Nobody wants to be a statistic, but on reading the following, many kossacks might feel like mere guinea pigs in an experiment proving the accuracy of this analysis by Henry A. Giroux, originally published on truthout.com.
Here's hoping bobswern republishes this piece in its entirety, as he often does with Giroux' incisive, pertinent work. Meanwhile, I'll excerpt a few slices, beginning with the final paragraph:
The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world. The challenge it poses in a democracy is one of both learning how to reclaim literacy so as to be able to narrate oneself and the world from a position of agency. But it is also about unlearning those modes of learning that internalize modes of ignorance based on the concerted refusal to know, be self-reflective and act with principled dignity. It is a problem as serious as any we have ever faced in the United States. At the core of any viable democratic politics is the ability to question the assumptions central to an imagined democracy. This is not merely a political issue but an educational issue, one that points to the need for modes of civic education that provide the knowledge and competencies for young and old alike to raise important questions about what education and literacy itself should accomplish in a democracy. This is not an issue we can ignore too much longer.
