ABSTRACT
We live in unsettling and uncertain times. The opening decades of the twenty-first century have been marked by increasing anxieties about public safety that have erupted into the emergence of a number of threats. This includes, but is not limited to, threats posed by terrorism, ecological and biological threats such as climate change, the threat of economic collapse due to volatile markets, fluctuating currencies and decreasing supplies of natural resources, as well as threats of destabilization in the Middle East as various nations seek democratic alternatives to current regimes. More recently, the global financial crisis (GFC) has amplified calls for stability, security and certainty as we witness increasing unemployment, housing foreclosures, growing economic inequalities within and between nations, the loss of pensions, reductions in health and welfare programs, and escalating levels of violence and overt antagonism towards immigrants and refuges. In many ways we are at a crossroads; we can remain witnesses to these events or we can become activists and speak back to the paralyzing effects of these crises. These uncertain times offer a unique opportunity to critically examine the political and ideological tendencies in our nations and to reject calls for common-sense solutions to these crises. No matter how common sense any proposed policy solutions appear, too much is at stake to ignore the production and circulation of discourses that generate differential realities in schools.
