Cultural Politics & the Promise of Democracy
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This book examines the relationship between democracy and schooling and argues that schools are one of the few spheres left where youth can learn the knowledge and skills necessary to become engaged, critical citizens. Not only is the legacy of democracy addressed through the work of John Dewey and others, but the democratic possibilities of schooling are analyzed through a range of issues extending from the politics of teacher authority to the importance of student voices. These issues have only become more vital in an era of neoliberalism and "smaller government," as Giroux discusses at length in this new updated edition.
With its dream worlds of power, commercialization, and profit making, neoliberalism has ushered in new Gilded Age in which the logic of the market now governs every aspect of media, culture, and social life from schooling to health care to old age. As the social contract becomes a distant memory, the new corporate state distances itself from workers and minority groups, who become more disposable in a new age of uncertainty and manufactured fear. This is the only book to connect the history, ideology, and consequences of neoliberal policies to education and cultural issues that pervade almost every aspect of daily life. A significantly revised and updated new version of Giroux s 2003 book, "The Terror of Neoliberalism," this book points to ways in which neoliberal ideology can be resisted, and how new forms of citizenship and collective struggles can be forged, to reclaim the meaning both of a substantive politics and of a democratic society.Read a review at http: //www.dissidentvoice.org"Against the Terror of Neoliberalism" was featured in the New York Times in the Stanley Fish blog: Stanley Fish Blog"