EDUCATION, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC LIFE Series Editors: Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Susan Searls Giroux, McMaster University

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1 EDUCATION, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC LIFE Series Editors: Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Susan Searls Giroux, McMaster University Within the last three decades, education as a political, moral, and ideological practice has become central to rethinking not only the role of public and higher education, but also the emergence of pedagogical sites outside of the schools which include but are not limited to the Internet, television, film, magazines, and the media of print culture. Education as both a form of schooling and public pedagogy reaches into every aspect of political, economic, and social life. What is particularly important in this highly interdisciplinary and politically nuanced view of education are a number of issues that now connect learning to social change, the operations of democratic public life, and the formation of critically engaged individual and social agents. At the center of this series will be questions regarding what young people, adults, academics, artists, and cultural workers need to know to be able to live in an inclusive and just democracy and what it would mean to develop institutional capacities to reintroduce politics and public commitment into everyday life. Books in this series aim to play a vital role in rethinking the entire project of the related themes of politics, democratic struggles, and critical education within the global public sphere. SERIES EDITORS: HENRY A. GIROUX holds the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. He is on the editorial and advisory boards of numerous national and international scholarly journals. Professor Giroux was selected as a Kappa Delta Pi Laureate in 1998 and was the recipient of a Getty Research Institute Visiting Scholar Award in He was the recipient of the Hooker Distinguished Professor Award for He received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Memorial University of Newfoundland in His most recent books include Take Back Higher Education (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006); America on the Edge (2006); Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006), Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability (2006), The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (2007), and Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (2008). SUSAN SEARLS GIROUX is Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her most recent books include The Theory Toolbox (co-authored with Jeff Nealon, 2004) and Take Back Higher Education (co-authored with Henry A. Giroux, 2006). Professor Giroux is also the Managing Editor of The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.

2 Critical Pedagogy in Uncertain Times: Hope and Possibilities Edited by Sheila L. Macrine The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy (forthcoming) Kenneth J. Saltman Feminist Theory in Pursuit of the Public: Politics, Education, and Public Life (forthcoming) Robin Goodman

3 Critical Pedagogy in Uncertain Times Hope and Possibilities Edited by Sheila L. Macrine

4 CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN UNCERTAIN TIMES Copyright Sheila L. Macrine, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Critical pedagogy in uncertain times : hope and possibilities / edited by Sheila L. Macrine. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN Critical pedagogy. I. Macrine, Sheila L. LC196.C dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September

5 This book is dedicated to my father, an immigrant to this country, an iron-worker who labored his whole life to support his wife and educate his children. A special thanks goes to my husband Nicholas for his patience and support. Thanks also to my sons Gavin and Garret and my siblings Catherine, Bridget, Thomas, and John, and my new nephew John Andrew.

6 Contents Foreword Stanley Aronowitz Acknowledgments ix xiii Introduction 1 Sheila L. Macrine Part 1 Uncertain Times: Exploring the Costs of Neoliberalism 1. The Attack on Higher Education and the Necessity of Critical Pedagogy 11 Henry A. Giroux 2. Schooling in Disaster Capitalism: How the Political Right Is Using Disaster to Privatize Public Schooling 27 Kenneth J. Saltman 3. Critical Pedagogy, Latino/a Education, and the Politics of Class Struggle 55 Peter McLaren and Nathalia E. Jaramillo 4. Unmasking Prepackaged Democracy 79 Donaldo Macedo 5. A Critical Pedagogy of Hope in Times of Despair 97 Ramin Farahmandpur Part 2 Critical Pedagogy: A Source of Hope and Possibility 6. What Is Critical Pedagogy Good For? An Interview with Ira Shor 119 Sheila L. Macrine

7 viii Contents 7. Teaching as Possibility: A Light in Dark Times 137 Maxine Greene 8. Imagining Justice in a Culture of Terror: Pedagogy, Politics, and Dissent 151 Antonia Darder 9. Amilcar Cabral: Pedagogue of the Revolution 167 Paulo Freire. Translated by Sheila L. Macrine, Fernando Naiditch, and Joao Paraskeva 10. Toward a Critical Pedagogy of the Global 189 Noah De Lissovoy Afterword 207 Gustavo E. Fischman List of Contributors 217 Index 221

8 Foreword Stanley Aronowitz Inspired by the practice and writing of Paulo Freire, several generations of intellectuals of which teachers of literacy are a vital part have learned that the term pedagogy may be freed from the tasks associated with the transmission of received knowledge. Teaching, in Freire s discourse, is eminently political. It is part of the project of freedom, in the first place the liberation of those whom Franz Fanon termed the wretched of the earth and others, regardless of their salaries, who are forced to work and live under conditions of subordination. Freire believed that critical literacy was a weapon of emancipation and, conversely, the deprivation of the ability to read and write, and to examine texts as well as the circumstances of one s life, which perpetuated a system of servitude. Thus, for Freire literacy was not a means to prepare students for the world of subordinated labor or careers, but a preparation for a self-managed life. And selfmanagement could only occur when people have fulfilled three goals of education: self-reflection, that is, realizing the famous poetic phrase, know thyself, which is an understanding of the world in which they live, in its economic, political and, equally important, its psychological dimensions. Specifically critical pedagogy helps the learner become aware of the forces that have hitherto ruled their lives and especially shaped their consciousness. The third goal is to help set the conditions for producing a new life, a new set of arrangements where power has been, at least in tendency, transferred to those who literally make the social world by transforming nature and themselves. In his last work, Freire became imbued with what may be described as radical democratic humanism, the concept that learning is not an exercise driven by leaders over the led, but a practice of empowerment of those without power.

9 x Foreword In the context of U.S. social reality, critical pedagogy has always confronted a number of obstacles. Among them, the relentless subordination of schooling to the corporate order in which education is reduced to training for jobs and the concept of citizenship conflated with loyalty to the existing social and economic system and participation in democratic life confined to the act of voting. Recognizing the limits of schooling, especially for the subaltern (underlying) classes, some critical pedagogues have reduced their practice to a teaching method. The heart of this method is to involve students in the process of learning, to listen to what they have to say, to pay attention to their feelings, especially their educational biographies where schooling has hitherto been an experience of oppression rather than a process of selfemancipation. In short, critical pedagogy became, for some, a classroom practice that was integrated, tacitly, with the canonical practices of progressive education, which still remain the only indigenous American philosophy of education. Admittedly, there is much in Freire s writing that discusses pedagogy in terms of classroom practice. Yet this interpretation of the critical aims of pedagogy is one-sided. We can see the limits of critical pedagogy if it narrows its scope to a teaching method by evaluating the current period of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) schooling. As Henry Giroux and others have pointed out, this regime is nothing less than a program of control, both of students and of teachers. By forcing teachers to teach to standardized tests, political and education authorities who follow them violate the genuine purpose of education of providing students with a means to achieve self determination. Students succeed when they have done well on these tests; if the students achieve high grades in a growing number of school systems, teachers and administrators are rewarded. If they do badly the educator is to blame and may suffer dire consequences, including being removed from the classroom. If the social goals of critical pedagogy are to be realized or even tolerated as an option teachers and other educators are required to enter the fray to abolish NCLB and offer an alternative both to the standardized test and to the curriculum upon which it is based. As it stands, school authorities have been ordered, in no uncertain terms, to exempt only a tiny fraction of schools from the rote methods by which the curriculum is delivered, and this exemption rarely applies to schools attended by children of the working class, particularly the working poor and the unemployed. In short, parents and teachers who wish to offer children, youth, and adults an opportunity to obtain an education, as opposed to training to be obedient workers, must learn to fight for their program, must enter the tangled world of politics.

10 Foreword xi The task is complicated by recent developments. As this is written, a new national administration has taken office. President Barack Obama has nominated an Education Secretary, Chicago school superintendent Arne Duncan, whose main criticism of the Bush administration s education policy is that NCLB is not fully funded. Unless there is a real outcry from teachers and their organizations secretary Duncan is likely to modify the program a bit, but he will continue the Bush policy of making it a virtual national curriculum and pedagogy. To make matters worse, some educational progressives, notably AFT president Randi Weingarten, a past critic of NCLB, has welcomed Duncan s nomination. Worse still is that there is almost no debate about its substance. So this book is urgently needed because it revives a discussion of the goals and pedagogies of critical pedagogy at a time when the tide has turned the other way. Yet, those of us who have labored at the intellectual and activist margins of education, no less than in the broader political world, are accustomed to the huge odds that things can actually change. But this time we have a new opportunity. President Obama has rallied millions of young people and social activists to the banner of change. If his initial impulse after election is to move rapidly to the middle, there is reason to believe that the economic and social crisis this country is facing may make it difficult to hew a centrist course. Even the old political scene is that you run in the primary to the Left, but in the general election and in administration, moving to the center may no longer suffice, given the depth of the problems facing the United States. The first impulse of nearly all mainstream politicians has been to partially displace the prevailing policy imperative of neoliberalism (that is, the market and the private sector can do everything better) with new forms of state intervention. With each passing day we are inching further in the direction of state capitalism, of which the promise of federal bailouts to banks and industrial corporations were only the first step. In the next period, as state and local governments go broke and demand federal aid, and existing political forces reveal a high degree of incompetence to meet the growing challenges, among the chances for change, a new educational Left that is armed with the wisdom of critical pedagogy may emerge. If this optimistic prognostication has any chance of fulfillment, this book will be a necessary guide.

11 Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who helped and encouraged me through the completion of this book. It would not have been possible without the contributions of my collaborators to whom I owe a great debt. First, a sincere and genuine thanks to Henry Giroux and Susan Giroux, not only for accepting this book in this new series at Palgrave but also for their continued support and solidarity. I am constantly inspired by Henry Giroux s unswerving insistence that all public intellectuals take action and develop democratic emancipatory projects that challenge power and dominance and oppression and to defend democracy, democratic public life, and the public sphere in these uncertain times (2006). The idea of this book came as a result of conversations that I had with two colleagues and collaborators, Peter McLaren and Dave Hill, both of whom gave me the courage to do it. I owe a great deal to Peter McLaren, the Poet Laureate of the Educational Left, for his ongoing inspiration, friendship, and constant support of my work. I would also like to say a special thanks to Dave Hill, who jumpstarted my book-writing when he invited me to coedit a series with him for Routledge, London. The inclusion of the piece by Paulo Freire was made possible by the enormous generosity of Paulo Freire s wife and outstanding scholar, Nita Freire. This piece, which has never been published in English, would not have been possible without the effort and comradeship of Freirean scholar Donaldo Macedo. I could not have negotiated the Paulo Freire piece on Amilcar Cabral without the knowledge, scholarship, and Freirean expertise of my two collaborators, Fernando Naiditch and Joao Paraskeva. I would also like to thank Alex Oliveira for his technical expertise in bringing this piece to light. This book would not have been possible without the encouragement of Maxine Greene, who was the first person to sign on to contribute to my efforts. It also would not have been possible without the contributions of my collaborators, to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude.

12 xiv Acknowledgments I also want to extend my appreciation to Stanley Aronowitz for writing the Foreword of this book. His contributions to the evolution of Critical Pedagogy are unsurpassed. In addition, I am deeply indebted to Kenneth Saltman, David Gabbard, and Pat Hinchey for their constant support. Their help, stimulating suggestions, and encouragement helped me to refine this book. There is a long list of people who have provided help. A special thanks goes out to Rebecca Goldstein for her intellectual curiosity and to Deborah Eldridge for her endless support. Another nod must go to my dear friend and colleague, Elaine Fine, for her constant belief in my efforts. Thanks also to David Hursh for his encouragement and simple, in the Freirean sense, but elegant suggestions before I even started writing to him to please give us some practical applications of Critical Pedagogy. I hope that this book delivers on those suggestions. Recognition goes to my dear friend, Helene R. Boss, for her relentless support to my scholarly efforts throughout my career. Thanks also to my graduate research assistant and technical reviewer, Deborah Hunter. I could not have managed without her outstanding organizational skills. I will never be able to repay her. A special thanks to the folks at Palgrave Macmillan for their help in getting this book off the ground. Julia Cohen, my editor at Palgrave, has been so wonderful to me throughout this effort. A special thanks to Samantha Hasey, Julia Cohen s assistant, as well as Allison McElgunn, my production editor, for helping to get the book through production, and to Maran at Newgen for managing the copyediting process. Thanks to all of my students over the years. Your questions and insights have challenged and strengthened me.