Education and the Crisis of Public Values

HENRY A. GIROUX is the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His primary research areas are in cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education. In 2002, he was named as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present. He is on the editorial and advisory boards of many scholarly journals and has published numerous books and articles. His most recent books are America’s Educational Deficit and the War on Youth (2013), Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (2015), and The Violenceof Organized Forgetting (2015). His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.

«I have been reading Henry A. Giroux for decades and in this book he has never been better nor clearer at illuminating the forces that are impairing our democracy and helping to destroy our public schools. Education and the Crisis of Public Values is a marvelously insightful examination of the forces that have changed our nation’s teachers from citizens whom we admired into objects of humiliation – a profession to be shamed and blamed for problems created by our businesses and the politicians who they influence. This trend must be reversed or we lose a necessary part of what makes our democracy possible.» (David Berliner, Regents Professor of Education, Arizona State University)«Henry A. Giroux is a one-of-a-kind gift to civic life, a scholar of immense learning and deep commitment to social justice. For the last three decades, he has written and spoken tirelessly in defense of the public good embedded in public education. This age has been unkind to all amenities in the public sphere and in this toxic time no one has been a stronger champion for education, students and teachers than Giroux. His new book collects his sharpest critiques against privatization and his most articulate defense of public needs. In these pages, we have the intelligence we need to defend civil society against its corporate assailants.» (Ira Shor, City University of New York Graduate Center)«Fresh, original, and articulate, Henry A. Giroux’s newest masterpiece is Education and the Crisis of Public Values. In the context of the increasing corporatization of public education, where academics are defined not as critical intellectuals but as state workers, Giroux calls for substantive and meaningful reform – reform that values engaged citizenship, civic courage, and a genuine embracing of freedom and justice. This book is an impassioned plea for our future. We all would do well to heed his call.» (Gary A. Olson, Provost and Vice President, Idaho State University)«Teachers and students have long been on the receiving end of attacks by the state and corporate power. They should take heart from and draw strength from thibook by Henry A. Giroux, one of critical pedagogy’s most powerful advocates. He is the scourge of those who endorse the commodification of education and partake of the war on children and youth. He is also a great source of inspiration to those who continue to regard education as a public good and an important feature of a substantive democracy.» (Peter Mayo, University of Malta)

• Contents: Reversing the Authoritarian Assault on Public Education – Henry A. Giroux: In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis – When Generosity Hurts: Bill Gates, Public School Teachers, and the Politics of Humiliation – Teachers Without Jobs and Education Without Hope: Beyond Bailouts and the Fetish of the Measurement Trap – Chartering Disaster: Why Duncan’s Corporate-Based Schools Can’t Deliver an Education That Matters – Dumbing Down Teachers: Attacking Colleges of Education in the Name of Reform – Business Culture and the Death of Public Education: Mayor Bloomberg, David Steiner, and the Politics ofCorporate «Leadership» – Public Intellectuals, the Politics of Clarity, and the Crisis of Language – Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Bearing Witness.