ABSTRACT
The future of education will be tested by technological advances, by environmental crises, but very importantly, by further pressures from economic contexts. Education is always undergoing a crisis of some sort. Hanna Arendt contends that politics corrupts and undermines the potential education has. In her view education can easily become a political weapon, a weapon which has historically been used to debase criticality, freedom and democracy. In Arendt’s philosophy education should remain untouched by the pervasive world of politics. Arendt outlines many issues that are easily overlooked. One of the issues highlighted is how within politics education is turned to very specific objectives. Education has had to face up to privatisation, commodification, competition and more public scrutiny as to how it contributes value to the economic reality. Both theorists, Arendt and H. Giroux, although writing in different times, see the attack on education by politics and economics, as an attack on the future of democracy, public good and justice.
