Resisting Neoliberal Schooling

This book was possible because of all the contributors Clifton Sanders, Roderic Land, Ashley Cox, Lauralea Edwards, David Robles, and Emily Thompson, Elisa Stone, Lea Lani Kinikini, Elizabeth Vasileva, Will Boisseau, Adalberto Aguirre, Jr., Rubén Martinez, Richard Van Heertum, Victor M. Mendoza, Laura Schleifer, Riley Clare Valentine, Steve Gennaro, Doug Kellner, Frank A. Fear, Caroline K. Kaltefleiter, David Bokovoy, Anthony Joseph Nocella, and Paul R. Carr. All the wonderful beautiful people from around the world that wrote powerful, supportive reviews of this book Tony Quintana, Dr. Kevin Walby, Zane McNeill, Nathan Poirier, Dr. A. Peter Castro, Dr. Mechthild Nagel, Dr. William Horne, Dr. Chandra Ward, Dr. Richard J. White, Laura Schleifer, Dr. Mark Seis, Dr. Bill Ayers, Dr. Taine Duncan, Lucas Alan Dietsche, Matthew R. Sparks, Brock M. Smith, and Les Mitchell. I would like to thank all the organizations I have involved with too Save the Kids, Academy for Peace Education, Institute for Critical Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies Society, Critical Animal Studies Academy, Peace Studies Journal, Green Theory and Praxis Journal, Wisdom Behind the Walls, Poetry Behind the Walls, Outdoor Empowerment, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for Social Transformation, SLCC’s Department of Criminal Justice, SLCC’s EDICT, Lowrider Studies Journal, Transformative Justice Journal, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, #NoYouthinPrison, Alternatives to Violence Project, Salt Lake Prisoner Letter Writing, Ecoability Collective, Total Liberation Campaigns, Utah Cycling Newspaper, Arissa Media Group, and SLCC’s JEDI Senate Committee, SLCC’s Faculty Senate, SLCC’s FDAR Senate Committee. I would also like to thank my family mom, dad, sisters, my friends (Ben, Amber George, Richard White, Emily Thompson, Alisha Page, Reece Graham, Monika, Selinda, Dejesus, David Michael, Lucas, Erik J., Stormie, Cecile, Brett, Russ, Stephanie, Ryan, Peter, Laura, Lauren, Chris, Amy, Kaela, Rich, Dan, Brock, Leslie, Cris, Kevin, Juone, Gina, Rita, Idolina, Brenda, Caleb, James, Nick, Ana, Liz, Kristin, Nancy Barrickman, Julia, Antonette, David Robles, Adam Dastrup, Kati Lewis, Ashley Cox, Hangar 15 Bicycle Millcreek (Ian, Tommy, Mike Hanseen, Lewis, Mike P., Chuck, Rob, Chris, Mark, and Joey), and my cats Emma and Lucy. I would like to thank an amazing beautiful person in my life Christine Camille. My family has been my support and rock through my whole life; I could not have done anything without them. I would finally, like to thank Dani and Jackie and everyone at Peter Lang Publishing who supports me on all my publications throughout the years. Dani is an amazing brilliant scholar and kind person. I thank her so much.

For colleges and universities worldwide, particularly for public institutions in the West, the philosophy and praxis of neoliberalism dominates. National organizations, local and state legislatures and major business interests determine (with impunity) funding, incentives, resource allocation, curriculum design and program prioritization. Increasingly, and in this current moment of Critical Race Theory demonization, powerful economic elite interests are manipulating a virulent strand of populism and anti-scholarship in order to disembowel democratic norms and academic freedom, and further suppress marginalized voices and historical perspectives under the pretext of ‘divisiveness’. Higher education—as scholarly knowledge, as knowledge for personal and public good, as empowerment gained from development of critical thinking and encounter with new ideas and ways of knowing—is heavily commodified and debased by a neoliberal/capitalist mindset which idolizes job training, ‘hard-skill’ mastery (that frequently categorizes humanistic knowledge as ‘soft skills’), individuals as units of economic utility, and which tenaciously holds onto a myopic, materialistic illusion of success or failure in life as quantified by ‘business analytics’.

Many scholars have written extensively on the toxic impacts of neoliberalism on higher education. I contend that this new contribution, Resisting Neoliberal Schooling: Dismantling the Rubricization and Corporatization of Higher Education, is far more than another welcome contribution to the current body of work. The wide-ranging collection of essays presented here together constitute a novel and innovative exercise in resistance. The opening overview by Anthony Nocella II et al. sets the stage for work presented by scholars, educators and activists representing the full spectrum of the higher education experience. Several essays come from my own colleagues at Salt Lake Community College in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I believe that it is very important for community colleges to be represented in this eclectic monograph. I have been a community college professional for nearly thirty years, starting as a member of the faculty and, for more than 20 years, serving as an academic administrator. In my judgement, community colleges are universally the least understood entity in higher education, even by educators and administrators. More telling, community colleges are the most vulnerable sites of rubricization and corporatization in higher education simply because they are thoroughly public entities without consistent, large-scale access to other kinds of support. Fund-raising and grant procurement are, when compared to long traditions of philanthropy to colleges and universities, a very recent part of community college culture. Community college educators and leaders need adequate resources to provide students with rich education and training to lead meaningful and productive lives. Nevertheless, community colleges are defenseless against the kinds of neoliberal false equivalencies and gaslighting that have consistently resulted in defunded higher education and co-opted institutional priorities.

There is enormous variation among approximately 1200 community colleges in the US. Community colleges are tasked with providing ‘affordable’ education, primarily via: (1) workforce training and professional education for immediate job seekers and workers in local industries, and (2) the first two years of course credits which can be transferred to complete a college/university baccalaureate major. Community college faculty are a professionally diverse community of educators who possess credentials spanning workforce occupational specialties, academic scholarship and lived experience. Together they serve the neediest students with the promise of education that liberates and transforms entire communities. What is often overlooked (to me at least) is a valuable kind of knowledge production that arises from community college teaching and faculty-centric scholarship. All too often, what passes as community college ‘scholarship’ comes from neoliberal think tanks and university scholars who, despite their alleged dedication to student success, critique community colleges primarily as defective institutions that must be micromanaged with less than adequate funding to improve student ‘completion.’ These critiques are often justified via a framework of statistical analyses of selectively constructed, often federated, data sets. Information curated in this way inevitably sacrifices nuance and valuable insight, and homogenizes variable inputs into a flattened output narrative, which then shamelessly fuels simple-minded political and other aggression in the name of reform.

As we rest in a global society mired in conflict, inequities and ideological dogma, I am always curious about the role education—or lack thereof—has played in the creation of this condition. A condition that is void of love, compassion and any sense of humanity. A condition that values the cacophony of selfish individualism over the harmony of selfless collective work and responsibility. A condition that sees difference as a license to harm physically, mentally, and/or spiritually opposed to celebrating and embracing the value these differences bring to bear. While education is not the only factor to consider, it is indeed my belief that it has played a role as we have witnessed the push towards a curriculum and assessment that seeks to satisfy standards influenced by businesses and corporations.

Living in a time where members of local, state, and federal government is making a push to diminish academic freedom and the relevance of Humanities and Social Sciences by banning the teaching of “divisive” topics, critical race theory, and a more comprehensive American history is highly problematic. As a student of history, I think about the function of education during the early 20^th century when America had a massive flow of immigrants coming to her shores. It was intended to tell a particular narrative to assimilate and build an allegiance to a country that many “New Americans” would call home. It was intended to tell a story about the promise of America; it told a story about the strength of America; and yes, it told the story about the greatness of America. However, what this narrative did not tell, was the dark side of America.

The content of this curriculum was often void of a major part of what shaped this country, slavery. Slavery was/is the foundation, the engine, the heartbeat of America’s economic, political, and social structure. While this is not the focus of this book, it does provide context as to why we have witnessed such a strong governmental resistance to telling this part of the narrative, both historically and present day. This is a stain in the social fabric of these United States of America. An America in which many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and people of the global majority cringe at the slogan, “Make America Great Again”.

These virulent attacks on critical thought and liberatory forms of curriculum and pedagogy is in alignment with an earlier period in American history. As Giroux (2021) so aptly points out, these attacks are akin to the McCarthy and Red Scare period of the 1950s when there was a heightened sense of fear over the threat of communism which resulted in laws that banned the teaching of any subject or topic deemed unpatriotic.