NEOLIBERALISM Global neoliberalism and education and its consequences

Neoliberalism, Youth, and the Leasing of Higher Education 35right to access the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of students inboth public schools and higher education. Trust and respect now give wayto fear, disdain, and suspicion. Children have fewer rights than almost anyother group and fewer institutions protecting these rights.Instead of providing a decent critical education to poor young people,neoliberals and neoconservatives serve them more standardized tests (Kornblut,2005, p. 26), enforce abstinence programs instead of sex education,hand out bibles and inculcate right-wing Christian values, and advocatecreationism at the expense of reason and freedom. 3 Youth who are poorfare even worse and often find themselves in classes that are overcrowded,lack basic resources, and subject to policies largely designed to warehouseyoung people rather than educate them with even minimal basic literacyskills. Rather than providing young people with vibrant public spheres, theBush government offers them a commercialized culture in which consumerismis the only condition of citizenship. But the hard currency of humansuffering that has an impact on children can also be seen in some astoundingstatistics that suggest a profound moral and political contradiction atthe heart of one of the richest democracies in the world: over one-third ofthose in poverty are children, boosting the number of children who arepoor to 12.9 million. Similarly, 9.3 million children lack health insurance,and millions lack affordable child care and decent early childhood education;in many states more money is being spent on prison construction thanon higher education; and the infant mortality rate in the United States is thehighest of any other industrialized nation.The idea, not to mention the reality, of justice seems dead on arrival asthe Bush regime consistently and aggressively attempts to generate retrogradepolicies that seem intent on increasing corporate power and wastingbillions of dollars on a rapacious empire-building agenda. In the name of“free market capitalism,” the government increasingly promotes “a predatoryculture of open barbarism: the resurgence of open racism, war, imperialism,sexism, religious fundamentalism,” (Foster, 2005) and a brutal waragainst youth marginalized by race and class. Evidence of such an attackcan be seen in Laura Flanders’s (2005) characterization of Bush’s 2006budget as a hit list targeting teens and kids because it “calls for cuts inemergency medical services for children, cuts in K–12 education funding,cuts in vocational education and the highly successful Head Start Program.There are food-stamp cuts and a five-year freeze on child care. A $41 millioncollege loan program is eliminated. The whole National Youth sportsProgram which has provided athletics for low income kids is cut, as in cutout.” Paul Krugman reinforces the charge calling Bush’s budget projectionsa form of class warfare since he “takes food from the mouths of babes andgives the proceeds to his millionaire friends” (2005, p. A23). In this case,savage cuts in education, nutritional assistance for impoverished mothers,veteran’s medical care, and basic scientific research would help fund tax cutsfor the inordinately rich. All of this may be good news for those die-hard