In the past ten years radical educators have developed several theories around the notions of reproduction and resistance. In this article, Henry Giroux critically analyzes the major positions of these theories, finding them inadequate as a foundation for a critical science of schooling. He concludes by outlining the directions for a new theory of resistance and schooling which contains an understanding of how power, resistance, and human agency can become central elements in the struggle for social justice in schools and in society.
In this article, Henry Giroux addresses the corrosive effects of corporate culture on the academy and recent attempts by faculty and students to resist the corporatization of higher education. Giroux argues that neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology of the current historical moment. He shows that civic discourse has given way to the language of commercialization, privatization, and deregulation and that, within the language and images of corporate culture, citizenship is portrayed as an utterly privatized affair that produces self-interested individuals. He maintains that corporate culture functions largely to either ignore or cancel out social injustices in the existing social order by overriding the democratic impulses and practices of civil society through an emphasis on the unbridled workings of market relations. Giroux suggests that these trends mark a hazardous turn in U.S. society, one that threatens our understanding of democracy and affects the ways we address the meaning and purpose of higher education.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.