If we believe that education ought to be empowering, and that education should aim to reduce social inequality and provide young people with the skills, knowledge and attributes needed to truly be participants in a democracy, then, as Clare Land suggests, our knowing needs to be honoured by our actions.

This means we need to consider how to educate ourselves in relation to the issues – find out for ourselves what are the benefits of a neoliberal education system, who is gaining from this system and who is the most affected? Who is maintaining this neoliberal education system? How does neoliberalism oppress us as educators and as students?

Self-education can be accompanied by community education – our reflection around these questions can be shared with others and we can engage in challenging debates with our friends, family and colleagues as we continue to ponder these questions.

Then we have to think about what we could be doing. Do we target our actions towards those who benefit the most from neoliberalism: the leaders/ managers/ policy makers/ bureaucrats? Do we target our actions towards those who are the most affected: the students, those who have unequal access to education, educators who are increasingly constrained and controlled? Both targets are relevant and if we really want change, we ought to be thinking about both.

Here working collectively is important – no one person can do it all, although we know throughout history that one person can make a huge difference to the world (Ghandi, Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King for example). Once we begin to work collectively we also have to engage with inter-sectionality – the interaction between different forms of privilege and oppression. It is possible for example to be a student experiencing neoliberal oppression in terms of access to education and simultaneously experiencing oppression through gender and/or sexual identity and/or ethnicity. How do we, living with our own versions of privilege, make sure that we do not oppress others in our fight to address neoliberalism?

Building collaborations means working with allies, those who identify the oppression and want to resist and/or challenge it.

A good ally is committed, willing to put time into the collective and understands the importance of working democratically, even when collaborative decision-making appears to result in long delays and even lack of action. A good ally understands the risks in resistance and is willing to support collaborators who are punished for their “disloyalty”.

In academia, such punishments can include lack of promotion, increased monitoring of work and even (in one case I know about) being subjected to a misconduct investigation. However we should not allow this to stop us: remember allowing ourselves to be stalled, to stop trying to take action, is in effect an action in support of neoliberalism. Nor can we allow ourselves to be made so busy that we fail to engage and to act. As Prue Gell once said, being busy is not sufficient justification for doing nothing.