Burden of Conscience, The: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence

by Henry A. Giroux

In The Burden of Conscience, Giroux confronts the insidious rise of fascism infiltrating today's politics and education, alongside the suffocating silence that paralyzes our will to resist and speak truth to power. He decries the moral apathy in the face of the slaughter of children in Israel and the mass killing in Gaza, positioning this silence as part of a broader, ominous affliction of our age-the fusion of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. He calls for a groundswell of resistance, urging a movement to reclaim education as a public good, where critical education becomes an expression of freedom, a crucible of literacy, liberation, and collective empowerment. Drawing on his own childhood, he intertwines the personal with the political, unearthing the complexities of class, whiteness, and race, showing that individual and collective actions must converge to dismantle oppressive systems. Finally, he argues that education is a powerful tool, giving us, in the words of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'the power to think the absent.' Only through this awakening can a critical public consciousness emerge, sparking a multiracial working-class movement capable of challenging entrenched systems of oppression and bringing about true social transformation and radical democracy.

258 pages, Hardcover

Published February 20, 2025

About the author

American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory.

A high-school social studies teacher in Barrington, Rhode Island for six years, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Giroux has published more than 35 books and 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies literature. Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer, and has published nine books, including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in 2002.