Customer Reviews

Stealing Innocence: Corporate Culture's War on Children

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Giroux's book furthers his study of the politics of youth culture which has been continuing through Fugitive Cultures and Channel Surfing. This new book also offers one of the most penetrating discussions of the rise of corporate culture that I have seen. The second half engages the work of Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, and Stuart Hall. In my view this book is a major integration of Giroux's important early theoretical work on the politics of schooling with his more recent work on education and cultural studies. I highly recommend it for anyone involved in cultural work or cultural theory as well as teachers and teacher educators.

Even though we as American parents would be willing to blow the whistle on baby sitters who physically and emotionally harm our children, we have done nothing short of brushing the surface when it comes to pulling the plug on the most dangerous baby sitter of all-popular media. Please read this book, and take the necessary steps to loosen the grip of this menace from your child. Parents have, and always will be, the best influence on our children's reality;they should collaborate with educators on how best to remove this menace and restore childhood to its purity.

I read this book for a class on Democracy and Education. The book was very pertinent to the class subject matter. However, Mr. Giroux clearly wrote this book for his peers and not for general consumption. I know a large percentage of my (younger) classmates had a great deal of difficulty even finishing this book, much less writing a huge paper about it. I think that the point of the book is very important and that Mr. Giroux would reach a much larger audience if he used smaller words.

The quality of the book was fine and the delivery was fine, too.

After reading the editorial review from Booklist, I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, I couldn't even make it through the first chapter. Giroux's academic style of writing seems to obscure the issues more than shed light on them. Seeing that I am a college graduate and avid reader, that is usually not a problem for me. He definitely seems to have an agenda to bash the political Right, and the Religious. Conservatives and Business are the bad guys, and more government involvement in our daily lives seems to be the solution. After slogging through 24 pages of Left-wing babble, I had had enough. If only I had taken the time to read the first six pages in the Look Inside section, I could have avoided wasting my money. These pages give some idea of what the book is like, although it became much clearer as I continued through more of the first chapter. I thought that I might try to sell my copy used on Amazon, but when I saw the huge number of copies being sold that way, for such low prices, I decided I had just better accept the loss and put this book where it belongs: in the trash can! You've been warned!