We Can't Build Our Dreams On Suspicious Minds: Neoliberalism, Education Policy, and the Feelings Left Over

Last fall, the author took his Politics and Education class to see Waiting For "Superman." This was a movie we had been preparing to see all semester. The class focused on reading contemporary educational policy as a symptom of neoliberal economic and political ideology. We went into the movie knowing what we were going to see and how to critique it. But a funny thing happened on our way out of the theater-many of us were crying. Despite all our strong and tough ideological critiques, we were glassy-eyed and barely even able to remember who deregulation was and what Milton Friedman had to do with anything. After a semester of thinking with our heads, we were standing there feeling with our hearts. In this paper, the author reflects on these experiences by paying attention to his own pedagogy and how the critique of neoliberalism functions to both preclude and produce certain types of affects.