Introduction to Chapter from The Abandoned Generation written for this issue

ed from the ideal of public commitment, the new authoritarianism represents a political and economic practice and form of militarism that loosens the connection among substantive democracy, critical agency, and critical education. In opposition to the rising tide of authoritarianism, educators must make a case for linking learning to social change, pluralizing and critically engaging the diverse sites where public pedagogy takes place, and must make clear that every sphere of social life is open to political contestation and comprises a crucial site of political, social, and cultural struggle in the attempt to forge the knowledge, identifications, affective investments, and social relations which constitute a political subject and social agent capable of energizing and spreading the basis of a global radical democracy. Educators need to develop a new discourse whose aim is to foster democratic politics and pedagogy that embody the legacy and principles of social justice, equality, freedom, and rights associated with the democratic concerns of history, space, plurality, power, discourse, identities, morality, and the future. 4 Journal of Educational Controversy, Vol. 3, No. 1 [2008], Art. 8 http://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol3/iss1/8 Under such circumstances, pedagogy must be embraced as a moral and political practice, one that is both directive and the outgrowth of struggles designed to resist the increasing depoliticization of political culture that is the hallmark of the current Bush revolution. Education is the terrain where consciousness is shaped; needs are constructed; and the capacity for self­reflection and social change is nurtured and produced. Education has assumed an unparalleled significance in shaping the language, values, and ideologies which legitimate the structures and organizations that support the imperatives of global capitalism. Rather than being simply a technique or methodology, education has become a crucial site for the production and struggle over those pedagogical and political conditions that offer up the possibilities for people to believe it is possible to develop forms of agency that enable them individually and collectively to intervene into the processes through which the material relations of power shape the meaning and practices of their everyday lives. Within the current historical context, struggles over power take on a symbolic and discursive as well as a material and institutional form. The struggle over education is about more than the struggle over meaning and identity; it is also about how meaning, knowledge, and values are produced, legitimated, and operate within economic and structural relations of power. Education is not at odds with politics; it is an important and crucial element in any definition of the notion of the political and offers not only the theoretical tools for a systemic critique of authoritarianism, but also a language of possibility for creating actual movements for democratic social change. At stake here is combining an interest in symbolic forms and processes conducive to democratization with broader social contexts and the institutional formations of power itself. The key point here is to understand and engage educational and pedagogical practices from the point of view of how they are bound up with larger relations of power. Educators, students, and parents need to be clearer about how power works through and in texts, representations, and discourses while at the same time recognizing that power cannot be limited to the study of representations and discourses. Changing consciousness is not the same as altering the institutional basis of oppression, but at the same time institutional reform cannot take place without a change in consciousness capable of recognizing the very need for such reform or the need to reinvent the conditions and practices that make it possible. In addition, it is crucial to raise questions about the relationship between pedagogy and civic culture, on the one hand, and what it takes for individuals and social groups to believe that they have any responsibility whatsoever to even address the realities of class, race, gender, and other specific forms of domination, on the other. For too long, educators, progressives, and other concerned citizens have ignored that the issue of politics as an ideal and set of strategies is inextricably connected to the issue of critical education and to what it means to acknowledge that education is always tangled up with power, ideologies, values, and the acquisition of both particular forms of agency and specific visions of the future. Finally, I want to return to the question of youth: Youth signifies in all of its diversity the possibilities and the fears adults must face when they re­imagine the future while shaping the present. To the degree that large segments of youth are excluded from the language, rights, and obligations of democracy indicates the degree to which many adults have abandoned the language, practice, and responsibilities of critical citizenship and civic responsibility. This is a lesson that cannot be ignored in light of the endless number of tragedies youth face daily in this country, including lack of food, decent schools, health insurance, and a positive sense of the future. There can be little doubt that American society is failing its children. The crisis of youth represents the crisis of democracy writ large. Educators need to focus attention on this crisis and work with others to address the complex issues that define and the resources and strategies needed to address it. We need to approach educational reform as a question of political and moral leadership and not simply as an issue of management. As engaged educators, we need to honor the lives of children by asking important questions such as what schools should accomplish in a democracy and why they fail, and how can such a failure be understood within a broader set of political, economic, spiritual, and cultural relations. Educators need to remind ourselves in this time of emerging authoritarianism that militarism and consumerism should not be the only forms of citizenship offered to our children, and that schools should function to serve the public good 5 Giroux: Introduction to Chapter from The Abandoned Generation Published by Western CEDAR, 2008 and provide young people with the knowledge and skills they need to struggle for a future in which they can glimpse the promise of a real democracy.