The fantasy of the populist disease and the educational cure

The populist turn has produced contrasting conceptions of education. Research has suggested that individuals educated to university level are unlikely to support populist discourses. Meanwhile, populism is often understood as a social illness or disease that needs to be cured through education. This article argues that both populist and anti‐populist discourses are fantasies in which education comprises an ideological grip. In the populist fantasy, education is perceived as being ideologically controlled by the elite. In the anti‐populist fantasy, education is seen as being inherently emancipatory, liberating us from irrationalism and economic inequality. The article concludes not by showing how these ideological alternatives might be reconciled, but by suggesting that we can only proceed by creating new discursive landscapes where emancipatory education can be understood differently.