Democracy and the Obama Presidency

As the editor of the Journal of Educational Controversy, I would like to welcome you to our new blog. Although our journal has a rejoinder section for formal, refereed responses, we thought there needed to be a public space for more spontaneous discussion. Our current issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters" appeared before the historic events of November 4th that saw the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Henry Giroux, who wrote the article, "Education and the Crisis of Democracy: Confronting Authoritarianism in a post 9/11 America," for that issue of our journal has posted a follow up in light of the Obama election. We have decided to publish it as a separate post and invite our readers to contribute their comments and responses.

POST FROM AUTHOR, HENRY GIROUX

Obama and the Promise of Education

Needless to say, like many Americans, I am both delighted and cautious about Barack Obama's election. Symbolically, this is an unprecedented moment in the fight against the legacy of racism while at the same time offering new possibilities for addressing how racism works in a post-Obama period. Politically, I think it puts a break on many authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies operating both domestically and abroad, while offering a foothold not only for a fresh critique of neoliberal and neoconservative policies but also an opportunity to reclaim and energize the language of the social contract and social democracy. While the Bush administration may have been uninterested in critical ideas, debate, and dialogue, it was almost rabid about destroying the economic, political, and educational conditions that make them possible. In the end, the Bush administration was willing to sacrifice almost any remnant of democracy to further the interests of the rich and powerful, especially those commanded by corporate power. The Obama administration will fail badly if it does not connect the current financial and credit crisis to the crisis of democracy and its poisonous undoing by commanding market forces. Corporate power, rather than simply deregulation, has to be addressed head on if any of the ensuing reforms undertaken by the Obama administration are going to work. Similarly, the social state has to be resurrected once again against the power and interest of the corporate state, and that battle is not just economic and political but also pedagogical. Of course, the last thing we need is to overly romanticize the Obama election. We don't need lone heroes offering a path to salvation and hope. Obama's victory is not about the gripping story of his personal journey and ultimate victory as a Black man, but about the emergence of a certain moment in history when not only small difference matter, but new possibilities appear for making real claims on the promise of democracy to come. What this historic event should make clear is the necessity for various progressive and left-oriented groups to get beyond their isolated demands and form a powerful progressive movement that can push Obama to the left rather than allow him to drift to the center and right. Of course, this means that progressives will have to do more than embrace a language of critique, they will also have to engage in a discourse of hope but a hope that is concrete, rooted in real struggles, and capable of forging a new political imagination among a highly conservative and fractured polity. This is an especially important time for educators. New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof recently argued that one of the most remarkable things about this election is that Obama is a practicing intellectual and that the era of anti-intellectualism so pervasive under the Bush administration may be coming to an end. Surely a message that resonates with anyone interested in the power of ideas. But there is more at stake here than an appeal to thoughtfulness, critique, and intelligence, there is also the need to rethink the relationship between education and politics, the production of particular kinds of subjects as a condition of civic life, and the ways in which new and diverse sites of education in the new millennium have proliferated into one of the most powerful political spheres in history. The most important challenge, especially for educators, facing the US in a post Obama period, is to make the pedagogical more political and take seriously the educational force of a culture that is central to creating a new citizen, one that is defined less through the hatred and bigotry of racism and the narrow commodified identities offered through market fundamentalism than through the values, identities, and social relations of a democratic polity.