Education and the Politics of Interruption Does the Right Always Win?

Introduction: Education and the Politics of Interruption: Does the Right Always Win? 1. United States: Can We Win? Social Mobilizations and the Politics of Official Knowledge 2. England: Learning to Fear: How Islamophobia is Manufactured, Made Educational, and Resisted in England 3. Poland: The Empire Strikes Back: A Neoconservative Revolution in Polish Schools and the Struggles Against It 4. Australia: Teacher Union Resistance to the Impacts of Marketised and Neo-Liberal Restructurings: The More than Thanks campaign by the New South Wales Teachers’ Federation 5. Brazil: Brazil’s Black Movement and Policies for Racial Equality in an Antidemocratic Period 6. Chile: Standardization Policies and the Teacher Career Law in Chile and its Resistances: When the Right Doesn´t Always Win, Even if it Wins 7. Japan: Ecological Interventions in the Postwar Politics of Japanese Education: Reassessing the Japanese Language and Moral Education Debates 8. India: Reforming the ‘Right’ Way: Market, Hypernationalism, and Curriculum Vigilantism in Indian Higher Education 9. Afterword: Understanding and Interrupting the Right: What Have We Learned?

Biography

Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. He is also Distinguished Professorial Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK and elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Iana Gomes De Lima is Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Luis Armando Gandin is Professor of Sociology of Education at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

"The strength of Education and the Politics of Interruption lies in its ability to show a diversity of ways in which ideological struggles occur surrounding what education should look like. By taking a global perspective and drawing on the history of education-related activism and reforms in different countries, readers can see more clearly how these political struggles over education recur across time and place... The book shows the necessity of continued organizing, mobilization, and resistance to bring about progressive change."

Book Review by Hannah Castner, Harvard Educational Review, April 2026, 96 (1) p. 151-156.

Read the full book review: https://doi.org/10.17763/B7G5T9N3L

"Presenting a myriad of examples, the text challenges assumptions of wins and losses, the distribution of power, and what is possible in movements of the people, showing how right-wing influences happen in similar and distinct ways across countries. These examples also show how resistance can be effective, when it is mobilized in thoughtful and strategic ways."
Book review, Journal of Education Policy

"The book represents a timely and significant contribution to critical education policy, comparative education, and the sociology of education. It will be of particular interest to scholars and graduate students seeking to understand the complex interplay between education and political ideology, as well as to practitioners and policy makers concerned with sustaining democratic and socially just educational practices in increasingly polarised contexts. By foregrounding the possibility of interruption, the volume offers both an analytical framework and a cautiously optimistic account of the transformative potential of collective action in education."
Book review, Educational Review