November 18, 2008

Giroux on Education

Henry Giroux states, in “Obama and the Promise of Education”:

“ One of the most important challenges, especially for educators, facing the US in a post-Bush period, is to take seriously the educational force of a culture that is central to constructing a new type of citizen. What is needed are citizens defined less through the hatred and bigotry of racism and the narrow obligations of consumerism than through the values, identities and social relations of a democratic society. ”

As I’ve learned during the past eight years: democracy cannot be fruitful without an educated, engaged citizenry. Perhaps we can finally put the time of anti-intellectualism behind us.