Educating Edward Snowden: Reconfiguring Public Schooling for National Security

• In Event: 29.090 - Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: 29.090-9 - Political Modes of Reconfiguring the School: Voters, Coalitions, and Spies

Abstract

This paper investigates the remaking of US public schooling in the ongoing service of the national security state. To do so, I examine the growing number of specialized homeland security programs that prepare poor and working class student of color for low-level work in the security industry. These programs, by design, teach students to value secrecy, covet the security clearance, and privilege military solutions to social problems. As these programs increasingly funnel young people into the war-making business through partnerships with the security industry, I ethnographically explore the ideological contours this kind of schooling and how this education effectively mobilizes students to contribute to the national security state.

Author

• Nicole Nguyen, University of Illinois at Chicago