The informal practices have come under pressure. No longer only schooling has become the preoccupation of output and performance indicators. Educational experts and the government intrude in this area too in the name of so-called quality. Should these initiatives by the authorities be welcomed for the effects that can be anticipated? Or are the grounds on which these interventions are justified fatally flawed with presuppositions that many are not likely to accept or endorse? 6 presentations The UK Government's construction of the relationship between parents and schools in the up-bringing of children: 1967-2007 David Bridges Attempts to redefine or reconstruct the roles of parents and schools in the education and, more widely, the up-bringing of children have been driven by a variety of forces. An historical and analytic treatment of the currents in the evolution of social and educational policy in this period is given. The final part discusses the distinction between paternalistic and non-paternalistic conceptions of parents' rights and the role and responsibilities of the state. Legal interventions in childhood and the philosophical questions they raise Pat Stuart and Paul Standish Some recent legal interventions in childhood in the UK and other European countries, especially concerning children in care are examined. These are shown to raise a number of philosophical questions, concerning: the role of professionals and professional agencies involved in care; the reconstruction of childhood and carer-child relationships; the concept of care (specifically being "in care"). Educating Children? Educating Parents? James C Conroy Using the ongoing and very live debate about the permissibility/desirability of home schooling as a context, this study will attempt to map and understand this complex relationship between the state and parents. Why it is that a state can so undermine its own foundational conditions. How it is that it increasingly holds to the view that parents themselves are in need of education and consequently are not competent to rear their own children. The dysfunctional parent. Notes on the permanent need of the parent for consultancy Nancy Vansieleghem Psychology no longer functions as a ‘foundational’ discourse; and the parent does not appear as someone who knows what is good for the child, but as someone who has to supply, demand and use advice and information to learn how to manage oneself. Thus social science became a governmental technology (next to others) that serves the permanent need for consultancy and support. This can be regarded as an effect of a strategic configuration that generates a dysfunctional subject. ‘Initiation’ into practices and the language of experts. Paul Smeyers Initiation can be conceptualized without endorsing the conservative and reproductive conception when attention is given to our ways of learning and enacting practices (intertwined with our self and sense of identity, our relations and ways of interacting with others). The language of experts (particularly when focusing on parental skills/training) is used to exemplify how this has distorting effects for child rearing. An antidote is offered by bringing language and practices back at the level of the (Cavellian) ‘ordinary’, to withstand the sceptical tendency underlying the craving for certainty nowadays. Parenting in late capitalism: finding a language that makes sense Richard Smith Some of the alternative ways of thinking about parenting that are emerging are drawn together. From these the project attempts an account of parenting as necessarily slow; as involving no kind of extrinsic aim; as risky and containing ineliminable elements of experiment; as messy and uncertain. It identifies the distinctive joy of parenting as lying in precisely these aspects, and in its power to disrupt and resist the demeaning and alienating features of late- or turbo-capitalism.

Philosophical Analysis.

This symposium discusses the developments concerning government intervention (aided by experts) in different areas. A particular interest is taken in the justification that is offered. Clearly, the anticipated costs (for society) already now seem to be an important element. But there may be more (increasing control, governmentality, the question whether the ‘liberal’ state is entitled to do that). Last but not least, attention is given to how this changes the nature of education.