PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Giroux, Henry
TI  - Obama's Dilemma: Postpartisan Politics and the Crisis of American Education
AID  - 10.17763/haer.79.2.x576782u27885513
DP  - 2009 Jul 01
TA  - Harvard Educational Review
PG  - 250--266
VI  - 79
IP  - 2
4099  - http://harvardeducationalreview.org/content/79/2/250.short
4100  - http://harvardeducationalreview.org/content/79/2/250.full
SO  - herp2009 Jul 01; 79
AB  - In this essay, Henry Giroux frames the election of Barack Obama as an opportunity to shed the outdated neoliberal perspectives of previous presidential administrations and to recreate democracy and education for this new age. He argues that education must be reconceived as a tool for instituting the democratic values and social consciousness required for broad social change, and he questions the extent to which Obama's "postpartisan" political approach will move our society away from a preoccupation with markets and toward a greater sense of civic responsibility. Critiquing current approaches to education reform, Giroux identifies an inherent conflict between Obama's professed commitment to instating democratic equality and his appointment of Arne Duncan as secretary of education.