this ‘hidden curriculum’ in the context of
various historical educational traditions. The main questions are: What is the connection
between a particular, civilisational understanding of time and then educational practices? Is
this connection universally applicable to all members of societies under inquiry? How are
these broad civilisational approaches to time related to the education of girls and women?
And, most importantly, is it possible to provide alternative readings of educational histories
which would take into account different, non-linear, views of time?
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3.4 Dreamtime and the Eternal Now: An Alternative History of Indigenous

Education
Passage of time, and history as a passage from “a subjective state to an objective expression”,
movement between external reality where time is “absorbed in the circles of birth, growth, decline,
and renewal of the living creatures” and the Dreaming, which represents the eternal aspect of time
(Lawlor, 1991, pp. 41, 241). Image from http://www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html
While the linear meta-narrative of educational history described indigenous peoples

as barbaric and primitive, certainly this was not how the indigenous peoples imagined
themselves. But their imagination was silenced—no civilisational conversation occurred, the
meta-narrative did now allow for it—and European views were, quite violently, imposed
onto these ‘barbaric others’. The views of indigenous people were thus almost completely
absent from the official, written canon. Of course, an occasional anthropologist gave a
favourable picture of indigenous societies. But, in the tradition of Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’,
more often than not these favourable pictures tended to essentialise and romanticise the
Aboriginal people and their way of living.
The ‘discovery’ of alternative indigenous histories is quite recent, and connected with
a paradigmatic shift, or, a ‘postcolonial turn’. Partly, this discovery is about writing a more
‘accurate’ description of those pre-colonisation times, as seen from the perspective of
contemporary indigenous peoples. And partly, this discovery, or ‘recovery’, is about making
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choices in terms of whose/which/what kind of history is to inform present choices and

decisions of the future. That is, this, alternative, history is often described in terms of what is
lost, and could possible be regained, and in terms of what should be remembered, and never
repeated.
As a non-indigenous person, I am wary of writing yet another ‘history of savages’. I
discuss this issue—the ethics behind any study of anything ‘indigenous’ by non-indigenous
people—in detail in Chapter Five, where Exemplar Two deals with the recovery of
indigenous traditions in education as part of imagining/creating alternative futures. What will
suffice to say here is that I am not attempting to discover a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ history of
indigenous peoples. What I investigate is the connection between views of time and
educational practice, fully aware that they too are part of a particular discourse and a
particular ‘regime and politics of truth’. As Patricia Weibust argues tradition can come in
three very different forms. (Weibust, 1989). It can come in the form of ‘the historical
tradition’ (what really took place), ‘the defined tradition’ (what members of the particular
culture believe really took place), and ‘the contemporary tradition’ (the way tradition is
manifested today) (ibid.). Of course, while this distinction is a useful heuristic and analytic
tool, in practice, e.g., when examining a text, this distinction is, more often than not,
extremely difficult to make (Reagan, 1996, p. 7). But the distinction between ‘historical’,
‘defined’ and ‘contemporary’ tradition, remains significant as it reminds us that “traditions
are in fact processes that continually change, develop, and evolve” (ibid.). The most recent
‘regime of truth’ on ‘traditional indigenous education’ is of course, totally different from the
previous mainstream cannon and is part of on-going negotiation between indigenous and
non-indigenous peoples about ‘the truth’. Alternative educational histories have only become
possible after indigenous peoples were finally allowed to ‘speak for themselves’. As this is
quite recent, texts written by indigenous peoples about their true history often use materials
(texts and visual images) that were collected by (sometimes sympathetic, more often not)
westerners. What is different in these alternative histories is not always the described
‘traditional’ reality, but rather the interpretation and meaning given to that reality. In that
sense the work of certain contemporary anthropologists (e.g. Lawlor, 1991 and Voigt &
Drury, 1997) corresponds with contemporary accounts by indigenous people of ‘traditional’
indigenous societies and ‘traditional’ indigenous education (e.g. Valadian, 1991; Bayles,
1989; Ilyatjari, 1991). Both versions are part of the same paradigm shift within the field of
history. This shift is, of course, about rewriting history, about writing an alternative story to
the western and linear. The new story does not contest that the traditional education of
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indigenous peoples was quite different from education brought by European colonisers. What
is contested is that this education was somehow inferior, primitive and undeveloped. For
example, the western narrative that argues that the Aboriginal way of life was ‘stagnant’,
‘non-progressive’ and ‘simple’ is replaced with the new narrative that asserts that traditional
indigenous societies, in fact, incorporated different approaches to change. That is, change
was not seen as linear movement from the past towards the future through the present, but
rather as integrating “past and present, qualities and quantities, objects and process, visible
and invisible, sequential and simultaneous” (Lawlor, 1991, p. 321). One interesting example
of this traditional Aboriginal approach to change is provided by a western anthropologist who
performed a series of logic and intelligence tests in the early 1950s (ibid., p. 320). In the
tests, the anthropologist put three matches on the left and two matches on the right, trying to
discover whether “Aborigines were capable of consistently visualizing and identifying the
abstract concept of groups” (ibid., pp. 320–321):
The Aborigine responded, “In this place there are three matches and over here
there are two matches.” This answer was encouraging to the anthropologist,
despite the fact that the Aboriginal subject failed to describe these things as
purely abstract, quantitative groups. Next he moved one match from the group
of three, placed it in the group of two, and again asked the Aborigine what he
saw in this arrangement. A response consistent with western logic would be,
“Now there is a group of two and then a group of three.” The Aborigine’s
response was, “I see two groups of three matches and two groups of two
matches, and one ‘three–making’ match” (ibid.)
It is our (western) logical habits that cause us to fall into a static, uniform, quantitative
interpretation and make us fail to see qualitative process–related differences, such as
identifying one ‘three–making match’ as different from those that are stationary, argues
Lawlor (1991, p. 321). Brock (1989, p. xix) also argues that there is now “much evidence to
indicate that Aboriginal society was never static, but was always adapting and changing”. An
argument can be made that, in fact, it is non-indigenous societies that resist change. For
example, it is in so-called ‘early civilisation’ that we find the first attempts to immortalise
those that die—through written records, mummification, creation of tombstones, and
architectural testimonies to great people that have once lived (Lawlor, 1991). And it is now
among most ‘developed’ western societies that frozen bodies and cells of the deceased await
to be reawakened in the future, once scientists discover treatments for the diseases to which
they succumbed. On the other hand, the traditional Aboriginal worldview not only explicitly
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forbade the use of names of those that died, it even required the change of the name of an
animal if its name was in some way connected to the name of deceased (ibid.). Life seems to
have been lived in full view of change. But it also seems that this view was about acceptance
of the organic unfolding of change as the way of nature, rather than trying to control, and
even arrest, this organic development. Thus defining the traditional as static—their society,
educational practices—may not be warranted.
In addition, the mainstream narrative still suggests that education among indigenous
peoples has remained organised along the lines of the Socialisation or Enculturation model,5
because their societies somehow ‘failed’ to progress and develop. A different narrative is
again here provided by Lawlor:
There appears to be no explanation for why these cereal gatherers did not
become cereal cultivators other than deliberate choice [italics added] . The
choice was dictated by the plan of life laid down by the Ancestors . . . Any
custom, ritual, social behavior, or form of technology that was not mentioned
in the Dreamtime stories was not included in the Aboriginal way of life . . .
This culture also refused to adopt clothing, even though they had an
abundance of skins and used refined weaving techniques. They refused
architecture, even though they made complex structures for ritual purposes.
They refused writing, even though they were accomplished artists and makers
of signs, with an exquisite capacity for abstraction and symbolic
representation. The Aborigines chose to transmit information from generation
to generation through example and through shared experience in stories, art,
songs, and ceremonies, again in conformity with the ancient Law. (Lawlor,
1991, p. 61)
Another commonly held view is that indigenous societies are ‘simple’ while
civilisations are ‘complex’. This complexity is said to increase historically, especially with
western civilisation and modern societies. It is assumed that “there was a ‘point in time’
which was ‘prehistoric’” (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p. 55). It is also assumed that the point at
5
The basic lines within this narrative are that first, the entire environment and all activities are viewed
as school and classes. Second, that most adults act and are seen as teachers—teachers are therefore recruited
from the immediate community. Third, that there is no separation of education as a special subsystem within a
society; that education is organic, conducted in an informal atmosphere as people go about their daily activities.
And fourth, children learn mostly by example, observation, imitation, and doing— learning is therefore
experiential and participatory.
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which society moves from prehistoric to historic also represents the point at which tradition
breaks with modernism (ibid.). This implies that traditional indigenous knowledge
completely ceased when it came into contact with ‘modern’ western society (ibid.). This is
foundationally problematic from the perspective of contemporary indigenous peoples who
base their physical and cultural survival on the idea of (physical and cultural) continuity with
‘traditional’ indigenous society. As discussed previously, early 20th century western historical
narratives on the education of indigenous peoples suggest that their education was “non-
progressive . . . unconscious of its own aim and cannot be said to possess any genuine ideals,
political, social, or moral” (Graves, 1909, p. 13). The current mainstream narrative still paints
a deterministic picture of what happens to education once societies become more ‘complex’
and ‘developed’:
As societies grow more complex, however, the quantity of knowledge to be
passed on from one generation to the next becomes more than any one person
can know; and hence there must [italics added] evolve more selective and
efficient means of cultural transmission. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2001)
This view of indigenous societies as ‘simple’ and modern societies as ‘complex’ is
challenged by the incredible complexity of the Aboriginal kinship system, languages and
mode of perception (as the ‘three–making match’ example demonstrates). Both ‘complexity’
and ‘simplicity’ can be found in all societies. One society might define something as ‘simple’
not because of its own complexity and sophistication but rather the lack of it. Of course, it
was predominately through its power to define that the west managed to enforced its own
understanding of time, change, continuity, simplicity and complexity onto others.
As I have already mentioned, it is extremely doubtful that Aboriginal peoples prior to
colonisation would themselves believe that their educational practices were either ‘primitive’
or ‘underdeveloped’. This is because the traditional Aboriginal approach to time and the
future does not allow for a distinction between primitive and civilised, ‘undeveloped’ and
‘developed’. According to numerous sources (e.g. Lawlor, 1991; Voigt & Drury, 1997;
Judge, 1993; Wildman, 1997; Morphy, 1999), the traditional Aboriginal worldview did not
separate the category of the future from the eternal now. It is in this eternal now, the
Dreamtime, that “all stages, phases, and cycles were present at once” (Lawlor, 1991, p. 15).
According to Voigt & Drury (1997, p. 27) “the Dreamtime encompasses past reality and
future possibilities in an eternally sacred present”:
Thus all of Creation and all Time are contained in a diverse multiplicity of one
sacred reality. Irrespective of the particular names ascribed to it, the
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Dreamtime holds the idea that all aspects of life are eternally interconnected in
a vast web of relationship, for all creatures and all things have their origin in
the sacred events of the Creation. (Voigt & Drury, 1997, p. 27)
The word Dreamtime was first used in print in 1896 by anthropologists Spencer and
Filler (Morphy, 1999). Dreamtime broadly corresponds to a word or set of words that exist in
many Aboriginal languages such as the Yolngu wangarr, the Warlpiri tjukurrpa and the
Arrente (Aranda) altyerrenge (Morphy, 1999). While this English translation was accepted
by many Aboriginal people early on, some felt that “the connotation of ‘dream’ is
inappropriate: [Yolngu] wangarr is not a dream, but a reality” (Morphy, 1999, p. 265). So the
words ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Dreamtime’ should not be understood in their ordinary English sense
but rather as time existing independently of the linear time of everyday life and the temporal
sequence of historical events (ibid.). In that sense, Dreaming is as much a dimension of
reality as a period of time gaining temporality, because it was “there in the beginning,
underlies the present and is a determinant of the future” (ibid.). From the viewpoint of the
present, this concept is unique, as it is as much a feature of the future as it is of the past. It is
different from the western linear concept of time as the passage of time and history are not
imagined as a movement from the past towards the future, but rather as a passage from “a
subjective state to an objective expression” (Lawlor, 1991, p. 41). It is a movement between
external reality where time is “absorbed in the circles of birth, growth, decline, and renewal
of the living creatures” and the Dreaming, which represents the eternal aspect of time (ibid.,
p. 241). It is also unique because it has “as much to do with space as with time”, referring to
origins and powers that are located in places and things (Morphy, 1999, p. 266). That is, both
the external reality (the sphere of living and dying) and the eternal Dreaming (the sphere of
the Unborn and Death) are materialised in the actuality of space. Space thus becomes the
source of knowledge and identities. The stories focus on place descriptions and spatial
directions, rather than “time designations such as when, before, or after” (Lawlor, 1991, p.
239). Thus the movement of traditional indigenous communities was predominately through
space, which also incorporated within it particular understanding of time. This theme of land
seen as “the core of . . . cultures and the origin of identities” (Goduka, 2001, para. 2) is a
common theme across various indigenous traditions. It is not through the passage of time that
previous, present and future generations are connected, but through land and space. As
argued by Goduka (2001):
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She [the land] connects with the past (as the home of our ancestors), with the
present (as nourisher of material and spiritual needs), and with the future (as
the legacy they hold in trust for their children and grandchildren). (para. 2)
Part of western, Christian mythology is that humans have left the perfect place, fallen
from grace, and so on. All of eschatology, messianism, millennialism and classic utopianism
reflects the desire to go back to, or reinvent, the original, perfect place. In Aboriginal
cosmology, land was created perfect by the ancestral beings and it is the role of those that are
currently living to keep the world in its original perfection (Lawlor, 1991, p. 87). Therefore,
there is no need to project perfected futures ‘out there’, either as Utopia, Eupsychia or as the
return to the Golden Age, which existed prior to the Fall. The west ‘discovered’ linear time
as primary temporal organisational principle, and, as I discuss later, western education in
many ways reflects this discovery. But education practices remain radically different if time
is not projected to be ‘out there’ but is ‘here’, not located in some direction ‘forwards’ but
part of the “encompassing dream which is [simultaneously] past, present and future”
(Wildman, 1997, p. 16).
Consistent with the cosmology of traditional Aboriginal society was its educational
system. The main role of education is to transfer knowledge to help maintain life and the
environment in its original condition (Lawlor, 1991; Holm, in Parrish, 1991). The elaborate
and complex initiation ceremonies are designed to help individuals to cope with life
changes—movement of time within external reality—as well as to prepare them for eternal
Dreaming. Traditional wisdom is embodied by the Elders, transmitted orally and understood
through spiritual experience. According to Holm, in the traditional Aboriginal
educational/cultural system, “. . . learning is conceived as natural . . . as spontaneous.
Education is regarded as a natural transformation. Cultural mediation is not required to
transform nature. Nature transforms itself. Teachers and schools for example are unnecessary
. . . “ (Holm, quoted in Parrish, 1991, p. 17).
Since it was “ancestral human and animal beings [that] had moulded the landscapes
and their populations” (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 1993, pp. 6–7), holistic
approaches to teaching and learning cannot exclude “the vital link between the Land,
Language and Culture” (Grant, 1997, p. 56). As among all known indigenous peoples
existence is seen as “a living blend of spirit, nature/land, and people” (Goduka, 2001, para.
1), indigenous education draws on the spirit world (intuitive knowledge, myths, divination,
prophecy), nature/land (eco-knowledge) and people (oral transmission of knowledge).
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Among Aboriginal people, education is aimed at both external and internal states of
mind: initiation processes included development of awareness of Dreamtime through sleep
and an hypnotic state—“to the point of being able to act consciously in the dream world and
to bring symbolic messages received while asleep into the awakened world” (Lawlor, 1991,
p. 50). Each child was increasingly and continuously introduced to the spiritual mysteries of
the Dreaming (ibid., p. 171). Because the social and natural environments were created
together in the Dreamtime, children became familiar with the two together (ibid., p. 168).
The Aboriginal way of life provided “more time for the artistic and spiritual development of
the entire society” (ibid., p. 165), rather than time for the colonisation of nature, time and
peoples or the development of technologies. As mastery of the eternal soul was not separated
from the temporal body and sexuality not separated from spirituality, observation of adult
sexuality was also part of the educational ‘curricula’. Aboriginal society was “child–
centered” in the sense that children were not excluded from most adult activities. In addition,
the children were provided with the attention they required, as the care of children, included
breastfeeding, was shared among many members of the social group they lived in:
Children are never allowed to cry for any length of time; the parents and the
entire clan see that their discomforts are quickly soothed or alleviated. Small
children are breast-fed on demand . . . No other people seem to be as lenient or
indulgent toward children as the Australian Aborigines, and many
anthropologists have declared it to be the most child–centered society they
have ever observed. As soon as a newborn infant returns to the camp with its
mother, he or she becomes the unchallenged center of attention. (Lawlor,
1991, p. 165)
Similarly, in the same way that all time exists in the present moment at once, all
life—the Spirit Ancestors, the Earth, the Cosmos and all species—are “aspects of an
inherited divine order and are thus sacramental” (Voigt, 1997, p. 26):
There is no ‘thing’ in Aboriginal consciousness that is ‘nothing’. There is no
aspect, no creature—be it a dung beetle, a poisonous snake or a human
being—that does not have its place and its role to play in the ordained sacred
pattern of Creation. There are no gods, no religious hierarchies, no segregation
of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ [in a Christian sense], no unsavoury bits, and no
separation between the physical and the spiritual or nature, humanity and
culture. All came into being at the one time, and all of these dimensions are
reflections of each other.
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Because everything is foundationally interconnected, one of the main focuses in

Aboriginal education is on how to build relationships—between nature/land, world of spirits
and people—and how to maintain balance: “The goal of Aboriginal education is the
extending, relating, and expanding of being, forming a kinship with the entire world, and
maintaining that kinship through the ritual enforcement of the universal law of reciprocity”
(Lawlor, 1991, p. 154).
Earlier western judgments of Aboriginal women’s position in the traditional society
range from views that Aboriginal women were men’s slaves to views that “insist on
superiority of women and ‘play down’ the prestige of men” (Brock, 1989, pp. xvi &14). Both
are biased, argues Catherine Berndt (in Brock, 1989, p. 14). Rather, it was the
interdependence between men and women that was a salient feature of traditional Aboriginal
life. That is, while there was a clear separation between genders, both men’s and women’s
‘secret business’ was equally valued within society. Women were knowledgeable and
women’s knowledge/perspective was considered as relevant in the education of young girls
and boys as was that of men. Women’s knowledge encompassed both practical and spiritual
aspects of education. Women were knowledgeable in both external reality—the cyclical
movement of time between life stages—and in the eternal aspect of time—the Dreaming.
Aboriginal women also had an important role in maintaining this balance and
emphasised “their role as nurturers of people, land and relationships” (Bell, 1993, p. 21).
They “played a significant role in traditional culture, possessing a body of knowledge
separate from, and complementary to, that of the men” (Ellis and Barwick, 1989, p. 38). This
position is shared by Jen Gibson (1989) in her description of the roles of Aboriginal women
and men in the Oodnadatta region of South Australia. While Gibson’s description was based
on research conducted in the 1980s, it is indicative of women’s roles as custodians and
teachers of traditional knowledge and ways of life:
Women in the Oodnadatta community today have significant and
complementary roles to those of men. These are expressed through: their
reaffirmation of links with traditional sites by visits whenever possible; their
independent knowledge of cultural matters from a female point of view, which
is however fast deteriorating; their important role in networks of kinship and
the care of children; their moral custodianship of traditionally ‘right’ ways of
behaviour, their continuing knowledge of some bush foods and how to find
and prepare them; and their strength and balance in the difficult and often
conflicting situations which life today brings. (Gibson, 1989, p. 73)
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Because the Aboriginal worldview was firmly based on seeing everything as

interconnected, interrelational and based on co-operation and co-existence, as argued
previously, the education of girls and boys was not constructed in hierarchical terms. That is,
while the education of boys and girls was different, neither was considered inferior. But from
the worldview of western colonisers, judgments of the position of Aboriginal women in the
traditional society were rarely described in those terms (Brock, 1989).
Another example of western bias in terms of gender relationships in indigenous
societies has become cemented in the English language, as for example, in the expression
‘hunter–gatherer’ societies. By placing the hunter first, a more active and important role for
men is implied. However, as Lawlor (1991) argues, a more appropriate term is gatherer–
hunter societies:
The natural male–female complementarity forms the basic unit of Aboriginal
society . . . Although men spend long hours hunting, their return is relatively
small compared with women’s. Women’s gathering normally produces
between 80 and 90 percent of the Aboriginal diet, which is 70 to 80 percent
vegetarian . . . The male-centered bias of our culture has ignored this fact—
indigenous people ought to be thought of as gatherer–hunters. (pp. 308–309)
Of course, in many ways some of the previously described educational practices
correspond to the social organisation of gatherer–hunting, non-agrarian, nomadic and tribal
societies. As this has been the common theme, I have here focused more on a particular
epistemology and ontology and its influence on education. As can be seen from previous
discussion, Aboriginal epistemology and ontology is crucially related to their educational
practices. For example, the Aboriginal worldview is firmly based on the understanding that
“the key to survival depends on co-operation and co-existence” (Parrish, 1991, p. 16), rather
than on competition as in, for example, the Darwinian evolutionary narrative. Such an
interactional basis for the Aboriginal worldview ensures “the coherence of people, nature,
land and time” (ibid.). When the individual and the collective “are the contracted and
expanded form of one continuous being” (Lawlor, 1991, p. 242), what is cultivated in
education is a “sense of relatedness” (ibid., p. 171). Education for achievement, individual
success, competition, transformation of nature, or even for the future; simply does not make
much sense and is totally alienated from the traditional Aboriginal view of reality.
To summarise, educational practices among indigenous peoples are connected to a
worldview that conceptualises reality and all existence as interconnected. This
interconnectedness includes a blend, and equal relationship, between spirit, nature/land, and
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people. Education is aimed at conservationism as well as the maintenance of balance between

spiritual, physical and collective aspects of being. As I have previously argued, particular
educational discourses developed among indigenous people not because indigenous societies
somehow failed to develop and progress, but because these discourses better served the needs
of indigenous societies at that time and better corresponded to indigenous worldviews and
ways of knowing. There was no need to separate education from the whole of life nor create
education that was ‘future oriented’ among indigenous peoples. This became the
consequence of different worldviews, different views and approaches to time and the future.
3.5 The Cyclical Future: An Alternative History of ‘Oriental’ Education
Illustration 3.1
Colossal Wheel from the Sun Temple, Orissa, India. Image from Beverly Moon (1991, p. 2). This
‘wheel of salvation’ (Judith, 1993) is also a symbol of the view that life is lived in an endlessly
recurring cycle.
The cyclical understanding of time developed within various cultures and societies,
both those that are recognised as western (e.g., Greece and Rome) and as non-western (e.g.,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Mayan and Chinese civilisation) (Taylor, 2001). Here, I limit my
analysis to approaches to time and education that developed within the Indian episteme. I
choose to focus on the Indian episteme because of its antiquity and wide historical as well as
more recent influence it has had on other cultures—the civilisational and global exchange
that Galtung (1980), Appadurai (1996), Iyer (2000) and other commentators alert us to.
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The Indian episteme is based on a body of knowledge, such as the Vedas, that in its
written forms date back as far as 1,500 to 1,000 BCE and approximately as far as 6,000 BCE
in their oral form (Reagan, 1996, p. 93). The Indian episteme is a product of the blending of
four distinct traditions,:
. . . [t]he religious and spiritual traditions of the original, indigenous people of
the subcontinent, whose stone age culture dates back some half million years. .
. [t]he religious and spiritual traditions of the Indus civilization . . . The
religious and spiritual traditions of the Dravidian culture, and . . . [t]he Vedic
religion, which was brought to the subcontinent by Aryan invaders roughly
between 200 B.C. and 900 B.C.. (ibid.)
Given this diversity, it comes as no surprise that the notion of time as cyclical was not
universally shared by all the philosophical orientations that are part of the Indian episteme.
That is, as argued by Arvind Sharma (1992, p. 203), the “widely, if not universally, held view
that the notion of time in Hinduism is cyclical as opposed to the [linear] notion of time in the
Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam)” is problematic. Sharma (ibid., p. 210)
concludes that the Hindu notion of time is not a “monochrome but a mosaic” and is “too
complex to be described as merely cyclical”. Still, the notion of time as cyclical has been an
important part of that mosaic, and has often constituted the most dominant discourse within
Indian history. However, it is also important to stress here that this notion of time as cyclical
is mostly based on the Hindu theory of Yugas, Manvantaras and Kalpas. In particular, the
literature known as Smrti (e.g., Ramayana, Mahabharata, Manu) contains references to the
theory of the Yugas which are “clear, explicit, direct and unequivocal” (ibid., p. 207). While
ancient Indian education was in large part based on the study of Vedas, which according to
Sharma (ibid., p. 206) have only “slight references” to the cyclical notion of time, I here
maintain that cyclical notions of time have indeed influenced traditional education practices
in India and also throughout Asia. As I have already stated, I have chosen to focus on the
Indian episteme because of both its antiquity and its wide historical influence. For example,
the influence of Indian civilisation in Asia lasted for a period of about 1,500 years, until
approximately the 15th Century. This influence or historical process is sometimes referred to
as “Indianisation” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2001). Indianisation was at its most powerful
in Southeast Asia and was especially visible in Sri Lanka and Central Asia (ibid.). It was
achieved “partly through cultural or trade relations and partly through political influence”
(ibid.). According to Nakosteen (1965) the influence of Indian civilisation did not stop there
but has continued to our present time. Nakosteen argues that Indian science—that developed
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in the context of ancient Indian cultural and practical curriculum and was further enriched by
association with Greek science—especially:
. . . found its way through Persian, Syrian, and Muslim channels into
European schools during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and so remained
part of the heritage of European and American education to the present day.
(p. 40)
The particular educational practices and theory behind these practices that I describe
in connection to the cyclical understanding of time and the future can probably best be
termed as Brahmanic education. Brahmanic education was based on the study of Vedas, holy
texts and scriptures that date back as far as 6,000 BCE (Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 852).
Written down in Sanskrit in the last few millennia, they are the world’s most ancient
scriptures, the earliest work of all Indo-European languages and of humanity
(Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 852; Mookerji, 1960, p. 17).
The Gurukula model is one way of understanding these ancient texts and is
characterised by a spiritual and intimate relationship between the teacher and his students. I
say his students because, within Indian history, official teachers—gurus—were almost
exclusively men. Formal education was almost exclusively the domain of males, and, in
addition, the domain of male members of the Brahmanic elite. In fact, traditional Indian
education—as it evolved with the Aryan invasion—is one example of an extremely rigid
educational system that was used to perpetuate the interests of the higher castes. It is also a
good example of the existence of parallel futures discourses informing education, for
example, a broad civilisational approach to time and the future and its caste based
specialisation. I discuss this in more detail after investigating the connection between a broad
civilisational approach to time and mainstream formal education.
The questions I thus ask in this section are: What are the implications for education if
the universe is not seen as having a beginning and an end, but rather as following the rhythm
of periodic destruction and re-creation? What if time is not seen to flow in a linear fashion
from the past and present towards the future, but as infinitely repeating itself through cycles
of creation, preservation and dissolution? What if human history is not seen as being marked
by linear progress? What if the individual future lies in neither melting into non-existence nor
the choice between heaven and hell but, rather, in continuous re-birth?
While I begin with the classical, the real relevance is in the present and the future,
wherein modern Indian educators use the classical—but transform it—to develop alternatives
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to western modernist and postmodernist models. To understand how they do so, I here
discuss in detail the classical Indian episteme.
According to one version of the Hindu timeline, we are now experiencing the Kali
Yuga, which began at midnight, February 18, 3102 BCE, or in year one according to the
Hindu calendar (Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 705). Kali Yuga is one of four Yugas that
comprise mahayuga, which equals 4,320,000 solar years. Each cosmic cycle—one of the
infinitely recurring periods of the universe—comprises 1 mahayuga and 71 mahayugas
(Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga), our current mahayuga being the
28th (ibid.). Each 1,000 mahayugas constitute a day of Brahma or kalpa (ibid., p. 744). At the
end of each mahayuga, the physical world is destroyed and then recreated, while both the
physical and subtle world are destroyed at the end of each kalpa. After 36,000 of these
dissolutions and creations, there is a “total, universal annihilation, mahaprayala, when all
three worlds, all time, form and space, are withdrawn into Shiva” (ibid., p. 705). This period
of total withdrawal enables a new universe or life span of Brahma to begin. The entire cycle
repeats infinitely (ibid., p. 706).
Given the huge length of historical stages which occur with certainty and are beyond
human reach, one of the main goals of education becomes to prepare “for the life to come
and absorption into the Infinite” (Graves, 1909, p. 83). The individual’s supreme duty is thus
to “achieve his expansion into the Absolute, his self-fulfillment, for he is a potential God, a
spark of the Divine [and] education must aid in this fulfillment” adds Mookerji (1960, p.
xxiii). Learning was sought “as the means of salvation or self-realisation, as the means to the
highest end of life, viz. Mukti or Emancipation” (ibid., p. xxi). It was this mukti, or moksha
(liberation) that would enable one to break the circle of continuous rebirth. This was partly to
be done through education—reading and learning of scriptures. Certainly a far cry from
modernist notions of education as essentially practical training for a globalized marketplace.
Apart from scriptures, other traditional vehicles for human perfection included inner
zeal and the teacher (Cenkner, 1976, p. 200). Education took “full account of the fact that
Life includes Death and the two form the whole truth” (Mookerji, 1960, p. xxii). Since the
physical world is “transitory, characterized by change, renewal, and decay” (Nakosteen,
1965, p. 38), the permanent pattern of reality that underlies this phenomenon of change could
only be realised within “individual psychic and spiritual unfolding” (ibid., p. 25). The notion
that basic truths or realities of life and destiny should be realized within intuitive process and
realisation, forms the basic unity of the Upanishads—Vedic texts that constitute the
theoretical foundations of ancient Indian education, “The identification of the subject with
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the object, of the soul with God, of the atman with Brahman, is the fundamental aim of the
teachings of the Upanishads” (ibid.).
According to Nakosteen, at its highest peak Brahmanistic education was:
. . . primarily a system of personal moral disciplines to enable each individual
to work out his own by steadily reducing and removing earthly entanglements.
It reaches one of its peaks in the moral–educational outlooks of Buddhism, in
which the ultimate aim of man’s [human] endeavors is not only to save
himself from the world but also to be liberated from himself—from illusions
of personality, individuality, and selfhood. (ibid., p. 39)
Ancient Indian education, however, did not neglect the practical and social aspects of
education, but these were defined in the context of individual’s spiritual development:
There is an outer and external life of man as a member of society which
imposes upon it its rules and regulations, conventions and obligations,
ultimately based on morality. But behind this external, social life, there is the
inner life of man as an individual, his spiritual life. (Mookerji, 1960, p. 156)
The paths of liberation are many—through faith, knowledge, asceticism, intuition and
meditation or service to others—and each individual can choose from these many paths the
one for which he is best fitted (Nakosteen, 1965, p. 39). The mode of conduct that is most
conducive to spiritual advancement is the adherence to dharma, the right and righteous path.
(Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 710). The individual is called to adhere to four principal kinds
of dharma. First, the adherence to rita (universal law, the inherent order of the cosmos),
second, to varna dharma (social duties), third to asrama dharma (the duties of life’s stages)
and fourth, to svadharma (personal law or one’s perfect individual pattern through life)
(ibid., p. 710).
In effect, social organisation is then taken care of by a strict division of the populace
within four varnas, or castes: Brahmans (priests, the spiritual caste), Kshatriyas (warriors,
the ruling caste), Vaisyas (merchants, the producer caste) and Sudras (outcasts, the servant
caste). Given this strict division of the populace within four varnas, which can be
transgressed only in the next life through careful adherence to prescribed varna dharma
(social duty), there was little need or space left for the development of utopian discourses.
Social and other inequalities of human life are explained “by the doctrines of karma and
transmigration” (Keay, 1959, p. 11). It is the karma that determines one’s caste and then it is
the caste that provides channels “for the further progress of one’s karma, or what one [is] at
each point of spiritual evolution” (Nakosteen, 1965, p. 28). This seems rather like a ‘nice
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ideological twist’ to perpetuate and legitimate rigid class division. Cross (1994) and Reagan
(1996) argue that this rigid class system had its origins in the culture brought to India by the
Aryan invaders and is not a part of the religion itself. Rather, the caste system is “a social
phenomenon masquerading as religion” (Cross, quoted in Reagan, 1996, p. 99). In any case:
Each individual worked out his spiritual progress within the limits of the caste
into which he was born. Progress through transmigration into a higher caste
was conditional to a faithful adherence to the duties and competences
characterizing the particular position in life in which one found oneself. In this
upward evolution of the soul, each individual carried his past, or karma,
within him, and this past determined the social level within which he should
function after birth. (Nakosteen, 1965, pp. 27–28)
From within this perspective, class differences are therefore not so ‘crucial’ because
by fulfilling dharma or one’s inner destiny and doing good works one can increase one’s
chances for success (Inayatullah, 1997, p. 183), and achieve a more favourable position in the
next life. Which also means that the division between classes, always hierarchical, came to be
religiously sanctioned as well as permanent and binding in nature (Reagan, 1996, p. 98). The
aim of education is here identical to the aim of life—to provide for each individual the
necessary knowledge, arts, skills, and values within his own caste (Nakosteen, 1965, p. 38).
Obviously this would reflect Brahmanic preferences and their own desired presents and
futures. Throughout this thesis I argue that the formation of particular mainstream futures and
educational discourses is always influenced by the domination/knowledge/authority of a
particular social group. In the case of traditional Indian education it is the Brahmans who
have been instrumental in creating the system of education which, one would assume, did not
necessarily reflect the perspectives and worldviews of other castes. It is also doubtful
whether Brahmanic education, that was mostly controlled by men, would reflect the
perspectives and worldviews of women within the same caste. But these accounts are largely
absent from official recorded history.
Parallel to the above described ‘social channels’ for the upward realisation of the
spiritual ideal, “in a systematic course of duties towards his further conscious evolution”
(Nakosteen, 1965, p. 28) the individual was to follow the organisation of life within clearly
defined life stages. Human life proceeds through four main stages: brahmachari (student),
grihastha (householder), vanaprastha (elder advisor) and sannyasa (religious solitaire). Each
person moves through these phases in pursuit of four human goals: dharma (righteousness),
artha (wealth), kama (pleasure) and moksha (liberation). Linear and eternal concepts of time
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coexist parallel to cyclical notions of time and the notion of time tends to vary between and
within these four human goals. Still, the linear conception of time—that is seen as the
ultimate truth within Semitic religions and scientific discourse—is seen within the Indian
episteme as merely a part of one stage, one cycle. Death is but one of those life phases, rich
in spiritual potential, when the soul detaches itself from the physical body and continues on
in the subtle body (Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 708). Linear and cyclical time continue their
dance until moksha, the final human goal, is obtained. Time then becomes eternal. Depending
on the type of liberation obtained, one can find himself/herself either in nirvikalapa samadhi,
a state of oneness beyond all change or diversity, beyond time, form and space, or in
visishtadvaita, a blissful union with God in eternity (Sharma, 1992, p. 211,
Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 772).
The acquisition of objective knowledge and the focus on the external, outer world is
therefore not the chief concern in this system of education. Rather it is to “directly seek the
source of all life and knowledge, which cannot be acquired by piecemeal approach and the
study of objects” (Mookerji, 1960, p. xxiii). Education is a process by which the mind is
guided from external reality towards the deeper layers which are not “ruffled by the ripples of
the surface, the infinite distractions of the material world” (ibid., p. xxv). The knowledge was
to be “in the blood, as an organic part of one’s self” (ibid., p. xxxi). As such it is embedded in
the teacher, who has obtained a higher level of realisation. The close relationship between
teacher and student is crucial because “the pupil is to imbibe the inward method of the
teacher, the secrets of his efficiency, the spirit of his life and work, and these things are too
subtle to be taught” (ibid., p. xxvi).
The importance of realisation rather than acquisition of objective knowledge is visible
in three steps of education mentioned in Upanishads. The first phase was listening to the
words or text given by the teacher. As the study of each Veda required 12 years (there were
four Vedas, those knowledgeable in all would spend 48 years studying them), and the Vedas
were considered to be too holy to be transferred to the written text, the teacher was “the
living and walking library” (Mookerji, 1960, p. xxxi). The fixed form of knowledge was
known as Mantra—which compressed the minimum of words with the maximum of
meaning, “the crowning example” being the letter OM (ibid., p. xxxi). The listening phase
(Sravana) is followed by a process of deliberation and reflection (Manana). But this phase
results only in an intellectual apprehension of the meaning and needs to be supplemented by
one more phase of learning, called Nididhyasana or meditation (ibid.). Intellectual
understanding is a necessary first step but it is not sufficient. Only by the process of
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meditation can one achieve the stage in which there is “a realisation and knowledge of the
doctrine” (Gautama, quoted in Mookerji, 1960, p. xxxii). It is only through the process of
meditation that one can see the reality of Atman (soul) and this reality is to be contrasted and
compared to the reality of the material, objective world. Here numerous excercises (Yoga)
and contemplation techniques (Meditation) are prescribed by the Guru. These are designed to
help reach the realisation of One Reality, One Consciousness, the whole or the Absolute, that
is beyond the change, decay, death and dissolution (Mookerji, 1960).
Image by Sri Viswaranjan Chakravarty, from Swami Vishwashrayananda, (1990, Vivekananda for
Children, Calcutta: Swami Styavratananda, front cover).
While 20th century Indian educators, Aurobindo, Mahrishi Mahesh Yogi, Sathya Sai
Baba, and P. R. Sarkar, modernize the Indian educational system—through a focus on
science, economic development, and gender balance—they keep spirituality as a basis for
their system. The spiritual alternative becomes then one of the key disruptive discourses to
the modern secularized and the postmodern multiplicity approach. It has been picked up in
symbolic and actual forms by the holistic and New Age educational movements. The Indian
system thus becomes a global historical resource for pedagogical transformation—
challenging what is taught, who teaches, the process of teaching, what is true learning—a
source of an alternative desired future. I develop this more fully in Chapter Five.
However, in tradition, the template of verticality—levels of consciousness—was used
in the social world as well, leading to some groups being below and others above. Over time,
women would become located below and the untouchables outside the entire system.
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As I have already mentioned, we could use the case of educational history within
India to follow the invention of patriarchy and its impact on the image of the future being
distinguished according to gender. In the previous example of traditional indigenous
education, certain educational processes were segmented according to gender but still
followed the general dictates of the dominant understanding of time and the image of the
future. In the case of traditional Indian education, general civilisational understanding of time
and the future was not equally applicable to the education of girls and boys. Once individual
futures are limited within the constraints of one’s own class, caste or gender, the broad
civilisational ‘rules’ seems to remain in sole jurisprudence of the elite groups. This is so even
though the official canon argues that these broad civilisational and social rules are
‘universal’. In fact, and in practice, when it comes to marginalised social groups, the broader
canon is replaced with a ‘specialised’ entry. This was true for the classical Indian episteme
and it is true today for globalisation, as I argue in Chapter Four. In the case of women, this
specialised entry concerned their future roles as mothers and wives. This is a common theme
in all deeply patriarchal societies, irrespective of whether the predominant approach to time
was ‘cyclical’ or ‘linear’. Since I discuss here the traditional Indian education, I limit my
analysis to historical education (or the lack of it) of Indian girls and women.
Initially, Indian women were not only regarded as “perfectly eligible for the privilege
of studying the Vedic literature” (Altekar, 1957, p. 207), they were also authors of some of
the Vedic hymns. This followed the pattern of the far more egalitarian pre-Aryan Indian
system (Sarkar, 1987, 1995). Men could not perform Vedic sacrifices unless accompanied by
their wives, which meant that both genders were required to undergo a special initiation
enabling them to perform equally active roles in Vedic procedures (Altekar, 1957, p. 207).
Vedic initiation, Upanayana, was compulsory for both girls and boys, and girls were both
students and teachers. The Yajurveda specifies that a daughter should only be married after
the period of studentship—brahmacharya (Yajurveda, viii, 1. Quoted in Keay, 1959, p. 72).
These early influences are visible in the particular ritual of the Upanayana ceremony,
charactarised by the intimate and spiritual relationship between the teacher and the pupil. The
ceremony is not only predominately spiritual in its meaning it also seems to reflect on
experiences only accessible to women:
By Upanayana, the teacher, ‘holding the pupil within him as in a womb,
impregnates him with his spirit, and delivers him in a new birth’. The pupil is
then known as a Dvija, “born afresh” in a new existence, “twice born”
(Satapatha Brahmana, xi, 5,4). The education that is thus begun is called by
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the significant term Brahmacharya, indicating that it is a mode of life, a

system of practices. (Mookerji, 1960, p. xxvi)
The Upanayana ceremony was originally held for three upper classes and for both
boys and girls. But in the case of girls the Upanayana ceremony later became merely a
formality (Altekar, 1957; Keay, 1959). In the course of time, the situation changed even more
and “the right to study came to be denied to women” (Keay, 1959, p. 73). This setback in
female education was directly related to the “deterioration of the religious status of women”
(Altekar, 1957, p. 215). The most detrimental was the introduction of early marriage of girls
(Altekar, 1957; Keay, 1959). The study of even one Veda became lengthy and could rarely
be finished before about the age of 24; yet the marriage of girls was hardly ever postponed to
this advanced age (Altekar, 1957, p. 217). When early marriage became a custom, women
were prohibited from study because:
. . . dilettante Vedic studies were regarded as not only useless, but also
dangerous; even the slightest mistake in the recitation of the Vedic hymns was
regarded as very disastrous in its consequences. It was therefore probably felt
that since women could not study the Vedic literature in the proper manner, its
study should be prohibited to them in order to avert spiritual disasters to the
family arising out of the mistakes of amateurish Vedic girl students. (Altekar,
1957, pp. 217–218).
Altekar (1957, p. 207) believes that the deterioration of women’s position in Hindu
civilisation is an exception to the general rule, which is, “that the further back we go into
antiquity, the more unsatisfactory is found to be the general position of women”.
More recent feminist scholarship and especially the work of Riane Eisler (1987, 1995,
1997, 2000) argues the opposite. The introduction of the patriarchal system changed more
equitable societies—societies where women’s position in the society was that of authority
and where women’s knowledge and perspectives were respected and included. I discuss this
in more detail in Chapter Five, Exemplar One in a section that deals with feminist approaches
to time and the vision for the future. But it is important to mention here that this feminist
interpretation of history, as movement away (not movement from) a more unsatisfactory
position for women during early history, certainly does seem to reflect more accurately what
happened in ancient India. If Greek civilisation is taken as the point where western
civilisation starts, this also means that western civilisation has, from its very beginning, been
patriarchal. That is, the beginnings of western civilisation could be located within the last
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‘dominator’ cycle (Eisler, 1987) that started some 5,000 years ago, mostly within early states
in the Middle East and Asia (Lee, 2000, p. 1491).
A similar major change seems to have happened in the context of ancient Indian
society. The invention and the spreading of patriarchy here also replaced the previous more
balanced approach to girls’ education with the patriarchal image of girls’ futures. Becoming
wives, mothers and homemakers became a more important ‘future’, and is in contrast with
the generally integrated philosophical views on the nature of self, time and reality. This
process seems to have developed gradually, until approximately 200 CE when the patriarchal
vision of girls education became more cemented in the code of Manu (Altekar, 1957). This
code proclaimed not only that girls’ Upanayana should be performed without the recitation
of Vedic Mantras, but also that “it is really the marriage ritual of girls which corresponds to
the Upanayana ritual of boys” (ibid., p. 216). From then on, a woman’s mukti and moksha is
to be postponed, at least until their eternal soul’s next re-birth within a man’s body.
To sum up, the Indian image of the future, seen as part of a renewable cycle of
creation, preservation and destruction, was influential in creating an educational system that
sought to facilitate the realisation of reality beyond change, perseverance and decay. The
external, objective, material world is perishable; therefore, only when the mind is withdrawn
from the world of matter can “the whole truth of which Life and Death are parts and phases”
(Mookerji, 1960, p. xxii) be achieved. The future, thus, is not forward time, as in the modern
world, but lies in transcending the physical world which constitutes linear time.
As well, within the context of the highly hierarchical Brahmanic society the luxury of
‘liberating’ one’s Atman (soul), of working towards the final human goal of liberation,
moksha, was reserved for ruling elites. It is they who derived the most benefit from the
formal system of education. Other social groups were, on the other hand, either directly or
structurally, excluded. Education, too, became gendered. It is with modern educators (e.g.,
Sarkar, Aurobindo) that the problem of exclusion is resolved without losing the essential
spiritual basis of the Indian episteme. This I discuss in Chapter Five, Exemplar Three, that
focuses on spiritual education.
Thus, education in the classical Indian episteme was: (1) spiritually focused; (2) based
on the direct relationship between master and disciple; (3) initially gender balanced but over
time, as the as the caste system evolved and the Vedic system hardened, women were
excluded from spiritual practices and thus from education; so that (4) in turn, the cyclical and
spiritual view of life was reinforced since the verticality of the caste system had become
hegemonic. Change was only possible in another life or far away in time. As mentioned
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earlier, it is in modern times that that this system has been challenged from outside (by
western modern secularism) and from inside (by spiritual education that is integrated and
gender balanced).
The next section develops linear time and the resultant modern education, as well as
asking questions as to futures beyond the modern. I have juxtaposed in this chapter the
indigenous and the classical Vedic Indian with the western to suggest that they represent
three distinct ways of seeing time, and thus are three potential alternative futures. As well—
and this is postmodern praxis—by situating the west as one alternative and not as the sole or
true past and future, its hegemony is disturbed, its deep structure is seen not as universal but
as one mode among others to organize society and education.
3.6 The Linear Future: The Victory of the West
Big Ben, London, picture retrieved July 31, 2002, from

http://www.geocities.com/nina_plett/public/lon19a.jpg
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The understanding of the future as a one directional movement from the past and the
present projected forward has become the predominant understanding of time within western
civilisation. It has come to dominate global discourses as well. The linear understanding of
time has, historically, not been limited only to recent western history. However, the linear
understanding of time among traditional indigenous and eastern civilisations, as well as in
earlier phases of western civilisation, is limited to a particular, short time frame that exists
either within the eternal present or as part of a larger cycle. While both ideas of the extended
present or the cyclical aspects of time do exist within the current discourse on time, they are
understood within the framework of the linear. Individual life goes through cycles and phases
but individual life also has a clear beginning and an end. Societies go through cycles and
phases, but these are defined as either linear progression or regression to the past.
Historically, argues Johan Galtung (1991), we can distinguish between seven phases
in western (Occidental) time: paradise, paradise lost (the fall), darkness, awakening, growth,
crisis and then apocalypsis or catharsis (paradise regained). Galtung also makes the
controversial claim that such an understanding of time correlates to western male sexuality
that was institutionalized and imposed on others. In any case, linear time captures only phase
five—the growth phase (Galtung, 1991). It is this particular phase that has become
hegemonic, dominating both all other phases as well as other civilisational approaches to
time. The roots of current linear understanding of time lie within both Christianity and
modern science. Within Christianity, God has created the world and at some point He is
going to bring it to an end (Taylor, 2001). The scientific view of the universe follows a
strictly linear pattern. Time is divided between past, present and future and into hours,
minutes, and seconds. The Universe was created in a Big Bang and it will end either in a Big
Crunch or, after it expands indefinitely, it will slowly fade away. In the end, reports Michael
D. Lemonick of Time magazine (June 25, 2001, p. 52), the universe “once ablaze with the
light of uncountable stars”, will become an unimaginably vast, cold, dark, empty and
profoundly lonely place. Since no biological matter can escape, the only consciousness that
can possibly survive could perhaps be in the form of a “disembodied digital intelligence”
(ibid.). It is this view of time that is behind some futures alternatives, such as that of
globalised cyber-education. I discuss this in more detail in Chapter Four, which deals with
dominant futures and utopian visions.
The linear movement of time is implicit in current notions of progress and its reverse
image, regress. When the linear future is understood as regress, a certain historical period
from the past is idealised as a more, or the most, desirable way of living. One example is
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‘back to the basics’ demands that idealise the mid 20th century in countries such as the USA
or Australia. Behind these demands there is a perception of the mid 20th century as a period
that was stable and secure, a period when the nation was strong and the Other less
threatening. Another current example can be found within some parts of the New Age
movement that often glorify agricultural or indigenous societies where food, water and air
were clean and the spirit able to roam free, prior to industrialism degrading the physical,
social and spiritual environments.
When the linear future is understood as progress, the earlier social stages are seen as
less developed and simple or rudimentary and primitive. Most importantly, such discourse
had real life implications in regard to the suppression of indigenous languages, ways of
knowing and educational practices. There were serious practical repercussion for those that
were ‘theorised’ as, for example, uneducated and, therefore, in a need of (western, modernist)
‘education’. The discourse itself was instrumental in creating colonial policies that intended
to impose western educational models on subjected peoples. But these policies were designed
according to the perceived development phase of different colonised peoples. While
colonised peoples were generally seen as inferior compared to advanced western civilisation,
there were important differences. For example, during the debate between Anglicists and
Orientalists in colonised India on whether the language of administration and schools should
be English or native languages, Anglicist Thomas Macaulay exclaimed, “. . . a single shelf of
a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia!” (Macaulay,
quoted in Spring, 1998, p. 16).
In a single sentence, Macaulay manages to write off a whole tradition, which is
especially disturbing given that “no other living tradition can claim scriptures as numerous or
as ancient as Hinduism” (Klostermaier, quoted in Reagan, 1996, p. 95) and close off an entire
alternative future. Macaulay’s actions and the discourse they created helped firmly to
establish English as the administrative language of India (Spring, 1998, p. 16). But this
debate was only possible because “Europeans recognized the importance of the languages
and cultures of what they called the ancient civilizations of the East” (Spring, 1998, p. 17).
Other peoples were not so lucky:
In contrast to the cultures of Asia and Northern Africa, Europeans in Africa
south of the Sahara and in the Americas simply dismissed indigenous
languages, religions, and cultures as primitive . . . [so] the British colonialists
did not attempt to preserve languages labeled as primitive . . . To a greater
extent than Orientalism, Primitivism allowed Europeans to believe in their
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cultural superiority to the others of the world population. Under the rubric of
Primitivism, colonialism, as an expression of white love, was considered a
cultural rescue mission. (Spring, 1998, pp. 17–18)
Thus, in colonised Africa, there was no debate over educational policies comparable
with that which occurred between the Anglicists and Orientalists in India. Rather, “the British
simply introduced an English educational model” (Spring, 1998, p. 18). Likewise, in North
America—and we could here add Australia as well, which Spring does not discuss—“they
[the British] ignored local educational practices and languages” which they encountered upon
arrival (Spring, 1998, p. 18).
As discussed in Chapter Two, philosophical orientations such as evolutionism and
euchronic utopianism also reflect this progressivist discourse. While evolutionism is more
recent, utopianism followed a change in western approaches to time:
Before the late eighteenth century, history had been interpreted as being cyclic
and thus repetitious. The late Enlightenment produced several thinkers who
made the Age of Reason’s implicit notion of the idea of progress explicit and
placed it in a novel time–forward scheme that challenged the notion of cycles.
The shift in utopian approaches from a future ideal place to a future ideal
time—euchronia—marked a major departure from the traditions begun by
Thomas More and prepared the way for the revolutionary era ahead. (Hollis,
1998, p. 78)
Both evolutionism and utopianism imply that “social institutions can be rationally
transformed in ways that enhance human wellbeing and happiness” but they disagree about
how and how fast change is to be achieved (Wright, 1999, para. 3). As discussed in the
previous chapter, evolutionists focus on piecemeal change and slow, incremental
modifications (Wright, 1999). Utopians, on the other hand, focus on “wholesale ruptures”,
grand designs for social reconstruction, conscious design, rational calculation and political
will (Wright, 1999, para. 4).
The current mainstream educational model, also referred to as ‘modern education’,
grew out of this debate and out of the tension between these two approaches to social change.
It replaced the previous dominant educational model, that can best be described as a religious
model of education, after it had finally won the centuries old battle. The ‘educated’ person
became “an effect of teachable knowledge, not an effect of divine dispensation or natural
evolution” (Fendler, 1999, p. 40). This new scientific, secular and rationalist discourse was
based on an alternative vision of the future and an alternative reading of the past. The
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particular vision of the future, as progressive movement from the past and present rather than
as regress from the Golden Age, better served the needs of a more secular, scientific
“Urizen”, symbolizing the imposition of the rational methods of mathematics on chaos and the
crushing of man’s sense of the infinite, shutting him up within the narrow wall of his five senses
(Lippincott, 1999, p. 21). Image detail from Europe, a Prophecy, by William Blake, 1793 (in Lippincott,
ibid.)
industrial civilisation. Within this worldview, life is divided between four life stages: child,
student, worker and retiree. The main focus of education is to prepare a child and a student
for a productive economic life within a chosen vocation. In schools, time is broken into
smaller and bigger units such as classes, working days, weekends, terms, semesters and
school years. Education is divided between early, primary, secondary and higher. Short
courses that focus on improvement of vocational skills are also introduced. Life-long
education is the exception rather than the rule. Punctuality is highly valued and so is
effectiveness and efficiency. Tests are established to measure individual, school and national
educational effectiveness and achievements. As the scientific and secular worldview
dominates, a particular emphasis is put on intellectual intelligence and reason.
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Reason rather than faith, and awareness about objectives rather than internal
phenomena, started to form the core nucleus of modern education. The meaning of life was to
be found within the vocational sphere and intellectual development. Real life issues, for
example, family related ones, sickness, death, emotional upsets and so on, were to be kept
either outside of the public discourse or confined within specialised institutions (e.g., the
church). Education became predominately about the preparation of a productive labour force
as well as about the creation of a complete human being as previously defined. Neither
includes the emotional or the spiritual self. Emotions are seen as inferior to reason, while
spirituality became identified with a particularly bleak period of western history, known as
the Middle Ages. The Renaissance attempted to liberate people from the oppressive social
conditions of the day. These included the brutality of church inquisitions, religious
suppression of other ways of knowing and seeing the world, or religious justification for the
feudal organisation of political, social, and economic relations. Other characteristics of the
current ‘modern’ education model include the democratisation of education (still a far cry
from the availability of indigenous education to all), an increase in literacy levels,
compulsory education for all primary school aged children, focus on achievement,
intellectual development, and the importance of standards, certificates, diplomas. Education
is about the creation of a productive nation and about the preparation of children to become
responsible members of that nation.
This model particularly reinforces linguistic and logical–mathematical forms of
intelligence. According to Gardner (1983, 1993), who argues that humans posses not one but
eight distinct forms of intelligence, what is neglected are the spatial, bodily–kinesthetic,
musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist intelligences and ways of learning and
knowing. Teachers love children who are good with words and logic while children who
show ability in dance, art, music, social relations, intuition, drama, nature and other areas of
self-expression tend not to receive as much recognition (Armstrong, 1996).
There are different opinions as to why this particular model spread throughout the
world. According to Connell (1980, p. 16) western-type schools expanded rapidly throughout
the world in such a way that, in “non-western countries, few indigenous schools survived to
the middle of the century”. Those that did, such as in Islamic countries and in India, found
their influence “somewhat restricted and specialised, and they were outdistanced by their
western rivals” (Connell, 1980, ibid.). Connell explains this expansion of western educational
models in the following way:
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The western school, with its carefully organised grades and classroom
procedures, its hierarchy of teachers and administrators, and its readily
recognisable standards, certificates, and sequences of studies, established a
pattern suitable for a program of mass education. It was a pattern that was
easily grasped and readily exportable. Migrants from Europe and America and
colonial administrators helped to set it up throughout the world and it was also
actively sought and introduced by non-colonised countries such as Japan,
China, Thailand, and Turkey. It was seen as an essential instrument of national
development. It took root because it met a current need. Through the western
school, education had been systematically institutionalised and packaged; and
in that form it could be readily distributed to the mass audiences that were
seeking it throughout the world. (Connel, 1980, p. 16)
Others (e.g., Spring, 1998, Said, 1993) argue that this model was imposed on other
peoples because their cultures were seen as subordinate, inferior and less advanced.
Education was a consequence and means of maintaining colonisation. For example,
education was seen as crucial in liberating backward peoples: justifying enslavement of
Native Americans. Morcillo, writing in the 16th century, wrote this: “They should be civilized
by good customs and education and led to a more human way of life” (Morcillo, quoted in
Spring, 1998, p. 10).
In any case, part of this colonising process was also ‘teaching time’ (see Illustration
3.3). As Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 53) describes, western observers were “struck by the
contrast in the way time was used (or rather, not used or organized)” by indigenous peoples
in Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. Representations of ‘native life’ described this life as
“devoid of work habits” and native people as “being lazy, indolent, with low attention spans”
and so forth (ibid., p. 55). Explanations of why this is so, ranged from ‘a hot climate’
argument to the ones that made a direct connection between race and indolence, that is
“darker skin people [were] . . . considered more ‘naturally’ indolent” (ibid., p. 54). After the
arrival of missionaries and the development of more systematic colonisation, the connection
between time, work and education became even more important (ibid.):
The belief that ‘natives’ did not value work or have a sense of time provided
ideological justification for exclusionary practices which reached across such
areas as education, land development and employment. The evangelical
missionaries who arrived in the Pacific had a view of salvation in which were
embedded white lower middle-class English or puritanical New England work
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practices and values. It was hard work to get to heaven and ‘savages’ were
expected to work extra hard to qualify to get into the queue.
Illustration 3.3
Image from Harris, 1984, p. 26.
Of course, it was forgotten that before industrialisation, in the west too, time was
measured by human activities or environmental changes and not so much ‘by the clock’. It
was forgotten that clock time was also at one time ‘invented’ and that this was done in order
to respond to the needs and desires of particular societies/cultures/civilisations. As argued by
Boorstin (in Levine, 1997, p. 54):
The first grand discovery was time, the landscape of experience. Only by
marking off months, weeks, and years, days and hours, minutes and seconds,
would mankind be liberated from the cyclical monotony of nature. The flow
of shadows, sand, and water, and time itself, translated into the clock’s
staccato, became a useful measure of man’s movements across the planet . . .
Communities of time would bring the first communities of knowledge, ways
to share discovery, a common frontier on the unknown.
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Clock time was invented to satisfy the needs of industrialisation, not the environment,
argue Levine (1997), Nowotny (1994) and Adam (1998). The clock, and not the steam
engine, is “the key machine of the industrial age” argues Lewis Mumford (in Levine, 1997, p.
63). In turn, the discovery of industrial time had an enormous impact on both human societies
and the natural environment (Levine, 1997, Nowotny, 1994, Adam, 1998). Adam (1998)
argues that when time became a commodity, both the environment and the future became
simultaneously devalued. This remains a main principle in the neo-classical economic
approach and reflects the general attitude of modernism:
The future . . . is discounted which means giving the future less value than the
present . . . This means, by today’s value and at a discount rate of 10 per cent
per annum over a period of ten years, the future $1,000 is calculated to be
worth a mere $386 today . . . the future is devalued by a sleight of the
economic hand . . . [which] makes many an incomprehensible action rational. .
. From the standpoint of the present, projected into the future and back again,
the future is less important than the present and, given a long enough time
span, it is in this scheme of things worthless. (Adam, 1998, p. 75)
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Illustration on previous page: Clock time as industrial time, International Time Recording Catalogue,
1914, image in Lippincott (1999, p. 15).
The discovery and the victory of clock time has also meant that education became
about teaching punctuality. In the industrial model, ‘correct time’ is valuable, and time is a
product that can be bought and sold. As argued by the Blodgett Clock Company in 1896
(quoted in Levine, 1997, p. 68) ‘Order, promptness and regularity’ became “. . . cardinal
principles to impress on the minds of young people . . . [And] not better illustration of these
principles than this clock can be secured in a school”.
The urgency of punctual behaviour was promoted in schoolbooks, and associated
with achievement and success (Levine, 1997, 69–70). The latecomer became characterized as
“a social inferior and, in some cases, a moral incompetent” (ibid., p. 69). Schooling based on
this temporal template was exported to both local and colonised societies. In the case of the
latter, industrial time template was exported as a ‘package’:
The assumptions associated with the linear perspective, Newtonian science,
and neo-classical economics, in conjunction with the rationalised time of
calendars and clocks, form a powerful, mutually reinforcing conceptual unit.
As such, this conceptual conjuncture constitutes the deep structure of the
taken–for–granted knowledge associated with the industrial way of life,
creating the by now accustomed semblance of certainty and control. (Adam,
1998, p. 97)
Not only that, continues Adam (ibid., pp. 107–108), “[i]t was imposed irrespective of
whether or not these temporal innovations were welcomed or rejected there: non-compliance
spelt automatic exclusion; it meant being constructed as ‘other’ and therefore in need of
‘development’”.
While everyone was to learn this promptness, punctuality and what the progress was
about, there were important differences. Different education was provided for different
children, depending on their social positioning. While education was ideally supposed to
promote meritocracy, in practice, criteria such as the ‘merit’, various tests and what counts as
knowledge were used for streaming and social reproduction of existing social (e.g., class and
gender based) hierarchies. As my thesis deals predominately with issues of culture and
gender, I will not discuss the issue of class here, or in which ways was a particular futures
discourse was used to reproduce class hierarchies. What will suffice is to say that, as was the
case in Brahmanic hierarchical society, throughout western history education of children
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from lower classes was always inferior to elite education. This remains one of its main
features even today (Oakes, 1985, Angus, 1993, Apple, 2001), although for centuries many
educational reformers attempted democratisation of education according to the democratic
ideals of equal opportunity and access. These educational reformers, such as, for example,
Jean Baptiste de La Salle (1651–1719), Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), John Dewey (1858–
1952) and Maria Montessori (1870–1952), always had improvement and a particular
(desired) future in mind. This desired future more often than not included democratisation of
education as well as the inclusion of other practices (e.g., a ‘holistic’ approach) that were
seen as missing from modern education. Of course, all these, as well as the majority of
contemporary educational reforms, approached the change in a way that generally reflected a
linear view of reality. These approaches to change have been based on “implementing
educational innovations in a rational, systematic manner” (J. Miller, 2000, p. 146). As
volumes have been written about western educational reformers and reforms, I will not go
into this in detail. What is relevant here is to conclude this exemplar on ‘the linear future’ by
discussing the history of women’s education within the linear west.
Illustration 3.4
Educational reformer La Salle (Cubberley, 1920:349).
As discussed earlier, the linear approach to time became predominant only after
industrialisation. By that time western societies were already deeply patriarchal. The history
of women’s education in the west in general, and within ‘linear’ time in particular, is then
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mostly the history of women’s exclusion and their slow inclusion over centuries. European
women have “protested about the way men have organised education in the interest of men
and at the expense of women” for “over three hundred years” (Spender, 1982, p. 8). But:
. . . while the examples have sometimes changed from one century to the next,
the understanding and the accusations have remained constant: men have
controlled education and have ordained that males shall receive preferential
treatment. (ibid.)
Because in its early beginnings feminism was dominated with experiences of
European and North-American women, patriarchy was often seen as a universal
phenomenon. For example:
[f]eminists then began to point out that all societies, whatever their economic,
political or religious differences, are patriarchies. All known societies are
ruled by men, who control and profit from women’s reproductive capabilities.
Under some systems women have more privileges, even token power, than in
others, but everywhere men are dominant, and the basic principles, defined by
Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970) remain the same: ‘male shall dominate
female; elder male shall dominate younger’. (Tuttle, 1986, p. 242)
But more recent interpretations challenge the assumed universalism of patriarchy:
Although patriarchy has emerged as the predominant form of social
organization, historically the institution of patriarchy has been most prevalent
in pastoral societies and early states in the Middle East and Asia, where
women were subjugated to elder males within domestic or kin-based modes of
production . . . Accordingly, patriarchy is not universal. Anthropological
studies indicate that variation in gender status is closely related to rules of
descent and postmarital residence [Stone, 1997], and ethnohistorical evidence
shows that European colonization played a central role in spreading patriarchy
in its modern form [Erienne and Leacock, 1980]. (Lee, 2001, p. 1491)
More recent feminist scholarship not only disturbs the alleged universalism of
patriarchy but is also a more powerful narrative for its transformation. I return to this issue in
Chapter Five in Exemplar One, which discusses feminist writings on the futures of education
and the creation of alternative educational models. What is important here is to stress that,
with the invention of patriarchy, the patriarchal image of women’s futures became more
relevant than the general approach to time and the future.
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While within the cyclical model ‘students’ were to be educated for spiritual growth,
women’s futures were limited by their destined roles of wives and mothers. Within the linear
model, ‘students’ were, in general, to be prepared for paid work in the ‘public’ sphere.
Women, on the other hand, were to remain in the ‘private’ sphere. While today we think of
‘education’ as something that mainly occurs in schools and other educational institutions,
throughout history education has occurred in many various spaces. For example, in terms of
spatial arrangements, educational practices have occurred in (1) nature (under the tree, in the
forests), (2) in places purposely built for educational purposes (schools, libraries, bookshops,
boarding schools), (3) in sacred places (churches, mosques, temples, synagogues,
monasteries), (4) at home (teacher’s or student’s), or (5) in various communal places built to
satisfy other purposes (factories, farms, courts and palaces). While the home (and local
community) has always been the main place of so-called informal learning, the home
remained the only place of learning for girl children in patriarchal societies. In exceptional
cases, women were educated in ‘women only’ institutions, such as nunneries. Both in terms
of time and in terms of space, patriarchy became the most dominant system that influenced
the education of women. In terms of time, the patriarchal image for the future of women
replaced broader social and civilisational approaches to time and the future. In terms of
space, it was predominantly patriarchal discourses that determined that home remained the
main place of learning for girl children, across diverse civilisational and temporal contexts.
This discourse placed women’s role within society in the realm of their domestic duties as
wives and mothers, and consequently determined a particular content or curriculum once
girls began to receive education within more formalised settings. While the biggest change in
20th century western education has been the mass education of women within formal settings,
western style education is still very much patriarchal. This is visible in terms of educational
theorists and reformers being predominantly male, in terms of the so-called hidden curricula
for different genders, and in terms all recognised knowledge being male biased. In addition,
the patriarchal aspect of dominant discourses in education is visible in the lack of viable
alternatives proposed by women. That is, these alternatives are drowned in the sea of male
authorship. They are also pushed into diversity ghettos and often seen as utopian—irrelevant
and naïve. When it comes to men’s strategic positioning in society, they still exercise greater
control over social and educational change as well as the status and legitimacy to define and
control social and educational discourses.
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3.7 Conclusion: Where to from Modern Education?
Illustration 3.5
Image from Rousmaniere, 1998.
Illustration 3.6
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There is no set curriculum that withstands the test of time. (O’Sullivan, 1999,
p. 195)
In her pictorial representation of history of education, Kate Rousmaniere (1998)

argues that we now commonly and universally accept and recognise the image of “the
school” and “the teacher”. School photographs from America, England, Mexico, and Africa
all tell a similar ‘story’. For—at the very least—over one hundred years the image of
education was that of children ordered, stiffed, grouped together, with a teacher looking stern
and authoritative (Rousmaniere, 1998, Illustrations 3.5 and 3.6). She contrasts this image
with a similar photo, of the same children and teacher, looking relaxed and laughing and asks
why an image of smiling children does not look like school? (Rousmaniere, 1998, Illustration
3.7).
Illustration 3.7
As I argued previously, this now hegemonic model of modern education was also at
one time invented. It replaced both elitist and religious education in the west, as well as
countless indigenous/traditional systems of education in colonised lands. In her visual
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representation of the history of education, Rousmaniere also contrasts the image of the urban
classroom with the earlier images of the ‘one-room school house’. She argues that in the
American context these earlier images are usually interpreted in ‘romantic’ and ‘pastoral’
ways. That is, they are interpreted as symbols of a simpler past, when children were well-
behaved, teachers pretty and honest and schools, in general, a pleasant place to be
(Rousmaniere, 1998). This romantic interpretation forgets that such schools usually existed in
poor, provincial places and were located in small, drab buildings, with “no storm windows
and no screens to keep the cold or bugs out” (Rousmaniere, 1998). She therefore concludes
that we always bring our own understanding and assumptions of schools to our viewing. It is,
therefore, our cultural assumptions and experiences that enable us to recognise certain images
as images of education and certain narratives as educational narratives. Most people, located
in the west and non-west alike, will today probably not recognise the image of children
running after Krsna (Illustration 3.8) as the image of “education”. The image from sixth
century A.D. titled “Gautama at School” (Illustration 3.9) would probably would neither be
recognised as the image of education nor as the pictorial representation of the ‘school’. The
‘universality’ of particular images of schooling is also challenged by different current
realities, as seen in Illustrations 3.10 and 3.11.
But, most importantly, it is also our cultural conditioning—the interaction of our
world and social practices—that makes most of us see only certain images and ideas as ‘the
future of education’. This hegemonic image of ‘the future’ of education corresponds to the
hegemonic view of the future in general. For example, as argued in the previous chapter,
most people immediately recognise the images in Illustrations 2.10, 2.38 and 2.39 as having
something to do with the future. In addition, image 2.10 is immediately recognisable as an
image of time, history, social change. This might not be the case with images that portray
time in different ways (see start of section 3.4 and 3.5) Each one of these images not only
tells a different story about time and the future, it also enable us to see the ways in which our
own understanding of time influenced is by the hegemonic, western linear one.
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Illustration 3.8
Image from Swami Prabhupada (1993, pp. 4–5).
147
Illustration 3.8
“Gautama at School”. Image from Mookerji (1960, pp. 386–387).
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Illustration 3.10
Someone else’s future? Boys in front of their school, 2000, Bavrakona, Pakistan. Picture taken by the
author.
Illustration 3.11
Girl’s madrasa (Islamic religious school), 2000, Kolo, Pakistan. Picture taken by the author.
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As I have also argued earlier, the image portraying the new emerging ‘Gaian’
paradigm (Illustration 2.40) would rarely be recognised as such. A utopian image perhaps,
but not the image of ‘the future’. But Villemard’s 1910 image (Illustration 3.13) would, most
likely, be immediately recognised as having something to do with the future, although it is
almost one hundred years old. Today, the single common denominator indicating educational
futures is technology. This, of course, seriously limits alternatives that focus on social
transformations. This denominator appears to be replacing the image of schooling, of
children ‘ordered, stiffed, grouped together, with a teacher looking stern and authoritative’,
as argued by Rousmaniere (1998). Interestingly, when we look at some historical images of
education, such as in Illustrations 3.14 to 3.19, the common denominator, across time and
space, seems to be flogging, or the need to maintain discipline by the possibility of
punishment through the use of rods and canes. While the need to maintain discipline
remained important within the modern education model, rods disappeared from the picture,
as other ways of maintaining discipline and order were ‘discovered’.
Illustration 3.13
Villemard, “A l’Ecole” (At School), Visions de l’an 2000, 1910. Chromolithograph,

Paris, BNF, Departement des Estampes et de la Photographie. Image at www.nypl.org/utopia/
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Illustration 3.14
Flogging at a Roman primary school. “A chair for the master, benches for the pupils, an outer room
for cloaks and for the pedagogues to wait in, and a bundle of rods (ferula) constituted the necessary
equipment.” A Roman Primary School. Image from Cubberley (1920, p. 66).
Illustration 3.15
Flogging at an early Arabian school, Image from Thut (1957, p. 119).
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Illustration 3.16
th
Flogging at a late 18 century school, Germany. Image from Cubberley (1920, p. 564).
Illustration 3.17
th
A bundle of rods still constituted the necessary equipment: 15 century school, England. Image from
Cubberley (1920, p. 156).
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Illustration 3.18
th
Teachers holding bundlse of rods, 16 century schools. Image from Cubberley (1920, p. 309).
Illustration 3.19
th
Teacher holding a bundle of rods, 17 century French school. Image from Cubberley (1920, p. 332).
Despite enormous and significant changes in the past, it now seems that education is
remarkably resistant to change. Frustrated by a slow introduction of ‘everything digital’ in
contemporary schools, Negroponte (1995, p. 220) writes:
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Seymour Papert tells the story of a mid-nineteenth-century surgeon magically

transported through time into a modern operating theater. That doctor would
not recognize a thing, would not know what to do or how to help. Modern
technology would have totally transformed the practice of surgical medicine
beyond his recognition. If a mid-nineteenth-century schoolteacher were
carried by the same time machine into a present–day classroom, except for
minor subject details, that teacher could pick up where his or her late-
twentieth-century peer left off. There is little fundamental difference between
the way we teach today and the way we did one hundred and fifty years ago.
The use of technology is almost at the same level. In fact, according to a
recent survey by the U.S. Department of Education, 84 percent of America’s
teachers consider only one type of information technology absolutely
“essential”: a photo copier with an adequate paper supply.
Headly Beare (2001, p. 1) argues that the popular view of the unchanging school is a
myth. According to this popular view, “the modern school as we have known it has been
remarkably resistant to change” (ibid.):
Schools still ‘take’ children at age 5 or 6, put them into class groups
composed of children the same age, place each class in the charge of one
teacher and allocate students and teacher to a self-contained classroom where
pupils are led through a curriculum based on the notion that human knowledge
is divide into ‘subjects’ (ibid.). Schools are still ranked according to upwards
progression (kindergarten, pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary) and
‘expert’ teachers still transfer knowledge to ‘learners’ who are seen to be
“relatively ignorant” (ibid.). And finally, most schools tend to look the same
the world over: they are set in a large geographical area called ‘the school
grounds’ or a campus implying “a self-contained institution” (ibid.).
But schools are bound to change, argues Beare (2001) and many others. Of course,
the ‘universally’ recognised image of ‘the school’ has continuously been challenged. This has
been done by many educational reformers, social movements, visionaries, as well as ‘official’
futurists in the past. Some of these critiques are based on a conviction that the modern system
of education always was/is universally flawed. Other are based on a particular (desired)
image of the future or a belief that since societies in the future will be radically different from
those today, education needs to be reformed to reflect that. Yet others base their demands for
reform on a particular desired future. In any case, over the last few decades the pressure on
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modern education seems to be increasing. In fact, hardly anyone seems to remain satisfied
with current educational practices. As argued by Maharishi (1988, p. 208):
When one travels in the world and meets people of different nations, one finds
that the public opinion in almost every country is set against the prevailing
system of education. In no country of the world are people really satisfied
with the existing system of education.
The futures discourse is increasingly used to support arguments about the impending
demise of modern education. In sum, ‘modern’ education has become ‘outdated’. The
critique of modern education ranges across the political spectrum (from ‘the Right’ to ‘the
Left’); across countries (both ‘western’ and ‘non-western’) and across genders (within men’s,
queer and feminist movements). Christian and Islamic scholars alike critique modern
education for helping create selfish, driven individuals and anxious, materialistic societies. In
this case, modern education is mostly accused of separating the ‘inseparable’—from this
perspective, education makes little sense if it is removed from a religious context.
At the other end of political spectrum (e.g., humanist, multicultural, feminist, neo-
Marxist approaches), modern education is critiqued because it reproduces existing,
social/economic/gender hierarchies. Authors informed by these theories and perspectives
argue that education should instead promote human rights, equality and diversity. In contrast,
proponents of elitist education maintain that there is nothing wrong with hierarchies. Students
should be given the best opportunity to ‘achieve and excel’ within existing societies. Yet
others, for example authors that can be located within spiritual, holistic and eco-centric
approaches, argue that modern education is based on an outdated
worldview/paradigm/narrative. They argue for the ‘mainstreaming’ of the ‘Gaian
narrative’—seen to be more in tune with ‘the future’. Postmodernists, on the other hand, do
not want to replace the current model with any other meta-narrative—but rather with
diversity, on-going processes and negotiations.
One of the main features of modern education—reproduction of the nation state
‘citizen’—has been increasingly challenged by various globalisation processes. Globalisation
proponents would ‘push’ education even further towards this “New Pedagogy” where it
becomes “advantageous to learn well, to learn quickly and learn continuously” (Ellyard,
1998, p. 61). Others, however, see globalisation as a new threat to their ‘traditional’
(national, ethnic, cultural, religious) identities and believe education should remain mostly
about national and cultural preservation. Parallel to this, an on-going process of ‘de-
colonisation’ from both ‘modern’ as well as ‘globalised’ education is taking place. Crucial to
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this process are recoveries of various non-western traditions, including indigenous ones, that
were forcibly replaced by European colonisers. Lastly, new technologies seem to be making
education based on print literacy increasingly ‘out of step’ with the ‘new times’. Proponents
of cyber-education vision see education transforming towards new ‘networked’ classrooms
existing within new information/ network societies. Here too, education is to satisfy both the
needs of future societies as well as present generations of children who are to inhabit them.
The main question then is not whether modern education is going to change. Change,
as defined by the modern and the postmodern, is ‘the only constant’. The main questions
have thus become: (1) What should education be like; (2) Should it be about ‘preparation’ for
certain given futures as predicted by many (both ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’) futurists or should
it be about creation of desired, preferred visions for the future; (3) If it is about preparation
for given futures, what exactly are these futures going to look like; (4) Alternatively, if it is
about creation of preferred visions, what kind of visions are desirable; and, (5) How can
traditional modes of time and education be used as resources for desired futures?
In this Chapter, I have focused my analysis on the historical futures discourse in
education. While this historical narrative could have been approached in various ways, I
investigated three distinct civilisational approaches to time, identified in Chapter Two. I will
follow this theme of various approaches to time throughout my thesis. However, the next two
chapters more specifically focus on visions of and for the future. This is because, given the
general ‘victory’ of linear time, both cyclical and eternal time approaches have been
marginalised. Still, these alternative approaches to time remain significantly present in some
alternatives that demand futures different from those that currently dominate the global
(western and patriarchal) imagination. Part two of my thesis, therefore, maps current
discourses of the futures of education. This mapping also identifies dominant futures and
utopian visions as well as alternative ones.
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PART TWO: MAPPING THE DISCOURSE OF THE FUTURES

OF EDUCATION
The next two chapters—Chapter Four and Five—continue the investigation of the
connection between underlying views of time, images of the future and educational visions.
To do so, I have summarised what are the current tensions, debates and the main issues in
OECD nations (in particular in Australia, the USA and Canada) with regard to where
education should be going. Figure 1, Futures of Education (next page), locates modern
education in the center. This main core has now spread almost universally throughout the
globe, but it is also often seen as outdated and in desperate need of major reform.
Various futures discourses are used to argue for the transformation of modern
education into an improved model that will be more in tune with ‘the future’. As described in
Chapter One, two of these futures discourses have become hegemonic—‘globalised’ and
‘cyber’ education. As I will develop in Chapter Four, they provide the main challenge to
modern education. Other ‘counter’ and ‘alternative’ discourses about the future are
competing to become hegemonic. These I have located on the outer part of the figure’s circle.
In Chapter Four I investigate how a particular text functions as ‘a desire’. That is,
while hegemonic futures visions are intended to be ‘the truth’ about the future, I investigate
various utopian and dystopian narratives that underlie this ‘truth’. I both investigate the
impact of these hegemonic visions on current attempts to transform modern education, as
well as the underlying approach to time, vision of the future and underlying civilisational
myths/metaphors. I argue that it is not only ‘alternatives’ that are ‘utopian’ but hegemonic
visions as well. Chapter Five focuses on some of those alternatives, namely on three
exemplars: feminist alternatives, the recovery of indigenous traditions and spiritual
education.
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Figure 1: Futures of education—Hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses
158
The mapping in Figure 1 differs from other similar attempts. For example, earlier
readings on educational ideologies, philosophies and epistemologies implied that the main
tensions are between educational conservativism, liberalism and anarchism, and between
secular and religious education (e.g., O’Neill, 1981). It was recognised that these approaches
variously answer the questions of what is the fundamental aim of education and what should
education be about. For example, should education be predominately about intellectual
development; integration into society; physical and mental health; economic competence;
emotional and spiritual growth (Connell, 1974); or a particular combination of these. Up until
a few decades ago, the main ‘competition’ for the hegemony was between the so-called
‘Right’ and ‘Left’ approaches. It is now increasingly argued (e.g., Eisler, 2000) that, for
several reasons, the traditional division between the Left and the Right has become outdated.
The two most commonly mentioned reasons are the increasing convergence of rightist and
leftist governments within nation states and the reversal of demands for fundamental change
and preservation by these political perspectives. While traditionally it was the Left that
promoted change, its current proponents are mostly interested in protecting traditional
modern education from reforms aimed at radical change in terms of further privatisation and
globalisation. On the other hand, it is the traditionally conservative Right that demands
drastic changes, as, for example, in the case of demands for the introduction of education
vouchers in the USA and other industrially developed nations.
I have kept some of this right/left division, but have transformed it. The map I use has
two dimensions—gender and cultural. On one dimension, I locate discourses in terms of their
commitment/adherence to patriarchy (right) or, alternatively, to gender partnership (left). On
the other, I loosely locate discourses in terms of their commitment/adherence to uni-cultural
(right) or multicultural (left) issues and concerns. This trajectory was partly visible in Figure
1, where I located religious education, elitist education and education for national and
cultural preservation on the ‘right’ side of the cycle. Multicultural, humanist, feminist,
spiritual, holistic and eco-centric education should broadly located on the left side of the
cycle. This is visually better presented in Figure 2.
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Figure 2: Futures of Education—Hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses
160
It is, of course, always difficult to systematise various educational alternatives into

neat and decisive categories. Our global knowledge production now demands increased
awareness about various cultural educational traditions. New technologies facilitate this but
also make it more difficult because of the current huge production of books and articles (in
both print and electronic media) that deal with educational reform and change. Of course, any
mapping would also depend on one’s own location and positioning, in both space and time.
Several decades ago, the main division might have been along ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’
lines. Presently, non-hegemonic feminist alternatives would be even further marginalised in
many non-western countries, especially Islamic ones. In addition, various alternatives would
take a different meaning; spiritual education would mean one thing in poverty ridden
countries (often traditional religious instruction) compared to the meaning given in affluent
Canada (the New Age discourse).
As I described in the introduction, this thesis focuses on the manifestation of futures
visions as they imprint on global space, or, as they are part of current global knowledge
production in English. Still, even within these limiting parameters, the mapping would look
different if informed by different worldview/politics.
There are, of course, numerous problems with my previous classifications. Firstly,
none of those models is completely unified. For example, cyber education as a whole can be
located towards the uni-cultural, patriarchal end. This I show in my detailed analysis of cyber
education in Chapter Four. But, what of cyber-feminism or indigenous (and other) cultural
groups that use the Internet as the main medium for connection, cooperation and organisation
of their own politics? Similarly, eco-centric alternatives sometimes show a lack of respect for
human life. This approach is clearly removed from feminist alternatives that do value the
Earth and also value human life highly, believing it should be preserved and maintained.
As I have also previously discussed (in Chapters One and Two), there are arguments
that locate Postmodernism firmly within not only the western intellectual tradition but also
within western politics. This positioning can, perhaps unintentionally but still effectively,
silence previously marginalised social groups who only recently have gained a political and
social voice. At the same time, there are many postmodernisms: the previous may be an
accurate description of ‘deconstructive’ (Hicks, 1998, p. 227) or ‘postmodernism of reaction’
(Lather, 1991a, p. 160) but not of ‘constructive’, ‘revisionary’ (Hicks, ibid.) or
‘postmodernism of resistance’ (Lather, ibid.).
Still, I argue that postmodernists’ general refusal to participate in the project of
envisioning alternative futures is especially detrimental to those social groups that have not
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yet achieved ‘the end of history’. Therefore, I have located postmodernism towards the centre
of my diagram.
Thus the figures intend to systematise current debates and issues, rather than provide
a definitive statement. The various hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses on the
futures of education are systematised in accordance with their main tendencies, as well as in
accordance with the most influential historical tradition that informs them. I have identified
Religious, Elitist and Education for national and cultural preservation at the furthest end
towards the political Right. In the case of Religious Education and Education for national
and cultural preservation, this is because they predominately view gender and culture as
fixed categories, and are usually resistant to attempts to construct these categories as more
fluid and susceptible to continual social change. In addition, the religious model assumes
that:
Education should be about teaching the Truth of God as defined by “our”
tradition. Discipline is a prerequisite to Godliness. The teacher must be
obeyed and honored. There is a central text that must be memorized. Other
texts and perspectives are rarely important except as anthology. (Inayatullah,
1996b, p. 14)
While the axiom of honoring of the teacher is shared in numerous discourses, the rest
is much more problematic and hardly a ‘solution’ for the future. I come back to this—the
question of what type of social and educational initiatives are most needed in our current
world—in the concluding chapter (Chapter Six).
Education for national and cultural preservation is currently mostly championed by
those who hold to ‘imaginary communities’ (Anderson, 1983), usually nation states that are
seen as homogenous, moral, comfortable. The threat, of course, comes from globalisation,
which both means a challenge from multinational companies as well as a challenge from
cultural, religious and ethnic minorities. Together with multiculturalism, feminism is also
seen as ‘an enemy’ here, because it challenges ‘the natural’ and how things ‘have always
been’. If the main goal is to preserve the nation, the main role of women—as many feminists
have argued—is, then, to produce yet another generation of ‘future warriors’. In addition,
nations are not only defined by whom they include, but more importantly, whom they
exclude. To preserve boundaries and the ‘fortress’ mentality that underlies much of what
constitutes national politics, the main focus is to educate the populace to successfully defend
itself, which is best done within the context of existing (and enhanced) social hierarchies.
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This model is behind numerous ‘back to the basics’ demands heard in many nations and
states, including Australia.
Elitist education, such as provided in select private schools and colleges, courses that
give one ‘the edge’, the Kumon system, and some versions of home schooling, are also
firmly based within existing social hierarchies. Most importantly, they are firmly located
within existing class hierarchies and are aimed as alternatives, not for the masses, but for the
chosen few. Home schooling, of course, is based in traditional notions of family, where
education rests predominately in the hands of ‘unemployed’ mothers. Elitist education aims
to provide selected students with the information, knowledge and skills that will help them
maintain their hegemonic position within their own society or, alternatively, as in home
schooling, maintain the values of their parents. There are, of course, variants of home
schooling and some are a result of the failure of educational institutions to respond to the
needs of particular students. But home schooling as an ideology, rather than an enforced
choice, seems to be based on the maintenance of tradition, history, traditional gender roles
and so on. As such, together with the previously mentioned examples, it can politically be
located within the traditional elitism in education, that predates even ‘modern’ education.
Globalised education and Cyber education are equally located towards the patriarchal
and uni-cultural end, but to a lesser degree than previous discourses. As I discuss in further
detail in Chapter Four, they represent hegemonic futures visions and as such are seen as the
main discourses currently destabilising the core of modern education.
The main alternative to the discourses coming from the Right has traditionally been
the Humanistic model of education, wherein education is seen to be about equality, social
justice and inclusion. This model firmly rests on ideas of progress, development, reason, and
rationality, which in the western tradition continue the civilizational project of the
Enlightenment. The humanistic model of education accentuates some aspects of modern
education and, like globalised and cyber educational discourses, aims at ‘tilting’ it towards a
particular, desired future. In the case of humanistic education, the image is of an inclusive
society where principles of justice and fairness prevail. Humanistic education has for a long
time been the ‘official’ opposition to the discourses coming from the Right. It is currently
also their most ‘loyal’ opposition, given the long tradition and increasing ideological
convergence between the two parties. This long tradition includes western intellectual
history, especially the Enlightenment, from which both discourses have historically emerged.
In terms of their convergence, within both globalised and cyber education and within
humanistic education, for example, it is accepted that: (1) we should be focused on mass
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education; (2) that social justice issues are important (the difference is in the degree of
importance attached); (3) that education is bound to change; and (4) that change can be
implemented in a rational, systematic and planned manner through external measures. Both
promote multiculturalism, although the globalised and the cyber version have in mind more
of a tokenistic and pragmatic multiculturalism, rather than the extensive multiculturalism that
humanistic education values. Although this model has helped promote the social inclusion of
previously marginalised social groups, such as ethnic, racial and religious minorities, as well
as women, it has also been implicated in the education of the Other, in terms of making ‘the
Other’ like ‘the Self’.
In addition, humanistic education has traditionally been concerned with the uplifting
of man, and this tradition is still present among proponents of so-called critical education.
For example, as argued by C. Luke (1992, p. 25):
. . . from a feminist position, the discourse of critical pedagogy constructs a
masculinist subject which renders its emancipatory agenda for 'gender'
theoretically and practically problematic.
Critical pedagogy’s “adding on” of gender is then “simply inadequate” (Gore, 1993,
p. 47). Not only that, humanistic education is firmly based on western history, a particular
approach to time and social change. Therefore, I have located the humanistic model of
education within the uni-cultural bracket (while recognising the movement towards multi-
cultural issues and concerns) as well as in the middle of the patriarchy/gender partnership
dichotomy.
Other counter and alternative discourses on futures of education include Postmodern
education, Feminist alternatives, Non-western alternatives focused on the recovery of
indigenous traditions, Holistic education, Eco-centric education/education for sustainability,
Multicultural education and Spiritual education. Obviously these overlap even more: for
example, it could be argued that Holistic, Eco-centric and Spiritual Education represent one
core rather than three separate alternatives. Similarly, feminist authors are variously aligned
with multicultural, humanistic, holistic, postmodern, cyber, spiritual or eco-centric education.
In the context of this thesis, I explore the alternatives that most deeply challenge
assumptions and preferred visions coming from dominant, hegemonic ‘regimes of
educational truths’. In particular, I investigate the alternatives that fundamentally challenge
patriarchal and western assumptions about what constitutes knowledge, history, future and
ideal education. When it comes to the challenge of patriarchy, feminist alternatives stand out.
But they have originated within the western intellectual tradition—although there is a
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significant and continuous effort to transform middle-class, western, white feminism to

address the issues and concerns of women coming from different racial, ethnic and cultural
groups. There are, therefore, connections between feminist and non-western alternatives.
However, I have located feminist alternatives still more towards the uni-cultural end. I
explain this when discussing feminist alternatives more thoroughly. If the west can currently
be defined to be fundamentally about materialism, external change, linear time, evolution,
rationalism, a techno–scientific approach to knowledge, anthropocentrism, competition,
division between mind/body, human/nature and so on, then the most relevant alternatives to
be discussed in detail would need to challenge most of the above. Spiritual education seems
to be the most obvious candidate, together with the other alternatives that could be seen as
part of the same core, that is, together with Holistic and Eco-centric education. Given that
Holistic and Eco-centric education have come to be more accepted alternatives (e.g.,
Montessori, Steiner/Waldorf schools, mainstreaming of environmental education), I bring
these alternatives into a more detailed discussion predominately in the context of viewing the
Earth and the environment as sacred. That is, I particularly focus on the discourse on
Spiritual education because it is rarely accepted as an alternative and makes ‘the least
sense’—is unintelligible—if viewed from the mainstream. In addition, as western civilisation
has been built with the help of processes such as colonialism and imperialism, I believe it is
also important to discuss alternatives that aim at, somewhat and somehow, reversing these
processes.
Most industrially developed countries have based their wealth on colonisation and the
exploitation and destruction of indigenous lands and cultures. Of course, the remaining
indigenous population is usually excluded from this wealth while benefits are reserved for
both the initial, as well as for, to an extent, subsequent generations of colonisers/ immigrants.
Indigenous discourses on social and educational futures are also rarely discussed as important
alternatives—as, perhaps, alternatives that might be more relevant to the future than the
creation of a global, information society. While the argument can be made that these
alternatives are merely about the return to an imagined past, I here argue that all alternatives,
including hegemonic ones, base their future imagining on some imagined/constructed
past/history. The question here is which history one chooses to ground the vision within, or
rather, which history and which interpretation/ reconstruction is seen to be important or
accurate.
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Chapter Four: Dominant Futures and Utopian Visions
Image from Wilson (1999, front cover).
4.1 Introduction
Globalisation and new technologies are dominant forces of the future . . .

(Kellner, 2000b, p. 316)
Things could always be other than they are and what they are is always
diverse. (Edwards and Usher, 2000, p. 10)
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As argued in previous chapters, while various societies and communities have their
own ‘regimes of educational truths’, assumptions and preferred visions, some of those truths,
assumptions and visions have become hegemonic—that is, naturalised and uncontested.
Hegemonic futures visions that currently dominate are the image of a ‘post–industrial’,
globalised, pan–capitalist world and that of a ‘post–information’, ‘networked’ society. There
are other underlying futures visions that are evoked when the calls for educational reform, in
Australia as well as globally, are made. These include, for example, visions of an
‘environmentally sustainable’, ‘multicultural’ or ‘partnership’ society. What distinguishes
hegemonic futures narratives from other, counter or alternative ones, is their capacity to
convince others of the inevitability of a particular future. They eliminate alternatives not by
making them illegal, immoral or unpopular, but by making them invisible and therefore
irrelevant (Postman, 1993, p. 48). Alternative narratives thus become considered possibly
‘interesting’ and even sometimes ‘worth knowing about’ but, in general, if looking for the
‘truth’ about the future one must turn towards “dispensers of legitimate knowledge” (ibid.).
Others may assign a dystopian reading to that future, most often expressed in the form of
critique. But, as argued by Grosz (1990, p. 59) in my introductory chapter, it is by that very
act of “negative or reactive project” that ‘the truth’ of what is critiqued gets reaffirmed. That
is, what is contested is whether a particular vision is ‘good’ and ‘desirable’ and not that this
vision is the future.
In order to constitute the main ‘truth’ about the future, hegemonic narratives heavily
depend on prediction and determinism. This prediction about the future usually takes the
form of trend identification and analysis that is, in turn, often based on technological and
economic determinism. Other times, determinism is backed by a belief in the ubiquitous
character of historical and social structures that leave little space for human agency. Yet other
times, but in now globally marginalised spaces, determinism takes the form of the belief in
karma or destiny; ‘God’s mysterious ways’, or certain planetary influences, as in astrology. I
argue that determinism is problematic because at any given time, there are numerous trends
that may impact the future in very diverse, even surprising, ways. Of course, the ‘push’
towards the future (trends) as well as that of a ‘weight of history’ (historical and social
structures) play a very important role when it comes to issues related to social change and
continuity. No present (once future) occurs in a vacuum. But determinism forgets about the
‘pull’ of the future, that is, the impact of the desired, hoped for and imagined. It discounts
human and social agency. Philosophers have debated the issue of structure vs. agency for
millennia and it is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss this issue in too much detail.
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However, it is within the scope of this thesis to analyses what is missing from current
hegemonic futures narratives. So, in this part of the thesis, I attempt to destabilise the
hegemonic futures by discussing ways in which this vision too is not only about the ‘push’
but also about the ‘pull’. That is, it is also about a particular future that is desired, hoped for
and imagined.
As hegemonic discourses claim to be based on ‘the truth’ about the future this also
implies some sort of ‘objective’ neutrality. Thus, in essence, the modernist approach is still
powerful enough to influence theorists across the board. For example, Cunningham et al.
(1997, p. 4) argue that while there is no shortage of scholarly, journalistic, governmental or
institution–specific materials on the intersection of areas such as globalisation, information
technologies and education, there is, they continue, an “acute shortage of disinterested,
thorough and realistic analyses”. Their demand for such an analysis is problematic because,
as feminist, postcolonial and poststructural theorists have shown, “disinterested, thorough
and realistic analysis” is an epistemological and ontological impossibility (ibid.). Rather, the
globalisation narrative, for example, represents a “contested terrain described in conflicting
normative discourses that provide the concept [of globalisation] with positive, negative, or
ambivalent connotations” (Cvetkovich & Kellner, 1997, p. 3). Even globalisation processes
and tendencies “have a history and geography” (Edwards and Usher, 2000, p. 15). Therefore,
the way in which globalisation itself is, for example, formulated in policy “needs to be
located as a particular discourse of the contemporary moment that discursively constructs
future directions in a particular and often problematic way” (ibid., p. 5). Utopian and
dystopian narratives dominate the discourse on new Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) in particular and to such an extent that a great number of authors (e.g.,
Kellner, 1998; Snyder, 1997; Kenway, 1996; Burbules & Callister; 2000, Kapitzke, 1999)
warn that “one must avoid two extremes which would either denigrate and demonize
technology in the mode of technophobia, or celebrate and deify it in the mode of
technophilia” (Kellner, 1998). Univocally, these authors argue that utopian/dystopian themes
should therefore ‘best be avoided’ mostly because they constitute ‘binarist approaches’ and
as such tend to “overlook the complexities and the contradictions of sociotechnical activity
and educational change” (Kapitzke, 1999, p. 3). While this certainly may be the case, I
engage with utopian thinking, rather dismissing it, for several reasons. To start with, unless
there is a dialogue between various utopian, eutopian, dystopian and other futures imaging,
dominant social groups and ideologies will continue to define what is seen as utopian
(implying impossible and naïve) and what is to be seen as ‘the truth about the future’. This is
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problematic because it facilitates the colonisation of the future by particular visions and
images. Such colonised futures claim both universality as well as far-sightedness. The
problem with this claim is that alleged universality is usually claimed predominantly on the
basis of one’s own particular experiences and worldviews. In addition, “a ‘far sighted’
perspective” is developed “solely on the basis of one’s myopia” (Luke & Luke, 2000, p.
278). As I stated in Chapter One, the subject of this thesis is not to investigate what education
is going to be like in the future, or which utopia/eutopia/dystopia seems more plausible.
Rather, I argue that by focusing on utopian, eutopian and dystopian elements in all futures
visions, whether hegemonic or marginal ones, claims about particular futures ‘out there’ are
weakened.
Another reason why I engage with utopian and dystopian discourses is because they
bring with them the issues of ethics, values systems, and the emotional—that is, layers of
reality. There is a pretence in the academic discourse that truth is derived from rational and
intellectual reasoning and that the intellect can be separated from spheres of desire and
emotions. This reasoning is, however, most often based on certain assumptions that are rarely
debated. For example, whether a particular event, or a proposal in regard to educational
change is seen as desirable or undesirable by a particular person or a group will not only
depend on whether she or he is presented with convincing arguments either way. It will also
depend on how they feel about the argument and about the proposed direction of a specific
change. In addition, it will also depend on one’s own history and positioning in world
society, for example, one’s educational attainment, age, gender, race/ethnicity, genealogy,
ancestral presence (or the inability to feel it), samsara6 , class, dharma, geographical location,
karma, samskaras7 and so on. And, it will also depend on a particular philosophical position
and educational school of thought, approach to teaching and learning,
epistemology/ontology/worldview, and what education generally is considered to be about.
6
Samsara: “‘Flow’. The phenomenal world. Transmigratory existence, fraught with impermanence
and change. The cycle of birth, death and rebirth; the total pattern of successive earthly lives experienced by a
soul.” (Subramuniyaswami, 1993, p. 806)
7
Samskara: “Impression, activator; sanctification, preparation . . . The imprints left on the
subconscious mind by experience (from this or previous lives), which then color all of life, one’s nature,
responses, states of mind, etc. . . A sacrament or tithe made to mark a significant transition of life. [e.g.,]
samskara vidyarambha marks the beginning of formal education . . . samskara upanayana . . . marks the
beginning of the period of brahmacharya and formal study of scripture and sacred lore, usually with an acharya
or guru.” (ibid., pp. 806-807)
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In short, how a particular call for educational reform is made or perceived is also a matter of
belief. A focus on utopian and dystopian narratives helps to move the analysis in this
direction—methodological unpacking and layering are embedded—enabling an approach
that is more engaged with the ‘totality of human experience’.
To summarise, in this part of the thesis I question how discourses of ‘globalisation’
and ‘virtualisation’ are currently used, and what their overall impact on educational practices
is. I also ask what the underlying visions of the future behind the calls to globalise or
virtualise are, and what kind of worldviews, myths and approaches to time they assume. This
part of my thesis therefore asks how the currently dominant futures and utopian visions are
formed and what their main impact on education is. I investigate various utopian and
dystopian imaging that underlines much of the debate and discussion related to globalisation
and new ICTs. I also show the ways in which perceptions of what constitutes ‘global dreams
and global nightmares’ (Leyshon, 1997; Tomlison, 1999) are contingent on one’s own
positioning and worldview. Or, in which ways both contemporary and imagined (future)
spaces always exist within the context of ‘imaginary geographies’ and political moves (Pile
& Keith, 1992).
Although they are often discussed together, I have identified globalised and cyber
world, and education as two distinct futures and utopian visions. There are, of course, more
similarities here than differences, yet these two futures visions accentuate qualitatively
different phenomena, characteristics and possibilities. It could be convincingly argued that
taken together these two visions represent one particular direction for the future, for example,
towards the creation of a global network or global information society.
The ICT revolution has, of course, been “the most evident and highly popularized
aspect of globalization” (C.Luke, 2001, p. 46). It is often stressed that globalisation is made
possible predominately because of the development of new information and communication
technologies. Alternatively, globalisation is often seen as further enhancing the use of ICTs
by creating the need for their further implementation and development. For example, Manuel
Castells (1996, p. 13) argues that the current technological revolution has originated and
diffused in a historical period of “the global restructuring of capitalism, for which it was an
essential tool”. This did not happen by accident, continues Castells. Rather, the Keynesian
model of capitalist growth that earlier brought “previously unprecedented” economic
prosperity and social stability in the western world finally “hit the wall of its built-in
limitations in the early 1970s” (ibid., p. 19). Therefore, the capitalist system needed to
restructure and rejuvenate and this was made possible by technological innovation and
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organizational change, focused on flexibility and adaptability. Thus, concludes Castells

(ibid.), “informationalism is linked to the expansion and rejuvenation of capitalism, as
industrialism was linked to its constitution as a mode of production”. What finally resulted
was:
. . . the new society emerging from such a process of change [which] is both
capitalist and informational, while presenting considerable historical variation
in different countries, according to their history, culture, institutions, and to
their specific relationship to global capitalism and information technology.
(ibid., p. 13)
However, I here discuss globalised education and cyber education separately because
of their emphasis on significantly different material phenomena (e.g. economic vs.
technological) and because of their qualitatively distinctive “imaginaire” (Appadurai, 1996,
p. 31). I summarise these differences and similarities at the very end of this chapter and in the
concluding chapter.
4.2 The Globalisation Discourse
During the last decade of the 20th century, the concept of globalisation became “an
all-purpose catchword in public and scholarly debate” (Lechner & Boli, 2000, p. 1). It has
become the new ‘regime of truth’, “imbued with its own rationality and self-fulfilling logic”
(Blackmore, 2000, p. 133). Kelly (1999, p. 379) states that at the end of the millennium,
world globalisation has, together with ‘millennium’ itself, become “the new mantra for our
times”. As Robertson and Khondker (1998, p. 32) argue, the term ‘globalisation’ is therefore
in danger of becoming simply a ‘slogan’ as well as a “scapegoat for a wide range of
ecological, economic, psychological, medical, political, social and cultural problems”. This is
further elaborated by Lechner and Boli (2000, p. 1):
Government officials could attribute their country’s economic woes to the
onslaught of globalization, business leaders justified downsizing of their
companies as necessary to prepare for globalization, environmentalists
lamented the destructive impact of unrestrained globalization, and advocates
for indigenous peoples blamed the threatened disappearance of small cultures
on relentless globalization.
The globalisation discourse has greatly effected educational policy around the world,
to the extent that:
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. . . “globalization” (perceived in a particular way) has become an ideological

discourse driving change because of a perceived immediacy and necessity to
respond to a new world order. (Burbules & Torres, 2000, p. 2)
One of the consequences of this effect is that:
. . . the reconfiguration of pedagogical practices around the globe has taken on
a momentum that an earlier generation might well have considered startling
and disoriented. (Edwards & Usher, 2000, p. 1)
This part of Chapter Four consists of four sections. First, I analyse the globalisation
discourse and its impact on education (section 4.2.1). I argue that current policy actions
undertaken to realize ‘globalised education’ may not necessarily be connected to
‘globalisation processes’ per se, but possibly, to other social and historical forces. In
addition, I argue that the discourse about ‘globalised education’ and globalisation in general
is also a discussion about the direction for the future and not just an attempt to objectively
and impartially describe ‘the way things are’. Following the layered methodological
approach used throughout this thesis, I then investigate the underlying approach to time and
visions of the future (section 4.2.2). Section 4.2.3 and 4.2.4 focus on various utopian and
dystopian imaging that underlies visions of the globalised world and education. Here I
investigate the ways in which these utopian/dystopian narratives are formed within popular
and academic discourse on globalisation. In short, I argue that globalised space is both a
utopian and a dystopian space from which concrete local places of today are variously re-
imagined and re-thought. However, I maintain that too often these imaginations remain
locked within old hegemonic narratives and worldviews that globalisation processes
themselves are, in fact, continuously destabilising.
4.2.1 The globalisation discourse and its impact on education
There is little agreement among various theorists of globalisation on what

globalisation is or what it does (various positions are overviewed in, for example, Scholte,
2000, and Lechner and Boli, 2000). To some extent, this could be attributed to an awareness
that “there is, of course, no unitary ‘reality’ of globalization” (Gough, 2000, p. 77). Rather,
whatever awareness (of ‘globalisation’) may be ‘increasing’ is:
. . . a somewhat inchoate apprehension of complex, multiple, proliferating, and
immanent realities, overlaid (and further complicated) by our own reflexive
“awareness” of the need to be—and to be seen to be—aware that globalization
is, indeed, worthy of our attention. (ibid.)
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Nonetheless, the image of a globalised future, understood and described in a

particular way has been circulating around calls for educational reform for a few decades. In
particular, in ‘Anglo–American democracies’, such as Canada, the United States, Australia,
the United Kingdom, and New Zealand:
. . . educational policy debates are infused with the imagery of ‘globalisation’.
Whether debating assessment and evaluation, curricular context, or school
governance, and regardless of who is party to the debate (e.g. parents, union
leaders, politicians, business advocates), phrases like ‘increasing global
competition’, ‘international trade’, and ‘transnational exchange’ dominate.
(Davies & Guppy, 1997, p. 435)
In these calls for educational reform, globalisation is predominately understood in
two ways. Firstly, globalisation is understood as a powerful, ubiquitous and ‘monolithic
force’ (C. Luke, 2001a, p. 32) that is about to engulf us. While it is often debated whether
this globalised future is desirable or not when it comes to education, it is nevertheless
assumed as how things are going to be—it is hegemonic. And secondly, globalisation is
predominantly understood in terms of its economic dimension. As the discourse on
globalisation presents capitalism as an incombatible force (Gibson-Graham in Stromquist &
Monkman, 2000, pp. 20–21), the calls for educational reform stress the importance of
adjusting to an already given global (materialistic, technologically developed) future.
But, although globalisation is often portrayed as resembling some sort of ‘weather
pattern’ or ‘tsunami of change’ most globalisation processes are, in fact, governed. As many
authors convincingly argue (e.g., Weiss, 1998; Henderson, 1999), economic globalisation
depends on the active role of governments and policies that promote deregulation,
privatisation, liberalisation of capital flows, opening of national economies and so on.
Similarly, educational reforms (e.g., curriculum changes, standardized and centralized
testing, diverse cultural education and school administration) which were introduced in
countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and New Zealand, were made possible
through “the implementation of policy innovation and the adaptation of several reform
models” (Davies and Guppy, 1997, p. 435). In addition, argues Paul Ganderton (1996, p.
403), with regards to Australian curricular reforms there is “no evidence to suggest stronger
pressure from the outside”. Rather, “much of the pressure is self-generated [italics added]”
(ibid.). In the case of non-OECD nations pressures are also generated from particular policy
innovations. But in these cases pressures are generally imposed from outside, taking the form
of so-called structural adjustment policies.
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Rather than being a ‘ubiquitous and monolithic force’, what is recognised as

‘globalisation’ in fact consists of numerous small and large scale ‘asymmetric’, ‘dialectical’
and ‘disjunctive’ processes (Castells, 1996; Cvetkovich & Kellner, 1997; Appadurai, 1996;
Scholte, 2000; Lechner & Boli, 2000). These could be governed in various ways.
Globalisation discourse could be used for various ends. As argued in the introduction,
globalisation discourse can be used both to help promote imperatives of corporate capitalism
or, on the contrary, to promote social justice issues (as in, for example, issues raised by
global social movements). Which also means that some agency remains. It can both help
continue western imperialism and patriarchy or create opportunities for global transformation
that would change these historical systems of oppression. So far, however, the globalisation
discourse has predominately been used to argue that the type of education currently needed
is, above all, to provide future employability. This represents the victory of the ‘human
capital’ approach to education (Spring, 1998; A. Luke, 2002). Within this approach education
is, most of all, seen as an investment in the economy and is valued for its contribution to an
individual’s worth as measured by income (Spring, 1998). This “now rampant vision of
schooling, teaching and learning” is, therefore, “based solely on systemic efficacy at the
measurable technical production of human capital” (A. Luke, 2002, p. 1). There is an
increased pressure to reduce education to “a subsector of economy” (McLaren, 1998, p. 435)
and apply in education “an ensemble of policies ‘borrowed’ from business” (Ball, 1998, p.
117). Educational democracy is thus becoming “redefined as consumer democracy in the
educational marketplace” where “buying an education” became a substitute for “getting an
education” (Kenway, Bigum and Fitzclarence, 1993, p. 116). Furthermore, the globalisation
of learning “seems to uphold the idea that the whole world in a linear fashion has been
moving and will continue to move towards the ‘modern’ form of schooling” (Sweeting, 1996,
p. 389). Structural adjustment policies imposed on non-OECD nations are therefore
championed as meeting that end, as ways of becoming better adjusted within the global
educational marketplace. The commercialisation of education has in both OECD and non-
OECD nations been particularly promoted in the area of higher education. But, in countries
such as the USA, it has already found its way into institutions of both primary and secondary
education (Apple, 2001).
But if globalisation discourse can be used to promote various policies and
interventions in the present, why has it so far been mostly linked to demands to
commercialise and corporatise education? When calls for educational reform are made by
politicians and senior educational administrators, why is globalisation “not normally linked
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to” multiculturalism (Davies and Guppy, 1997, p. 440) or ecological issues, or issues of
global social sustainability? Or indeed, given all the talk about the ‘global knowledge
economy’ or global ‘learning society’, why is globalisation not normally linked to demands
for increased funds for education? Why is it that, even within the language of the corporate
world, education is “still more often described as a cost [rather] than as an investment”
(Levin, 1998, p. 131). Who decides that economic policy imperatives and the ideologies of
the market are to take precedence over social, cultural and environmental issues?
Several authors (e.g. Blackmore, 2000; Kenway et al., 1993; Apple, 2001; McLaren,
1998; Spring, 1998; Mason, 1998) suggest that this is because the push towards global
education is primarily dominated by the neo-liberalist agenda. It is this
perspective/worldview, that has managed to impose its own interpretation of
‘globalisation’—as an economic (and inevitable) force. This power to define is not only
connected to globalisation being understood in a particular way, it has also become one of the
‘call to the arms’ words that currently impact on education. As discussed earlier, so far this
call to arms has served some ideologies and worldviews, such as neo-liberalism, better than
others, such as those that focus on social justice issues. Currently, this means that while the
role of education as a key institution in the provision of skills and human capital formation is
being preserved (Odora Hoppers, 2000), other functions are being erased. Some of these
functions include the transmission of the normative heritage of particular societies and the
development of critical thought (ibid.), or promotion of spiritual and cultural values
(Maguey, cited in Stromquist and Monkman, 2000, p. 11). In addition, environmental issues
are also marginalised.
Not only is the push towards global education not motivated by social justice issues
but it has not been motivated by pedagogical imperatives either (Mason, 1998). What Mason
considers to be mostly pedagogical reasons include: benefits of a global student body;
improvement of access to educational resources; and expertise or expansion of knowledge.
He argues that, instead of being motivated by pedagogical concerns, the ‘globalisation of
education’ is motivated by the corporatisation of government—concerns for increased
efficiency. This has led to government policies, such as the drastic reduction in funding,
especially in higher education (ibid.); the view is that education, like other sectors of the
economy, should not be subsidized by the State. This, in turn, has forced administration and
policy makers to “look to global markets as a way of making up for falling government
revenues and falling numbers of traditional learners” (ibid., p. 6). The ‘globalisation of
education’ has predominately come to mean an effort to attract students from overseas and
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thus supplement for the reduction in government funding (Field, 1995, in Mason, 1998, p. 7).
Both students and education have thus become commodities, the former as customers and the
latter as a service to be shaped according to consumer demand (ibid.). As the push towards
globalised education is rarely motivated by pedagogical reasons as described above, it is not
surprising that, despite all the talk about the dramatic impact of globalisation, so far, very
little effort has been made towards globalising educational context, structure and practice,
along multicultural and transnational lines. Most global, or what Mason (1998, p. 12) terms
“pseudo–global”, courses still originate in North America. The majority of students are also
North Americans, occasionally being joined by students from Britain or Australia. These
courses are:
. . . global in fact but not in spirit—the content has not been altered; the
interactions are amongst people of the same culture (living at home and
abroad), the institution has not been re-engineered for a global mission. (ibid.)
Rather, the outcome has been in linking educational policy to economic needs and
productivity gains, with the exclusion of educators and other interests groups (e.g., women)
who are requested to temper their demands for equality so that the nation–states do not loose
their competitive global advantage (Blackmore, 2000, p. 134). Most efforts towards
globalised education are therefore currently organised in ‘piecemeal operations’ consisting
of:
. . . a good deal of flag-waving from senior staff, or idealistic visions of new
educational paradigms from educational technologists, or financial officers
rubbing their hands in expectation, but at the end of the day, a very few
academics and trainers are actually delivering something that could be called
global in parts. (Mason, 1998, p. 15)
Globalisation processes may have helped increase the flow of international students.
However, the direction of this flow is ‘principally south to north and east to west and to
English-speaking countries’ (C. Luke, 2001a, p. 38). It is clearly the case, argues Mason
(1998, p. 45), that ‘the leaders’ in the field of ‘global education’ are “predominantly Western,
the language in use predominately English, and the pedagogical and cultural approach
predominantly that of developed countries”. While this does not necessarily prove an
accelerating trend towards “unbridled westernization” (Rizvi, 2000, p. 221), such a
unidirectional movement certainly does not match the ideal of a truly globalised world—a
symmetrical flow of goods, services and ideas. Access to overseas education remains
reserved to non-western elites who are indeed not the passive recipients of westernisation,
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but subjects actively engaged in the discursive negotiations within global spaces (ibid.).
While there is a great demand in developing countries for western degrees and certification,
this does not imply passive engagement with western education by those living in non-
western societies. Mason (1998, p. 46) reports that people in developing countries whom he
interviewed feel it is “reverse colonialism” for westerners to take the stance that “we feel it is
bad for you to want our degrees, so we will try to prevent them being available”. Rather, it is
precisely this attitude by which westerners perpetuate their “role of knowing what is best for
others” (ibid.) that is the problem. Still, these negotiations have not challenged the overall
assumption that the expertise and knowledge still belong to traditional ‘centers’ of economic
and political power. Appadurai (1996, p. 32) argues that, as a complex, overlapping and
disjunctive order, the new global cultural economy can no longer be understood “in terms of
existing center–periphery models”. However, in the area of education, the center–periphery
structure will break down once degrees from Cambridge, Oxford or Harvard provide similar
advantage in the global market to degrees from, for example, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
Quaid-I-Azam University or Zhejiang University (see Illustration 4.1).
In addition, education aimed at creating a movable, flexible and ‘globalised’ working
force is premised on the notion of an ‘ideal worker’, and this idea in turn based on the
experiences of an independent professional man. The vision of a globalised world in which
both capital and labour are to go ‘to the highest bidder’, that is, to those that offer them the
best conditions, discounts factors other than ‘skills’, ‘knowledge’, ‘merit’, ‘competence’ and
‘expertise’. If the globalisation discourse and ‘globalised education’ are used to promote a
movable labour force, factors such as social and ecological embeddedness in a particular
local place are effectively discounted. Modern, industrial education separated the
‘reproductive’ as opposed to the ‘productive’ aspects of education (Roland Martin, 1981, pp.
3–20) and have thus effectively discounted and discredited women’s contributions to the
education of children. As only official, formal, public education is to be counted as
‘education’, women have, in general, remained invisible in educational history (see Chapter
Three). The globalisation of education not only continues to discount the ‘reproductive’
aspects of education, it also prescribes the moving of educational ‘production’ even further
away from a ‘private’ sphere. If one is expected to get degrees from the best educational
institutions that are located thousands of miles away, one cannot remain embedded in one’s
own locality, where women’s ‘strengths’ are usually based and priorities and investments
made. Of course, the assumption is that globalised education is coupled with ‘distance
education’ and therefore an individual can get the best of both worlds. There are numerous
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problems with this assumption and I will discuss them in the section that deals with cyber
education. What will suffice here is to say that, as it is women who have, so far, invested
more in the ‘reproductive’ aspects of education and the ‘private’ and local communal sphere,
globalisation discourse used in the ways described above does not reflect women’s interests
and priorities. Rather, it is deeply embedded in patriarchal reasoning and thus fails to
significantly disturb the patriarchal project of the future.
Illustration 4.1
Token multicultualism at western ‘universities for the future’, International Student Guide 2000-2001,
USQ, Australia, 2001.
To summarise, global issues and concerns in the area of education have a long
history. As Gough (2000, p. 80) argues, these global issues and concerns have predominantly
functioned as topics or themes in specific learning areas, such as history and geography, or in
more recent curriculum areas such as development, industrialisation, peace studies and
environment. But learning about these ‘global issues’ is potentially a traumatic activity
because most educators “despite their commitment to global understanding, may make things
worse for students by teaching about global issues as if this were solely a cognitive
endeavour” (Hicks, 2001b, p. 423). While over the last 25 years, global education
predominately meant dealing with issues such as environment, development and human
rights, peace and conflict, race, gender, health and education (ibid., p. 413) and was in some
ways connected to issues of social justice, recently, ‘global education’ has come to mean
something else (see Illustration 4.2). The discourse has been changed, even ‘hijacked’, and is
increasingly used to denote the need for competition and market-based strategies in
education. As described earlier, ‘globalised education’ has mostly come to mean vocational
education necessary for preparation for a competitive market force.
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Illustration 4.2
Educating in harmony, within a globalised multicultural community, Image from AvantCard postcard,
Australia, 2001.
The image of globalised education is thus currently evoked by politicians and senior
educational administrators predominately in order to promote the establishment of a global
marketplace rather than to promote global peace and wellbeing (Jones, 1998, p. 143).
Imagined in such a way, global education represents the ‘collective aspirations’ (Appadurai,
1996) of particular social groups—those that benefit from global capitalism the most. Thus,
the preoccupation with the global remains geographically located among the affluent and
industrialised nations.
However, this need not be the case. Globalisation processes themselves provide
opportunities for opening ‘spaces of enclosure’ (Lankshear, Peters and Knobel, 1996) and
great hope for the emergence of transcultural and international dialogues and learning. They
may help create what Mason (1998) identifies as ‘truly global education’, that is, an
education where a continuous and comprehensive awareness of the world as a whole is
reflected within an educational context, structure and practice. Truly globalised teaching and
learning would occur in a context where education is no longer regarded as an important
element in nation–building, but as education for the world that is both multicultural and
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trans-national (ibid.). This theme is picked up by Willis, Minoura and Enloe (1996) who
argue for transcultural, transnational and international education as a legitimate future vision
for education. This would, according to them, include the multiplex visions of culture(s),
education(s), and experience(s), and also suggest new possibilities for educational systems,
educational methods, and educational policies (ibid.).
However, while there are spaces for transformation within globalisation, these are
derived from current realities and the conventional vision of the future. Rather than opening
old ‘spaces of enclosure’, globalisation discourse is currently predominantly used to
propagate a particular project for the future that continues the western and patriarchal
hegemony. The discourse about ‘globalised education’ is, therefore, not the objective and
impartial description of ‘how things are’ or ‘are going to be’, as is often assumed. Rather, the
globalisation discourse is used to argue for the inevitability of a particular future ‘out there’,
the future in which dominance of western and patriarchal models of education is
unquestioned.
Continuing the layered approach of unpacking the assumptions beyond the litany of
the description of the hegemonic vision, in this case globalisation, the following section
investigates in detail the approach to time and the vision for the future that underlies the
vision of a globalised world and globalised education. I then investigate utopian and
dystopian narratives on the globalised world and globalised education. As argued earlier,
both reaffirm the certain ‘truth’ about the future: a future colonised by the image of a
globalised, pan–capitalist world.
4.2.2 The approach to time and the vision of the future
Quite often, globalisation is represented not so much as a historical tendency

or a complex process, but as an outcome: a ‘new order’. (Dicken, Peck and
Tickell, 1997, p. 158)
Depending on one’s interpretation, the history (or histories) of globalistion(s) might
go back several hundred or even thousand years. While debates abound about history and the
nature of globalisation, globalisation as a hypothesis that best explains current reality can be
more easily located geographically and temporally.
Geographically, the globalisation hypothesis originated in western societies, the vast
majority of its theorists being USA or western European male academics. That is,
globalisation has been predominately theorised from the western spatial location as well as
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from the perspective of male embodiment. Which means that, so far, globalisation has itself
“been analysed from a very un-global perspective” (Massey, 1994, p. 166).
More relevant to this thesis is the temporal location of how globalisation is
hypothesized. Historically, the globalisation hypothesis coincided with the coming of the
Christian millenium, emerging in the 1980s and increasing in influence during the last decade
of the 20th century. It has coincided with a period in western history that can be characterised
by a certain void in socio-economic futures visions. As narratives on progress and
development were weakened by postmodern, postcolonial and feminist discourses, the space
opened and the need arose for another guiding image of the future to appear. Globalisation—
as process and theory—became a useful replacement for these old narratives. It has helped
name more concretely the vaguely described ‘New World Order’. It has also helped replace
more problematic terms such as ‘monopoly capital’ or ‘world capitalism’, conveniently
neutralising anti-capitalist rhetoric. The globalised future has, therefore, not come to
represent the victory of ‘the Right’ in the historical ideological battle with the ‘Left’. More
conveniently, it has come to represent a whole new system with a new set of rules that can
potentially benefit all humanity. While, arguably, this may be the case, this globalised future
can clearly be identified as a new phase within western and patriarchal understandings of
time and social change. As Cvetkovich and Kellner (1997, pp. 13–14) write:
In many mainstream social theories, the discourse of the global is bound up
with ideological discourses of modernization and modernity, and from Saint-
Simon and Marx through Habermas and Parsons, globalisation and
modernization are interpreted in terms of progress, novelty and innovation,
and a generally beneficial negation of the old, the traditional, and the obsolete.
In this discourse of modernization, the global is presented as a progressive
modernizing force; the local stands for backwardness, superstition,
underdevelopment, and the oppressiveness of tradition.
But although the globalisation hypothesis may be recent, as mentioned earlier, the
processes of globalisation in themselves are not. Material processes that are usually attributed
as the drivers of globalisation, such as communications and other technological innovations,
markets and finance, prototypical global organisations and migrations, have been current for
many centuries if not millennia (Robertson, 1992; Pieterse, 2000; Tomlison, 1999; Hirst,
1997). Most importantly, the imagining of the world as ‘one place’ preceded the
development of more substantive social relations and technologies of globalisation (Scholte,
2000, p. 62). This imagination has been current for many centuries and was most obviously
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apparent among, but not exclusive to, world religions (ibid., p. 64). This imagination of the
global is also connected with western expansionism. As argued by O’Sullivan (1999):
Before 1492, cartographical procedures for mapping commerce routes were
flat. For Europeans, Columbus moved the mapping systems for commerce
from a flat surface to a globe. The globe is a mapping device made for
commerce today. The language of globalization is first and foremost for
commercial purposes. (p. 194)
While often used interchangeably, the terms ‘planetary’ and ‘global’ actually imply
two different things, further argues O’Sullivan (ibid.). While ‘a planet’ implies “organic
totality . . . [that] we are one species living on a planet called ‘Earth”, ‘globe’ implies “a
cartological map [and] is a construct of human artifice” (ibid.). As the notions of ‘globe’ and
‘global’ were invented to help expand European markets, these concepts are, in essence,
connected to European colonisation and imperialism. The desire for the ‘global’, thus,
precedes the most recent ‘take’ on globalisation processes, as in the hypothesis if
globalisation. It also precedes the most recent ‘awareness’ that the world is becoming ‘one
place’. Rather, it came out of a particular view that has, in turn, created desire and the need
for particular technologies, now seen as the sole force behind ‘globalisation’.
Illustration 4.3
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Illustration on previous page: Globalisation: “A New World? USA, September 2001”. Image by Peter
Corrigan, postcard for sociological conference, retrieved from www.tasa.org.au
In addition, the ‘Global Age’ (Albrow, 1997) has recently come to represent a new,
emerging order (see Illustration 4.3), in line with similar theorising that puts an emphasis on
slightly different phenomena (e.g., ‘post–industrial’, ‘postmodern’, information or knowledge
society). The Global Age has become the new image for the future and globalised world, the
new ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983). This new image encompasses previous
metaphors of ‘post–industrial’ and ‘postmodern’ society, becoming a new phase, a new
direction towards progress, development and linear evolution. This clearly locates it within
the western ‘imaginaire’—“a constructed landscape of collective aspirations” (Appadurai,
1996). In addition, as Albrow writes (1997, p. 1), the new ‘global age’ is also sometimes
referred to using the following metaphors: “age of automation”, “atomic age”, “electronic
age”, “solar age”. This too locates the global age within concerns, priorities, desires and
experiences within industrially developed societies. As discussed in Chapter Three, the
previously described periodisation arises from within the western timeline and a particular
western understanding of time, progress and development.
Illustration 4.4
Globalisation, environmental degradation and time impoverishment. Image from New Internationalist,
343 (2002, front cover).
Not surprisingly, compressed, globalised time does not follow the tradition of so-
called ‘event time’ of cultures and individuals that perceive human activity “as a measure of
time and not the other way around” (Szalai quoted in Levine, 1997, p. 60). Neither is it
women’s “glacial”, “shadow” or “rhythmical” time (Urry, 2000, p. 439; Adam, 1995, p. 52;
Fox, 1989, p. 127). It does not allow for time to be seen as ‘intergenerational’ (Urry, 2000, p.
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429) or as existing in the “eternal present” (Levine, 1997, p. 94; Lawlor, 1991; Voigt &
Drury, 1997; Judge, 1993, Wildman, 1997). Rather, it is an “instantaneous time” of a ‘three–
minute culture” (Urry, 2000, pp. 432–433), an “evolutionary progression from a ‘time
surplus’ to a ‘time affluence’ to a ‘time famine’ society”, which is how most developed
countries could now be characterised (Levine, 1997, p. 13) (see Illustration 4.4). It is only
possible where there is a “mechanical approach to human beings” rather than a focus on
people and their collective well being, argues Levine (ibid., pp. 18–19, 74). As “people are
prone to move faster in places with vital economies, a high degree of industrialization, larger
populations, cooler climates, and a cultural orientation toward individualism” (ibid., p. 9),
compressed globalised time reflects time understood and lived among the affluent west.
‘Globalised time’ is thus not only about the ‘shrinking of space and time’. It also reflects how
time is experienced and how this experience is perceived and conceptualized within the
industrially developed west. Needless to say, this experience is neither universal nor ‘global’.
Illustration 4.5
Time becoming space? Image by Salvador Dali, in Hughes (1991, p.239).
While Levine argues that globalised time follows in the tradition of the industrial
linear one, others (Nowotny, 1994; Tyrrell, 1995; Urry, 2000) argue that compressed
globalised time is radically different from the more conventional linear one. That is,
globalised time is ‘instantaneous’ and ‘simultaneous’ (Nowotny, 1994; Tyrrell, 1995; Urry,
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2000). It is not linear (Illustration 4.5). Digital clocks and watches are different from the
conventional watch that indicates that time, indeed, is passing, writes Meeker (1987, p. 57):
Digital clocks and watches convey no such context [indicating time passing].
Impaired instruments that they are, they are unable to comprehend more than
one instant at a time, with nothing to hint that there is a process going on that
includes what went before and what comes after. A digital timepiece
resembles a highly trained specialist who has learned to do only one thing, to
do it very well, and to ignore all surroundings and relationships. Digital
watches and narrow visions fit together very well, and both are signs of our
time.
Illustration 4.6
Mechanical approach to nature and instantaneous digital time of the ‘three minute culture’, both signs
of our times: The University of Southern Queensland brochure, 2001.
Still, globalised time is based on “contemporary technologies and social practices”

themselves based “upon time frames that lie beyond conscious human experience” (Urry,
2000, p. 433). As such it is based not on measuring time by human activities or
environmental changes but on the clock time. In addition, it is based on Anglo–American
cultures, and their addiction “to rapid and perpetual change” (Levine 1997, p. 44). Globalised
time is still seen as a commodity, a product, even money; as something that passes, that can
be wasted, that can be saved and bought (Evans-Pritchard in Urry, 2000, p. 417). Inactivity
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still equates with “doing nothing”, signaling “waste and void” (Levine, 1997, p. 41). Within
the Anglo–American cultural context, Levine (ibid.) argues, inactivity is dead time:
Even leisure time in the United States is planned and eventful. We live in a
culture where it is not uncommon for people to literally run in order to relax,
or to pay money for the privilege of pacing on a treadmill. It sometimes seems
as if life is constructed with the primary goal of avoiding the awkwardness
and sometimes the terror of having nothing to do.
Like industrial time, globalised time also continues to be exported and forced upon
individuals and societies that may have different relationships to time. Globalised time
demands the compression of education processes—the need to be perpetually available,
around the clock, without an “excuse to [ever] be away from e-mail for more than 12 hours at
the time” (Dator, 2002). Those that are, still risk being called ‘slow’ and ‘incompetent’. This
attitude continues to devalue the future, as argued by Adam (1998, in Chapter Three). So,
while education is to prepare children for the future, the future itself is devalued and
immediate gratification promoted. Both concerns for future generations as well as of the
environment are missing from such a ‘compressed’, instantaneous approach to time. Also
missing are concerns and priorities raised by women and those from non-western traditions
(as will be seen in the next chapter).
But this approach to time remains necessary if it is materialistic, pan–consumer
oriented, uni-chronous future that is desired. Both a call to ‘globalise’ the world and a call to
globalise education are most often made by evoking the futures image of an economically
developed global society in which everybody benefits, eventually. Behind this, there is also
an assumption that “a single culture and society will, in time, come to occupy the planet”
(Little, 1996, p. 427) (Illustrations 4.7 and 4.8). At the same time, this image of a globalised
future is understood and described mostly in terms of the future becoming (even) more
competitive, challenging, with risk professionally managed. Given the ‘victory’ of economic
globalisation, in this future world there is little space left for alternative ways of living and
doing things. Implicit in this future is that globalisation continues to be influenced mostly
from ‘above’, by multi-nationals and states. The world is populated by the global consumer,
social order is profit–oriented and the focus is on ‘wants’ and instant satisfaction of needs. To
fulfill these ‘wants’ there are ever increasing material products and material choices.
Intellectual development and property remains paramount and only rational aspects of
knowledge are still valued. This reflects the current situation in which most “. . . knowledge
that has circulated in global spaces to date has continued to exhibit the core rationalist
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attributes of secularism, anthropocentrism, scientism and instrumentalism” (Scholte, 2000, p.

185).
Receiving particular gendered and cultural messages: a young consumer in a Hong Kong toy store
(left), (New Internationalist 343, p. 12); and (right) Selling American dreams globally (New
Internationalist 308, front cover).
The main role of education, then, is to adapt and adjust rather than to focus on
future possibilities. Education is mostly seen to be market-led suggesting a
“utilitarian future curriculum that would be narrowly vocational”. (Ganderton,
1996, p. 395)
As I have argued earlier, the main debates do not seek to question the globalised
future as the future, but whether globalisation is ‘a bad’ or ‘a good’ thing:
Is globalization beneficial to the cause of economic growth, equality, and
justice, or is it harmful? Does it promote cultural sharing, tolerance, and a
cosmopolitan spirit, or does it yield only the illusion of such understanding, a
bland, consumerist appreciation, as in a Disney theme park, which elides
issues of conflict, difference, and asymmetries of power? (Burbules & Torres,
2000, pp. 13–14)
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Given that the processes of globalisation are ‘deeply asymmetric’ (Castells, 1996),
‘dialectical’ (Cvetkovich & Kellner, 1997, p. 2), and ‘disjunctive’ (Appadurai, 1996), it is
impossible to determine whether the consequences of globalisation are mostly good or bad.
There is even disagreement on whether the prevailing discourse on globalisation is ‘rather
optimistic’ (Stromquist & Monkman, 2000, p. 19) or mostly about “unmediated negative
effects” (C. Luke, 2001a, p. 48).
Thus, globalised education is seen both as beneficial (by some) and detrimental (by
others). The difference compared to counter–hegemonic and alternative visions is that, being
a hegemonic vision for the future, the dystopian (a critique) elements are much more
prominent in globalisation than in alternative futures. This too will further be explored in
Chapter Five. The following section investigates utopian, eutopian and dystopian narratives
on globalisation.
4.2.3 The globalised wo rld and education: utopian and eutopian versions
The globalised world is essentially a vision of a utopian society, or at least a eutopian

society. It should not be seen only as an argument for opening up national markets, as a push
of the future, but as a compelling pull of the future.
According to its proponents, although the negative consequences of globalisation are
certainly regrettable, they are either seen as minimal or are justified as something that needs
to be endured so that humanity as a whole can at the end benefit. As Peter Martin (P. Martin,
2000) passionately argues, globalisation is “the best thing that has happened in the lifetime of
the post-war generation”, including those residing in non-western countries (pp. 12–13). This
is because:
It [globalisation] will lead to an irreversible shift of power away from the
developed countries to the rest of the world . . . [It] . . . is simply untrue, both
in relative and in absolute terms, . . . that there are many more losers than
winners from globalisation . . . It is sometimes said that free trade must cede
precedence to more elevated values. Surely there is no more elevated values
than delivering billions of people from poverty, creating opportunities for
choice and personal development, and reinforcing democracy all round the
world? The liberal market economy is by its very nature global. It is the
summit of human endeavor [italics added]. (ibid.)
Illustration 4.9 (on following page)
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Globalisation, the summit of human endeavor? Image from Cornish (1984, front cover).
Here Martin not only advocates globalisation but also promotes a particular desired
vision for the future, that of a neo-liberal global democracy. While not everyone is as
enthusiastic as Martin, most authors mention at least some positive aspects of globalisation
which often include: a shift towards the understanding of human differences within the
unified view of humanity; increased ecological consciousness; higher cultural interchange;
more consumer and employment choices; and the opening up of possibilities in travel,
communication, and business (Kofman & Youngs, 1996, Lenchner & Boli, 2000): an
authentic eutopia.
This is true as well for education:
At its most visionary, the ideal of global education is one of a movement away
from the bounded classroom, seen as a haven from the world, self-contained
and static, to a dynamic synergy of teachers, computer-mediated instructional
devices, and students collaborating to create a window on the world.
Interaction with learners on a global scale leads to an increased awareness of
the extraordinary complexity of interrelations and a relativistic comprehension
and tolerance of diverse approaches to understanding. (Mason, 1998, p. 6)
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Globalisation is, therefore, marked by the disruption of modernist educational

practices that in many ways constitute previously mentioned spaces of enclosure (Lankshear
et al., 1996). Thus, it is argued that it can open up some spaces for critical–emancipatory
education (Edwards and Usher, 2000, p. 154) and the possibility to creatively re-imagine
educational practices. According to Derrick Cogburn (2002), this re-location created by
globalisation will influence the creation of a new system of knowledge, education and
learning that will include many components that do not currently exist. This new system of
knowledge, education and learning could and according to Cogburn (2002) should include
the following key components: a focus on abstract concepts; a holistic, as opposed to linear,
approach; enhancement of the student’s ability to manipulate symbols and to acquire and
utilise knowledge; production of an increased quantity of scientifically and technically
trained persons; blurring of the distinction between mental and physical labour;
encouragement of students to work in teams; use of virtual teams around the world. In
addition, there is the emergence of “an agile and flexible system” that effectively “breaks the
boundaries of space and time” (ibid., para. 31).
The benefits of a global student body are connected with the creation of a network
which has the ability to energize, diversify, and deepen what is thought (O’Donnell in
Mason, 1998, p. 4). Globalisation, in fact, argues O’Donnell (ibid.), mitigates against the
usually dominant Western worldview.
Another compelling educational justification for globalised education is that of
access:
Whether potential students be geographically remote, time constrained,
financially constrained, house-bound, disabled, or simply unable to find a
course on the subject they want locally, there exist large un-met educational
needs which every research report, policy study and educational analysis
shows are increasing. (Mason, 1998, p. 4)
Another purely educational rationale for promotion of global courses is that:
. . . the expertise of the few can be made available to the many, such that those
in remote areas can have the same access to educational resources, specialist
courses and renowned experts as those located in large cities and developed
parts of the world. (ibid.)
Global curriculum can provide students with a much broader perspective than a
course presented by a single lecturer or developed by a single institution (ibid., p. 6). While
neo-Marxist and other similar ideologies might not look favourably to the trend towards
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student–as–consumer, Edwards (1995, in Mason, 1998) argues that this too can have positive
outcomes. Knowledge is exchanged on the basis of the usefulness it has to the consumer:
…effectively empowering the learner and forcing the providers of education
to concern themselves with students’ needs, rather than with the transmission
of a pre-established canon of knowledge (Mason, 1998, p. 7)
Courses demanded by the global consumer will become flexible, adaptable, portable
and interactive, and all this could promise great benefits for the student body. Even for the
traditionally disadvantaged social groups within education, such as women, globalised
education (e.g., the corporate university) could potentially increase women’s chances in the
job market. As potential customers, women could influence the changes in both learning
environments and curricula. For example, in the area of higher education, educational
institutions might decide to compete for female students by making studying more accessible
and more flexible for women, allowing re-entries, providing child care, and more effectively
addressing sexual harassment issues. These educational institutions could also be motivated
to shift curricula towards inclusion of women and women’s perspectives as well as to
diminish gender bias in most disciplines (Milojevic, 2000, pp. 177–178). Some of these
developments are already occurring in many places, but they can also develop a new
momentum. Globalisation thus represents a sign of hope, of the transformative future that can
be.
4.2.4 The globalised world and education: dystopian version
The dystopian version, however, seems equally compelling. The negative

consequences that are mentioned most often include the widening gap between the rich and
poor globally and within nation states, further environmental degradation (Illustrations 4.10
and 4.11) and continuation of cultural colonisation. The educational, culturalist and social
science discourse on globalisation has produced “volumes of scholarship” that present the
negative effects of globalisation (C. Luke, 2001a, p. 48):
Among these are the obliteration of local cultures, the demise of nation–states,
the erosion of cultural identity and tradition, the loss of sense of place and
home, the technologising of everyday life and concomitant compression of
space and time and loss of “authentic” communications, a global sameness of
desires and consumption patterns, and a dramatic blowout of social
inequalities and unequal capital accumulation.
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Illustration 4.10
Globalisation, dystopian version, image from AvantCard postcard, Australia, 2001.
192
Illustration 4.11
Globalisation, dystopia, image from Nicholson (2000, front cover).
The dystopian reasoning also focuses on the undesirability of consumerism in general

and the concern that education is becoming “a product to be bought and sold, to be packaged,
advertised and marketed” (Mason, 1998, p. 8). There is also a concern that globalised
education might support the further breakdown of the community by offering a much less
substantial substitute in the form of virtual communities (ibid.). There are concerns about
colonisation, imperialist attitudes, the loss of indigenous cultures and the relentless
imposition of western values (ibid.) (Illustrations 4.12 and 4.13). Global educators are seen as
the new colonizers, insensitively spreading their own views of the world to developing
nations in the mistaken belief that they are actually helping people (ibid., p. 7). Globalised
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Illustration 4.12
th
Selling what? Exoticised image of “the Other” in advertisement for Thai airlines. Image from Time, 5
February, 2001, inside cover and p. 1.
education will thus weaken national initiatives to develop local educational provisions for
local needs; globalisation is likely to help create the potential for a post-colonial dependency
on another ‘developed’ nation (Evans, 1995; in Mason, 1998, p. 10).
Illustration 4.13
Globalisation = Americanisation = dystopia, Image from New Internationalist, 308 (1998, p. 11).
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Focusing on the ‘hardest’ definitions of both globalisation and learning, Anthony

Sweeting concludes that the prospects presented of the globalisation of learning “would seem
to many a very dire, nightmarish one” (Sweeting, 1996, p. 384):
Instead of the line-workers (teachers and students) having to sacrifice
individual styles and idiosyncratic enthusiasm in order to satisfy national
criteria, they would have to make the same and, perhaps, additional, sacrifices
in order to meet global criteria. The opportunities for bureaucratic rigidities to
smother all forms of creativity as, for example, officially authorized check-
lists were utilized, would be legion. Lock–step progress towards publicly pre-
announced ‘key–stages’ or ‘targets’ would become the major item on the
hidden agenda of all schools. The worst, repetition–riddled, aspects of mastery
learning would be in the ascendant in most schools that feared dropping in
status. And in the populist name of ‘parent power’ and the econometric name
of ‘accountability’, efforts would probably be made via techniques of
behaviour modification to ensure a docile, hard–working, conformist group of
students.
From a Foucauldian perspective, this may not be anything new, as the creation of
docile and conformist group of students is inherent in how education has been practiced
within most societies and throughout most historical periods. Still, Sweeting argues that one
very probable outcome—whenever the expression globalisation of learning is taken to mean
a deliberate effort on the part of one group of people to globalise the learning of the
majority—would be nothing short of an “Orwellian nightmare” (ibid.).
While globalisation has increased the need for education, Frances Stewart (1996, p.
332) argues, it has also made it “more difficult for many countries to provide it in sufficient
quantity or quality”. The problem, of course, is that globalisation is being inextricably linked
with the neo-liberal emphasis on increasing the role of the market and reducing that of the
state, which also involves a downward pressure on government expenditure (ibid.). But it is
unrealistic to expect improvement in quality and access with little or no increase in public
expenditure (Vaidyanatha Ayyar, 1996, p. 348). Not surprisingly, in about two–thirds of the
countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America where educational expenditures were
significantly cut (e.g., from 30% in Argentina to about 60% in Nigeria and Zambia),
pressures to ‘globalise’ have not improved access but have rather resulted in reduced school
attendance (Stewart, 1996, p. 332). In addition to reduced school attendance, other
consequences of reduced public funding include a worsening quality of education and a
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negative impact on gender equity (Stewart, 1996, p. 332; McGinn, 1997, p. 43). This means
that unless the critical importance of education is recognised, the forces of globalisation will
lead to dire consequences:
. . . the uneducated within and among countries will become an underclass,
with low and often falling incomes, large families, poor nutrition, and acute
gender imbalances since where education is poor it is invariably girls who
suffer most. (Stewart, 1996, p. 333)
Illustration 4.14
Globalisation: Satisfying everyone’s needs? Postcard from Afghanistan.
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Illustration 4.15
Opening of the markets will increase women’s choices? Image from advertising catalogue, Myer,
Australia, 2001.
In addition to the negative impact on gender equity in education, restructuring caused

by the extension of global capitalism will impact negatively on women in other areas as well.
Since in both ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ world societies women provide and are expected to
provide services that buffer the negative aspects of this restructuring (e.g., Afshar &
Barrientoes, 1999; Heyzer, Kapoor and Sandler, 1995; U.N., 1999; UNIFEM, 2000), they
will have to cope with additional pressures to care for the family and community. The
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benefits that may result from national economic restructuring, such as more job opportunities
and greater consumer choice, will continue to be reserved for younger and educated
professional women. It will be only some women that will benefit from these processes, and
the majority will be left behind. Contrary to the eutopian version of globalised education
potentially benefiting either some or maybe even the majority of women, there are concerns
here that this would occur in an environment that is, in general, increasingly hierarchical,
unequal and insecure. Globalisation, even while benefiting some women, will fail to radically
transform gender relationships, the nature of education, and the patriarchal character of our
societies (Milojevic, 2000, p. 178) (Illustrations 4.14 and 4.15). The transformation of the
patriarchal character of our societies is the main focus within feminist alternatives which I
discuss in Chapter Five. But before focusing on narratives counter and alternative to the
mainstream discourse of the futures of education, I first investigate another hegemonic
futures vision, that of the ‘information society’ and cyber education.
4.3 The Information Technology ‘Revolution’
The future begins with e? The University of Southern Queensland brochure, 2001.
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At precisely the same moment that the planet is being constructed within the
powerful, pervasive all consuming logic of the market, there is a second order
language, a fairy tale . . . that suggests in Utopian terms new possibilities, in
particular those presented by the new alchemies of ‘the Net’. (Tracey, 1997, p.
50)
Imagination without technology can lead to utopias in the desert; technology

without imagination can end up shredding the soul. (Arizpe, 1999, p. xiii)
This part of Chapter Four is organised similarly to the previous discussion on

globalisation. I first map the discourse on new ICTs and their impact on education, the litany.
I then investigate the underlying vision of the future that currently informs calls for
virtualising education. Thirdly, I organise debates and discussions in relation to new ICTs
and education along utopian, eutopian and dystopian narratives. And, fourthly, I conclude by
challenging the assumption that technologies are in themselves neutral, and focus on ICTs
social, cultural and gender aspects. Thus, the litany of the discourse of ICTs is unpacked in a
layered fashion.
4.3.1 New technologies and their impact on education
In a mere fifty years the computer has come from being a huge vacuum tube
filled machine that counts, adds, subtracts, divides, multiplies, and stores
information to a desktop and even a laptop wizard of communication,
visualisation, entertainment, and work station. Every educator, from those old
timers still unsure if they can master and use this new “machine”, to those
younger ones for whom the computer was an integral part of their home life
and schooling, all know that the computer will (if it has not already) become a
major tool of teaching and learning and a ubiquitous feature of daily life in the
twenty-first century. (Burniske and Monke, 2001, p. ix)
Over the last several decades, and particularly over the last few years, the
‘information technology revolution’ discourse has “saturated the media, the marketplace, and
the public imagination” (C. Luke, 2000b, p. 69). While the theme of the last decade might
have been “globalize or die” (Inayatullah & Gidley, 2000, p. 9), the current theme appears to
be more like “virtualize or disappear” (ibid.). The implications for education in industrially
developed nations have been tremendous. For example, Luke (C. Luke, 2000b) writes that:
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[c]omputer studies have been implemented hastily over the last decade with
relatively little teacher or parent resistance. If anything, we have witnessed a
tidal wave of financial and in-principle support from federal and state
governments for successive initiatives: in the 1980s, to put a computer in
every classroom: in the early 1990s to put a computer on every child's desk:
and by the mid-1990s, to have every classroom wired. (p. 426)
Illustration 4.16
Leading the way in higher education. TAFE billboard, Caboolture, Australia, July 2002.
In addition, not only have computers been embraced with “fervor” (ibid.), numerous
claims have been made in relation to the revolutionary potential of new ICTs in education.
These utopian narratives have been met by equally passionate claims about imminent dangers
ahead.
From their early days of being ‘counting machines’ computers have come a long way.
But, at the same time, computers are also predominately technological tools, so why have
they been met with so much excitement, ‘hype’ (Snyder, 1997) and ‘ecstasy’ (C. Luke,
1996a)? Is it because they are ‘new’? Is it because every new technology creates passionate
responses from people, even love/hate relationships, whenever they are introduced, as C.
Luke (2001a) seems to suggest?
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Although many saw their potential early on, nothing fueled public imagination as
much as the ideas of the Internet, Cyberspace or a ‘World Brain’ that computers suddenly
made possible. As early as 1938, H.G. Wells advocated the development of the World Brain,
hoping that it would eventually produce a World Mind, able to cope with all available
knowledge as well as prevent war (Rossman, 1992, p. 77). According to Goodman (in
Rossman, 1992, p. 77), a thorough history of the idea of the World Brain would go much
further into history. It would find its roots in the development of the first libraries in ancient
Alexandria and Greece, in Comenius’s 17th century idea for a Pansophic College, in efforts of
the French Encyclopedists, and in appearance of numerous ‘World Brain’–like institutions in
late 19th century Europe and America (ibid., pp. 76–77). The more recent push for the
creation of a worldwide, electronic, ‘borderless educational infosphere’ came from the 1970s
with the creation of the Internet. It is common knowledge by now that the Internet was
created because of, and in the climate of, the Cold War, and to support military and industrial
complex. It was imagined in the 1960s by the US Defense Department Advance Research
Project Agency, with the main goal of preventing the destruction of American
communications in case of nuclear war (Castells, 1996, p. 6). The idea was to create a
network that could not be controlled from any center, would be made up of thousands of
autonomous computer networks able to independently link up as well as to avoid certain
electronic barriers imposed by the ‘enemy’. But, despite its origin within the military sector,
it was not militarism but other fundamental characteristics of American society that
determined the form and evolution of new ICTs (ibid., p. 5). According to Castells:
. . . the technological blossoming that took place in the early 1970s can be
somehow related to the culture of freedom, individual innovation, and
enterpreneurialism that grew out from the 1960s culture of American
campuses. (ibid.).
More recent developments also follow the fundamental characteristics of the
American culture. The current imaginaire around ICTs fits well with the American, and more
generally the western, approach to time and the future. One characteristic coming out of this
worldview is the belief in unbridled progress and development; a belief that even
postmodernism has not managed to challenge, even less, replace. There is very little doubt
that the next phase of ‘human’ development will follow particular trajectories, as they are
currently developed in the west, and that these trajectories will eventually be embraced by the
whole world. Similar to the globalisation discourse, the underlying narrative of the ICT
discourse is that of economic and technological determinism. According to C. Luke (1997, p.
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12), technological determinism implies that technologies operate in a contextual vacuum

independent of human agents, and that the effects or consequences of technologies on, for
instance, literacy or social interaction, are similar for everyone across class, geographic or
cultural differences. Or, as Snyder (1997, p. 132) describes it, determinism is based on an
Illustration 4.17
“Tomorrow this will do the teaching”, photo accompanying the article by Ravitch (1993, p. 40)
underlying “assumption that qualities inherent in the computer medium itself are responsible
for changes in social and cultural practices”. Significantly, determinism also implies a lack of
choices, possibilities, constructive dialogues, passivity, even impotence to attempt anything
else but adjust to these ‘taken for granted’ futures. The only action possible is to jump on the
IT bandwagon and adjust to the future ‘that has already arrived’ (Illustration 4.17). Whether
determinism is organised around narratives of ‘postmodernity’, ‘the post–industrial age’,
‘post–Fordism’, ‘new times’, ‘globalisation’, ‘the information age’, ‘casino capitalism’ and
so on, these stories are of “dramatic irreversible, life altering, unpredictable change[s]”
(Kenway, 1996, p. 219). As one of the more famous proponents of the digital age argues,
“like a force of nature, the digital age cannot be denied or stopped” (Negroponte, 1995, p.
229). The change from atoms to bits is, therefore, irrevocable, unstoppable and exponential
(Negroponte, 1995). Current changes are often compared to the ‘onslaught of automation’
that has replaced physical workers with machines. Some writers go even further. Mark
Pesche argues that the web is an “innovation as important as the printing press—it may be as
important as the birth of language itself . . . in its ability to completely reconfigure the
structure of civilization” (Pesche in Elgin & Drew, 1997, pp. 6–9).
Those that still resist are labeled as ‘old’, as history, compared to the new generation
of N–geners, screenagers and Netizens. They are also seen as, in general, less–able or
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‘incapable’ because of their apparent lack of skills. Especially effective dismissive labels
such as ‘technophobe’ and ‘Luddite’ are also employed. Determinism is also about
prediction. For example, here is one: “. . . those who pursue degrees will be uneducated in the
next millennium; those who surf the Net will ride the waves of tomorrow” (Ogden, 1995).
Because of these ‘predictions’, it has become very hard to:
. . . avoid encountering the avowedly evangelical predictions about the
educational implications of the digital ‘this’ and the electronic ‘that’, and the
triumphalist announcements of the optimists introducing the education
superhighway here and the virtual university there. (Mason, 1998, p. 3)
Even ‘critical’ education theorists have been ‘affected’. For example:
As we enter a new millennium, most people are by now aware that we are in
the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that
is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, and spend
our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer,
information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often
interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and
therefore ascribes education a central role in every aspect of life. This Great
Transformation poses tremendous challenges to educators to rethink their
basic tenets, to deploy the new technologies in creative and productive ways,
and to restructure schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the
technological and social changes that we are now experiencing. (Kellner,
2000a, p. 245)
And, “There can be little doubt that new technologies are helping to bring into effect
a new economic order, call it what you will” (Kenway, 1996, p. 227).
If technological determinism is prevalent in the area of education it is even more
rampant within the field of futures studies. George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future of
electronic surveillance is very well know and so are the utopian imaginings of Marshall
McLuhan, Buckminister Fuller, Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt. Here are two more recent
examples:
The new technology will affect really everybody regardless of ethnic or
religious background and what is more, this phenomenon will not be limited
to the United States or to Western Europe. It will have a true global impact,
reaching to the most remote places in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Far
East. (Schneider, 1999, p. 75)
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Also important is Jim Dator’s (2000) farewell to not only current universities (which
will become future ‘theme parks’) but also to publicly funded educational system. In his
article, tellingly titled “The Futures for Higher Education: From Bricks to Bytes to Fare Thee
Well”, he thus argues that:
This [universities, publicly funded mass education, campuses and school
buildings] is all coming to an end as a “post-industrial”—possibly, an
“information”—society springs from the rigor mortis of the residual industrial
state. (ibid., p. 70)
To find some more examples, any futurist journal, especially The Futurist, or Future
Survey, would suffice. The ‘information technology revolution’ discourse has become
ubiquitous.
Asking education to adjust to immanent social changes may not be anything new
though, argues Diane Ravitch (1993, p. 39). This is because education does not develop
autonomously but rather “tends to be a mirror of society and is seldom at the cutting edge of
social change” (ibid.). Even increases in inequalities are not seen to be an issue by Ravitch,
because this has always been so; every new technology has always increased inequalities by
default:
When someone first brought a violin into a village, a few learned to play it,
most did not; inequality was created. As soon as the first personal computer
became available, gaps appeared between those who learned to use them and
those who were technophobic. The spread of technologies into education will
create winners and losers, even if everyone has full access to the same
technologies. (ibid., p. 40)
This discourse, of course, implies that losers are somehow ‘guilty’ themselves for not
benefiting from the latest technological developments:
The likelihood is that modern society will reward those who learn to use their
minds well: to innovate, analyze, plan, imagine, create and explain. Those
who reject education, even when it is available to them as ‘edutainment’ in the
privacy of their homes, will not prosper. (ibid., p. 45)
What is left out of Ravitch’s discourse is the question of why and how it is that
education gets defined as technological, and why education, defined in such a way, is valued
more than, for example, learning to play a violin. Ravitch privileges a technological
worldview that defines education in those terms. Ravitch’s account is typical of the attitude
when it comes to ICTs; that is, adjust or you will fail (at your peril). No wonder, then, that
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when computers first arrived in schools in the late 1970s there was “a little skepticism and a
lot of euphoria” (Snyder, 1997, p. 125). Over time the pressure only increased, becoming
“enormous—perhaps unprecedented” (Riffel and Levin, 1997, p. 51). Huge pressures are also
generated by local communities, for example, by:
. . . parents’ vocal demands for schools to make students computer literate in
light of the heavily promoted millennial visions of the new ‘techno–literate’
citizen of the 21st century. (C. Luke, 2000b, p. 426)
The adaptive approach to the future became popular among parents, teachers and
educational administration, in line with their concern with students’ success as workers and
citizens of the future. Schools often advertise themselves as supplying their students with the
skills which will give them ‘the edge’ and ensure their future employability and livelihood.
The use of technology is most often explained in terms of “preparing students for tomorrow’s
world of work” (Riffel and Levin, 1997, p. 58).
Determinism and passivity within this adaptive approach to the future is problematic
for numerous reasons. One reason is the lack of a critical cultural dimension in school–based
ICT and computer studies (C. Luke, 2000a, p. 426). Rather, computer education remains
“firmly rooted in an operational skills orientation at the expense of a more critical
orientation” (ibid., p. 427). Lack of critical evaluation of new ICTs and the rampant
technological determinism means that the “dialectical interaction between society and
technology” (Castells, 1996, p. 5) is forgotten. Also forgotten is that every technology not
only embodies societies, but is society (ibid.) and that ICTs cannot be separated from how,
when and in which ways they are used. What is also missing when a “critical approach to
computer literacy” (C. Luke, 2000a, p. 426) is lacking are:
. . . issues of equity and access, the emergence of new virtual identities and
communities; issues of an authentic or “masquerade” identity; the relationship
between local and global issues of authorship, censorship, ownership, or
cultural appropriateness; shifts in learning and teaching, changing teacher and
student roles; and challenges to the industrial model of schooling.
There is one more reason why determinism, passivity and the prevalence of an
adaptive approach in education is problematic:
. . . unless educators take a lead in developing appropriate pedagogies for
these new electronic media and forms of communication, corporate experts
will be the ones to determine how people will learn, what they learn, and what
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constitutes literacy . . . In other words, the designers of software can easily

become the literacy and pedagogy experts of tomorrow. (C. Luke, 1997, p. 7)
Illustration 4.18
“New Look for e-classroom”, but in which ways have computers changed the industrial model of
schooling? Image from The Futurist (January-February, 2001, p. 68).
Perhaps, the lack of proactive response in creating educational futures may be behind
the reality that, even in the industrially most developed countries, computers have not
significantly transformed educational content, process and structures within which it takes
place. As Riffel and Levin (1997, p. 51) argue, it seems that information technology is at best
an “adjunct” to existing educational practices, “not yet integrated into people’s thinking
about teaching and learning”. Despite all the ‘hype’ (Snyder, 1997) and ‘ecstasy’ (C. Luke,
1996a) it seems that, in practice, things have indeed changed very little. One report (USDE,
1996) estimates that even in the United States, students’ use of computers for learning is
currently, on average, only a few minutes a day. Another report, (Meredyth, Russell,
Blackwood, Thomas and Wise, 1999, p. 11) links this to previous promises of radio, film and
television which have “all been put to work in the classroom, with the intent of enriching the
instructional experiences for students”. But, despite their promise, “these technologies have
remained marginal to the educational process” (ibid.). So although currently:
. . . the idea of an information technology driven revolution of social and
economic life is commonplace, both in Australia and elsewhere. . . the use of
information technology in classrooms is the exception rather than the rule.
(ibid., p. 13)
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It seems that new ICTs have failed to live up to their promise, and numerous futurists
and other authors in general express their frustration and disappointment at the lack of
expected changes. For example, as early as in 1967, Watson Davis, who was, according to
Rossman (1992, p. 77), fully supportive of Well’s World Brain idea:
. . . expressed his frustration over why it was taking so long to materialize four
important concepts that had promising beginnings right after World War II:
one big global library; on-demand publication; one global scholarly journal;
and the World Brain—a system to manage human knowledge.
A decade ago in the article Megatrends or Megamistakes? What ever happened to the
Information Society? Tom Forester (1992) wonders what happened to promises such as:
dramatic reductions in the quantity of paid employment; large increases in the amount of
forced and unforced leisure time; paperless office and so on. Instead, argues Forester, the vast
majority of people in the workforce appear to be working harder than ever, while junk mail
and surface mail have not only remained strong, but are constantly growing in volume. The
information technology ‘revolution’ in education seems to have somehow ‘failed’ to satisfy
predictions of exponential, irrevocable and unstoppable trends.
Of course, the overall impact of new ICTs on education cannot be (and certainly
should not be) completely denied. However, as is the case with the discrepancy between the
vision and practice of ‘truly globalised’ education, the gap between the image of the virtual
university or networked classroom with most current educational practices looms large.
Which means that, both calls to ‘globalise or die’ and ‘virtualise or disappear’ are drawing
their inspiration not only from ‘the reality’ but also, and perhaps even more so, from ‘the
future’.
4.3.2 The WebNet vision of the world
I have a vision for the year 2020; I like to call it the 20/20 vision. Think of
everyone at screens: A billion around the planet. And each person at a screen
will be able to extract from a great common pool any fragment of whatever is
published, with automatic royalty and no red tape. (Nelson, 1992, p. 44 quoted
in Snyder, 1997, p. 130)
The mainstream paradigm argues that the WebNet vision of the world originated from
attempts to “make sense of the profound transformation wracking industrial societies since
the mid-1950s” (Nelson, 1996, p. 479). To describe this shift, various terms have therefore
been used, such as ‘post–industrial society’, ‘service society’, ‘technological society’,
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‘computer society’, and ‘knowledge society’. The term ‘post–industrial’ seems to be one of
the oldest as it first appeared in print in 1917, but the earliest widely read book to appear on
this subject was Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Postindustrial Society (1973) (Nelson, 1996, p.
479). The term ‘information society’ appeared in 1968, the ‘service society’ was the
preferred term in the 1970s and the earliest reference to ‘knowledge society’ apparently dates
from 1969 (ibid.). The OECD adopted the term information society as early as 1975, and by
the early 1980s the term information society started to come into common use (ibid.). Finally,
in 1982, John Naisbitt gave the final verdict by saying that “it is now clear that the
postindustrial society is the information society” (ibid.). But the idea of the information
age/society is now as obsolete as 20 year-old computers (Koelsch, 1995). It is therefore
claimed that we have now embarked on a new era. Schneider (1999, p. 77) argues that this
era is so distinctively different that a whole history can be divided into BC (before
computers) and AC (after computer) period. We are now getting a first taste of “Cyberia”,
argues Sardar (1996a), a taste of the new civilisation emerging through our human–computer
interface and mediation. Koelsch (1995) argues that the engine of the emerging new world
economy will be infomedia industries—computing, communications, and consumer
electronics. Douglas Kellner (1998, para. 23) agrees, and attempts to describe this change by
coining the slightly clumsy term “infotainment society”. Jerome Glenn (1996) uses the term
of post–Information age, as does Nicholas Negroponte (1995). Castells (1996), however,
moves from the term ‘information society’ that he has previously used, to describe The Rise
of the Network Society. Whatever the term used, there is very little disagreement on what is
emerging. For example, Glenn (1996, p. 744) argues:
Today, advanced [italics added] nations are completing the transition from the
industrial to the information age. The early signs of the post–information age
are barely visible, but do point to the emergence of a new age and civilization
that can be anticipated. Technological trends in micro–miniaturization,
communications, voice recognition and synthesis, artificial intelligence,
human interactivity with software, biotechnology, genetic engineering,
bionics, and manufactured object with build-in intelligence should continue
and become increasingly and mutually reinforcing. The social trends in public
participation, globalization, democracy, lifelong learning, and the rate of
scientific inquiry and curiosity should also continue and become increasingly
and mutually reinforcing. The interaction of these social and technological
trends over the next century will create the post–information age.
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Other characteristics of this new, ‘post–information’ age include: integration of

humans with technology to the point where distinctions between humans and machines will
begin to blur until humanity and intelligent technology become an interrelated whole (ibid.).
This means a strong trend toward the “cyborganization of humanity” (ibid.). In addition, the
built environment will become alive with artificial intelligence, communications, and voice
recognition and synthesis. In sum, the main product of this age is ‘linkage’ (as opposed to
food, machine and info–service of previous ages). Power has moved from religion
(agricultural age), state (industrial age) and corporation (information age) towards the
individual. Wealth in the post–information age becomes the quality of one’s experiences, life,
and being. It is no longer based on land (agricultural), capital (industrial) or access
(information age). The central place is neither that of a farm, factory nor office but ‘motion’.
This means that people will conduct their livelihood “anywhere, with anyone, at any time”
and therefore be viewed by others as constantly in motion (ibid., p. 745). Our sense of time is
equally altered, it has moved from cyclical (agricultural), linear (industrial) and relativistic
(information age) towards the invented (ibid.).
Similar descriptions could be found among the writing of other futurists and theorists
of the post–information or ‘AC’ age. For example, this is how Castells (1998, pp. 335, 353)
describes the rise of the Network Society:
The twenty-first century will be marked by the completion of a global
information superhighway, and by mobile telecommunication and computing
power, thus decentralizing and diffusing the power of information, delivering
the promise of multi-media, and enhancing the joy of interactive
communication. In addition, it will be the century of the full flowering of the
genetic revolution. For the first time, our species will penetrate the secrets of
life, and will be able to perform substantial manipulations of living matter . . .
Prudently used, the genetic revolution may heal, fight pollution, improve life,
and save time and effort from survival, so as to give us the chance to explore
the largely unknown frontier of spirituality.
And,
A new world is taking shape in this end of the millennium. It originated in the
historical coincidence, around the late 1960s and mid-1970s, of three
independent processes: the information technology revolution; the economic
crisis of both capitalism and statism, and their subsequent restructuring; and
the blooming of cultural social movements, such as libertarianism, human
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rights, feminism, and environmentalism. The interaction between these

processes, and the reactions they triggered, brought into being a new dominant
social structure, the network society; a new economy, the informational/global
economy; and a new culture, the culture of real virtuality. (ibid., p. 336)
In the area of futures studies, the mainstream discourse is predominately concerned with
forecasting emerging technologies. For example, at issue is “competition and cooperation
among fibre optics, cellular radio, and satellites in meeting communication and transportation
needs” for the 21st century (Kurian and Molitor, 1996, p. 124). Or, the way new
communication technologies will change our lives, is often described with catchy titles such
as The Cyber Future: 92 Ways Our Lives will Change by the Year 2025 (Cornish, 1996).
Other forecasts include a future in which a new generation of personal computers will be able
to download millions of megabytes in nanoseconds; or that almost all information will be in
cyberspace by 2047. The latter is argued by Gordon Bell and James N. Gray (1997) of
Microsoft who further state that “it is safe to predict that computers in the year 2047 will be
at least one hundred thousand times more powerful than those of today” (quoted in Future
Survey 19(9), 1997, p. 2). Apparently, this might be an understatement. Instead, editors of
Future Survey argue that, using straight extrapolation, Moore’s Law and present rates of
improvement “at 1.60/year, computers would be ten billion times more powerful” (ibid.). It is
also consistently predicted that the infomedia industries such as computing, communications,
and consumer electronics will be the engine of the new world economy (Koelsch, 1995). To
sum up, via the title of an article which argues that around 2005, the number of mobile
telephone subscribers will exceed fixed lines, we are informed that “The Future is Bright,
The Future Is Mobile” (Minger, Mannisto and Kelly, 1999).
According to this discourse we can ‘safely’ assert that in the future people will
routinely use virtual reality to gather knowledge and experience from far-away countries and
events. Or that we will be able to control computers with our voices, movements and even
thoughts, and reach everyone everywhere through a personalised phone link. The movement
of people will be revolutionised with the development of new means of transport, which will
be more economical, faster and safer, and possibly less polluting. The variety and enormity
of technological inventions will have implications in the entertainment industry and media,
changing the way we work or shop, and revolutionising everything from space research to
everyday life.
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Illustration 4.19
Image from Ruthven (2000, p. 198).
This view of the future has been heavily popularised in popular science fiction.
Almost every single block-buster movie that is based ‘in the future’ brings similar images.
Because they are visual, these images are even more powerful then futures visioning in either
academic journals and books or popular magazines (Illustration 4.19). The images are part of
the deeper myths that organize our worldviews and, eventually, educational policy. They
make reality. Quite clearly, they make techno–narratives and ideas even more popular:
Popular culture industries have a way of harnessing the public imagina[tion]
and turning technology into narratives of consumption . . . and narratives of
the fantastic, the futuristic, and the anarchic, all of which generate their own
social dynamics. (C. Luke, 1997, p. 15)
The WebNet vision of the world is described, predicted, imagined and visualised in a
meticulous fashion. It is now commonly accepted as ‘the truth’ about the future. Not
surprisingly, it is this ‘truth’ that demands urgent changes in educational policy and strategy.
But while futurists are mostly concerned with forecasting, educators take these forecasts for
granted, focusing on how education should adjust to these emerging changes. Interestingly,
while social rhetoric overall demands that importance be given to education, the reality is that
not only education, but also the social and cultural too often remain invisible in the WebNet
vision of the world. True to this general trend, science fiction either does not describe/portray
education in the future at all, or, alternatively, presents it as effortless, instantaneous and
technologically mediated (as in, for example, the films The Matrix or Battlefield Earth
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wherein information and knowledge is instantly downloaded). True to its hegemonic status,
the WebNet vision of the world and education have inspired both a utopian and a dystopian
‘take’. This I discuss in the following sections.
4.3.3 The information society and cyber education: utopian and eutopian
versions
For those of us in the developed world the future holds a cornucopia of

brilliant possibilities, as life-long education becomes a reality, easily available
at low cost to everyone in forms that are adapted to the way people learn best.
(Ravitch, 1993, p. 45)
If the post–information society utopia could be described in only two words these
would be ‘Libertarian Utopia’ (Kinney, in Sardar, 1996a, p. 9). In this utopia, the digital age
removes limits imposed by time and geography. It includes “less and less dependence upon
being in a specific place at a specific time, and the transmission of place itself will start to
Illustration 4.20
Cyber education = happines, International Student Guide 2000-2001, The University of Southern
Queensland, p. 13.
become possible” (Negroponte, 1995, p. 165) (Illustration 4.21). The relativism of time is
connected with the increased personal power to invent reality, to the point where “time itself
will seem an invention” (Glenn, 1996, p. 745). Other limitations, that of a physically less–
abled body, disadvantage due race or gender also cease to exist. This also means that the
Internet enables new means and opportunities for the formation of identity. Because there is
no obvious framework of constraint, the individual is free to become the “author of meaning”
(Kenway, 1996, p. 222). As there is not yet real censorship in cyberspace, totalitarian
societies stand less chance of controlling information. Being a new medium, the Internet
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Illustration 4.21
Cybereducation will remove the limitations of space, Image from Ruthven, P. (2000:196)
tends to be in the hands of more creative, ambitious, and usually younger members of
society. Here lies its potential to provide support for pro-democracy social groups. Because it
is a new medium and beyond censorship, this distinguishes it from traditional means of
communication that are currently mostly dominated and controlled by those with political
power. The potential for freedom of expression is also limitless. The Internet decentralises
and therefore democratises. It will enable more democratic polity and new models of social
and economic organisation (ibid.). New technologies not only liberate us from space and
time, but also from totalitarian regimes. Eventually, they will also free us from repetitive
boring tasks, whether in the office or at home, thereby giving us more time for leisure (see
Illustration 4.22).
In addition to its libertarian aspect, the digital age is also ‘harmonizing’ (Negroponte,
1995, p. 229). Digital technology has the potential to be “a natural force drawing people into
greater world harmony” (ibid., p. 230) (Illustration 4.19). New ICTs provide the means for
resolving many of the world’s problems. Problems become more visible thanks to global
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Illustration 4.22
‘New technologies will liberate us from repetitive boring tasks’. Image from Ruthven (ibid., 195).
media, enabling quick and committed responses. New ICTs also provide a means for
addressing hunger and illness among the world’s poor, as we can now globally produce more
food than ever, better prevent and cure certain illnesses and more quickly transfer and
provide for the victims of natural catastrophes and social conflicts. These abilities can have
Illustration 4.23
‘With cybereducation towards world harmony’, Image from Ruthven (2000, p. 194).
harmonizing effects in addressing the issue of the gap between the rich and poor,
predominantly by improving the conditions of the world’s poor. New ICTs also allow for
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ever-increasing access to tools of ever-increasing productivity, and those that adopt

technology later will actually benefit by acquiring advanced technology created by
entrepreneurs, avoiding the mistakes of the trailblazers (Gates, 1995). Adequate and quick
communication and, most of all, the possibility to learn about and understand others, is
probably the most necessary condition for conflict resolution. Technology has enabled the
creation of links between many diverse civilisations, nations, groups of people and
individuals. The possibility of learning about and understanding others is increasing; for
example, through personal inter-cultural contacts made easier and cheaper, with the help of
new means of transport, the Internet and even information that we gather from television.
New ICTs can help individuals to find their soul mates on other continents. New technologies
have helped create conditions in which the world can see itself, can imagine itself, as one
global community. In addition, while many intellectual movements are “distinctly driven by
national and ethnic forces . . . the digital revolution is not” (Negroponte, 1995, p. 204).
Rather, its “ethos and appeal are as universal as rock music” (ibid.). New ICTs can also help
harmonise people with nature, by resolving current environmental problems (e.g., fixing the
ozone hole with a layer of scientifically/technologically created ozone replacement).
Two more crucial utopian aspects of new ICTs are the creation of abundance and
individual and group empowerment. The post–information society promises more jobs and
new economic opportunities, “a bountiful harvest of information and entertainment, and new
prosperity in a computopia that would make Adam Smith proud” (Kellner, 1998, para. 7).
The choices are virtually limitless, whether it in buying products, getting entertained,
improving health or acquiring education. Information will be easily accessed and will create
numerous benefits for the person who seeks it. The easy acquisition of information helps in
numerous areas:
. . . [in] creating ideas, finding directions, acquiring skills, getting support or
confirmation, getting motivated, calming down or relaxing, getting pleasure or
happiness, and reaching goals. (Bruce and Candy, 2000, p. 3)
The main or root metaphor of the digital age is ‘network’. This metaphor implies
“new, non-hierarchical, democratic and reciprocal model of human relationships” (Kenway,
1996, p. 222). As opposed to the pyramid metaphor of the industrial and agricultural ages, we
are now living in a phase of multiple and shifting centers (ibid.). In the words of Appadurai
(1996, pp. 31–32):
The crucial point . . . is that the United States is no longer the puppeteer of a
world system of images but is only one node of a complex transnational
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construction of imaginary landscapes . . . The new global cultural economy

has to be seen as complex, overlapping , disjunctive order that cannot any
longer be understood in terms of existing center–periphery models (even those
that might account for multiple centers and peripheries).
Previously excluded social groups now have a medium through which they can
participate, promote their politics and agenda, make their issues visible. The Internet provides
subordinated groups with “new opportunities to represent themselves in their own voices and
own ways” (Kenway, 1996, p. 222). The anonymity of the Internet allows other political
opportunities such as “fluid identity games” (ibid., p. 223). These games are possible because
people can “. . . live parallel lives, use nicknames or false names, conceal their identity and
have multiple identities—including multiple gender and sexual [/racial] identities” (ibid.).
Individual empowerment is said to be in following areas:
The gains of electronic postmodernity could be said to include, for
individuals, (a) an increased awareness of the “big picture,” a global
perspective that admits the extraordinary complexity of interrelations; (b) an
expanded neural capacity, an ability to accommodate a broad range of stimuli
simultaneously; (c) a relativistic comprehension of situations that promotes
the erosion of old biases and often expresses itself as tolerance; and (d) a
matter–of–fact and unencumbered sort of readiness, a willingness to try new
situations and arrangements” (Birkerts, 1994, p. 27).
To summarise, the post–information or digital age is liberating, democratising,
harmonising, and empowering in many ways. Similar gains are to be obtained in education.
They include: liberation from the limits of time, geography, class, race and gender;
improvements in access to and quality of education; individual–centered education;
pedagogical abundance; and general improvements in teaching and learning.
Because the Internet removes almost all constraints of time and space, its potential is
in allowing “individuals to take courses at their own pace, and to choose from all possible
courses in the world those which best meet their learning needs” (Skolnik, 2000, p. 57). With
constraints of space and time removed, the benefits are obvious:
If Little Eva cannot sleep, she can learn algebra instead. At her homelearning
station, she will tune in to a series of interesting problems that are presented in
an interactive medium, much like video games. First the learning program will
identify her level of competence and then move her to the appropriate level of
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challenge; algebra, she will discover, is presented as a series of brain–teasers,

puzzles that she wants to solve.
Young John may decide that he wants to learn the history of modern
Japan, which he can do by dialing up the greatest authorities and teachers on
the subject, who will not only use dazzling graphs and illustrations, but will
narrate a historical video that excites his curiosity and imagination. When he
decides that he wants to learn Japanese, he may enter into a program of virtual
reality, learning the language in conversation with Japanese speakers.
(Ravitch, 1993, p. 40)
Other benefits that result from removing geographical boundaries include improved
access to top quality education:
For every student who gets into a Harvard or a Princeton or a Berkley there
are probably a hundred who could handle the work. Why should they be
denied the opportunity? (Forbes.com, 2000, para. 12)
Limitations of class, race and gender are also removed. The new technological era in
education promotes greater equity of access for those previously excluded. This argument is
implicit in the previous quote and more explicit in the following:
Before, when schooling was limited to traditional buildings and managed by a
state bureaucracy, poor children usually got the least–experienced teachers
and the poorest quality of instruction. In the new era, technology makes it
possible to provide exactly the same quality of instruction to every child.
Using the new technologies, all children will have access to exactly the same
electronic–teaching programs, learning at their own speed and in settings of
their own choosing, at home or at school, in a community learning center or at
a friend’s home. Regardless of her race or her parent’s income, little Mary will
have the same opportunity to learn any subject, and to learn it from the same
master teachers as children in the richest neighborhood. (Ravitch, 1993, p. 40)
While educational institutions will initially resist these trends towards
democratisation, they will eventually ‘give in’:
Students will be able to shop around, taking a course from any institution that
offers a good one. Degree–granting institutions will have to accommodate
this. They will resist at first, but eventually society will realize that anyone is
entitled to the best courses, and barriers will fall. Quality education will be
available to all. Student will learn what they want to learn rather than what
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some faculty committee decided was the best political compromise. Education
will be measured by what you know rather than by whose name appears on
your diploma” (Forbes.com , 2000, final para.)
The democratisation of education will occur because new ICTs are making education
less costly, more accessible and flexible. They will enable student–centered life-long learning
and faster acquisition of skills than in any period before. This means that disadvantaged
social groups who lack financial resources and unlimited free time for study will still be able
to obtain education. For example, a single mother living in a remote, impoverished rural area
can improve her lot in life by enrolling in courses that do not cost too much and do not last
for too long. She can study after putting her children to bed, before they wake up, or at any
time that suits her (see illustration 4.24). She can afford these courses with a greater ease
compared to financing a three to four year study at a traditional institution of higher learning.
Illustration 4.24
“New Technologies will liberate modern women”, version from year 2002. New Internationalist (ibid.,
pp. 16–17).
Another important utopian promise lies in the emerging “pedagogical plenty”

(Ravitch, 1993, p. 40). Cyberspace is about the creation of webs of knowledge with unlimited
access to information, with a potential to provide access to ‘everything’. All the knowledge
and all the existing information exists ‘at the fingertips’. This knowledge is available 24
hours a day, 365 days of the year. There is no need to memorise, use rote learning or focus on
the acquisition of data any longer. All this will help improve the quality of education
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because, as argued by Negroponte (1995, p. 199), the major part of learning does not come
from such teaching but from “exploration, from reinventing the wheel and finding out for
oneself”. Computers allow yet again approaching learning by doing:
Learning for more information is unnecessary because it is becoming
increasingly possible to retrieve specific information when needed . . .
students can substitute learning to find what they need to know for the
impossible task of learning everything they may need to know. (Grabe and
Grabe, 1998, p. 5)
Technology assisted pedagogy is oriented towards “self-directed, but collaborative
learning that is resource–based and problem–oriented” (Kapitzke, 1999, p. 4). This would
help educators to be “more able to reach children with different learning and cognitive
styles” (Negroponte, 1995, p. 198). The approach to education has become ‘constructivist’
while the focus on “abstract and meaningless numbers” (ibid., p. 200) and on data is gone:
We are finally moving away from a hard–line mode of teaching, which has
catered primarily to compulsive serialist children, toward one that is more
porous and draws no clear lines between art and science or right brain and left
. . . Personal computers will make our future adult population simultaneously
more mathematically able and more visually literate. Ten year from now,
teenagers are likely to enjoy a much richer panorama of options because the
pursuit of intellectual achievement will not be tilted so much in favor of the
book-worm, but instead cater to a wider range of cognitive styles, learning
patterns, and expressive behaviors. (ibid., p. 220).
All this will bring excitement and motivation back into learning. Picking up on such
promises, information technology corporations like AT&T and Apple have “increasingly
drawn on the rhetoric of education to market their products” (Dimitriades and Kamberelis,
1997, p. 138):
Their advertisements promise a utopia, a shrinking world where information is
available at the touch of a finger and exotic peoples can be accessed with a
click of a mouse. These images are replete with wonder, enchantment, and
awe. They promise a generation of young people capable of dealing with both
the challenges and the possibilities of a radically shrinking world, a world
increasingly constituted by and through rapidly developing technological
apparatuses.
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Other promises of cyber education highlight increased student independence,

curiosity and autonomy. In the ‘networked classroom’ the traditional distribution of students’
bodies in rows and the unobstructed gaze of the teacher is disturbed (Kapitzke, 1999). Instead
of being atomized as in traditional ‘teacher–centered classrooms, students work
collaboratively, pooling knowledge and skills in the search for information (C.Luke, 1997, p.
31). Overall, teaching becomes subordinated to learning, enabling teachers to become
mentors, guides, even friends to their students. Teachers themselves will be liberated from
the expectation that they know ‘everything’ and can start enjoying their new role as
facilitator of learning. Networked classrooms will finally help materialise “the utopian dream
of an equitable sharing of classroom authority” (Faigley, 1992, p. 167). And, just as the
authority of the teacher is de-centered, the authority of the written text and the pedagogy
founded on the linearity of print–based textbook learning can meet a similar fate (Faigley,
1992, p. 185; C.Luke, 1997, p. 31). It is also suggested that unlimited technology in the
classroom “leads to better problem solving ability, less truancy and greater collaboration
between students (Berston and Moont, 1996, p. 43).
Beyond the networked classroom is the promise of virtual reality. For example,
students can now safely conduct chemistry experiments, visit virtual galaxies, walk through a
factory, and even visit historical events or enter into a novel and interact with its characters
(Briggs, 1996). Disciplinary boundaries are also shattered, facilitating more productive
approaches to learning.
The list of potential benefits and improvements in education does not stop here. Some
writers go as far as to suggest that we are at the beginning of a learning revolution with
children themselves becoming agents for change at school (Papert, 1996). Or that the
advances in knowledge are such that the information age could more appropriately be termed
the “Innovation Age” (Pitsch, 1996) revolutionising everything. Old dreams and utopias can
now finally be fulfilled:
The promise of the Information Age is the unleashing of unprecedented
productive capacity by the power of the mind. I think, therefore I produce. In
so doing, we will have the leisure to experiment with spirituality, and the
opportunity of reconciliation with nature, without sacrificing the material
wellbeing of our children. The dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and
science would solve the problems of human kind, is within reach. (Castells,
1998, p. 359)
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But, not everyone is convinced. The next part of this chapter analyses distopian takes
on information society and cyber education.
4.3.4 Information society and cyber education: the dystopian version
The dystopian version can be summarised in two words: “Corporatist Dystopia”

(Kinney in Sardar, 1996a, p. 9). This dystopia is based on a continuation of traditional
relations of power and control (ibid.). According to Peter Drahos (1995), the evolution of the
information society can best be characterised as “information feudalism”. Vast amounts of
information have fallen into private hands and private databases, information is excludable
and fee–based, the info–rich have found new ways of robing the info–poor, and consumption
is rampant. This situation is similar to European feudal society which was characterized by a
profound weakening of the state, especially when it came to its protective capacity, and by
rigorous economic subjection of the many to a powerful few (ibid.). In a similar fashion, Jeff
Johnson (1996) describes The Information Highway from Hell. In this ‘worst–case scenario’
choice is greatly limited by the formation of monopolies, the network and most of its services
are controlled by only a few companies. Most of the traffic is recorded and analyzed for
commercial use, freedom of speech restricted and advertising ubiquitous (ibid.). Advertising
has triumphed and become not just a central institution, but the central institution, creating
the new culture of Adcult, argues James Twitchell (1996). He stresses that by 1993 American
companies already spent more than $140 billion per year on advertising while an average
adult saw some 3,000 ads every day (ibid.).
The Information Superhighway has not only degraded into a corporatist tool for
extracting profits but there is a substantial lack of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance. The
introduction of the new information technologies initially resulted in the demise of the
surveillance state and in ‘Big Brother’ being laid off (Whitaker, quoted in Marien, 1999, p.
5). But the Panoptic tendencies in modern society have gained immeasurably in scope and
efficiency, the shift towards the surveillance society has occurred and “Big Brother is being
brought back as an outside consultant” (ibid.). The concept of privacy has come and gone
(ibid.). Because “everything you do could be known to anyone else and recorded forever the
basic principle underlying the mechanism of democracy is undermined (Chaum, quoted in
Kenway, 1996, p. 224).
There are other arguments about why the information age does not provide
democracy but is, instead, based on elitism. These are predominately founded in arguments
about the ‘info–rich and info–poor’ or the ‘haves and have–nots’ (e.g., Haywood, 1995,
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Wresch, 1996). To highlight this issue, Bosah Ebo (1998) uses the term ‘Cyberghetto’, and
contrasts it with the more commonly used term ‘Cybertopia”.
Other authors focus on data smog, or ‘info–glut’, phenomena which no longer add to
the quality of life but instead begin to “cultivate stress, confusion, and even ignorance”
(Shenk, 1997). Putting a computer in every classroom is not unlike putting an electric power
plant in every home (ibid.). Information overload threatens peoples' ability to educate
themselves, leaves them more vulnerable as consumers, diminishes control over their lives.
Social cohesion as well as truth are also threatened, “in our increasing distraction and
speediness, the lies will move so much faster than the truth, they will too often become the
truth” (quoted in Marien, 1997, Future Survey 19(6), p. 4.).
Illustration 4.25
Cyber education, dystopian version, New Internationalist, 343 (2002, p. 22).
Other arguments about the dystopian character of the impending digital age include
temporal and cultural impoverishment. This is because the intrusiveness and overbearing
character of technology leaves us with “no moments of silence, less time to ourselves, and a
sense of diminished control over our lives” (Norman, 1998). There is a general loss of
meaning and non-verbal expression. Imagination is impoverished:
. . . Technology is taking away our ability to speculate, and from speculation
comes imagination. From imagination comes originality and inventiveness;
the kaleidoscope of visions one has before them. Technology has slaughtered
the lost substance of newness and novelty. There is no longer any need to
come up with new ideas in new ways, when chances are some computer can
do it all for us. (Bohen, 2001, p. 55)
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The dystopian digital age is characterised by the future being devalued. Long-term
thinking is virtually non-existent. As summarised by Frank Ogden (quoted in Marien, 1996,
Future Survey 18(4), p. 4) “today, my idea of long-range planning is lunch”.
Culturally, cyberspace is a desert. To start with, the Internet is an outcome and
expression of (only) male culture (Kenway, 1996, p. 227). One language dominates, which
will not help reverse the trend towards the extinction of languages. Apparently, “at least half
of the world’s 6,000 or so languages will be dead or dying by the year 2050” (Ostler, 1999).
The appearance of English as a global language is not a benign phenomenon, but a form of
linguistic colonisation. As the world’s dominant language, English creates certain forms of
thinking and suppresses others. It cannot replace or fully express words and phrases from
other cultures, which have centuries of meaning behind them. The English language is the
“invisible technology” (Postman, 1993, p. 123) of the Internet and, like any other language,
has an “ideological agenda that is apt to be hidden from view” (ibid., p. 124). The language
of the Internet is not only the language of the most powerful nation, but also the language of
the dominant form of knowledge: technical rationality. Only one culture of expression is
possible and other ways of knowing and experiencing the world are suppressed. For example,
there is little space for communicative poetry, for feeling what is unsaid, for reading other
signs, for weaving with another’s energy. New ICTs aid and abet the process of
communication that engages with nature through domination and the need to suppress and
conquer. Nature, and cultures that respect nature, are also silenced.
Sardar (1996a) argues that techno–utopian ideology distracts western society from the
actual increase in spiritual poverty, meaninglessness, and inhumanity of everyday lives.
While the west focuses on colonising yet another ‘frontier’, it does so to forget its problems
at home. Cyberspace is “an emphatic product of the culture, world-view and technology of
Western civilisation” (Sardar, 2000, p. 734); it did not appear from nowhere. Rather “it is a
conscious reflection of the deepest desires, aspirations, experiential yearning and spiritual
Angst of Western man.” (ibid.). Cyberspace is the ‘American dream’ writ large; it marks the
dawn of a new ‘American civilisation’. It is a place where white man’s burden shifted from
its “moral obligation to civilize, democratize, urbanize and colonize non-Western cultures, to
the colonization of cyberspace” (ibid., p. 735). European authors such as John Gray and
Enrique Gil Calvo agree. For Gray, the Internet is not only a product of neo-liberal ideology
that reduces the complexity of human interactions to the model of the market interchange, it
is also a pure mimicry of American culture (Gray in Gil Calvo, 2000). For Gil Calvo,
Americans have created the Internet to replace the emptiness resulting from a lack of
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authentic interpersonal bonds. Americans are always fleeing from something, argues Gil
Calvo: its European origins, the Indians of the prairies, the black of the urban ghetto, its
poorer fellow citizens (Gil Calvo, 2000; Case, 2001). They lack the place, the locality, a
closely–binding public culture, traditionally identified as the ‘agora’. Europeans, especially
Mediterraneans, are still comfortably integrated in their primary networks of community
solidarity and only resort to the secondary associations for “utilitarian convenience, and not
for existential therapy” (Gil Calvo, 2000; Case, 2001, p. 29). Americans, on the other hand,
connect themselves to a network to redeem their own lack of place.
Not only were cultural factors important in creating the Internet in the first place, but
the culture of the Internet helps maintain and promote historical relationships of domination
and submission between ethnic, racial and cultural groups. Lisa Nakamura (2000) argues that
race is either erased or exoticised and can find no discursive space outside those two options.
For example, the stereotypes of Asian-ness deployed are those of either martial arts experts
and Samurai, or sexualized, docile, submissive Geishas. The invisibility of race is seen as a
necessary requirement for harmony. Those who choose to describe themselves in racial terms
as Asian, African American, Latino, or as members of other oppressed and marginalized
minorities, are often seen as “engaging in a form of hostile performance, since they introduce
what many consider a real life ‘divisive issue’ into the phantasmatic world of cybernetic
textual interaction” (Nakamura, 2000, pp. 712–720).
The Cyber Age is also dangerous because it threatens local communities. As
cybercommunities increase in popularity, the atomisation of society increases, the weakness
of local, immediate communities deepens. While some hail the ability of cyber communities
to provide more support and understanding than local ones, virtual communities can never
provide as much caring, support and protection. They are based on selfishness rather than on
realities of everyday existence where relating to others in meaningful ways is required.
Even Negroponte (1995, p. 227) talks of the dark side of the digital age. For him, the
main dangers lie in intellectual property abuse, invasion of privacy, digital vandalism,
software piracy, data thievery, the loss of many jobs to wholly automated systems and the
disappearance of the notion of lifetime employment.
To conclude this section on the dystopian character of the digital age, what follows
are two lists that summarise the problems of the digital age. According to Michael Marien
(1997, p. 4), a ‘top 10’ list of the dark side of the information technology revolution includes:
. . . greater social gaps, speeding the pace of life, more privacy invasion, less
democracy, a distraction from building a sustainable society, vulnerability to
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infowar and infoterrorism, cybercrime, negative influences on futures

thinking, and—above all—the problem of infoglut (leading to specialization,
devalued information, boredom, stress, and sleeplessness).
In a similar fashion, Birkerts (1994, p. 27) writes:
In the loss column, meanwhile, are (a) fragmented sense of time and a loss of
the so-called duration experience, that depth phenomenon we associate with
reveries; (b) a reduced attention span and a general impatience with sustained
inquiry; (c) a shattered faith in institutions and in the explanatory narratives
that formerly gave shape to subjective experience; (d) a divorce from the past,
from a vital sense of history as a cumulative or organic process; (e) an
estrangement from geographic place and community; and (f) an absence of
any strong vision of a personal or collective future.
Interestingly, while some authors argue that it is about how technology is used, others
believed that the ‘danger’ lies in the very “essence of technology”, because it forces human
beings to think in purely instrumental terms (Mayers and Swafford, 1998, pp. 155-156). As
we move into the sphere of hyperreality we inevitably lose touch with our bodies, with
nature, with other people and with focal things and practices (Kellner, 1998). In sum, new
technologies are technocratic by nature and potentially dominant—the main threat is a
totalitarian nightmare (Snyder, 1997, p. 129).
All these negative aspects are reflected onto the educational discourse as well. As
approaches to knowledge, learning, relationships and so on are affected, so too is education.
Technological change is neither additive nor substractive but ecological, argues Neil Postman
(1993). Which means that “one significant change generates total change” (ibid., p. 18). For
example, in a technocracy, tools play a central role in the thought world of the culture and
everything must give way to their development: “Tools are not integrated into the culture;
they attack the culture. They bid to become the culture. As a consequence, tradition, social
mores, myth, politics, ritual, and religion have to fight for their lives” (ibid., p. 28).
Technocracy also gave us some good things, for example, people came to
believe that knowledge is power, humanity is capable of progressing, poverty
is a great evil and the life of the average person is as meaningful as any other.
(ibid., p. 38)
Technocracy also allows for an opposing worldview—a traditional, tool using
approach—to coexist. However, we now live in a Technopoly which eliminates all
alternatives to itself, not by making them illegal, immoral or unpopular but by making them
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invisible and therefore irrelevant. Technopoly is a totalitarian technocracy that redefines what
is meant by religion, family, politics, history, truth, intelligence, and so on (ibid., p. 48). In
concrete terms, computers carry with them the banner of private learning and individual
problem solving, not very much unlike the print medium that stresses individualized learning,
competition and personal autonomy (ibid., p. 17). Orality, on the other hand, stresses group
learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility (ibid.). In Technopoly, the main
focus in education is to improve “learning technologies” (ibid., p. 171). Education is reduced
to being an instrument of economic policy, teaching children about “progress without limits,
rights without responsibilities, and technology without cost” (ibid., p. 179). It is about
teaching that technological innovation is synonymous with human progress. It promises
heaven on earth through the conveniences of technological progress telling a story of a life of
skills, technical expertise, and the ecstasy of consumption (ibid.).
What is the point of connecting children to the Internet, others ask? It can only breed
“a cop–out society by feeding fantasy, escapism and nostalgia” (Kenway, 1996, p. 226). As
Postman argues, the information superhighway is unnecessary because we already have an
overabundance of information (ibid.). In addition, there are also concerns that the Internet
provides one more tool for sexual predators to find new victims, creating a reverse civil
society, a community of the predatory violent. It is also feared that the Internet is becoming
yet another tool for the spreading of pornography, thus communicating a “distorted view of
sexuality” (Milojevic, 2002, p. 101).
Lastly, as is the case with the dystopian discourse on globalisation, there are concerns
with mechanical approaches toward nature. As is visible in illustrations 4.26 and 4.27, nature
is replaced incrementally until it disappears all together.
Illustration 4.26
Ruthven, P. (2000:199)
226
To conclude, in this section I have engaged with dystopian and utopian thinking
rather than dismissing either. Of course, the particular position taken depends on, for
example, one’s own position in the world society, lifestyle, education, gender, approach to
teaching and learning and worldview. In short, whether new ICTs are more beneficial or
more detrimental to our societies and education is not only a matter of pure intellectual
reasoning. It is also a matter of a belief system, backed by historical and contemporary
myths, metaphors and other metanarratives. These are summarised in the following sections.
Illustration 4.27
Ruthven, P. (2000, p. 200).
227
4.4 Causal Layered Analysis: Contextualising Global Dreams and Nightmares
th
The Land of Cockaygne. 16 century painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Image from Rose-Marie
and Rainer Hagen (1994, p. 75).
This section presents an analysis, using tables that summarise the main points of this
chapter. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 present selected features of both the globalised world (1) and the
WebNet vision of the world (2). These features include: (1) the approach to time; (2) the
vision for the future; (3) the utopian promise; (4) dystopian dangers; and (5) social eutopia.
For example, the vision for the future for the globalised world is the alternatively global pan–
capitalism, post–scarcity society and post–industrial society. The utopian promises are
material benefits, instant satisfaction of material needs, global international democracy, and
more consumer and employment choices.
228
the Globalised World
Approach to Vision for the Utopian Dystopian Social eutopia

time future promise dangers
Linear/ Global pan– Material benefits Gap between Potential for

Compressed capitalism haves and have global
Instant
nots/Rampant transformation,
Time as Post–scarcity satisfaction of
poverty inter/transnationa
product—it can society material needs
l government and
be bought, sold Increase in
Post–industrial Pushing towards cooperation.
and saved gender inequality
Society international
Potential to move
Time of ‘project democracy Single culture
Global Age away from the
and history’ globally and society
‘tyranny of the
dominating the
Instantaneous More consumer local community’
planet, global
and employment
Simultaneous sameness,
choices
western
imperialism
Environmental
degradation
Hierarchical,
unequal and
insecure social
environment
229
WebNet vision of the world

Linear/ Post–Information Cyber Digital divide, Potential

Compressed society democracy info-rich and info- environmental
poor benefits
Time replacing Knowledge World harmony
distance society Formation of Increased
Environmental
Cyber-ghettos efficiency
Network society crisis resolved
Electronic Increased
Digital Age Freedom to
surveillance, total possibilities for
create new
Electronic Age lack of privacy intercultural
virtual identities
exchange within
Age of and Information
the discourse of
automation communities— feudalism—
rationalism
invent reality network
Atomic Age controlled by few
Freedom from
Cyberia companies
repetitive boring
tasks—more Adcult—
time for leisure advertising
ubiquitous
Liberation from
the limits of time, Infoglut—
geography, information
class, disability, overload—
race, gender cultivates stress,
confusion and
ignorance
Temporal and
cultural
impoverishment
Tables 4.3 and 4.4 summarise educational futures—globalised education (Table 4.3)
and cyber education (Table 4.4). This is done by answering the following questions: (1) what
is the underlying vision of the future; (2) what is the utopian promise; (3) what are dystopian
dangers; (4) what is the social eutopia offered; (5) what is the worldview and approach to
knowledge; (6) what is the epistemology; (7) what is the educated subject; (8) what is the
educational content; (8) what is the educational process; and (9) what is the educational
structure.
For example, for cyber education, the underlying vision for the future is the
interconnected world. The utopian promise is improved access and quality. The dystopian
dangers are, among others, linguistic colonisation and the suppression of other forms of
learning. The educational eutopia is expansion in approaches to teaching and learning. The
worldview consists of scientism, instrumentalism, secularism, empiricism and technological
determinism. The epistemology employed is rationalism and the techno–scientific approach
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to knowledge. The education subject is computer literate and has operational skills and
expertise. In terms of educational content, computer and multimedia literacy is primary. The
process is skills focused and the structure is the networked classroom and individualised
learning.

Futures: Globalised Education
Underlying vision Utopian promise Dystopian dangers Educational eutopia

for the future
Globalised World Dynamic synergy of Education a product Benefits from

teachers, computer to be bought and sold globalising student
mediated instructional body and globalising
Commercialisation
devices and students curriculum
and corporatisation of
collaborating globally
education Improvement of
Transnational and access to educational
Westernisation
transcultural resources and
dialogues and Sacrifice of individual expertise
learning styles and
idiosyncratic
Deepening what is
enthusiasm to satisfy
thought, expansion of
global criteria
knowledge
Increase in
Student–centred
bureaucratic rigidities
education, students
needs central Smothering of all
forms of creativity
Creation of docile,
hard-working,
conformist students
In non-OECD
countries decrease in
both quantity and
quality
Worldview and approach to knowledge Epistemology Educated Subject
Neo-liberalism Rationalism Measurable technical production of

skilled, flexible, movable global worker
Anthropocentrism Instrumentalism
Students as consumers
Focus on growth Secularism
Economic determinism Scientism
Market Liberalism and Social Conservativism
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Educational visions/futures
Content Process Structure
Vocational Focus on skills Connection between

traditional educational
Pragmatic and token Standardisation
institutions
multiculturalism and gender
Focus on achievement and
equality Privatised—voucher system
success
Agile and flexible system
Centralised testing

Futures: Cyber Education
Underlying vision for Utopian promise Dystopian dangers Educational

the future eutopia
Interconnected World Improved access and Linguistic colonisation Expansion in

quality, education less approaches to
Suppression of other
costly and more flexible teaching and
forms of learning (e.g.
learning
Student–centred life- oral)
long learning Powerful method
Too much stress on
that can meet the
Self-directed, individualized learning
needs of some
collaborative learning and personal autonomy
students the best
leads to competition
Learning by doing
Education teaches
Increase in students
about progress without
independence, curiosity
limits, rights without
and autonomy
responsibilities and
Faster acquisition of technology without cost
skills than ever before
The era of ‘pedagogical
plenty’
Equitable sharing of
classroom authority—
authority of the teacher
decentred
Knowledge available 24
hours a day, 365 days of
the year
Worldview and approach to Epistemology Educated Subject

knowledge
Scientism Rationalism Computer literate

Instrumentalism Techno–scientific approach to Operational skills and
knowledge expertise
Secularism
Empiricism
Technological determinism
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Computer and multimedia literacy Focus on skills Networked classroom

Gender and cultural issues seen Flexibility, adaptability, interaction Individualised learning
as irrelevant
Table 4.5 summarises key words used to describe the Globalised world and
education, and Table 4.6 the WebNet vision and cyber education. For globalised world, these
include terms such as choice, freedom, opportunities and competition. For Interconnected
and Cyber Education, these include terms such as interactivity and multidirectionality.
Globalised World and Education
Change Future Society Education Other key

words
Rapid and Already given, Globalised Human capital Choice, freedom,

perpetual more of the opportunities
Rationalisation Achievement
same
Need to adjust to success Competition
Healthy economy
change, trends
Opening of
unstoppable Deregulation,
national
privatization,
economies
liberalization of
capital flows
Interconnected World (WebNet) and Cyber Education

words
Rapid and Already given, New information Access Interactivity

perpetual more of the same technologies
Potential Interconnecte
Exponential d-ness
Networked
Irrevocable classroom Multi-
directionality
Need to adjust to Digital library—
change, trends cybrary Flow and
unstoppable seamlessness
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Tables 4.7 and 4.8 restate the analysis conducted earlier in the text. Table 7 divides
the future into four levels. The first is the litany. In terms of the globalised world, the litany is
the statement that globalisation is dramatically changing education and our world. The
second is the social cause level. These include, depending on one's worldview: neo-
colonialism, patriarchy or capitalism, for example. At the deeper level, underlying
assumptions are individualism, modernity and rationalism. The myth metaphor level that
underlies this is alternatively, the Land of Cockaygne (land of milk and honey), the Golden
Age, and Evolution. The bottom line for education is that education is about the provision of
skills for human capital formation, education as economic investment and as providing skills
so as to compete in the global economy.
Analysis: Globalised World and Education
Litany Social cause Discourse/ Myth/ Metaphor Education

Worldview Bottom line
Globalisation is Capitalism Individualism Land of Cockaygne Education mainly

dramatically (land of milk and about providing
Patriarchy Rationalism
changing honey), Golden Age vocational skills in
education and our Neo-colonialism Modernity order to achieve
Western world at the
world and imperialism (movement and compete
top of development
towards the
Governance of ladder Education as
modern form of
economic investment in
schooling) Darwinian
globalisation economy
paradigm/evolution
(social and
and survival of the Education as
educational
fittest human capital
policy)
formation
Free market
World as ‘one place’
In terms of the Interconnected World and Cyber education presented in Table 8, the
litany consists of the statement: computers and the internet are revolutionizing education. The
social causes of this are the development of ICTs and economic decisions that support cyber
education. The worldview beneath this is based on instrumental rationality as well as linear
progress and technology. The myths–metaphors that describe this are that the global brain,
the new world, the new frontier, and, of course, the network. For education, the bottom line is
that education is about increased access to information.
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Analysis: Interconnected World and Cyber education
Litany Social cause Discourse/ Myth/ Metaphor Education

Worldview Bottom line
Computers and Invention and Internet a Global brain Education mainly

Internet are development of representation of about increased
World mind
revolutionizing new information instrumental access of
education and rationality New World information
communication
Focus on New Frontier
technologies
individual and
Discovered but
Economic her/his interface
yet not fully
investment and with technology
policy decisions colonized space
Sense–based
that support cyber Network
education
education
privileged
Linear progress
and development
The Globalised and the WebNet world are deconstructed in Tables 4.9 and 4.10. The
questions asked are: (1) who gets to speak; (2) who and what is silenced; (3) what is missing
from the discourse; (4) what is the continuity; and, (5) what is the discontinuity. For the
Globalised world, government and consumers speak. The individual, the family, the
community, NGOs and the environment are silenced. Sustainability is thus missing from the
discourse, as is a concern for social justice, slow time and critical thought. The main
continuity is with the west and patriarchy as well as with the imagination of the world as one
place. Discontinuity is the need for the new vision that appeared in the 1980s and 1990s, and
coincided with both ‘the end of Millenium’ as well as with a collapse of socialism (as a
genuine futures alternative to the western capitalism).

Globalised World
Who gets to Who and what is What is missing Continuity Discontinuity

speak silenced from a discourse
International Individual, family, Concern with Western The fall of

cooperation communal and social and civilisation, communism in
environmental patriarchy Eastern Europe,
Government Environmental
sustainability
concerns Imagination about 1980s in the west
Consumers
Concern with the world as ‘one
NGOs Postmodernism
social justice place’
issues and ethics
Development of
critical thought
Slow time
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For the WebNet world, those who have access and knowledge get to speak. The
majority of the world is silenced: their issues and concerns are lost. Emotional and spiritual
aspects of the self are missing from the discourse, as are silence and non-verbal expressions.
This world continues humanity’s techno–evolution development. The discontinuity is the
Cold War, 1950s USA and the transformation of 1970s capitalism.

WebNet World

Those that have Majority of the Emotional and Thousands of Cold War
the access and world; their spiritual aspects years of human
knowledge issues and of the self attempts to
concerns improve lives 1950s USA
through
Respect for development of
silence and various tools and Transformation
reflection (seen technologies in 1970s
as inactivity) capitalism
Non-verbal
expression
4.5 Conclusion: The ‘Truth’ of the Future
In this chapter, I have described the two hegemonic visions of the future that
challenge the modern world: the Globalised world and the WebNet vision of the world.
While there are debates as to whether globalisation or the Internet are good or bad, or both
good and bad at the same time, the assumption remains that these two processes are the
future. The task of educators is to prepare students for a future where global–technology
dominates. It is not to contest or search for alternatives. The globalised and cyber world
concepts are succeeding in the modern world not because they challenge its basis, but
because the assumptions of their worldview fit perfectly with it. Globalisation and the
information society continue the linear stage–like history of the west. Indeed, both processes
rescue capitalism from its recent stagnation. Thus while globalisation and the WebNet
supersede modernity, they do so not by destroying the basis of modernity but by continuing
it—its linear view of history, its exclusion of the Other, its patriarchal bias.
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The purpose of the tables above has been threefold. First, to summarise the main
arguments. Second, to unpack the levels of reality underneath the claims of realism for each
image of the future—that they are derived from specific social and technological causes as
well as worldviews and myths. Third, to question these images of the future, to ask disturbing
questions—who and what is silenced, what is missing from the discourse, and who gets to
speak, for example—so that space for alternatives can be created.
It is in the next chapter (Chapter Five) that I pursue alternatives to the hegemony of
globalisation and WebNet and the resultant images of educational futures—globalised
education and cyber education. The three alternatives pursued are: feminist education, the
recovery of indigenous education and spiritual education. All three challenge the modernist
theory of history and vision of the future at foundational levels. All three challenge us to
rethink how we organise our worlds. But most importantly, by presenting alternatives, the
hegemony of globalisation and WebNet is made problematic. Agency can be recovered.
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Chapter Five: Alternatives to the Mainstream Discourse
‘Millenium Tree’ by Josephine Wall. Image retrieved October 12, 2000, from
http://freespace.virgin.net/josephine.wall/frontpage.html
Opposition is not enough. In that vacant space after one has resisted there is
still the necessity to become—to make oneself anew. (hooks, 1991, p.15)
It is not education, but education of a certain kind, that will save us. (Orr,
1999, p.166)
5.1 Introduction
In this chapter, alternative futures and educational visions are explored. While there
are many alternatives challenging both modernist, as well as the globalised and cyber, vision
of/for education, I analyse feminist visions, and the recovery of indigenous and spiritual
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education in detail because they offer foundational challenges to hegemonic visions. The
analysis of feminist alternatives in education is important because it is the approach that has
so far thrown the deepest challenge to patriarchal interpretations of time, history, future,
knowledge and what education is seen to be about. The recovery of indigenous traditions in
education and spiritual education are crucial as these alternatives challenge the way time,
history, future, knowledge and education have been understood and framed within the
mainstream western intellectual tradition.
As I have already discussed, these various alternatives do overlap in some ways.
However, I discuss feminist, spiritual and indigenous alternatives in terms of their main
‘core’, that is, in terms of what stand out as fundamental issues, concerns and strategies
within these alternative visions. While I use a similar template to that already applied in
Chapter Four, I here more specifically focus on three main questions: (1) in which ways, if at
all, are these alternative visions different from the hegemonic futures visions, and to what
degree; (2) what is their main approach to time, how is history interpreted and what is the
guiding (desired, implied) vision for the future; and (3) what is the connection between these
guiding futures images and educational visions for the future?
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5.2 Exemplar One: Feminist Alternatives
Celebration of the Tree of Life, Illustration by Jackie Morris, Image from Resurgence, 179 (1996, front
cover).
In this exemplar I argue that feminist writings on the futures of education and the
subsequent development of alternative educational models fundamentally disrupt the many
givens in futures and educational discourses. This is because, until recently, theories of
human beings’ nature and behaviour, and most official knowledge about ourselves and our
world have been ‘man-made’ (Hunter College Women’s Studies Collective, 1983, p. 3). This
official knowledge also includes the development of futures and the educational field, and in
turn the way history and social change outside and within education are most commonly
understood. Feminist alternatives reflect upon and incorporate ‘women’s experiences,
perspectives and ways of knowing’. This has resulted in a dramatic paradigm shift (Kuhn,
1970) within the social sciences. The discussion of feminist alternatives is therefore crucial
for this thesis. It is, however, debatable whether the feminist movement is still predominately
infused with the western worldview, if it is still Anglo or Eurocentric. But there is very little
doubt that feminism has fundamentally challenged one of the longest standing systems of
oppression, that of patriarchy. Patriarchy has, on the other hand, as feminists often claim,
served as a model for oppression for different categories of ‘Others’, including nature and the
‘non-west’. As is seen in Figure 2 ( a summary of alternatives), discourses are often aligned
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towards the similar end of the continuum: relationships tend to exist between the
multiculturalism/gender partnership discourses, or, alternatively, the uni-
culturalism/patriarchy discourses. While this is, of course, not always the case, these are
some of the main tendencies that currently underline various futures alternatives.
The history of education within patriarchal societies could, of course, predominantly
be written as the history of women’s exclusion (as discussed in Chapter Three).
Alternatively, women were included but within a context that sharply polarised genders,
where differences between genders were accentuated and subsequently fixed, effectively
erasing possibilities for escape from socially constructed gender roles. In both cases,
education, or the lack of it, became one of the most powerful ways in which gender
hierarchies have been reproduced. But education has also become one of the most important
institutions that has helped destabilise patriarchy. Mass education of women in the west,
coupled with the need and the possibility for women to gain jobs and work outside the
private sphere enabled the disruption of the centuries old continuum of women’s exclusion
and pseudo–inclusion. The emergence of the second wave feminist movement in the 1960s
enabled an influx of feminist research and knowledge that has had significant implications
for education. Feminist intervention in the area of education took at least four main ‘turns’.
Initially, feminists campaigned for equal access to education for women and argued against
the separate acquisition of feminine skills (Humm, 1989, p.60). The second phase focused on
the critique, the ways in which education functions as the major vehicle for the reproduction
of gender inequality. The most often criticized aspects of modern education include:
– existence of ‘hidden curricula’, i.e., different treatment for boys and girls in
such a way that existing gender inequalities are maintained;
– fragmentation of knowledge into discrete specializations where everything has
to be classified, measured, categorized and presented in terms of higher and
lower achievements;
– lack of topics of interest for women (e.g., childbirth, housework, sexual abuse,
family relationships, peaceful management of our species through history,
daily life and work);
– bias against women in most textbooks; and
– concentration on ‘big’ names and ‘big’ events, as well as on teachings about
the conquest and domination of the Others (including nature). (Milojevic,
1998, p. 87)
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In the area of education, much of the feminist work through the 1970s and early
1980s could be characterized as "gender and education" research (Luke & Gore, 1992, p. 8;
Kenway & Modra, 1992). This work was not without practical impact:
Throughout that period [1970s and 1980s], the results of gender and eduation
research filtered through to state and federal commissions and inquiries into
girls and schooling and subsequently into educational policies and curricula.
Policy texts prescribed the need for gender–inclusive curricula and for girls'
greater access to and participation in maths and sciences, sports and physical
education. Curricular texts began to give girls equal representational space.
More textual illustrations of and reference to girls became evident . . . Equal
classroom time, equal numerical participation, and equal curricular presence
were the main aims and outcomes of the 1970s and 1980s gender and
education research. (Luke & Gore, 1992, p. 8)
The third turn has been inspired by, but has moved away from, the critique, and has
focused on the development of alternative educational models that transcend previous
limitations while including women’s experiences and ‘ways of knowing’:
Reflecting the separatist move of much feminism of that period [1980s], the
construction of feminist pedagogy in Women's Studies gave limited attention
to male–authored constructions of pedagogy, with Paulo Freire's work the
only significant exception. (ibid.)
The main impact this approach was the further development of Women's Studies, as
an alternative to current education, informed by alternative visions for the future:
Women's Studies, diverse as its components are, has at its best shared a vision
of a world free not only from sexism but also from racism, class–bias, agism,
heterosexual bias—from all the ideologies and institutions that have
consciously or uncounsciously oppressed and exploited some for the
advantage of others . . . The uniqueness of Women's Studies has been its
refusal to accept sterile divisions between academy and community, between
intellect and passion, between the individual and society. Women's Studies . . .
is equipping women to transform [society]. (Charter document of the National
Women's Studies Association, 1977, quoted in Kenway & Modra, 1992, p.
149)
Since it was initially introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Women's Studies
programs and courses have expanded ‘dramatically’ (Hoffmann and Stake, 1998). They can
242
now be found not only at the majority of universities in the west, but have also expanded to
various places all over the world.
The fourth turn is consistent with this expansion, and is mostly characterised by the
widening of feminist analysis and internal critique. This critique incorporated four main
approaches. First, those critical of Women's Studies in general started to question the
legitimacy of pedagogic approaches used. The main argument is that feminist education in
fact, discourages independent thinking, overemphasises student’s personal experience, is
overly politicised, promotes anti-intellectualism and intolerance, replaces inquiry with
ideology and free expression with dogma (Hoffmann and Stake, 1998).
Second, those coming from the education field questioned the distinctiveness of
pedagogical approaches within Women's Studies (e.g., Kenway & Modra, 1992; Gore, 1993).
The third critique was by representatives of group minorities, especially lesbians and women
of colour (Gunew, 1990, pp. 29–31). These theorists (e.g., Adrienne Rich, Gayatri Spivak,
bell hooks) questioned the unifying and universalist approach that characterised much of the
visioning developed in the previous phase and challenged some of the most common
assumptions that underlie feminist visions of transformative education. For example, bell
hooks raised the issue of literacy as pertinent to people of colour; the issue of covert racism;
the inability to be heard or of being put in the spotlight to speak for their whole race in the
feminist classroom:
In a feminist classroom, especially a Women's Studies course, the black
student, who has had no previous background in feminist studies, usually
finds that she or he is in a class that is predominately white (often attended by
a majority of outspoken young, white, radical feminists, many of whom link
this politic to issues of gay rights). Unfamiliarity with the issues may lead
black students to feel at a disadvantage both academically and culturally (they
may not be accustomed to public discussions of sexual practice). If a black
student acknowledges that she is not familiar with the work of Audre Lorde
and the rest of the class gasps as though this is unthinkable and reprehensive,
that gasp evokes the sense that feminism is really a private cult whose
members are usually white . . . Suddenly, the feminist classroom is no longer a
safe haven, the way many [in] Women’s Studies imagine it will be, but is
instead a site of conflict, tensions, and sometimes ongoing hostility. (hooks,
1994, p. 113)
A similar point is made by Orner (in Luke & Gore, 1992, p. 81):
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There are times when it is not safe for students to speak: when one student’s
socially constructed body language threatens another; when the teacher is not
perceived as an ally. It is not adequate to write off student silence in these
instances as simply a case of internalized oppression. Nor can we simply label
these silences resistance or false consciousness. There may be compelling
conscious and unconscious reasons for not speaking—or for speaking, perhaps
more loudly, with silence.
The fourth critique came mostly from the poststructural, postmodern orientation and
has highlighted inherent inconsistencies and contradictions within feminist thought, such as
issues of power, control, authority and so on. For example, Janice Raymond argued that non-
hierarchical practices can, in effect, prevent women from “ . . . discovering and using their
own individual strength and can also encourage them to endeavor the achieve their goals
through the exercise of indirect power or even manipulation within a group” (quoted in
Kenway & Modra, 1992, p. 162).
This is problematic, because “ . . . no real power emerges from a group that silences
its best and brightest voices for a false sense of group equality. And certainly no strong
friendships can be formed among women who have no power of being” (ibid.).
While I have so far outlined the context of feminist educational alternatives, I next
investigate the connection between educational and futures visions developed by women
influenced by feminist theory. To do so I investigate an alternative approach to time and
vision for the future that is argued to be ‘women’s’. I then analyse the worldview,
epistemology and approach to knowledge behind these visions and ask in which ways it is
connected with particular educational visions. Finally, I investigate feminist utopian promises
and apply causal layered analysis to feminist writing on the futures of education and the
subsequent development of alternative educational models.
5.2.1 The approach to time and the vision for the future
You must have a positive alternative, a vision of a better future that can
motivate people to sacrifice their time and energy towards its realization.
(Alcoff, 1988, p. 418)
Feminism originally developed within an exclusively western, linear approach to
time, arguing for further ‘progress’ and development, which predominately meant women’s
inclusion within already existing institutions. Then various approaches that argued for the
distinctiveness of Women’s Ways of Knowing (Belenky et al., 1986) ‘discovered’ that
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women’s approach to time is different from the dominant, linear, instrumental, industrial,
patriarchal, ‘clock’ time. Arguments for the distinctiveness of women’s ways of knowing
have been based, as Kathy Ferguson (1993, p. 61) argues, on approaches either within praxis
feminism, that focused on distinctiveness of what women are said to do, or on approaches
within cosmic feminism, that focus more on what women are said to be. More concretely,
female experience has most often been defined by “ . . . mothering and reproduction; by the
political economy of the gendered division of labor; by the arrangements of the female body;
by women’s connection to non-human nature; by spirituality and contact with the divine”
(Ferguson, 1993, p. 61).
In addition, numerous authors (e.g., Annas, 1978; Hartsock, 1983; Jaggar, 1983)
argued that women’s ways of knowing are not only different from the dominant perspective
(of the white, male, middle or upper class social group), but that a feminist perspective is, in
fact, more ‘accurate’ and ‘complete’. Standpoint epistemology, developed by these authors,
implies that less powerful members of society have the potential for a more complete view of
social reality because they are aware and sensitive to both the dominant worldview of the
society as well as their own (Nielsen, 1990, p. 10). As argued by bell hooks (1990, p. 34):
. . . I was not speaking of a marginality one wishes to lose, to give up, or
surrender as part of moving into the center, but rather as a site one stays in,
clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist. It offers the
possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and create, to imagine
alternatives, new worlds.
Because of the ability to incorporate a more complete view of social reality, such a
‘double vision’ means that less is assumed and more examined and therefore, the appropriate
term is a “turn of a spiral, not the flip of a coin” (Thiele, 1986, p. 41).
Similar arguments have been developed in the area of futures studies as well.
Eleonora Masini (1993b, 2002), for example, has repeatedly argued that women have
developed the capacity to create alternatives for the future better than men. She argues that
this is because of certain women’s individual capacities and social capacities that are well
documented by empirical work (1993b, 2002, p. 255). These capacities include at the
individual level: flexibility, rapid response to emergency situations, superimposition of tasks,
definite priorities, adaptability—and, at the social level—solidarity, exchange and
overcoming of barriers (Masini, 1993b, pp. 9–10). In a nutshell, Masini (2002, p. 255) argues
that women are not only the victims in society but also “the silent builders of one or many
alternative societies”. Because we live in a time of great challenge, alternatives must emerge:
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. . . if we wish to stop, or at least hinder, the destruction of the environment

(as a rich resource or, more importantly, as a gift of God), the deterioration of
society, the apathy of the young generation, the manipulation of values, by
presenting the alternatives that emerge from those who are outside the present
social structures. (ibid.)
And, apparently, among those outside of the present social structures, women are one
important group that seems are able to provide ‘some answers’ (Masini, 2002).
Influential ‘pop futurists’ such as Patricia Aburdene and John Naisbitt, in their
Megatrends for Women (1992), argue along similar lines. According to them, successful
human beings, now and even more so in the future, will need to possess a combination of
traditional masculine and feminine traits, for example, to be competitive and compassionate,
goal–oriented and nurturing, intuitive and risk taking (Aburdene & Naisbitt, 1992, p. 262).
This means that the “cardboard, one-dimensional females and males alike are doomed to
failure” (ibid.). While the struggle to become a gender hybrid seems to rest on the shoulders
of each individual, Aburdene and Naisbitt (ibid.) go further to argue that as a social group,
women have absorbed positive masculine traits more successfully than most men have
integrated desirable female characteristics and have therefore evolved into “a more complex
state of wholeness”. This is because patriarchal societies have for a long time devalued
feminine characteristics, so that men had “little incentive to integrate them until recently”
(ibid.). However, the shift away from this is already happening. It is the shift away from
patriarchy and towards a more gender–balanced futures. Aburdene and Naisbitt (ibid., p. xix)
acknowledge that there are countervailing forces, that is, “old power structures that does not
particularly want to give way”. Nonetheless, they argue that the time has come when the
gender hybrid trend is about to become a megatrend, where “one accepted social paradigm no
longer makes sense and is replaced by another” (ibid., p. xvii). This is because: “social
change happens when critical mass occurs” and because the critical mass of support among
both women and men “to achieve all the objectives of the women’s movement is already in
place” (ibid.).
In terms of their politics and visionary input, insights by authors such as Masini,
Aburdene and Naisbit and the arguments developed by standpoint epistemology are crucial.
However, the arguments about the distinctiveness of ‘women’s visions’ fail to completely
satisfy academic rigour. That is, given the diversity among the world’s women, in–group
differences can be as big as differences between the two genders. Even within the same (e.g.,
western) culture, and even within a reasonably unified social movement, such as feminism,
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there is a myriad of perspectives and worldviews. The introduction by Rosemarie Putnam

Tong to Feminist Thought (1998), for example, identifies eight distinctive positions within
feminism—from older liberal, radical and Marxist/social feminist to the more recent,
psychoanalytic/gender, existentialist, postmodern, multicultural/global and eco feminist
perspectives. In addition, at least three more perspectives need to be included as completely
distinct rather the being discussed within the previous positions—for example, lesbian, cyber
and spiritual feminism. All this demonstrates that while politically there may be a consensus
on where priorities, exemplared in futures visions, are, epistemologically it is impossible to
identify even feminist vision for the future, let alone ‘women’s’. As any universalist
statement about woman/women can easily be challenged from the position of epistemological
(and group) minorities, it is therefore impossible to assert what ‘women’s approaches to
time’ or ‘women’s visions of the future’ might be. While debate about this particular issue is
at least hundred years old (e.g., the pro- and anti-war feminists debates that effectively
weakened the suffragette movement in the early decades of the 20th century), I here argue for
the distinctiveness of ‘feminist’ or ‘women’s’ visions and perspectives on several grounds.
First, as Putnam Tong (1998) and hooks (2000) maintain, diversity within women’s visions
and among feminists that are nowadays heard is one more argument that supports the claim
about the women’s movements’ strengths rather than weaknesses. They testify that feminist
thought, “like all other time-honored modes of thinking, . . . has a past as well as a present
and a future” (Putnam Tong, 1998, p. 1). Second, it has been repeatedly argued by feminists
themselves that, despite all differences within feminism and various other women’s
movements that refused to be identified as such, there is a core (of belifs, values,
epistemological positions) that is rarely challenged. This widely accepted core, commonly
incorporates acknowledgment of the following:
– gender issues are important, the influence of gender is pervasive;
– knowledge is socially constructed;
– there are deep structures but also there is a possibility of change;
– current imbalances in the world exist partly because women’s perspective,
experiences and knowledge are marginalised;
– feminist and women’s centered theories and approaches provide a basis for
understanding every area of individual and social lives; it is not just a laundry list
of ‘women’s issues’;
– the main goal is reorganisation of the world based on sex (gender) equality/
partnership in all human relations;
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– there is a commitment to struggling against racial, class, sexual and heterosexual

oppression as well as against other oppressions based on a hierarchy of
differences;
– feminism (and other women–centered approaches) is political theory, practice,
social movement, worldview, way of life; and
– the feminist (women’s) perspective can affect the world politically, culturally,
economically, and spiritually, and bring about significantly different outcomes.
Thirdly, while acknowledging various differences it is also possible to develop the
position of ‘strategic essentialism’ (Spivak, 1985) that both argues for distinctiveness of
women’s perspectives and positions and is aware that these are predominately socially
constructed discourses.
It is often argued, predominantly by postmodernists in general and postmodern
feminists in particular, that one should stay away from locking women’s and men’s
differences within binary approaches because these not only lack epistemological
justification, but in effect disempower women themselves. For example, by fixing women’s
time as ‘cyclical’, the particular experience of some women during a particular era (the past,
agricultural one) is essentialised and romanticised. While aware that women’s approaches to
time and their preferred vision for the future vary along the political and epistemological
continuum, I suggest that there is a certain ‘essential core’ among these various approaches.
This position is also taken in the next part of this chapter, where I investigate ‘non-western’
and ‘post-western’ approaches. All the difficulties mentioned above apply to this section as
well, and the proposed ‘solution’ also follows the position taken here. That is, as argued in
Chapters One and Two, when confronted with the inherently unsolvable conflict that often
stems from epistemological and academic rigour versus political and visionary input, I take
the position of the latter. The main argument here is, for example, not to assert that so-called
‘women’s time’ applies to all women at all times of their lives (Adam, 1995, p. 94), because
it does not. Rather, it is to argue that ‘women’s time’ can be used as “an exemplar for times
lived, given and generated in the shadow of the hegemony of universal clock time” (ibid.).
The main purpose here is not to establish ‘new dualisms and dualities’ but to “sensitize us to
a complexity largely untheorized and left implicit in social science analyses that focus on
some aspects of time to the exclusion of others” (ibid.). In addition, when we compare
multiple times, we can “begin to see that not all times are equal” and that some times are
“clearly privileged and deemed more important than others” (ibid.). This is, of course, the
case not only with the various approaches to time, but also for various approaches to the
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future, including those that focus on educational issues. Outlining various alternatives, in this
case, women’s, serves the purpose of both challenging hegemonic futures visions as well as
making present decisions about the future more informed.
To sum up the previous discussion, arguably women’s approaches to time and the
future follow that of the dominant civilisational framework, but they also often digress, more
so during some particular times in an individual’s life or during particular historical epochs.
Numerous authors have argued for the distinctiveness of women’s approach to time and the
future. For example, authors in Taking Out Time: Feminist Perspective on Temporality (ed.
by Forman & Sowton, 1989) argued that to think about time within patriarchal history is to
think within man–centered epistemologies (O’Brien, 1989, p. 14). According to their
accounts, patriarchal time is “abstract time”, “time out of mind”, such as, for example, in
Hegelian dialectics (Forman & Sowton, 1989, p. ix). Women’s time as historical time is a
contradiction, argues Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth (1989, p. 37), because the discourse of
historical time exists “in the first place by means of the crucial exclusion or repression of
women”. This linear time, which Julia Kristeva (1981, p. 17) calls “the time of project and
history”, is now taken for granted, as a given, as ‘natural’. But it is actually an artifice, “one
of the massive achievements of western culture, and as such . . . a profoundly collective
construct” (Deeds Ermarth, 1989, p. 42). Women’s time does not fit within the time of the
project and history because “Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented,
interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the
efforts and the demands of others” (Elizabeth Janeway, quoted in Deeds Ermarth, 1989, p.
42).
The best way to define what women’s time is then, is to look at the past, within more
gender balanced matrilinear societies, where “the time itself was considered female” (Forman
& Sowton, 1989, p. xii). Here, we move to viewing time predominantly as ‘event time’, or
‘cyclical like the seasons’, ‘spiral’, ‘dialectical’, ‘chaotic’, ‘contradictory’, ‘knowing no
beginning and no end’, ‘life as it is lived’. Compared to “historical time” it is not abstract or
time out of mind, but “experienced time”, “species time”, “common time” (O’Brien, 1989, p.
14):
Men have used mind for the sorts of understanding of reality embedded in the
history of the conquest of time, men’s history. Women “mind” the children.
The obvious thing that is wrong with this is the failure to realize that the first
is destructive of history, a quest for Nirvana, the periodization of abstract
heroes arrogantly symbolized in the cyclically insignificant death of the
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deified individual: the second—coping all the time—is the absolute condition
of a human existence in time. Human history has meaning only in species
time, a reality dimly recalled by “remembering” our individual birthdays
while forgetting the cyclical integrity of species life (ibid.).
Nothing can be more distinctive of ‘women’s experiences’ than giving birth to
children, and this theme is also used to argue for distinctiveness of women’s approach to
time. As previously argued by O’Brien, the main difference is in the shift from “a death–
determined future to a birth–determined one” (Forman & Sowton, 1989, p. 7). While not all
women give birth, those that do become intimately aware of the difference between time that
follows the motion of the clock and that of the organic, event time:
. . . the woman in labor experiences herself not as moving with time [of the
clock] but as moving in it. For her, time stands still, moments flow together,
the past and the future do not lie still behind and before her. In place of
sequence, and linear relation, there is an overwhelming richness of sensation,
which pulls her attention from the outer world. She is immersed in the
immediacy of her experience, Her body is no longer a neutral background for
her consciousness. (Fox, 1989, p. 132)
Because most women spend time caring, loving and educating and managing a
household and because most experience female times of menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth
and lactation, women are familiar with times that operate according to non-economic
principles, argues Adam (1995, p. 95). These times, of caring, loving, education and so on,
can neither be “forced into timetables, schedules and deadlines nor allocated a monetary
value” (ibid.). They are open ended, not so much “time measured, spent, allocated and
controlled as time lived, time made and time generated” (ibid.). These time–generated and
time–giving activities have “ . . . no place in the meaning cluster of quantity, measure, dates
and deadlines, of calculability, abstract exchange value, efficiency and profit” (ibid.).
Because currently, all work relations are touched by clock time and tied up with
hegemony and power, women’s time is rendered invisible and outside normative time as well
as outside basic assumptions and categories of classical social science analysis (ibid., pp. 94–
95). As already mentioned in Chapters Three and Four, Adam (1998) also argues that the
problem with industrial/patriarchal time is in discounting both nature and the future. Nature
is discounted on the grounds of assumptions that view the earth as “a man-made machine”,
and the future by being given less value than the present (Adam, 1998, pp. 74, 79). Because
they stayed in “the shadow of the hegemony of universal clock time” (Adam, 1995, p. 94),
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women are more closely aware of the existence of now devalued ‘natural’ time—event time
or “species time” and “generational time”. This particular theme, of time as generational, has
best been developed by Elise Boulding in her concept of 200 years present. Boulding (1990,
p. 3) argues that the short–time frame used to both make foreign policy and live personal
lives is almost from movement to moment and that it is important to expand our time
perspective to be able to better understand all kinds of events. But, while in many cultures,
for example within the traditional Indian approach to time discussed in Chapter Three, a
sense of time and history is much greater, it is also sometimes so large as to make individual
human events seem insignificant. On the other hand:
Between these extremes there lies a medium range of time which is neither too
long nor too short for immediate comprehension, and which has an organic
quality that gives it relevance for the present movement. This medium range is
the 200 year present. That present begins 100 years ago today, on the day of
birth of those among us who are centenarians. Its other boundary is the
hundredth birthday of the babies born today. This present is a continuously
moving movement, always reaching out 100 years in either direction from the
day we are in. We are linked with both boundaries of this moment by the
people among us whose life began or will end at one of those boundaries, five
generations each way in time. It is our space, one that we can move around in
directly in our own lives and indirectly by touching the lives of the young and
old around us. (Boulding, 1990, p. 4)
This approach to time is important within what Boulding (1977, p. 221) calls “gentle
society”, a society situated within a decentralised and demilitarized yet still interconnected
and interdependent world. This ‘gentle’ society is predominately androgynous and will be
created by androgynous human beings, like Jesus, Buddha and Shiva. Similarly to Aburdene
and Naisbitt (1992), Boulding argues that these androgynous human beings combine both
qualities of gentleness and assertiveness in ways that fit neither typical male nor typical
female roles. The gentle society will be created through three main leverage points. These
three leverage points that will influence ‘the coming of the gentle society” are: education,
particularly in the early–childhood school setting, that is nursery school and early elementary
school; family and community.
Another theorist who has destabilised the usual approach to time and history is Riane
Eisler. Eisler (1987, 1995, 2000) has developed a cultural transformation theory that includes
gender theory as transformation praxis (Inayatullah, 1998b, p. 44). She argues that the best
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way to understand our past, present and the possibilities for future is by “charting the
dynamic interaction of two movements” (Eisler, 1997, p. 141):
The first is the tendency of social systems to move toward greater complexity,
largely because of technological breakthroughs of phase changes. The second
is the movement of cultural shifts between two basic organizational forms or
“attractors”: the dominator and partnership models.
One main difference between these two models is that the templating of the
dominator models “gives high priority to technologies for domination and destruction”,
whereas the templating of the partnership model “gives high priority to technologies that
sustain and enhance life” (ibid.). Eisler’s two basic models describe systems of belief and
social structures that either nurture and support—or inhibit and undermine—equitable,
democratic, nonviolence, and caring relations. At one end is the partnership model that
embodies equity, environmental sustainability, multiculturalism, and gender–fairness. At the
opposite end of the continuum is the dominator model, which emphasizes control,
authoritarianism, violence, gender discrimination, and environmental degradation. Most
importantly, they represent two basic underlying alternatives for human relations,
irrespective of technological and economic change. Eisler draws on the work of Marija
Gimbutas and other women archeologists who argue that there is enough evidence to support
the claim that the partnership model existed before being swept away by androcratic and
patriarchal societies. But while androcracy has been the dominating model for millennia,
Eisler also argues (in common with Aburdene and Naisbitt), that our era is characterized by a
renewal of partnership wherein a strong movement towards more balanced societies already
exists in some places. The partnership society is clearly the desired future, not only for Eisler,
but for almost all other women futurists, visionaries, theorists, feminists and women’s
movements’ social activists. Given the homogenous, corporatist and patriarchal tendencies
within the globalised and cyber vision for the world that currently dominates it is, of course,
questionable whether this future is likely to emerge as another hegemonic ideal. But clearly,
for Eisler and many others, if it does not, what is at stake is nothing less that the survival of
the human species. In this nuclear/electronic/biochemical age, concludes Eisler,
transformation towards a partnership society is a necessity, but whether it will occur or not is
far from certain. The difference between such a view of history and the future, as opposed to
hegemonic futures visions that argue about the inevitability of certain futures, is the
difference between choice and determinism. As argued previously, one of the core beliefs of
feminists and women’s movements is that while patriarchy is ubiquitous there is, indeed, a
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possibility of change. This possibility of change exists at the micro level (the level of the
individual, personal, immediate community) and also at the macro level (broader society,
nation–states, international society). Feminist activities have been targeting all these levels,
incorporating both short-term and long-term solutions to the problem under inquiry, as well
as becoming a main slogan for the ecological movement—‘think globally act locally’.
Interestingly, women futurists take this question of choice even more broadly, arguing that
while humans exist within nature and are bound by natural processes/bodies, we are also co-
creators of our evolution, and have been since the human species arrived on this Earth. For
Barbara Marx Hubbard (1998b, pp. 14-15, 1998a), the whole evolutionary story of creation
is, in fact, the story of the birth of a universal humanity, a world “equal to our higher values
of love, inclusivity, nonviolence, and spirituality”. Moving from self-preservation, self-
reproduction/procreation, we are now entering the third phase of self-evolution, conscious
co-creation. This conscious evolution is emerging now, at this precise moment of history
because the noosphere (a term developed by Teilhard de Chardin meaning “all the spiritual,
cultural, social, and technological capacities of humanity, seen as one interrelated
superorganism” (Marx Hubbard, 1998b, p. 15)) “has matured and has given humanity powers
to affect evolution by choice” (ibid.). Biologist and futurist Elisabet Sahtouris (2000a, p. 220)
terms what Marx Hubbard calls birth into universal humanity, “the biology of globalization”.
That is, she argues that the globalisation of humanity is “a natural, biological, evolutionary
process” (ibid.). Still:
. . . we face an enormous crisis because the most central and important aspect
of globalization—its economy—is currently being organized in a manner that
so gravely violates the fundamental principles by which healthy living
systems are organized that it threatens the demise of our whole civilization.
(ibid.)
As argued by James Lovelock (in Sahtouris, 2000b), Sahtouris:
. . . gives us valuable insights as she draw parallels between the evolution of
cells and the evolution of human society, pointing out the contrast between the
healthy organization of cells, bodies, and biosystems on the one hand and the
unhealthy organization of economics and politics in human society on the
other. (p. xiii)
For Sahtouris, the core principles essential to the health of living systems are
“empowered participation of all parts” and “continual negotiation of self-interest at all levels
of organization”. What is essential to the health of humanity is “ . . . empowered participation
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of all humans and negotiated self-interest among individual, local and global economies as
well as the Earth itself” (Sahtouris, 2000a, p.220).
While arguments about diversity among women abound, similar visions emerge
wherever they are claimed to be distinctively ‘women’s’. For example, in The Fabric of the
Future (Ryan, 1998) and the 1997 special issue of The Futurist on “What Women Want”
(Wagner, 1997), as well as in Women of Spirit (Jones, 1995) the majority of women envision
futures inclusive of gentle ways of organising human affairs. There are of course differences,
and it is possible to identify two main difference between visions developed by broadly
grouped ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ women. Firstly, western feminists focus on the external
measures (e.g., in The Futurists) and non-western Women of Spirit focus on internal change.
And second, non-western women put higher importance on changing other oppressive social
structures, such as racism and poverty.
Regarding the first point, the preferred futures outlined in The Futurist, for example,
predominantly focus on the following issues: breaking of glass ceilings; establishment of
representation of the sexes at all levels of government; creation of human–scaled institutions;
establishment of equal education for women throughout the world as well as adequate
community and business based child care; demilitarisation leading to less war, crime, and
violence in general; maintenance of the clean environment based on principles of
sustainability; and creation of inclusive futures that benefit all of humanity, including men.
The perspectives outlined in Women of Spirit are best summarised by Pregaluxmi Govender
(in Jones, 1995, pp. 6–7), who argues that:
The struggles to transform human relationships are the most difficult and they
are at the core of the transformation of the world. The struggle to change
ourselves, the struggle to change our relationships and the struggle to change
the world seem to be exclusive of each other, yet they go hand in hand.
This of course, does not mean that either position excludes the Other. Several authors
in The Futurist mention the need for internal, spiritual change, while Pregaluxmi Govender
and others acknowledge that the change needs to happen at social, economic and political
levels as well. Nonetheless, the thrust of these two compilations is predominately different:
focused on external change—as in the case of The Futurist—and focused on internal
change—as in the case of Women of Spirit.
This distinction is, however, challenged by authors in The Fabric of the Future
(Ryan, 1998). This compilation incorporates visions by both western and non-western
women. Interestingly, both groups come from strong spiritual, eco-centric perspectives, and
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many non-western authors were, at the time of writing, physically located in the west. These
interactions both challenge previous divisions and form the core of emerging ‘post–western’
perspective, as discussed in Chapter One of this thesis.
To go back to the second point, authors such as bell hooks (e.g., 2000) in the US or
Jackie Huggins (e.g., 1994) in Australia have challenged the western feminist claim that
views gender oppression as the main system of oppression. They argue that in the lives of
black and indigenous women respectively racism plays a bigger role. But, due to the writing
of these and other authors, this difference is becoming less pronounced as feminism has
become more multicultural and less Eurocentric. This too is part of the ‘post–western’
development, where alternatives to the hegemonic futures visions are offered.
Still, with all the differences, feminist/feminine alternatives have a common core.
This common ground is similar to the vision expressed by Gita Sen and Caren Grown for the
project Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN). Although written in
1984, this summary of “Third World Women’s Perspectives” is important because it is these
perspectives that are most commonly invisible and marginalised. The paragraph which
summarises DAWN’s vision is worth quoting at length:
We want a world where inequality based on class, gender, and race is absent
from every country, and from the relationships among countries. We want a
world where basic needs become basic rights and where poverty and all forms
of violence are eliminated. Each person will have the opportunity to develop
her or his full potential and creativity, and women’s values of nurturance and
solidarity will characterize human relationships. In such a world women’s
reproductive role will be redefined: child care will be shared by men, women,
and society as a whole. We want a world where the massive resources now
used in the production of the means of destruction will be diverted to areas
where they will help to relieve oppression both inside and outside the home.
This technological revolution will eliminate disease and hunger, and give
women means for the safe control of their fertility. We want a world where all
institutions are open to participatory democratic processes, where women
share in determining priorities and making decisions. (Sen & Grown, 1984,
pp. 80–81)
While the previously mentioned The Fabric of the Future compilation is too broad to
be summarised here (500 pp., 38 authors), what will suffice is to say that the main themes
follow two key arguments previously made. These are: first, humanity is ‘at the crossroads’,
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living between the old and a new emerging path, and second, this new emerging path is
questing for wholeness where possible/desirable futures are ‘co-created’. The visions
outlined in this and previous compilations, as well in the work of Boulding, Eisler, Sahtouris
and Marx Hubbard is in many ways similar to the visions that exist in feminist utopian- and
science-fiction. As argued by feminist utopian and science fiction critics (e.g., Bartkowski,
1989; Halbert, 1994; Sargisson, 1996), the common themes in most feminist novels are:
. . . future societies tend to live in ‘peace’ with nature and have some sort of
sustainable growth, they are generally less violent than present ones; families
seldom take a nuclear form but are more extended (often including relatives
and friends); communal life is highly valued; societies are rarely totalitarian;
oppressive and omnipotent governmental and bureaucratic control is usually
absent, while imagined societies tend to be either ‘anarchical’ or communally
managed. (Milojevic, 1998, p. 90)
While very few feminist utopian and science fiction novels have been transferred to
the screen, they are nevertheless, widely read—albeit predominantly among English speaking
women in the west. Although, as argued by Pamela Ryan (1992) “Black Women Do Not
Have Time To Dream”, when they do find the time and are able to access resources their
visions are distinctively different from the hegemonic futures vision. For example, while
most recent mainstream science fiction is based on the othering of the difference, by
ridiculing or seeing the Other as a danger, as a threat, the work of Octavia Butler (one of the
rare black women within the science-fiction genre) challenges how the Other is seen. While
in most science fiction the alien is seen as the (potential) destroyer of the human race, for
Butler, aliens can save and improve the human race and also themselves. Cooperation is
necessary, as often the only alternative is extinction. But the Other, for Butler, is both
external and internal, the self and the Other cannot exist separately because they are defined
by one another, and are a central part of each other’s identity (J. Miller, 1998, p. 346). While
mainstream science fiction depends on competition and eventual conquest (by a rugged,
individualist male hero), in the work of Octavia Butler there is, on the other hand, the “desire
for the alien, the other, for difference within ourselves” (Peppers, 1995, p. 60). Butler’s work
seems to suggest that old mythologies that produce “ . . . the hierarchies of center and
margins, of colonizer and colonized, of alien and other, no longer provide an appropriate or
adequate vocabulary with which to articulate the possibilities for change” (Wolmark, 1994, p.
35).
In the words of Octavia Butler:
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Human Beings fear difference . . . Oankali crave difference. Humans

persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves
definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to
keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization . . . when you feel a
conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference. (Butler quoted in
Green, 1994, p. 189)
Feminist science fiction has now grown to such an extent that there are numerous
compilations (e.g., Batkowski, 1989; Sargisson, 1996) and countless webpages discussing it.
Preliminary research suggests that contrary to mainstream/malestream science fiction that
either does not portray education at all, or where learning is technologically mediated and
instantaneous, the worlds imagined within feminist fiction are quite different. Not only are
current gender relationships challenged—this is the most common theme—but also education
and parenting are not only extremely respected but sometimes are the main purpose for the
existence of these imaginary worlds (Milojevic, 1998, p. 90). It is beyond the scope of my
thesis to analyse these differences in further detail. However, what this preliminary research
suggests is that situating education as less important, marginal and as a subsector of
economy, business and industry is a truly patriarchal endeavour.
To summarise, feminist and other alternatives stemming from non-western women’s
movements still have a common core that provides a reasonably unified vision for the future.
The main characteristics of this vision include a shift from death, power, competition and
hierarchy–based glorifications, to a vision where life, love, caring and equality are more
valued. There is an emphasis that the future in front of us depends on our actions today,
rather than solely on some universal, omnipotent and irreversible ‘objective’ processes. In
addition, while hegemonic futures visions claim to be about ‘the real’, feminist alternatives
are unashamedly utopian. This, of course, supports the previously mentioned argument
(Chapter Two) that, while it is claimed today that ‘utopia is dead’, there will always be some
social groups in a need of utopia.
In the following part, I argue that these (utopian) futures visions are implicit in
educational alternatives developed by feminist theorists and activists. I especially focus on
the development of ‘Women’s Studies’, which is, I argue, one of the more concrete
manifestations of the educational ‘ideal model’, as seen by feminist and women’s liberation
activists. I also argue that the previously outlined approach to time and vision of the future
not only changes education from within—that is educational content, structure, process and
subject—but also, more importantly, how education as a whole is situated within society. In
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short, the previous visions imply a prioritising of parenting and education, a world where
“education, welfare, and eldercare [are] getting all the money they need, and the military
would have to hold bake sales” (B. Walker, 2000, p. 361).
5.2.2 Educational visions
As is the case with broader futures visions, there are many tensions in terms of what
feminist education should be about. However, I argue here that, similar to the previous
discussion, there is a common core of what constitutes (ideal) feminist education or more
specifically, feminist pedagogy. It is important to mention three points at this stage. First,
there is a discrepancy between feminist praxis and feminist theory or between educational
practice and what is considered to be an ‘ideal model’. As argued in the previous chapter, a
similar discrepancy exists between the ideal of globalised and cyber education and how
globalised and cyber education are most commonly practiced. My focus here is not to
thoroughly investigate whether Women’s Studies have lived up to their promise. This issue
is, of course important, however “despite all that has been written about feminist pedagogy,
few of the claims of advocates or critics have been empirically documented” (Hoffmann &
Stake, 1998). In addition, the main focus of my thesis is to investigate multiple discourses
about educational and social futures, analysing and comparing various regimes of educational
truths. The main purpose of this part then, is to identify and analyse the core of feminist
alternative visioning when it comes to educational futures and compare them with hegemonic
discourses. Another purpose is to investigate the connection between broader futures visions
developed within the feminist and women’s movement, as discussed earlier, and the
implication of these visions for educational ones.
The second point that needs to be mentioned at this stage is that, while it is reasonably
easy to identify dystopian elements in hegemonic futures visions this task is much more
difficult when it comes to alternatives in general, and here, when it comes to feminist
alternatives in particular. Feminist alternatives are, of course, often dismissed. They might be
seen as ‘irrelevant’, ‘past their due date’ or ‘unrealistic’. But, except for this outright
dismissal, there is very little engagement with feminist thought by authors who come from
different philosophical and epistemological standpoints. The mainstream ‘knowledge’ within
the accepted ‘discipline’ still significantly excludes feminist thought. Various educational
anthologies do include a chapter here or there written by a woman (or a feminist) on
‘women’s issues’. This sits well within the 19th century tradition of positioning ‘women’s
question’ but does not sit well with major changes in theory brought by 20th century feminist
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and women’s movements. The critique of feminist alternatives is done almost entirely from
within; it is feminists and women interested in gender issues that engage with this critique.
The reading of this could be both in terms of ‘feminism being betrayed by women’ or in
terms of feminism becoming strong enough to allow for diversification. In any case, this
probably explains both why feminist alternatives are still marginalised and why these
alternatives are mostly framed in terms of eutopian possibilities.
The third point returns to the discussion regarding postmodern potential in terms of
de-colonising futures, a discussion that I engaged in more detail in Chapters One and Two.
The core of feminist visioning of the distinctiveness of women’s ways of knowing, the
feminist classroom, feminist pedagogy and so on, was developed in the 1980s, before
postmodernism eroded the sense of commonality between all women. As I have previously
argued, postmodernism is, of course, irreplaceable when it comes to an understanding of the
limitations of each vision and the need for the existence of ever open–ended, ever questioned
futures and utopian visions. But it falls short when it comes to actually outlining the
alternatives. It stays locked into the critique and insistence on multiplicity and difference.
Fox-Genovese (1986), Brodribb (1992), Hoff (1994) and Grosz (1990) have argued that
while there is a need to both critique and outline alternatives, the postmodernist refusal to
engage with the later, in effect, disempowers those engaged with emancipatory politics. On
the other hand, as I have discussed in Chapters One and Two, Siebers (1994) and Doll (1995)
argue that postmodernism has, in fact developed a vision for the future and that is, in essence,
even “a utopian philosophy” (Siebers, 1994, pp. 2–3). This view is not supported by my
research on feminist educational alternatives. The outlined ‘alternatives’ were mostly
developed in a particular historical moment—the 1980s in OECD nations, as a response to
demands of the radical feminists to go beyond liberal concerns with inclusion but prior to the
general increase in popularity of postmodern theory among the Left. Authors engaged in
postmodern inquiry are sometimes aware of these limitations. For example, Jennifer Gore
concludes her The Struggle for Pedagogies (1993, pp. 155–156) by writing the following:
Some readers will be disappointed with this concluding chapter because of its
lack of prescriptive guidance. The changes I suggest for my own teacher
education practice are small in magnitude, and I am aware of the possibility
that they too are dangerous.
However, Gore (ibid, p. 156) believes that her analysis does open new spaces of
freedom and does not mandate rejecting visions of different societies, but instead, “proposes
that they get worked out locally” (ibid.). While this insight is invaluable, it has become
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increasingly problematic, given the globalising tendencies of neo-liberal, capitalist visioning

of the future, as discussed in the previous chapter. The approach suggested by those coming
from the discipline of futures studies, such as Bouding, Eisler and Henderson addresses this
limitation. Henderson (e.g., 1999) has repeatedly argued that intervention is needed at all
levels—including the development of alternatives at both local and global level. While
Henderson focuses her analysis on the reshaping of the global economy her template is
important for development of alternatives in other areas as well, including education.
Paraphrasing Henderson’s (1999) work education alternatives is, then, necessary at many
levels: the family–individual, civic society, provincial and local systems, corporate system,
the nation–state, the international system and the global system. Feminist alternatives have so
far attempted intervention at all these levels. For example, ‘empowerement’ targets the
family–individual level; interventions in public education and educational ministries and
departments target the nation–state level; interventions in local government’s education
departments and home institutions target the local systems level and so on. Currently, the
feminist interventions are weakest at the corporate systems level, which may also help
explain the previously discussed patriarchal ‘governing’ of globalisation processes. Given
that feminism is predominately western it could be expected that it has focused mostly on
eutopian, and external measures when it comes to social change. However, feminist
alternatives do, perhaps unintentionally, take into account the concept of eupshychia, the
development of the ‘good’ self. This is because feminists argue for the expansion of ‘one-
dimensional’, emotionless, ‘cardboard’ humans—an image central to industrial, patriarchal
and modern society. As argued by Nielsen (1990, p. 2):
The fact that Descartes’s ontological reality (his sense of existence of being)
was grounded in thinking rather than, say, feeling or loving—he did not say “I
feel (or love); therefore, I am”—illustrates an extraordinary trust in rational
thought.
Feminists have therefore argued for an ontological reality that not only incorporates
the rational but also the emotional aspects of one’s being. While in general staying short of
including spiritual aspects of one's self, feminists have made important steps towards arguing
for the inclusion of internal psychological processes in education. This change is not always
seen to be about external outcomes (performance, skills) and cumulative rational effects;
rather, what becomes equally important is how one is transformed through education (and
towards empowerment).
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So far, I have argued that feminist futures visions are different from the mainstream
hegemonic ones. I have also argued that while these feminist visions are different in detail,
they are nonetheless similar in spirit. Further, I have argued that this is also the case with
feminist educational alternatives. I have discussed the reasons behind the general absence of
dystopian elements in feminist educational alternatives and have argued that the core of
feminist alternative educational visioning developed in the 1980s. The next part analyses this
core, and compares it to both hegemonic futures and educational visions as well as to broader
images of the future developed within the feminist and the women’s movement.
Feminist alternatives are, most often, developed as a collective effort. As Jennifer
Gore argues (1993, pp. 18–19), so far, the discourse of feminist pedagogy has been
developed by two separate groups, one group writing from the context of Women’s Studies
and the other from the context of Education. In both cases, what distinguishes the discourse
of feminist pedagogy, from, say, the discourse of critical pedagogy, is that it is:
. . . not so much represented by the books of key proponents as it is by
anthologies comprised of many contributors, as well as by journal articles.
The distinction might crudely be phrased as feminist community versus
critical notoriety. (Gore, 1993, p. 18)
For Gore (1993, p. 18), the diversity and fragmentation found in such collections
makes very clear that “what is under discussion is not feminist pedagogy but feminist
pedagogies”. As I have already explained, my focus here is to look for the core in these
multiple feminist writings, identifying their ‘spirit’, or what these many authors argue that
education is fundamentally about. It is also often mentioned that these feminist alternatives
may only be alternatives in so far as they focus on gender. Other aspects of feminist
education and feminist pedagogy (or pedagogies) can commonly be found among many
others alternatives. For example, the feminist critique of the concept of ‘banking education’
is commonly found among most critical theories, and would be found among other
alternative approaches such as humanistic education, spiritual education, holistic education,
eco-centric education, multicultural education, postmodern education, as well as among
many alternatives that focus on the recovery of indigenous tradition. As I explained in the
introduction of this and the previous chapter, while the alternatives overlap both among each
other and also with hegemonic futures discourses, and are both critical of as well as part of
traditional, modern education, they are also all distinguished by their own core, focus and
priorities. Feminist alternatives, while incorporating numerous details found elsewhere, are
also different and distinct. This is because, they provide a different answer to the question of
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what is fundamental (issues, concern, reality) and are specific in terms of how those details
are put together. As argued by Maher and Rathbone (1986, p. 217):
While collaborative, interactive pedagogical techniques have a long history in
education outside of Women’s Studies scholarship (e.g., in the work of John
Dewey and Paulo Freire), they receive supplementary justification, and a new
context, when viewed from the perspective of Women’s Studies.
Madeleine Arnot (1994, p. 84) develops a similar argument saying that while the
variety of “educational moments” seen separately may appear inconsequential, when put
together they comprise a pattern that is qualitatively different. The following part of this
thesis identifies such qualitatively different patterns, or the core of feminist visioning and
alternatives in education. The representation will be consistent with feminist epistemology
that focuses on the collaborative efforts of many writers. That is, I here follow particular
themes, rather than particular authors and their approaches. The texts from which I draw
themes include: Belenky et al., 1986; Bignell, 1996; Boulding, 1990; Bright, 1993; Bunch,
1983; Bunch and Pollack, 1983; Clark, Garner, Higonnet and Katrak, 1995; Cohee et al.,
1998, Cohen et al., 1999; Coffey & Delamont, 2000; Culley & Portuges, 1985; De Francisco,
1996; Eisler, 2000; Friedman, 1998; Gore, 1993; Greenberg, 1982; Gunew, 1990; hooks,
1994; Hoffmann & Stake, 1998; Marx Hubbard, 1998; Kramarae, 1996; Lather, 1991a and
1991b; Leck, 1987; Lewis, 1993; Looser & Kaplan, 1997; Luke & Gore, 1992; Mackinnon,
Elgquist-Saltzman and Prentice, 1998; Maher, 1987; Maher & Tetreault, 1994; Manicom,
1992; Milojevic, 1996, 1998, 2000; Nielsen, 1990; Parry, 1996; Rich, 1979; Robertson,
1993; Roy & Schen, 1993; Sandell, (1991); Scanlon, 1993; Shrewsbury, 1987; Stone, 1994;
Tierney, 1989; Weiler, 1988; and Weiner, 1994. Of course, not all these authors could
possible agree on all the details that I further discuss. However, I argue that there is a
common enough understanding among these authors about the ways in which feminist
educational alternatives are different from the mainstream education and what feminist
education is mainly about. This common understanding represents the core of the feminist
educational project for the future, that, in turn, in various degrees influences the educational
practice of those influenced by feminist theory.
Importance of gender. If another criteria for describing what feminist education is
about is either not ‘new’ or not specifically feminist this characteristic alone would suffice in
describing the distinctiveness of feminist education. This distinctiveness means incorporating
awareness that gender issues are important, or at least, that they could be (Houston, 1994, p.
122). Feminist pedagogy insists that all human experiences are gendered, that is, that they are
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essentially shaped by our being either men or women and as such subject to social
prescriptions associated with either sex (Maher, 1987, p. 197). Feminist education is about
developing a gender–sensitive education versus a gender–free one (Houston, 1994, p. 122)
Gender is seen as social practice, as something people do (rather then as something people
are). But feminist pedagogy is not only concerned with gender justices, rather it seeks to
remove oppressions inherent in the ‘genderdness’ of all social relations and consequently of
all societal institutions and structures (Sandell, 1991, pp. 180–181).
- Themes of nurturing and caring. Feminist education is about the “3 C’s of caring,
concern and connection” (Luke & Gore, 1992, p. 153). The traditional rigid,
unquestioned authority of the teacher is transformed. Ideally, feminist education is
supposed to practice horizontal power relationships, flatten existing hierarchies and social
structures, focus on egalitarian pedagogical processes, and power–with instead of power–
over. Dialogue is encouraged, there needs to be mutual growth and learning of students
and teachers. The learning is experiential, collaborative, participatory, relational. The
focus is on relations between students/teachers, students themselves, students and their
course material. Classroom interaction is to be promoted. Feminist pedagogy is,
therefore, based on cooperation not competition, on reducing divisions between people by
flattening, transcending traditional notions of hierarchy and equalizing power between
teachers and students. All involved are seen as both learners and teachers, at the same
time. Feminist pedagogy emphasise “connection over separation, understanding and
acceptance over assessment, and collaboration over debate” (Iskin, in Bunch & Pollack,
1983, p.183).
- Education and knowledge are ‘holistic’. This means that (artificial) divisions between
thought and action, theory and practice, knowledge and politics, reason/rationality and
emotion, mind and body, self and other, caring and self-expression, communal
concerns/independent judgement, private and public spheres are removed. Feminist
education is supposed to integrate these elements. It is about adopting the development of
interdisciplinary ‘connected knowledge’—knowing in relationship—as opposed to
separate abstract knowing. This connected knowing is implicit in the empathetic
understanding of the world of others. Connected knowledge incorporates public and
private issues, cognitive, emotional/affective and intuitive. The environment needs to
support both emotions and the intellect because being able to grow and change is seen as
a basic precondition for learning. For example, it is important to deal with emotions like
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fear, anger, anxiety, and pain when women “first face their own feelings of being
oppressed, powerless, and immobilized” (Sherman, in Bunch & Pollack, 1993, p. 132).
Knowledge is created through methodology that is eclectic. The eclectic approach in
the choice of research methods adapted to the specific demands of each individual
research project. But qualitative methodologies are especially valued. Feminist education
transforms traditional disciplines into perspectives that can be used as approaches to
problems, with the goal of solving problems in accordance with the best interests of
today’s peoples and futures generation.
- Personal experience is valued. Knowledge should not be about abstract categories and
information but about experientially and participatory based learning. Knowledge is
experiential as it emerges from “first hand experience” (Iskin, in Bunch & Pollack, 1993,
p. 132). Knowledge structures need to correspond to the real world. Empirical, concrete
knowledge is valued as much as knowledge built up from abstractions. Theory needs to
be meaningful and contextualised within women’s lived experiences. Personal experience
and everyday lives issues are validated. Personal experience is extremely valued, if not
equal to (or even more important) to what is thought ‘officially’. An awareness that
knowledge is always embedded—knowledge from and about the body is also knowledge
about the world (Grumet, in Stone, 1994, p. 149). But most of all, feminist education is
about a balanced and contextualised exchange of insight and information, experience and
expertise (Hoffmann & Stake, 1998). Centering of women’s experiences in women’s
learning is the core, consciousness–raising is its quintessential expression. The focus is
on the empowerement (of student) and not domination (by teachers and official
knowledge). Students are to be involved at the personal level. They should be encouraged
to develop their own ideas and to analyse the assumptions behind their actions. Students
need to be encouraged to “evolve their own patterns of work based on the problems they
are pursuing”, instead of teachers “imposing their own expectations and arbitrary
requirements” (Iskin, in Bunch & Pollack, 1983, p. 183).
- Critical thinking and active participation is promoted. Teaching and learning are
interactive. This includes a critique of authority and affirmation of diversity of
perspectives. Critical thinking is crucial because it encourages social understanding and
activism. Knowledge should be knowledge for instead of just knowledge about. The main
skill to be developed is open–mindedness. Students are to be involved in the negotiation
of meaning and the production of knowledge. Ideally, critical thinking should be implied
to feminist theory and teaching practices as well. That is, feminist educators need to
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attend to contradictions and discontinuities in the field and be open to self-critique.

Knowledge is always “provisional, open–ended and relational” (Luke & Gore, 1992, p.
7). Holistic as not separated from politics, and it is important to encourage social
understanding and activism (Hoffmann & Stake, 1998). Education is seen as having an
important role in upward social mobility.
- Focus on difference and diversity, multiplicity. Diversity is valued. Feminist education
should help in interpreting the social positioning of race, ethnicity and gender. There is an
awareness that the classroom is not ideologically neutral but embedded in a web of social
relationships and that feminist educators as well as students are variously positioned
within this web. As everyone is invited to ‘speak out’ and is ‘listened to’, students from
diverse backgrounds should be empowered to voice their own difference without being
put in the ‘spotlight’. Incorporating views and knowledge from marginalised social
groups—because of their race, nationality, age, sexual preference, disability, class—is to
be encouraged. Constant efforts are to be made to include the perspectives of the
powerless/marginalised. This means the need for constant shifting of the center toward
the periphery/margins. Incorporating many various ways of knowing, and different ways
of using the mind in knowing instead of overvaluing one way of gaining information is
crucial.
- Concern with ethics. Anti-authoritarianism. Promoting values—of community,
communication, equality, mutual nurturance, shared leadership, participatory decision-
making, democratic structure, interdependence. This is a concern with moral education
but ethics is relational.
- Concern with the future—because of the link with future generations (Grumet, in Stone,
1994, p. 152). The image of a desired future is implicit in the focus on transformation,
liberation, empowerment, emancipation of oppressed/ subjugated/ marginalised social
groups. Sometimes the concern with the desired future is also explicit, for example,
Bunch's (1983) teaching model includes not only description (of what exists) and analysis
(why such reality exists) but also vision (which determines what should exist) as well as
strategy (how to change to what should be). Concern with the future is also present when
the importance of students perspectives and student’s issues are stressed or when it is
imagined that children should have a more prominent role in the public sphere (Boulding,
2000).
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- Curricula are transformed. Previous biases (exclusion and degradation of women and
girls) are removed. Crucial focus throughout each discipline is gender. Overall, curricula
are interdisciplinary, flexible, problem–oriented, knowledge–based, holistic and practical.
- Education is about transformation. Education is not only about skills, but also as a means
to transform and change the very societies within which learning takes place. It is also
about inner transformation, awareness of one’s oppression leading to insight, and to inner
and outer transformation. The traditional model concentrated on the molding of character
(moral education), the passing on of culture, and the development of vocational skills;
feminist alternatives seek to be useful in improving the conditions of women’s lives and
teaching activities aimed at changing patriarchal characters and cultures. Education for
transformation is a liberatory practice (hooks, 1994). Empowerment: feminists tend to
view power as repressive; it is used to dominate, oppress, coerce, deny (Gore, 1993,
p.120). At the same time, in the notion of empowerment, feminist pedagogy embodies “a
concept of power as energy, capacity, and potential rather than as domination”
(Shrewsbury, 1987, p. 8). Empowerment means developing strategies that allow students
to find their own voices, discover the power of their own authenticity, develop their
thinking about the goals and objectives they wish and need to accomplish as well as their
independence, skills of planning, negotiating, evaluating, and decision making, and to
increase their self-esteem (ibid., pp. 8–9).
- Community based learning. The boundaries between educational institutions and the
community are obliterated and the active participation of community members is
encouraged. The main question is not so much the pursuit of truth but how to attain better
health, happiness and quality of life for present and future generations (Milojevic, 2000,
pp. 181–182). Community is both local and broad—as in a global sisterhood.
- New technologies are seen as tools. Contrary to the general belief that the feminist vision
is not technophobic, there is a refusal to worship the use of Technology (Marx Hubbard,
1998, p. 166). The focus is on politics, on creating women’s own information networks,
computerized mailing lists, and political alert systems (Tierney, 1990).
5.2.3 Summary: Causal layered analysis of feminist alternatives
Feminism pedagogy is still defining itself, largely through a process of

questioning long-standing beliefs and practices in education. (Brown, 1992, p.
52)
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The following tables indicate that feminist priorities differ from the mainstream
vision of the future. As is seen from Table 5.1, the predominant vision is that of a gender
partnership in the context of a gentle society. What is important is to create an inclusive
society based on the principles of social justice and equality. To be able to do this, feminists
rethink time, transforming it from the linear time of modernity and the hypertime of the
information society to a range of alternative temporalities, including cyclical, eternal, and
glacial. Especially important in this context is Elise Boulding's notion of the two hundred
year present, where the life of the grandparent and the grandchild co-exist.
Table 5.1: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
Partnership Society
Approach to time Vision for the Utopian promise Dystopian Social eutopia
future dangers
Linear (as in Partnership Everyone able to Dystopia Improvement in

progress) society fulfil potential developed as a women’s lives,
irrespective of method to critique more choices
Cyclical (women’s Gentle society
their gender, patriarchy and
biological rhythm)
Inclusive society race, ethnicity, opportunities
Critique internal–
Eternal (as during based on religion, ability,
symphatetic
labour) principles of culture, sexual
social justice and preference External critique
Glacial/
equality that would bring
generational Survival of the
the vision towards
human race
Time lived, made the dystopian
and generated edge missing
Educational futures also differ. They are focused on the removal of gender bias and
prejudice in education. The utopian promise lies in ‘truly holistic education’ oriented towards
bringing about positive social and personal change. Dystopian dangers include the bias
against boys’ and men’s issues and concerns, as feminist education is seen to be ‘restorative’,
balancing patriarchal societies. The focus is therefore predominately on girls’ and men’s
issues, although arguments are often made that feminist futures would benefit both genders.
As feminist education is political and aims to produce ‘empowerement’ and particular social
change, other dystopian dangers lie in the possibility of feminist education becoming overly
ideological, anti-intellectual, intolerant and dogmatic. While the circular classroom is
celebrated as a symbol of the removal of hierarchies between students and teachers, the
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dystopian interpretation sees this educational setting as part of the Panopticon which, in fact,
results in hierarchies becoming even more intrusive.
Table 5.2: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational Futures:
Gender–balanced education
Underlying vision Utopian promise Dystopian dangers Educational
for the future eutopia
Partnership, Truly holistic education Neglect of boys’ and men’s issues Removing of
gender–balanced gender bias and
Education bringing about Feminist education ideological,
society prejudice in
positive social change anti-intellectual, intolerant, education
dogmatic
Positive effects on personal
lives and relationships Circular classroom arrangement
replicates Panopticon—students
visible to an all–seeing eye, self-
surveillance of each other also
promoted
Worldview and approach Epistemology Educated Subject

to knowledge
Knowledge integrated, based Incorporation of cognitive and More complete, balanced individual
on everyday experiences, for emotional
More informed, politically active, in
cooperation, connected
Double standpoint charge of ones own life
Women’s ways of knowing epistemology
Empowered –with developed critical
thinking skills
Outcomes: critical thinking, raised
consciousness, active participation
in public life
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Interdisciplinary, flexible, Cooperative, non-hierarchical, Flattened, as in circular

problem–oriented, focus on connection, collaboration, classroom
knowledge–based, holistic, understanding and acceptance
Most within (slightly
integrated, practical,
Caring, nurturing, networking transformed) traditional
experientially–based
educational institutions
curricula Interactive teaching and learning
Also in range of alternative
Includes both personal Participatory learning and
educational settings, e.g. local
experience and theory classroom practices
communities and national and
Recognition that knowledge Horizontal power relationships, global (civil) society
is constructed power with
Ideally, would break division
Various perspectives are Democratic, group cooperation within public and private
included spheres—education in ‘private’
Promotes critical thinking and sphere, ‘private’ issues in
open-mindedness
education
Promotes political–social activism
Children participating in public
life
Educational content, process and structure are also radically transformed, as presented
in Table 5.2. For example, the content includes both personal experience and theory; the
process is cooperative wherein everyone is both student and teacher; and the structure ideally
breaks the division between public and private spheres.
Table 5.3 summarises key words used by feminist visionaries and educational
theorists. These too are radically different from key words used when discussing globalised
and cyber visions. This is so across all five catagories. Change is to be created rather than
passively accepted; society is described in terms of qualitative social indicators rather than in
quantitative economic and technological terms, and education is for social justice and equity
rather than for achievement and success.
Table 5.3: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words:
Partnership society, gender–balanced education
Change Future Society Education Other key words
Need to create, Different future Cooperative For transformation Love, relationships,

bring about (to the extension body, reproduction,
Nurturing To encourage social
change of the present, to life, caring,
justice, equity,
the patriarchal Gentle equality, diversity
Personal and inclusion, diversity
one) possible
social change Caring
Inclusive
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The main goal within the feminist movement, as presented in the next table (Table
5.4) on causal layered analysis, is to educate for social transformation instead of preparing
students for a competitive globalised world. Education is neither an investment in the
economy nor predominantly about information access. Rather, it is about the creation of more
balanced and inclusive societies. The main myths and metaphors used are based on women’s
experiences of giving birth as well as on narrative, ‘reconstruction’ of history that implies
once egalitarian gender relationships. The purpose of this reconstruction is to inspire, because
what has existed is seen to be possible (Boulding & Boulding, 1995), can be created again.
Table 5.4: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Causal Layered
Analysis: Partnership society, gender–balanced education
Litany Social cause Discourse/ Myth/ Bottom line

Worldview Metaphor
Women’s Patriarchy Empowerment of Matriarchy Education for
concerns and marginalised social
Industrialism Giving birth
issues missing social groups transformation
from traditional Mass education
Equality Education for
education
creation of more
Progress
Women’s (gender)
involvement in balanced
educational societies
process is
increasing
The final table (Table 5.5) in this section deconstructs the partnership society,
answering questions of who speaks, who and what is silenced and what is missing from the
discourse. The development of the feminist movement and vision was made possible by both
continuity, such as women challenging patriarchy throughout history, as well as by the main
discontinuity, the 2nd wave feminist movement. Together with the mass education of women,
it was the 2nd wave feminist movement that started in the 1960s west that was most
influential in enabling articulation and development of feminist visions. What is missing
from these tables is, perhaps one of the most important feature of feminist vision: education
itself (together with parenting) being at the core of the future society.
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Table 5.5: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Partnership society, gender–balanced education
Who gets to Who and what What is missing Continuity Discontinuity

speak is silenced from a
discourse
Feminists Other group and Economic growth Women 1960s social
epistemological challenging movements in
Women’s Negative aspects
minorities patriarchy the west
activists and of human nature
throughout
theorists
Protection history
Expertise Women’s
liberation
movements,
especially
starting from
19th century
5.3 Exemplar Two: Recovery of Indigenous Traditions in Education
Aboriginal ‘pattern epistemology’. Image from http://www.crystalinks.com/dramtime.html
271
The Western ignorance of indigenous knowledge holds profound

consequences for everyone. (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999, p. 39)
. . . is the study of indigenous peoples and their knowledges in itself a process

of Europeanization? In some ways, of course, it is, as Western intellectuals
conceptualize indigenous knowledge in context far removed from its
production. (ibid., p. 20)
The above comments represent the main dilemma non-indigenous people encounter
in regard to the recovery of indigenous traditions in education. On one hand, there is a
demand for inclusion. For example:
It is important that this [indigenous] knowledge be recognized and valued at
the level of the school curriculum, and that it be incorporated into the
teaching/learning process. (George, 1999, p. 90)
Particularly I think the appropriate education ensures that Aboriginal

perspectives are included across the curriculum and ensures that community
members are playing an important role in the education of not only Aboriginal
students, but all students. (Davison, 1999, p. 22)
On the other hand, there is an acute awareness that the very process of incorporation
of indigenous knowledge into teaching/learning processes by non-indigenous educators
carries the great risk of the intrinsic ‘western gaze’, in the appropriation, commodification
and essentialising of indigenous knowledge. An obvious solution is to enable higher
participation of indigenous educators in schools and in academia. However, that too is not
without problems. Firstly, due to the general marginalised status of indigenous peoples in
colonised societies, there is, unfortunately, an acute shortage of indigenous educators. In
addition, because of a “history of hurt, humiliation, and exploitation that has been perpetrated
by some institutions and academics” (Smith, 2000, p. 213) some indigenous communities
have adopted an “often strident anti-intellectual and anti-academic stance” (ibid.). Secondly,
many indigenous educators are, rightfully, increasingly becoming impatient with the lack of
awareness of indigenous issues within mainstream communities. Some feel that they are
repeatedly asked to teach mainstream communities for free and may express their frustration
as: “here we go again—educate another whitefalla” (Craven, 1999, p. 52). After several
decades of recovery of indigenous traditions, marked by indigenous activism, knowledge
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production and various educational initiatives, non-indigenous people are increasingly

expected to ‘do their own homework’ and educate themselves about indigenous issues,
perspectives and ways of living and knowing.
These two sets of issues present as almost an unsolvable dilemma: How is a non-
indigenous educator to ‘know’ and learn about indigenous knowledge without ‘gazing’ into
it? And, how is the non-indigenous educator to ‘talk’ and teach indigenous knowledge
without being accused of appropriating, speaking for and in the name of indigenous peoples?
The main difficulty in writing this part of the thesis comes from this dilemma. That is, how to
answer the above mentioned demands for inclusion into the mainstream discourse (as in
searching for and analysing alternatives that are mindful of or based upon indigenous ways of
knowing and pedagogy) without falling into the anthropological trap of defining the Other
using the ‘western gaze’? It seems to me that there is a very thin line upon which I can walk,
a (tiny) space that exists between ignorance and the appropriation/essentialising/
romanticising of ‘indigenous’ knowledge, teaching and learning. As Semali and Kincheloe
(1999, p. 20) further argue:
Western scholars and cultural workers concerned with the plight of indigenous
peoples and their knowledges are faced with a set of dilemmas. Not only must
they avoid essentialism and its accompanying romanticization of the indigene,
but they must sidestep the traps that transform their attempts at facilitation
into further marginalization. Walking the well–intentioned road to hell,
Western scholars dedicated to the best interests of indigenous peoples often
unwittingly participate in the Western hegemonic process. The question: how
can the agency, the self-direction of indigenous peoples be enhanced? must
constantly be asked by Western allies. What is the difference between
celebration of indigenous knowledge and an appropriation? Too often Western
allies, for example, don’t simply want to work with indigenous peoples—they
want to transform their identities and become indigenous persons themselves.
Yet another issue I face is best summarised by John Bradley (2002) in his description
of his experiences while working with indigenous peoples on the preservation of indigenous
knowledge:
As for myself, I find that on a personal level it reminds me to remain mindful
of a suffering world, without losing myself in tragic experiences which are
ultimately not my own, and how to make peace with the relative comfort and
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security of my own life, that is my option, without growing deaf to such

suffering.
Because of these difficulties most non-indigenous educators stay away from dealing
with issues of indigenous knowledges and education. Some work closely with local
indigenous communities, which is the most preferred model of cooperation. But what of
theoretical work? Could and should a non-indigenous person study indigenous knowledges,
education and pedagogy?
Semali and Kincheloe (1999, pp. 20–21) argue that in this respect western
intellectuals have ‘little choice’:
. . . if they are to operate as agents of justice, they must understand the
dynamics at work in the world of the indigene. To refuse to operate out of fear
of Europeanization reflects a view of indigenous culture as an authentic,
uncontaminated artifact that must be hermetically preserved regardless of the
needs of living indigenous people.
They also argue that:
. . . as complex as the question of indigeneity may be, we believe that the best
interests of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples are served by the study of
indigenous knowledges and epistemologies. An appreciation of indigenous
epistemology, for example, provides Western peoples with another view of
knowledge production in diverse cultural sites. Such a perspective holds
transformative possibilities, as they come to understand the overtly cultural
processes by which information is legitimated and delimited. (ibid., p. 17)
Another argument in terms of how to approach indigenous knowledge has been
popularised by indigenous activist and educator Lilla Watson (2002). She stated, “If you have
come to help me, then you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your
liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together” (Watson, 2002).
Thus, western approaches to indigenous knowledge have to be done in the context of
mutual learning and respect as well as in the context of joint strategy. Or, as Craven,
D’Arbon and Wilson-Miller (1999, p. 260) argue, it is important to move from teaching
about indigenous people to learning from indigenous people by maximising indigenous
viewpoints and perspectives. In that sense, perhaps we could talk of a joint strategic interest
between indigenous peoples and other theorists and educators who find emerging hegemonic
futures educational discourses problematic, as well as about joint strategic interest among
those who are committed to social justice and fairness issues and to exploration of
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alternatives that promote social innovation (Slaughter, 1996a). This is crucial, as indigenous
peoples offer “genuine alternatives to the current dominant form of development” argues
Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p.105). Indigenous peoples also have “philosophies which
connect humans to the environment and to each other and which generate principles for
living a life which is sustainable, respectful and possible [italics added]” (ibid.).
I am aware that by analysing indigenous knowledge and visions I embark on a risky
enterprise. As Semali and Kincheloe argue (1999, p. 3), while there are many benefits to be
derived from the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the academy such a task cannot be
accomplished easily, because “[i]ndigenous knowledge is an ambiguous topic that
immediately places analysts on a dangerous terrain. Not only are scholars unsure what we’re
talking about, but many analysts are uncertain who should be talking about it”.
There is yet another set of issues, best described as local/global tensions. That is, as
indigenous knowledge is by its very definition local and contextual it is impossible for the
outsider to this knowledge to do anything else but employ the universalism of the ‘western
gaze’. At the same time, indigenous societies are not static. They have survived against many
odds, “despite the limitations and restrictions” imposed upon them (Valadian, 1991, p. 6).
Part of this survival strategy was an adjustment to mainstream society and a rebuilding of
their own social organizations (ibid.). Indigenous knowledge is therefore no longer only
local. Certainly there are still some aspects of indigenous knowledge that remain exclusive to
indigenous community, such as the much popularized ‘secret women’s (and men’s) business’
of Australian Indigenous peoples. The recovery of indigenous traditions represent a
continuation of processes indigenous peoples have engaged both prior and during
colonization. Many strategies are exclusive to indigenous communities as they are connected
with issues of cultural and physical survival. However, as I will later elaborate in more detail,
the recovery of indigenous traditions that has emerged from the 1970s has also always been
in the context of the engagement with western, mainstream society and knowledge
production. Similarly to the narrative on ‘women’s’ ways of knowing and approaches to
education, the first point in this recovery of indigenous traditions is the critique. Mainstream
society is critiqued so that it can be improved upon. This improvement is not only seen as
relevant for the cultural and physical survival of indigenous peoples, but, it is argued that
transformation is needed for the mutual benefits of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
By embracing indigenous knowledges, all of whole society should benefit. This is most
commonly argued in view of current and projected future ecological problems. For example:
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The western arrogance and ignorance not to embrace a culture whose

harmonious existence nurtured a co-existence with the land, its habitat and its
people, remains a puzzle to me and many of my people. (Smallwood, 1995, p.
13)
You [who call yourselves Australians] must now accept the full responsibility
for the many inequalities and injustices of 20th Century Australia. You are
responsible for the continued destruction and desecration of my people’s
culture and the natural environment . . . .So in the interest of our children and
all future generations, in the interest of the survival of the human race we must
all become a pat of the solution and stop being part of the problem. (Bayles,
1989, p. 6)
There are two different points at issue here. The first is the right of Aboriginal
peoples to exercise their own culture; the second is the benefit that the
Western world can derive from this culture. Western scholars are gradually
realizing how important Aboriginal knowledge may be to the future survival
of our world. (Battiste, 2000, p. 194)
The real justification for including Aboriginal knowledge in the modern

curriculum is not so that Aboriginal students can compete with non-
Aboriginal students in an imagined world. It is, rather, that immigrant society
is sorely in need of what Aboriginal knowledge has to offer. (ibid., p. 201)
Originally, indigenous societies were firmly based in their own localities. After
colonisation, indigenous issues have also become part of issues debated at the nation–state
level. More recently, indigenous issues have moved toward the global level as well. Although
in Chapter Three I focused on a specific indigenous tradition, that of the Australian
Aboriginal, this chapter focuses on resources from multiple indigenous traditions—
Aboriginal Australian, Maori and North American, for example.
Indigenous issues have moved to the global level because the social context has
changed and indigenous peoples now must further grapple with two worldviews, two
epistemologies and two consciousnesses in order to survive in the world of capitalism and
global economy (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999). While the mainstream discourse on
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globalisation and globalised education represents globalisation as ‘a new phase’ within

indigenous alternatives, globalisation is theorised as being part of a continuous project:
To the extent that ‘indigenous’ has meaning today in a global context, it is
derived from an historical colonial relationship between indigenous peoples
and European conquerors. The European project of incorporating resources
into a global economic system controlled by nation–states has necessitated
programs aimed at the cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples—their
cultural destruction and subsequent ‘re-education’. (ibid., pp. 12–13) ]
For indigenous peoples, the beginning of a new century is really a

continuation of a struggle that began five centuries ago. The optimism that
prevails is based on the belief that now more than ever before in the last 500
years indigenous peoples are better able to respond . . . indigenous peoples
[have] . . . re-position strategically around international alliances in ways
which have reinforced a sense of movement towards a positive future. But that
is an optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that we are dying and that the
legacy of the presence of indigenous peoples on earth will be obliterated.
Indigenous peoples are positioned along both ends of that continuum.
(Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p. 104)
In this context globalisation remains a part of broader process of ‘dis-indigenization’
or assimilation of indigenous peoples into Western culture (Maurial, 1999, p. 62).
Dis-indigenization (assimilation) of indigenous peoples into western culture occurs
through various processes. These processes may be quite different from each other but still
result in dis-indigenisation because they attempt to assimilate indigenous peoples and
cultures within own goals and historical projects. Indigenous peoples then “become workers
for industry, consumers for the markets, citizens for the nation and humans for mankind”
(Sbert, quoted in Maurial, 1999, p. 62). As a response to this continuing and now global
colonisation, indigenous issues and identities have moved from the contextual and local, to
become part of the global problematique:
In indigenous studies, such as the Native American academic programs,
emerging new political awareness have been expressed in terms of the
existence of a global Fourth World indigeneity. Proponents of such a view
claim that Fourth World peoples share the commonality of domination and are
constituted by indigenous groups as diverse as the Indians of the Americas,
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the Innuits and Samis of the Arctic north, the Maori of New Zealand, the
Koori of Australia, the Karins and Katchins of Burma, the Kurds of Persia, the
Bedouins of the African/Middle Eastern desert, many African tribal peoples,
and even the Basques and Gaels of contemporary Europe. (Semali &
Kincheloe, 1999, p. 16)
In my analysis of current ‘indigenous’ approaches to time, visions for the future,
knowledge and educational visions I remain at the level of the global. That is, I will
investigate discoursive formation of ‘indigenous’ knowledge and education as written in the
emerging global language (English). I investigate the role of futures discourse in formation
of educational visions, those that are explicitly and publicly stated. I do not intend to assume
the position of independent and objective knower nor to speak for indigenous peoples
themselves. I will however, analyse the discourse on indigenous knowledge, pedagogy and
education in general, mostly within the global context of the recovery of ‘indigeneity’.
I have already outlined my ethical position in regard to justification in undertaking
this project. In addition, while there are certain areas of indigenous knowledge that should
only be studied and taught by the Indigenous peoples concerned, the study of indigenous
knowledge, education and visions for the future are topics that could be studied and thought
about by non-indigenous researchers and educators as well. As I have already mentioned,
Semali and Kincheloe argue that it is through the study of indigenous knowledge and
epistemology that the best interests of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples are served. In
addition, Craven, D’Arbon and Wilson-Miller (1999) develop a set of guidelines in terms of
the type of knowledge that could be taught by non-indigenous educators and those that
should only be taught by indigenous people. This can perhaps be applied to theoretical
research as well. According to them, the topics that should be taught only by indigenous
people (if they deem it appropriate) include: ceremonial life (sacred symbolism, ritual, mystic
language, sacred stories), languages; spirituality; information about sacred artifacts and
men’s business, women’s business (Craven et al., 1999, p. 240). There are however, some
topics that can be taught by non-indigenous educators. These topics include: contemporary
issues [italics added]; economic, political and social relationships; about belonging to the
land; Land Rights; educational pedagogy and historical practices; futures perspectives;
gender roles [italics added]; historical events; about kinship; land and water usage and
management; conservation and technology (Craven et al., 1999, p. 240). They also stress that
‘whenever possible, activities should be developed, implemented and evaluated with
consultation and participation of the local Indigenous community’ (ibid.).
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As important as the issue of allowable topics of inquiry is the issue of the respect of
indigenous peoples and their ways of knowing and living. Given the western intellectual
tradition within which this thesis is written this becomes much more problematic. ‘Critical’
tradition, whether of critical theory in education, critical futures studies or critique developed
by feminists, allows, even demands, vivisection, deconstruction and the general ‘attack’ on
text written by others. ‘Mistakes’, ‘illogical’ statements and politically problematic positions
are to be exposed. As argued by Kolig (in Harris, 1990, p. 6), there is a conflict between
different knowledge systems that is basically unresolvable:
. . . the naked fact of the matter is that Westerners believe that intellectual
enterprises do not stop at arbitrarily drawn borders. They believe that
knowledge should be thrown wide open to dissemination, discussion,
speculation, and critique every bit as much as the Aborigines staunchly adhere
to secrecy and the non-disputability of established truths. Regardless of which
side you may favour, basically no compromise is possible.
Harris (1990) also argues that there is a huge discrepancy in what is considered as an
appropriate knowledge production approach among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
For example, he argued that:
The kinds of Western thought processes which are central to the
positivistic/scientific outlook and which allow a great deal of control over the
physical world through science and technology are distinctly un-Aboriginal.
These un-Aboriginal thinking styles mostly involve imagined situations of no
personal or immediate relevance to the student and include: Extensive verbal
comparing and contrasting; extensive generalising; hypothesising unrelated to
a practical task; evaluating objectively other people’s or culture’s beliefs and
extensive summarising, enquiring, justifying, clarifying, interpreting and
challenging. . . . Transmission of knowledge by verbal means alone, away
from any real–life context to which the talk is related; transmitting knowledge
through hypothetical problem posing; acceptance of the question–and–answer
technique for transmitting, reinforcing and testing knowledge; and accepting
that knowledge is not personal property but is objectively available to anyone.
(ibid., p. 5)
Hughes (1987, p. 9) also argues that one of the main differences between Aboriginal
and non-Aboriginal Australia is in uncritical versus critical approaches:
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It is very much the Aboriginal way to be uncritical of each other and

especially children. Sometimes we are too polite and ignore blatant wrongs
but it is generally the nature of our people. It may not seem that way to non-
Aboriginal Australia in our references to you but amongst ourselves I contend
that it is common. Non-Aboriginal society promotes criticism. It asks children
to always judge themselves and often asks them to judge others. Within
school programmes we ask children to judge things or question them
constantly. I believe that there is a very great difference in attitude here that
must have an effect on classroom practice.
The question of how to maintain ‘respect’ towards indigenous knowledge and
epistemology given that the doctoral writing process is itself embedded in critique, suggests
yet another unsolvable dilemma. In that sense, the research process in itself is violating.
Which means that my enterprise will surely in many ways be faulty. However, I have still
decided to embark on this project because I agree with Semali and Kincheloe (1999) who
argue that today’s educators and researches have ‘little choice’. As well, as Semali and
Kincheloe (1999, p. 3) conclude, “the benefits of the study of indigenous knowledge [are]
sufficiently powerful to merit the risk”.
A Dream
I dreamt the world is a perfect place
No longer judged by colour or race
Everyday hearing laughter and joy
No sadness or envy in girl or boy
Adults sat together to create and plan

Of a perfect future for fellow man
No more anger no more pain
Living together sharing once again
Nation leaders together planning has begun

The world together planning as one
Warheads, nuclear weapons all buried far away
Nations rejoicing peace on earth today
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No more land mines children screaming with pain

Earth revegetating forest rivers living once again
Each nation signing a treaty for trust and peace
Promising all hostilities on earth will cease
Suddenly I’am awake by tortured scream

I find I’ve been living in an impossible dream
Fear torture leaders still out there scheming
Why did I awaken why did I stop dreaming
(Cec Fisher, 2001)
In addition to the issues raised above, the analysis of futures discourses is particularly
problematic given that the category of the future itself might be completely alien within the
context of ‘indigenous knowledge’. I have dealt with the issue of historical futures discourse
within ‘traditional’ indigenous education in Chapter Three. To summarise, the main dilemma
there was how to acknowledge culturally different approaches to the future without
essentialising ‘their time’ as the ‘other time’ (Adam, 1995). Also, it is important to remember
that although we should be aware of approaches to time within the context of ‘other’ cultures,
culturally appropriate knowledge is also based on lived human experience that is in many
ways universal. In that sense, the category of the future might be understood differently
within different cultural contexts but it would be culturally arrogant, even racist to assume
that certain cultures do not understand this concept. Putting now aside the issue of
‘traditional’ indigenous approach to the future, in the next section I argue that future imaging
plays an important role within indigenous alternatives.
While Indigenous languages prior to the colonisation may not have had a word for
time or future, Indigenous peoples who today write in English are clearly comfortable with
the term. It is often argued that the recovery of indigenous traditions is entirely about the
return to the mythic past. This is wrong for several reasons. Firstly, all visions for the future
are informed by particular cultural traditions. Secondly, in my literature review of indigenous
perspectives not one text was discovered that argues for the destruction of the built
environment and the expulsion of all non-indigenous peoples from colonised lands. And
thirdly, given the present marginalised status of most indigenous peoples there is a desire to
reverse this and create a better future. This implies a rejection of the status quo, the way our
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societies have been structured. In fact, one of the main characteristics of the recovery of
indigenous traditions is the focus and the commitment to change (see Figure 3). As argued,
for example, by Dodson (in Harris & Malin, 1997, p. 72), “If we are going to give future
generations of non-Aboriginal Australians a different inheritance, and one which will foster
respect and understanding, we need a commitment to change”.
Or, as argued by several Maori educators:
References to the effects of the education system on Maori, to the negative
statistics, and to Maori underachievement have provided a platform for
discussion. Now is the time to go beyond dwelling on past grievances and
make preparations for a positive future. (Tapine & Waiti, 1997, p. 27)
Figure 3: A holistic approach for developing teaching activities
(Craven, 1999, p. 241)
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It is the responsibility of Maori to provide current and future generations with

the ability to exercise choice. We cannot achieve this if we are constantly
victim blaming and trying to address the problems of the past without giving
any thought to the future. (ibid., p. 28)
“In order to address the crisis we must be innovative, be prepared to change and
adapt” (Te Ururoa Flavell, quoted in Tapine & Waiti, 1997, p. 3). Simultaneously, history
plays an important part in the recovery of indigenous tradition. For example, there is a
demand to teach more appropriate and more factual history than that currently taught in
schools. It is often stressed that without a recognition of a more accurate rendering of history,
societies cannot move forward. As argued by Iritana Tawhiwhirangi (quoted in Tapine &
Waiti, 1997, p. 3) “where we are going has to be considered in light of where we have been”.
Similarly, Michael Dodson (1994, p. 7) argues that “no program to ‘give to us’ will ever
work for us because it is in our own heritage that we can find the source of our power and
liberation”. As could be expected, the timeline implicit in this teaching of alternative history
differs from the western one. As argued earlier, this can be characterised by a division of
history in accordance with certain technological and economic developments. Depending on
what tools and weapons are used, societies are divided along a hunter–gatherer, agricultural,
feudal (manufacture), industrial (Fordist) and post–industrial continuum. The divisions such
as between ‘pre-modern, modern and postmodern’ or ‘pre-historic, industrial and
information’ or ‘traditional, nation–state based and globalised’ eras are variations on the
same theme. Not surprisingly, the timeline proposed by indigenous peoples takes the
experience of colonisation as the main demarcation point. The timeline consists of three main
phases: traditional societies prior to the colonisation; colonisation—massacres and
assimilation, and recovery of indigenous traditions. For example, Roger Moody in his edited
volume on The Indigenous Voice: Visions and Realities (1993) divides the texts into the
following parts: ‘the species of origin’, ‘dispossession’, ‘present struggles’, ‘conscientisation
and the recovery or origins’, ‘dialectics of liberation’ and ‘in our own ways’. The first phase
‘recovery of origins’ describes indigenous ways of knowing and living prior to the invasion.
Moody (ibid., p. 3) argues that these portrayals of ‘original’ existence are largely drawn from
the records of sympathetic 19th century white observers which now seem over–idealised. He
also argues that accounts written by indigenous spokespeople can seem over–pessimistic,
overly influenced by the need to counter alien influences, expressed in a maxim that “We are
what we are” yet “We can never be the same again” (ibid.). For him this is problematic
because it can become “a recipe for hopelessness and the abandonment of origins” (ibid.).
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The next two parts on ‘Dispossession’ and ‘Present Struggles’ include a description of the
experience and analysis of massacres, invasions and genocide, assimilation, militarisation,
racism, sterilisation, imprisonment and tourism. It also focuses on indigenous peoples’
experiences with the nuclear state, mining and multinational corporations, with missionaries
and in schools, within working environments as well as with government policies and actions
in respect to dams, forests, pollution and land rights. These two parts could be located within
the colonisation phase of the three–phase timeline. The last two parts are aspects of the
recovery of indigenous traditions. They deal with issues such as self-determination,
relationships between ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’, building independence, schooling for
survival and building international links and strategies.
Another important text, Reclaimining Indigenous Voice and Vision, edited by Marie
Battiste (2000) is also indicative of the previously described approach to time. Battiste’s
classification is based on the Medicine Wheel which symbolically illustrates that “all things
are interconnected and related, spiritual, complex and powerful” (Battiste, 2000, p. xxii).
Battiste begins with the western door, ‘the autumn’ of traditional Indian education, which
focuses on ‘mapping colonialism’. The Northern Door is “the home of winter”, it “evokes
feelings of struggle and cold”—survival is challenged but “from experiences endurance and
wisdom are learnt” (ibid., p. xxiii). The north is cold and dark and there is just a hint of light
that makes it possible to hope and dream—this is the section that “diagnoses colonialism”.
The Eastern Door is the direction of spring, of the sun rising—and it is about healing
colonised indigenous peoples (ibid.). The Southern Door is “the direction of summer”, “the
home of the sun and the time of fullest growth” (ibid., p. xxiv). It offers the foundation for
reclaiming “ourselves and our voice, as we vision the Indigenous renaissance based on
Indigenous knowledge and heritage” (ibid.). To paraphrase her classification within western
terminology and epistemology, she begins with history, the facts and experiences of
colonisation and then moves towards healing and visioning, towards the renaissance—the
preferred future.
While both Moody and Battiste identify more than the three phases above mentioned,
a three–phase timeline—precolonised societies, colonisation, recovery—is implicit in their
work. This is similar in the work of Poka Laenui (2000) who “based on his individual
Hawai’i experience” identifies two main processes in this respect. The first set of processes
are aspects of colonization, such as: “denial and withdrawal”, “destruction/eradication”,
“denigration/belittlement/insult”, “surface accomodation/tokenims”, and “transformation/
exploitation”. The other set of processes is processes of decolonization and they include:
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“rediscovery and recovery”; “mourning”; ‘dreaming”; and “commitment and action”.

According to Laenui (2000, p.155) dreaming is “the most crucial” phase for decolonization:
Here is where the full panorama of possibilities is expressed, considered
through debate, consultation, and building dreams on further dreams, which
eventually become the flooring for the creation of a new social order. It is
during this phase that colonized people are able to explore their own cultures,
experience their own aspirations for their future, and consider their own
structures of government and social order to encompass and express their
hopes.
Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 152) also argues that envisioning is also one of the important
strategies that indigenous peoples have employed effectively to bind people together
politically. This strategy “. . . asks that people imagine a future, that they rise above present
day situations which are generally depressing, dream a new dream and set a new vision”
(ibid.).
She also gives examples of envisioning by the Maori that has resulted in positive
social change, such as negotiating a settlement with the Crown, working to revitalise
language, build a new economic base and renegotiate other arrangements with governments
(ibid.).
To conclude, alternative histories play an important part in the development of
preferable ‘authentic’ alternative futures. As argued by Moody (1993), these alternative
histories portray indigenous societies prior to colonisation as more advanced and healthier
compared to the present society in general and the present situation of indigenous peoples in
particular. For example:
Historical evidence tells us that prior to the settlement of Europeans in this
country Aboriginal people led a well–ordered existence, rich in culture,
kinship and the essentials of life. In good seasons they made free and wide use
of their traditional lands, ate well, enjoyed family and ceremonial life and
engaged with neighbouring peoples either in friendship or hostility depending
on the current circumstances. In seasons when the weather was not in their
favour they lived more frugally, restricted family growth and traveled more
widely and in smaller groups. Aboriginal people took the wealth that the land
offered where to do so would not irreparably alter or destroy its nature. As
with people the world over, their health was better when food was plentiful
and the weather not reaching extremes. Indeed, they had a distinct advantage
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over people in many other parts of the world in that they carried few endemic
diseases and then not ones that were catastrophic. (Parry, 1997, pp. 1–2)
However, the guiding image of the future is only partly based on alternative histories
that draw on the previously described, almost utopian image of traditional societies. There
are other elements of indigenous futures visioning that predominately draw on current
problems and issues faced by indigenous peoples. Given that indigenous peoples have not
lived in a vacuum for the past several hundred years since colonisation, and possibly never, it
is understandable that their current visions reflect more recent processes and changes. That is,
the discourse of the future is used to address the most pressing needs of indigenous
communities, such as, for example, the right to self-determination. While there is certainly a
tendency for most colonised societies to glorify their pre-colonised histories, this needs to be
viewed in the context of cultural and group survival. But the main point here is that the image
of the future of the present generation of indigenous peoples is not about the return to the
imagined past, as is commonly assumed. As John Muk Muk Burke argues (1997, p. 27):
Aboriginal people know that the clock cannot be turned back. No one is
demanding that the impossible be done. But they are demanding that all that is
possible to redress inequity . . . be explored and implemented. The possible
includes the Land Fund legislation being made sacroscant; guaranteed
continued landrights on a National scale; and much more than lip service to
self-determination.
The connection between alternative history and the future is again summarised in the
following paragraph:
Aborigines are seeking equity. To seek equity is to seek justice. If justice is to
become a reality in the present and be a part of the future, we cannot pretend
that the past did not exist. (Smallwood, 1995, p. 11)
To deny the past and to refuse to recognize its implications is to distort the
present; to distort the present is to take risks with the future that are blatantly
irresponsible. (Indian Tribes of Manitoba, quoted in Abele, Dittburner and
Graham, 2000, p. 3)
Alternative histories are therefore not about the return to the mythic past. Alternative
histories are about a reconfirmation of visions of the future that were dreamt a long time ago,
passed down the generations as “poems, songs, stories, proverbs or saying” (Tuhiwai Smith,
1999, p. 152) and a recognition of significant change in social contexts. These visions from
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history not only bind particular indigenous people together, they also “make our spirits soar
and give us hope” (ibid., p. 153).
In Australia, the issue of land rights comes as perhaps one of the strongest preferred
visions for the futures of indigenous peoples. In the following paragraph, Tiga Bayles (1989,
p. 7) summarises this in the following way:
We must now have a permanent solution, a temporary solution is not good
enough. Tokenism is totally unacceptable. The permanent solution is access to
and control of our own land. With our own land we can create our own jobs,
control our own economy and solve our own problems, instead of waiting on
Government bureaucrats to solve our problems for us. With our own land we
can set up our own farms and businesses and various other enterprises. We
can establish our own Government and become an independent race of people,
an independent nation. We grow the food to feed our people, we raise the
cattle and sheep to use the hide, leather and wool to clothe our people. We
build the houses from the natural resources from the land to house our people.
This is the total solution.
The issue of land rights is strongly connected to the issue of self-determination, self-
management, self-government as well as economic independence and self-sufficiency. As
argued by Coombs and Bayles, “[t]he promotion of Indigenous autonomy [is] part of a larger
project of Indigenous identity–building linked to central issues of land rights and self-
determination” (Coombs, in McConaghy, 2000, p. 206)
Land Rights mean: creating racial harmony, no more handout mentality,
creating our own community projects, fewer homeless Koories, fewer Koories
in gaol, fewer Koories on the dole queues, self-management, self-
determination, self-sufficiency, fewer alcoholics and drug addicts, economic
independence, self government, this is our right not a privilege. (Bayles, 1989,
p. 13)
In Australia, another issue that is raised as a priority for the future is reconciliation
(e.g., Craven, 1999, 2000). As stated by Sally Morgan (quoted in Craven, 1999, p. 1), “We
have to find a way of living together in this country, and that will only come when our hearts
and minds and wills are set towards Reconciliation. It will only come when thousands of
stories have been spoken and listened to with understanding”.
But most of all, one of the most important visions for the future is connected to the
issue of physical and cultural survival. As argued by Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 107) for “most
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of the past 500 years the indigenous people’s project has had one major priority: survival”.
While since WWII and particularly since the 1960s, indigenous peoples’ projects were
indeed reformulated around “a much wider platform of concerns”, survival “at a basic human
level’ still remains the priority concern for many indigenous peoples across the world (ibid.).
New hegemonic discourses for the future, such as the Globalised and the WebNet
visions, are not seen as ‘liberating’ for indigenous peoples. As argued earlier, they are seen as
part of a continuing process of ‘dis-indigenisation’. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) argues that
while the language of imperialism may have changed, imperialism still exists. New
hegemonic futures continue the process of imperialism. They do so, for example, through the
following means: the patenting, stealing and copying of genealogy and identity (stem cell–
lines); the farming of the umbilical cord blood of aborted babies; scientific and political
reconstruction of a previously extinct people (Human Genome Diversity Project); and,
creating virtual cultural as authentic culture (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, pp.100–103). Part of
globalisation is also “feeding consumption of indigenous (and other) peoples” which numbs
people into believing that they are “autonomous ‘choosers’ in a culturally neutral
marketplace” (ibid., p. 103). But, in fact, indigenous peoples are denied global citizenship
and their hard won battles within nation–states are everywhere under threat (ibid.).
To conclude, the predominant approach to time within the indigenous alternative has
now become linear, divided in a three phase—pre-colonisation, colonisation and
recovery/indigenous enlightenment—timeline. This timeline exists even among authors who
argue that indigenous people still have “very much a ‘time is now’, immediate gratification
approach to life” (Hughes, 1987, p. 7). The vision for the future partially draws on the image
of traditional indigenous societies, in particular, to the ‘holistic’ way of living. Interestingly,
these alternative histories are now on the verge of turning ‘mainstream’. The “growing
interest in indigenous knowledge” is “perhaps directly related to growing concerns about the
degradation of the environment” (George, 1999, p. 79). This perhaps explains why an
increasing number of people in the west are now willing to listen to alternative histories
proposed by indigenous peoples. But it should also be recognised that the change is directly
connected to theoretical arguments and activism developed by indigenous peoples over many
decades. The popularity of indigenous alternatives among certain groups of non-indigenous
peoples is today mostly related to this desire for holistic and socially, ecologically and
economically sustainable societies. It is also related to the rejection of materialistic culture
and the need to return to the broader view of what it means to be human. The discourse on
indigenous alternatives represents a good example of the use of the futures discourses
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(ecological forecasts, increase in individual and social alienation) to reinforce a particular

group’s politics.
Another set of defining issues can best be described in terms of ‘social justice’ and
fairness terminology, based on a vision of a society where there is equality between
indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. The “story of the next 150 years” is the one where
“increasing colonization and subjugation [are] being met by resistance, regrouping, and a
cultural renaissance” (Rameka & Law, 1998, p. 203) of indigenous peoples. This vision is of
an endless struggle for “social justice, equality and self-determination”, whereby indigenous
and non-indigenous peoples can “live as coequals” (Walker quoted in Rameka & Law, 1998,
p. 203). Other elements of this vision are the physical and cultural survival of indigenous
peoples, land rights—ownership of land, self-determination, self management, self
government, self sufficiency and economic independence. There is a conspicuous absence of
issues such as ‘the revolution’ in new information and communication technologies or the
emergence of a new ‘globalised’ era.
Modern society is not rejected, but social, cultural and environmental issues take
precedence. The recovery of indigenous traditions is indeed a global phenomenon, but
globalisation itself is not theorised along utopian lines. Rather, both new information
technologies and globalisation are viewed in light of their potential threats to indigenous
societies and potential further colonisation of indigenous peoples (e.g., Tuhiwai Smith,
1999). Gender rarely plays a prominent role. Furthermore, feminist alternatives are made
problematic because they are often based on the experiences of white, middle class
academics (e.g., Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Huggins, 1994; Lucashenko, 1994). But gender
partnership is implicit within a future based on recovery of indigenous traditions. This vision
of the future is based on the ‘web of life’ argument, where each individual/living being has a
place within the broader system, a place which needs to be respected. Given that each part is
necessary for the functioning of the whole, differences are not conceptualised in terms of
hierarchies that promote inequality. As argued by James Sakej Youngblood Henderson
(2000, p. 259), “[t]he Aboriginal worldview asserts that all life is sacred and that all life
forms are connected. Humans are neither above nor below others in the circle of life.
Everything that exists in the circle is one unity, of one heart”.
Jacquie Huggins (1994, p. 74) explicitly states that “Aboriginal women’s traditional
social, political and spiritual roles gave them a far better position than white women could
ever imagine”. She therefore rejects any outside intervention in regard to certain gender
issues (such as, for example, domestic violence) in indigenous communities. This is because
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while colonisers have indeed imposed their patriarchal values on indigenous peoples, sexism
is seen to be a secondary issue in indigenous communities. In addition, the focus on gender
issues is sometimes seen as part of the continuous effort by coloniser to further divide
indigenous communities and justify state intervention. Addressing racism and colonisation
still form the most pressing issues among indigenous communities.
The next section investigates educational visions as they are expressed within
indigenous alternatives. Similar to feminist alternatives, a large part of these visions is based
on a critique of mainstream knowledge and education. Interestingly, the main points of
critique are somewhat similar to the critique within the two other alternatives that I analyse in
this chapter—the feminist and the spiritual. However, as is the case with feminist and
spiritual alternatives, there is also a set of issues that make indigenous alternatives unique.
The following section explores this distinction in more detail.
Our intention is to challenge the academy and its ‘normal science’ with the
questions indigenous knowledges raise about the nature of our existence, our
consciousness, our knowledge production, and the ‘globalized’ future. (Semali
& Kincheloe, 1999, p. 15)
As developed in Chapter Three, education has been part of ‘the industry’ that has
aimed at the assimilation and disappearance of indigenous peoples. Eric Willmot (1986, p.
15) suggests that the education of Aboriginal people in Australia was even a part of the
“Australian Holocaust”. Development and literacy still represent ‘superior truths’ that attempt
to “materialize the myth of progress among the ‘developing’ countries in the years since the
end of World War II” and serve as a potentially powerful remedy for ‘underdevelopment’
argues Mahia Maurial (1999, p. 61). It is not surprising then, that one of the main tenets
within the recovery of indigenous traditions represents a critique of western knowledge and
education. This critique is represented in terms of binary oppositions, that is, everything of
indigenous education and knowledge is, and of western education and knowledge is not, and
vice versa. This is very similar to feminist alternatives that also critique western patriarchal
knowledge in terms of binary oppositions. From these critiques both indigenous peoples and
feminists draw inspiration to establish new ways of teaching and learning. As discussed in
the previous chapter, feminists have established Women’s Studies to counter hegemonic
masculinist epistemologies and education. These feminist alternatives are mainly aimed at
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post-secondary school levels and tertiary education. At the primary and secondary levels,
there are of course no feminist schools per se, however there are significant attempts to
transform curriculum and pedagogy at mainstream schools to make them more gender–
balanced. Indigenous alternatives, however, are aimed at every level of education, from the
development of primary community schools to the development of higher education
Indigenous and Aboriginal Studies. Alternatives at the primary and secondary school level
include Band–operated schools in Canada, Charter schools in the USA, Native and
“Tomorrow schools” in New Zealand and Community and “Two Way” schools in Australia.
While these alternative educational institutions are still ‘schools’ in a strict sense, and are
therefore closer to western than indigenous traditions, they, nonetheless represent important
de-colonising attempts. Alternatives developed at the higher education level are usually
attached to already existing universities and other institutions of higher education, as with
Women’s Studies. Both alternatives at the primary/secondary and higher education level
attempt the introduction of indigenous curriculum and pedagogy and differ from the more
often found education about indigenous peoples in mainstream schools. They form dissenting
educational visions as they attempt the introduction and development of indigenous
education, pedagogy and knowledge.
It is important to stress that indigenous educational visions are not monolithic. Even
while becoming more and more global, and thus to some extent, shared, there is a
considerable debate about the existence of ‘indigenous’ (e.g., Native American, Maori,
Aboriginal) pedagogy amongst indigenous educators. For example, “Maori practitioners have
wrestled with this concept [of Maori pedagogy] and some are constantly redefining their
teaching style to address the issue” (Tapine & Waiti, 1997, p. 24)
In Australia, as argued by Eric Willmot (1986), indigenous educators are divided into
three ideological camps. He describes them as ‘separatists’, ‘integrationists’ and
‘evolutionists’. According to him, separatists characteristically argue from a ‘difference’
position: “They absorbed the political philosophy of nation within a nation, and formed the
phalanx of the people, who argued for independent education, separate systems, and separate
tertiary institutions” (ibid., p. 24).
The second group, or the integrationists, generally support systems development and
favour a ‘debilitation’ theory. They also believe that “Aboriginal people could integrate quite
successfully in the mainstream Australian education systems, provided that the systems
which they first encountered were sufficiently modified and developed to cope with their
particular educational needs” (ibid.).
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The final group, the evolutionists, disregarded both theories of difference and
debilitation:
Fundamental to the evolutionists’ thinking is that what is occurring in
Aboriginal society today, is the evolution of a new part of the society that has
never existed before. This element in the society has evolved in response to
the challenges and difficulties that the society faces, and is made possible by
education. Most evolutionists support strategic separatism. Strategic
separatism simply proposes that separatism ought to be practised in order to
overcome certain system problems, or else students reach a level of
competence in dealing with the other system. In many ways this group appears
very similar to the integrationists. In this respect, some evolutionists have
been accused of being little more than intellectual elitists. It is true that most
evolutionists, particularly in Aboriginal society, take the view that unless the
path of social evolution is followed, Aboriginal society will become either
assimilated or become so socially marginal as to be not worth the difficulties
of existing as an entity. (Willmot, 1986, p. 24).
In addition to diversity in regard to particular educational schools of thought,
indigenous alternatives differ in respect to local complexities. That is, educational strategies
are developed in respect to practical needs and main issues faced by local and national
indigenous communities. The recognition of these differences is crucial. As argued by Semali
(1999, p. 114), “[c]urriculum designers must be cognizant that there is not one indigenous
culture that needs to be incorporated into education. Models of education borrowed from
other African cultures can be as oppressive as the Euro–American models”.
However, as is the case with feminist alternatives, there is a common core that
separates indigenous alternatives from other educational visions. As I argued in the
introduction to this chapter, many of these alternatives overlap, for example, there are
numerous similarities between indigenous, ecological, spiritual and holistic alternatives. It is
beyond the scope of this thesis to analyse all the alternatives. The following summary is
provided to help identify a common core of what constitutes indigenous knowledge and how
that is compared to western knowledge. While written in the present tense, the following
features actually represent recommendations for the future. They form the basis of the re-
introduction of indigenous traditions for schools with a large indigenous community and for
indigenous students. At the same time, they form the basis of preferred visions for
educational futures, for both the education of indigenous and non-indigenous students.
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Characteristics of indigenous knowledge from which educational practices should draw an

inspiration are as follows:
– Indigenous knowledge is holistic. This means that ideas and practices are one, that all
aspects of one's self (intellectual, emotional, physical, creative, moral, and spiritual) are
integrated and that there is no division among ‘disciplines of knowledge’. What western
thinking calls “religion”, “law”, “economics”, “arts”, etc. is united within a unitary
worldview (Maurial, 1999, pp. 63–64). The holistic basis of indigenous knowledge
means that the knowledge is produced and reproduced within human relationships as well
as in their relationship with nature (ibid.). The incorporation of holistic knowledge and
education has now become even more important, given the ecological and social
problems global society is currently facing.
– Indigenous knowledge is oral. This is because it is through oral interaction that holistic
culture is transmitted and relational aspects of knowledge reaffirmed. To counter the
destruction of traditional knowledge systems, strategies that are most often suggested by
westerners include ex–situ storage, that is, isolation, documentation, and storage in
international, regional, and national archives, argues Arun Agrawal (1995). However, this
is similar to arguing that the creation of libraries is sufficient to stimulate the production
of literary works (ibid.). On the other hand, indigenous peoples often argue that if
westerners were truly interested in the possible contributions of indigenous knowledge
systems they should support the continuation of indigenous cultures rather than the
recording and documenting of existing knowledge (Viergever, 1999, p. 339). Indigenous
knowledge needs to be kept alive. This can only be done by supporting existing
indigenous communities, so that knowledge can continue to be transmitted as it always
was. As Viergever (ibid.) points out, the issue of the conservation of indigenous
knowledge is therefore linked to land rights and self-determination (ibid.). While the
reality might dictate decisions by indigenous peoples to record their knowledge (e.g.,
Bradley, 2002) the identification, definition, and implementation of these activities
should be “left to indigenous peoples, or at least have their full participation” (Viergever,
1999, pp. 341–342).
– Indigenous knowledge is alive. “Indigenous knowledge abounds in many communities,
particularly in rural communities, and students growing up in such communities interface
with this knowledge on a daily basis” (George, 1999, p. 90). This knowledge is about
what “local people know and do, and what they have known and done for generations—
practices that developed through trial and error and proved flexible enough to cope with
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change” (Semali, 1999, p. 95). Indigenous knowledge has not only survived colonisation
it has managed to continuously regenerate itself, following patterns tens of thousand
years old. Rather than being destroyed by the “modern invaders”, indigenous peoples
learned to “accommodate and adjust themselves to these realities in ways that help
indigenous systems not only survive but to regenerate themselves” (Prakash, 1999,
p.168). As argued by Robert Mwadime (1999, p. 257), new knowledge is continuously
generated in line with today’s reality and systems. Furthermore, argues Mwadime (ibid.,
p. 259), this new indigenous knowledge is generated from the following factors:
perceived problem; resource availability; ecological factors; formal education and
extension services; changing perceptions and desired, cultural/social networks and
beliefs; access to relevant information and technology; and historical experiences and
knowledge.
– Indigenous knowledge cautiously engages with change. Traditional, indigenous societies
are often perceived to be resilient to change. This has been looked upon by mainstream
society as a factor that has contributed to the downfall of traditional societies. But authors
such as Rodney Reynar argue that cautious engagement with change is one of the main
strengths of indigenous knowledge systems. He argues that:
. . . contrary to what the modern scientific paradigm suggests, the resistance of
indigenous knowledge to change is, rather, one of its most enduring strengths,
and this for several reasons. Although modern culture has elevated progress or
change to a virtue, indigenous cultures have, on the other hand, established
their ways of life in balance with a living and dynamic ecology, by cautiously
engaging in change. Change is not undertaken for change’s sake, as is the
case, all too often, in modern cultures (Reynar, 1999, p. 298).
– Indigenous knowledge and education engage in a dialogue with nature. The ecological
basis of indigenous education means that indigenous knowledge is learned in a dialogical
relationship with nature (Maurial, 1999, p. 66). This means that children learn that nature
is alive. To the indigenous child, and from an indigenous education perspective, the plant
only has a meaning as a living organism—“in a garden, in the forset, on the lake, on the
mountain fed by water and sun, alive” (ibid.). A plant has no meaning in “a black–metal
microscope” (ibid.): “In the child’s world, she or he will touch the plant, will see it
growing up, will be worried if it does not rain, and will ask gods or godesses to save it. In
the microscope, the plant loses its relationship with the world, the society of plants,
animals, and human society” (ibid.). All this also means that land is the basis of
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indigenous knowledge, spiritual and cultural traditions—“Integral indigenous

territoriality is a prerequisite for enabling the creative and inventive genius of each
indigenous people to flourish” (ibid.) It is through relationship with the land that people
develop a sense of belonging which also requires development of an ‘emotional
library’—the connection cannot be only understood on an intellectual level but has to be
felt at an emotional level as well (Buxton & d’Arbon, 1999, p. 78).
– Indigenous knowledge is based on spirituality. As argued by Sambuli Mosha (1999, p.
220) “according to experience of indigenous peoples everywhere, and the experience of
this author, spirituality is the foundation of all human endeavor. It is the foundation of
good families, of thriving communities, of enduring cultures and civilizations”. Tiga
Bayles (1989, p. 12) also argued that a very important aspect of Aboriginality is
spirituality. It is with access to land that indigenous people develop culturally and
spiritually as a people, otherwise they do not fully develop as individuals (ibid.).
Concepts of spirituality which “Christianity attempted to destroy, then to appropriate, and
then to claim” are critical sites of resistance for indigenous peoples, argues Linda
Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 74). She also argues that it is also the most difficult aspect of
indigenous cultures for westerners to accept:
The arguments of different indigenous peoples based on spiritual relationships
to the universe, to the landscape and to stones, rocks, insects and other things,
seen and unseen, have been difficult arguments for Western systems of
knowledge to deal with or accept. These arguments give a partial indication of
the different worldviews and alternative ways of coming to know, and of
being, which still endure within the indigenous world. The values, attitudes,
concepts and language embedded in beliefs about spirituality represent, in
many cases, the clearest contrast and mark of difference between indigenous
peoples and the West. It is one of the few parts of ourselves which the West
cannot decipher, cannot understand and cannot control . . . yet (ibid.)
These points—indigenous knowledge is holistic, oral, alive, cautiously engages with
change, engages in dialogue with nature, and is based on spirituality—form the bases for the
indigenous approach to education. Thus, the ‘reconceptualization of education’ is to be done
through “the conceptualization of indigenous knowledge” argues Mahia Maurial (1999, p.
59). The main attempt should be to both validate indigenous knowledge as well as “to widen
a perspective that reduces education to ‘schooling’” (ibid.). Indigenous knowledge differs
from school knowledge in several ways, argues June George (1999). For example:
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Indigenous knowledge is not normally generated by planned procedures and

rules. Instead, it is generated as lay people seek to find solutions to problems
in their day–to–day lives by drawing on existing societal wisdom and other
local resources that may be available, and by using a fair amount of intuition
and creativity. Typically, the knowledge generated is passed on from one
generation to the next in the oral mode, although, within recent times, there
have been concerted efforts to document and store such knowledge. With few
exceptions, indigenous knowledge is not to be found on the school curriculum
that is a position reserved for academic knowledge that has been sanctioned
by communities of scholars over the years. (ibid., p. 80)
She also argues that indigenous knowledge may also be embedded in indigenous
technologies that have evolved in the community over time:
Sometimes, the indigenous knowledge is expressed in special prose, poetry,
and drama; for example, as stories, calypsos, proverbs, jokes and chants. In
these latter forms, the indigenous knowledge is often used for entertainment,
but a careful analysis, would reveal that these forms are rich sources of
national and regional history, social analysis and criticism. (ibid., p. 83)
Goduka (2001) argues that it is through methods such as:
. . . experiential learning—by doing and seeing; oral tradition—by listening
and imagining; ritual\ceremony--through following and imitating; dreaming--
through unconscious imagery and artistic creation--through creative synthesis
. . . [that] the integration of outer and inner realities of educators and learners
are fully honored, and the educational needs and aspirations of learners are
fully realized. (final para.)
Oral transmission of education seems to be indispensable, even in the information–
based ‘cyber’ era. This is because it is through the oral tradition that indigenous peoples
“transmit their holistic culture; in this way human beings’ foster relationships among them
and between them and nature” (Maurial, 1999, pp. 63–64).
Inclusion is the utopian promise of the indigenous educator. However, this promise
lies not only in the physical and cultural survival of indigenous peoples, but of humanity as a
whole. Indigenous knowledge is not only “useful”, argues Marcel Viergever (1999, p. 332);
rather, it is of “critical importance to the survival of indigenous communities” (ibid.). Jill
Abdullah and Ernie Stringer (1999, p. 151) similarly argue that a context is needed to ensure
that the primacy of Aboriginal systems of knowledge is based on Aboriginal Studies being
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“directed to the survival, continued growth and enrichment of Aboriginal people and their
heritage” (ibid.). Semali and Kincheloe (1999, p. 16) summarise the perspective of “some
indigenous educators and philosophers” who put it “succinctly” that they want to use
indigenous knowledge in order to:
. . . to counter Western science’s destruction of the earth. Indigenous
knowledge can facilitate this ambitious twenty-first century project because of
its tendency to focus on relationships of human beings to both one another and
to their ecosystem. (ibid.)
Most educational visions expressed within the indigenous alternatives require radical
transformation rather than piecemeal strategies within education. For example:
My vision for the future, is an educational system where cultural diversity is
cherished and respected, where social justice is a central theme, where
indigenous perspectives are incorporated throughout the curriculum, where a
true and accurate account of history is taught and respected, Where adequately
funded proactive programs are established to redress the 207 years that
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were systematically excluded or
placed on the fringes of society and the educational system. When this occurs,
education will be equitable for all. (Smallwood, 1995, p. 16)
A vision: Somewhere there is a school. Before you have even entered the
school grounds you know it is a Maori school. The layout, the architecture,
and the people will let you know. What you hear will let you know. The way
you are received will let you know. The arrangement of subjects and much of
the curriculum will be recognisable. The study of the language will be robust
as that currently expected of English. The students will know why they are at
school, as will the parents. They will be confident, inquisitive, and engaging.
The staff will be in no doubt as to the importance of the education they need
to provide and encourage. Let’s hope this is not one of those annoying stories
that children write, which start so well but end ‘and then I suddenly woke up
and realised it was just a dream’ (Uenuku Fairhall, in Tapine & Waiti, 1997,
p. 42)
What is the vision? An education that values . . . the unique identity of the
individual and group, the dignity and mana of Maori people . . . that enables
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Maori to learn yesterday’s knowledge . . . and today’s knowledge, skills, and

values . . . to prepare them for tomorrow . . . that enables Maori people to
communicate and interact as equals with people from other countries and
cultures . . . that empowers Maori people to participate and determine what is
appropriate education for Maori people. (Te Ururoa Flavell, in Tapine &
Waiti, 1997, p.44)
These educational visions correspond to the previously discussed general vision for
the future of local and global society. This is because the main issues raised here are as well
related to physical and cultural survival, self-determination, justice, holistic and socially and
ecologically sustainable societies. On one hand, these visions are about “survival education
as cultural possibility” (Reignier, 1995, p. 79). On the other hand, the incorporation of
indigenous perspectives is seen as crucial for not only redressing previous injustices but also
for the benefit of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. The incorporation of
indigenous perspectives can then help ‘liberate’ education currently confined to “a narrow
scientific view of the world that threatens the global future” (Battiste, 2000, p. 194). Semali
and Kincheloe (1999) argue that there are numerous benefits to be derived from the inclusion
of indigenous knowledge in the academy. Indigenous knowledge and perspectives need not
be confined into an academic ghetto. This is because indigenous knowledge is “intellectually
evocative” and “useful for a variety of purposes in a plethora of contexts” (ibid., p. 3). For
example, the “transformative power” of indigenous knowledge means that such knowledge
can be used to foster empowerment and justice, “[a]s Paolo Freire and Antonio Faundez
(1989) argue, indigenous knowledge is a rich social resource for any justice–related attempt
to bring about social change” (ibid., p.15).
Indigenous knowledge and education draw their utopian promise from being
‘holistic’, for addressing ecological issues and social injustices, for fulfilling the spiritual
void. In addition, there is no need to invent new solutions because these alternatives have
been proved to ‘work’ over a period of thousands of year. They are still available because, as
argued earlier, one of the main characteristics of indigenous knowledge is that it is still alive:
The essence of indigenous knowledge is that it is alive in indigenous peoples’
culture. Different from Western knowledge, it is neither in archives, nor in
laboratories. It is not separated from practical life. Thus, indigenous peoples
are the actors of their knowledge and not passive repositories of a knowledge
separated from everyday peoples’ life. However, there are also non-local or
non-indigenous factors that influence the recreation of—local—indigenous
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knowledge. These factors include such phenomena as indigenous responses to

technological, market, and state innovations.” (Maurial, 1999, p. 63)
To summarise, because of current ecological and social problems e.g., alienation, the
crisis in meaning, existence of perpetually conflict ridden societies, global warfare), western
ways need to be abandoned. While western technological achievements are to be kept, the
general framework within which technological development occurs needs to be
fundamentally changed. Knowledge taught in schools should be holistic, produced and
reproduced within human relationships as well as in their relationship with nature (Maurial,
1999). It should be more contextualised (Thomas, 1991, p. 18), an integral part of the
physical and social environment of communities. What is considered to be empirical
evidence needs to be broadened, that is empirical data should include experiences of dreams,
visions, and environmental signs. Multi–literacies should be promoted, including giving
higher relevance to the oral transmission of knowledge. There should be higher participation
by local indigenous elders who will promote this important oral transmission. Learning
should be organised as a communal and collaborative exercise, rather than being individual
and competitive. Knowledge should be seen as a collective good and not something that can
be commodified and measured by the economic utility it provides. The vocational aspect of
education is important, but morality and spirituality are also crucial. These and other aspects
of indigenous knowledge and how they relate to western knowledge are summarised in the
table below (Table 5.6).
Table 5.6: Indigenous and western epistemology and ontology
Indigenous knowledge Western knowledge

Holistic Mechanistic
The holistic basis of indigenous knowledge is
produced and reproduced within human
relationships as well as in their relationship with
nature.
Through respecting the place of everyone and Power over nature and other people
everything in the universe, the universe is kept
in balance and harmony
Coexistence with the mystery of nature Attempting to explain the mystery of nature
away
Contextual, integral part of the physical and Exists independently of the human/nature
social environment of communities context in which it originated
Knowledge ‘local’, embedded in the social, Knowledge ‘universal’
political, and economic structure of indigenous
cultures
Table continued on next page
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Table 5.6 continued

Inseparable from a particular place as it is Can be moved from community to community
derived from the direct experience of day to without the fear of transmutation
day life
Detaching indigenous knowledge from its
sustentative human/nature context is
tantamount to foretelling its death
Knowledge idiographic, acquired through the Knowledge ‘nomothetic’, generalized Obtained
processes of traditional experiences through structured paradigms as set forth by
established institutions
Search for intimate relationship with nature Decontextualized objectivity
Accommodative, Intuitive and Spiritual Reductionist, manipulative and analytical
All aspects of experiences seen as interrelated Data analysed in isolation
and interconnected—e.g. between people,
knowledge and the natural world
Broadens what is considered to be empirical Seeks empirical laws and principles
evidence
Empirical data includes experiences of dreams, Empirical data defined as data perceived by
visions, and environmental signs one or more of the five senses
Predominately oral Predominately written
Ideally, it is product of a dynamic and creative Is stored and documented
system to resolve perceived problems
Currently, many aspects documented in order
to ensure cultural survival
Learning communal Learning individual enterprise
Elders legitimate carriers of knowledge Experts legitimate carriers of knowledge
Knowledge collective good, intergenerational— Knowledge commodity
cannot be ‘owned’ or traded.
Value of knowledge measured by its Value of knowledge measured by the economic
usefulness to the community utility it provides
Cautiously engaging in change Change undergone for change’s sake
Knowledge and truth are to be received and/or Knowledge and truth are to be ‘found’
agreed upon through various dialogical
processes
Moral, strong ethical base Amoral
Learning spontaneous Learning structured
Based on listening Based on verbalising
Spiritual Secular
(Adapted from Battiste, 2000; Cajete, 1999; Hughes, 1987; Semali and Kincheloe, 1999;
Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Walker, 2001)
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4.3.3 Summary: Causal layered analysis of the Indigenous alternatives
People With Hope
Living on Mornington Island

Way up there on this tribal place
My Aboriginal people still have hope
For the people of my Aboriginal race.
Each year with we weather

Cyclone winds that upset this place
Still they plan for the future
On Mornington, my Aboriginal race.
Modern days have caused problems

That Tribal people never had to face
But the adaptable people never gave in
The Mornington Island Aboriginal race.
Taken away from their homeland in tender years

Burketown, Riversleigh, Lawn Hill and other places
Put together on Mornington Island
People of mixed tribal Aboriginal races.
Their hope for their future they’ll never drop

These Mornington Island people in this beautiful place
Their language, ties and dreaming has never stopped
My people of Mornington Island Aboriginal race.
(Fisher, 1993, p. 71)
While it is most commonly assumed that indigenous alternatives are irrelevant for the
futures of education and that they are fundamentally about the return to an imagined past, I
have argued that indigenous alternatives indeed present a viable alternative for the future. Of
course, as subjugated futures discourses, they are often defined as either ‘utopian’ or
301
‘irrelevant’ within mainstream knowledge. Indigenous alternatives in education are firmly

connected to a preferred vision for the future—that of an equitable, just and fair society.
Table 5.7: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
Indigenous Renaissance

Linear (as in Indigenous Saving the Earth [Missing] Survival and

creating more Renaissance advancement of
Survival of
just future) indigenous
Equitable and human species
peoples
Long-term future just societies and other living
(as in 7 beings
generations—
Universe kept in
Native American)
balance and
harmony
This vision for the future is reflected in the preferred educational model. Education is
envisioned as more communal, wherein Elders are more respected. Multi–literacies and
multi–temporalities ensure that indigenous culture keeps its historical connection with
ancestors as well as creating the necessary links with future generations. Relationships
among people and between people and nature are seen to be crucial. The biggest change
between ‘traditional’ indigenous education and recovery of indigenous traditions is the
movement from local and nation–state level towards global indigenous issues. The traditional
view of time has also changed, moving towards a linear western approach. Here, the
discourse corresponds to the one used within the humanistic education paradigm. Societies
are seen to be able to be improved upon, justice and equity are seen as achievable human
goals. Technologies are not rejected but they are seen in terms of the need for ‘two way’
education. No one has suggested that indigenous children remain only orally and
environmentally literate. Numerous strategies are developed to facilitate the success of
indigenous children in ‘new (electronic) times’ (e.g., Castellano, Davis and Lahache, 2000;
Kapitzke et al., 2001). However, the writings on electronic literacy are not accompanied by
utopian imaging, rather, it is part of a broader focus on cultural survival. As argued by
Battiste (2000, p. 202), “Aboriginal languages and education can be the means to opening the
paradigmatic doors of contemporary public education. Creating a balance between two
worldviews is the great challenge facing modern educators”.
The suggested/needed transformation of mainstream education corresponds to this
vision of the future. In concrete terms it is proposed that education needs to become more
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holistic, nature–oriented and incorporate moral and spiritual learning. The most pressing
issues are seen to be:
1. The revision of history and inclusion of indigenous perspectives (such as in the
‘settlement’ vs. ‘invasion’ debate). In Australia, this would consist of contrasting
the myth of ‘terra nullius’ with historical facts.
2. Education to promote respect between various cultures.
3. Education that teaches different worldviews and ways of being and acknowledges
cultural differences.
4. Indigenous peoples to become the subject and not the objects of education. There
should be higher involvement of indigenous peoples within educational systems.
Schools to work with local indigenous communities.
5. Education is to no longer be an instrument of assimilation but an instrument that
promotes the survival and wellbeing of indigenous communities.
Table 5.8 Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational

Futures: Indigenous educational alternatives or visions

for the future
Indigenous Holistic learning Missing out on Learning from

Renaissance achievements within indigenous peoples
Improved
mainstream society about local history and
Equitable and just relationships between
environment
societies peoples, with nature
Education more life
relevant

knowledge
Holistic, relationship based, The Dreaming, Medicine Wheel, One who continues
spiritual, nature–oriented and Web of life indigenous culture for
contextual future generations
Land, genealogy and spirituality. Elders, legitimate carriers of Communal learning.

Broadens the empirical knowledge. Oral, multi–literacies Integrated into physical
and multi–temporalities and social environment.
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The previous and following tables suggest, as argued earlier, that the indigenous
alternative is dramatically different from the hegemonic globalised and cyber vision for the
future of education. While indigenous authors consider it important to engage with
mainstream society and its technologies, the technological is not at the core of their
epistemology and vision of the future. The core is consistent with the needs and desires of
indigenous peoples. It is their physical, cultural and environmental survival, and as well, the
planet’s survival that is paramount. Gender is not seen as crucial here, racism and
imperialism are far more important. External factors are seen as the causes behind the litany
of colonisation. Utopia is to be found in pre-colonisation. It is from this reality/history/
tradition that directions for the future are inspired and derived. However, this does not mean
a return to the past, as social conditions have changed. The technological is incorporated into
a vision for the future that values relationships, land and community.
Table 5.9: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words

words
Metaphors of Relationships Colonised Incorporation of Justice

nature between indigenous
Decolonised Environmental
ancestors and perspectives
protection
future generations
Genealogy
Equitable education for
all
Table 5.10: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Causal Layered
Analysis
Litany Social cause Discourse/ Myth/ Education Bottom

line
Worldview Metaphor
Indigenous people Imperialism Indigenous Web of Life Education for
are colonised cultural, human and
Trauma from
nature survival
colonisation
Table 5.11: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction

Indigenous Non-indigenous Growth Tens of thousands Colonisation

peoples peoples years old indigenous
Development 1960s social
civilisation/indigenou
movements in
s cultures
the west
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5.4 Exemplar Three: Spiritual Education
Image from Judith (1993, front cover).
The spiritualistic educational movement is probably one of the oldest on the

planet. Like the tide, it always returns. (Bertrand, 1995, p. 9)
Spirituality is not a road on which humans are free to travel or not to travel.
They must choose to travel on it in order to be human. (Mosha, 1999, p. 220).
Spiritual education is the last exemplar alternative that I investigate in my thesis.

Spiritual, holistic and eco-centric education have basic similarities in their visions of
education. The main difference between holistic and spiritual is that the former represents a
counter–alternative to the global and cyber hegemonic vision of eduation while the latter
represents true and foundational dissent. Holistic education intends to correct modern
education imbalances, to bring in forgotten and neglected dimensions of what it means to be
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human, including the spiritual aspect of life. Spiritual education, on the other hand, is about
fulfilling “a fundamental human need to understand our presence on Earth” (Bertrand, 1995,
p. 9). Its focus is on the relationship between humans and the Cosmos, universe, prana (life
force), noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘mind sphere’), collective (human, universal)
consciousness. With spiritual education “we come to the problem of the true motive of life,
the reason of our existence upon earth” (The Mother, 1965, p. 23). Holistic education argues
that education should cultivate the physical, psychological, emotional, moral and spiritual
dimensions of a learner. Holistic education is spiritual, because spirituality is its integral part.
Spiritual education focuses on the relation the individual has with the universe/collective
consciousness. Spiritual education is holistic in that it is “encompassing all of life” (Erricker
and Erricker, 2001, p. xi). As Ron Miller and Yves Bertrand explain about holistic and
spiritual approaches:
Throughout the 200–year history of public schooling, a widely scattered group
of critics have pointed out that the education of young human beings should
involve much more than simply molding them into future workers or citizens.
The Swiss humanitarian Johann Pestalozzi, the American Transcendentalists
Thoreau, Emerson and Alcott, the founders of "progressive" education--
Francis Parker and John Dewey--and pioneers such as Maria Montessori and
Rudolf Steiner, among others, all insisted that education should be understood
as the art of cultivating the moral, emotional, physical, psychological and
spiritual dimensions of the developing child. During the 1970s, an emerging
body of literature in science, philosophy and cultural history provided an
overarching concept to describe this way of understanding education--a
perspective known as holism. A holistic way of thinking seeks to encompass
and integrate multiple layers of meaning and experience rather than defining
human possibilities narrowly. Every child is more than a future employee;
every person's intelligence and abilities are far more complex than his or her
scores on standardized tests. (R. Miller, 2000, para. 1)
In the past twenty-five years, we have witnessed a very strong resurgence of

this spiritualistic movement. Industrialized civilization has failed to fulfill a
fundamental human need to understand our presence on Earth . . . People have
always wondered: “Does life have a meaning?” Hence the proliferation of
spiritualistic movements that answer positively: “Yes, there is another world,
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an unnameable world with a thousand names that we must experience.” The

goal of spiritualistic education is to familiarize the individual with this
spiritual reality—also-called mystical or metaphysical. (Bertrand, 1995, p. 9)
There is another important distinction between holistic and spiritual education, argues
Marcus Bussey (1996, p. 3). The way holistic education has developed so far has been “ . . .
too much in the head and not enough in the heart. It was bound up with ‘shoulds’ that were
wonderful but lacked the transformative forces to shift people into a discourse that actively
promoted a condition of self transformation” (ibid.).
But our current values and habits are ingrained in such a way that it is difficult to
simply “become holistic” (ibid.). Because holism did not contain within itself a deep
commitment to an integrative spiritual practice, it has “met a dead end” (ibid.). Without
consistent reflective work no deep transformation of our consciousness can occur, the holistic
platform remains rhetoric. It is a commitment to spiritual practice, concludes Bussey (ibid.)
that is “the only way to fill the hole in holism, or, to put it another way, put the whole into
holism”.
However, many holistic educators would agree with Bussey’s (ibid.) assertion that
“transformative process can only come about through sustained meditative reflection”. For
example, one of the leading theorists on holistic education, John Miller (1999, p. 48), has
recently argued:
In holistic learning, teachers must also nurture their own deeper selves. I
encourage teachers to set aside time during the day to develop their inner life.
Activities like gardening and meditation allow us to make the transition from
a calculating to a listening mind. Another technique is mindfulness.
So, in many ways, holistic and spiritual education alternatives are, in fact, more close
together than further apart. Both take issue with materialistic, mechanistic and secular
orientation of modern education. Both also take issue with current hegemonic visions for the
future, arguing that these are leading humanity towards an undesirable, dangerous terrain.
And both are seriously concerned about the environmental and social damage coming out of
the current leading paradigm. Here lies the connection with environmental education, also
part of a larger core of alternatives. Environmental education is very close to holistic and
spiritual alternatives in its ‘deep ecology’ approach. However, environmental education can
also be interpreted as consisting of teaching about and through (in deep interaction with) the
environment. These represent “more politically acceptable forms of education” but also
“dilute” “counter–hegemonic” teaching for the environment (Fien, 1992, p. 9). Education
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about and through the environment is part of a dominant social paradigm that still “views
nature as subservient to human needs and economic growth” (ibid., p. 2). On the other hand,
education for the environment is part of a new environmental paradigm that views people and
nature as interdependent (ibid.). As summarised by John Fien (ibid.), other values within this
new environmental paradigm include:
. . . a high regard for nature, respect for natural and social limits to growth,
empathy with other species, other people and future generations, support for
careful planning in order to minimize threats to nature and the quality of life,
and a desire for change in the way most societies conduct their economic and
political affairs.
Spirituality is only sometimes implicit in ecological approaches to education. This is
most commonly found among so-called ‘deep’ or ‘radical’ or ‘spiritual ecology’ theorists
who argue that the only way out of the current ecological crisis lies in major paradigm shift:
A truly deep spiritual ecology would acknowledge the depth dimension of
reality, rather than maintaining that the material natural system—the ‘web–of–
life’—exhausts the infinite dimensions of the divine . . . the way beyond
ecological crisis lies in solving the crisis of meaning created by the adoption
of a one-dimensional materialist ontology [i.e. flatland] . . . this crisis cannot
be solved by a spasm of life–denying transcendentalism and otherworldly
longing, but rather by developing a multi–dimensional [i.e. integral] non-dual
ontology that allows room for what has so long been excluded. (Michael
Zimmerman, quoted in Wilber, 2000, p. 87)
But it is also argued that spiritual education is crucial if the ecological paradigm is to
replace the modernist, industrial one. O’Sullivan, in particular (1999), has convincingly
explained this connection. According to him (1999, p. 45) to be able to move towards “a
global planetary education” it will be necessary to have “a functional cosmology that is in
line with the vision of where this education will be leading us”. The newly developing
ecological community needs “a mystique”, even “the great liturgy” (ibid., p. 186). This could
be found in the renewal of “human association with the great cosmic liturgy in the diurnal
sequence of dawn and sunset as well as the great seasonal sequence” (ibid.). Parker Palmer
(1999b) also argues that it is through the universal connection with nature that spirituality
may be approached. For example:
Seasonal metaphors offer a way to raise deep questions about life without
blinking, while honoring the sensibilities of everyone from Jews to Buddhists,
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from Muslims to secular humanists, from Christians to those whose

spirituality has no name. When we raise such questions in the context of safe
space and trustworthy relationships, the soul can speak its truth—and people
can hear that truth in themselves and in one another with transforming effect.
(ibid., pp. 6–11)
While there are similarities between holistic, spiritual and ecological education, I
focus on spiritual education, as it is the most disruptive of globalised and cyber education. As
well, space considerations limit what can be treated in depth in this thesis.
As summarised in the opening quote by Yves Bertrand, the spiritual8 education
movement is arguably one of the oldest approaches in education. It is also one of the most
widely found—throughout history and human societies. According to Bertrand (1995, p. 11),
the idea of spiritual vision of/for the world stems from “Platonism and Neo-Platonism, from
Hinduism and the Oriental religious philosophies such as Taoism and Zen”. The main
sources that the recent spiritual renewal draws upon are, according to him, religions,
metaphysics, Eastern philosophies, mysticism, Taoism, Buddhism, perennial philosophy and
the concept of cosmic consciousness (ibid., p. 223). But there is, of course, an indigenous
approach to spirituality which I have previously only briefly discussed. As explained by
Craven (Craven et al., 1999, p. 240), this topic should be ‘out of bounds’ for non-indigenous
researchers and educators. There is also feminist spirituality (e.g., Plaskow and Christ, 1989),
including spiritual ecofeminism, most prominently articulated in the work of Starhawk,
Charlene Spretnak and Carol Christ but also implicit in the work of several women futurists.
Spirituality was described only briefly in the section on feminist visions. This is because
spirituality is part of some approaches within feminism and not of others and, therefore, is
not a fundamental part of the feminist ‘core’, of what feminism is mostly about. Plaskow and
Christ’s (1989) edited volume on feminist spirituality provides an excellent summary of the
main issues and patterns within this approach.
In addition to these approaches to spirituality, each of the three major monotheistic
religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—also includes a ‘softer’, mystical and spiritual
orientation (e.g. Green, 1989; Pourrat 1922-27; McGinn & Meyendorff, 1989; Nasr, 1989).
8
The term ‘spiritualistic’ is perhaps an inadequate translation from the original French into English.
The term ‘spiritualistic’ reminds of the tradition of spiritualism and spiritism, while spiritual and spirituality are
more adequate terms here.
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There is even the ‘postmodern’ Quantum Spirituality (Sweet, 1991). Also, more recently,
some authors have started using terms such as “secular” (Miller & Nakagawa, 2002, p. v) or
“critical” (Bussey, 2000a) spirituality.
As I have outlined in the Introduction in Chapter One, my thesis explores feminist,
non-western and post–western alternatives. As mentioned earlier, post–western alternatives
are those that embrace the epistemology of the Other, thus transforming the west. Following
the pattern set in Chapter Three, I also limit my analysis to educational alternatives that are
developed from the Indian episteme or have basic similarities to this perspective. I broaden
the concept of utopia and the predominantly western focus on external social change. Thus, I
more closely investigate the concept of eupsychia and the ways it has impacted spiritual
educational alternatives. This is done through both the study of twentieth century ‘classics’ as
well as through the study of more recent writings on spiritual education. The classics and
contemporary theorists on spiritual education that I analyse here include Sri Aurobindo and
Mirra Alfassa Richard (‘The Mother’), Mohandas Gandi, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi, Sri Sathya Sai Baba, Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar and Rabindranath Tagore. Also
included are western writers whose work follows this spiritual paradigm, albeit from different
tradition, for example, Palmer, Miller, O'Sullivan and others. These authors have been
chosen because, while they have written extensively on educational alternatives, they are
rarely included when discussing educational alternatives, including ‘alternative education’
and ‘alternative schools’. As discussed in Chapter Three, their invisibility follows the general
orientation of educational histories that either exclude non-western authors (and western
writers who take non-western perspectives) or discuss them within their own ‘corpus’. Along
with volumes written on education—and in English—they have influenced approaches to
education, not only on the Indian sub-continent and Asia, but also, and quite significantly, all
over the western world. And, most have developed/inspired educational alternatives in
praxis, from primary and high school educational institutions, to various research institutes
and communities.
Sri Aurobindo’s many books on education include compilations with his spiritual
companion, Mirra Alfassa Richard. Mirra Alfassa Richard was later recognised as the
manifestation of sakti, “an embodiment of the dynamic expressive aspect of evolutionary,
creative Force” (http://www.auroville.org/vision/ma.htm), which in India was traditionally
known and approached as the Supreme Mother. She is therefore better known as “The
Mother”. Their numerous compilations include Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education
(1956), Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Physical Education (1967), Integral Education
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(1952), Education, General Principles; Education, Teaching; Education, Learning (1972)

(more thorough references are given in Cenkner, 1976, and Marshak & Litfin, 2002). But the
‘crowning glory’ of their educational vision was the establishment of Auroville, a spiritually
based “city of the future”, recognised by the Indian government as an international city–state
(Marshak & Litfin, 2002).
Tagore too started an educational institution—Santiniketan (The Abode of Peace)—
with only five students. This place later became a major university, Visva-Bharati, that also
includes the Vinay-Bhavana Institute of Education. Tagore’s writing on education would “fill
five volumes” argues Cenkner (1976, p. 45), with “at least one hundred and thirty separate
essays, pamphlets, addresses and a number of textbooks”.
Mohandas Gandhi is renowned not only for his many writings on education (e.g., The
Problem of Education, 1962; Educational Reconstruction, 1939; Towards New Education,
1953; To the Students, 1949; True Education, 1962, My Views on Education, 1970, Basic
Education, 1951) but also for launching the Wardha Scheme, a national program in basic
education (Cenkner, 1976, p. 99).
Krishnamurti, too, wrote extensively on education, but is rarely recognised as an
educator:
His first book on education was published in 1912 and he kept writing and
speaking on education until his death in 1986—a seventy-four year span of
publicly addressing questions of education which is, to my knowledge,
unparalleled. His not being thought of as an educator is even more remarkable
in view of his having started ten schools in his lifetime (Rudolf Steiner started
five) all but one of which have survived. (Forbes, 2002, p. 96).
Krishnamurti’s most influential books include: Education and the Significance of Life
(1953) On Education (1974), The Way of Intelligence (1985) and Letters to the Schools, Vol.
1 and Vol. 2 (1981 and 1985).
Both Sri Sathya Sai Baba and Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar have established numerous
primary schools. Sathya Sai Baba also established an Institute of Higher Learning in 1981
and an Institute of Music in 2000. Sarkar’s network of ‘neo-humanist’ schools now includes
more than 1000 schools in “over 50 countries in both the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’
world” (Kesson, 2002, p. 42).
Sai Baba and Sarkar have also written extensively on education. Two good
compilations that summarise their main ideas include Sathya Sai Education in Human Values
(1988) and Sarkar’s Discourses on Neohumanist Education (1998).
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Maharishi’s efforts in education are still ‘growing strong’. His Open University,
currently based in The Netherlands, delivers on-line courses and is now “broadcasting around
the world through a Global Satellite Network” (http://www.mou.org). His educational ideas
could be among the most successfully ‘mainstreamed’ throughout many western schools, as
apparently “thousands of schoolteachers have become meditators” through the system of
transcendental meditation, and these teachers encourage “their students to practice TM as
well” (Ankerberg & Weldon, 1996, p. 438). Given the general panic this created among the
Christian right, TM was eventually legally expelled from the classroom (Malnak vs. Yogi
courtcase, 1979, USA.). But his, and other similar approaches, are still increasing in
popularity, in the USA in particular. A summary of Maharishi’s and New Age ‘successes’ in
USA public education are covered in detail by Ankerberg and Weldon (1996), albeit attacked
and critiqued from the position of the Christian right.
Given the sheer volume of their writing as well as their influence on educational
praxis, the fact that Aurobindo, Gandi, Krishnamurti, Maharishi, Sai Baba, Sarkar and
Tagore are hardly ever recognised as educators can only be explained by western colonialist
attitudes and/or ignorance. While focused on spirituality, the work of Aurobindo,
Krishnamurti, Maharishi, Sai Baba, Sarkar, Tagore and Gandhi is much more complex. They
provide a civilizational gateway to an alternative future.
There are also many important differences between these authors. The differences
between Krishnamurti’s and Sarkar’s approaches to education are as wide as those between
Alexander Neil and Rudolf Steiner, for example. I do not focus on Indian educational classics
as a whole but include them in as much as they discuss spiritual education. This is
problematic because these educational classics have as much to say about the physical,
psychological, emotional, moral and intellectual development of a child as they do about
her/his spiritual development. But the analysis would then again be much broader than the
scope of this thesis. Thus, I only focus on their discussion of the purpose and practice of
education as well as their approaches to spiritual pedagogy.
In addition to above-mentioned authors, a more thorough reading on the classics on
spiritual education would also include analysis of both Steiner’s and Montessori’s work.
And, it would also include a study of more general literature. For example, Bertrand (1995, p.
223) identifies the following as authors relevant to spiritualistic theories and practice in
education: Richard Bucke, Fritjof Capra, Mircea Eliade, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marilyn
Ferguson, Constantin Fotinas, Willis Harman, Hazel Henderson, Carl Jung, Lao-Tzu, George
Leonard, Abraham Maslow, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki and Henry David Thoreau.
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Ron Miller’s (2000, para. 4) list of “general holistic literature” exemplars includes
works by Theodore Roszak, Fritjof Capra, Charlene Spretnak and Ken Wilber. John Miller’s
and Yoshiharu Nakagawa’s Nurturing Our Wholeness: Perspectives on Spirituality in
Education (2002) includes: Tibetan Buddhism; Taoist; Tantric; as well as Spiritual Christian
Education. In addition to Aurobindo, Krishnamurti, Tagore, Emerson, Thoreau, Montessori
and Steiner, they also include authors such as Martin Buber, Aldous Huxley, Thomas
Merton, Bronson Alcott, and J.G. Bennett. Steven Glazer’s (1999) The Heart of Learning:
Spirituality in Education also includes articles on Buddhist and Western Spiritual Tradition
in education. Nakagawa’s Education for Awakening (2000) discusses, among others, authors
such as Kitaro Nishida, Shin’ichi Hisamatsu and Toshihiko Izutsu. His compilation also
includes article by Palmer, who has recently become an influential author on spiritual
education in his own right (e.g., Palmer, 1980, 1993, 1998, 1999a).
As I have previously explained, analysis of work by most of these authors would be
beyond the scope of this thesis. I therefore analyse the work of twentieth century classics as
well as contemporary authors that more directly worked from within the Indian episteme,
have published in English and have discussed and/or developed/inspired educational
alternatives in praxis. This includes an analysis of the main approaches to human society and
social change developed within the New Age movement—most of it inspired by Indian
philosophy (of Tantric, Vedic and Buddhist varieties).
Some parts of the western New Age movement grew from at least a century of
development, but as a whole, the New Age movement is quite recent. As Bertrand (1995, p.
10) explains, while spiritual revival “so popular nowdays” really took off at the beginning of
the twentieth century, it was in the last two decades that the movement was established and
the idea of a New Age culture popularized.
The New Age movement is also incredibly broad:
As the end of the millennium approaches, the New Age seems to be
everwhere but continues to elude specific definition. The genealogy of New
Age thinking can be traced to the sixties and the Age of Aquarius, and, much
earlier, to Positive Thinking, Mind Cure, Christian Science, Theosophy, and
spiritualism, and even further back, to Transcendentalism and the influence of
Indian religions on American Protestantism. But the New Age cannot be
accounted for in terms of a single root influence. It includes phenomena as
diverse as Yoga and the Kabbalah, holistic healing and Wicca, veganism and
acupuncture, contact with angels and spiritual computer interfaces, wilderness
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trips and tours of holy places, self-help and Jungian psychology, goddess
revivals, and even the mythopoetic men’s movement . . . (Torgovnick, 1997,
p. 172)
The movement is therefore eclectic, drawing upon a variety of cultural and religious
traditions, “past and present, Western and Eastern, modern and primitive, familiar and
exotically Other” (ibid., p. 173). What seems to be beyond doubt is that it is continuously
growing. Its influence can best be ‘measured’ by dystopian readings, that neither indigenous
nor feminist alternatives seem to have. This dystopian reading of the New Age movement, as
well as spiritual alternatives in general, is mostly provided by the Christian right. While
indigenous alternatives lack any substantial external or internal critique and feminist
alternatives are mostly critiqued from within, spiritual alternatives have generated more than
the usual ridicule reserved for dissenting visions. The threat of the New Age movement in the
USA alone seems to be such that it has, for example, prompted an incredibly detailed 670
pages of writing that ‘exposes’ every approach, movement and philosophy associated with it
(e.g., Ankerberg & Weldon, 1996). I further raise the issue of this dystopian reading at the
end of this chapter.
As is visible from the above-mentioned bibliography, most texts written on spiritual
education and published in the 1980s and 1990s in English are almost entirely written by
authors located in the west. This is of course related to general, global knowledge production,
wherein western–based authors are continuously privileged. Still, while these western authors
writing on spiritual education are physically located within western societies, their
intellectual and spiritual inclinations lie both within and outside of the western world.
Together with eastern classics they also aim to bridge the gap between eastern “knowledge of
the Spirit” and western “knowledge of matter” (The Mother, 1965, p. i). Their work can then
be considered as part of a more global, planetary ‘post–western’ curricula and approach to
knowledge and education.
Before I discuss these futures and educational alternatives in more detail, the last
point I make in this introduction is the distinction between spiritual and religious approaches
to education as well as between more recent and traditional spiritual movements. As
discussed earlier, religious education is mostly concerned with handing down a particular
given truth, particular religious tradition and knowledge. As argued by Laukhuf and Werner
(1998), religion is the service and adoration of God expressed in forms of worship; it refers to
an external formalized system of beliefs, values, codes of conduct and rituals—it is a codified
set of morals. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a very personal and individual value system
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about the way that people approach life, varying from person to person and changing
throughout a person's life (ibid.). While religion is “a specific way of exercising that
spirituality and usually requires an institutional affiliation”, spirituality does not require an
institutional connection (Nodding, 1999). According to Palmer (1999b), it is about:
. . . the ancient and abiding human quest for connectedness with something
larger and more trustworthy than our egos—with our own souls, with one
another, with the worlds of history and nature, with the invisible winds of the
spirit, with the mystery of being alive.
Religion not only attempts to institutionalize spirituality, in many instances this is
done “for the perpetuation of the institution rather than for the explicit welfare of the
individual” (O’Sullivan, 1999, p. 260). Unfortunately, spirituality has, in our times, been
seriously compromised by its identification with institutional religions, argues O’Sullivan (p.
259). This is problematic because spirituality is neither religion nor is it in the sole province
of religion (ibid., p. 260). As Krishnamurti (1995, p. 25) also argues, spirituality “does not
belong to any cult, to any group, to any religion, to any organised church”. The spiritual
mind:
Is not the Hindu mind, the Christian mind, the Buddhist mind, or the Muslim
mind . . .[it] does not belong to any group which calls itself religious . . . [it] is
not the mind that goes to churches, temples, mosque . . . nor it holds to certain
forms of beliefs, dogmas . . . It is a mind that has seen through the falsity of
churches, dogmas, beliefs, traditions. Not being nationalistic, not being
conditioned by its environment, such a mind has no horizons, no limits.
(ibid.)9
The mystic notion of God may be replaced “by the more philosophical notion of truth
and still the discovery will remain essentially the same” (The Mother, 1965, p. 23). From a
spiritual perspective, the religions are problematic because “as they are taught and practiced
today [they] lead to conflict rather than unity” (Gandhi, in Cenkner, 1976, p. 113). Because
of fractionism brought by religions, Tagore, Aurobindo and others argue that religions should
best not be officially taught, but ‘the truths’ common to all religions could and should be
9
In this paragraph Krishnamurti talks about the ‘true religious mind’, but the way he describes this
‘true’ religious mind is in opposition to established religions and along the lines of the more recently developed
and accepted term spiritual/spirituality. I have therefore omitted from the paragraph the words ‘religious mind’
because that would confuse the true meaning of Krishnamurti’s phrase.
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taught to all children (Cenkner, 1976). According to Palmer (1999b), however, spirituality is
less about teaching truths than about helping with articulating and thinking about particular
questions. He argues that people rarely raise spiritual issues, partly because of “the
embarrassed silence that may greet us if we ask our real questions aloud” (Palmer, 1999b).
But also, another, perhaps even more significant reason why people don’t ask these questions
is because someone will try to given them “The Answer” (ibid.). Spirituality is not about
answers but about questions such as:
“Does my life have meaning and purpose?” “Do I have gifts that the world
wants and needs?” “Whom and what can I trust?” “How can I rise above my
fears?” “How do I deal with suffering, my own and that of my family and
friends?” “How does one maintain hope?” “What about death?” . . . “How
shall I live today knowing that someday I will die?”. (ibid.)
But it is important to remember that spiritual questions do not have answers “in the
way math problems do” but are deeply personal (ibid.). People do not want to be saved but
simply heard, they are not looking for fixes or formulae, but for compassion and
companionship. Questions are therefore there not to be answered but to be “loved and lived”
(Rilke, in Palmer, 1999b).
Spirituality is therefore primarily concerned with “a personal interpretation of life and
the inner resource of people” (Laukhuf & Werner, 1998). In its “broadest sense, spirituality is
the manifestation of the spirit, just as physiology is one manifestation of the body and
emotions are a manifestation of the mind” (ibid.). It is “at the core of the individual’s
existence, integrity” transcending “the physical, emotional, intellectual, and social
dimension” (Landrum and associates, quoted in Laukhuf & Werner, 1998).
Spirituality could then, in fact, be conceived as “the umbrella concept under which
religion and the needs of the human spirit are found” (Laukhuf & Werner, 1998). While it
can include, be related to or expressed through, more formal religious it is, in essence, a
much broader notion than the notions of the religious. This is because spirituality is
predominately about “a personal quest to find meaning and purpose in life and relationship to
the mystery/God and the rest of the universe” (ibid.). This ‘new God’ is markedly different
from the God often imagined within Judeo–Christian–Islamic tradition. That is, the word has
come to signify “a nonathropomorphized, genderless entity, equivalent to the sum total of
matter or energy in the universe” (Torgovnick, 1997, p. 175). Similarly, Trenoweth (1995, p.
ix) writes:
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As often as not, our God today is androgynous and increasingly our God sides
more solidly with the oppressed than the oppressor. Our God is a shape–
shifter. When we envisage God, she is as likely to be the colour of chocolate
as the colour of snow and might sit high on a cloud or lie curled beneath the
earth, birthing the forests, the animals, the mountains, the oceans and, over
and again, the human generations. Or perhaps, as the Dalai Lama would have
it, we envisage no God at all, for the one true reality lies in blissful emptiness,
perfect place.
Still, it could be argued that such an interpretation of spirituality follows a particular
religious tradition. For example, Purpel (1989, p. 66) argues that some religions, such as
Judaism, seek to strongly integrate moral and ethical behavior with basic religious belief
while others, such as Hinduism, in general put greater stress on metaphysical and spiritual
concerns. The Christian right in particular is extremely concerned about apparently non-
denominational practices, such as progressive relaxation, guided imagery, inner counselors
and centering. There is also a concern that even some aspects of Montessori’s and Steiner’s
education actually stem from “Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern and occult religions”
(Ankerberg & Weldon, 1996). Rabbi Harold Kushner (1999) also expresses concern about
the introduction of any teaching about religion in public schools (as supposed to the teaching
in religion that exists in denominational ones). For example, he argues that:
If I were a Jewish parent sending my kids to public school, not only would I
not want the teacher to preach the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, I
wouldn't even want the teacher to say that all religions are equal. I'm prepared
to teach my child that all religions are equally deserving of respect, but not
that they are all equally valid. If my child were to come home and say,
"According to school, one religion is as good as another and therefore it
doesn't make any difference whether I observe my religion or some other,' I
would feel undermined as a parent. (Kushner, 1999, pp. 20-21)
But it is exactly this attitude by Ankerberg, Weldon and Kushner that is telling of the
main difference between the emerging spiritual movement and traditional institutionalised
religious approaches to spirituality. This response is predominately based on fear of
difference and the belief of the higher superiority of one’s own ‘truth’. Given the general
sensitivity when it comes to the introduction of any aspects of spirituality in public schools,
John Miller (2002) promotes a term used by the Dalai Lama, the notion of “secular
spirituality”. This secular spirituality is “primarily concerned with fostering qualities such as
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wisdom and compassion in human beings . . . [and] the development of wise and caring
individuals” (J. Miller, 2002, p. v). Bussey (2000a, p. 28) proposes the term of critical
spirituality to denote the practices which:
. . . subjects all experience to an internal processing, demanding of each
individual the discipline to take the world without, within and deconstruct it
through a process of meditative reflection that is not simply quiet self analysis
but a real transformative activity.
But Bussey’s (ibid.) critical spirituality also draws on the “ancient meditative
tradition of Tantra”, while including “new insights into human nature and the nature of
ethical action” (ibid.). Qualities highlighted by Miller are, of course, also part of the main
tenant within Tibetan Buddhism. The idea that the secular cannot be separated from religion
(as is the case in the west) also stems from classic Hinduism: “In other words, there is no
Western concept of the secular against religion in Hinduism because “dharma”, religion, is
life itself for Hindus” (Kaneda, 2002, p. 114).
While this could be seen as problematic from within a particular religion’s tradition
and framework, an increasing number of theorists argue for such a notion of the spiritual that
unifies rather than divides. The focus is not on particular ‘truths’ but on peacefully ‘living
together’ and ‘learning from each other’. As articulated almost forty years ago by Mirra
Alfassa Richard (The Mother, 1965, p. 38), “The time of Religions is over. We have entered
the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity”.
Another important difference is between the more recent spiritual revival and
traditional spirituality. Traditional spiritualists often removed themselves from society,
predominately engaging with meditative and contemplative processes that could potentially
bring enlightenment. More recent spiritual revival considers such removal from society, as
well as any form of theology or institutionalized religion, as an escape from life (Bertrand,
1995, p. 9). The works of Krishnamurti, Sarkar, Aurobindo and others represent a radical
break from the Hindu tradition—as described in Chapter Three—which considered the world
as mere maya, an illusion. Some Eastern philosophies have “distorted spirituality to such an
extent that they regard the world as an illusion” argues Sarkar (1998, p. 145). The traditional
approach is seen as problematic because all attempts to try and develop the material world
are therefore seen to be futile (ibid.). This has, according to Sarkar (p. 250), resulted in
“fabricated religious injunctions [that] have been a repeated cause of exploitation”.
Especially in the case of women, some of the proclamations of the traditional scriptures (to
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live the life of a virgin is a vice; polygamy and widow’s suttee are accepted and encouraged)
resulted in incredibly cruel practices (ibid.).
Krishnamurti also argues that the traditional approach is problematic, mostly because
“you cannot withdraw from life” (1974, p. 122) but have to live in this (though “monstrous”)
society. Krishnamurti’s (ibid., p. 94) argument is based on the belief that such a (traditional)
approach cannot help bring in the ‘new man’ and the new society but merely reproduces age–
old problems:
And there are also those who are concerned only with the inner world. They
emphasize the so-called inner world, and become more and more isolated,
more and more self-centered, more and more vague, pursuing their own
beliefs, dogmas and visions. (ibid.)
For Aurobindo, the world is rather “an inseparable power of the divine through which
the latter manifests itself” (Cenkner, 1976, p. 148). Sai Baba (1988, pp. 9, 43) also argues
that, “[b]orn in society, one has the duty to work for the welfare and progress of society . . .
Man cannot live in isolation like a drop of oil on water. He is a product of society. He has to
live in it, grow with it and work for it”.
The goal of contemporary approaches to spirituality is not to isolate oneself from the
world but rather to find a centre, to balance inner and outer, to somehow find an approach
which does not divide, and to be able to function in both worlds equally (Krishnamurti, 1974;
Sri Aurobindo; 1965, Sarkar, 1998).
Spiritual education alternatives do not deny the linearity of time, but this linearity
exists within a broader context: within both cyclical movements of time and within ‘timeless’
time. This alternative view of time leads to a different interpretation of human history and
different views on future directions for humanity. Here I briefly discuss eternal, cyclical and
linear understandings of time by authors on spiritual education and relate these
understandings to particular futures and educational visions.
As touched on in Chapter Three, the concept of timeless time is based on a conviction
of the existence of a Transendental Reality that is beyond time and space. This Reality cannot
be intellectually understood, theorised or analysed. It is the non-negotiable foundation of the
episteme. It can only be felt, experienced. The one, and possibly only, avenue which can
enable access to this Reality is spiritual practice.
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Although humans exist within the boundaries of time, space and person, these
limitations can and should be transcended. Mind, which is of time and space, needs to enter
the non-spatial, timeless state because it is only in that state that there is creation, argues
Krishnamurti (1974, p. 173). Unless the mind is emptied of all previous conditioning, unless
the mind is free and totally new, no real change is possible. It is in that state that one is
finally free of fear, and it is that state that enables feeling of all time “. . . not today,
tomorrow, the day after day, but the feeling of all time. To think in terms of man, the world,
the universe is an extraordinary feeling” (ibid., pp. 135–136).
There is no other alternative but to break free from the bondages of these limitations
and “merge with the Infinite” argues Sarkar (1998, p. 166). When one merges with the
Infinite, one becomes omniscient. By knowing one, a person can know all (ibid., p. 329).
Once this omniscience is achieved it is possible to see all three ages—past, present and future
(ibid., p. 269). Of course, for Sarkar, Krishnamurti and others, while endeavoring to go
beyond, one should also remain within the scope of time, space and person. That is, one
needs to live in both worlds, inner and outer. Once this balance is achieved—between time of
the clock, psychological time and timeless time (Krishnamurti, 1974)—the path towards
‘realisation’ is open. The time on the clock can also be termed ‘objective time’ (J. Miller,
2000, p. 24).
Miller argues that this objective time corresponds to the Ego. It is the ego that sees
objects as separate, focusing on controlling reality. The soul, on the other hand, exists in a
space that enables it to see multiplicity and unity at the same time. It exists within subjective
time and focuses on love (ibid.). He makes a further distinction between ego, soul and spirit.
It is spirit that sees unity and connection and exists outside time. It is therefore neither ego
nor soul but rather spirit “this divine essence within” that is the part of us which exists
beyond time and space (ibid.). It is through spirit (variously called Atman, paratman, Buddha
nature, or the Self), that humans experience unity with the divine (e.g., Brahman, God, Tao)
(ibid.). For Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, an important distinction between spiritual and
psychic life needs to be made. The former is “a return to the unmanifest, beyond time and
space” while the latter is about “higher realization in time and space” (The Mother, 1965, p.
27):
. . . the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, every
progressive change, unbroken continuity in the world of forms. The spiritual
consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and eternal, to
throw oneself outside all creation, beyond time and space. To become fully
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aware of your psychic being and to live a psychic life you must abolish in you
all selfishness; but to live a spiritual life you must be selfless.
Timeless time can only be approached through spiritual practice. Spiritual education
thus remains one of the most important, if not the most important social institution and
practice.
Of course, the ‘timeless time’ approach immediately assumes a long-term vision. It is
timeless time that contains within it all other times: the time of the clock; personal and social
cycles, and one-way directional movements through time. Both linear and cyclical
approaches to social change are therefore theorised at the macro level: they last anywhere
between a few thousand years and eternity. The following three examples—the approach to
change often found within New Age movement, as well as that of P.R. Sarkar and
Krishnamurti—differ in their interpretation of human history. However, they are quite similar
in their conviction about desired directions for the future, about where humanity should be
going.
Anodea Judith’s (1993) interpretation of human history and social change is reflective
of the dominant worldview that exists within the New Age movement. Most familiar to the
wider audience is the notion of astrological time. The present era is seen as a transition to the
so-called “Age of Aquarius” (Ferguson, 1980), the spiritual rebirth of humanity. According
to Judith, who summarises the New Age interpretation of history well, human evolution is
analogous to the rise of the Kundalini (activiting energy force that connects chakras) up
through the main chakras (energy centers) that exist within the human body. Human
evolution follows a pattern that can best be described as a growth towards higher
consciousness: as a species we are ‘destined’ to ‘rise’ towards ‘true’ progress and the
development of higher levels of ‘sophistication’ (Judith, 1987, p. 435). The past of our
human species was “clearly delineated by our lower chakras”, while “we find that the future
will follow the path of the upper chakras” (ibid.):
In the dimension of time, each chakra represents an Age of varying length in
average worldwide levels of sophistication. While it is clear that one part of
the world may be more advanced than others at the same point in time, there
are general trends in development that can be spotted when culture is
examined as a whole. As populations and technologies grow, cultures become
more homogenous, making these trends easier to see.
The summary of this view of history, social change and trends towards the future is
presented in the tables below.
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Table 5.12: Chakras as an evolutionary system
Chakra Location Element Associated with

One Base of the spine Earth Survival
Two Sacral plexus Water Emotions and Sexuality
Three Solar plexus Fire Personal power and
metabolic energy
Four Sternum Air Love
Five Throat Sound Communication and
creativity
Six Center of the forehead— Light Clairvoyance, intuition and
“Third Eye” imagination
Seven Top of the head—head Thought Knowledge and
crown understanding
Chakra Phase in history Technology Age of

One Early Stone Age Made of natural materials Nomads, lives short and
(stone, wood and bone) dangerous
Two From 8500 BCE to 1500 Control of water, First agricultural
BCE development of communities
agriculture, beginning of
ship building
Three Iron Age Tools forged in the fire, Aggression, power and
including weapons. technology
From about 1500BCE to
about 2000CE
Four From 2000CE to 3750CE New Information Balance (between spirit and
Technologies matter, sexes, peoples of all
races and creeds
Five From 3750CE to 4625CE Technologies that Space travel

promote communication
Six From 4625CE to 5062CE Psychic powers, travel at Seeking and developing
the speed of light visions
Seven From 5062CE to 5280CE Development of Harmony with the universe
awareness and body of
knowledge
(Adapted from Judith, 1993)
Typically, the greatest attention is given to the transformation of the current phase,
based on the Age of the third chakra, towards “The Age of Aquarius”. The transformation is
seen to be following a linear pattern, is ‘destined’ as the “world of man is being irresistibly
forced to form one single whole . . . converging upon itself” (de Chardin, 1970, p. 53). Each
new phase brings humanity towards “greater freedom and understanding” but the coming
New Age is first to be “fully expected and anticipated” (Judith, 1993, p. 439). In the words of
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Barbara Marx Hubbard (1998), the “new story of creation” is about “the awakening of
humanity”, “conscious evolution by choice” which now marks a dawn of “co-creative
society”.
Although this view of history and social change is represented in very firm
deterministic terms, it is also often stressed that this change is not inevitable. Rather, it is up
to humans to decide whether the upcoming change will be “a graceful, natural, or violent
birth to the next stage of evolution” (Marx Hubbard, 1998, p. 27). While the seeds of change
are here, if humans do not act positively they may not be able to bypass the nuclear age and
bring forth the new one (Judith, 1993; Eisler, 1987, 1997, 2000). Still, the main problem with
this previous classification is its determinism. Another problem lies in its organicism—the
patterning of social change according to ‘energy centres’ that reside within the human body.
The major problem with this scheme is that it does not allow for differentiation between
various social, cultural, national and civilisational patterns of social change. Similar to the
mainstream linear approach to history, all stages and all phases are to be experienced by all
societies simultaneously.
This view of history and social change, while popular within the New Age movement,
is not universally shared by all that have focused on the development of spiritual alternatives.
For example, for Krishnamurti (1974, 1985, 1995) all of previous history can be marked by
suffering, pain, brutality, violence and despair. In addition, no previous attempt to transform
society (e.g., the French, Russian and Chinese Revolutions) have produced anything new.
This is because every society “has three stages or hierarchies” (1974, pp. 64–65)—the high
(aristocracy), the middle (middle class) and the low (laborer), each in battle with the other:
The middle wants to get to the top and they bring about a revolution and then
when they get to the top, they hold on to their positions, their prestige, their
welfare, their fortunes, and again the new middle class tries to come to the top.
The low trying to reach the middle, and the middle trying to reach the top; this
is the battle going on all the time throughout society and in all cultures. And
the middle says: “I am going to get to the top and revolutionize things”, and
when it gets to the top, you seen what it does. It knows how to control people
through thought, through torture, through killing, through destruction, through
fear. (ibid.)
As pointed out by Pupul Jayakar in a conversation with Krishnamurti (1995, p. 74),
this interpretation of history is problematic because if all of previous history was “without
any change”, how are we to “go back to a period or a state where things would be more
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desirable than they are” or, Krisnamurti asks, how can we “make the quantum leap”. This
also means Krishnamurti’s interpretation of history is problematic because it ascribes:
. . . a certain homogeneity to everything . . . giving the same character to
different civilisations, different religious systems, systems of modern science
and systems of thought that create wars all over the world. (Jayakar, in
Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 73)
From Krishnamurti’s point of view, however, there is no real difference between
these systems because they are all based on conditioning, all stand in a way of the new
human being that will finally be free, totally unconditioned. Krishnamurti’s perspective is
also significant because he openly rejects utopianism while advocating a long-term futures
perspective. For example, he asks and then answers the following questions:
Can an idealist ever be honest? He is living in a future carved out of the past;
he is caught between that which has been and that which ought to be and so he
can never be honest. (Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 102)
So for Krishnamurti (1995, p. 105), the “desire for enlightenment and desire for
money are the same, though the objects vary”. The change towards ‘what should be’ is not a
movement, not real change. This is because the ideal of what should be is usually away from
the fact and so it “limits the mind and makes it static” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 155). At the
same time, Krishnamurti (ibid., p. 103) argues that “there must be the long vision . . . there
must be something else” acting in and focusing on the immediate. In particular, he argues
that it is the function of education to “bring about a mind that will not only act in the
immediate but go beyond” (ibid., p. 101). This he even more strongly argues in the following
paragraph:
But a really good educator must be concerned not only with the immediate but
be prepared for the future—future not in the sense of the day after, or a
thousand days after tomorrow, but the tendency of this extraordinary
development of the mind . . . The world is on fire; and being an educated man
you must have the right answer to this. (ibid., pp. 162–163)
So while openly against utopianism, Krishnamurti advocates unconditional freedom,
in itself a utopian ideal. In addition, all of his efforts in education and social theory are about
development of the ‘new man’ and the ‘new society’. Perhaps, Krishnamurti would be
satisfied with the ‘resolution’ within the modern approach to utopianism. As argued in
Chapter Two, this approach both stresses the need for future visions and that these visions
should be flexible, open to constant questioning and critique.
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Yet another approach to history, social change and the future has been developed by
Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar. Sarkar’s cyclical theory of history conceives social change in terms
of the movement between four classes. These are: Shudra/worker (dominated by
environment); Ksattriya/worrior (struggles with and dominates environment);
Vipra/intellectual (struggles with and dominates ideas); and Vaeshya/capitalist (struggles
with and dominates environment/ideas) (Inayatullah, 1997, p. 135). The movement is similar
to Krishnamurti’s movement between three classes, that is, there is a constant change, a
period of rise and transformation is followed by a period of fall. The New Age interpretation
of history also allows for this cyclical movement, but the entire cycle lasts thousands of
years. Sarkar’s cycle seems to be moving faster. In addition, the phases of the cycle can be
broken. While ours is the era of the Vaeshya—the world capitalist system—there is also the
possibility to create new futures, and his neo-humanist education is crucial in this process.
Sarkar’s view of history, social change and trends towards the future is summarised in the
table below.
Table 5.13: Varna (caste) as an evolutionary system
Age Leaders of The most Main features Main strength/

Age recent cycle
weakness of Age
Shudra Manual Early societies Reliance on No sense of acquisition,
Age workers physical power no intellectual
exploitation/life was brutal
Ksattriya Herculean type Antique Reliance of Well–knit group/ The
Age giants personal valour power to rule, supremacy
and might, little or in arms the only material
no use of intellect factor that mattered
Vipra Age Intellectuals Middle Ages Development of Learning extended

skills, learning. beyond use of arms and
New ideologies strategy/parasitic
created. exploitation of other
classes, imposition of
superstitions, rituals,
faiths and beliefs to
maintain power
Age of Merchants Capitalism Collection and Ingenuity/personal
Vaeshyas transfer of acquisition, exploitation.
consumable goods Commodifies education
(Adapted from Sarkar, 1998)
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Thus the transformation from one Age to another occurs when the Age can no longer
satisfy new needs or reconcile main contradictions. For example, the movement from the
Shudra Age to the Ksattriya Age occurred when reliance on physical power gradually led a
chosen few to lead the rest by the strength of their muscles (Sarkar, 1998, p. 239). The
chosen few eventually became leaders of the shudras. These leaders then started a well–knit
group and ultimately formed a class known as the ksattriyas. Ksattriyas mostly rely on force
making little use of intellect, so gradually the growing intensity of intellectual demand leads
to an increased need for teachers. In the previous cycle, the learning extended from the use of
arms towards other spheres (e.g., battle–craft, medicine, forms of organization and
administration) and ‘in the course of time’ real power passed into the hands of intellectuals.
Because intellectuals ‘justified their existence’ on intellect only, performing no labour, they
rely on the output of others. As such this Age is also parasitic in nature. To be able to
maintain the power of the limited few, during the latest Vipra Age, the majority was
prevented from acquiring the use of the intellect by imposition of superstitions, rituals, faiths
and beliefs, and “even introducing irrational ideas” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 240). Sarkar argues that
the caste system of Hindu society is one example of the introduction of such irrational ideas.
But needs—such as the need for the transfer of consumable goods, food and other necessities
of life, from surplus parts to deficit parts gained importance—resulted in the eventual
appearance of a merchant class handling goods. Their individualistic or laissez–faire sense
developed into capitalism. One of the main features of the later phase of the Vaeshyas Age is
that the large majority of society are turned into shudras—that is, persons living by manual
work or labour for their livelihood. At the end of the Age, a shudra revolution is likely to
occur, propelled by created injustices. From then on, the process follows the circular motion:
The leaders of this [shudra] revolution, also are people physically and
mentally better–equipped and more capable essentially of overthrowing the
capitalistic structure by force. In other words, they are also ksattriyas. So,
after a period of chaos and catastrophe, once more the same cycle—Shudra
Age to Ksattriya to Vipra, and so on—recommences. (Sarkar, 1998, p. 242)
But this cyclical movement is not totally deterministic because the social cycle
(samaja cakra) can be reversed by the application of physical or psychic force by a group of
people inspired by a negative theory—a counter (r)evolution. The main value in Sarkar’s
theory lies in the recognition that each social cycle is going to go into ‘eternal motion’
because such a motion is the law of nature and the law of life. Stagnancy, on the other hand,
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“means death” (ibid.). Any force, whether external or internal, can only retard or accelerate
the speed of transition, but cannot prevent it from moving.
However, the cyclical nature of the social cycle can be transformed. Doing so requires
a number of factors, the most important is neo-humanist education. Neo-humanist education
initiates the process of creating a new type of leadership—the sadvipra. The sadvipra is a
person who has a balanced mind, having dimensions of the shudra (service to others),
ksattriya (willingness to accept great challenges), vipra (intellectual development and
idealism) and vaeshyan (economic growth and innovation). The role of the sadvipra is to
transform the cycle to a spiral, wherein the cycle continues to rotate but the duration of each
phase decreases. Exploitation is thus minimised by the sadvipras. The positive dimensions of
each rotation are magnified through social revolution, and the negative dimensions
minimised. Thus, Sarkar's vision is that of a eutopia, a good society, and not a utopia.
Creating sadvipras is impossible without a transformation of the current system of
education, that is, sadvipras must be spiritual, universal in their outlook (not afflicted by
racism, nationalism, sexism, or even humanism, since the latter discriminates against plants
and animals) and ready to take on the burden of human suffering. Transforming primary and
secondary school education is crucial in this process, as it is in this period that notions of the
ultimate nature of life, its purpose, become established, and that spiritual practice can
commence.
The main weakness of Sarkar’s theory is in its determinism through the law of the
social cycle and in using the particular Indian episteme to theorise ‘human society’. It
remains silent as to when and how differences between societies form, that is, why some
societies follow this rhythm more closely and others do not. Also, the mechanism for change
is internal. Societies change according to inner transformation and the role of the external
(e.g., colonisation) is not accounted for. The theory is also based on male experience. As
discussed in Exemplar One, social cycles throughout history, theorised from feminist
perspectives, look quite different. Women were excluded from leading positions in Ksattriya,
Vipra and Vaeshyas ages alike. A cycle that moves according to gender partnership—
patriarchy—as theorised by, for example, Riane Eisler, makes more sense when a gendered
perspective is incorporated. At the very least, both of these dynamics (general social change
as well as change from the perspective of marginalised social groups) needs to be
acknowledged. Sarkar, however, sees the phases as that of matriarchy–patriarchy and once
the new society develops, true gender partnership can emerge. Each social phase, whether
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Ksattriya, or Vipra or Vaeshya, have in their exploitive downward phases been most brutal
toward females. For him, no social progress is possible without the empowerment of women.
Whether the New Age perspective is that of Judith, Krishnamurti or Sarkar, the
emergence of the new ‘total’ human being is a consistent theme, cutting across the diversity
amongst various authors on spiritual education. There are also several other similarities.
Firstly, change is constant. Second, change is theorised from an evolutionary macro
perspective. Thirdly, behind visible change there is also an entity that exists beyond the scope
of time, place and person. Such an entity is the only eternal, undecaying, imperishable,
immutable entity (Sarkar, 1998, p. 319). And fourthly, we are in the midst of radical
transformation. This transformation is about the possible (but urgently needed) emergence of
a ‘new man’ and a new society.
This new human and new society are most often described along utopian lines, even if
the society they imagine is not perfect. There is as well agreement between these authors—
and others from the Indian episteme—when it comes to where humanity should be going,
what is the preferred, desired future. For example, according to Maharishi (2002):
The result of education at Maharishi Open University is a self-sufficient,
Independent individual, a self-sufficient nation, and a uniformly peaceful and
harmonious world. This is the great goal of Maharishi Open University: to
create a perfect world as soon as possible—problem–free, perfect life for
every individual and every nation.
According to Sarkar (1998, p. 44), there is “a change taking place more or less
uniformly in almost all the countries of the world”. Part of this “cultural evolution” is that the
human race, “knowing or unknowingly, is gradually building a new human culture through
mutual cooperation” (ibid.). Human beings of today want to channel “their whole range of
vision towards the bright future” (ibid., p. 95). That bright future will “transcend all
individual or group interests, all territorial limits of countries and states, and transform the
fates of many people into one destiny” (ibid.).
This new bright future is part of a greater evolution, and can best be labeled using Sri
Aurobindo’s (1962, p. 353) “the coming of a Spiritual Age”. As written by Sri Aurobindo
(ibid.):
. . . the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an
increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal
intellectual, vital and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater
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evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to

lead others to it, and to make it the recognized goal of the race.
But the highest utopian promise lies in personal liberation. As described by The
Mother (1965, p. 27):
. . . an inner door will open suddenly and you will come out into a dazzling
splendour that will bring to you the certitude of immortality, the concrete
experience that you have lived always and always shall live, that the external
forms alone perish and that these forms are, in relation to what you are in
reality, like clothes that are thrown away when worn out . . . And yet this
release from all slavery to the flesh, this liberation from all personal
attachment is not the supreme fulfillment. There are other steps to take before
you reach the summit. And even these steps can and should be followed by
others which will open the gates of the future. It is these later steps that will be
the subject–matter of what I call spiritual education.
The final goal of Aurobindo’s, Krishnamurti’s, Gandhi’s, Tagore’s, Sarkar’s, Sai
Baba’s and Maharishi’s approaches and theories of education is transformation, the
awakening of humans as spiritual beings. Of course, societies should change as well;
however, this cannot be achieved by external change alone. As argued by Krishnamurti
(1974, p. 15), “You have to change society, but not by killing people. Society is you and I.
You and I create the society in which we live. So you have to change”.
The first step in bringing total transformation in all spheres of life is to “transform
ourselves” (Anandamitra, 1987, p. 210). One can become a Marxist by reading books about
Marxism or listening to lectures on Marxist ideology, argues Anandamitra (ibid.), but one
cannot awaken as a spiritual being unless “the vision of oneness of all creation . . . [is]
experienced in the core of one’s being . . . [becoming] an undeniable part of one’s reality”.
People must purify their own personalities of all narrowness and tendencies to harm others,
as well as develop the powerful discernment and force necessary for the struggle against
tyranny in all its forms:
We must become embodiments of the vision of New-Humanist, not just
spokespeople for it—for no great idea can prevail unless it is embodied in
individuals whose lives are the message. When we have transformed
ourselves, we can transform the world. (ibid., p. 213)
Evolution is not described in terms of ‘survival of the fittest’, strongest, most capable.
This is because it is the evolution of the consciousness that takes precedence over the
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evolution of the matter, albeit both unfold together and cannot be separated. In this
evolutionary chain humans are ‘lucky’ to be born within this particular form as it takes many
life times to achieve it. As argued by Sarkar (1998, p. 249), it takes “millions of years, lives
and stages to get a human body”. Human life is, therefore, precious. At the same time, human
form is not seen as the highest evolutionary achievement. Writes Aurobindo:
Man is a transitional being; he is not final. For in man and high beyond him
ascend the radiant degrees that climb to a divine supermanhood. There lies our
destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring but troubled and limited
mundane existence . . . Supermind is superman; a gnostic supermanhood is the
next distinct and triumphant evolutionary step to be reached by earthly nature.
(Sri Aurobindo, quoted in Cenkner, 1976, p. 151).
As summarised by Sarkar (1998, p. 247), on the evolutionary ladder it is “when
animality ends, [that] humanity begins, [and] where humanity ends, [that] divinity begins”.
To achieve divinity one should learn how to go behind the cycles of change, because
behind this cycles of change there is the eternal truth:
The only eternal truth is Parama Purusa (Supreme Consciousness), anadi,
beginningless, endless, all-pervasive; an entity beyond the scope of time, place
and person, the only eternal, undecaying, imperishable, immutable entity.
From this Supreme Entity the inanimate, plant and animal worlds have
emerged, it is the starting and the culminating point of everything. (ibid., p.
319).
It is in accessing this eternal truth/absolute knowledge that the goal of human life is to
be realised. Eternal truth/absolute knowledge is based on ‘spiritual science’. That is,
spirituality is not seen as practice based on irrationality, fear and superstition as is commonly
assumed in the secular west. Rather it is based on factuality: spiritual science invented about
7,000 years ago by Lord Shiva (Sarkar, 1998, p. 331). The Sanskrit word Vijinama, is often
taught to be synonymous with the English word “science” argues Sarkar (1998, p. 292).
However, it really is not, because “in Sanskrit, Vijinana stands for Brahma Vijinana,
intuitional science or spiritual science” (ibid., p. 99). Education should always be based on
“factuality” (ibid., p. 292). There must not be “the injection of any dogma or fanaticism or
any type of geographic or racial chauvinism in the education system” (ibid.). Thus the
educational system is to be based on science, albeit a science which is broader than the
western version. While spiritual science also describes certain laws that exist within the
universe, it fundamentally differs from western science. For example, one of the universal
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laws is that “ . . . matter is false and impotent unless it becomes the manifestation of the
Spirit” (The Mother, 1965, p. iii). Alternatively, matter is seen to be “the crudified form of
the universal mind” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 324). Or, as argued by Aurobindo (1965, p. 18):
All human energy has a physical basis. The mistake made by European
materialism is to suppose the basis to be everything and confuse it with the
source. The source of life and energy is not material but spiritual, but the
basis, the foundation on which the life and energy stand and work, is physical.
It is this spiritual science that should be basis for education:
Education in the new age, instead of encrusting the children’s minds with the
barnacles of dogmas, must incorporate intuitional science into the curriculum
from the earliest grades, to liberate the students from the “prison–house of the
senses” focussed on the material world. As their minds expand through more
and more subtle layers of consciousness, they will realise that they are, indeed,
infinite, and in ecstasy they will merge in the all-embracing whole. Then their
higher selves will shine forth in splendour, and our education will have
fulfilled its sacred task—of “leading out” the perfection already within every
child. (Anandamitra, 1987, p. 199)
A similar critique is sometimes developed from the perspective of monotheistic
religions, including western Christianity. The perspective from the Indian episteme differs
though, because materialistic based science is seen to compliment rather than contradict the
spiritual. The theory of evolution therefore does not contradict Creationism, as evolution of
our bodies is part of broader evolution of consciousness.
Other ‘eternal truths’ that exist from the perspective of ‘spiritual science’ are about
the evolution of consciousness, and that human beings are ‘the progeny’ of Parama
Purusa/Supreme Consciousness. Also, the goal of human life is the attainment of Brahma,
the divine within. In addition to the above, the other parts of universal truth/absolute
knowledge are:
. . . by dint of sadhana or spiritual practices human beings gradually become
divine; whoever is born will have to die one day; liberation is the birth right of
all living beings; human society is one and indivisible; diversity is the law of
nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform. (Sarkar, 1998, p. 324)
Maharishi in particular has utilised science to buttress his arguments. He argues that
Transcendental Meditation (TM) is not only nonsectarian in its character, but also a “purely
scientific method” of enlarging the conscious mind (Maharishi 1988, p. 309). It is scientific
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because it is systematic, universal in its application, open to verification by personal

experience, not opposed to any methods of scientific investigation and because the end
results are found by everyone to be the same (ibid.). Proponents of Transcendental
Meditation (TM) quote hundreds of studies (some listed in So & Orme-Johnson, 2001) which
confirm that TM practice results not only in reduction of general anxiety but also increased
cognitive ability, performance and improved memory. These claims are not without critics
(e.g., Ankerberg & Weldon, 1996, p. 438). Still, interestingly, Maharishi argues that
meditation should be part of education even if one’s worldview is based on materialism. That
is, as there is scientific evidence about the benefits of his TM, this approach is desirable even
if it is only increased intelligence, higher productivity, success and achievement that are
desired. One does not need to accept or believe in the Divine, Supreme Consciousness, or
anything else not of this (material) world. Still, by the very act of practicing TM, one is able
to tap into “an ocean of knowledge, bliss, and power”, the divine that exists within everyone
(Maharishi, 2002).
To summarise, the central concepts within spiritual alternatives are: the concept of
inner transformation; the movement toward enlightenment, Brahma; and perfection of one’s
self towards ‘true’ nature and reality. The main approach towards change could be
summarised in the following: ‘be the change you want to see’. The main vision for the future
is therefore one where society is constituted by self-actualised individuals. It is also about
accessing ‘cosmic’ time, where the individual is liberated through access to ‘infinite time’,
entrance to ‘spacelessness’ and a ‘timeless’ state. This access is only possible through
silence, withdrawal within one self, going beyond words and “therefore out of time”
(Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 173). As Krishnamurti argues, “the word is time” (p. 173) and
therefore one needs to go beyond words, beyond fixed thoughts, beyond intellect, and into a
space free of any preconceptions, with a mind “that is astonishingly quiet, still” (p. 175).
Only then can the mind create something new, otherwise the person remains a specialist,
technician, repeating and adding onto the old. To achieve this, spiritual practice is necessary.
And, it is education that is both crucial in the learning of spirituality as well as in creation of
a new man and a new society.
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Image from Ananda Rama, 2000, front cover.
Sa vidya ya vimuktaye—Education is that which liberates. (Sarkar, 1998, p.

111)
Before discussing the preferred educational vision, I briefly summarise the main
critique of current education from within the spiritual perspective. This critique is based on a
conviction that the modern system of education is universally flawed. What is seen to be
lacking is a focus on full human development. Accumulation of information and knowledge
does not lead to ‘intelligence’, goodness nor ‘flowering’ argues Krishnamurti (1995).
Actually, mere acquisition of knowledge without a moral and spiritual approach is outright
dangerous: “If you have no intelligence, no sensitivity, then knowledge can become very
dangerous. It can be used for destructive purposes” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 30).
To make education ‘fit into’ current mainstream society is a mistake because current
society is riddled with problems, conflicts and misery, argues Krishnamurti (1974, 1995).
Mainstream society is “compulsively authoritarian, . . . brutal and tyrannical, not only in the
immediate relationships but in social relationships” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 101). Further,
humans have created a society which “demands all their time, all their energies, all their life”
argues Krishnamurti (1995, p. 77). As there is no leisure to learn, life becomes “mechanical,
almost meaningless” (ibid.).
There is today little talk of “pleasure or ecstasy, or even joy in the world of
educational discourse” (Kesson, 2002, p. 31). Because in the current educational system
spiritual elements have no place, it cannot be said that such a system represents “true
education” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 9). Today’s education is only “yielding a harvest of pride and
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envy” (ibid., p. 29). Our present educational institutions are in line with and are feeding into
“industrialism, nationalism, competitive transnationalism, individualism and patriarchy”,
argues O’Sullivan (1999, p. 7). The most familiar words in education are “assessment,
standards, zero tolerance, and accountability”, which are “the worlds of the corporate
boardroom, not the human potential movement” (Kesson, 2002, p. 30). Emerging hegemonic
futures visions are also problematic because they rely on competition, fear, insecurity and
materialism. It is fear that is essentially involved in competition—“to be afraid of being
nobody, of not arriving, of not succeeding” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 53). But when there is
fear, “you cease to learn” (ibid.). The primary economic emphasis in education means that
‘education’ has become a series of tests and hurdles rather than focusing on learning (J.
Miller, 2000, p. 4). Education has therefore become an institution whose purpose in the
modern world is “. . . not to make culture, not to serve the living cosmos, but to harness
humankind to the dead forces of materialism. Education as we know it, from preschool
through graduate school, damages the soul” (Sardello, 1992, p. 50).
Not only is the soul damaged, it is almost murdered and is definitely seriously ill,
argues O’Sullivan (1999, p. 260):
. . . ’globalization’ is becoming a religion. [But] it is not a religion that
cultivates the human spirit; in fact, it warps the human spirit by its egregious
emphasis on material goods. What is happening in our time under the guise of
‘globalization’ is nothing less than soul murder. It is pervasive and appears to
move at the speed of an aggressive cancer. The movement into ‘globalization’
of the world economy is most certainly a cancer of the human spirit.
Kushner (1999) goes even further, arguing that if children are not enabled to nourish
their souls (through a sense of ritual and a sense of magic) this is to be considered “a form of
child abuse” (p. 21). They need to be enabled to understand and experience that there is “a
reality beyond the reality of everyday life and that there is something wonderful about this”,
because it is that realization that nourishes the soul (ibid.)
Current education violates “the deepest needs of the human soul” with some
regularity, argues Palmer (1999b). Because the system of education is so fearful of things
spiritual it fails to address the real issues of our lives, it dispenses facts at the expense of
meaning and information at the expense of wisdom (ibid.). The price paid is:
. . . a school system that alienates and dulls us, that graduates young people
who have had no mentoring in the questions that both enliven and vex the
human spirit . . . When we fail to honor the deepest question of our lives,
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education remains mired in technical triviality, cultural banality, and worse: It

continues to be dragged down by a great sadness. I mean the sadness one feels
in too many schools where teachers and students alike spend their days on
things unworthy of the human heart—a grief that may mask itself as boredom,
sullenness, or anger, but that is, at bottom, a cry for meaning. (ibid.)
While the WebNet vision of the world assumes technology as our saviour, this
perspective is seen as extremely problematic. Neither markets nor technology can produce
balanced individuals and develop holistic societies. Technology cannot help achieve “a
perfect or a good society” argues Krishnamurti (1974, p. 93). That is:
It may produce a great society, where there is no poverty, where there is
material equality and so on. A great society is not necessarily a good society.
A good society implies order. Order does not mean trains running on time,
mail delivered regularly. It means something else. For a human being, order
means order within himself. And such order will inevitably bring about a good
society.
So what remains is to “write an obituary for the great god Progress” (Keen, 1994, pp.
13–14). This is because we are living in the last days of “the myth of unlimited growth and
technoutopia, and the religion of the Mall” (ibid.).
Spiritual educational visions are therefore based on the radical transformation of both
modern education, and on a change in the perception of current emerging ‘future realities’
(cyber and globalised education). As is the case with feminist and indigenous alternatives,
spiritual educational visions also require radical transformations rather than piece meal
strategies within education. The main change is thus epistemological, paradigmatic. While
ideally, spiritual education is conducted within a setting that facilitates spiritual growth (e.g.,
small classes, natural surroundings), the change could as well be implemented in ‘industrial
type’ inner city classrooms. The issue of implementation is seen as secondary when
compared to the paradigmatic change that needs to occur:
Why do you give time to dance, to music? Why not give time to this as you
give to mathematics? You are not interested in it. If you saw that it was also
necessary you would devote time to it. If you saw that it [spiritual education]
was as essential as mathematics, you would do something. (Krishnamurti,
1974, p. 177)
At heart, Sarkar, Krishnamurti, Sai Baba and Aurobindo offer a vision of
transformation. They write:
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You must try your best to reshape the system . . . Every village school is to be
transformed into a gurukula (the forest schools of the past in which sages
taught spiritual practices along with other subjects) and every teacher into a
rishi or sage, who will lead the children along material, moral, ethical and
spiritual paths, until they become ideal citizens. (Sai Baba, 1988, pp. 49–50)
We will establish the Gurukul. We will dye each and every bud with the light
of knowledge. No one will stay away. We will bind everybody with the thread
of love and create a garland of incomparable beauty. No one will stay behind,
none will be thrown at the bottom. All will exist with kit and kin with their
minds full of sweetness and tenderness for all. (Sarkar, 1998, p. 11)
. . . thousands of kindergarten and primary schools must be started with this

new system of education [neo-humanism], to create a spiritual urge amongst
children throughout the entire world. (ibid., p. 182)
There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as
its sole property, a place where all human beings of goodwill, sincere in their
aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single
authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony,
where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer
the causes of his suffering and misery, to surmount his weakness and
ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the
needs of the spirit and the care for progress would get precedence over the
satisfaction of desires and passions, the seeking for pleasures and material
enjoyments. In this place, children would be able to grow and develop
integrally without losing contact with their soul. (Auroville Charter, 2002,
vision statement)
The essence of spiritual education is summarised below. The summary of a ‘core’ that
follows is more concerned with the epistemic and paradigmatic change then with the issue of
pedagogy. It only briefly focuses on pedagogy, the ‘how’ of teaching. Concrete suggestions
on how to approach spirituality in education are developed in detail in articles and books by,
for example, Ananda Rama (2000), Anandamitra (1987), Bussey (1998, 2000a, 2000b),
Dermond (2001a, 2001b, 2002), Daleo (1996), Palmer (1980, 1993, 1998, 1999a), J. Miller
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(2000), Kessler (2000) and Myers (1997). Many articles in Miller & Nakagawa (2002),
Glazer (1999) and in a special issue of Educational Leadership (Vol. 56, No. 4, Dec 1998/Jan
1999) also deal with spirituality and educational pedagogy. As well, all of the 20th century
educational ‘classics’ that developed educational alternatives from within the Indian episteme
contain extensive writings on issues of spirituality and educational pedagogy. The following
summary is not complete; rather, it focuses on the main elements of educational visions as
expressed by the most influential and best known authors on spiritual education. It should be
seen as a point of departure.
– The focus is on human and cosmic unity. Knowledge and education should facilitate
bringing humans to a consciousness of unity. The goal is to achieve harmony with the
universe, which means unification of both spiritual and social integration of all life with
the Supreme. Contrary to the dominant western view of education which constitutes the
individual as “fundamentally alone in the universe and in competition with others for
resources and status” (Kesson, 2002, p. 41) humanity is envisioned as “intimately linked
with the fabric of the universe” (Bussey, 2000b, p. 10). The individual is seen as “a soul,
a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in
Nature of the universal self and spirit” (Sri Aurobindo, 1965, p. 4). Therefore,
educational practices ought to include the “examination and contemplation of the awe,
wonder, and mystery of the universe” (Purpel, 1989, p. 113). Education is the realization
of an inner quality of man that places human life in harmony with all existence (Tagore,
in Cenkner 1976). This is based on the existence of a common dharma for all human
beings: no divisions, no isms. Human dharma consists of four main components: vistara
(expansion), rasa (flow), seva (service) and tadsthiti (attainment of the supreme stance)
(Sarkar, 1998, p. 215). The fundamental aim of human dharma is vistara, psychic
expansion. To be able to expand their minds, humans have to realize that “they are one
with the supernatural cosmic flow” (ibid.). They have to move ahead remaining
connected with the cosmic flow—“merging their pleasure and pain, hopes and
aspirations with the cosmic rhythm” (ibid.). Even if human dharma “causes pain and
torture” and if plant or animal dharma is easily performed and results “in a bed of roses
being spread out before you” (ibid.) it is still preferable to follow human dharma. As
argued by Krsna in Giita (Sarkar, 1998, p. 217), human beings should strictly avoid para
dharma (plant or animal dharma) under all circumstances. The focus on unity also
means that education should be about going beyond anthropocentrism. As argued earlier,
human beings are ‘transitional’, rather than the end goal of an evolutionary movement.
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This general understanding of unity results in the development of respect for all forms of
life, animate and inanimate, as all life is seen to be sacred. The spiritual unity of humans
should be realized through both nature and neighbour, argues Krishnamurti. So
education is to be about building relationships. Life in itself is “a movement in
relationship. If we do not understand what is implied in relationship, we inevitably not
only isolate ourselves, but create a society in which human beings are divided, not only
nationally, religiously, but also in themselves and therefore they project what they are
into the outer world” (Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 34). Relationship with another human
being is, therefore, one of the most important things in life. Therefore, “every person in
the primary school must feel a sense of kinship with everyone” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 64).
Students should cultivate the spirit of mutual regard and harmony (ibid., p. 96).
Separation immediately brings conflict (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 34). To be able to live
peacefully in the world, we should cease being “Muslim or Hindu” (ibid., p. 35). The
spiritual goal is always one. But in the absence of this unitary goal, factionalism emerges
(Sarkar, 1998, p. 165). Factionalism does not mean only groupism, it is also a conflict of
doctrines (Sarkar, 1998). If human beings want to save themselves from perpetual unrest
and conflict, the only way is to march forward towards a single goal. Humanity must be
guided to follow “the path of synthesis and not the path of analysis.” (ibid., p. 165).
Furthermore, collectivity does not exist outside individual humans. The personal future
is “inseparably connected with the collective fortune” (ibid., p. 226). In fact, a human
being is ‘psychologically’ the whole of mankind (Krisnhamurti, 1995). Individuals not
only represent but are in themselves the whole of the human species. As one suffers, so
all mankind suffers in various degrees (ibid., p. 74). As further argued by Krishnamurti
(ibid.) “psychologically, you are the world”. As a representative of the whole human
race, an individual’s response is whole not partial: “you are responsible for the whole of
mankind, not for yourself as a separate human being, which is a psychological illusion”
(ibid.). This feeling of responsibility is based on feelings of love and compassion. One
must love all mankind and not emphasise the differences between nations, or between
castes and colours (Sai Baba, 1998, p. 17). Rather, one should “cultivate universal
heartfelt love” (ibid.). So, “the highest mission of education is to help us realize the inner
principle of unity of all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual being”
(Tagore, in Cenkner, 1976, p. 45).
– Spirituality can be known and should be taught. The aim of education is to facilitate
spiritual growth (Tagore, in Cenkner, 1976). The only ‘true’ education is that which
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makes one central objective the growth of the soul and its powers and possibilities (Sri
Aurobindo, 1965, p. 5). Without knowledge of the Absolute, and without the practice of
Meditation to unfold the mental faculties, education is incomplete (Maharishi, 1988, p.
210). This is important as it helps center individuals, and helps them live in the midst of
all relative values of the world and forms and phenomena (ibid., p. 212). Education
should facilitate movement toward greater wholeness, towards the infinite, towards the
Supreme Consciousness. It should facilitate the growth of the human soul, the self, the
mind, in all its powers and potentialities (The Mother, 1965). As argued by Krishnamurti
(1995, p. 67) “this is our intent and why these schools have come into being; not to turn
out mere careerists but to bring about the excellence of spirit”. To develop the spirit
means building a character and enabling “one to work towards a knowledge of God and
self-realization” (Gandhi in Cenkner, 1976, p. 81). Moral, ethical and spiritual
knowledge and experience are the best foundation in education (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 51).
Of course, within the individual there is “a mental, an intellectual, an ethical, dynamic
and practical, an aesthetic and hedonistic, a vital and physical being, but all these have
been seen as powers of a soul that manifests through them and grows with their growth”
(Sri Aurobindo, 1965, p. 4). And yet all these aspects of a being are not all the soul,
because “at the summit of its ascent it arises to something greater than them all, into a
spiritual being” (ibid.).
– Education is that which liberates. Enlightenment is possible. The path towards ‘bliss’
(ananda) is through education, discipline and spiritual practice. Education should help
achieve moksha/freedom. The highest aspiration is the realization of the relationship
between deepest self (atman) and the Absolute (Brahman). The ‘true secret”, “whether
with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real phychic entity within”
(Sri Aurobidno, 1965, p. 19). True education, therefore, is that which “directs and
counsels the mind and intellect of man towards the earning of pure (Satwic) happiness”
(Sai Baba, 1988, p. 48). Spiritual education liberates the self and society from all
bondage (Bussey, 2000b, p. 10). As humans are encouraged to go ‘beyond the self’, this
freedom also includes freedom from the bondage of ego (Sarkar, Krishnamurti,
Aurobindo, Tagore, Gandhi). Spiritual education also liberates the individual from “the
misconception that they are alone” (ibid.). But it is “only those who look upon
everything of the world in a spiritual spirit [that] can realize in everything the blissful,
transcendental Entity” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 79). It is through spiritual practice that the mind
is lead towards “inner happiness and inner contentment” (Maharishi, 1988, p. 215).
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These in turn result in informed thinking, proper values in life, the capacity to harmonize
two opposing ends of behavior, spontaneous love of others and mutual harmony (ibid.).
– Education should promote cardinal human values. Education should therefore promote
compassion, love, bliss, sympathy and joy (Tagore, in Cenkner, 1976). Everyone should
practice “Truth, Right Conduct, Peace, Love and Non-Violence” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 19).
Children should learn how to practice compassion and understanding rather than blame,
forgiveness rather than retaliation, active calm rather than anger or passive victim–
consciousness (Dermond, 2001b). Education should be about teaching “harmony,
mindfulness, service, self-reliance, community, history, compassion, beauty, balance and
joy.” (Daleo, 1996) Sarkar’s neo-humanist education is to promote values such as:
ahimsa (non-harming), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), aparigraha
(minimising one’s needs), bramacarya (seeing everyone as an expression of the Divine),
shaoca (cultivation of a strong healhty body), santoca (contentment), tapah (serving
others), svadhyaya (going beyond dogma and ritualism),and ishvara pranidhana (mental
effort, through meditation, towards union with cosmic consciousness) (Kesson, 2002, p.
38). True human values are based on service to others, compassion, humility. Education
should also promote service to others, the Gandhian sarvodaya—the uplift of all. The
knowledge that is gathered in schools and colleges should be “capable of being used for
service to society and helping to improve the conditions of one’s fellow men” (Sai Baba,
1998, p. 10). This includes “the cultivation, nourishment, and development of attitudes
of outrage and responsibility in the face of injustice and oppression” (Purpel, 1989, p.
118). Real education should enable one to “utilise the knowledge one has acquired to
meet the challenges of life and to make all human beings happy as far as possible” (Sai
Baba, 1988, p. 9). In the life of animals, there is no scope for service (Sarkar, 1998, p.
216). There is only scope for mutual, commodity transaction “pay the money and take
the goods” (ibid.). With service the motive is to give but not take, it is one–sided (ibid.).
Service exists when nothing (e.g., money, respect, tax benefits, etc.) is expected in
return. Ability to do service, without expecting anything in return is part of human
dharma. An element of this focus on service is also cultivation of devotional sentiment,
devotional wealth (ibid., p. 233). This devotional wealth must be preserved. Otherwise,
“humanity will lose its most valuable possession” (ibid.). Whenever there is a conflict
between the brain and the heart, “intelligent people should respond to the call of the
heart” (ibid., p. 324). Most of all it is love that should be promoted. Without love, “you
are a dead human being” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 85). Everyone should find out what is
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it to “love people, to love dogs, the sky, the blue hills and the river” (ibid.). Learning
love is getting accustomed to the feeling that there is “gentleness, quietness, tenderness,
consideration . . . beauty” (ibid., p. 82). And, it is in love that “there is no ambition, there
is no jealousy” (ibid.). Love is “at the origin of the world and Love is its Goal” (The
Mother, 1965, p. 37). There is “only one religion, the religion of love. There is only one
language, the language of the heart” (Sai Baba, 1998, p. 7). This is why real education
“leads to a pervasive sense of love and compassion for all creation” (Sarkar, 1998, p.
111).
– Education comes from within. It is about unfolding the full potential that already exists
within an individual. In that sense, ‘nothing can be taught’ (Krishnamurti, Tagore, Sri
Aurobindo). That nothing can be thought is “the first principle of true teaching” (Sri
Aurobindo, 1965, p. 6). The teacher is “not an instructor or task–master, he is a helper
and a guide” (ibid.). The second principle of true teaching is that “the mind has to be
consulted in its own growth” (ibid.). Educational centres should help the student and the
education to “flower naturally” (Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 59). The flowering incorporates
constant change, not a finished outcome. Education is the constant change of “the inner
man” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 65).
– The outcome of the education should be total, whole, integrated, free, happy, joyful,
blissful and peaceful human being. Schools are not only to be excellent academically but
much more. They are to be concerned with the cultivation of the total human being
(Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 59). This ‘new man’, will combine both the scientific and the
religious (spiritual) mind becoming “harmonious without any contradiction within
himself” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 26). This new, ‘really beautiful’, healthy, sane, rational
‘total’ human being will be born out of ‘right education’ and only if s/he manages to
become free from ego and social conditioning. The only concern should be to “set man
absolutely, unconditionally free” (Krishnamurti, 1995, p. ii). For Gandhi, the goal is
development of satyagrahi, a non-violent personality. For Sai Baba (1988, p. 99)
education is “merely an opportunity” to become an exemplary human being. For Sarkar
(1998, p. 107), the educated and learned are only those people who have “read a lot,
understood what they have read, remembered what they have read, and understood and
acted according to what they have read, understood and remembered”. Education is thus
not about achievement of formal degrees. In addition, great personalities are only those
that “work with the good of all humanity in mind” (ibid., p. 31). For Moore (2000, p.
vii), the educated person is one who is “free of paranoia and narcissism . . . has sufficient
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tranquility of heart to be compassionate and can make a real contribution to the

community”. Others (Lifton, 1993, O’Sullivan, 1999) argue that education should
develop ‘protean self’, awakening a sense of our species belonging. It is about asserting
our organic relationship to each other and to nature (O’Sullivan, 1999, p. 27). And again,
it is predominately spiritual practice and education that will result in desired outcomes.
This spiritual practice will “develop balance in life . . . understanding of right values . . .
[and] creative intelligence” (Maharishi, 1988, p. 310). It will also “improve the memory
and power to retain knowledge . . . increase self-confidence and self-reliance” (ibid.) and
in general result in “happier and more peaceful” human beings (p. 212). Students coming
out of educational institutions should be “fully developed and completely responsible
citizens of their countries, well–grown in the fuller values of life, [and] developed in
higher consciousness and understanding” (ibid., p. 209).
– Pedagogy and curriculum are to cultivate inner peace, harmony and balance. The
‘curriculum for the inner life’ is composed of specific education processes and
techniques that include meditation, visualization, dreamwork and autobiography (J.
Miller, 2000, p. 10). Techniques could also include experiences in nature (Tagore,
Krishnamurti), through art (Tagore) or craft (Gandhi). Education should teach students
how to engage in activities that are right and what acting right means. There should be
focus on discipline, service and duty, but also detachment from the outcomes. Selfless
action should be promoted. Education is “also to be able to listen to the birds, to see the
sky, to see the extraordinary beauty of a tree, and the shape of the hills, and to feel with
them, to be really, directly in touch with them” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 14). Meditative
techniques could be based on strict guidelines, a fully developed system (Sarkar,
Maharishi, Sai Baba) or, alternatively, no guideliness at all are given (Tagore,
Krishnamurti, Aurobindo) while meditation is still promoted. For Krishnamurti
meditation is about watching, not correcting or suppressing, just watching one’s own
thinking. To watch thoughts is “to learn . . . once begun there is no end to learning”
(Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 23). If possible, and preferably, bio-psycho-spiritual practice
should be started as early as possible after the age of five, argues Sarkar (1998, p. 268).
But if that is not possible, one should definitely start sadhana [meditation] by the age of
thirteen “after the sex glands develop and the sense of responsibility and dutifulness
arises in the mind” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 268). Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation, on
the other hand, “should be introduced into the curriculum so that the students may start
practicing it from about the age of 15 years” (Maharishi, 1988, p. 310). But more
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important, is that a person starts a practice of sadhana, no matter what the age. In any
case, education is “an unending process stretching across incarnations” (A contributor, in
Sri Aurobindo, 1965, p. 71). Still, particular pedagogy depends on the age. Children
should be educated thorough play, stories and fantasies while adolescents should be
educated through the medium of idealism—when “the dream of the future first
crystallizes” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 20). As the minds of young adults are somewhat inclined
towards realism, they should be educated through the “harmonious blend of idealism and
realism” (ibid.).
The main principle is that “the thirst for knowledge should be awakened” (ibid., p.
293). School should be a place where students (and teachers) are helped to find out for
themselves “through discussion, through listening, through silence, to find out, right
through your life, what you really love to do.” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 76). People can
only learn where there is both attention and silence, these are prerequisites for learning
(Krishnamurti, 1974). The role of silence is seen to be crucial. This is because “the inner
self needs silence and solitude to develop” (Dermond, 2002). In order to have any time
at all for “her own thoughts, to get in touch with her own feelings, to imagine, to create,
a child needs to have quite times” (ibid.) It is considered that when information is taken
in without regular breaks, very little is retained. Time is needed for information to
become knowledge. While this goes against the predominant trend of mainstream
society, it is an integral part of spiritual education. It is in stillness and beauty that “the
answers to your dreams” lie (http://www.visionsofheaven.com/). Or, it is “in silence
more than in argument [that] our mind–made world falls away and we are opened to the
truth that seeks us” (Palmer, 1993, p. 80). A school should therefore also be “a place of
leisure” because “to learn the art of living one must have leisure” (Krishnamurti, 1995,
p. 77). Experiential learning is irreplaceable: “knowledge gathered from books is but
second hand . . . man must acquire also experiential knowledge” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 23).
Ideally, the space where learning takes place should be “bounded and open . . .
hospitable and ‘charged’” (Palmer, 1998, p. 74). The space should invite both the voice
of the individual and the voice of the group, honour both the ‘little’ stories of the
students and the ‘big’ stories of the disciplines and tradition, support both solitude and
surround it with the resources of community and welcome both silence and speech
(ibid.). Freedom of learning is also connected with discipline and responsibility. But
responsibility has different meaning then when imposed from outside. As Krishnamurti
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The Soul of Ediucation”, Kessler (2000).
(1995, p. 74) argues “if one grasps the full significance that one is psychologically the
world, then responsibility becomes overpowering love” (ibid.). Through such attitudes
schools should promote our responsibility to the earth, to nature and to each other. Fear
is considered to be the worst incentive for education. It is seen as “the surest way of
attracting what is feared” (The Mother, 1965, p. 32). Children should feel both free and
safe to learn, fear is directly opposite to this. Fear prevents “the flowering of the mind,
the flowering of goodness” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 52).
— The separation between the spiritual (sacred) and secular is false. There should be no
dichotomy between science and spirituality (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 42). To deny spirit is to
deny “an essential element of our being and thus diminish ourselves and our approach to
education” (J. Miller, 2000, p. 9). Education should be about integration, harmonisation
and balancing of material and spiritual aspects of one’s life. It needs to balance inner and
outer, the rational and intuitive, the qualitative and the quantitative (ibid.). Students
should be helped to both “see the flowers and also be very good at mathematics”
(Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 95). Together with the “outer” fields of the different branches of
learning, education “in the inner spheres of life” should also be provided to students
(Maharishi, 1988, p. 210). Education therefore has a dual meaning. Firstly, it refers to
“worldly education”, which teaches skill and discipline and imparts information useful
for earning one’s livelihood and attaining and maintaining a decent standard of living
(Sai Baba, 1998, p. 55). Secondly, it is moral and spiritual education which imparts
“equanimity, tolerance, sense–control, gratitude, devotion to God and dedication to the
realization of the Reality” (ibid.). In fact, the real meaning of education is trilateral
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development—“simultaneous development in the physical, mental and spiritual realms of

human existence” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 111). A proper and all round development of the
mind can, therefore only take place “when it proceeds pari passu with the education of
the physical and spiritual faculties of the child” (Gandhi, 1980:189). Raising the standard
of living therefore must also mean raising ethical, moral and spiritual standards (Sai
Baba, 1998, p. 38). It is only then that education can lead to “progress in human values
and harmony in social life” (ibid.). Since the body is the manifestation of mind and
physical basis for spiritual development one should take care of it, live in it according to
the laws of nature. Physical exercises are important; mostly in the form of yogic asanas
(postures). A flexible body can facilitate adoption of adequate meditative postures, help
awaken the Kundalini, and is crucial for achieving the goals of spiritual education.
– Science and technology are invaluable but even here human values should be
emphasised. Technology “must be dedicated to the promotion of high ideals” (Sai Baba,
1988, p. 17). For Sai Baba (1988, p. 22) “excessive use of computers and calculators is
fraught with dangers”. This is because they make the students abjectly dependent on the
machine, without relying on their abilities (ibid.). Of all authors the most enthusiastic
about modern science seems to be Sarkar, although he is critical of the political–
economy of the epistemology of science—how science is produced, managed and
defined. Still, for him, those who criticize science, in fact “want to turn the onward
current of the Ganges backwards towards its source, which totally contradicts the
principles of dynamics” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 101). Rather, children should be equipped
“with the most excellent technological proficiency” so that they may function with
“clarity and efficiency in the modern world” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 89). Rejection of
science leads to inertia and dogmatism, therefore, “cultivation of science must go
forward” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 102). While science in the future will “surely make happen”
the sending of a person’s brain to London while keeping their bodies at Gorakhpur (ibid.,
p. 105), even with these ‘fantastic’ future scientific developments there are limits to
science. This is because “science can never change a person’s samskaras [reactive
moments of the mind]” (ibid.). So, while scientific development should be encouraged,
at the same time, for the development of personalities there is “no alternative for human
beings other than spiritual practice or Sadhana” (ibid.).
– Respect for Teachers. Respect for teachers, even devotion towards teachers (guru-
bhakti), needs to be cultivated. Even when there are differences between teachers they
“must speak to one another in loving terms only. They should not indulge in mutual
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recrimination” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 63). One example from history is the respect Tagore
and Gandhi showed to each other. This is despite the opinion that “no two people could
be more different in character in life”, as they “disagreed on every public issue of the
day: civil disobedience, spinning and the burning of foreign cloth, approaches to Hindu–
Muslim unity, birth control, morality and education” (Cenkner, 1976, p. 124). Still,
Gandhi referred to Tagore with the respectful “Gurudev”, while Tagore called Gandhi
“Mahatma” (great soul). Teaching is one of the most important occupations. The teacher
is “the most important person in a school, for on her or him depends the future welfare of
mankind” (Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 19). For Sarkar (1998, p. 16), teachers are samaja
gurus, that is, “those who lead the entire society by virtue of their extraordinary
intelligence, deep wisdom, towering personality and leadership ability”. Every teacher
should feel secure in the sense of being at home, cared for, and without financial worries,
argues Krishnamurti (1995). If the teacher does not feel secure and is therefore not free
to give attention to the student and his security, he will not be able to be totally
responsible (ibid.). The profession of teacher is the most responsible one in every
country (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 49). If the teacher “strays from the path of truth the entire
society will suffer . . . It is only when the teacher himself is wedded to discipline and
observes good habits that his pupils will be able to shape themselves into ideal
individuals and citizens” (ibid.). Respect for teachers, and teacher–student relationships
are the most important media of human development (Tagore). If the teacher is not in
himself happy, his attention will be divided and he will be incapable of exercising his
entire capacity (Krishnamurti, 1995, p. 85). The first things teachers should do in order
to be able to educate the child is to educate themselves (The Mother, 1965, p. 31). One
must be “a saint and a hero to be a good teacher, one must become a great Yogi to be a
good teacher” (The Mother, 1972, pp. 4–5). It is only those that can love that can
(should) teach (Tagore, in Cenkner, 1976, p. 58). The greatest “teachers of men have
been lovers of men” (ibid.). Real teaching is “a gift; it is a sacrifice; it is not a
manufactured article of routine work; and because it is a living thing, it is the fulfillment
of knowledge for the teacher himself” (ibid.).
Teachers are not merely teachers at their own schools but they are also “teachers of
the human race” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 50). Because of that, teachers need to cultivate in
their own heart “the spirit of sacrifice, the virtues of charity and the awareness of
divinity” (ibid.). Teachers should “pursue chances to serve others and to promote the
prosperity of the nation and the world” (ibid., p. 59). They should look forward to “no
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remuneration or reward, except the joy on the faces of the children” (ibid.). This service
is not only for children but equally for the teacher’s sake. They should “become fully
imbued with the ideal of teaching as a spiritual practice” (ibid., p. 62). Teachers’
academic qualifications are less important than qualities such as “personal integrity,
strength of character, rightenousness, a feeling for social service, unselfishness, an
inspiring personality and leadership ability” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 16). The function of the
teacher, of an educator, is not just to give a lot of data, or knowledge, but also to show
“the whole expanse of life, the beauty of it, the ugliness of it, the delight, the joy, the
fear, the agony” (Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 31). To be able to do that, to nurture and
develop a student’s soul, the teacher should bring their authentic presence to the
classroom each day, attune themselves empathetically to their students; in short, the
whole process must begin with the teacher’s soul (J. Miller, 2000, p. 121).
– Aims of education should be at one with the aims of life. The aims of good education are
always one with the aims of life—integral education is possible only when both the
knowledge of things and the knowledge of the self is achieved. On the other hand when
one or the other is lost educational decay occurs (Gandhi, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo). The
school is “a place where one learns not only the knowledge required for daily life but
also the art of living with all its complexities and subtleties” (Krishnamurti, 1995, p.
104). As argued by The Mother (1965, p. 36), “to know is good, to live is better, to be,
that is perfect.” The subjects taught should be such that they bring home to the students
the full scope of life (Maharishi, 1988, p. 209). Education should be “for life, not for a
living” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 14). It should be concerned with “the totality of life”
(Krishnamurti, 1974, p. 102). That the aims of education should be one with the aims of
life also means that education is a life long process. While “present arrangements”
emphasise that education is “finished when an examination is passed”, continuity should
be more fully ingrained in the process of education (A contributor, in Sri Aurobindo,
1965, p. 71).
– Education should be free, especially spiritual education. There should be “no link
between money and education” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 6). Education should be “free at all
levels” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 113). Both “mundane knowledge” and “spiritual knowledge”
must be “as free as light and air; and like the unhindered flow of a fountain, they must
keep society in a dynamic state and be a continuous source of inspiration to one and all”
(ibid., p. 200).
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5.4.3 Summary: Causal layered analysis of spiritual education
As with all systems of thought, there are clear problems with spiritual education.
Firstly, what is problematic is the essentialist nature of spirituality. The spiritual is not open
to negotiation, it must be experienced. Thus, it can be exclusionary for those who reject the
spiritual either for a priori reasons or because they have no such experiences. Thinkers who
espouse spiritual education do not take a strategic essentialist position. Spirituality is not
strategic, but the ground of being. This can result in unresolvable ontological debates with no
possibility for pedagogical improvement or transformation.
Secondly, given the vertical nature of the chakra model of evolution, what of children
who find themselves on the lower rungs? Is not the karma theory of causality a similar
determinism to the gene theory of causality? Will not a spiritual view of education lead to the
blaming of the victim—that it is their bad karma that they failed an exam or had an accident?
What of children who are not able to meditate or experience the spiritual? While all spiritual
writers call for compassion towards the Other, and state that everyone is by definition a
spiritual being, the vertical nature of spiritual education may still over time create structures
that judge the spiritual-less even if individual teachers and students exhibit compassion.
Thirdly, spiritual education as in the Christian medieval era and in the current debate
on Islamic education, can lead to a divorce between reason and faith and between the
scientific and the spiritual. Faith in the spiritual can become paramount, thus closing the
doors to inquiry. Instead of multi–literacies and multiple ways of knowing, it is one
predominant view that is likely to result. While certainly the New Age and Indian epistemic
thinkers presented in this section appeal for multiple ways of knowing, with a balance
between the spiritual and the scientific, by focusing so strongly on the spiritual, innovation
and creativity may, instead of leading to bliss, lead to endless discussions and debates on the
nature of reality and not on transforming reality for those excluded from the world economy.
Fourthly, there is an issue of gender. Spiritual authors tend to be male, and use male
categories of the spiritual, referring to the transcendental as Him. In addition, the private and
public spheres challenged by feminism tend to be reinscribed by spiritual education. This is
partly because the vision of the spiritual emerges from classical epistemes, where patriarchy
was not contested. It is also a result of the translation of Sanskrit and Bengali texts into
English. Still, the discourse is gendered in ways that do not lead to women's inclusion.
Finally, the focus in the Indian episteme is the transformation of the self. Feminists
assert strongly that the self must be seen in relationship to others, to community. The
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spiritual mode of knowing thus reinscribes male ways of knowing that are focused on
intuition, reason, authority and empirical evidence. They do not see relationships as a way of
knowing, as feminists argue. Thus spiritual schools may over time become as individualistic
as modern ‘standard’ schools.
Of course, both Aurobindo and Sarkar have attempted to modernise the Indian
episteme, make it less sexist, less caste driven, more relationship based. Writes Aurobindo
(1972, p. 455), who had formed a spiritual union with The Mother (Mirra Alfonso Richard):
The Mother’s consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine
Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be
done without her knowledge and force, without her consciousness—if
anybody really feels her consciousness, he should know that I am there behind
it and if he feels me it is the same with hers.
And The Mother (1961, p. 1) commented: “Without him, I exist not; without me, he
is unmanifest”.
Still, the vestiges of exclusionary history are not so easily won. Writes Aurobindo
(1965, p. 12): “Every boy should, therefore, be given practical opportunity as well as
intellectual encouragement to develop all that is best in the nature”. Equally, although
Krishnamurti challenged each person to inquire into each and every thought so as to
decondition themselves, what can we make of his own gender conditioning:
Probably, the girls among you will grow up and get married and the boys will
have careers and that will be the end . . . All through your life, till you die, you
will be working, working in the house or going to the office, every day.
(Krishnamurti, 1974, pp. 46–47)
Sai Baba’s writing is extremely patriarchal. The education given to girls should not
only make them “desirable wives’ but also “desirable mothers” (Sai Baba, 1988, p. 101).
Children should remain the sole responsibility of women, as “[t]he mother is the most
decisive factor in a child’s life. A child’s future is moulded by the mother” (ibid.). “A woman
has to maintain her house. She is not only the house-wife, but on her depends the glory of the
whole country. That is why we say this is our motherland.” (ibid., p. 104). Adds Sai Baba
(p.116):
Women these days rush for jobs even more than men. But of what avail is the
money they earn, when they are not able to tend their children which is a
mother’s sacred and first duty. Some mothers, working as teachers, look after
others’ children, but have no time to look after their own. They neglect their
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own children and hence they get spoilt, both with regard to studies and
character. A mother’s duty is to first look after her own children, send them on
the right path before attempting to look after other’s children. Their own
children should be first brought up as ideal children.
Sarkar has attempted to transform the sexist nature of Indian society, for example,
both men and women can become monks in his social and spiritual organisations. Still, from
a feminist view his perspectives do not go far enough. Furthermore, Sarkar (1998, p. 156)
states that it is in “women’s nature” to sacrifice and think about the others. This statement is,
of course, problematic given the patriarchal character of most societies, including Indian
society. While similar statements are made by feminists of “cosmic orientation” (Ferguson,
1998), Sarkar’s statement could be misread as prescriptive, and used to justify the continuous
subjugation of women. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, Sarkar is critical of
traditional practices that resulted in death, injury and general misery for women within
traditional Indian society. He also critiques orientations by different spiritual groups (e.g.,
Hare Krishna) that women cannot be enlightened, that is, until they are reborn in man’s
bodies (sic). Sarkar uses biopsychology to argue that while there may be differences in some
other glands, there are not difference between the pineal and pituitary glands of males and
females, glands most crucial in facilitating enlightenment. So he concludes that “this is why
those who way that women are not entitled to spiritual salvation are wrong. Men and women
are equally entitled to spiritual salvation.” (Sarkar, 1998, p. 270).
Unfortunately, by uncritically advocating [spiritual education], . . . educators
may create other systems that are as dogmatic and rigid as the system they
were leaving. [The spiritual alternative] may appear on the surface to be "the
answer," but at another level, it is still just a system. To create alternatives that
are truly nurturing for children and integrated with communities, we must be
conscious of the values, philosophies, and beliefs behind the systems and
within ourselves. Then, rather than defending one alternative as “the answer”,
we can be open to the idea that there is no one best system—just a diversity of
systems that match, or do not match, with the diversity of people in the world.
Further, such awareness can also enable us to change our educational systems
in more conscious ways that are aligned with how we ourselves are changing.
This in turn helps keep us from getting stuck in a stagnated perception of what
education “should” look like. (R. Martin, 2000, para. 19)
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The following tables summarise spiritual social and educational visions. Table 5.14
presents summary of key features of the spiritual vision of society. This vision differs
dramatically from the western utopian tradition in that instead of the perfect society it is the
perfect self—eupsychia—that is paramount. Instead of the hyper time of globalisation,
timeless time and cosmic flow are central. The main goal of spiritual society is to achieve a
balance between self and society. Dystopian danger, however, lies in verticality, male bias
and essentialism. Although spiritual society is supposed to be all-inclusive, it is clear that
without engagement with feminism (women’s movements), patriarchy may not be
challenged.
Table 5.14: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Social Futures:
Spiritual Society

Timeless time The coming of Eupsychia— Occultism Balance—

spiritual society perfection and between self and
liberation of self society
New Age
Cosmic flow Loss of
Ananda—bliss Integrated society
Age of Aquarius economic growth
Cyclical
Merger with the Counterbalancing
Essentialist
Spiral Infinite— excesses in
achieving Verticality materialism
Spiritual omniscience
evolution Exclusion of the Sadvipra society
Planetary less spiritual (Sarkar)
civilization in
Male biased Service to society
peace
Living in truth
Table 5.15 presents the vision of spiritual education. Educational utopian and eutopia
lie in liberation and the integration of body, mind and spirit. Educational dystopia, on the
other hand, lies in the danger of reproducing religious dogma.
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Table 5.15: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features Educational Futures:
Spiritual Education

for the future
Spiritual society Education that Education that Integration of body,

liberates reproduces religious mind and spirit
dogma
Education that
nourishes the soul

knowledge
Indian episteme—Tantric, Vedic and Intuition Unconditioned

Buddhist (Krishnamurti)
Devotion
Universe is causal and there is a Self-aware, centered
Direct experience of reality
purpose to life
Total, whole, integrated,
Unified
free, happy, joyful, blissful
and peaceful human
being
Focus on human and cosmic unity Education comes from within Free education
Spirituality explored and thought Cultivates inner peace, harmony Society values and
and balance rewards teachers
Promotes cardinal human values
Respect for teacher—guru Gurukul
Aims of education one with the
aims of life
The following tables suggest, as argued earlier, that spiritual education is

foundationally different and challenging from the hegemonic globalised and cyber vision for
the future of education. The former is focused on transcendence and the perfected realised
self, and the latter two focus on pan–capitalism and the satisfaction of material needs, and
increased/enhanced information and the freedom to create new selves. Appropriating parts of
it are likely to be a challenge for both the global and cyber visions of education. It can be
ghetto-ised, that is, private schools may have spiritual charters but notions of transcendence,
bliss, karma and dharma cannot enter the mainstream without transforming it. The most
likely point of entry is through the New Age movement where notions of centering, inner
quietness, and relaxation methods can become, and indeed are becoming, mainstream.
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However, there are points of similarity with the indigenous (respect for elders and
gurus, for example) and with the feminist (giving birth as similar to re-birth and the focus on
transformation). Still, the educational eutopia does differ. For the spiritual system it is
‘education that integrates body, mind and spirit’, while for the Indigenous, it is ‘learning
from indigenous people about history and environment’, and for the Feminist, it is the
‘removal of gender bias and prejudice in education’. In terms of content, for the spiritual it is
a focus on “human and cosmic unity”, for the indigenous, it is “land, genealogy and
spirituality” and for the feminist, it is “interdisciplinary, holistic and experience-based”. The
difference here is that in the spiritual perspective, it is more the values and the quality of
mind one brings to understand any experience that is more important than the nature of the
experience itself.
This is revealed using causal layered analysis, where for the spiritual system, the
educational bottom line is ‘education for spiritual realisation’ and ‘students and teachers
living their bliss’, while for the Indigenous it is ‘education for cultural, human and nature
survival’ and for the feminist, it is ‘education for social transformation’ and ‘education for
the creation of more gender balanced societies’.
However, the deeper similarity that does come across is the commitment to holism
and integration. As well, all three seek to contest the modernist educational paradigm and
challenge the global and cyber view of the future and of education; at the very least, to see it
as one possible future, not the only future, and certainly not the future that defines the core of
education. The following tables (Tables 5.16–5.18) illustrate this.
Table 5.16: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Key Words:
Spiritual society and education
Change Future Society Education Other key words
Be the change Bright Transformed Liberating Spiritual practice

you want to see
Blissful Balanced Intelligence Karma
Rebirth
Unified 'True' education Dharma
Transcendence
Integrated Mind, spirit
Intuition
Fear, conditioning
Love, compassion
Realisation
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Table 5.17: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features— Causal Layered
Analysis: Spiritual society and education
Litany Social cause Discourse/ Myth/ Educational

bottom line
Worldview Metaphor
Marginalisation Materialistic society Purpose of life is Kundalini rising Education for
of spiritual spiritual spiritual realization
Expansion of Karma and
within realization and of the individual and
secular west and dharma
materialistic evolution spiritual
reductionist science
societies advancement of the
human species
Students and
teachers living their
bliss
Table 5.18: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Spiritual society and education
Who gets to speak Who and what is What is missing Continuity Discontinuity
silenced from a discourse
th
All—everybody Perspectives based 'Accidents' Indian episteme 19 Century
included on materialism Transcendent
Gender–balanced
al movement
Belief in language
randomness and 1960s west
purposelessness
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Chapter Six: Conclusion
To Have Or To Be? Image from Fromm (1988, front cover).
6.1 Defining Hegemonic, Counter and Alternative Educational Futures

Discourses
Those who control the past, control the future; Those who control the future,
control the present; Those who control the present, control the past. (George
Orwell, 1949)
In earlier chapters, I have made the following arguments: (1) modern education is
under increasing pressure to change; (2) this pressure comes from across the political,
cultural, civilisational and gender spectrum; (3) the pressure is strongest when it comes to
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pushing modern education towards a globalised and technologised version of the future; (4)
this globalised and technologised vision takes a particular form which is in accordance with
the neo-liberal, western and patriarchal vision for the future; and (5) there are numerous
alternatives to both modern education as well as to these hegemonic visions of the future.
I have also argued that all educational visions are based on particular approaches to
time, social change, history and the future. To be able to create another future, social groups
recreate, reinvent and reconstruct the givens in the mainstream interpretation of the past and
history. One of the main findings of this thesis is that while the mainstream interpretation of
the future focuses on the technological, alternative positions focus on social or other
empirical realities. For example, feminists interpret history in terms of gender relationships,
creating a two-phase history, the movement from matrilocal/partnership towards
patriarchal/dominator societies. Even if the classification remains the same, it is interpreted
in a different light. For example, as argued by Rosalind Miles (1993, p. 13) historical periods
of great progress (for men) have often involved losses and setbacks for women:
If there is any truth in Lenin’s claim that the emancipation of its women offers
a fair measurement of the general level of the civilization of any society, then
received notions of ‘progressive’ developments like the classical Athenian
cultures, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution, in all of which women
suffered several reversals, have to undergo a radical revaluation: for, as the
American historian Joan Kelly dryly observes, “there was no Renaissance for
women—at least in the Renaissance”.
The discovery of “hidden histories” played “a critical role in the emergence of many
of the most important social movements of our time—feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist”
(Hall, 1997, p. 52). Where our societies are intended to go is often connected with the view
of where we have been, how have we got here and which parts of our remembered history are
to be seen in a positive and which in a negative light.
The discovery of ‘hidden histories’ is part of the overall redefinition of time. “Time is
power”, writes Levine (1997, p. 118). There is “no greater symbol of domination, since time
is the only possession which can in no sense be replaced once it is gone” (ibid.). Indeed,
Jeremy Rifkin believes that the politics of time will increasingly dominate the politics of the
future, to the extent that we may witness Time Wars (1987, p. 10), “A battle is brewing over
the politics of time . . . Its outcome could determine the future course of politics around the
world in the coming century”.
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Conflicts over the pace of life “has been the center of power struggles on many
levels”, both personal and on the level of nations and cultures. (Levine, 1997, pp. 77–78).
While people react very strongly to intrusions on their understanding of time (ibid., p. 76)
this has not prevented an imposition of industrial, clock time and attempts to standardise, to
unify global temporal diversity. Education has always been instrumental in the teaching of
time—I have this explored in detail in Chapter Three—and education continues to do so,
moving from teaching industrial time towards the imposition and teaching of ‘compressed’
instantaneous time, as in the ‘time of computers’ which will “hammer the final nails into the
coffin of natural time” (ibid., p. 75):
The events in the computer world exist in a time realm that we will never be
able to experience. The new ‘computime’ represents the final abstraction of
time and its complete separation from human experience and rhythms of
nature. (Rifkin, 1987, p. 15)
Globalisation helps this process as it tends to “shift the ontology of time from a link
with distance to a connection with speed” (Scholte, 2000, p. 196). The result is the general
acceleration of life, allowing “ever more activity to crowd into a person’s time” (ibid., pp.
196–197):
A day becomes a deluge of telephone calls, e-mails, channel hopping between
radio and television transmissions, electronic money transactions, etc. In a
word, life becomes far more ‘busy’. The combination of faster and fuller time
in a highly globalized life can present substantial coping challenges. In this
regard it is probably no accident that stress and supraterritoriality have grown
concurrently in contemporary history. Indeed, like notions of ‘globalization’,
the concept of ‘stress’ has in recent decades spread to countless languages
across the world.
The need to continously increase the speed is inherent in modern capitalism, argues
Richard Swift. “The most revolutionary” of social systems, dynamic, aggressive and
technologically innovative, capitalism always thrusts into the future (Swift, 2002, p. 10):
The faster capital is turned over, the faster it can realize a profit. The faster
that profit can be reinvested, the faster it can expand in its turn. This quick
turnover of capital is of course connected with volume—more widgets
produced, more energy used, more money in circulation, more infrastructure
needed. The key to the process is to speed everything up, whether in
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production, transport, the circulation of money or—nowadays particularly—

consumption.
Illustration 6.1
Liberating and taking control of time: Certificate of membership of the Gas Workers and General
th
Labourers Union of Great Britain and Ireland, late 19 century. Image from Unstead (1974, p. 33).
Capitalism, industrialism and colonialism have helped create hegemonic time. This
hegemonic time is western, Christian, linear, abstract, clock–dominated, work–oriented,
coercive, capitalist, masculine and anti-natural, argues Jay Griffiths (2002, p. 14). But there is
also revolt:
The challenge to Hegemonic Time has come from the radiant variety of times
understood by indigenous peoples; from self-conscious political protest, from
children’s dogged insistence on living in a stretchy eternity; from women’s
blood and from carnival. (ibid., pp. 14–15)
Religious authorities, colonisers, capitalists and revolutionaries alike have all tried to
take control of the calendar “as a way of asserting and legitimizing their power”, argue
Levine (1997, p. 78) and Griffiths (2002) (see Illustration 6.1). They have also always
attempted to create educational systems that reflects their own worldview and utopian vision
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for the future. Taking control of time and taking control of education go hand in hand. For
any educational reform to break from and transform the dominant system of education, a
different approach to time and a different vision for the future is necessary. All the
educational alternatives that I explored, hegemonic and alternative alike, attempt the
transformation of the current dominant approach to time—industrial, commodified, linear.
They aim to transform the modernist desire for ‘progress’ and ‘development’, at the very
least, defining these categories differently. But while claiming to disturb the modernist
project, hegemonic visions of a globalised cyber world, in fact, help maintain, and further
cement at the global level, western and patriarchal domination. They do not fundamentally
disturb western linear time, they accelerate it; they do not fundamentally disturb the western
and patriarchal future, they just name it differently. In this future differences are coopted, and
‘the Other’ continues to be controlled.
Feminist alternatives, on the other hand, are informed by a different history, that of
women’s subordination within patriarchy as well as women’s strengths in pre-patriarchal and
non-patriarchal spaces. They argue for a different, ‘women’s’ understanding of time and for
different priorities in creating the future. Indigenous alternatives remember the traditional
approach to time while explicitly engaging with western time—as defined within the
modernist ‘project of time and history’. They use categories developed from the
Enlightenment to argue for social justice, fairness, and the incorporation of diversity. The
traditional approach to time is implicit in the discourse of ‘indigenous knowledge’. To deal
with the problem of the west, to challenge being constituted as ‘undeveloped’, ‘primitive’
and ‘idle’, as was the case during early colonisation, indigenous peoples have engaged with
western categories of time and the future. While western revolutionaries increasingly look
towards indigenous time for ‘salvation’, indigenous peoples seem to have recently framed
their needs and priorities within a framework understood by mainstream society. Spiritual
alternatives, on the other hand, continue advocating for ‘timeless time’, for silences and for
reflection. The spiritual alternatives that I investigated, while informed by the traditional
Indian episteme also engage with the west and modernity. This engagement is most
significant in how gender relationships are to be reconceptualised, but also in areas such as
class and caste, that is, traditional vertical relations.
As the tables below show, different understandings and views of time and the future
are implicit in the creation of different goals and aims for education.
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Table 6.1: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: approaches to time
Futures visions Approach to time Historical phases

Globalised world and Linear/compressed, Pre-industrial—industrial—
education instantaneous postindustrial
Time as product
WebNet vision of the world, Linear/compressed Technological theory of
cyber education evolution, from simple to
Time replacing distance
complex. BC–AC (before
computers and after
computers)
Feminist alternatives Linear (as in progress) Matriarchy—patriarchy—
gender egalitarianism
Cyclical (women’s biological
rhythms)
Eternal (as during labour) Partnership—dominator—
partnership or dominator
Long-term future (glacial,
societies
intergenerational)
Time as lived, made and
generated
Recovery of indigenous Linear (as in creating a more Traditional societies—
traditions just future) colonisation—further
colonisation or Indigenous
Long-term future (as in
intergenerational) Renaissance
Spiritual alternatives Timeless time Simple to more complex
forms—deeper, intuitive—of
Spiritual evolution
consciousness
Table 6.2: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: vision of the future and of
education
Futures visions Vision of the future Vision of education

Globalised world and education Global pan-capitalism Education as human capital
formation, investment in
Global Age
economy, about providing
vocational skills in order to
achieve and compete
WebNet vision of the world, Post–information society Education about increased
cyber education access of information
Digital Age
Feminist alternatives Gender balanced, inclusive, Education for social
partnership, gentle society transformation and for creation
of more gender balanced
societies
Recovery of indigenous Indigenous Renaissance Education for cultural, human
traditions and nature survival
Equitable and just societies
Spiritual alternatives Spiritual society Education for spiritual
realisation of the individual and
spiritual advancement of the
human species
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As Toffler (1974, p. 19) argues: “all education springs from some image of the
future”. While the image of the future is, in general, informed by a broad civilisational
approach to time there are also other parallel discourses that co-exist. In hierarchical
societies, the broad civilisational approach to time does not necessarily inform the education
of the members of all society. That is, while a particular ‘hegemonic’ futures image is used to
inform the education of everybody, it is also followed by specialised entries—specialised
futures images that inform education of marginalised social groups. That is, while modernist
education portrays itself to benefit all, it has, historically, mostly benefited western societies
and men. Modern education has transformed the lives of many non-western peoples and
many women for the better. At the same time, western domination and patriarchy has not
been fundamentally challenged. It is only when marginalised social groups are ‘allowed to
speak for themselves’ that they rescue their own futures from how dominant groups define
them. For example, patriarchy has defined women’s futures in terms of their future roles as
wives and mothers. Alternatives developed within the feminist and women’s movements
challenge this by imagining and pushing for futures that are more gender balanced and less
hierarchical. Non-western alternatives challenge the western obsession with ‘the control of
nature’. They challenge the west's fundamental principle of technological progress and
development, defined mostly in terms of the accumulation of material goods and services.
They argue that the west not only devalues nature it also devalues the future, especially the
long-term one. What is important is the present, and the immediate gratification of one’s
needs.
The connection between the future and educational discourses is neither deterministic
nor one-directional. Desired visions and imagined futures represent the ‘pull’ (Polak, 1973)
of the future and should be seen as part of a broader triangle, consisting of both the ‘push of
the future’ (Polak, 1973), as well as the ‘weight of history’ (Inayatullah, 2002). This pull of
the future can be personal or collective. The collective can be based on a smaller community
(e.g., particular religious minority) or a larger one (e.g., national, cultural and civilisational
visions). These visions are only sometimes expressed explicitly, as in particular utopian and
social movements. While they underly all people’s actions and behaviours in the present,
most of the time they remain implicit, even ‘subconscious’. The ‘push’ (Polak, 1973) towards
the future is about social or natural changes or ‘trends’. The trends that are currently the most
influential in ‘pushing’ modern education towards a particular future include new
technologies, globalisation, demographic changes and environmental degradation. But both
the pull and the push of the future exist within the context of particular ‘social structures’
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such as “language/symbols, customs, laws, constitutions, institutions” (Slaughter, 1991, p.

31). These structures represent the ‘weight of history’ (e.g., patriarchy, capitalism,
colonialism, class hierarchy) that limit potential change. Part of this weight of history also
comes from the other underlying structures and dominant discourses, worldviews and
paradigms (Slaughter, 1991; Inayatullah, 1998b). Further ‘down’ still, there is an underlying
structure of ‘myth/metaphor’ that consists of the elemental civilisational and cultural
collective archetypes (Inayatullah, 1998b, p. 815). These too, in many ways, limit the
possibilities for transformation. Which means that, although there is always a change, that
change also always occurs within the context of existing traditions, social structures and
hegemonic ways of knowing. Whatever is currently seen as continuity, has, at a certain point
in time, been ‘invented’ or ‘given for guardianship’. At the same time, whatever is ‘new’
does not arise from ‘nowhere’. That is, behind various discourses of educational change it is
always possible to identify particular civilisational and cultural traditions. Of course, these
themselves represent products of prior transformations.
The question we can now ask is why and how have certain futures visions become
hegemonic? Numerous authors, particularly those informed by neo-Marxism and
postmodernism, suggest that the push towards current hegemonic visions is dominated by the
neo-liberal agenda. This domination has partly been successful because they have managed
to change the discourse about the future, for example, how globalisation is defined and
perceived. Globalisation defined in economic terms, coupled with new information
technologies, is increasingly seen ‘as the solution’ for the future, even part of our ‘salvation’.
Critical social and educational thinkers, meanwhile, have been too busy critiquing and
deconstructing and even outrightly refusing to offer futures visions. This is because futures
visioning is in itself seen as prescriptive, as part of a meta-narrative formation. What has
resulted however is not a rejection of desired futures and old meta-narratives on progress and
development; rather, we have seen the emergence of a new meta-narrative—globalisation—
as “the mother of all meta-narratives” (Luke & Luke, 2000, p. 278). The decision by the Left
to abandon meta-narratives has turned out to be costly. Neo-liberal educational governance
and the new globalised political economy of education have colluded with leftist skepticism
toward grand narratives, argues Allan Luke (2002, p. 2):
Taken together, these two ostensibly opposite forces can set the practical and
administrative conditions for a fragmentation of the educational work of
teaching and learning. This fragmentation is achieved both through the narrow
instrumental technicism of a test or package–driven classroom, and through an
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overly developed epistemological sensitivity to the local, the ‘cultural’ and the
diasporic that eschews grand constructions of discipline, field and discourse
and thereby effectively narrows the curriculum to parochial concerns
Similar aguments are developed by McLaren (1998, pp. 439,435):
The Leftist agenda now rests almost entirely on an understanding of
asymmetrical gender and ethnic relations . . . The educational Left is finding
itself without a revolutionary agenda for challenging inside and outside the
classrooms of the nation the effects and consequences of the new capitalism . .
In the face of the “the current lack of Utopian and the postmodern assault on the
unified subject of the Enlightenment tradition” (ibid., p. 444), what has resulted is a ‘political
paralysis’, at least at the Left end of the political spectrum. Modernity, stemming from the
Enlightenment tradition, has not been “destroyed by alternative visions, but by the collapse of
all visions; everything goes, but nothing much counts” (Giddens, 1992, p. 21). To fill that
vacuum, a “new alliance” and a “new power block” has formed (Apple, 2000a, p. 226)—in
the USA in particular and in developed western countries in general. This new power bloc:
. . . combines multiple fractions of capital that are committed to neoliberal
marketized solution to educational problems, neoconservative intellectuals
who want a ‘return’ to higher standards and a ‘common culture’, authoritarian,
populist, religious fundamentalists who are deeply worried about secularity
and the preservation of their own traditions, and particular fractions of the
professionally oriented new middle class who are committed to the ideology
and techniques of accountability, measurement, and ‘management’. (ibid.)
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Illustration 6.2
US elementary school students perform a daily ritual of the 1950s, pledging allegiance to the flag,
Image from The Wilson Quarterly 19(3) (1995, front cover).
Most importantly, this new power block has utilised a particular image of the
romantic past (see Illustration 6.2) to fill in the vacuum created by the disintegration of the
old and the lack of articulation of new futures narratives. As argued by Apple (ibid.):
Its [new alliance’s] overall aims are in providing the educational conditions
believed necessary both for increasing international competitiveness, profit,
and discipline and for returning us to a romanticized past [italics added] of the
‘ideal’ home, family, and school.
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At the same time, while, perhaps, western intellectuals of ‘Leftist’ orientation have
abandoned meta-narratives, utopia and prescriptions for desired futures, we have also
witnessed the emergence of numerous alternatives, developed outside and on the margins of
the western/patriarchal world. As argued by Polak (1973), it is always marginalised social
groups that lose the most from the abandonment of utopia. Therefore, we can see that all
three alternatives, feminist, indigenous and spiritual, still make claims for a particular ‘truth’
that can be discovered and recovered. This truth is ‘the truth’ about the suppression of their
own worldviews and priorities as well as ‘the truth’ that societies and education could,
indeed, be better, be improved. There is still ‘truth’ in certain ‘universal laws’, as described
within indigenous and spiritual science. These traditions are, therefore, ‘true’ in themselves,
and it is that truth that alternatives for the future build upon.
Paradoxically, postmodernists, while critical of essentialism, by destabilising earlier
hegemonic meta-narratives, have enabled the opening of new discursive spaces—of
differently imagined futures and histories—hegemonic and alternative visions. While this has
always been the case, that is desire as contested by different social groups —postmodernism
has destabilised the hegemonic present by contextualising it as a western and patriarchal
project. While postmodernists have, in general, stayed short of articulating futures visions,
they have helped open some ‘spaces of enclosure’.
And while postmodernists may indeed be ‘guilty’ of weakening the western Left, to
give them sole responsibility for the emergence of new hegemonic images of the future is to
give them, in a way, too much agency. That is, hegemonic futures visions have emerged for
other reasons as well. As I have repeatedly argued throughout this thesis, hegemonic futures
visions of a globalised and technologised world and education have also emerged because
they ‘make the most sense’—are easily recognisable and intelligible—within mainstream
views of time, history and the future.
The hegemonic future convinces of its inevitability because it ‘fits’ within the already
existing ‘imaginaire’. As seen from the first image that appears in my thesis, Villemard’s
(1910) utopian image of the school in year 2000, the ‘new’ ‘techno–literate’ citizen of the
21st century has a long history. This techno–literate subject has been imagined, discussed and
portrayed in detail for many decades, if not the whole century. Villemard’s school of the
future, for example, has teachers directly wiring students to a ‘book feeding machine’. It is
precisely such imaging that creates the demands to “put a computer in every classroom”
(1980s) and “have every classroom wired” (1990s) (C. Luke, 2001b, p. 426), that is, for
future literacies to be defined within technological terms.
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Hegemonic futures also fit well with the mainstream interpretation of human history,
the way our experience of time is interpreted, and how social change is seen to occur. That is,
history is seen as a linear progression from simpler, pre-modern and primitive towards more
complex, modern/postmodern and advanced societies. In addition, history is seen to be
created by technological change. Therefore, the measure of complexity, progress and
development is through the accumulation of material goods and services, through
technological advances. As this worldview is based on the linear view of time, a perspective
that sees technology is the solution for most, if not all problems and the purpose of life as the
accumulation of material goods. The desired futures is thus about the continuation of the
present but with more technology and more goods, the magnified present.
Emergent hegemonic futures remain so because they fit into the worldview that
legitimates. This worldview also has an ‘inevitability’ to it, the trajectory of the future is
predicated on past and present trends and developments. It also presents what reality is, and
is going to be. I have, however, repeatedly argued throughout this thesis that the discourse
about ‘globalised and cyber education’ is only partly about ‘the push’ toward the future. That
is, rather then being only an attempt to ‘objectively’ and ‘impartially’ describe ‘the way
things are/going to be’, these discourses are also about what is desired, hoped for, or
alternatively, about what is feared. They are also discussions about future directions. Most
significantly their description of inevitable futures is itself embedded in politics.
In this thesis, I have argued against the claims of objectivity of globalised and cyber
education. I have shown that these are historical processes based on particular worldviews—
western, technological, instrumental rationalism, consumerism—and supported by myths,
such as, for example, the Land of Cockayne, Global Brain, Network, ‘New World’ and the
myth of the ‘free market’. I have also argued that, historically, the ‘globalisation hypothesis’
coincided with the coming of the Christian second millenium, emerging in the 1980s and
increasing in influence during the last decade of the 20th century. It has coincided with a
period in western history that can be characterised by a certain void in socio-economic
futures visions. It has become a useful replacement for the old and tired narrative of
‘progress’ and ‘development’. However, I have also argued that globalisation—as process
and theory—does not fundamentally disturb the patriarchal and western historical project.
Rather, it fortifies it.
The important part of the process to assert hegemony is the ability to control
discourse. Changes in discourse are often followed by changes in politics and vice versa.
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For example, the ‘globalisation hypothesis’ has been hijacked from supporting earlier
demands for multiculturalism, inclusiveness and ecological sustainability to mean
irreversible, unstoppable economic forces that demand competition between individuals,
corporations and nation–states. Globalised visions for the (desired, inclusive, cooperative)
future became a vision of the (feared, exclusive, competitive) future. Visions of the future,
similarly to visions about the future, do nothing but “prepare students actively for a tomorrow
that will be very different from today. It merely tells them what might happen” (Hicks &
Holden, 1995, p. 10). Furthermore, it implies passivity. Education for the future, on the other
hand, they argue “ . . . requires exploration of their own and others’ hopes and fears for the
future and the action required to create a more just and ecologically sustainable future. It
empowers children to feel that they can work towards their chosen future”. (ibid.).
But, as also argued throughout my thesis, this hegemonic process is never complete.
There are always alternatives that resist some of the previously described changes and that
help to further advance their own and (other then economic and technological) global human
needs and interests. These alternatives are also an attempt to control and transform the
discourse. In that regard, some have been more and some less successful. Feminism has, in
general, seen the appropriation of the ‘liberation discourse’ to mean the empowerment of
individual women within still the patriarchal dystopian future. The new language feminists
have tried to create has often been appropriated to mean something else (as in, for example,
Ms. becoming a signifier of a divorcee). But there have been some successes by those
wishing to change education. The reason why proponents of spiritual education have been so
successful in the USA, argue Ankerberg & Weldon (1996), is because they have managed to
effectively neutralise and depoliticise their own ‘religious jargon’. That is, “occult,
metaphysical and New Age terminology is removed” and replaced with neutral concepts and
techniques making it acceptable to the general public (ibid., p. 432). For example, “[t]he
Hindu practice of transcendental meditation may be termed the ‘Science of Creative
Intelligence’; the religious practice of yoga may be called ‘psychophysiological exercies’,
and meditation may be called ‘centering’ and visualizing’” (ibid., p. 431).
Insights gained from “the upsurge of interest in meditation, biofeedback, martial arts,
Eastern thought, and altered states of consciousness” have therefore managed to find “their
ways into the classroom” (Gay Hendricks and James Fadiman, quoted in Ankerberg &
Weldon, 1996, p. 431). From the perspective of the Christian Right, this is, of course, a
disastrous development. But for those wishing to introduce change into mainstream
education this is a sigh of hope. It is not only dominant social groups that can, therefore,
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control the discourse. Rather, discourse can be manipulated, changed and transformed to
serve the interests of marginalised social groups and marginalised worldviews as well.
Still, an important part of the hegemony of the new emerging futures alternatives is to
deny alternatives. As argued by Postman (1993, p. 48), they do so not by making them
illegal, immoral or unpopular but by making them invisible and therefore irrelevant. Global
dominant knowledge “destroys the very conditions for [local] alternatives to exist, very much
like the introduction of monocultures that destroy the very conditions for diverse species to
exist”, argues Vandana Shiva (1993, p. 12). In other words, “local knowledge is made to
disappear” when the dominant system negates “its very existence”, or when it erases or
destroys the reality which the local knowledge attempts to represent (ibid., p. 9, 12). Erasure
of localised regimes of educational truths has been central to the colonialist project. While
colonialism and imperialism could never erase various experiences of time, this being
integral to human existence, these processes did, however, erase or marginalise the way
different cultures and historical periods perceive and conceptualized that experience. Erasure
of localised regimes of truths about time has thus also been central to the colonialist project.
As a consequence, the tendency of the new emerging hegemonic future is to bring about one
(standardised) education as well as one (standardised) approach to time and vision for the
future. The seeds necessary for the expansion and colonisation of nature and lands were
already implemented in the western worldview, its approach to time and the vision for the
future. The use of particular technological innovations has only helped manifest western
Dreaming. The forward projection of the west’s own linear view of time is an essential part
of the west’s ontology, focused as it is on progress, development, expansion and change. It is
foundationally related to the western conviction of the superiority of western culture and
western educational models. That they are to be, must be, exported worldwide is part of the
same equation.
The intervention of marginalised social groups has recently moved to the global level.
That is, marginalised discourses on feminist, indigenous and spiritual alternatives assert that
their alternatives are not only good for themselves, but are also the solution for all.
Arguments can be made that the alternatives that have become the most popular also satisfy
the particular needs of ‘the centre’ (west, patriarchy). For example, ecological education and
the Gaian paradigm may become popular because they help address the ecological crisis in
the west, as well as globally. As well, the recent upsurge in spirituality may not only be
related to efforts made by those who object to the creation of materialistic technologised
futures. The need for spirituality may also come from people, particularly those in First
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World nations as they become more uncertain of “their identities, rights, privileges and very
existence” (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p. 102). Spirituality could also be commodified to become
“a profitable experience” (ibid.). Alternatives are always in danger of being coopted. This is
especially the case when alternatives develop within the context of the dominant continued
growth worldview. What this suggests is that while material changes are crucial, change in
the episteme/worldview/paradigm are equally, if not more, important.
I have thus examined alternatives that have the highest potential to create epistemic
change. Feminist, indigenous and spiritual alternatives were selected because they
fundamentally challenge hegemonic visions of the future. Feminist education challenges the
patriarchal assumptions of globalisation and the WebNet vision of the future. It also
challenges the view of time and the dominant mode of rationality that underlies these two
visions. The indigenous vision of the future, while linear, challenges the fundamental
epistemological assumptions of the nature of society—the role of the individual, who
teaches, the purpose of education, the role of nature. It disturbs the essential globalist and
technolopolist nature of the determined future. The final disturbing vision of the hegemonic
future offered in this thesis was the spiritual. By definition it challenges the materialistic
nature of the current models of the world and the futures of education. However, the spiritual
vision is not unbalanced but rather seeks an integrated, sustainable, peaceful world. These
alternatives were also selected as they are derived from civilisations outside the emporium of
the west.
The alternatives that were discussed were each seen as a possible future. They have
the capacity to dramatically transform education—who learns, how we learn, the structure of
teaching, what is taught. While the awareness of the hegemonic tendency of globalised and
cyber education is important, it is even more important to argue that these dominant images
do not need to remain so. Furthermore, they will not be able to remain so, as change is the
only constant. However, change is also always created in the context of the ‘weight of
history’. Hegemonic futures visions are thus both about ‘discontinuity’ as well as a certain
‘continuity’. Being part of ‘continuity’ they may help maintain and expand the worldwide
western and patriarchal domination for quite some time to come. Education can both help
adapt and adjust to these futures as well as help to create transformative, alternative ones.
Transformative, alternative futures would then be based on their ‘continuity’ or alternative
histories, defined in their own terms.
I have also argued throughout my thesis that alternatives are not only possible, but
that they also always parallel hegemonic visions. Still, one of the findings of this thesis is that
369
hegemonic futures visions are described, imagined and theorised in much more detail than
alternatives. This also explains why there is a paucity of images of alternatives. Hegemonic
futures are better known, both in terms of their promise and their potential downfall. A higher
presence of dystopia signifies engagement by those who disagree with the particular visions.
In general, dystopia is missing from the alternatives that I have explored. Except for some
critique by the Christian Right of spiritual education and the critique of feminism from
within, the dystopian element is barely evident. While I have added some dystopian elements
to both feminist and spiritual alternatives I have not done so for the indigenous alternative.
This is because, as a non-indigenous person, I am not in epistemological position to do so.
The table below (Table 6.3) compares utopian and dystopian aspects of each vision.
The important question to be asked here is: Is it the presence of both utopian and
dystopian perspectives that makes a particular vision seems ‘realistic’? As argued by Elise
Boulding (1995, p. 100), is it because we now take it as axiomatic that fears are somehow
realistic and hopes not? Or is it that only alleged ‘realistic’ futures are critiqued if we
disagree with them, and not the ones seen as ‘impossible’ and irrelevant? Or is it because
hegemonic futures visions are indeed ‘more dangerous’? In any case, both textual and visual
images of a future technologised world are incredibly easy to find. This can be compared
with the general difficulty in finding images, particularly visual ones, that disturb this
hegemony. The same is true of education in general. For example, it is much more difficult to
find visual representations of futures of education compared to visual representation of the
futures of war, transportation, communication, etc. Education thus remains either invisible or
mediated through the technological. How are created futures, then, going to be different? If a
transformed and improved educational system is absent from mainstream consciousness of
the future, what then?
What is the consequence of the replaying of the images that do exist? As argued by
Hicks (2001b), most educators thus “make things worse” by communicating what is assumed
about the future. What is assumed as real is often, for both adults and children, dominated by
popular imaging, as in science fiction. This popular imaging is now also dystopian, following
the general change of how utopian is constituted, as discussed in Chapter Two. Children’s
images of the future in particular are likely to be “stereotyped and critically unreflective”
(Hicks & Holden, 1995, p. 12):
In the same way that children have preconceptions and stereotypes about other
countries, so they also make a range of assumptions about the future. In large
part these come from portrayals of the future in popular films, advertisements,
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television, books, comics, computer games and toys . . . Children are not
blank tables, nor does schooling take place in a cultural vacuum.
Table 6.3: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: social utopias and
dystopias
Futures visions Social utopia Social dystopia

Globalised world and Material benefits, satisfaction Widening gap between rich
education of material needs and poor, rampant poverty
More consumer and Increase in gender inequality
employment choices
Single culture and society
Pushing towards international dominating the planet
democracy globally
Environmental degradation
Hierarchical, unequal and
insecure social environment
WebNet vision of the world, Cyber democracy and world Digital divide, formation of
cyber education harmony Cyberghettos
Environmental crisis resolved Electronic surveillance, lack of
privacy
Freedom from repetitive boring
tasks as well as from the Adcult and Infoglut, ubiquitious
limitations of time, geography, advertising and information
class, disability, race, gender overload
Freedom to create new virtual Temporal and cultural
identities and communities impoverishment
Feminist alternatives Everyone able to fulfil potential Dystopia developed as a

irrespective of their gender, method to critique patriarchy
race, ethnicity, religion, ability,
Critique internal–sympathetic
culture, sexual preference
External critique that would
Survival of the human race
bring the vision towards the
dystopian edge missing
Recovery of indigenous Saving the Earth [Missing]
traditions
Survival of human species and
other living beings
Universe kept in balance and
harmony
Spiritual alternatives Ananda –bliss Occultism
Planetary civilization in peace Essentialist
Living in truth Verticality
Exclusion of the less spiritual
Male–biased
To counteract such a situation, the detailed expression, articulation and envisioning of

alternatives is necessary. Futures need to be explicit or they remain implicit and taken for
granted, tied to the hegemonic future. While the future is “often a missing dimension within
371
the curriculum” (Hicks, 2002, p. 11), both critical futures and utopian thinking is crucial if
the hegemonic, patriarchal and western future is to be destabilised. For example, recent
reflections on the major research study titled Images of the World in the Year by Galtung
(2000) discovered that what ‘people’ desired most was a peaceful future, community,
environment and safety, but what they received was more and more technology. This is
largely because such a future has been pushed by the dominant elite groups because it serves
their interests and fits within their worldview. They have historically benefited from this
future, and would resist alternatives. But it is also because critique, usually continuously
replayed by those who disagree with a particular present or future, somewhat also reaffirms
the very present or future it critiques. Critique without envisioning, without proposing
dissenting alternatives remains futile, incapable of transforming what it opposes. Images of
the future thus become “an agent of social change” (Boulding, 1995, p. 95), a place to begin
“practical journeys of hope” (Hutchinson, 1996, p. 210).
6.2 Towards Educational Eutopia
Illustration 6.3
Images from Utne Reader, 41 (1990, p. 85, and front cover).
The world is now far too dangerous for anything except Utopia. (Buckminster
Fuller, quoted in Anandamitra, 1987, p. 168)
Most difficult decisions require making a choice between alternative futures.

(Hicks & Holden, 1995, p. 14)
372
The following tables compares hegemonic and alternative visions so as to clarify the
choices. This is done for both educational utopias and dystopias as well as social and
educational eutopias. They provide the concluding map of the research questions raised in
this thesis. Clearly, while each vision promises a bright future, each vision also comes with a
dystopian possibility.
Table 6.4: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: educational utopias and
dystopias
Futures visions Educational utopia Educational dystopia
Globalised world and Dynamic synergy of teachers Education a product to be bought
education and students collaborating and sold, commercialisation and
globally corporatisation of education
Transnational and transcultural Sacrifice of individual styles and
dialogues and learning idiosyncratic enthusiasm to satisfy
global criteria, increase in
Expansion of knowledge
bureaucratic rigidities
Student–centered education
Smothering of all forms of
creativity, creation of docile, hard–
working, conformist students
Further westernisation
In non-OECD countries decrease
in both quantity and quality
WebNet vision of the Improved access and quality, Linguistic colonisation
world, cyber education education less costly and more
Suppression of other forms of
flexible
learning (e.g., oral)
Student–centred life–long
Too much stress on individualized
learning
learning and personal autonomy
Self-directed, collaborative leads to competition
learning
Education teaches about progress
Learning by doing without limits, rights without
responsibilities and technology
Increase in students
without cost
independence, curiosity and
autonomy
Faster acquisition of skills than
ever before
The era of ‘pedagogical plenty’
Equitable sharing of classroom
authority—authority of the
teacher decentred
Knowledge available 24hours a
day, 365 days of the year
373
Table 6.4 continued.

Feminist alternatives Truly holistic education Neglect of boys’ and men’s issues
Education bringing about Feminist education ideological,
positive social change anti-intellectual, intolerant,
dogmatic
Positive effects on personal lives
and relationships Circular classroom arrangement
replicates Panopticon—students
visible to an all–seeing eye, self-
surveillance of each other also
promoted
Recovery of indigenous Holistic learning Missing out on achievements
traditions within mainstream society
Improved relationships between
peoples, with nature
Education more life relevant
Spiritual alternatives Education that liberates and Education that reproduces
nourishes the soul religious dogma
Table 6.5: Hegemonic and alternative futures visions comparison: social and educational
eutopias
Futures visions Social eutopia Educational eutopia

Globalised world and Potential for global Benefits from globalising
education transformation, inter- student body and globalising
transnational government and curriculum
cooperation
Improvement of access to
Potential to move form the educational resources and
‘tyranny of the local expertise
community’
WebNet vision of the world, Potential environmental Expansion in approaches to
cyber education benefits teaching and learning
Increased efficiency Powerful method of learning
that can meet the needs of
Increased possibilities for
some students the best
intercultural exchange within
the discourse of rationalism
Feminist alternatives Improvement in women’s lives, Removing of gender bias and
more choices and prejudice in education
opportunities
Recovery of indigenous Survival and advancement of Learning from indigenous
traditions indigenous peoples peoples about local history
and environment
Spiritual alternatives Integrated, balanced and Integration of body, mind and
service–oriented society spirit
Counterbalancing excesses in
materialism
374
This thesis presented several alternative visions for the transformation of education
that desire to play an important role in creating more balanced societies of tomorrow. It also
critiqued the foreclosing of the future, which occurs when some visions are privileged and
seen as the only ‘real’ possibilities. The question now becomes what can be done today to
create some of these desirable futures? If the continuation of the present is desired, or if the
realisation of hegemonic futures visions is desired, not much effort is needed. The
continuation of what the majority is already doing would suffice. On the other hand, if the
disruption of hegemonic futures and of the continuation of present trends is desired, much
more fundamental and difficult work is required. This is because there is a need to rebuild on
the ‘faulty foundations’, and to sustain that effort through the generations and not expect
‘solutions’ to occur either immediately or in our lifetimes. Utopias take a long time to
materialise—the best measurement of this achievement is when they are no longer
recognised as such.
Throughout this thesis I have repeatedly argued that by focusing on utopian, eutopian
and dystopian elements in all futures visions, whether hegemonic or marginal, claims about
the particular future as external to a worldview are weakened. The future is de-colonised and
returned to its true meaning of ‘not yet’ or ‘in times to come’. I have also repeatedly argued
that ‘utopian’ does not lie solely in the jurisdiction of alternatives. Hegemonic futures visions
also address certain hopes and desires—they too portray imaginary good or perfect places
and prescribe improved imagined states of collective and individual being. That is, both
utopian and dystopian narratives underlie hegemonic futures visions.
One of the main findings of this thesis is that despite postmodern efforts to destabilise
all meta-narratives, including futures and utopian visions, we have witnessed both the
emergence of new meta-narratives as well as of new utopias. This is the case for both
hegemonic and alternative discourses, although the former is disguised as ‘the truth’ about
the future. I have also argued that visions of globalised and cyber education exist in the
context of the western and patriarchal tradition. However, as part of the continuous human
endeavor to survive and improve living conditions, they also in some ways satisfy the needs
and desires of the ‘universal’ human. Still, while these developments certainly satisfy much
of what is desired by humans universally—that is, health and happiness—the alleged linear
progression toward this end is far from clear. There is, of course, a great imbalance in the
redistribution of these goods and services, as most beneficiaries are (still) western men. The
cost of this particular future is also incredibly high, threatening the conditions necessary for
basic human survival. The proponents of the globalised/cyber future believe that this will be
375
resolved through the very (technological) means that have seen western civilisation flourish.
For example, it is also through the technological solution that the problem of the Other will
be magically resolved, through media such as Cyberspace, the Internet, etc. that ‘equalise’
everybody. Others believe that much more work is needed if we are to create (or recreate)
egalitarian societies, and that current problems cannot be solved with the means that helped
to create them in the first place. Thus, alternatives developed outside the western
civilisational and patriarchal framework are sought. In either case, there are certain
underlying myths and metaphors that make the story function as true. The underlying
worldview determines what the litany is, whether the ‘reality’ of globalisation or the ‘reality’
of impending ecological crisis. Both base their claims on particular empirical evidence
focusing on some data but not other data. The position I have taken in this thesis is closer to
the one less concerned with technological salvation and more concerned with social and
ecological ‘resolutions’. That is, since the costs of globalised cyber futures are much higher,
these visions are much more ‘dangerous’. That there are foundational problems in the
western project of expansion and technologism is the position of my work. Saving our
futures, creating more peaceful, gender–balanced, sustainable and planetary futures requires a
conversion and conversation, as well as entry into other visions of the future, other models of
education. Not entering these doors puts humanity at risk. Postmodernism may see this risk
as yet another discourse; however, as I have argued, the pain of the future makes this risk far
more foundational.
As argued by Richard Swift (2002, p. 9), we are currently in the midst of a “rush to
nowhere”:
We drive fast cars. We are expected to ‘multitask’ and some people have even
come to enjoy it. Children are rushed to grow up. We are under ever–
increasing pressure to work faster and faster. Some people work themselves to
death . . . We gobble fast food . . . We sleep less than we used to . . . There is a
macho ethos of speed that goes with it all. It’s like the Mike Douglas character
in the Oliver Stone movie Wall Street says: ‘Lunch? Lunch is for wimps’.
The main need has now become to find liberation from the globalised, computer
generated compressed time that threatens life itself (Griffiths, 2002, p. 15). In doing so,
modern ‘time liberators’ can learn from women and cultures that have different ideas of
time—both essentially opposed to linear time (ibid.). As argued throughout my thesis, this is
a crucial prerequisite for any substantial social or educational reform:
376
We need to take back control of our time, not only so we can spend it with our
children, but so we can work on rebuilding and re-cementing the social bonds
that will allow them to grow up in real communities and have contact with a
variety of interested, caring adults. (McDonell, 2002, p. 23)
Illustration 6.4
“Taking Back Our Time”, New Internationalist, 343 (2002, pp. 14–15).
The challenge to liberate from hegemonic time, in society and in schools, is akin to
saving childhood itself:
One of the most tenacious conceptual threats to work, and to Captain Clock’s
hegemonic Time, is childhood itself. Children have a dogged, delicious
disrespect for worktime, punctuality, efficiency and for schooled uniform
time. Their time is an eternal present [italics added]. They live (given half the
chance) preindustrially, in tutti–frutti time, roundabout time, playtime; staunch
defenders of the luddic revolution, their hours are stretchy, ribboned,
enchanted and wild: which is why adults want to tame their time so
ferociously, making them clock–trained, teaching them time–measurement as
377
if they were concrete fact. The school clock is pointed to as the ultimate
authority which even the Head obeys. (Griffiths, 2002, p. 15)
The best way to de-colonise the system of education is, however, not to replace one
hegemonic approach to time with another, but to teach how to critically engage with multi–
temporalities. Alternatively teaching hegemonic time and the future will remain part of the
hidden curriculum. Critical engagement with multi–temporalities is important because it
exposes the linear understanding of time that informs current mainstream discourses on
education as not necessarily constitutive of objective reality, as is assumed. Rather, it shows
the ways in which such an approach to time is a cultural and social phenomenon, created
within a particular civilisational framework. This is important because a particular approach
to time may create discursive spaces for the creation of some educational futures and not the
others. If it is ‘multiplex visions’ of the world that are sought, teaching would need to include
‘multi–temporal proficiency’ and ‘time literacy’, enhancing one’s own temporal repertoire
and learning of alternative approaches to time (Levine, 1997, pp. 187–191).
But the multiplex vision of the world needs to be coupled with the debate on
“normative visions about what education can and should be” (A. Luke, 2002, p. 8). Critical
educational theory, coupled with critical futures and utopian thinking, can help promote the
educational rationale behind each educational change. Education needs not be seen as a
passive recipient of current social trends. Critical educational theory is to remain “hybrid and
polyvocal”, both articulating “visions of social and cultural utopias and heterotopias while
blending this with a continued skepticism towards totalisation” (ibid., p. 1). It is through
these critical traditions (critical educational and futures thinking, as well as strategic
utopianism) that those who oppose hegemonic futures visions can, perhaps:
. . . develop a political project that is both local yet generalizable, systemic
without making Eurocentric, masculinist claims to essential and universal
truths about human subjects. (ibid., pp. vi–vii)
To de-colonise the future, alternative histories are also needed. But alternatives must
recognise that knowledge never exists in “objective, decontextualized forms, but is intimately
linked to specific contexts, people and issues” (Abdullah & Stringer, 1999, p. 142). Critical
futures thinking here remains paramount. Part of critical futures thinking is critical discourse
analysis that can help determine where the discourse is going, how it is dominated by
mainstream social groups and how can it be transformed. It can also help unmask what the
main issues, priorities, worldviews and myths are that underlie the litany of the future. By
378
searching for particular key words used within each vision, main issues and priorities become
more visible.
Rather than marginalizing alternative education, suggests Robin Ann Martin (2000),
we may instead consider “all schools and learning environments to be educational
alternatives” (final para.). Then, the schools that are chosen are to be based on “a deeper
level of reflection about what you think it means to be human and to live and to grow in a
self-sustaining and nurturing community” (ibid.). What needs to be changed is the situation
in which:
Very rarely does school curriculum deal with intercultural worldviews,
religion, corporeality, time, space, feelings, emotions, fluidities, liminalities,
transformations or relations between people, and other animate beings or their
environmental ecologies. Yet these aspects of life are of great concern to us
all. (Marshall, 1999, p. 42)
The continuous articulation of utopias and critical engagement with them is
important. Stating that utopias are utopian, impossible to achieve, is not a ‘scientific’
statement but a political statement. Part of the thrust of this thesis is to take back the power of
utopia and use it to create an alternative future. As argued by Giroux and Freire:
Radical pedagogy needs to be informed by a passionate faith in the necessity
of struggling to create a better world. In other words, radical pedagogy needs a
vision—one that celebrates not what is but what could be, that looks beyond
the immediate to the future and links struggle to a new human possibilities.
This is a call for a concrete utopianism. (Giroux, 1983, p. 242)
When education is no longer utopian, that is, when it no longer embodies the
dramatic unity of denunciation and annunciation, it is either because the future
has no more meaning for men, or because men are afraid to risk living the
future as creative overcoming of the present, which has become old. (Freire,
1998, p. 492)
Epistemic changes do not just mirror changes within society, but help bring about
new resolutions, policies and actions. Bringing many different, excluded, pseudo–included,
directly or structurally invisible, groups and perspectives into the future of education
discourse and debate will help change not only what is taught in schools but also ‘everyday
life pedagogies’ (C. Luke, 1996b) and, critically, how we imagine and situate ‘education’
itself.
379
The transformation of our societies is not possible without the transformation of how
we see and imagine our common futures. In this respect, it is crucial to allow for alternative
visions of the future to develop. The most important aspect of such alternatives is that
alternatives to colonized futures conceptualised by patriarchy and the west do exist, and “that
these alternatives can be as ‘real’ as our reality” (Halbert, 1994). We can learn from both
hegemonic and alternative future visions; that is, what is utopian, dystopian and eutopian.
To conclude, what this thesis has offered is not a prescriptive of what education in the
future should be like. Nor did it investigate which utopia/eutopia/dystopia is more plausible.
Rather, this thesis offered an invitation to engage with multiple educational regimes of truths
about the future—both western and non-western, patriarchal and feminist. It is only through
such engagement that social and educational eutopias benefiting the most can develop.
380
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Ivana Milojevic PHD Thesis 12 August

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FUTURES OF EDUCATION:

FEMINIST AND POST-WESTERN CRITIQUES

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for

PART ONE: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW 1

Chapter One: Research Framework..........................................................................1

Chapter Two: The Futures Context .........................................................................28

Chapter Three: Historical Futures Discourses in Education..................................94

PART TWO: MAPPING THE DISCOURSE OF THE FUTURES OF EDUCATION 157

Chapter Four: Dominant Futures and Utopian Visions........................................166

4.3.1 New technologies and their impact on education.................................199

Chapter Five: Alternatives to the Mainstream Discourse .....................................238

Chapter Six: Conclusion........................................................................................355

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 4.3: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational

Table 4.4: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational

Table 4.9: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Table 4.10: Hegemonic futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Table 5.5: Feminist futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Table 5.8: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Educational

Table 5.11: Indigenous futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction

Table 5.13: Varna (caste) as an evolutionary system 324

Table 5.18: Spiritual futures and educational visions: selected features—Deconstruction:

Figure 1: Futures of education—Hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses 158

Figure 2: Futures of Education—Hegemonic, counter and alternative discourses 160

Figure 3: A holistic approach for developing teaching activities 282

PART ONE: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL OVERVIEW

Chapter One: Research Framework

Image from The Futurist (1988, 22(6), front cover).

I think that a rigorous, theoretical analysis of the way in which economic,

1.2 Contextualising the Inquiry

My thesis is influenced by three distinctive and overlapping theoretical approaches:

researchers informed by postcolonial theory—argue, “dissent has to go beyond mere protest”,

1.3 Methodological Approach

My inquiry is based on feminist, critical futures and postcolonial and poststructural

transformation, as with spiritual education? Is the purpose of education mainly to control,

1.4 Chapter Outline

Chapter Two: The Futures Context

2.1 A Selective History of Futures Thinking

alectryomancy, cartomancy, clairvoyance, oneiromancy, ichthyomancy, palmistry, and so

Still, future studies is generally dominated by forecasting and scenario planning,

‘futurology’, ‘prospective’, ‘prognostics’, ‘forecasting’, ‘futuribles’) that reflect different

interpretative” and “critical/post– structural” (Inayatullah, 1990), as well as “normative” and

2.2 Definitions and Histories of Utopia

However, defining utopias in terms of ‘desire’ is problematic. For example, from a

Pacific and the Americas can be connected either to millennialism or

2.3 From Utopia to Dystopia: Is Utopia Dead?

2.4 From Utopia to Heterotopias and Eutopias

Heterotopia can literally be translated as other or diverse place. It is a term used by

microgeographies, nearsighted and near–sited, deviant and deviously apolitical” (ibid.). In

2.5 Colonisation of the Future and the Power to Define

Cosmic Evolution by Robert McCall, Foundation for the Future logo.

Image from Ackerman, F. (1997, front cover).

1972 Image from Ackerman (1997, p. 22).

Image from Ackerman, F. (1997, p. 39).

1938 Image from Ackerman, F. (1997, p. 111).

1988 “Sexy Robot”, by Hajime Sorayama.

Illustration 2.22 and 2.23

1988 “Sexy Robot”, by Hajime Sorayama.

The Matrix movie, video tape front cover.

1948 “Buble-top car”. Image from Brosterman (2000, p. 31).

Image from Clute (1999, p. 214).

Illustration 2.34 Illustration 2.35