Forthcoming from Ohio State University Press, 2027.

In the last twenty-five years, brain-based arguments, or neuropolicy arguments, have profoundly affected education policy in the United States. However, to date, no scholarly monographs address neuropolicy from a rhetorical perspective. Accordingly, this book draws on rhetorical theory to articulate how neuropolicy arguments work, focusing on debates that relate to children’s brains and how they should be educated.

My argument is that neuropolicy works by doing more than simply providing scientific evidence that is then rationally weighed with relation to a proposed policy. Instead, I argue that neuropolicy involves the more subjective act of imagining alternative futures and choosing among them, or what Aristotle termed phantasia bouleutike. Policy discourses engage phantasia to motivate audiences to mental judgment. Neuropolicy rhetoric structures audience perceptions of a nation “falling behind” and offers visions of the future in which the brain functions as a space of possibility and growth. It does so by using terms such as “brain activation” or “neural development” alongside broader arguments and images of failing schools, dysregulated children, and ineffective curricula. To support this argument, this book tracks how audiences have been collectively led to envision education and the role of the brain in learning from the 1950s to the present.