Education, Politics, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Age of Pandemics

Abstract

In a time when truth has become malleable and people are being told that the only obligation of citizenship is to consume, language has become thinner, more individualistic, detached from history, and more self-oriented, all the while undermining viable democratic social spheres as spaces where politics brings people together as collective agents willing to push at the frontiers of the political and moral imagination. Too many people across the globe have forgotten their civic lessons, and in doing so cede the ground of history to the purveyors of lies, militarism, and white supremacy. As educators and intellectuals, it is crucial to remember that there is no genuine democracy without the presence of citizens willing to hold power accountable, engage in forms of moral witnessing, break the continuity of common sense, and challenge the normalization of antidemocratic institutions, policies, ideas, and social relations.