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

With a highly accessible and lucid text this book reviews the political shift toward neo-liberal ideology and explores its tremendous impact on education. It maps out in careful detail the theoretical foundations of democratic citizenship by asking the question: What does it mean to learn and live in a democracy and what responsibilities, capacities and knowledge does a citizen need to fulfill these requirements? From the Back Cover 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.