Physical Education and Social Transformations: Neoliberal state, individual well-being and fragmented habitus (1979 - 2008)

End of the blocks. Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. The alternative to market democracy disappears. Second wave of globalization. Neoliberal surf. Everything is commodified. Providence in tatters. 

Structural adjustment programs in the global South. Latin America is rebelling. War in the Middle-East. Iraq devastated. The mad finance syndrome. Lehman sells its toxic assets. 2008. States come to the rescue of the market. Taxpayers buy bank loans.

1979. Pivotal year. Margaret Thatcher. Afghanistan war. Deng Xiaoping. Then, Reagan. Everywhere, the market entersthe public sphere. The state reduces its reachand becomes miserly. Budget constraints are imposed, starting with social spending.

Sovereignties amputated. Decisions are made elsewhere. Where the masses do not have access. Multinational market. Intergovernmental Bureaucracies. G8. End the post-war social compromise. Waves of deregulation and privatization. Well-being, health, education subject to the economic imperatives. The masses are suffering. Austerity plans.

The welfare state is dismantled. Suppression of state services. Transfer to local authorities. The private becomes the model. Command and hierarchies are strengthened. Performance is the new totem of public action. Employees are classified by skills and competencies. Human activity is reduced to accounting. Another vision of the public service.

All countries are affected. From the United Kingdom to Sweden, from the Netherlands, to New Zealand. From the most liberal to the most social democrats.

United Kingdom. New Public Management is our second symbolic revolution. A puzzle of doctrines. Hayek, Thatcher's friend. Friedman and Chicago boys. Center for Policy Studies as political tool. Managerial modernization. 

Public sectors are streamlined. The central power is strengthened. Local authorities, labor bastions, are rolled. Natural market competition is the bible of the Thatcher and Major governments, including in education.

1988. Margaret Thatcher fires the first salvo. The school was uncontrollable. Knowledge must be a tool of social authority. The law on education. National Council of Programs. For "real knowledge". Objective: discipline teachers. 

In physical education, replace the modernity of Laban with a return to tradition. At least one advantage. Physical education and sport, subjects of public debate. A notable entry into the national curriculum.

1990. John Major draws the second salvo. Kenneth Clarke is Secretary of State. Social cohesion and cultural restoration. Clarke reduces physical education to action. Knowledge and understanding are useless. 

Priority target: the tradition. Major is more sporting than Thatcher. The tradition of English games. Cultural restoration. Elitism. Nationalism. Social Darwinism.

Social structures are modernized. A social order is imposed. Local authorities, teachers are being fanned. Basic skills to be achieved. But also. The national debate is exposed in the media. Physical education and elite sport converge.

Cognitive structures bring back the past. Sport versus movement. Regressive Victorianism versus Post-Fordist School. Voice of the elite versus mistrust of the popular. "Little Englandism" versus multiculturalism. According to Stephen Ball, it's a curriculum of the dead.

Thatcher - Major show a paradox. Cultural restoration but managerial modernization. New Public Management. Swiss "neo-liberal" Swiss knife. The symbolic revolution becomes global joining Reagan’s policy by linking the school to the economic production.

1997. Anthony Blair, his neo-labor policy, picks up the baton. To follow the Third Way of Anthony Giddens. The market is still all-powerful. In education, Blair puts on Thatcher's boots. 

He transforms the school into a business, fetishizing the audit. Trivializing the NPM with objectives and performance indicators. The swelling of bureaucracy is a paradox. Blair goes further. 

Citizens are consumers by choosing their public service. Internal emulation within the administration to compete with the private offering.

Physical education is closely linked to sport. PESSCL program. 1.2 million pounds. Target: Two hours a week for 85% of students. Skills and indicators in schools and clubs. Competition is vital. Select the elite at school. Tessa Jowell. Minister of Sports, then of the Olympic Games.

The neo-liberal wave reaches Sweden. Pioneer of social democracy bi-coming a model of the market economy. School is municipalized then privatized. Profitability above all. Seventy five percent decrease in physical education time. Some progress. But, the market is incrusted at school in a country that maintains welfare state taxes.

United States, Europe, China. The symbolic revolution is becoming widespread. Economic crises polarize skills corresponding to the needs of the market. Then, school becomes a space for their creation: basic, generic, fragmented. Against knowledge. The market has become embedded in education policies. Physical education, its fragmented habitus, is a link in the new chain.