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GOVERNING FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND WITH LOVE: PARENTS AND CHILDREN BETWEEN HOME AND SCHOOL
Author(s) -
Baez Benjamin,
Talburt Susan
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2007.00274.x
Subject(s) - conceptualization , empowerment , government (linguistics) , politics , sociology , school choice , pedagogy , psychology , developmental psychology , political science , law , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , computer science
A bstract In this essay, Benjamin Baez and Susan Talburt analyze the U.S. Department of Education’s Helping Your Child Series to consider how the government of children, families, and schools reflects a concern with two seemingly unrelated political objectives of neoliberal projects: creating responsible, self‐reliant citizens and making schools more efficient. Where these two objectives converge is in their techniques: they both use the parent‐child relationship and what appears to motivate it. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of government as “the conduct of conduct,” Baez and Talburt analyze two pamphlets with an eye to several themes: the “commonsensical” nature of its address to loving parents; the “responsibilization” of parents and children; the insidious entry of school goals and behavioral norms into homes; and the seeming empowerment of the parent as partner in his or her child’s learning. Finally, the authors discuss how the logic of modern forms of governing families and schools might be contested.