Gramsci, Hegemony and Educational Politics

Abstract

Antonio Gramsci is arguably Italy\textquoteright{}s most cited author in the literature concerning the politics of education. His contribution to educational thought is immense in that, in order to do justice to his thinking on education, one cannot simply restrict oneself to his concerns about schooling or deal with specific aspects of his thought in isolated fashion. One needs to treat his work as a coherent body of thinking on politics and education, with hegemony serving as the central concept in his \textquoteleft{}philosophy of praxis\textquoteright{}, every relationship of which is a pedagogical relationship. Rather than focus on his specific writings on particular sites of educational practice, be they schools, island prison learning centres or workers\textquoteright{} education circles, or, as is common when dealing with other political theorists, glean ideas from his political philosophy and draw out their implications for education, this chapter views Gramsci\textquoteright{}s overall political project as a broad educational project. Being central to the workings of hegemony, in all its different social relational dimensions, education has to be viewed holistically as its presence can be felt throughout Gramsci\textquoteright{}s whole corpus of writing; the quest for a process of \textquoteleft{}intellectual and moral reform\textquoteright{} warrants an educational effort on all fronts.