CHAPTER 9: Henry Giroux: The “Crisis” of 21st Century Education

Henry Giroux is recognized as a key and founding scholar of critical pedagogy (Besley, 2012; Kincheloe, 2008; Pinar, Reynolds, Slatterly, & Taubman, 1995; Riley, 2012; Robbins, 2006; Sandlin, O’Malley, & Burdick, 2011). Despite his reception as a critical scholar and his impressive impact on critical education, his writing often elicits mixed reactions. His work is philosophical, innovative, and vision-oriented, but it is difficult for some readers to overlook problems with his scholarship, and at the least, what Pinar et al. (1995) describe as his “doses of inspiration and guilt” (p. 311), or melodrama. Many have also complained about the style of his writing, calling it jargonistic and at times turgid. Even his endorsers, in their various introductions to collections of his essays, hedge their praise with statements such as, “While Giroux’s writings disclose a deep theoretical erudition, there are grounds upon which they can and should be challenged and contested as part of an ongoing dialogue” (McLaren, 1988, x–xi). If not for Giroux’s grave and evocative poetics, persistence about current issues such as the privatization of public goods, and the visibility of his work in the field, one might more quickly dismiss the writing of Giroux. Henry Giroux’s 38-year career is formidable, and I propose that we carefully read or re-read his key works and entertain his newest writing. Henry Giroux has made a significant impact and should not be ignored as a scholar and public intellectual in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.