"I think it would be a good idea."—Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
A friend sent this article (see below) my way.
I’m no Marxist. I am less impressed by Freire and Giroux’s radical theorizing than my friend.
On the other hand, I recognize that huge changes are afoot, and, in the absence of leadership, education in this country is becoming far more hollow than it has already been. I am amazed by the trends and the forces at work—and, as usual, by the general stupor of Americans and their educators.
Good grief.
I do wish radicals would abandon their religion and then learn to speak more plainly.* Still…
Lessons to Be Learned From Paulo Freire as Education Is Being Taken Over by the Mega Rich (Truthout)*And, no, I don’t mean more simply.
Henry A. Giroux
At a time when memory is being erased and the political relevance of education is dismissed in the language of measurement and quantification, it is all the more important to remember the legacy and work of Paulo Freire. Freire is one of the most important educators of the 20th century and is considered one of the most important theorists of "critical pedagogy" – the educational movement guided by both passion and principle to help students develop a consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, empower the imagination, connect knowledge and truth to power and learn to read both the word and the world as part of a broader struggle for agency, justice and democracy. His groundbreaking book, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," has sold more than a million copies and is deservedly being commemorated this year – the 40th anniversary of its appearance in English translation – after having exerted its influence over generations of teachers and intellectuals in the Americas and abroad.
Since the 1980s, there have been too few intellectuals on the North American educational scene who have matched Freire's theoretical rigor, civic courage and sense of moral responsibility. And his example is more important now than ever before: with institutions of public and higher education increasingly under siege by a host of neoliberal and conservative forces, it is imperative for educators to acknowledge Freire's understanding of the empowering and democratic potential of education. Critical pedagogy currently offers the very best, perhaps the only, chance for young people to develop and assert a sense of their rights and responsibilities to participate in governing, and not simply being governed by prevailing ideological and material forces.
When we survey the current state of education in the United States, we see that most universities are now dominated by instrumentalist and conservative ideologies, hooked on methods, slavishly wedded to accountability measures and run by administrators who often lack a broader vision of education as a force for strengthening civic imagination and expanding democratic public life. One consequence is that a concern with excellence has been removed from matters of equity, while higher education – once conceptualized as a fundamental public good – has been reduced to a private good, now available almost exclusively to those with the financial means. Universities are increasingly defined through the corporate demand to provide the skills, knowledge and credentials in building a workforce that will enable the United States to compete against blockbuster growth in China and other southeast Asian markets, while maintaining its role as the major global economic and military power. There is little interest in understanding the pedagogical foundation of higher education as a deeply civic and political project that provides the conditions for individual autonomy and takes liberation and the practice of freedom as a collective goal.
Public education fares even worse. Dominated by pedagogies that are utterly instrumental, geared toward memorization, conformity and high-stakes test taking, public schools have become intellectual dead zones and punishment centers as far removed from teaching civic values and expanding the imaginations of students as one can imagine….
9 comments:
One of the worst offenders has been within Education: this is the creation of the ED.D. Rather than receive a rigorous degree in a discipline, the creation of these programs in schools of education--from Harvard to the U. of Phoneix--has unleashed hoards of folks who spout ideas from badly written and botched texts to some teachers and many administrators who can barely articulate a whole idea and clearly present it. Sad to see creativity, imagination, and intelligence take a back seat to mushy thinking (if it's thinking at all) found in Schools of Education across this country.
Couldn't agree more, 11:16.
Hey BvT, I need some clarification: what exactly is your issue with Freire and Giroux? What is their "religion" that you speak of? And what do you mean that they should speak more "plainly"?
Thanks.
11:21, I do hope you realize that I was not rejecting the ideas of Giroux and Freire; on the contrary, I do believe that there is much that is right about what these men say. The difficulty I have concerns the extent to which their thinking stems from Marxism and from the logical and rhetorical deficiencies of Marxist and late “phenomenological” traditions, of which Freire, at least, was a part. Further, these people view themselves as soldiers in a movement, and I am wary of such talk. Let me explain.
Anyone familiar with the philosophical debates of the 20th Century (and one won’t be, it seems, if one has been trained in that insular zone of American literary academia) is aware that, at least within the analytic and verificationist traditions in philosophy/science, Marxist (and other—e.g, Freudian) traditions received withering criticisms that, as I choose to put it, revealed much of this theorizing to be more akin to religious or metaphysical thinking—a variety of thought that ultimately brings useful discussion to a halt, leaving only pushing and shoving and bombing. If you are unfamiliar with this "school" of thought (it is broader than a school, really), you might start with, say, Karl Popper’s views in the philosophy of science, though much has happened since Popper’s day. (Or: the logical positivist tradition (e.g., Ayer).)
Re rhetoric: in my view, leftist thinkers will never make any headway with the American public until they eschew their endlessly off-putting and theory-bound talk of “consciousness of freedom,” “empowerment of the imagination,” “practice of freedom,” and “connecting truth and power.” Many ordinary people shrink back from such language as they would the language of a cultist or reborn Christian. In this instance, their instincts are good.
Occasionally, great leftist “isms” do capture the imagination of the uneducated masses, and off they go, lopping off heads and burning villages. Their passions and adventures impress me about as much as do those of Glenn Beck’s hordes of illiterate caterwaulers, half-thinking of refreshing the tree of liberty with blood.
And so, yes, by all means, we educators should help students to recognize authoritarian tendencies and unrecognized manipulations. We she help them to see how easy it is to let others do our thinking for us. I do that everyday. But let’s not wrap it all up in a “movement,” especially one tied to some grand vision of the world that is no more grounded and amenable to reason than blather about the coming end-times.
MOST excellent, BvT. You've nailed it once again.
Not for the first time, by any means, you've helped me to figure out what is so off-putting and scary about some leftist thinking and writing that is also clearly on the right track.
Damn, you're good.
MAH
Gosh thanks.
Ok, BvT, so you disagree with the Marxist and Freudian trends in much twentieth-century continental philosophy which profess universal claims (ontological, metaphysical, teleological, etc.), on the ground that these claims can't be verified or (qua Popper) falsified and tested on logical or empirical grounds. Do I have have that correct? Also, I agree with you regarding the ambiguity of the masses. But the thing that gets me about much analytic philosophy is that it has had very little political effect on the masses. Pehaps that, like much academia, is due to it's specialized language. No matter how rigorous the arguments, how rationally coherent, philosophy rarely has wide appeal. Talk of religious end times, eschatological hopes, fears of doom, etc., has much wider appeal for people. Perhaps this is what Marx had in mind when he said "the philosophers have only contemplated the world. The point is to change it."
If I were to seek to change the world, I would make damn sure my message was a good one and a simple one--something immune to abuse and distortion. Well, there's no such thing, is there? Good and simple is hard enough; immunity to distortion is impossible. Trying to change the world: a project for fools and monsters. I like to think that I am neither. Me, I'll spend my days trying to be decent, simple, and clear here in my little pond. Maybe decent beings will some day find my sentiments amusing.
Ah, but 4:44: Peter Singer, author of *Animal Liberation* and the superb "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" has, indeed and literally, changed the world. He brought serious concern for animals to this country in the '60's, initiating a change as momentous as any in history; and he has changed the thinking of many about our responsibilities to the starving.
I'd certainly agree that much of analytic philosophy is anal, precious, self-absorbed, ridiculously written, and of no import or interest to anyone except specialists--but not all of it. The stuff that is good is truly life-changing, or can be.
MAH
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