This paper is one of two which bring together leading educational researchers to consider some of the key challenges facing democracy and education during the twenty-first century, including rising social and economic inequality, political instability, and the existential threats of global pandemics and climate change. In this paper, key…

"Education and the Crisis of Public Values" examines American society's shift away from democratic public values, the ensuing move toward a market-driven mode of education, and the last decade's growing social disinvestment in youth. The book discusses the number of ways that the ideal of public education as a democratic public sphere has been…

This article examines the so-called new school reform movement led by a host of right-wing ideologues, billionaires, and foundations. It argues that instead of being reformers, the latter are part of a counter-revolution in American education to dismantle public schools not because they are failing but because they are public and make a claim,…

Henry Giroux begins this discussion by observing that he thinks there is a lot to be learned about what happens to higher education when authoritarians win elections and a liberal democracy morphs into something else. Giroux believes that under the regime of Donald Trump, higher education is under siege, and its stated purpose to produce the…

This article describes America's descent into madness under the regime of neoliberalism that has emerged in the United States since the late 1970s. In part, this is due to the emergence of a public pedagogy produced by the corporate-owned media that now saturates Americans with a market-driven value system that undermines those formative…

In this paper, the author focuses specifically on how the current crisis regarding teacher layoffs in the United States is being analyzed and addressed through weak reformist discourses and how the hidden order of these discourses is revealed through current policies being implemented to reform existing programs and colleges of education charged…

The Obama presidency has been premised on a commitment to progressive social change in its a repudiation of unfettered free-market capitalism. It also signals the end of an era in which privatization, deregulation, and cut throat competition combined with a massive assault on the social state. While such reforms are welcome, they do not as yet go…

In this article Henry Giroux discusses corporate school reform movement and its detrimental impact on the public school system such as the closure of public schools in cities such as, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York to make way for charter schools. Giroux argues that corporate school reform is not simply obsessed with measurements that degrade…

This article argues that under neoliberal casino capitalism there has been a wholesale attack not only on the social state but also on those public spheres that enable the formative cultures necessary to produce critical agents, engaged subjects, and the literacies necessary to make power and authority accountable. In this instance, the struggle…

This article argues that how we think about education must extend far beyond matters of schooling and include those spaces, practices, discourses and maps of meaning and affect produced through a range of cultural and pedagogical technologies. We live at a time in which the educational influence of the larger culture has become the major force in…

Recounts the recent debate over family values, civic culture, and cinematic violence and considers the implications for educators. Uses this national debate as a case study to investigate efforts to exercise control over and limit the democratization of culture. Argues for an expanded notion of civic culture. (MJP)

Suggests that corporate culture is undermining distinctions between higher education and business and that universities are losing sight of the values of civil society that cannot be measured in the marketplace. Advocates a rigorous, democratic, and uncommodified curriculum that explores the meaning of citizenship and promotes critical thinking.…

Public and higher education have fallen prey to forces of commercialization, privatization, and market considerations that undermine civic and critical learning while devaluing young people as a referent for a democratic and just future. This article criticizes this position and makes a case for reclaiming such vital institutions as fundamental to…

Discusses the sociopolitical function of the school, shows how that is accomplished in the classroom, and explains that present practice supports student alienation. Recommends an alternative set of values and social processes for use in the social studies promoting equality, community, and humanistic social interaction. (CK)

This article provides a case study of how a business culture imposes modes of educational leadership on a public school system in New York City that has little if any concerns for empowering children, teachers, and the communities. The article provides a counter-narrative that serves to dispel the notion that the culture of educational empowerment…