Neo-Liberalism, Globalization and Human Capital Learning: Reclaiming Education for Democratic Citizenship

Education for living or earning a living? To what degree should schooling be the same for all students? What is the critical part that school has to play as a core democratic institution in educating citizens who are ready to engage and commit themselves to the idea of social change and progress toward increased levels of social equality? The answers to these questions have preoccupied generations of philosophers, educational planners and prac- tioners. Recently, neo-liberal ideology has succeeded in focusing the answer on human capital preparation and instrumental learning as the panacea to the inequalities created by the present global economic order which serves the few at the expense of the many. Through a careful analysis of the historical evidence and based on ideas from progressivism, liberal education and critical theory. The authors reclaim career and vocational education for thick democracy. This definition of democracy has at its core social and economic equality. It means that students have the right to an education that will give them the tools needed to participate in creating the conditions of their career and vocational experience as future workers and citizens.

Throughout the world, neoliberalism functions to decouple learning from the most important elements of civic education, transforming education into training and students into consumers. Neoliberalism, Globalization, and Human Capital Learning is an enormously important book that reveals in painstaking detail how neoliberal ideology destroys critical education. But it does much more. It also provides the insights and tools for educators to both overcome the market-based attack on critical education and address schooling as a democratic public sphere and the classroom as a laboratory for the nurturing of critical agency and social responsibility. This dynamic book should stir a public outcry among concerned citizens and educators through out the globe.

Henry A.Giroux is the Global TV Network Chair at McMaster University and the author of the more recent America on the Edge and Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism.