Kerry McKeon recently received her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Texas at San Antonio in December of 2021. Her dissertation focused on neoliberal rhetoric and its use in advancing the privatization of public schools. It is titled Neoliberal Discourse and the U.S. Secretary of Education: Discursive Constructs of the Education Agenda (2017-2020).
She writes, in a summary:
Corporate reform of education has taken hold in the U.S., with neoliberal values regularly propagated and normalized—even among some public-school leaders. I witnessed this transition firsthand, beginning as a U.S. Senate aide, and then over decades as classroom teacher. In recent years, one voice has echoed above the rest, as a consequence of her privilege, power, and opportunity: former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.Listening to her stump again and again for the privatization of public education while pursuing my doctorate in educational leadership and policy, I became fixated on her language choices. The right words can make or break a given argument, and as a teacher, I know that language is the portal to meaning-making. So, I set out to investigate her linguistic and rhetorical strategies, as she sought to drive her neoliberal agenda forward.
Using a corpus of twenty-eight DeVos speeches over her four years in office, I explored the ways she tried to influencethinking around public education in favor of privatization—and how she aimed to normalize and naturalize certain neoliberal beliefs, while minimizing, discrediting, and ignoring other problems and solutions. Given the strength of her platform as education secretary, her messages were often replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community were muted.
While others have explored the causes and effects of neoliberalism’s incursion into public education, little research explores how strategic linguistic maneuvers can reshape American ideas about public education over time. To understand and unpack her persuasive strategy, I identified and mapped thelinguistic formulas and frameworks she used to influence audiences in favor of neoliberalism. When I dissected her speeches, I found neoliberal ideology layered throughout—in everything from her word choices to the personal stories she shared.
For example, DeVos repeatedly expressed disdain for the federal government’s role in education, and advocated more power to individuals and to the private sector. Even with a D.C. officeaddress, she regularly attacked all things “Washington,” including education-advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, and other experts in education policymaking. She also lambasted the elusively defined “elites,” ranging from Democratic political donors to university scholars. While distancing herself from present-day government structures, she averred a near-mythical allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and founding fathers—arguing that current federal oversight in education violates the founders’ intent for the role of government.
Likewise, DeVos expressed economic values that criticize government spending and regulation, while promoting the private sector, marketplace competition, and the rights of the taxpayer. Her economic values were articulated through keywords that celebrate the free market: innovation, results, metrics, efficiency, prosperity—all while presuming that all free-market participantsare equally capable to prosper. In doing so, she disregarded stark and obvious social inequalities that make the market an unequal space.
DeVos eschewed virtually all discussions of inequity, except when it helped her make arguments for school reform or choice. In fact, she regularly employed keywords such as opportunity, choice, freedom and options, and downplayed language relating to economic, racial, or social injustices. DeVos also decentered and discounted teachers and teacher-led classrooms, advocating instead for increased use of classroom technology, including the much-touted personalized learning (technology-enabled learning that is moving schools to a greater reliance on data, data systems and other technology products).
Over and over, DeVos proposed radical change to public schools by rooting educational values in a marketplace reality. In order to do this, she distanced herself from public schools through “othering.” She described public schools as flawed, failing monopolies, consistently underperforming, and failing to innovate. At the same time, she glorified all manner of non-public schools—charter schools, magnet schools, online schools—regardless of their records, eschewing the results and metrics she so strongly promoted elsewhere. And she often plugged a skills-based curriculum with a jobs focus. DeVos sought to create a market of education choices and so-called freedom by depicting families as customers and education as a product, while paying no mind to how communities or the democratic purposes of education may be compromised by a commoditized education system. Rarely did she speak of the important role teachers play in advancing education, and ignored any equalizing effects of education on child poverty. Indeed, she asserted, without evidence, that school-choice fixes all problems with public schools and even went as far as to say that public schools are un-American when choice isn’t an option.
In my exploration of her speeches, I identified a pattern of strategies—a framework—which I call tiered operations for ideological impact that is rooted in how we think and process information. I found that DeVos’s neoliberal ideological language is evident on three levels in her speeches: the micro, the meso, and the macro.
On the micro-level, I found that her word choices delivered a constellation of concepts to the listener. By repeating a set of neoliberal keywords, the scene is set. DeVos aligns educational values with market values, including the belief that school systems should provide “profit opportunities” for capitalists, and the primary outcome of education is to produce employees with skills employable in the free market. She continues by dividing people and things into divisive categories like good or bad, friends or enemies. Just like a novelist focuses on character development, DeVos instructs her audience on who to love and who to fear. In her narrative, the public school system is a disaster. Her anointed heroes want to dismantle the system, while her anointed villains wish to protect it. DeVos is creative with word-formation, whereby two or more words are combined to create a word cluster. These blends are sometimes charged, seeking to provoke audience anxiety or anger. For example, her phrase “the shrill voices of the education lobby” may trigger the sensation of high pitched voices or scraping chalk on a blackboard). Conversely, the blends are sometimes intended to inspire (so-called, hooray words) and thereby assist in the marketing of her ideas to her audience. In both cases, the word clusters impact the way the brain processes information by blending two concepts into a new, unified concept.
On the meso-level, she uses topics to organize her individual speeches, selecting which topics are included or left out, which topics are foregrounded or backgrounded. Through her argumentation strategy, she asserts that opponents of school choice are attacking core American values such as freedom, patriotism, and human rights. By promoting such a polarized perspective, DeVos flattens the complexity of issues, to offer a simpler version of the world in line with her own perspectives. The process of limiting audience attention to a smaller focus is known as windowing. In the current discursive climate, where individuals are exposed to huge amounts of information every day, windowing is one way to manage information overload and guide an audience to embrace a particular worldview.
On the macro-level, DeVos uses her speeches to align with the cultural climate of the current historical moment. Of particular note are ways DeVos engages in relentless “othering.” She depicts a society divided between patriots who value educational freedom and choice, and a corrupt elite who value public education in the form of community schools. Her biased and misleading claims contribute to a crisis of confidence in education. She promotespublic education as a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace, rather than as a collective common good. She elevates choice, while humanitarian discourse is undervalued. In the process, she damages the reputation of public education, contributing to the erosion of America’s commitment to public schools an equalizing institution.
Essentially, her discursive strategies amount to a cognitive suppression of certain humanitarian, social-justice values.Furthermore, DeVos participated in populist, anti-elite, and anti-establishment discourses by positioning the privatization of education as a grassroots effort to overthrow an oppressive system. In addition, she embraces an anti-expert and anti-intellectual worldview, as she attacks education advocates, teachers, local leaders, while elevating the education outsider: the education entrepreneur. These post-truth discourses characteristically appeal to emotion and partisanship over reason and rationality. DeVos may also be furthering anti-democratic work by disparaging others in the democratic process, including public schools and teachers’ unions.
Some might highlight that DeVos’s legislative accomplishments were few. Yet, ideological acceptance almost always comes before policy change. Thus, her impact may reveal itself in time. While she failed to meaningfully impact federal law in favor of neoliberalism, she succeeded in further normalizing ideas that continue to be taken up by Republican-led state legislatures. She succeeded in shifting the federal discussion on education from matters of equity and inclusion, to delivering a manifesto on the importance of flexibility, choice, and opportunity. Increasingly, Americans are more focused on individual educational needs than the needs of the larger community. She also reframed the shortcomings of public schools as an existential threat. By invoking a narrative of crisis and a politics of fear, she commands an increased power of persuasion and betrays the possibility of pursuing more practical, modest, and cooperative modes of change.
Neoliberal political and cultural values that currently inform education policy creation can be identified and decoded, by deconstructing and analyzing the political speech of prominent actors like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. A close look at her speeches revealed various cognitive triggers that attempt to persuade audiences. DeVos’s political speech contributes to a symphony of powerful voices in the education-policy community, whose messages are replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community are muted. Public education advocates would do well to learn more about the rhetorical strategies through which neoliberal ideology is promoted
“…she succeeded in further normalizing ideas that continue to be taken up by Republican-led state legislatures.”
These legislatures are full of people who lack the ability to craft legislation, so they come to the table with little more than the rhetorical flourishes they have been fed. Unfortunately, most of the legislators had these ideas pre-Devos. I have a friend who is very much right of center and was a State Senator. One day about ten years ago I was asking him about an issue when he confided in me that the people getting elected at that time were radically against public education.
This is so very similar to what is going on in government at all levels today. Government is bad.and not to be trusted. Corporations are wonderful and can be trusted. the pied piper effect leading to what. Government and corporations are only as good as the people running them and by the yardstick by which we measure them.
As I somewhat pointed out yesterday, it is up to us as citizens to study in depth what is going on, compare that with our basic philosophy of life – What is it all about Alfie kind of thing and make our voices heard.
I fear for this next election. When Biden gave a speech in the ‘South not long ago some of the black community boycotted it because he had not been able to give them all that they wished. Of course the pace of progress is slow, much too slow, but what is the alternative, such as between Trump and Hillary.
The kind of research shown above is superb, Dr. Ravitch jhas done likewise but now too many people disregard research by scholars and lare being led down the garden path by innuendo, real false news etc.
A lot of anti-government messaging is aimed particularly at the federal government, aka, big government. While I live in an ultra-conservative part of Florida near military bases and contractors, the federal government pumps more than two billion a year into the economy. So many of these people on the federal payroll disdain the federal government. That’s irony!
Irony and flat-out stupidity
As they do in almost every Western and Southern State. Whose smaller populations give them undue influence in the US Senate.
Nailed it, RT, Ciedie!
same experience
retired teacher…..There is a reason for the disdain. I live in an area outside of DC and most people work for the gov’t or they are contractors for the fed gov’t (my husband has been both). Professionals hate the way the government works and how slow and ineffective it has become with so many regulations in place. Lots of red tape and hoops to jump through if one is trying to get work done or contracts started/approved. Then there is the fact that you have military law conflicting with civilian law and add in some corporate law and it makes for madness.
Parents from the business world come to the school site council and are surprised at the amount of regulation over how school money is spent. As it should be.
While I believe I disagree with DeVos on most if not all issues, I do appreciate in this article the idea that DeVos “flattens the complexity of issues”. These perspectives have to be taken seriously, but with a sense of the detail and the complexity involved in education.
Kerry McKeon is correct that DeVos was/is a master of her craft. The whole ScamWay industry is the perfect example of neoliberalism and capitalism run amok. DeVos’ public school rhetoric was a product of the Obama/Arne Duncan era that was planted by Bush II. The whole lot of them deserve to take the blame for the destruction….not just DeVos.
Yes, the grifter chose a grifter. And someone capable of making very large donations. E.g., the DeVos family gave $250,000 to the Trump Victory Fund.
“She described public schools as flawed, failing monopolies, consistently underperforming, and failing to innovate. At the same time, she glorified all manner of non-public schools—charter schools, magnet schools, online schools—regardless of their records, eschewing the results and metrics she so strongly promoted elsewhere.”
This isn’t just DeVos. It’s standard in ed reform. We watched this happen in real time in Ohio. When charters and private schools didn’t consistently “outperform” public schools using the ed reform measure (test scores) they simply switched focus and claimed “choice” was its own goal, independent of test scores or any of the “quality” measures they use for public schools. All of a sudden we got “soft” measures like parent surveys and polling results. When their chosen measure (test scores) didn’t show that ed reform privatized systems were superior to public systems, they changed the rules.
It has been painful to watch public schools accept the ed reform measures and attempt to meet them when none of it mattered anyway- the new objective is “choice” and under that measure public schools will always be found wanting, unless they privatize.They’ll always be “government schools” and in ed reform ideology that means they’ll be designated inferior.
Is there any discussion at all in ed reform that this lockstep ed reform policy the US has adopted and followed for more than 20 years now has not delivered the “results!” they promised? I read the national ed reformers commentary on US test scores (negative) and it’s always the fault of some nameless group who “support the status quo”.
They run education policy in the US. They ran it under Bush, they ran it under Obama and they ran it under Trump. That’s 20 years. At what point do they take responsibility for their work? In 30 years? 40?
This article relates:
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/schools-testing-inequality-covid-pandemic-remote-learning-loss
Failed policy and how it has harmed our youngest learners.
One of the big factors in school privatization is the rabid hatred for unions of the far right wing libertarian Ayn Randian mafia. Another big factor is greed and the desire for profits as opposed to supporting the common good, public schools.
Betsy DeVos is a christian conservative republican, not a neo-liberal. A neo-liberal is someone who is socially liberal, but economically the same as a republican. (Free market capitalism with limited democracy and a modest welfare state.) The term “neo-liberal” is often used by left-wing progressives to call out corporate democrats for their hypocrisy. Arne Duncan is a neo-liberal since he supports both LGBT rights and school choice. I see no purpose in calling out an avowed republican like DeVos for espousing free market capitalism.
Are Schools the place, the only place, where neoliberalism and Christian Conservatism find common ground? Or do Christian Conservatives generally trust corporation and distrust government?
Of course Christian conservatives are pro-business and anti-government Roy. Greg Abbott is always bragging about all the businesses that Texas’s that have moved to Texas because of their business friendly small gov policies.
I claim conservative Christians are very ambivalent about government. They want government to insure their place in society, limiting choices people make about their private lives, but they do not want government limiting their ability to make economic relationships that benefit their lives. They claim to distrust government on one hand, but they argue for vast powers allowing government to peer into the bedroom. They claim to want freedom of speech, but would restrict speech they do not like.
She’s a regressive reactionary xtian fundie Republican who would like to see Amurika go back to a supposedly glorious past which never was and never will be.
Ooops! My definition of neoliberal is incorrect! “Neoliberalism is a political and economic policy model that emphasizes the value of free market capitalism while seeking to transfer control of economic factors from the government to the private sector.” Nothing to do at all with being socially liberal, so DeVos is definitely a huge neoliberal I was dead wrong about this!
Then I retract my previous response
I can’t tell the difference between “neoliberals” and hard-right conservatives
ArtsSmart
“A neo-liberal is someone who is socially liberal, but economically the same as a republican”
Complete nonsense .That was pulled from your rectum.
Neo Liberal is an economic term having nothing to do with Social issues .Liberal in this usage refers to the relaxing of Government intervention from taxes to regulations and social spending.
Try harder: As with most conservatives you are entitled to your own opinions however not your own facts.
Investopedia
“What Is Neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism is a policy model that encompasses both politics and economics and seeks to transfer the control of economic factors from the public sector to the private sector. Many neoliberalism policies enhance the workings of free market capitalism and attempt to place limits on government spending, government regulation, and public ownership.
Neoliberalism is often associated with the leadership of Margaret Thatcher–the prime minister of the U.K. from 1979 to 1990 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990–and Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the U.S. (from 1981 to 1989). More recently, neoliberalism has been associated with policies of austerity and attempts to cut government spending on social programs. “
“Complete nonsense .That was pulled from your rectum.” Yes it was Joel! But the good news is that I now know the correct definition of the term.
Christian conservatives are antigovernment UNTIL government is deciding whether women can control their own reproduction, whether gays and lesbians can get married, whether military-style weapons can be regulated, whether police and the military can be used against protesters, whether babies can be taken from their parents if those folks are asylum seekers, and on and on and on.
What was brilliant about DeVos was that she, a corporate libertarian skilled at mocking everything and everyone and making a fool of herself at confirmation hearings, parroted the rhetoric of neoliberals like Duncan and Rhee, exposing the lack of difference between them. That was helpful.
Whoever’s language frames the discussion wins the debate. Democrats in power and too many of those seeking it have fallen victim to this over and over.
The Repugnicans are extremely good at creating slogans and moral panics–death panels, CRT. But then, they have lots of think tanks and foundations working overtime to create and promulgate these. Very little comparable on the Democratic side. There is, for example, no Democratic ALEC.
An especially nasty recent development reported from the new civil rights movement web site: Fox News Dangerously Declares War on Teachers: Calls for Violence, Accusations of ‘Inclination’ to Pedophilia. And from Tucker Carlson: “I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teachers pushing sex values on your third grader why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?”
These far right maniacs like Carlson, Mark Levin, David Mamet, Lara Logan, Laura Ingraham, etc., ad nauseam, will not be satisfied until some public school teacher is slashed, gutted and vivisected in front of the 3rd graders.
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/04/fox-news-dangerously-declares-war-on-teachers-calls-for-violence-accusations-of-inclination-to-pedophilia/
But, but, but. . . remember that FauxNewsCorp own lawyers stated in court that one shouldn’t trust the bloviations of the various hosts: “US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil agreed with Fox’s premise, adding that the network “persuasively argues” that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statements he makes.”
Yes, that’s the small print, very sotto voce, to give Fox management deniability when the law suits come flying in.
Faux News is like the WWF of wrestling (the sport). It exists because it’s “entertainment” for those who have little critical thinking ability or those who wish to “check out of life” after a hard day (same with some CNN programming). The problem is that the Left is giving Faux News lots to work with when it denies the concerns of parents who know and feel something is amiss when their children come home from school talking about some crazy stuff. I DO NOT think that Tucker Carlson should be inciting the crazies to go on a rampage and harm teachers, but the left and left leaning news needs to take the reins on some of these issues and admit there are problems that exist. Instead, parents/those who are having issues are being told or made to feel that there is no problem and everything is honkey dory and that we are just imagining things. The next election cycle will be very interesting as the Dems get a big slap of reality.
Not sure I agree Lisa. There is good and bad in every human situation. Right wing news tends to talk about a small part of the things they want to insert into the conversation. Let me explain.
At my daughter’s school, she was recently in a play. The kids did a great job, showcasing their ability to interpret literature and sing. I may be biased, but they were really good, and the kids worked together after the final show to tear down and store the set. It was a triumph of education in every way. But the men’s bathroom was trashed right before the performance by some vandalism. The line at the men’s was a bit long (revenge! said the girls!)
Right wing media would spend an hour discussing the vandalism, which was probably the result of the warped nature of at most two people. They would not have said very much at all about the play, which was the real story, of course.
I would say that the Fox News apologists on here are part of the problem as they continue to push that our children are in real danger of being turned into trans children because public schools are normalizing trans kids instead of teaching their classmates trans kids are abnormal and definitely not okay.
There is a small subset of parents who want the teachers in all public schools to be ordered to reinforce the far right’s strong beliefs that being trans is abnormal and definitely not okay – most of those parents send their kids to private schools that are far more welcoming of trans kids or conservative religious schools that teach their students that anything that isn’t a right wing Christian beliefs is wrong.
Why aren’t those parents focusing on attacking the private schools that teach the privileged? Because they seem to avoid all criticism of the schools that teach the privileged – like most bullies, they target victims without power.
The elite private schools with tuition over $40,000 are very WOKE
And Carlson has, ofc, been cheerleading for Putin. And he recently had the U of PA law prof Amy Wax on his show for a white supremacist love fest. Spell Tucker with an “F.”
DeVos like so many conservatives knows how to use language to divide people through fear and loathing. Her speech is manipulative, but clear and on target, and it is something Democrats should learn to do. Like other radical Republicans DeVos tries to present herself as a trailblazer working against a corrupt system of public education. Many conservatives, I have noticed, take great pride in being perceived as an “outsider, renegade and a rebel.” I don’t know too many “outsiders” with as many yachts that she has, but her rhetoric would like to make people believe that she is a crusader for the nation’s children.
DeVos’s messaging falls short on truth and evidence. Her platform is based on bias, not information or data, which she loves, because data is a commodity today. When we look at facts, we can see that charter schools and vouchers have failed to deliver on their promises. Many charters are a waste of endless profiteering with little to no academic benefits unless the schools hand pick the best students. While charters transfer public funds out of the public schools and undermine the schools the neediest students attend, vouchers are a toxic waste dump.
Yup. It’s all rebel yell, now.
Yehaw! Say it loud. Dumb and proud.
Over the decades I have learned that too many very wealthy individuals resent the power of government when it gets in their way.
I think this is something that too many very wealthy and powerful individuals have in common with the Putins and Trumps of this world. Gates, DeVos, Koch, Suckerberg, et al, ALL think the same.
Narcists, malignant narcissisms, psychopaths and sociopaths only care about what they want based on their limited thinking and knowledge, and the rest of us should get out of their way or be smashed las in stepping on a cockroach while wearing combat boots.
Attention Would-Be 2024 Presidenshul and School Bored Candidates! If y’all would like a copy of yore guide to Trump Style: Running a Govermint the Weigh God Intended, please send a 3-inch stack of 20-dollar bills to Bob Shepherd Ministries care uv are post office box in the Cayman Islands. Jist to give you a little taste of the trehsures thar-in, here is the too most importent principals:
Base yore decisions on who you is goin to higher and endorse on what you here on TV. Here’s Glorious Leader Who Shines More Orange Than the Sun talking to reporter Chuck Todd:
Todd: “Who do you talk to for military advice right now?”
Trump: “Well, I watch the shows. I mean, I really see a lot of great, you know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows, and you have the generals.”
Genius!
Choose someone who wants to destroy whaever department or agency he or she (gotta remember the gals!) they’s supposed to head up, like Ditzy DeVoid, Amerika’s Greatest Christian (after Donald Trump) and the sworn enemy of the public schools she was spozed to lead.