North American insecurities, fears and anxieties: educational implications

Abstract

Contemporary North American insecurities and fears are the focus of this article. In the first section, the inter‐related concepts of insecurity, fear and vulnerability are theorised, and the argument put forward that these have come to constitute a dominant discourse in contemporary North American society. In the second section of the paper, the components of this discourse are presented by reviewing what North Americans fear, including terrorism, crime and violence, and the ‘Other’. Comparisons and local manifestations of this discourse in Canada, Mexico and the US are described. The final section turns to the educational implications (effects) of this discourse as it has been taken up across the three nations. While other comparativists have focused on phenomena such as globalisation and neo‐liberalism to explain contemporary education reform, the author argues that it is the discourse of fear and insecurity that now underpins educational reform.

Notes

1. Some of the acronyms in this quotation may be unfamiliar to readers outside of the USA. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) was a part of the Department of Justice and handled legal and illegal immigration and naturalisation. It ceased to exist in March 2003 and most of its functions were transferred to three new agencies within the newly‐created Department of Homeland Security. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency and the National Security Agency (NSA), a cryptologic intelligence agency of the US government.

2. Life outside school is much more dangerous for children. An average of five US children are killed by their caregivers every day, according to the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect. Further, national education statistics show that during the 1997–98 school year 35 children were murdered in school, compared to 2752 outside the walls of the school (Hancock 2001).