What form will the language of criticism and hope look like if it is to address the everyday lives of people caught in the grip of neoliberal common sense?

Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?

language of pollution

neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialized out of grievances against the government, privileged elites and the massive hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism.

For Fisher, capitalist realism functioned less as a crude form of quasi-propaganda than as a pedagogical, social and cultural machine that produces “a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.”

to turn education into a business

Trump built on a longstanding neoliberal project buttressed by an anti-democratic formative culture in which educational institutions have been used to shape market-based identities, modes of agency and collective subjects bound together by the notion that there is no alternative to an unfair and pernicious capitalist social order.

have done everything they can

intervening

If teachers do not have control over the conditions of their labor

while limiting their willingness to believe in something larger than themselves.

neoliberalism has not only achieved dominance

pedagogical terrorism

methods such as teaching for the test

cut across mainstream party lines.

they have aggressively attempted to turn education into a business, faculty into devalued clerks and students into consumers.

instrumentalist

Contemplative Community in Higher Education: A Toolkit

And when each of us steps behind any podium, we are positioned to be listened to, when really we need to be listening.

By the end of this course, you will: Give tongue to interesting thoughts of your own soul; Gain from dialogue the power of truth; Abhor and detest your enslavers; Understand how the silver trump of freedom rouses the soul.

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!

emergence

But Bloom and his team defined knowledge as involving “the recall of specifics and universals, the recall of methods and processes, or the recall of a pattern, structure, or setting.” Which means that by this definition, knowledge is the same as recall.

critical thinking

The value of universities to a capitalist society depends on their ability to resist capitalism, to carve out space for intellectual endeavors that don’t have obvious metrics or market value.

customers

if we imply that history, literature and linguistics are more or less interchangeable “content” that convey the same mental tools, we oversimplify the intellectual complexity that makes a university education worthwhile in the first place.

Yet bureaucratic jargon subtly shapes the expectations of students and teachers alike. On the first day of class, my colleagues and I — especially in the humanities, where professors are perpetually anxious about falling enrollment — find ourselves rattling off the skills our courses offer (“Critical thinking! Clear writing!”), hyping our products like Apple Store clerks.

Here is the second irony: Learning assessment has not spurred discussion of the deep structural problems that send so many students to college unprepared to succeed.

Maybe all your students have full-time jobs

“If you get unprepared students in your class and they don’t do well, how does that get explained?”

and to prove it

lacking the critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills needed in today’s workplaces

It was politically convenient to hold universities accountable for all this, rather than to scrutinize neoliberal austerity measures.

assistant vice president for assessment and institutional effectiveness at Furman University

“I do not feel threatened emotionally when presented with multiple perspectives”

analyticity

certify

skills