Lecture by Henry Giroux

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.