The myth of meritocracy fuels the misperception that wealth inequalities arise from natural genius and hard work, although empirical evidence proves the contrary: most wealth is inherited intergenerationally rather than earned (Piketty, 2014). Correlatively, the unrealisable dream that there can be equality of opportunity in economically and socially unequal societies is sold to children and teachers, incentivising them with false promises (Mijs, 2016): they imbibe the myth that there can be equality of opportunity without equality of condition, thereby undermining resistance to injustices that are endemic to education in an economically unequal society (Lynch, 2019). Yet, resistance is possible and education can and does play a central role in this.

As Althusser (1971) observed, there are three major institutions of ideology: the media, religion and education. While religion and the media are generally outside democratic control, this is not true of education. Education is a basic human right and is recognised as such in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Moreover, it is recognised as a constitutional right in many countries.

While the status of education as a human right does not guarantee that it can operate as a site to resist injustices, it most certainly challenges it morally and enables it legally to do so. Education is a relatively autonomous field of social practice (Bourdieu, 1993) and, as many chapters in this book demonstrate, educationalists can and do exercise this autonomy in creative and imaginative ways, challenging the values and practices of neoliberalism in many different educational settings.

While the relative autonomy of education enables it to exercise resistance, there is also a moral imperative to do so. Education is, at its foundation, a distributive process: it opens up new ways of knowing the world, facilitating new forms of consciousness and giving access to knowledge (Naidoo, 2015). Given this, resistance to injustice is integral to the very purpose of education itself. Education is compelled to be proactive in defending its foundations as a public good, enabling the unnamed, unknown, unspoken and unthinkable to be thinkable and visible.