Critical pedagogy group presentation

To speak a true word is to transform the world (Freire)

Table of Contents
 Critical Pedagogy: Conceptual Map
 Key Concepts of Critical Pedagogy
 Articles:
 Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? (Ellsworth, 1989)
 The Souls of White Folk: Critical Pedagogy, whiteness studies, and
globalization discourse. (Leonardo, 2002)
 Revolutionary Pedagogy in Post-Revolutionary Times: Rethinking the
Political Economy of Critical Education (McLaren, 1998)
 Rereading Paulo Freire (Weiler, 2001)
 Theme Issue: Olson, P. – Rethinking Social Reproduction (1981)
 Henry Giroux- Hegemony, Resistance, and the Paradox of Educational Reform (1981)
 Michael Apple- Reproduction, Contestation, and Curriculum (1981)
 Paul Willis- Cultural Production is Different from Cultural Reproduction is Different from
Social Reproduction is Different From Reproduction (1981)

 References

Key concepts of Critical Pedagogy
 Learning through discourse
 Critical Consciousness
 Reconceptualizing Literacy
 Honouring lived experience
 Historical context
 Praxis- both dialogue and action
 Reflection
 Direct honesty
 Identifying and actively countering hidden oppression
 Student Voice/ Empowerment
 A constructive rather than banking pedagogy of teaching
 Breaking down Eurocentric thought/ thinking
 Acknowledgement of the emotional nature
 Socialist vision / revolutionary agenda
 Hegemony

Why Doesn’t This Feel
Empowering? (Ellsworth, 1989)

 Concepts Discussoed  Key Terms:
 Historical Context  critical pedagogy
 Key Assumptions  critical reflection
 Curriculum and  dialogue
Instruction 607  empowerment
 Strategies for Educators  knowledge
 Ellsworth Concludes  other
 Thoughts  rational vs. irrational
 repressive myths
 sameness
 social change
 student voice
 suffering
 teaching for liberation

Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? (Ellsworth, 1989)

Historical Context
 1988, University of Wisconsin-Madison
 Racist acts and structures evident on campus and within community
 University fails to respond to racism and marginalization of students
 Ellsworth creates special topics course (Curriculum and Instruction 607)
 Course intended to understand institutional racism, as well as carry out political
intervention
 This relates, to an extent, to Leonardo’s (2002) discussion of praxis, which is a call to work that aims at
transforming the world with dialogue and action, as defined by Freire
 Intertwine classroom practices with historical and political contexts
 This becomes a journey in which individuals can “expand the horizons of human possibility”
(Kincheloe, 2004, p. 45) through action
 Ellsworth also seems to take on Freire’s (1970) view of authentic education, in which “A” works
together with “B”, while being mediated by the world
 Expose agenda of the course rather than hide it
 Kincheloe (2004) explains that education is political in nature, catering to the needs and
agendas of groups within a society. This means that teaching is political, as well (Freire, 1970)
 Use of media to construct anti-racist pedagogies
 Anti-racist pedagogy rooted in actual experiences
 Defined through its intersections with oppressive dynamics such
as, racism, classism, sexism, ableism, etc.


Key Assumptions
 Ellsworth argues “key assumptions, goals and pedagogical practices fundamental to
the literature on critical pedagogy – namely, ‘empowerment,’ ‘student
voice’, ‘dialogue’, and even the term ‘critical’ – are repressive myths that perpetuate
relations of domination”
 Kincheloe (2004) suggests that there is “room for disagreement” (p. 48).
 Dialogues of critical pedagogy can lead to repression
 Putting dialogues of critical pedagogy into practice can reproduce domination
 That said, Kincheloe (2004) posits that critical pedagogy is evolving. Perhaps in its evolution, as it
“devises new social arrangements, new institutions, and new forms of selfhood” (p. 46), educators
can look toward ways in which repression and elements of domination can be reduced.
 Discourse of critical pedagogy based on rationalist assumptions
 Essential to theorize and critically examine who produces valid knowledge
 If not, critical pedagogues have potential to extend domination in classrooms


 Context specific in order to understand social identities and situations
 Informed by postdiscourse perspectives, individuals’ view of self and world developed
through social and historical contexts (Kincheloe, 2004); however, “given the changing
social and informational conditions […] and media-saturated Western culture, critical
theorists have needed new ways of researching and analyzing the construction of
individuals” (p. 49).
 Questions what diversity do we silence in the name of ‘liberatory’ pedagogy?


Curriculum and Instruction 607
 In Curriculum and Instruction 607:
 Racism requires political action
 This can be related to critical social theory (Kincheloe, 2004)
 Political action may be required; however, hope, as described by Freire (1970), may also be required in
order to sustain action and commitment
 Differing social positions and political ideologies of those enrolled in course brought assumptions
about critical pedagogy, that were rational in nature, into question
 Literature and studies provide evidence that myths about who the ideal rational person is/should be
has been oppressive to those who do not fit the pre-set, constructed ideal
 Lack of literature on sustained attempt for educators to work toward ending student oppression
 Ellsworth took voice of students of difference; their word was valid
 Needs to be critiqued as implications for social movements and struggles exist
 Affinity groups within the course developed
 Contributed to communication in which exchange was cross-cultural/subcultural rather than individual
 Each group had partial knowledge of oppression
 This relates to Kincheloe’s (2004) discussion of hegemony: “all of us are hegemonized as our field of
knowledge and understanding is structured by a limited exposure to competing definitions of the
sociopolitical world” (p. 54). Thus, each of us brings our own, varying experiences and views of oppression
that cannot be generalized for members of groups we are part of, as well. For example, my experience of
privilege is not the same as another white female.
 Students engaged in political work


Critical Issues
 Critical pedagogy acknowledges power one group of individuals has over another
(i.e. teachers over students)
 Power imbalance exists
 Lack of meaningful analysis
 Illusions of equality created through strategies such as student empowerment and
dialogue
 Ellsworth describes empowerment as “treat[ing] the symptoms but leav[ing] the
disease unnamed and untouched”.
 Relates to Bobbitt’s scientific method in terms of diagnosing situations and prescribing
remedies


Strategies for Educators
 Strategies for educators:
 Provide students with opportunities to expand analytical skills
 Teacher as learner of student’s reality and knowledge
 Authority is inevitable; create acceptable imbalances
 (acceptable imbalance: “authority serves ‘common human interests by sharing
information, promoting open and informed discussion, and maintaining
itself only through the respect and trust of those who grant the authority’”)
 Question “empowerment for what?”
 Individuals “cannot unproblematically bring subjugated
knowledges to light when” they are not free of their own
learned, internalized oppressions
 Emancipation
 “No one is ever completely emancipated from sociopolitical context that has
produced him or her” (Kincheloe, 2004, p. 51).


 Talk back, defiant speech rather than sharing
 Voices partial, multiple, contradictory
 Issues of trust, risk, fear, desire surrounding identity and politics of
classroom
 In our own experiences, how can we set up an environment that allows both
students and us to open up and “talk back” without fear? Is this possible? What
limitations might exist, if any?
 Dialogue in classroom
 Need to feel safe to speak
 Not necessarily the case
 Requires trust and commitment
 Social interactions; building a sense of community
 Subordination present
 “Dialogue in its conventional sense is impossible in the culture at large because at
this historical moment, power relations between raced, classed, and gendered
students and teachers are unjust. The injustice of these relations and the way in
which those injustices distort communication cannot be overcome in a
classroom, no matter how committed the teacher and students are to ‘overcoming
conditions that perpetuate suffering’”.


Ellsworth concludes:
 “Current understandings and uses of ‘critical,’ ‘empowerment,’
‘student voice,’ and ‘dialogue’ are only surface manifestations of
deeper contradictions involving pedagogies, both traditional and
critical”.
 Multiple knowledges exist in classroom, which are a result of the way
difference structures social relations
 Knowledges are contradictory, partial, and irreducible
 Support students in moving about
 Affirm “you know me/I know you”, reminding “you can’t know me/I
can’t know you”
 Identity starting point for positions at any period in history
 Contextuality of meanings
 Classroom has dispersed, shifting, and contradictory contexts of
knowing


 “We cannot act as if our membership in or alliance with an oppressed
group exempts us from the need to confront the ‘grey areas which we all
have in us’”.
 Anyone can move to the position of oppressor
 Prevent “oppressive simplification” and put it into context
 Movement between positions of privilege and the other
 “If you talk to me in ways that show you understand that your knowledge
of me, the world, and ‘the Right thing to do’ will always be
partial, interested, and potentially oppressive to others, and if I can do the
same; then we can work together on shaping and reshaping alliances for
constructing circumstances in which students of difference can thrive”.


Thoughts
 Kincheloe (2004) posits that “critical theorists become detectives
of new theoretical insights, perpetually searching for new and
interconnected ways of understanding power and oppression and
the ways they shape everyday life and human experience” (p. 49).
Might Ellsworth’s course be a manifestation of this search, as both
Ellsworth and the students are seeking to understand institutional
racism and intertwining their experiences of privilege and/or
oppression to understand power and oppression?


 Kincheloe (2004) also explains that “discursive practices are defined as a set of
tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said, who can speak with the
blessings of authority and who must listen, whose social constructions are valid
and whose are erroneous and unimportant” (p. 55). This brings into question
whose knowledge counts, who has authority, and who has the power to grant
authority (or lack of power and forced to relinquish potential power)? Perhaps
Du Bois’ (in Kincheloe, 2004) concept of double consciousness should be at the
forefront “if subjugated peoples are to survive[.] [T]hey must develop an
understanding of those who attempt to dominate them” (p. 61), while seeing
themselves through the views of others. That said, it is important to note that
individuals and culture are not always controlled through coercive force, but by
consent (Kincheloe, 2004). Although Ellsworth (1989) attempts to set up an
environment in which students are called to discuss and act against instances
of oppression, do schools today function with hidden agendas, while taking
advantage of power imbalance and hiding behind illusions of equality? What
actions might individuals take in order to oppose consent that may be
uninformed/misinformed and/or blind?


 Is Ellsworth (1989) fixated on the authority she may be perceived to hold as
a professor and/or fixated on her privileges? How might individuals go
beyond seeing themselves as “I am just a…”? What is the relevance of
moving past “I am just a…”, if at all important?
 “I’m just a peasant, or a hillbilly, or a black kid from the ghetto, or a
woman, [etc.]” (Freire in Kincheloe, 2004, p. 73)

The Souls of White Folk: Critical
Pedagogy, whiteness studies, and
globalization discourse. (Leonardo, 2002)
Critical Pedagogy requires both “reflection and action” (Freire, 1970) and
it is “in speaking their word that men, by naming the
world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which
men achieve significance as men” (Freire, 1970) . However, as Leonardo
(2002) points out “Whiteness as a privileged signifier has become
global” and therefore whites have “created a global condition
after its own image” (Leonardo, 2002) in order to move
dialogue, and thus critical pedagogy forward we must
identify the elements of oppression that have become
“Transformed into the common sense that becomes law. “
Critical Theory questions the assumption that
(Leonardo, 2002)
societies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and other nations in the European Union are
unproblematically democratic and free. (Kincheloe, 2004)

The Souls of White Folk: Critical Pedagogy, whiteness studies, and globalization discourse. (Leonardo, 2002)

Critical points.
1. “Whiteness as a privileged signifier has become global”
(Leonardo, 2002)

2. There is a distinction between having white skin and
‘being white’ “Many white subjects have fought on the
side of racial justice” (Leonardo, 2002)”
3. White arguments to suggest racial equality demonstrate
that they “completely misunderstand the world that they
have created” (Allen, 2000 cited in Leonardo, 2002)
4. Admitting the reality of white racism would force a river
of centuries of pain, denial, and guilt that many people
cannot assuage” (Leonardo, 2002)
5. Whiteness has appropriated non-whites as necessary.


1. “Whiteness as a privileged signifier has become
global” (Leonardo, 2002)
 Little in the world and certainly little in the world of education is neutral (Kincheloe, 2004)
 Thus, in order to engage in critical pedagogy, we need to identify the elements of
oppression and hegemony that have become commonplace within white culture. In
particular, “the white diaspora has, to a large extent, created a global condition after its
own image, a condition that whites are generally ill equipped to understand.” (Leonardo, 2002)
 For example, “flexible communication, contract and part-time work, smaller batches of
production, and exportation of labor to Third World nations represent some of capitals
late Modus operandi[....]This condition leads to the false impression that the ‘class
situation’ is improving because much of the “manufacturing and hard labor remains out
of sight and out of mind” (Leonardo, 2002) as critical pedagogues we must identify these
(MO) and work to counter them (Kincheloe, 2004)
 “Because we know that capital is intimate with race, a close relationship exists between
economic exploitation and racial oppression” (Leonardo, 2002)
 “White, male, class elitist, heterosexist, imperial and colonial privilege often operates by
asserting the power to claim objectivity and neutrality” (Kincheloe, 2004)
 Given this global and insidious, commonplace nature of white hegemony the “The point
[is] not to flee the American social landscape but to change it” (Leonardo, 2002)


 Educators need to have a “larger awareness- so important in light of
U.S. Efforts at empire building in the 21st Century- of the sense of
Western superiority embedded in the knowledge production and
curriculum development. (Kincheloe, 2004)
 “Despite the racial progress that we have experienced through the Civil
Rights Movement in the USA and the fight against apartheid in South
Africa, White normatively remains central to the development of both
Western and non-Western nations. (Leonardo, 2002)
 As educators we need to seek out the normativity, we need to ask “do
‘best practices’, [...] help create democratic consciousness and modes of
making meaning that detect indoctrination and social regulation”?
(Kincheloe, 2004)
 The electronic world of the twenty-first century is vulnerable to power
in ways never before imagined not only through schooling, but also by
way of television and other modes of communication; dominant power
attempts to produce more compliant forms of consciousness and
identity (Kincheloe, 2004)
 “Critical pedagogues [look] to examine the ways American power
operates under the cover of establishing democracies all over the world
[…] Such neo-colonial power must be exposed so that it can be opposed
in the United States and around the world”. (Kincheloe, 2004)


2. “There is a difference between white people, white
culture, and whiteness” (Leonardo, 2002)
 “Schooling can be hurtful”; however, “teachers involved in the harmful process most
often do not intentionally hurt students. Critical pedagogy works to provide such
assistance to teachers who want to mitigate the effects of power on their students”
(Kincheloe, 2004) Some of those students are white and, therefore, it is important that we
remember that:
 Whiteness’ is a racial discourse, whereas the category ‘white people’ represents a socially
constructed identity usually based on skin color.” (Leonardo, 2002)
 “Some facets of white culture are benign or even liberatory, such as critical traditions of
the Enlightenment, whiteness is nothing but false and oppressive”. (Leonardo, 2002)
 Therefore, “this does not mean dismantling white people, as McLaren (1995) has pointed
out” (Leonardo, 2002)
 Critical pedagogy mandates that schools do not hurt students- good schools don’t blame
students for the failures or strip students of the knowledge they bring to the classroom
(Kincheloe, 2004). This applies also to white students.
 “The complementary goal is to dismantle race without suggesting to students of color
that their racial experiences are not valid or real” (Leonardo, 2002)
 “There is a difference between suggesting that race , as a concept, is not real and
affirming student’s racialized and lived experiences as ‘real’ (Leonardo, 2002)


•Whites, however, are NOT victims.
•“In the USA, whites feel minimized under the sign of multiculturalism, victimised by
affirmative action, and perceive that they suffer from group discrimination despite the fact
that white women are the largest beneficiaries of such policies.
•Ludic multiculturalism – which should not be confused with Critical forms of
multiculturalism- refers to the flattening out of difference, as if they were equal and
transitive. This reasoning allows for the mistaken claim that whites suffer from
discrimination (e.g. reverse affirmative action) just as blacks have suffered from it in the
past” (McLaren et al , 2001 as cited in Leonardo, 2002)
•Whites need to “acknowledge their unearned privileges and disinvest in them […] A
realistic appraisal is that whites do have a lot to lose by committing race treason, not
just something to gain by forsaking whiteness” (Leonardo, 2002). That said they have
humanity to gain!
•“Critical forms of multiculturalism have made significant progress in globalizing
education (i.e. Representing non-white cultures) but whiteness still remains at the
centre of many national curricula or culture” (Leonardo, 2002)
•Critical pedagogy must forge a third space for neo-abolitionist whites as neither
enemy nor ally but a concrete subject of struggle, an identity which is ‘always more
than one thing, and never the same thing twice’ (Ellsworth, 1997 as cited in
Leonardo, 2002)

3. White arguments to suggest racial equality
demonstrate that they “completely misunderstand the
world that they have created” (Allen, 2000 cited in Leonardo, 2002) They
have a “Racial Contract”
 The Racial Contract is “the implicit consensus that white
frequently enter into”( Mills, 1997 as cited in Leonardo, 2002). Whiteness is
transformed into the common sense that becomes law
(Leonardo, 2002), yet effective critical pedagogic dialogue requires that
they “subject recognize himself in the object” (Freire, 1970). It
is, thus, imperative that Whites recognize the elements
of embedded oppression that come as a result of this
contract.
 Education simply cannot be neutral. When education
pretends to be politically neutral like many churches in
Nazi Germany, it supports the dominant existing power
structure (Kincheloe, 2004)


 By suggesting arguments such as ‘if you do not like it here
go home’, or ‘if I come to your country I would have to learn
your language’ assume:
 That students who voice opposition to white racism do no
belong in the nation they seek to improve
 A frame of racism that identifies the problem as being
“dissatisfied with [ones] lot in life rather than a concern for
the humanity of all people”
 White ownership of racialized territories
 That there is a place on earth that has not been touched by
‘whiteness’
 Ignorance to the global privilege of English as the
international language of business
 White students do not disinvest in whiteness by claiming ‘I’m
not white,’ since this is how whiteness currently operates
(Leonardo, 2002)


4. Admitting the reality of white racism would
force a river of centuries of pain, denial, and guilt
that many people cannot assuage (Leonardo, 2002)
 The key to Critical Pedagogy is dialogue. Whites need to find a
way to dialogue, not just say, however, discuss and dialogue, “to
say the true word- which is work, which is Praxis- is to transform
the world, say that word is not the privilege of some men by the
right of every many” (Freire, 1970) and thus whites must dialogue and
discuss, listen and share with their colleagues.
 This will not be an easy process “made to recognise their
unearned privileges and confronted in public they react with
tears of admission” (Leonardo, 2002). “Discussing (anti) racism is never
easy and is frequently suppressed in mainstream classroom
conditions”(Leonardo, 2002).
 “How can I dialogue if I consider myself a member of the in-
group of ‘pure’ men?” (Freire, 1970)


 This cannot remain, however, and white educators should remember that “at the point
of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only men
who are attempting, together, to learn more than they know” (Freire, 1970).
 This must go further though “to say one thing and do another- to take one’s own word
lightly-cannot inspire trust” (Freire, 1970) and yet “white comfort zones are notorious for
tolerating only small, incremental dozes of racial confrontation” (Hunter and Nettles, 1999 as cited
in Leonardo, 2002).
 A pedagogy of politeness only goes so far before it degrades into the paradox of liberal
feel good solidarity absent of dissent, without which any worthwhile pedagogy becomes
a democracy of empty forms (Leonardo, 2002).
 Freire speaks a great deal about a dialogue of love - that “the naming of the world, which
is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is
at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (Freire, 1970). This removal
of a pedagogy of Politeness and entrance into hard conversations between white and
non-white educators (I might argue this applies to all forms of oppression), is what we
might call necessary ‘tough love’
 All of this dialogue that is required amongst educators, students, and between
educators, supports the idea that we absolutely cannot accept a banking method of
education
 We will only move forward if we dialogue with and amongst each other openly and honestly.
 Critical teachers, therefore, must admit they are in a position of authority and then
demonstrate that authority in their actions in support of students (Kincheloe, 2004) They
must be “learners- not functionaries” (Kincheloe, 2004)


5. Whiteness has appropriated non-whites as
necessary.
 In order to maintain its racial hegemony, whiteness has always had to maintain
some sense of flexibility. That is, like capital, white domination must work
with scope not scales, of influence, especially in times of crisis. It must
accommodate subjects previously marked as Other.
 In Ireland, British rule outlawed the practice of catholic holidays and the Irish
language.
 Irish people eventually became white whereas blacks and Indians remain non-
white.
 What it previously marked as subhuman, it later accepts as brethren. Irish
ascendancy also shows the wicked flexibility of whiteness to offer broader
membership for newcomers in exchange for allegiance to the white nation state
(Leonardo, 2002).
 Asian-American student is commonly touted as the ‘model minority’, or
‘intelligent minority’ this favourable image is a commentary on the perception
of African-American and Latino students as less than Ideal students
(Leonardo, 2002).
 The Asian-American case is instructive because it exposes the social
construction of whiteness (Leonardo, 2002).
 Whiteness mutates according to historical conditions (Leonardo, 2002).


Conclusions
 White, male, class elitist, heterosexist, imperial and colonial privilege has spread through
Economic and Capitalist mentalities to be a ubiquitous and subversive way of life around
the globe. This is so much a part of our life that “like a fish does not perceive the water it
lives in” we do not notice it. In particular many whites are not even aware of the privilege
they hold. Critical pedagogy teaches us to seek out theses sources of hidden oppression
and dialogue to bring them into the open and thus actively oppose them.
 Whiteness, white culture, and white are all different conceptions and not always linked.
It is whiteness that we need to fight against, as whiteness is the enemy and is a mental
choice rather than something we are born into. We need to identify both the historical
significance and the present presentation of these oppressions, name them for what they
are, and dialogue against them.
 Critical pedagogy teaches us that those ideas, procedures, and ways of life that seem most
neutral are likely the most subversively oppressive.
 In taking action against oppression, whites need to identify their privilege and “commit
race treason”. This should be made as difficult as it needs to be to openly and honestly do
so, but no harder. Dialogue will often bring both whites and non-whites to a mutual
understanding if they both approach the discussion with a learning stance.
 In the past whiteness , like capitalism, has had no choice but to be flexible and
incorporate minor variations, in order to maintain hegemony. We need to be careful that
this false acceptance is identified and opposed.

Revolutionary Pedagogy in Post-
Revolutionary Times: Rethinking the
Political Economy of Critical Education
by Peter McLaren

Key themes:
 Marxist and neo-Marxist perspective of critical education
 Economic inequity in global capitalism and its importance in local
relations, systems, and everyday practices
 Role of power and privilege in maintaining oppressive labour relations
between the “First World” and the “Third World” and within the “First
World”
 Need to revive the socialist agenda in critical pedagogy to counter
hegemonic control of capitalist ideologies from a framework that also
takes into accounting intersecting experiences of racism, sexism, and
homophobia

Revolutionary Pedagogy in Post-Revolutionary Times: Rethinking the Political Economy of Critical Education (McLaren, 1998)

Revolutionary Pedagogy:
Context of Economic Oppression
 There is widespread local and global economic inequity that is based
on redistribution of wealth so that the rich become richer and the poor
become poorer
 Capitalism is not just about class; it mediates all aspects of social life,
subjecting it to “the abstract requirements of the market” (p. 451)
 Economic marginalization, while mediated by class, is also deeply
connected to exclusion of people based on racism, sexism, and
homophobia
 Hence, the idea of a “free” market is not neutral and devoid of power
imbalances and oppressive tendencies that are built into the very
structures of capitalism
 Global capital movement to the South is imperialistic in nature based
on exploitative relations from a Marxist and neo-Marxist perspective


The Myth of Democracy
 Critical pedagogy is not living up to its transformative potential; it has
been “domesticated” and stripped of it “revolutionary agenda,” (p. 442) as
it is largely silent on social and political critique of global capitalism
 The rhetoric of multiculturalism has also been “co-opted” to conform to
the needs of capitalism that focuses on diversity and differences in
depoliticized ways, only to prepare students for a workforce that is
competent in intercultural skills for the very purpose of advancing
capitalism (p. 439)
 The new forms of control are less obvious and are operationalized via
hegemonic domination where power is not with teachers, but with the
institution and the capitalist relations and ideologies it is embedded in,
hence the myth of democracy
 McLaren talks about the “commercialization of higher education” (p. 435)
where knowledge becomes a form of production (p. 438); its ties to
capitalism to produce particular kinds of ideologies about what kind of
knowledge should be produced, ideas of citizenship, purpose of education
– that reinforce capitalist goals.


The Myth of Democracy
 Kincheloe (2004) speaks to the “contradictions in the contemporary
pedagogical landscape” where , while schools claim to strive for
democracy, they in fact perpetuate hegemonic control and a
competitive ethics; they are “authoritarian and pursue antidemocratic
goals of social control for particular groups and individuals” (p. 1)
 Consequently, “the globalization of capitalism and its political
bedfellow, neoliberalism, work together to democratize suffering,
obliterate hope, and assassinate justice” (p. 434)


Reconfiguring Critical Pedagogy
 Critical pedagogy is an important form of resistance against capitalism
because it is “a way of thinking about, negotiating, and transforming the
relationship among classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the
institutional structures of the school, and the social and material relations
of the wider community, society, and nation-state” (p. 441)
 Critical pedagogy should aim to transform global economic relations
rather than work within the existing capitalist structures, as “anti-capitalist
struggle is the best means to rearticulate identities within the construction
of a radical socialist project” (McLaren, 1998, p. 451)
 For critical pedagogy to be revolutionary, it should be “less in-formative
and more per-formative” (p. 452), centring lived experiences of those
marginalized, “walking the talk” of justice and anti-capitalism
 A critical pedagogy for multicultural education should build capacity of
students in cultural and social analysis and critique of capitalism. They
should be facilitated in practicing it in their everyday life in a way that will
challenge capitalism


Challenges & Possibilities:
Revolutionary Pedagogy
1. Critical pedagogy should not claim universality or speak to needs of all
humans. It should be situated in its own historical context as not to re-
enforce the normative view that centres a white, heterosexual, Western
male of working class.
2. While situated in its locality, critical pedagogy should also make
connections with the global systems of control that are perpetuated
through capitalism.
3. Critical pedagogy should be reflexive of history and conscious of not
“falling prey to a biological foundationalism or the falsely generalizing
and ethnocentric tendencies of modern, Western grand theories that
privilege certain historical or philosophical endpoints to the human
condition,” as it “impl[ies] the redundancy of any discourse projected
into the future that attempts to hold humanity accountable for its
present condition” (p. 454). Stanley Aronowitz warns against such a
“right-wing pronunciamentos of ‘endings’” – “the notion that history,
ideology, and political evolution have ended because liberal democratic
capitalist states have produced a social order that can never be
improved” (cited in Kincheloe, 2004, p. 61).


4. Critical pedagogy should de-centre notions of knowledge, intelligence, and
“reason” that privilege capitalist class; they should challenge neoliberal “systems
of intelligibility” in educational institutions and their relationship with the
dominant culture within which they are situated. Critical pedagogy must centre
oppressed voices – it should be aware of power dynamics and social location in
the production of knowledge. Freire (cited in Kincheloe, 2004) proposes that
critical pedagogy embody “radical love” that will strengthen our ability to bring
love in our practice and in our systems, “and to rethink reason in a humane and
interconnected manner” that will allow us to appease human suffering (p. 3).
5. Educators of critical pedagogy should contextualize shift in “modes of
production” in global capitalism and recognize how capitalism is not something
“out there”; rather, it is embedded in our everyday practices, subjectivities, and
relations (p. 457). In education, connections to sweatshops and systems of
exploitation should be made (p. 457).
6. Critical pedagogy should speak to interlocking systems of oppression by also
challenging racism, sexism, and homophobia. Willis (1977) offers insight into the
contradiction between domination and resistance when only one aspect of
domination is focused on. Willis (1977) advocates challenging all systems of
domination in radical pedagogy for it to be transformative and revolutionary.


7. Critical pedagogy should reinvigorate its historical socialist vision and work towards a
basic standard minimum of human needs and human rights. Michael Apple (in
Interchange, 1981) reminds us that our task as educators is also historical: it is to “place
education again on a socialist agenda”.
8. Critical pedagogy must challenge power at multiple fronts because it “involves a
politics of economic and resource distribution, as well as a politics of recognition,
affirmation, and difference” (p. 458). Similarly, Henry Giroux argues that power is
more than just distribution of political and economic forces – it is “a concrete set of
practices that produces social mechanisms through which distinct experiences and
personal identities are shaped” (Kincheloe, 2004, p. 62). Likewise, Kincheloe (2004)
echoes this concern with power and politicizing education since “every dimension of
schooling and every form of educational practice are politically contested spaces” (p.
2) influenced by the “surrounding institutional morality” (Goodland, 1994 cited in
Kincheloe, 2004, p. 2).
9. Reconfiguring critical pedagogy to its revolutionary potential and its vision of socialist
democracy entails focusing on “communicative democracy,” that is moving towards a
collective interest, group representation, and giving voice to formerly silenced
oppressed groups.


10. Lastly, critical pedagogy must centre lived experience and “standpoint epistemology
[from below] of the oppressed” and calls them to continually educate themselves. For
Paulo Freire, this is premised on the idea of creating knowledge relationally or “co-
investigating” with “people (who would normally be considered objects of that
investigation)” (Freire, 1970, p. 131). This is important in addressing the “theme of
silence” around marginal viewpoints and bring to surface themes and issues that
impact the reality of those oppressed by capitalism.


Conclusion: Revolutionary
Pedagogy
 Struggle for revolutionary education is linked to larger social and political struggle against global and
local capitalism.
 Schools must become “sites for the production of both critical knowledge and sociopolitical action”
(p. 460).
 According to Giroux (in Interchange, 1981), what is needed is to question how hegemonic ideologies are
facilitated via schooling and ask “what constitutes appropriate knowledge for working class students?”
 Education should build capacity of students to engage in activism and “critical citizenship” so that
they have social justice literacy and the language to challenge global capitalism, labour relations, and
how they themselves are implicated in capitalist systems. Thus, “the important challenge ahead is to
educate a citizenry capable of overcoming the systemic exploitation of so many of the world’s
populations” (p. 460).
 In conclusion, “if educators are to follow the example of a Marxist-inspired critical pedagogy, there
must be a concerted effort to construct a social order that is not premised upon capital” (p. 461). This
is not without contradictions because schools also have contradictory ideologies that should be
addressed: “…as a state apparatus, schools perform important roles in assisting in the creation of
conditions necessary for capital accumulation (they sort, select, and certify a hierarchically organized
student body) and for legitimation (they maintain an inaccurate meritocratic ideology and, therefore
legitimate the ideological forms necessary for the recreation of inequality)” (Apple in Interchange,
1981). The contradiction lies in these two functions of schools and it is important to address them
because, as discussed in the article, legitimation for capital accumulation is not neutral and is
influenced by neo-imperialism values that privilege certain groups over others along lines of class, as
well as race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Rereading Paulo Freire
by Kathleen Weiler
 Critical Thoughts
 What is Feminist Pedagogy?
 Feminist Pedagogy
 How Feminist Pedagogy and Freirean Pedagogy are Alike
 How does Weiler Interpret Freire from a Feminist Perspective?
 Problematic Concepts of Freire’s Theory
 Freire’s Assumption about Oppression and Liberation as part of
the Male Public World
 Freire and Oppression
 Feminist Educators and bell hooks

Rereading Paulo Freire (Weiler, 2001)

Critical Thoughts
 Weiler interprets what Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy means in terms of her
view of feminism and how it fits into the Freirean world
Freirean world (from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire, 1970):
 Freire was devoted to working to improve marginalized people
 Developed curricular and instructional strategies that produced better learning
climates and a better society
 Freirean liberation is a social dynamic that involves working with and engaging
other people in a power conscious process (Freire, 1970, p.71)
 Liberation and critical hope cannot be attained until individuals move to a
critical consciousness
 Oppressed learn to understand the social, political, economic and cultural
contradictions that undermine learning
 Learning and being are inseparable
 Literacy empowers students to change themselves and to take action in the
world for justice, liberty, and equality


What is Feminist Pedagogy?
 Feminist interventions in education have been determined by
historical, economic, and political contexts in which women have lived
 Feminist pedagogy is political in nature
 Women in all cultures have developed resistances and identities in
response to historical and social circumstances - progressive critique
and social advancements for women
 Social and political goals of U.S. feminism were originally framed
around liberal, Enlightenment conceptions of rights and justice for
women
 Subsequently feminists have condemned patriarchal desires and practices
using the Western discourses of psychoanalysis and poststructuralism


 Feminists have challenged structure of traditional canon
 Interventions and issues raised by feminist teachers and theorists
around nature of women as learners; the gendered nature of accepted
knowledge in the academy; the role and authority of the teacher; and
the epistemological question of the source of knowledge and truth
claims of men and women
 Feminist pedagogy emerged from developmental psychology on the
differences between men and women in moral and cognitive
development
 Differences are socially and discursively constructed - failure to explore
and analyze the social and historical construction of these ideas of
women’s natures
 History of Western patriarchy, rationality the province of men and
feeling and nurturance of women- historically sedimented identities
 Use of mass media to construct theories of womanly stages of
development, ways of knowing, violence, and sexism
 Myths and stereotypes of how women are viewed in society


 Feminist poststructuralist educational theory has challenged the idea
of a unitary identity “woman” and the idea that feminist pedagogy will
lead to the discovery of a collective unity of experience for women or
men
 It has critiqued the ideas of control, abstract rationality and universal truth
implied in the project of modernism and in critical, democratic and
Freirean pedagogies
 It has criticized male education theorists who fail to take gender into
account, to acknowledge their own male privilege or their claims of mastery
(p. 5).
 The identity “woman” has been challenged by women of
colour, lesbians, women from working class background
 It obscures the meaning of race in a racist society, class, power or
oppression, age or other kinds of differences or deviations from a mythical
norm
 Feminist pedagogy analyses patriarchy and attempts to develop an
education appropriate for women


How Feminist Pedagogy and Freirean
Pedagogy are Alike
 They both emphasize the importance of consciousness raising, the
existence of an oppressive social structure and the need to change
it, and the possibility of social transformation
 They both hold the belief in the ability of human beings to come to a
knowledge and understanding of themselves and the world and the
assumption that both the content of the curriculum and methods of
pedagogy teach lessons to the marginalized
 They see the fundamental need to challenge dominant assumptions of
knowing and knowledge and to value all students


How does Weiler Interpret Freire from a
Feminist Perspective?
 Weiler is from a white, middle class, non-oppressed background and
has been challenged in critiquing Freire, a Brazilian man who spoke for
the subjugated and oppressed
 She discusses how her own social and historical location of privilege
shape her critique of Freire
 Weiler acknowledges Freire’s commitment to social justice and
condemnation of exploitation and dehumanization
 Freire has been an inspiration to progressive education in seeking ways
to use education to build more just societies in settings throughout the
world


Problematic Concepts of Freire’s Theory
 Weiler believes that feminist educators need to consider the issues that Freire
ignores or distorts
 Freire’s work is so decontextualized and his claims are sweeping; readers
identify themselves as either the oppressed or the liberatory teacher
 Freire describes transparent, liberatory teacher without consideration of
location and identity, public and private worlds
 Weiler recounts Freire’s failure to include the experiences of women or to
analyze or even acknowledge the patriarchal grounding of Western thought
 She criticizes his view of history as a struggle between good and evil and his
recognition of himself as a force of goodness and salvation
 Weiler questions the masculine nature of his work
 Weiler discusses his resistance to addressing questions of sexism or patriarchy


Freire’s Assumption about Oppression and Liberation
as part of the Male Public World
 Freire considers oppressed as a “general category” without acknowledging the
complexities and differences among real people. Freire has been criticized (his early
work) for his assumption that “the oppressed” were male peasants or workers in the
public sphere, as well as for his use of the male pronoun to refer to all people (p.12)
 Freire held assumptions of patriarchal privilege: “If the oppressed women choose to fight
exclusively against the oppressed men when they are both in the category of
oppressed, they may rupture the oppressor-oppressed relations specific to both women
and men. If this is done, the struggle will only be partial and perhaps tactically incorrect
(p. 16)
 He writes about the need for oppressed to attain literacy, overlooking the fact that in
many communities women are more literate than men - male definition of literacy is
validated in workplace, cultural and social patriarchy
 Devalued women’s literacy because it belongs to the home, to the care of the children and
maintenance of private life
 Reproduction linked to project of economic reconstruction, ignores issue of women’s
work
 Talks about the need to fight against sexist discrimination, but implies that antisexist and
antiracist movements are not as serious as class movements
 Discusses importance of women’s movement for progressive change, but fundamental
framing of oppression remains in class and occasionally racial terms


Freire and Oppression
 Freire includes gender within class - liberation should take place for
both men and women and not just for men or for women or along
colour or ethnic lines
 Freire felt that women’s main concern should be to understand the
different levels of male oppression rather than examine and
understand the levels of women’s oppression
 The most important focus for women should be to understand men
and to help men confront their own sexism (p. 16)
 Fails to recognize ways that class, sex, and race are intertwined
 Together, men and women need to cut the chains of oppression
 “What is the strategy of the struggle of the oppressed? It is the Utopia
of liberty that severs the chains of oppression. This should be the
dream of the struggle for liberation that never reaches a plenitude” (p.
17).


Feminist Educators and bell hooks
 Many feminist educators have embraced Freire’s visionary humanity, his
emphasis on seeing human beings as subjects and not objects of history
 Women have identified themselves as the oppressed and have read Freire’s
demands for justice and human rights as women’s demands
 bell hooks identified with Freire
 Provoked deep thought about the construction of an identity in resistance and led to
her seeing herself as a subject of resistance; feminism must be more than a call for
equal rights for women; must be able to eradicate the ideology of domination that
expresses itself along the axes of race, class, sexuality, colonialism, and gender
 Feminism and Freirean thought are interwoven
 bell hooks contends that Freire was more concerned with the plight and needs
of the disenfranchised than were many of the white bourgeois feminists
 One’s actions in pursuit of resistance to oppression are more important than
one’s race, class, or gender - one’s positionality. Teachers need to develop a
global perspective that allows one to see self as others see it
(Kincheloe, 2004, p.83).


Conclusions
 How does perspective change our knowledge of critical pedagogies - Freire’s
location and history as compared to Weiler’s?
 How do we acknowledge differences and hear the voices of all students in an
unequal society?
 We need to discuss the conflicts that emerge from oppression, the control of
political projects and ambiguities of history
 Feminist educators struggle to create pedagogical spaces in which women can learn
- stubborn structures of patriarchal and racial privilege continue to define academic
institutions
 The power of the androcentric Western philosophical and political traditions
characterizes the texts that we and our students read, as well as our consciousness
 Attempts at more liberatory pedagogies have been uneven and raise questions
around pedagogy and identity
 Female educator tries to create the conditions for a female speaking subject as part
of a larger political and social project against patriarchy, as well as against racism
and class exploitation (p. 18)
 Who are we speaking for when we speak and what sort of knowledge are we
seeking?


 Critical pedagogy wants to connect education with passion, to embolden teachers
and students to act in ways that make a difference, and to push humans to new
levels of social and cognitive achievement previously deemed impossible
(Kincheloe, 2004, p. 2)
 Weiler wants to recreate that passion in feminist pedagogy
 Education is always political as it supports the needs of the democratic culture
while subverting the interests of marginalized cultures (p. 14). Weiler describes
feminism and feminist pedagogy as political projects. Freire talks about women
living in “the third world in the first world” (p. 7).
 Kincheloe, Freire and Weiler believed in the ever evolving critical pedagogy over
time - critical enlightenment, emancipation, ideology, discursive power and how
power dominates and shapes our consciousness
 They all “retained a vision of the not yet” (Leila Villaverde in Kincheloe, 2004), and
the desire to build new forms of relationships with diverse people
 Discursive power cannot exist without critical thinking. Thinking which perceives
reality as process and does not separate itself from action.
 As Freire states, authentic education is not carried on by “A” for “B” or by “A” about
“B”, but rather by “A” with “B”, mediated by the world - a world which challenges
both parties, giving rise to views or opinions about it (Freire, 1970).
 Freire’s humanity and responsibility for students as “knowers of the world”
resonates with feminist educators seeking to develop an education and pedagogy
for women

Weiler, Kathleen. (2001) Rereading Paulo Friere. In Weiler, Kathleen. (Ed.), Feminist
engagements: Reading, resisting and revisioning male theorists in education and
cultural studies.

Theme Issue: Rethinking Social
Reproduction. Interchange, (1981)
 Paul Olson: Rethinking Social Reproduction
 Henry Giroux: Hegemony, Resistance, and the Paradox
of Educational Reform
 Michael Apple: Reproduction, Contestation, and
Curriculum: An Essay in Self-Criticism
 Paul Willis: Cultural Production is Different from
Cultural Reproduction is Different from Social
Reproduction is Different from Reproduction

Theme Issue: Olson, P. – Rethinking Social Reproduction (1981)

Theme Issue – Rethinking Social Reproduction
Olson, P. (1981)
 Social inequality
 Schools play role in inequality
 Both the required and supplementary articles this week examine some form(s) of inequality and
suffering
 As educators and/or individuals who have experienced the school system, are we aware of the inequality
that exists, especially in terms of power and dominance? What is our role on this created spectrum of
power? How can we act to promote equality or give and receive hope as explained by Freire (1970)? Is this
possible or do factors exist that prevent us from doing so?
 Transformations of consciousness and society can be viewed with problems
associated with interaction, communication, and sequenced cumulated learning
 Katz (historian) examines origin of American system
 1880s: “system was already ‘universal, tax supported, free, compulsory, bureaucratic, racist,
and class biased.’”
 Today, more issues are evident in the system (sexism, intolerance, etc.)
 When examining social, political, and historical contexts, as presented in this week’s readings, it
seems that issues continue to manifest themselves in one form or another across generations. That
said, is it realistic to take action that brings about transformative change (as Ellsworth (1989)
attempted to do together with students against institutional racism)? How is change measured? Can
a vision of hope (Freire, 1970) be attained and sustained within societies in which human suffering
and oppression seem to be cyclical in nature?
 Throughout 1960s and 1970s, relationship of the variables within social structure
and outcomes of schooling examined


 Reanalysis of key works, in order to provide “evidence that social
structure and family background were more powerful determinants of
cognitive outcomes than even the best schooling”
 Apple explains hidden curriculum in both educational practice and
content
 Related to social roles, values, and norms of students
 Jackson and Sharp and Green explore hierarchy and competition of the
whole group through demographics and physical space of classroom
 These positions countered the, then, view that schools worked for all
 Showed that schools were not functioning optimally to address the
varying needs of students, especially minorities and the poor
 Today, within the education field in Ontario, there is movement toward an education
system that addresses the needs of all students
 There is a shift toward fairness
 Fairness is not about sameness or being equal, but about taking action based on
individualistic needs
 That said, are there politicized, hidden agendas (as examined in this week’s readings)
that exist even in these positive movements?


 Essential to be aware of the power of social and economic determinants within society
 School as a “passive servant to the active determinant masters of social background and
structure”
 Relates to positions of power, who has power, how groups/individuals can move about
(Ellsworth, 1989) from privilege to oppressor and can have varying positions of power (from
powerful to powerless)
 If schools were deemed “passive servant[s] to the active determinant masters of social
background and structure”, might they feel empowered by being the masters of students,
enforcing hidden agendas and engraining sociopolitical ideologies and/or moulding students
into pre-set, prescribed ideals?
 Correspondence theory
 Social inequality created and reproduced within schools
 Schools have contexts within general social structure that can both contradict and reproduce
structural order
 Factors, such as economics, culture, history, movements, context, etc., shape schooling
outcomes
 Structural variables and effects intertwined with lived experience needed
 Willis – Learning to Labour
 Lived experiences and social reproduction possess complexities
 Social constructivist logics – in order to work toward equality in schools it is necessary to
partake in “active analysis of concrete situation and theory”, while incorporating strategies
 The authors within the Theme Issue – Rethinking Social Reproduction (Giroux, Apple, Willis,
Dale, and West) all:
 look for ways to address such problems
 provide theory that calls upon critique of which types of theories/methodologies/strategies
would be best to address issues

Theme Issue: Henry Giroux- Hegemony, Resistance, and the Paradox of Educational Reform (1981)

Theme Issue – Hegemony, Resistance, and the
Paradox of Educational Reform
Giroux, H. (1981)
 Giroux examines hegemony, resistance, and the paradox of
educational reform
 How studies have revealed economic and political character of
education, class domination and inequality occur in day-to-day
classroom experiences
 Relates to schools and social inequality, as well as Apple’s (1981)
discussion on “hidden curriculum”
 Theoretical and practical importance of counter-
hegemonic struggles both within and outside the sphere of
schooling

Theme Issue: Henry Giroux- Hegemony, Resistance, and the Paradox of Educational Reform (1981)

 Three major positions emerged to analyze the relationship between schooling
and the capitalist societies of the advanced industrial countries of the west:
o Social reproduction - process of schooling and economic life in capitalist society
o Cultural reproduction - how capitalist societies are able to repeat and reproduce
themselves
o Theories of social and cultural reproduction - both positions view class domination as
the central element underlying the mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction
• Concepts of ideology, hegemony, and cultures as reconstructions for examining
relationship between general society and school as starting points for radical
pedagogy
• Radical pedagogy - the concepts and tools used in pursuit of social and self-
analysis by students be rooted in the cultural capital that constitutes and
mediates their relationships to world
• Need to learn how knowledge is produced and reconstructed
• How to theorize, how to judge knowledge from a class and political perspective
• Learn the kind of knowledge that promotes social analysis and points to
transformative social action (Freire, 1970)
• At core of any radical pedagogy there must be the aim of empowering people to
work for a change in the social, political, and economic structure that constitutes
the ultimate source of class based power and domination (Giroux, 1981, p. 24)

Theme Issue: Michael Apple- Reproduction, Contestation, and Curriculum (1981)

Theme Issue: Reproduction,
Contestation, and Curriculum
Apple, M. (1981)
 In re-examining his own conception of critical pedagogy, in particular
as it pertains to the school reproducing, (he argues that it also
produces quite a bit) many elements of critical pedagogy are re-
illuminated
 Just as critical pedagogy focuses on the continual shaping of
knowledge by our interactions with culture and society at large, Apple
quotes Castells (1980 as cited in Apple, 1981) “ the economy is not a
‘mechanism’ but a social process continuously shaped and recast by
the changing relationship of human kind to the productive forces”.
 This is reminiscent of Leonardo (2002) conception of globalization and
economic forces spreading oppressive culture.
 Apple focuses on the contradictions that often occur whereby a
workplace, culture, or school begins to produce rather than just re-
produce the ideologies of white hegemony


 Apple also deconstructs two views
 Schools have more or less impact than much of the literature suggests.
He sees both sides stating “the realization that understanding and
acting on schools is not enough and also knowing that ignoring them is
simply wrong” (Apple, 1981)
 Apple recognizes that attempts to “ develop a supposedly neutral method” of
education and curriculum “often functioned to help legitimate and
reproduce the structural bases of inequity” (Apple, 1981)
 Apple argues that beyond a banking view of education, students are not just
“passive internalizers of pre-given messages.” No matter how we deliver the
curriculum (with all of the hidden messages included) "student
reinterpretation, at best only partial acceptance, and often outright rejection
of the planned and unplanned messages of schools [is] more likely”
(Apple, 1981). He argues that many of the forms of rebellion that students
use only serve to prepare them for the ideology of the workforce that they
will enter, a white, male, class –based world and thus on some level the
school is also producing the ideology that students appear to be rebelling
against.
 Furthermore, although schools have “relative autonomy” they also serve to
recreate the conditions necessary for ideological hegemony to be
maintained. Indeed this is how the ideology spreads and takes hold as a
hegemony through hidden and “naturalized” methods


 Thus when contradistinctions, such as the student example above occur, they
often serve to produce rather than re-produce the ideology they are
apparently attempting to contest. “By rejecting school knowledge, the
students are in essence rejecting mental labor. They thus harden the
distinction between mental and manual labor” (Apple, 1981). They are
caught in a contradiction that produces the “articulation of the social
relations of capitalist production” (Apple ,1981)
 Apple speaks of culture in a dual form- culture that is created through
interaction and culture that is transmitted as “cultural capital”. This cultural
capital is what we need to fight against and is strikingly similar to Leonardo’s
(2002) distinction between white culture and “whiteness”
 Apple refers to this cultural capital as “the ability of certain groups in society
to transform culture into a commodity, to accumulate it, to make of it what
Bourdieu has called “cultural capital”
 Apple looks at the processes that schools create, not just the knowledge they
impart, and identifies that these ways of being transmit the ideology that
many educators are attempting to fight against. The distinctions of mental
and physical labour, for example, feed into our class system.
 These are the ideological configurations of the dominant interests in a
society” and Apple questions “how do schools legitimate these limited and
partial standards of knowing as unquestioned truths “(Apple, 1979 as cited in
Apple, 1981)


 The “black box” mentality of schools that Apple (1981) sought to learn more
about echoes the theme in cultural pedagogy of implicit learning and the
hidden curriculum that we must actively seek to bring to the forefront and
dialogue about to fight against.
 “Rather than being places where culture and ideologies are imposed on
students, schools are the sites where these things are produced”.
 Apple (1981) also identifies the school as a workplace like any other labour
space where ideologies play out, are produced and re-produced amongst the
staff.
 In particular, themes of management, removed control, and the carrying
out of others ideas.
 Apple (1981) suggests that we begin to dialogue outside of the school with
other “labor groups” and actively oppose these ideologies as a united front.
 The notion of hegemony is not free floating, it is, in fact, tied to the state in
the first place-that is, hegemony isn’t am already accomplished social fact
but a process in which dominant groups and classes “manage” to win the
active consensus of those over whom they rule” (Mouffe, 1979, as cited in
Apple, 1981)


 Teachers have been placed into a common management form of control
Apple terms as technical control. Through tools such as standardized
programs, which involve diagnostic testing and subsequent, test-
determined, programs, the teacher is effectively deskilled and becomes more
of a manager than a free thinking individual.
 Finally, Apple argues that we need to understand the “lived culture of
students” and to win people over to create a broader movement that can work
against these factors. This echoes the thoughts of many other critical
pedagogy thinkers. Through open dialogue we can seek to understand the
situations of others. The focus should not remain on possibilities, but on
actualities. Possibilities are nothing until they are acted upon (Apple, 1981).
This is remarkably similar to Freire’s (1970) focus on both dialogue and action
or praxis.

Theme Issue: Paul Willis- Cultural Production is Different from Cultural Reproduction is Different from

Theme Issue: Cultural Production is Different from
Cultural Reproduction is Different from Social
Reproduction is Different from Reproduction
Willis, P. (1981)
 This article presents nuanced understandings of Social Reproduction, Cultural
Production and Reproduction and its implication for different strategies that come
about from these distinctions.
 Social reproduction refers to the relationship between the classes that are
reproduced generationally and important to sustain capitalist structures and modes
of production. Willis argues that this relationship between classes and its
reproduction is one that is “dynamic and contested” and the starting point for its
exploration should be its cultural context that is very much alive in our everyday
practices, history, consciousness (p. 49). Focusing on Cultural Production as a
starting point opens up possibility for change in the root of the problem by
addressing the very contents that are “disabling” (p. 65). He is a proponent of taking
advantage of the contradictions within dominant Cultural Production and
Reproduction to “increase the mismatch between education and industry and to give
greater value to labour than capital can realize” (p. 63)


 Similarly, Apple (1981) complicates the idea of hegemony in education by
pointing out the conflicts and contradictions within the state itself and
suggests leveraging on this state of conflict and contradictions to have
interests of “contending groups” reflected in dominant structures:
 “…To maintain its own legitimacy, the state needs to gradually but continuously integrate
many of the interests of allied and even opposing groups under its banner (Mouffe, 1979, p.
182). This integration involves a continual process of compromise, conflict, and active
struggle to maintain hegemony. The results, therefore, are not a simple reflection of the
interests of an economy or of dominant classes. Even reforms proposed to alter both the way
schools are organized and controlled and what is actually taught in them will be part of this
process. They too will be part of an ideological discourse that reflects the conflicts within
the state and of attempts by the state apparatus to maintain both its own legitimacy and
that of the surrounding process of accumulation” (Apple, in press, cited in Apple, 1981, p.
39)
 Gitlin (1979) warns against “over-using concepts such as hegemony in
explaining cultural and economic reproduction” by arguing that “[We need
to] bring the discussion of cultural hegemony down to earth. […]” since its
indiscriminate use is “useful neither as an explanation nor as a guide to
action” (cited in Apple, 1981, p. 45)


 Schools play a key role in facilitating dominant cultural and social reproduction and
in maintaining status quo that breeds inequities (a “minimum” cultural capital is
required to succeed in the education system (p. 53). With culture comes certain rules
and norms that makes themselves “official” that are usually dictated by the
dominating class. Therefore, a higher cultural capital is required for educational
success. Since the class categories stay fairly stable while similar class relationships are
reproduced and inhabited in different subjectivities, those in dominant class tend to
acquire higher cultural capital and hence, mover higher in the educational ladder.
Hence, the system appears to be “legitimate and objective” as the rules seem to apply
equally and fairly to everyone. It is assumed that working class students do not
succeed not because they are working class, but because they do not have the
“objective” cultural capital (p. 54). This way, symbolic capital becomes real capital
and vice-versa. This, in turn, causes “symbolic violence” that makes invisible systems
of power and oppression (p. 54).
 Cultural reproduction and implications for education: “Where production relations
show the social exclusion, inequality, and heritability of real capital, education
guarantees the apparent equivalence, independence, and free-born equality of
symbolic capital. Education mystifies itself, as well as others, in concealing its own
basis in, and its reproduction of, the power relationships in society” (p. 54).


 Willis (1981) argues that while Bourdieun understanding of dominant social and
cultural reproduction is valuable, it is limited; we should also be examining
subordinate reproduction of social an cultural capital. It challenges the assumption
that only the dominant has “culture” and the dominated is “powerless” and has no
agency (55). He raises important questions: “But how do the "powerless" understand
and accept their position? What is their role in Reproduction?” By framing the
discourse on reproduction as such, he legitimizes forms of resistance and practices of
counter-hegemony that is present in subordinate cultural and social reproduction.
This opens up the possibility of nuanced “praxis,” of “deal[ing] with change and the
possibility of liberation.” It also makes visible patterns of inequity that keep being
inherited as they were taken as givens rather than negotiated and contested. As a
result, as educators, are energies are shifted to ‘walking the talk’ of action rather than
“detach[ing] from power just by wishing and hating” (p. 66).

References
 Ellsworth, Elizabeth. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive
myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297-324.
 Friere, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Ch 12 in Flinders, David & Thornton, Stephen. (Eds.)
The curriculum studies reader, 2nd ed New York: Routledge.
 Kincheloe, Joe. (2004). Ch 1 Introduction (pp. 1-43). Critical pedagogy primer. New York: Peter Lang.
 Kincheloe, Joe. (2004). Ch 2 Foundations of critical pedagogy (pp. 45-96). Critical pedagogy primer.
New York: Peter Lang.
 Leonardo, Zeus. (2002). The Souls of White Folk: Critical pedagogy, whiteness studies and
globalization discourse. Race, ethnicity and education. 5(1), 29-50.
 Special Issue on Critical Pedagogy. Educational Theory, (1998), 48(4), 431-462.
 Theme Issue: Rethinking Social Reproduction. Interchange, (1981), 12(2-3).
 Weiler, Kathleen. (2001). Rereading Paulo Friere. In Weiler, Kathleen. (Ed.), Feminist engagements:
Reading, resisting and revisioning male theorists in education and cultural studies.

Critical pedagogy group presentation

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