"Beyond Neoliberal Miseducation" --- Henry Giroux on the Bill Moyers Website.

[bvar22]

Fairly Lengthy,
but worth the read.

Goes into detail on the impact of "NeoLiberal" Free Market Economics,
not just on our Economy, but on the fabric of life in these United States.

Beyond Neoliberal Miseducation

<snip>

Casino capitalism does more than infuse market values into every aspect of higher education; it also wages a full-fledged assault on public goods, democratic public spheres and the role of education in creating an informed and enlightened citizenry. When former presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum argued that intellectuals were not wanted in the Republican Party, he was articulating what has become common sense in a society wedded to narrow instrumentalist values, ignorance as a political tool and a deep-seated fear of civic literacy and a broad-based endorsement of the commons. Critical thinking and a literate public have become dangerous to those who want to celebrate orthodoxy over dialogue, emotion over reason and ideological certainty over thoughtfulness.

Hannah Arendt’s warning that “it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think” at the heart of authoritarian regimes is now embraced as a fundamental tenet of right-wing politicians and pundits and increasingly has become a matter of common sense for the entertainment industry and the dominant media, all primary modes of an education industry that produces consumers, smothers the country in the empty fog of celebrity culture and denounces democracy as tantamount to the enemy of free-market fundamentalism. How else to explain the willingness of so many people today to give up every vestige of privacy to the social media, the government and anyone else interested in collecting data for the most despicable and anti-democratic purposes. Self-interest does more than embrace a new culture of narcissism; it empties out any viable notion of the social, compassion and the ethical imagination.

Right-wing appeals to austerity provide the rationale for slash-and-burn policies intended to deprive government-financed social and educational programs of the funds needed to enable them to work, if not survive. Along with health care, public transportation, Medicare, food stamp programs for low-income children and a host of other social protections, higher education is being defunded as part of a larger scheme to dismantle and privatize all public services, goods and spheres.

The passion for public values has given way to the ruthless quest for profits and the elevation of self-interests over the common good. The educational goal of expanding the capacity for critical thought and the outer limits of the imagination have given way to the instrumental desert of a mind-deadening audit culture. But there is more at work here than the march toward privatization and the never-ending search for profits at any cost; there is also the issue of wasteful spending on a bloated war machine, the refusal to tax fairly the rich and corporations, the draining of public funds for the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ongoing consolidation of class power in the hands of the 1 percent.

<much more>

http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/20/beyond-neoliberal-miseducation/

[malaise]

1. Thanks for this

[Catherina]

2. Proud to be the first rec. Excellent article. Excellent last paragraph too about enlightenment n/t

[malaise]

3. I just sent this to several friends

It's really excellent

[Catherina]

5. I did too! To 2 teacher who are actively protesting what they're doing

Can you share what happened to Jamaica's schools when the IMF stepped in with their Austerity Cut crimes?

[dgauss]

6. Insightful article about the invasion of the corporate culture and mindset

into areas where it is destructive, especially education. I think the last paragraph you mention is worth quoting here:

The transformation of higher education into an adjunct of corporate control conjures up the image of a sorcerer’s apprentice, of an institution that has become delusional in its infatuation with neoliberal ideology, values and modes of instrumental pedagogy. Universities now claim that they are providing a service and in doing so not only demean any substantive notion of governance, research and teaching, but also abstract education from any sense of civic responsibility. Higher education reneged on enlightenment ideals and lost its sense of democratic mission, but it also increasingly offers no defense to the “totalitarianism that haunts the modern ideal of political emancipation.” [17] Driven by an audit culture and increasingly oblivious to the demands of a democracy for an informed and critical citizenry, it now devours its children, disregards its faculty and resembles an institution governed by myopic accountants who should be ashamed of what they are proud of. The university needs to be reclaimed as a crucial public sphere where administrators, faculty and students can imagine what a free and substantive democracy might look like and what it means to make education relevant to such a crucial pedagogical and political task. This could be a first step in taking back higher education as a precondition for developing a broad-based social movement for the defense of public goods, one capable of both challenging the regime of casino capitalism and re-imagining a society in which democracy lives up to its promises and ideals.

[Catherina]

15. +1 Thanks for posting it n/t

[Catherina]

4. Thread on same subject: "The right wing destruction of public schools (and SOME libs are complicit"

"The right wing destruction of public schools (and SOME libs are complicit in this)" posted by Sarah Ibarruri

It has a great video in it

[malaise]

12. Thanks

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. This was already starting when I left academia in 1993

Increased vocationalism, increased bureaucracy, increased paperwork and meetings for teaching faculty, more use of underpaid adjuncts, even though the adjuncts are just as qualified as the professors; less time or encouragement for the students to read, question, or enjoy cultural pursuits.

That's what I hear from people who are still in academia, especially at state universities.

[malaise]

8. Correct but the sad truth is that most of the academics remained silent

when the ancillary workers and groundsmen were forced into contracts and their benefits removed. They never thought this neo-liberal madness would reach them.

[xchrom]

9. du rec.

[Eleanors38]

10. We are a Corporate State. Why? No opposition.nt

[bvar22]

14. There IS opposition, but you won't see it on your TV.

Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (thanks Bill),
a handful of very RICH guys were allowed to buy themselves a monopoly of the Media Outlets in the USA.

Since then, all the "news" and "opinion" on the MSM seems to support policy that transfers WEALTH into the pockets of the very RICH guys, and demonizes "Government Spending" and "Entitlements".
Funny how THAT happened.

[woo me with science]

11. K&R

[jsr]

13. Recommend

[woo me with science]

16. kick

[Jefferson23]

17. Chomsky's OP on this topic offers similar support for what has occurred. Great piece. K&R

snip*The transformation of higher education in the United States and abroad is evident in a number of registers. These include decreased support for programs of study that are not business-oriented; reduced funds for research that does not increase profit; the replacement of shared forms of governance with rigid business management models; the lessening of financial support for academic fields that promote critical thinking rather than an entrepreneurial culture; the ongoing exploitation of faculty labor; and the use of purchasing power as the vital measure of a student’s identity, worth and access to higher education.