In light of this dystopian attempt to remove education from any notion of critique, dialogue, and empowerment, it would be an understatement to suggest that there is something very wrong with US public and higher education. For a start, this counterrevolution is giving rise to punitive evaluation schemes, harsh disciplinary measures, and the ongoing deskilling of many teachers that together are reducing many excellent educators to the debased status of technicians and security personnel. Additionally, as more and more wealth is distributed to the richest Americans and corporations, states are drained of resources and are shifting the burden of their deficits onto public schools and other vital public services. With 40 percent of wealth going to the top 1 percent, public services are drying up from lack of revenue, and more and more young people find themselves locked out of the dream of getting a decent education or a job, robbed of any hope for the future.11
While the nation’s schools and infrastructure suffer from a lack of resources, right-wing politicians are enacting policies that lower the taxes of the rich and megacorporations. For the elite, taxes are seen as constituting a form of class warfare waged by the state against the rich, who view the collection of taxes as a form of state coercion. What is ironic in this argument is the startling fact that not only are the rich not taxed fairly but they also receive billions in corporate subsidies. But there is more at stake here than untaxed wealth and revenue; there is also the fact that wealth corrupts and buys power. And this poisonous mix of wealth, politics, and power translates into an array of antidemocratic practices that have created an unhealthy society in every major index ranging from infant mortality rates to a dysfunctional political system.12
Hidden in this hollow outrage by the wealthy is the belief that the real enemy is any form of government that needs to raise revenue in order to build and maintain infrastructures, provide basic services for those who need them, and develop investments such as a transportation system and schools that are not tied to the logic of the market. One consequence of this vile form of actual class warfare is a battle over crucial resources, a battle that has dire political and educational consequences especially for the poor and middle classes, if not democracy itself. This battle in the United States is particularly fierce over the issue of taxes. As David Theo Goldberg points out, neoliberal ideology makes clear—as part of its project of hollowing out public institutions—that “paying taxes has devolved from a central social responsibility to a game of creative work-arounds. Today, taxes are not so much the common contribution to cover the costs of social benefits and infrastructure relative to one’s means, as they are a burden to be avoided.”13
Money no longer simply controls elections; it also controls policies that shape public education, if not practically all other social, cultural, and economic institutions.14 One indicator of such corruption is that hedge fund managers now sit on school boards across the country, doing everything in their power to eliminate public schools and punish unionized teachers who do not support charter schools. In New Jersey hundreds of teachers have been sacked because of alleged budget deficits. Not only is Governor Christie using the deficit argument to fire teachers, he also uses it to break unions and balance the budget on the backs of students and teachers. How else to explain Christie’s refusal to endorse reinstituting the “millionaires’ taxes,” or his craven support for lowering taxes on the top twenty-five hedge fund officers in New Jersey, who in 2009 raked in $25 billion, enough to fund 658,000 entry-level teachers?15
In this conservative right-wing reform culture, the role of public and higher education, if we are to believe the Heritage Foundation and billionaires such as Bill Gates, is to produce students who laud conformity, believe job training is more important than education, and view public values as irrelevant. While Gates, former DC education chancellor Michelle Rhee, and secretary of education Arne Duncan would argue they are the true education reformers, the fact of the matter is that education in their view is tied to job training, quantitative measurements, and the development of curricula to prepare students for particular occupations. Teaching to the test, undercutting the power of teachers, and removing subjects such as art, literature, music, and critical thinking from the school curriculum are at the core of their conservative vision for reform. Moreover, their relentless attempts to turn public schools into charter schools are in direct opposition to their claims that their policies serve the public good and empower young people, especially poor minorities. Students in this corporate-driven world view are no longer educated for democratic citizenship. On the contrary, they are being trained to fulfill the need for human capital.16 At the same time, this emphasis on defining schools through an audit culture and various accountability regimes conveniently allows the financial elite to ignore those forces that affect schools such as poverty, unemployment, poor health care, inequality, and other important social and economic forces. Removing matters of equity from issues of excellence and learning also makes it easier for right-wing foundations and conservative foundations to blame teachers and unions for the failure of schools, making it all the easier to turn public schools, universities, and colleges over to for-profit forces.
What is lost in this approach to schooling is what Noam Chomsky describes as “creating creative and independent thought and inquiry, challenging perceived beliefs, exploring new horizons and forgetting external constraints.”17 At the same time, public schools and colleges are under assault not because they are failing (though some are) but because they are one of the few public spheres left where people can learn the knowledge and skills necessary to allow them to think critically and hold power and authority accountable. It is worth repeating that not only are the lines between the corporate world and public and higher education blurring, but all modes of education (except for the elite) are being reduced to what Peter Seybold calls a “corporate service station,” in which the democratic ideals at the heart of public and higher education are up for sale.18 At the heart of this crisis of education are larger questions about the formative culture necessary for a democracy to survive, the nature of civic education and teaching in dark times, the role of educators as civic intellectuals, and what it means to understand the purpose and meaning of education as a site of individual and collective empowerment.
This current right-wing emphasis on low-level skills distracts the US public from examining the broader economic, political, and cultural forces that bear down on schools. Matters concerning the influence on schools of corporations, textbook publishers, commercial industries, and the national security state are rendered invisible, as if schools and the practices they promote exist in a bubble. At work here is a dystopian pedagogy that displaces, infantilizes, and depoliticizes both students and large segments of the US public. Under the current regime of neoliberalism, schools have been transformed into a private right rather than a public good. Students are being educated to become consumers rather than thoughtful, critical citizens. Increasingly, as public schools are put in the hands of for-profit corporations, hedge fund elites, and other market-driven sources, their value is derived from their ability to turn a profit and produce compliant students eager to join the workforce.19
What is truly scandalous about the current dismantling of and disinvestment