ABSTRACT

Paulo Freire firmly believed that public schooling is implicated in the perpetuation of economic inequalities and all forms of cultural exclusion. By the end of the 1980s, globalization had become the euphemism of economic imperialism and its ruthless mechanisms of capital accumulation. The forceful neoliberal ideology of advanced capitalism, justified by colonizing epistemicides of exclusion, has fueled widespread global economic conquest under the guise of freedom and democracy or the liberal banner of human rights. In the neoliberal era, forces of the marketplace and the interest of corporations have driven federal and state policy reform—both domestic and global—in directions that have amplified economic exploitation, political disempowerment, cultural domination, and destruction of the planetary ecosystem. Despite brutal conditions of exclusion engendered by a politics of disposability, public educational policy debates over the academic performance of students from oppressed communities continue to reflect victim-blaming portrayals—where oppressed depicted as responsible for their impoverishment, even when they exist economically and politically subjugated.