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Using the comic “gutter” as a guiding metaphor, the authors frame contemporary schooling as marginal yet generative work occurring amid historic cultural, economic, and political upheavals. The piece calls educators to reimagine, re-culture, and re-construct education from the ground up. 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Seeming to say nothing at all, that thin white strip is where most of the magic actually happens. The gutter brings the art to life as sequential, and is the central site of tension and conflict, interpretation, imagination, and meaning making. We often feel, these days, that we are living inside a comic book, and so we write this from the margin, the cut, the gutter.  \nWe are living in the midst of an historic sea change—a dramatic and irreversible cultural, economic, and political shift. The financial crisis and the cyclical economic adjustments of the day grab the headlines and draw most of the attention, but they are in some ways the least of it. Just beneath the surface, roiling and churning, a more profound upheaval is well under way: the decline of the U.S. empire and the eclipse of the“American Century,”which in all likelihood (but not inevitably) will be as messy as the end of the British, French, Japanese, or Spanish empires; the end of financial capitalism and the shift from a concentrated industrial world to a globally industrial world, which may well be (again, not inevitably) as murderous as the great leap from agriculture to industry and from feudalism to capitalism; an unprecedented ecological dislocation that is already redrawing all existing maps and propelling millions of environmental refugees out of their homes and into a shrinking world.  \nThe center cannot hold, and we are, each and all of us, whether we recognize it or not, in the mix and on the move, witnessing and participating in the end of an empire and the creation of new social and cultural connections. Nothing is inevitable, and the shape of the new world is impossible to predict. It could be a time of real peace, democracy, and equality; or it could be marked by permanent war, genocide, forced labor, and concentration camps. Where we go from here—chaos or community, barbarism or a revitalized democracy based on economic and global justice—depends on many variables, including how we understand and name this political moment, and how we actor fail to act within it.  \n1 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rick Ayers. Email: [rick-ayers@earthlink.net](rick-ayers@earthlink.net).  \n2 Rick Ayers is an Adjunct Professor of Education at the University of San Francisco. Bill Ayers is retired Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They are the authors of Teaching the Taboo: Courage and Imagination in the Classroom (2010), Teachers College Press.  \nBerkeley Review of Education Vol. 2 No . 1, pp. 95-108  \n96 Ayers & Ayers  \nTime, action, vision—getting any of this more clearly in hand requires us to reimagine, re-culture, and re-construct education from the ground up, for while education in the hands of the elite can be wielded as the guardian of the old and a bludgeon of control, education at its best is built on the twin pillars of enlightenment and liberation, and so it is also the midwife of the new. Where do we go from here? Our hope is to contribute now to this necessary conversation, for educator","cbCaimiYyBXTjA8d","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimiYyBXTjA8d","pdf",244821,15,"English","# Living in the Gutter: Conflict and Contradiction in the Neoliberal Classroom\n## The “gutter” as a site of tension and meaning\n## Historic shifts and the decline of empire\n## Education, responsibility, and action\n## Neoliberalism and global economic domination","[{\"question\":\"What does the “gutter” metaphor represent in the article?\",\"answer\":\"The “gutter” is the narrow blank space between comic panels where the key “magic” happens. It represents a marginal space where tension, interpretation, imagination, and meaning-making emerge.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article connect neoliberalism to education?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that education can function as guardianship and control for elites, yet education at its best supports enlightenment and liberation. Neoliberalism intensifies contradictions that shape how education is experienced and used.\"},{\"question\":\"What major historical changes does the article highlight as context?\",\"answer\":\"It describes a profound cultural, economic, and political upheaval, including the decline of U.S. empire, the eclipse of the “American Century,” shifts in global capitalism, and ecological dislocation pushing new social connections and crises.\"}]","Living in the Gutter: Conflict and Contradiction in the Neoliberal Classroom - A Call to Action | PDF",1792079761,38]