Totally Pedagogised Society: Contributions to Critical Policy Studies. Educationalization, Pedagogisation and Globalisation

Abstract

At the end of the sixth Basil Bernstein symposium held in 2010 in Brisbane, Australia, Bill Tyler developed ten points for theoretical progression of the Bernstein sociological oeuvre. This paper picks up on Tyler’s (2010) call to explore the possibilities of Bernstein’s last paper on the totally pedagogised society (TPS). Specifically, the paper takes up Tyler’s (2010: 1) call that Bernstein’s ‘models of pedagogic discourse could re-theorise the post-structuralist debates on class and culture’. It does this by firstly reviewing the take up of Bernstein’s concept of the TPS in the critical policy sociology literature, arguing that this work presents a dystopian view of education aligning it directly to the instrumental needs of neoliberal economic productivity. The paper suggests that this interpretation of the TPS concept does not do justice to the complexity of the whole Bernstein theoretical corpus, specifically the work on pedagogic discourse, pedagogic device, pedagogic modalities and pedagogic codes. The paper positions the TPS concept within the larger Bernstein research project, with its dual focus on power relations and symbolic control in and through ‘the processes and mechanisms of the pedagogic communication of knowledge’ (Gordon, 2009: xi). It examines Bernstein’s (2000: 111) attention not only to issues of social reproduction in and through education systems, but also to the production/fabrication of social identities and relations of whole populations through pedagogic means in a period of ‘reorganising capitalism’.