Education and the Crisis of Youth: Schooling and the Promise of Democracy

Abstract

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 a substantive democracy, emphasizing the importance of critical pedagogy in providing students with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind that prepare them to be engaged, critical citizens.

Acknowledgments

This article draws, in part, from “Youth and the Politics of Disposability: Resisting the Assault on Education and American Youth,” by Henry A. Giroux, published in the Winter 2007 issue of State of Nature.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most recent books include The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (2007) and Against the Terror of Neoliberalism (2008). His primary research areas are cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education.