Shaping educational debate: a case study and an interpretation

Abstract

The contribution of American economist, A. Dale Tussing, to the penetration of Irish policy paradigms governing the funding of education is presented as a case study of how a cultural stranger can, by a process of cultural mirroring and deconstruction, influence the cultural understanding of the-educational process in an indigenous society. In relation to the funding of education, Tussing succeeded in making public existing assumptions, advanced a reconceptualisation of the benefits of schooling, suggested principles for guiding funding decisions, proposed values of equity and justice and added stratification and elitism to the terminology of concern in public educational discourse. Why it should fall to a cultural stranger to provide such an experience in cultural illumination for us is explored in relation to the influence of corporatist policy making on educational discourse. Suggestions for a more paradigmatically-open analysis of education are made in relation to the Green Paper on Education, Education for a Changing World.