Page 106 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 106
šolsko polje, letnik xxix, številka 1–2
contempt for reason that has been decades in the making. It also points
to the withering of civic attachments, the undoing of civic culture, the de-
cline of public life and the erosion of any sense of shared citizenship. As
market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of so-
ciety, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if
not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish – from public
schools and alternative media to health care centers– there is also a seri-
ous erosion of the discourse of community, justice, equality, public val-
ues, and the common good. At the same time reason and truth are not
simply contested, or the subject of informed arguments as they should
be, but wrongly vilified – banished to Trump’s poisonous world of fake
news. For instance, under the Trump administration, language has been
pillaged, truth and reason disparaged, and words and phrases emptied of
any substance or turned into their opposite, all via the endless production
of Trump’s Twitter storms and the ongoing clown spectacle of Fox News.
This grim reality points to a failure in the power of the civic imagination,
political will, and open democracy. It is also part of a politics that strips
the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of
education as a public good. What we are witnessing under neoliberalism
is not simply a political project to consolidate power in the hands of the
corporate and financial elite but also a reworking of the very meaning of
literacy and education as crucial to what it means to create an informed
citizenry and democratic society. In an age when literacy and thinking
become dangerous to the anti-democratic forces governing all the com-
manding economic and cultural institutions of the United States, truth
is viewed as a liability, ignorance becomes a virtue, and informed judg-
ments and critical thinking demeaned and turned into rubble and ashes.
Under the reign of this normalized architecture of alleged common sense,
literacy is regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data and science is
confused with pseudo-science. Traces of critical thought appear more and
more at the margins of the culture as ignorance becomes the primary or-
ganizing principle of American society.
Under the forty-year reign of neoliberalism, language has been mili-
tarized, handed over to advertisers, game show idiocy, and a political and
culturally embarrassing anti-intellectualism sanctioned by the White
House. Couple this with a celebrity culture that produces an ecosystem of
babble, shock, and tawdry entertainment. Add on the cruel and clownish
anti-public intellectuals such as Jordan Peterson who defend inequality,
infantile forms of masculinity, and define ignorance and a warrior men-
tality as part of the natural order, all the while dethroning any viable sense
of agency and the political.
104
contempt for reason that has been decades in the making. It also points
to the withering of civic attachments, the undoing of civic culture, the de-
cline of public life and the erosion of any sense of shared citizenship. As
market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of so-
ciety, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if
not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish – from public
schools and alternative media to health care centers– there is also a seri-
ous erosion of the discourse of community, justice, equality, public val-
ues, and the common good. At the same time reason and truth are not
simply contested, or the subject of informed arguments as they should
be, but wrongly vilified – banished to Trump’s poisonous world of fake
news. For instance, under the Trump administration, language has been
pillaged, truth and reason disparaged, and words and phrases emptied of
any substance or turned into their opposite, all via the endless production
of Trump’s Twitter storms and the ongoing clown spectacle of Fox News.
This grim reality points to a failure in the power of the civic imagination,
political will, and open democracy. It is also part of a politics that strips
the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of
education as a public good. What we are witnessing under neoliberalism
is not simply a political project to consolidate power in the hands of the
corporate and financial elite but also a reworking of the very meaning of
literacy and education as crucial to what it means to create an informed
citizenry and democratic society. In an age when literacy and thinking
become dangerous to the anti-democratic forces governing all the com-
manding economic and cultural institutions of the United States, truth
is viewed as a liability, ignorance becomes a virtue, and informed judg-
ments and critical thinking demeaned and turned into rubble and ashes.
Under the reign of this normalized architecture of alleged common sense,
literacy is regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data and science is
confused with pseudo-science. Traces of critical thought appear more and
more at the margins of the culture as ignorance becomes the primary or-
ganizing principle of American society.
Under the forty-year reign of neoliberalism, language has been mili-
tarized, handed over to advertisers, game show idiocy, and a political and
culturally embarrassing anti-intellectualism sanctioned by the White
House. Couple this with a celebrity culture that produces an ecosystem of
babble, shock, and tawdry entertainment. Add on the cruel and clownish
anti-public intellectuals such as Jordan Peterson who defend inequality,
infantile forms of masculinity, and define ignorance and a warrior men-
tality as part of the natural order, all the while dethroning any viable sense
of agency and the political.
104
