The evil of authoritarian education: Banality and compliance in the neoliberal era

Education is widely seen as a force for good, associated with hope and optimism about better individual and social futures. By contrast, and controversially, this paper argues that education and education policy in recent decades has been far from benign, as evidenced in the growing alienation of significant numbers of teachers and students and, crucially for our paper, in the growth of authoritarian models of schooling, involving ‘zero-tolerance’, ‘no excuses’ disciplinary approaches. Against this background, and drawing on Hannah Arendt and the work of contemporary moral philosophers Elizabeth Minnich and Simona Forti, this paper diagnoses the nature and effects of school discipline policies in the neoliberal era, and in particular practices such as isolation, as a contemporary form of banal, or everyday, evil.