Sunday, December 16, 2012

American Students Are Educated To Be Only Consumers: Prof. Henry A. Giroux

Click here to access article by Kourosh Ziabari from CounterCurrents.

Ziabari, who is "an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent" interviews US educator and culture critic, Henry Giroux, on a variety of topics. This very articulate professor provides several insights on current US cultural and political subjects. Here is one where he describes the global nature of capitalism in which local governance has little chance to serve the public interest:
...the U.S. has no way to challenge, within the usual rules, the power of multinational corporations that now write the rules for domestic and foreign policy. Moreover, this power is global and has no allegiance to the nation state except to use it to further its own financial interests. Hence, the full-fledged attack on the welfare state, women, minorities of class and color, public servants, and the institutions that do not buy completely into market driven values. As the power of the state crumbles, the state is reconfigured largely as a punishing state used increasingly to criminalize the behavior of those caught in dire social problems such as homelessness, debt servitude, unemployment, poverty, and various disabilities.