State Of The Theory

This is Episode 87 of the State of the Theory Podcast. Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably. In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call. This week we conclude our two-part look at race and schools. We look at private and government run schools in the UK and the US, and think about ways in which the education system is affected by racial hierarchies. To what extent have schools been used to ameliorate racial inequalities, and to what extent have they merely reinforced t