Analyzing the Visual Discourse of Public Education in the News: Political Cartoons and the Critique of Business Involvement in Public Schools

• In Event: Neoliberalism and the “New” Public School Reform Movement

Abstract

By examining several political cartoons focused on the influence of business interests on public education, this study illustrates the power of visual discourse to tap into dominant cultural beliefs in ways that both reify particular understandings as natural or given while also satirizing and challenging those beliefs. By analyzing the visual rhetoric within three provocative political cartoons, this study helps to illustrate the way the media can be used to question and shape dominant ideas about school reform. This study endeavors to demonstrate the ways that political cartoons tap into the contemporary socio-historical context of public school reform to create persuasive claims about business involvement in public education.

Author

• Abe Feuerstein, Bucknell University