Revisiting Dearing: Higher education and the construction of the 'belabored' self
Abstract
Several authors have identified a 'therapeutic turn' in education in the UK, at all levels of the system. In this paper I focus on and develop this claim, specifically in relation to the Higher Education sector. I seek to do two things: First, I argue that the 'self' which is identified by commentators on the therapeutic turn needs to be reworked in the direction of McGee's idea of the 'belabored' self. This is because the therapeutic turn serves, I argue, a set of wider economic goals arising from the restructuring of capitalism which followed in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973 and the subsequent breakdown of the post-war (1939-1945) consensus around the purpose of public policy, of which education is an important part. Second, I revisit an important document in the history of the UK Higher Education sector: the National Committee of Inquiry Into Higher Education's 1997 report Higher Education In The Learning Society (known popularly as the Dearing Report, after its chair, Sir Ron Dearing). I argue that that the committee's ambition to bring about a learning society characterised by lifelong learning played an important and neglected part in bringing about the therapeutic turn in higher education in the UK. The project of creating a learning society characterised by lifelong learning, advocated by the Dearing Report, should properly be recognised as an exhortation to embark upon a lifetime of labouring upon the self.Citation
Apperley, A. 'Revisiting Dearing: Higher Education and the Construction of the 'Belabored' Self', Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 6 (4) pp. 731Publisher
Linköping University Electronic PressJournal
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural ResearchAdditional Links
https://journal.ep.liu.se/CU/article/view/2110Type
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
2000-1525ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.3384/cu.2000.1525.146731
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