Obama's Dilemma: Postpartisan Politics and the Crisis of American Education

2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Giroux
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
New Age ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Civic Responsibility ◽  
American Education ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Democracy And Education

In this essay, Henry Giroux frames the election of Barack Obama as an opportunity to shed the outdated neoliberal perspectives of previous presidential administrations and to recreate democracy and education for this new age. He argues that education must be reconceived as a tool for instituting the democratic values and social consciousness required for broad social change, and he questions the extent to which Obama's "postpartisan" political approach will move our society away from a preoccupation with markets and toward a greater sense of civic responsibility. Critiquing current approaches to education reform, Giroux identifies an inherent conflict between Obama's professed commitment to instating democratic equality and his appointment of Arne Duncan as secretary of education.

Equality, Liberty, and Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kiel
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Double Helix ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Education Law ◽  
Student Diversity ◽  
American Education ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Educational Challenges ◽  
The Future ◽  
1960S And 1970S

This chapter traces the arc of American education, describing how the tension between liberty and equality has shaped education law and policy every step of the way. The chapter begins by exploring the origins of American education, including the equality-minded adoption of compulsory education and common schools and the liberty-minded desire for parents to control elements of their children’s education. Next, the chapter expands to consideration of equality and liberty in the education of groups. This includes the equality revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s during which schooling became more inclusive of multiple groups of students, and also the liberty-based backlash to those revolutions pursuing greater local control and self-determination. The chapter then highlights the liberty and equality-based tensions impacting contemporary education reform, such as the standards and choice movements. Finally, the chapter looks to the future, arguing that advances in technology, increasing student diversity, and unprecedented flux in the structure of American education will force continued balancing of the values of liberty and equality. Ultimately, the chapter argues that these core democratic impulses—liberty and equality—form a double helix at the core of many of the conflicts in American education law and policy and that management of the relationship between them will continue to drive how Americans respond to educational challenges of the future.

scholarly journals Can group rights justify the denial of education to children? The Amish in the United States as a case study

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Education ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
State Interference

AbstractMulticulturalism gives preference to group rights over individual rights. This may challenge democratic values. This paper focuses on the Amish denial of education from their adolescents. Criticizing Wisconsin v. Yoder (Wisconsin v. Yoder 406 U.S. 205 (1972)), the paper analyses the power of the Amish community over its members. The main questions are: Is it reasonable to deny the Amish adolescents’ standard American education? What are the limits of state interference in norms of illiberal communities who invoke separatism as a mechanism of cultural and religious preservation?

scholarly journals The Unknown Unknowns of Humanitarian War

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 297-301
Author(s):  
Mohamed S. Helal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
International Community ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
The Press ◽  
Press Office

On March 19, 2011, the United States, its European allies, and its Arab partners launched an eight-month intervention in Libya. This was said to be necessary because Mu'amar Gaddafi, Libya's longtime ruler, was responding to mass protests against his over forty-year dictatorial reign by waging war on his own people. As President Barack Obama explained, without international intervention “the calls of the Libyan people for help would go unanswered. The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun. Moreover, the words of the international community would be rendered hollow.”

What Rough Beast: Neo-African Literature and the Force of Social Change

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Author(s):  
William Cook
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
William Butler Yeats ◽  
African Literature ◽  
New Age ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
The World ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
Second Coming

The Second ComingTurning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 5The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 10The Second Comingl Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desertA shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 15Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 20And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?William Butler YeatsChinua Achebe in 1959 turned to the above poem by Yeats, with its prophecy of the approach of a new age, for the title to his first novel. Ezekiel Mphalhlele in the same year chose lines seven and eight of the same powm as the epigraph to his autobiographical Down Second Avenue. This convergence upon one of the most foreboding images in modern poetry is not an accident. Both writers saw their own experiences of loss of order and future debilitation confirmed within the lines of Yeat’s apocalyptic poem. Viewed within the context of Yeats’ theory of 2000-year gyres, this vision becomes even more ominous.

Anti-intellectualism and education reform

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (7) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Johann N. Neem
Keyword(s):  
Education Reform ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Central Place ◽  
American Education ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Liberal Arts And Sciences

It is a strange and sobering experience to read Hofstadter in our own anti-intellectual era. If anything, left-leaning intellectuals’ sense of alienation has increased since the 1990s. To challenge anti-intellectualism in American education, the liberal arts and sciences will need to be restored to their central place in the curriculum.

Betsy DeVos’s Education Reform Agenda: What Principals—and Their Publics—Need to Know

2018 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie S. Kaplan ◽  
William A. Owings
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
Charter School ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
American Education ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Education Leaders

Betsy DeVos, the new U.S. Secretary of Education, has a reform agenda to advance school choice. Her track record includes enabling charter school growth in Michigan at taxpayers’ expense with little oversight or accountability. Although an effective advocate, DeVos represents a broader policy movement to privatize American education, much of it happening beneath public awareness. Understanding Ms. DeVos’s policy goals, how the President and Congress are supporting these, and how privatization is occurring in states can help principals and education leaders recognize the stakes, learn what to watch for, and take appropriate actions to preserve and strengthen America’s public schools.

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