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9 comments - Last on 12/27/2009
Guided by a Red Star: Ed Schools Bring Frankincense to the Cradle of Marxism
We recently learned of a Marxist journal influencing schools of education. The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies
(JCEPS) is published by the UK-based Institute for Education Policy Studies (IEPS), “an independent Radical Left/Socialist/Marxist institute for developing policy analysis and development of education policy.”
Why is it that the field of education is drawn to Marxism and critical pedagogy? Paulo Freire’s fingerprints are all over the La Raza studies programs in
Critical pedagogy is the concept developed by Brazilian radical Paulo Freire that teaches a narrative of oppression and aims to equip students with a “liberated consciousness” so that they can fully understand the meaning of oppression. Math, science, literature, and history are taught through this politicized narrative of group identity. Sandra Stotsky has described critical pedagogy’s effect on K-12 schools:
To implement [Freire’s] ideas, teachers seek to develop their students’ political understandings and attitudes—hostility or resentment in students belonging to social groups to be considered “non-dominant,” and guilt in students who are to be perceived as members of the “dominant” groups.
One reason why educators are attracted by this pedagogical theory is that it makes such handy excuses for unmotivated students and incompetent teachers. The core idea, as Stotsky puts it, is that “the relatively lower academic achievement and social status of these non-dominant groups may be traced to a lack of motivation for, or resistance to, the cultural content and pedagogy of a curriculum that was not originally designed for them—thereby an alien and oppressive curriculum.”
Of course, when the radical left does design a curriculum that it thinks matches the needs of the oppressed, the resulting courses are often a clownish caricature of real instruction. For example, Eric Gutstein, an eighth grade math teacher in a Chicago public school, teaches his Latino students that all the maps they are used to looking at are propaganda on behalf of Western colonialism. He manages to stir up some eighth-grader indignation, which he reported on earlier this year in an article in the Teachers College Record, and which we wrote about here. Gutstein, who is also a colleague of Bill Ayers at the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Education, has been an avid promoter of Freiran Marxist pedagogy.
Another reason educators are drawn to this pedagogical foolery is that it invites intellectual vanity. The participants are flattered into believing that they serve a higher calling, even as they deprive students of real learning. A reviewer from the Nation wrote, “Wherever education is explicitly involved in struggles for equity and justice, Freire’s ideas and his books, especially Pedagogy of the Oppressed, will live on.” But should education be explicitly involved in struggles for equity and justice?
The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies thinks most definitely so. The journal “addresses issues of social class, 'race', gender, sexual orientation, disability and capital/ism; critical pedagogies; new public managerialism and academic/non-academic labour, and empowerment/disempowerment.” It publishes articles that “report on, analyse and develop Socialist/Marxist transformative policy for schooling and education from a number of Radical Left perspectives.”
A prominent author is Peter McLaren, a Marxist activist who worships at the altars of Freire, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Che Guevara (McLaren’s personal website opens with a picture of Guevara and a flashing message: “Che lives! His spirit will never die! Join the revolution!”). Our source said that “while earning my Ph.D. such articles, many by McLaren, were required reading.”
Last month Katherine Kirsten broke a story about the
When the news got out about U Minnesota’s plans, it sounded almost too extreme to be true. Likewise, when we at NAS first scanned the contents of the Marxist journal, we wondered whether they were composed in satire. It’s not often you encounter titles such as “A Radical Redistribution of Capital,” “Critical Teacher Education for Economic, Environmental and Social Justice: an Ecosocialist Manifesto,” and “The time for action is now! Anarchist theory, critical pedagogy, and radical possibilities.”
The JCEPS editorial advisory board has members from thirty-three universities in the
While it is appropriate to study the now discredited but historically important ideas of Marxism in political science, philosophy, and economics courses, education schools have no need for radical ideology. Ed schools should be preparing teachers to train the minds of the next generation, not to arm them with socialist politics. To do so cheats both future teachers and their future students out of the sound, unbiased education they deserve.
The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies targets extremists, but it appears to have a substantial presence at universities around the world. To the extent that it and publications like it influence schools of education, it will not be long before teachers cannot distinguish between classrooms and class struggle.
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I find it remarkable that the people who espouse these views avoid south Texas by such a wide margin. Latinos for the most part would be classed as "priveleged" and whites would be considered "oppressed". If they had to apply their views objectively San Antonio and other places with significant Latino pressence in places of power, it would more or less force them to betray their radical left bretheren and tendencies by infact having to villify the dominant minority and victimize the whites.
Apparently being Mexican via Spanish descent (I look white but I'm Mexican) allows me to call bigotry a LOT
when surrounded by the hard left. We need to turn the hard left upon itself, force it to face its own bigotry. Anyone up for a manifesto?
by AndrewMedina Posted on 12/18/2009
Nice work, you really showed um. Where do I sign up for your club. Can I bring my friends? Do I have to know how to write to joyne?
avid fan.
by Bobmanob Posted on 12/19/2009
Definitely, education should be explicitly involved in struggles for equity and justice, especially at the current situation. Therefore, it’s very meaningful to arouse teachers and students’ critical consciousness, as Professor Peter McLaren does.
School and society shouldn’t be separated. No matter it is in John Dewey’s mind “school is society”, or in other scholar’s essay “society is school”, schools have close relationship with society. George Counts once insisted that it was a great ideal that people should mainly focus on educating the children and care little about others, however, he thought that schools and teachers had to think about the injustice since the then unequal society greatly influenced teachers and students in 1930s.
by John7331 Posted on 12/21/2009
You'd have to be awfully ignorant to write something like this:
Marxism isn't discredited anywhere, education isn't unbiased, and "radical" refers to the notion of examining the roots ("radical," from the Latin radix, or root) of everyday practice, something which should be done more often in schools. The rest of this is a rather amateurish collection of soundbites on a number of subjects, the least understood of which is critical pedagogy.
by Cassiodorus Posted on 12/24/2009
InArgentina
This article only serves to confirm that we are on the correct path of struggle. This educational movement is not intended to build ideological blocs but returning to education because their political neutrality is also a way of doing politics.
This article ends endorsing own knowledge of the dominant classes, their ideologies and worldviews deny the possibility of conflict as natural and accepting the hegemonic discourse.
FromArgentina
by ferlaz Posted on 12/27/2009
You have got to be kidding me. I came here looking for a serious critique and an collegial academic discussion and all I seem to get is right-wing fun and games much like the IHR ... oh my. How dissapointing. But, then looking at the biographies of the some of the people involved I do not see scholarship just ideological attacks without substance ... Pathetic!
by DrKB Posted on 12/27/2009
No agenda is an agenda. To think that education is neutral is to ignore the long-term implications of brainwashing teenagers/young adults and having them believe that they have a high school education despite reading at a 7th grade level; having a diploma is not the same as having an education. I suppose it behooves certain groups for the working class to not be aware of local, state, national or world events. These are the same groups that enjoy seeing working class teenagers join the military to fight in Iraq, despite the plethora of evidence that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th, nor did the Afghanistan government. We too harbor terrorist groups within our own borders - example of their destruction, Oklahoma City bombing - yet the feds did not attack the entire militia which Timothy McVeigh belonged to; within the US we call them Militia's, outside of the US they are referred to as insurgents or terrorists. God forbid that working class teenagers are made aware or these politics and refuse to join the military, based on principles. What would these self-serving individuals who are banking off of the war and the ignorance of working class teenagers do? How many parents would be supportive of the their teens joining the military if their level of conscience was high enough to understand President Truman's caution about building a Military Industrial Complex, which we now have. Clearly the profits would not be as high if working class people understood numbers and could not be suckered into ridiculous home loans. Is it possible that if we embraced critical thought, we could avoid all of these crazy economic downturns, and realize that investing in prisons over education is limiting to our future?I suppose claiming to NOT have and agenda is an agenda in itself! If the schools of education are not suppose to train teachers on critical thinking, then who is?
by beto911 Posted on 12/30/2009
I'm here from South Africa to stick my hand up for Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies and for teaching Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Guevara, Fanon, Shivji, Rodney, Cabral, Nkrumah, Mzala, Prachanda and many other such writers is school.
It's obvious. You can't be burying your head in the sand.
by Domza Posted on 12/31/2009
On December 29, Ashley Thorne wrote “I assumed that most people would agree that Marxist politics have no place in the classroom”. I couldn’t believe my eyes, how could excellent scholar neglect the simple fact that at least 1/5 of the people in the world are educated in the classroom by Marxist theory from elementary school to graduate school! Beyond China, there are still countless Marxists in other countries such as North Korea and even America. If Mr. Thorne thinks it’s meaningless to study these countries, it is better to know at least the more simple fact that there is Revolutionary Communist Party in UC system.
If the author would like to go out of the campus he will definitely encounter more and more Marxists with different colors or from different nations. Dialogue is necessary to solve problems, however ignorance and neglect will lead to severe conflict. I am sure if you talk with those people, you will be touched by their hearts, if you behavior like them the world will become more peaceful! It will be another year two hours later. I hope the next year will be totally different.
by John7331 Posted on 01/01/2010