Death-Dealing Politics in the Age of Extreme Violence
Monday, 26 January 2015 09:52 By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis- font size
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(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)
How a society treats its children is a powerful moral and political index of its commitment to the institutions, values and principles that inform the promises of a real democracy. When measured against such criteria, it is clear that the United States has not only failed, but it is on life support. According to a report released by the Southern Education Foundation, for the first time in history, half of US public school children live in poverty, and the United States has the fourth highest child poverty rate among developed countries. Moreover, 1.3 million homeless children are enrolled in US schools, and the United States incarcerates young people at a rate and in numbers that are shameful. (1) As Jana Kasperkevic points out:
Those numbers are representative of the growing problem of child poverty in the US. Overall, one in five US children lives in poverty. It has only recently been dropping, with 14.7 million US children living in poverty in 2013, down from 16.1 million in 2012. In 2012, out of 35 economically developed countries, only Romania had a higher child poverty rate than the US. (2)
With the social contract all but dead, children no longer count for much in a society that makes virtues out of self-interest and greed, and measures success almost entirely in terms of the accumulation of capital. Under the regime of a ruthless neoliberalism, children and their working-class families have become the new casualties of a system that brazenly disdains the rule of law, compassion and a concern for others. Systemic inequality has become one of the weapons now used not only against working families and the middle class, but also in the war on youth.
When it comes to educational policy, the logic of privatization and capital accumulation is the real force at work in destroying public schools, and it's done ironically under the name of reform.
Paul Buchheit, in his piece "The Reality Tale of Two Education Systems," maps out how systemic inequality needlessly ruins the lives of millions of young people in the public school system. (3) He makes clear that public schools succeed when there are less children who suffer from the debilitating effects of poverty. He points to the success of schools that are adequately funded, the importance of adequate support for early childhood education and programs such as Head Start, all of which have been defunded by the new extremists and will be further defunded as long as the apostles of free-market fundamentalism are in power. Impoverished schools are now matched by educational polices and classroom practices, such as teaching for the test, that impose on students an authoritarian regimen of repressive discipline and conformity. A pedagogy of repression that attacks unions, discredits teachers and punishes children has become the new norm in the United States, and it is backed by members of both the Democratic and Republican parties. When it comes to educational policy, the logic of privatization and capital accumulation is the real force at work in destroying public schools, and it's done ironically under the name of reform.
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