ABSTRACT
Contesting language is part of a larger struggle against educational norms that instantiate and universalizes bourgeois values, assumptions, and modes of comportment; norms that are hostile to working class life. The banking model of education refers to the notion that students are passive receptacles of knowledge that teachers deposit into them as if they were putting money into a bank. When education is a practice of freedom, then it is a collaborative process between teacher and student. The separation of values is antidemocratic and democratic education is the privileged means of remediating international divisions in actually existing educational practices. Donald Trump University is an indexical sign of the worst features of neoliberal education, that is, higher education as a site for capitalist exploitation, extraction, and predation. While sometimes challenging liberal democracy to live up to its ideals, liberal education often mirrors its deficiencies and failures.
