Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
Summary
I do not hold that the main virtue of education reposes in its economic consequences. Quite the reverse. I should tonight advocate a greater educational effort in Australia, even if its sole economic consequences were to reduce national production … I should do this since I believe that democracy implies making educational opportunities as equal as possible and that the working of democracy depends on increasing the number of citizens with the capacity for clear and informed thought on political and social issues. Moreover, I hold that the areas of expanded activity which education opens should be made as wide as possible.
Peter Karmel, ‘Some economic aspects of education’, the Buntine Oration, 18 May 1962Education and Public Policy in Australia began as a farrago of articles on schools, technical and further education (TAFE), higher education and research that were written mainly between 1989 and 1991. I was encouraged to believe the farrago could be made coherent, and the book took shape during the winter of 1992 around the common themes of economic theory and economic policy in education.
From the beginning I was conscious of an irony. My main concern was that economics (economic thinking and economic practices) had seized the role of master discourse in education policy, pushing aside other understandings of education. But my own headings were the economic ones: human capital, resources and outputs, productivity and efficiency, education and work, the public–private debate and so on.
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- Education and Public Policy in Australia , pp. xii - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993