Utopian realism and a new politics of education: developing a critical theory without guarantees

This paper is about utopia and utopianism and the relevance of both to thin king analytically and practically about the form and content of education p olicy. Specifically, it commends a particular application of the utopian im agination - utopian realism - which entails envisaging possible futures in terms of detectable trends in actual social development. It also assesses t he merits for education policy of a recent attempt to translate this kind o f utopianism into a mode of practical politics known as che 'Third Way'.