The safetyfication of curriculum as an example of bureaucratic governance

Abstract

This presentation takes up what Author 1 terms the “safetyfication” of education. Safetyfication refers to the process through which the notion of ‘safety’ has acquired an omnipresent status in education in the Anglophone world as a result of an amalgam of claims that range from disciplinary calls to social justice demands. In this paper-presentation, the authors will analyze attempts to make the curriculum safer – or free from sociopolitical risk – under Author 2’s political analysis of bureaucracy as a form of governance (2018; 2023). The main argument made is that this form of governance operates inadvertently, through the safetyfication of education.