Contested Classrooms: Education, Globalization, and Democracy in Alberta

Luke Lawson is a teacher and administrator in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

This collection of articles focuses on the vast changes that have taken
place in Alberta education, especially in the 1990s. The editors’
thesis is twofold: (i) educational change in Alberta cannot be separated
from broader changes throughout the world, and (ii) the meaning and
purpose of education is being reduced to “that of servant to the
economy, in particular, the dominant corporate elite.”

The editors’ insistence that the book is not a tirade against the
Klein government is contradicted by the at times vicious and almost
personal attacks on the premier. Teachers, students, support staff, and
the Alberta Teachers’ Association, in particular, are portrayed as
helpless victims of deficit-cutting and Klein’s supposed cosy
relations with the corporate, technological, and industrial elites at
the universities and in the community. The realignment of educational
interests around postmodern socialism and the need for a critique of
capitalism and class power are the book’s underlying themes.

Conceived as an invitation for discussion on educational change and
globalization, Contested Classroom is in fact a political attack on the
economic right. A truly balanced perspective on educational change would
have addressed other questions—why incompetent teachers are kept in
the classroom and why there is still a move to “dumb down” the
curriculum in the name of self-esteem, to name but two.