(Skip to the 4:40 mark if you don't understand Spanish)
How can we combat the present deterioration of democracy, the rise of
authoritarian powers, and the increasing precariousness of life? For
Henry Giroux, the solution necessarily entails unmasking the ultimate
causes of these evils: ignorance and the assault on critical thought.
According to Giroux, the great triumph of neoliberalism has been its
erasing of other social alternatives and imposing its own model of
society which is based on a culture of immediacy and monetisation, on
competition instead of cooperation, and unbridled individualism instead
of solidarity. In combatting this increasing degradation of society,
Giroux champions the school as a crucial bastion of democracy. He
believes that education is central to politics and the struggle for
knowledge, power, and agency. It is in education where the seed of a
critical sensibility is planted, where a radical imagination is
cultivated so that new social scenarios can be devised, and a feeling of
community and political responsibility can be re-established. This is
why the school constitutes the first and perhaps the most important
space of democracy.
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