Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education. Henry A. Giroux
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among educators and the general public about the death of democratic schooling and the institutional support it provides for critical dialogue, nurturing the imagination, and creating a space of inclusiveness and critical teaching. Given that educators and others now live in a democracy emptied of any principled meaning, the ability of human beings to imagine a more equitable and just world becomes more difficult. I would hope educators, of all groups, would be the most vocal and militant in challenging this assumption by making clear that at the heart of any notion of a substantive democracy is the assumption that learning should be used to expand the public good, create a culture of questioning, and promote democratic social change. Individual and social agency become meaningful as part of the willingness to think in oppositional, if not utopian, terms “in order to help us find our way to a more human future.”39 Under such circumstances, knowledge can be used for amplifying human freedom and promoting social justice, not for simply creating profits. The diverse terrains of critical education and critical pedagogy offer some insights for addressing these issues, and we would do well to learn as much as possible from them in order to expand the meaning of the political and revitalize the pedagogical possibilities of cultural politics and democratic struggles. The late Pierre Bourdieu has argued that intellectuals need to create new ways for doing politics by investing in political struggles through a permanent critique of the abuses of authority and power, especially under the reign of neoliberalism. Bourdieu wanted educators to use their skills and knowledge to break out of the microcosm of academia and the classroom, combine scholarship with commitment, and “enter into sustained and vigorous exchange with the outside world (especially with unions, grassroots organizations, and issue-oriented activist groups) instead of being content with waging the ‘political’ battles, at once intimate and ultimately, and always a bit unreal, of the scholastic universe.”40
At a time when our civil liberties are being destroyed and public institutions and goods all over the world are under assault by the forces of a rapacious global capitalism, there is a concrete urgency on the horizon that demands not only the most engaged forms of political opposition on the part of teachers but also new modes of resistance and collective struggle buttressed by rigorous intellectual work, social responsibility, and political courage. The time has come for educators to distinguish caution from cowardice and recognize the need for addressing the dire crisis public education is now facing. As Jacques Derrida reminds us, democracy “demands the most concrete urgency . . . because as a concept it makes visible the promise of democracy, that which is to come.”41 We have seen glimpses of such a promise among those brave students and workers who have demonstrated in Montreal, Paris, London, Athens, Toronto, Mexico City, and many other cities across the globe.
As engaged intellectuals, teachers can learn from such struggles by turning the colleges and public schools into vibrant critical sites of learning and unconditional spheres of pedagogical and political resistance. The power of the existing dominant order does not merely reside in the economic or in material relations of power, but also in the realm of ideas and culture. This is why educators must take sides, speak out, and engage in the hard pedagogical work of debunking corporate culture’s assault on teaching and learning, orient their teaching for social change, and connect learning to public life. At the very least, educators can connect knowledge to the operations of power in their classroom, providing a safe space for students to address a variety of important issues ranging from the violation of human rights to crimes against humanity. Assuming the role of public intellectual suggests being a provocateur in the classroom; it means asking hard questions, listening carefully to what students have to say, and pushing teaching against the grain. But it also means stepping out of the classroom and working with others to create public spaces where it becomes possible not only to “shift the way people think about the moment but potentially to energize them to do something differently in that moment,” to link one’s critical imagination with the possibility of activism in the public sphere.42 This is, of course, a small step, but if we do not want to repeat the present as the future or, even worse, become complicit in the workings of dominant power, it is time for educators to collectively mobilize their energies by breaking down the illusion of unanimity that dominant power propagates while working diligently, tirelessly, and collectively to reclaim the promises of a truly global, democratic future. There is no room for a dystopian pedagogy in a democratic society because it destroys the foundation for a formative culture necessary to provide the modes of shared sociality and social agents who possess the knowledge, skills, and values that support an ongoing collective struggle for democratization. In light of the current neoliberal assault on all democratic public spheres, along with the urgency of the problems faced by those marginalized because of their class, race, age, or sexual orientation, I think it is all the more crucial to imagine a politics that both challenges and rejects the dystopian “dreamworlds” of consumption, privatization, deregulation, and the neverending search for accumulating profits. At the heart of such a struggle is the need for a new radical imagination—in this case, one that is willing to develop new social movements, a fresh language for politics, an intense struggle to preserve the democratic educational possibilities of higher education, and alternative public spheres. All of which are crucial to sustain a democratic formative culture to challenge the neoliberal authoritarianism that generates massive social inequality, deepens market savagery, promotes massive privatization, and unleashes a global war against any viable notion of social citizenship and critical education.
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