Since the 1980’s, educational trends have been greatly influenced by economically oriented international organisations whose national politics pursue a relay race, assuring that schools are as appropriate as possible to present economic requirements, and that the beliefs of decision-makers and educational planners are thereby inscribed in the logic of competition. 

Parallel to this, in another context, other international organisations are promoting an education based on ideas such as social justice and respect for human rights, thereby making a case for the school where universal values aim to eliminate in the future the socio-economic inequalities that cause injustice and social tensions.  One finds in these debates an echo of UNESCO, amongst others, and numerous NGO’s.

These two trends, which are a priori reconcilable only with difficulty, place the school before choices which it is not able to make alone, as these trends are determined by the established political powers.  Yet, as can be rather easily observed, these drift effortlessly on rhetoric decorated with appealing words in the matter of citizenship education, while promoting trends based on the knowledge economy and an obsession with performance.  This double-talk not only produces confusion but encourages incoherent educational interventions, in that they attempt to combine a diversity of categorical interests battling over the control of education that is perceived sometimes as a common good and sometimes as under the influence of private interests.

It is easy for the promoters of profitability in education to emphasize improvement in individual performance of learners and adjustment in training to the demands of the market.  In the context of economic growth, this approach doesn’t produce much open opposition in that it is accompanied by a proclaimed interest in life-long learning.  Nevertheless it is not stated if this results primarily on a willingness to improve equal access to knowledge or – above all – to assure more easily the “flexibility in work” that is so cherished by the neo-liberal popularisers.

What principally seems to be at stake in light of this observed tendency to subordinate education to the demands of the market, is that the preparation for an active life involved in education involves more of a healthy and legitimate questioning of the dominant values that are driven by this means of the instrumentalisation of knowledge.  It is in this context that it seems to us particularly urgent to introduce into classrooms a substantial debate on citizenship, as well as the critical spirit necessary to prevent the school from becoming a simple business, subject to various takeover bids.