An Analysis of Barack Obama’s Dual Language Game on Education Basiyr D. Rodney, Webster University Lea Stephan, Webster University Introduction Educational reform is high on the political agenda of President Barack Obama. It would be fair to say President Obama views educational reform as a defining legacy to bequeath to future generations. His administration has overseen the re-authorization of the controversial “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” (NCLB) as well as “Race to the Top” competitive grants. In policy documents such as the Blueprint for Educational Reform (US Dept. of Ed. [DE], 2010a), the Obama administration has outlined the direction of the President’s education agenda. In addition to policy statements, President Obama has spoken extensively on education. His rhetoric on educational reform has centered on two major rationales: first the need for enhanced educational opportunity in order to help underserved students achieve social mobility and attain full civic participation in a democratic society; and second on the neoliberal paradigm of improving the economic competitiveness and consumer potential of the American worker in a hyper-globalized world. Many educational commentators see these two ideals—education for individual market driven consumption vs. education for democratic participation—as being contradictory (Freire, 2007; Giroux, 2010; Spring, 2008), but President Obama has utilized an educational rhetoric that shows he supports both these ideals. He advocates for minorities in their quest for social mobility and the requisite access to services such as education. He is able to do this even as he projects strong support for the educational goals of the corporate elite. The corporate vision of education is driven by the neoliberal paradigm of preparing workers for an economically competitive world and the privatization of public schools. In pulling together these two ideals, President Obama effectively uses the language of educational reform as a platform for a language game targeted to multiple audiences. President Obama’s educational reform discourse has policy implications for how we might assess the future success of his reform initiatives. Analysis of his discourse on education is necessary in order to understand whether his rhetoric is likely to lead to policies that are meaningful or if he is simply engaged in speech making for political survival. Is President Obama merely engaged in a discourse of political Journal of Philosophy & History of Education vol. 62, no. 1, 2012, pp. 29–40