Rethinking emancipation with Freire and Rancière: A plea for a thing-centred pedagogy

Abstract

In this article, I critically engage with a vital assumption behind the work of Paulo Freire, and more generally behind any critical pedagogy, viz. the belief that education is fundamentally about emancipation. My main goal is to conceive of a contemporary critical pedagogy which stays true to the original inspiration of Freire’s work, but which at the same time takes it in a new direction. More precisely, I confront Freire with Jacques Rancière. Not only is the latter’s work on education fully predicated on the idea of emancipation. For both Freire and Rancière, literacy initiation practice can be seen as an archetypical model for understanding the emancipatory moment in education. For both, educational practices are never neutral, as they decide to a great extent on the fate of our common world. Reflecting on similarities and differences in both their positions, I will propose to conceive of critical pedagogy in terms of a thing-centred pedagogy. As such, I take a clear position in the discussion between teacher- and student-centred approaches. According to Rancière, it is the full devotion to a ‘thing’, i.e. to a subject matter we study, which makes emancipation possible. Over and against Freire’s defense of emancipatory education, I highlight with Rancière the importance of educational emancipation.     

To Freire or not to Freire: Educational freedom and the populist right-wing ‘Escola sem Partido’ movement in Brazil

This article addresses key topics of academic freedom and critical pedagogy during a time of right-wing populist politics. The rise of the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency in 2019 was accompanied by a vow to eradicate any vestige of the ideas of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire from the country’s schools. Bolsonaro’s campaign was supported by ultra-conservative groups that have as their core mission a traditional Christian and anti-Communist educational agenda. At the forefront of these groups is the influential and conspicuous ‘Escola sem Partido’ (ESP) movement that has forcefully campaigned against Freire’s critical pedagogy across the country and promoted physical and online abuse of teachers since 2014. This article asks how Freire’s philosophies can be an ally in the struggle for democratic education in the current political climate in Brazil. It employs a method of dialogical narrative to bring Freire’s theories and critical methodology to life and test their potency against the ESP educational philosophies. It initially employs Freire’s core ideas to examine the ESP policies and parliamentary bills. In the second part, it analyses documents and online content produced by civil society resistance to ESP pressures. The findings show the vitality of Freire’s pedagogical philosophy to empower oppressed communities in their demands for quality education. The narrative concludes by demonstrating the vital role of the critical consciousness process and of Freire’s pedagogy of freedom to support ongoing struggles by teachers and communities to block ESP attempts to abolish critical thinking in Brazilian public education.     

Critical Pedagogy and the Praxis of Worldly Philosophy

This essay is a review of Peter McLaren's most recent work, Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy Against Empire. The essay situates McLaren's work in the philosophical tradition of Marxist Humanism, with reference specifically to Raya Dunayevskaya and Paulo Freire. Despite invoking the work of Dunayevskaya as a foundation for his own project, McLaren does not offer a robust explication of this important thinker, nor of the Hegelian-Marxist discourse she embraced. Here, as in much of McLaren's work, the reader is not offered rigorous analysis of his philosophical assumptions. The dearth of such analysis, this essay argues, compromises the critical thrust of McLaren's work. In turn, the essay sketches a framework for unpacking the Marxist Humanist paradigm, and, thereby, rethinking the philosophical foundations of contemporary critical pedagogy.     

弗莱雷的对话教学思想对成人合作教学的启示

保罗·弗莱雷是20世纪著名的教育家,其主要代表作《被压迫者教育学》被称之为被压迫者的教育圣经。弗莱雷结合自身长期的教育实践,针对传统灌输式教学的弊端,提出了对话教学思想,即倡导批判性思维、确立新型的师生关系、提倡提问式教学、对话要结合自身经验、营造良好的学习氛围。在当前终身学习的背景下,对话式教学对成人合作教学具有深刻的意义。     

Pedagogy of the anxious: rethinking critical pedagogy in the context of neoliberal autonomy and responsibilization

Critical pedagogy, and the work of Paulo Freire in particular, understands the struggle for emancipation as involving the emergence, as historical subjects, of those who have been marginalized. In this regard, this tradition could be said to foreground a politics of the subject as central to its philosophy. However, scholars of critical pedagogy have not adequately attended to the reorganization of subjectivity that neoliberalism itself proposes. In the context of a pervasive anxiety produced by contemporary processes of precarity and fragmentation, neoliberalism asks us to understand ourselves on the basis of principles of individual responsibility, autonomy, and competition. Starting from the Foucauldian notion of governmentality and the Lacanian notions of drive and desire, I describe how this neoliberal recomposition of the subject poses a challenge to key principles in critical pedagogy. Thus, Freire’s account of the paralysis that characterizes the oppressed stands in contrast to the particular autonomy and hypermobility that neoliberalism demands. Likewise, the privileging of the sphere of consciousness in Freire overlooks the structure of libidinal investments within neoliberal circuits of consumption and communication. This interrogation has implications for critical education in the present, which I argue should invite students to betray the compulsions of their anxious autonomy in favor of a collective commitment and enlivened agency.     

Freirean critical pedagogy’s challenge to interfaith education: what is interfaith? What is education?

Interfaith education has been boosted recently by the imprimatur of current and previous political world leaders. However, a critical analysis of what makes good interfaith education is yet to emerge. Indeed the attention may distract from the effort needed to ensure positive outcomes. This paper questions whether the uncritical nature of some interfaith education initiatives encourages the continuation of cultural and theological bias. Critical social theorist Paulo Freire viewed education as an opportunity for social evolution. His pedagogy of freedom relied on the idea that no knowledge is out of bounds and that such freedom nurtured the security to greet difference with humility. This paper examines some Australian approaches to interfaith education in light of Freire’s challenge. It questions the persistence of an Abrahamic skew and calls for a more critical approach to differences of belief.     

Crossing Borders and Changing Pedagogies: From Giroux and Freire to feminist theories of education

ABSTRACT We are living in times of change and uncertainty, where many groups are challenging existing structures. Challenges to education have come from postmodernists and poststructuralists, calling into question previously held beliefs and ideologies, and from people from a variety of cultural and ethnic groups, examining the relationship of the oppressed and the exploited to educational structures. Through consideration of the work of Henry Giroux and Paulo Freire, considered to be liberatory and radical, I will consider ways in which their work might inform feminist theory, but also consider how feminists in turn have built on their work, considering new levels of insight. I will call for feminist perspectives to be interwoven with the already rich and valuable ideas of educationists such as Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux to enable us all-women and men-to move towards a feminist pedagogy of change.     

Revolutionary Ecologies: Ecosocialism and Critical Pedagogy

In this article, we argue that critical and revolutionary educational praxis is increasingly shaped by and through ecological politics and imaginaries. Indeed, given the pervasiveness of environmental crisis in our everyday lives and vocabularies, we argue that critical educators can no longer ignore questions of ecojustice. In keeping with a growing interdisciplinary field of green Marxist scholarship, we argue that "greening" critical pedagogy ought not diminish its radical intent or its goal of transforming oppressive social and economic conditions. Drawing on the field of political ecology, we argue for critical revolutionary pedagogy to be informed by a dialectics of ecological and environmental justice that highlights the situatedness of environmental conflict and injustice toward nonhuman nature without obscuring its historical production under capitalist value forms. In particular, we explore schooling as one site of environmental injustice before embarking on a broader discussion of how justice toward nature more generally may be substantively linked to the objectives of critical revolutionary pedagogy.     

FREIRE RE-VIEWED

A bstract .  The work of Paulo Freire is associated with themes of oppression and liberation, and his critical pedagogy is visionary in its attempts to bring about social transformation. Freire has created a theory of education that embeds these issues within social relations that center around both ideological and material domination. In this review essay, Sue Jackson explores three books: Freire's final work Pedagogy of Indignation ; Cesar Augusto Rossatto's Engaging Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Possibility , which attempts to engage Freire's pedagogy of possibility; and C.A. Bowers and Frederique Apffel-Marglin's edited collection Re-thinking Freire , which asks readers to reconsider Freire's work in light of globalization and environmental crises. Jackson questions the extent to which Freire's pedagogical approaches are useful to educators as well as to "the oppressed," and whether challenges to re-think Freire can lead to new kinds of critical pedagogies.     

Playing with Fire,or the Stuffing of Dead Animals: Freire,Dewey, and the Dilemma of Social Studies Reform

In his proposal for a social studies both more critical and more participatory, Neumann's (2008) politically adaptive strategy of invoking standards for critical thinking poses troubling concerns for democratic-minded educators familiar with the trajectory of reforms. Neumann's outright dismissal of critical pedagogy ironically underscores how the political nature of educational knowledge itself mitigates the possibility of a more critical orientation. A reexamination of the Dewey-Lippmann debates points to the pivotal roles of dissent, dialogue and critical agency in democracy, and to the conclusion that, despite recent criticisms, critical pedagogy represented by Freire best meets Neumann's goal of a more “holistic approach to democratic health” (332).     

“新课程理念”“概念重建运动”与学习凯洛夫教育学

有论者主张要像新中国教育的早期建设、学习前苏联教育学那样,来开展"新课程理念""概念重建运动";同时宣称,建国以来我国教育科学"汲取的是前苏联教育科学的糟粕——凯洛夫教育学",它应该并已经被"抛弃"。这是否具有充分的事实和科学根据?值得认真研究。课程教学论当前面临这个现实重大课题。这两件事情或两个"运动"不能等量齐观,不可同日而语.很难相提并论。凯洛夫教育学反映了现代学校教育的基本规定性,提供了操作性强的教育实践规范,是现代教育学发展的重要历史成果。虽然它本身有局限和缺陷并时过境迁,但具有基本合理性,至今仍有意义。"新课程理念"反映了对现代学校教育局限性的忧虑和改革设想,有一定思想启发性和积极成分。但是它矫枉过正,本质上不符合现代学校教育基本规律,且思想驳杂,含混模糊,缺乏实践操作性,不能指导课程改革。基于理论和实践品格、意义和历史命运的强烈反差,两者在中国的境遇也截然不同:建国初学习凯洛夫教育学过程中虽有缺点,但主要产生了积极正面效应;"新课程理念""概念重建运动"脱离学校教育实际,并采取"大破大立"的激烈方式,不符合教育改革特点。因而时间或短或长,代价或小或大,人们终究不会完全接受。其理论是非和对实践的消极影响需要严肃反思检讨。     

Paulo Freire and the pedagogical traditions of the subject English

I seek here to explain and elaborate on how and why Paulo Freire’s work has significance for educators in today’s ‘affluent’ west, not least in reminding us powerfully of core critical and celebratory values at a time when many teachers, and not only of English, feel under huge pressure – a pressure that in fact verges on the oppressive. My focus here is on native language teaching and learning – English, in effect – thus echoing Freire’s concern for critical literacy and pedagogy and how these may relate constructively to fundamentally Romantic traditions of English pedagogy.     

ON THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY: THE METAPHYSICS OF MCLAREN'S "REVOLUTIONARY CRITICAL PEDAGOGY"

In this essay, Scott Ellison examines a line of critical thought in educational theory that has unapologetically sought transcendence in the face contemporary social and political conditions. Under the banner of critical pedagogy, Peter McLaren sees this current period of globalization as representing a worldwide historical crisis requiring a revolutionary struggle that, in turn, is dependent upon a revitalization of critical pedagogy as the necessary tool for overcoming global relations of domination. Armed with Marxist theory and politics, McLaren seeks to use classrooms as social locations for fostering class struggle and global revolution. However, seeking to transcend today's globalized social processes and structures presents unique challenges that McLaren fails to overcome. He is a victim of the utopic turn. In this essay, Ellison offers a sympathetic reading and critique of McLaren's most recent theoretical work; undertakes a modest and preliminary recovery of Marxian theory and method; and concludes by briefly exploring the applicability and utility of this recovery for educational practices in this historical moment.     

论弗莱雷的希望教育哲学

植根于被压迫者教育学,弗莱雷提出了他的希望教育哲学,认为希望是人的本体使命和需求,它与实践紧密相连,但是又超越于实践,它直指未来,是推动历史前进的动力。弗莱雷认为,希望教育只有通过民主的方式才能得以真正进行,人类的解放才会有希望。     

Confucius as a Critical Educator: Towards Educational Thoughts of Confucius

This paper is a cross-cultural comparative study in education philosophy. A comparative and philosophical approach is used to interpret texts from the Analects of Confucius and to find connections with ideas of critical educators. In comparing Confucius’ educational thought with that of Paulo Freire, John Dewey and other theorists in critical pedagogy, this paper finds four common threads between Confucian concepts of education and critical pedagogy: mutual learning, integration of theory and practice, importance of reflection in teaching and learning, and democratic purpose of education. By presenting these interwoven themes, this paper contributes to a cross-cultural dialogue on global understanding in education.     

Is Freire Incoherent? Reconciling Directiveness and Dialogue in Freirean Pedagogy

While some of Paulo Freire's readers understand his pedagogy as a rejection of any and all directive teaching methods, there are many scholars who do recognise Freire's emphasis on teacher directiveness in its appropriate form. In light of this tension between directiveness and dialogue, it seems that students of Freire must inevitably come to a crossroads: is Freire's pedagogy directive or is it not? However, even this question does not get at the more critical dilemma: if Freire's pedagogy is directive, is such directiveness incompatible with Freire's overwhelming emphasis on egalitarian dialogue? This paper establishes three readings of the issue of directiveness in Freire and ultimately provides an exegetical defence of what is termed the compatibilist reading—that directive teaching, properly construed, is compatible with dialogic teaching in Freirean pedagogy. The question this paper seeks to answer is how Freire can have it both ways. In sum, Freire undeniably supports teacher directiveness and philosophically justifies directiveness as compatible with problem‐posing education through his concepts of virtue education, utopia and criticality.     

Opening and transforming South African education

This article examines the challenge of opening and transforming South African education. ‘Openness’ and ‘transformation’ of any education programme in any society are ethicopolitical processes. In the case of South Africa, the transition from an autocratic education system serving the interests of a minority to a more modern and democratic educational dispensation demands a critical rethinking of the meaning of these twin concepts of openness and transformation. The policy of outcomes‐based education (OBE) has been used as a strategy for educational change. This article argues that, although OBE can be understood in the context of the desire for change, the programme’s implementation does not lead to radical opening and qualitative transformation of the South African educational sector. Any pedagogy of radical empowerment through political and deliberate advocacy policies needs to take into consideration the content of the new system of education, the professional quality of the educators, and the calibre of the new learners.     

教育学的坏理论研究之四：教育学的理论品性

虽然教育学有其存在的历史合理性和学术贡献,但总体上讲教育学具有较低的理论品性。教育学自身堪称形而上学,它基于先验概念所构建的教育理想国是脆弱的,只是一个排他性的理论空壳,其中充斥着大量理论伪问题。教育学不是学科理论,充其量只是从教者的职业指南。如果勉强称教育学是一种理论,它也是一种坏理论。因为教育学既不能帮助从教者实现有效的教育行动,也不能帮助从教者理解教育行动本身。以教育主张、原则、方法、模式表述的只是教育学者的主观建议,以它们为核心内容的教育学属于私人教育学,还没有经过主体间理性的洗礼而演变成理论。把教育学看作是教育智慧或艺术的学问,或多或少是恰当的,因为它表现出了低理论水准和高实践水准的特征。教育学学科的独立标志是独创的知识体系,教育学学科问题真正的追问是教育学到底独创或能够独创什么样的知识体系。教育学由于没有创新知识因而还没有成为学科,当然人们努力构建的教育学体系自然也都是空中楼阁。     

Feats of Strength for Weak Utopianism: Giorgio Agamben,Educational Potentiality and the Studious Spatiality of the Active Learning Classroom

One outcome of the increasing interest from philosophy of education circles in the work of Giorgio Agamben has been the possibility of apparently small alterations to enact a radical emancipatory change. This ‘weak utopianism’ (Lewis, 2013) found in Agamben's work means that traditionally radical changes are viewed with skepticism, as grand alternative designs often merely result in the operationalisation and actualisation of new ordering rather emancipation. In a recent commentary on Agamben's philosophy of education, Igor Jasinski (2018) argues that the theory of weak utopianism means that innovative classroom designs ‘should not be considered’ examples of Agambenian philosophy of education at work. In this article, I respond through an analysis of the case of active learning classrooms. Despite existing as a form of innovative classroom design, I argue that they nevertheless abide Agambenian principles in the philosophy of education as spaces open to—without demanding—study. The active learning classroom is not the ideal‐type studious space but a paradigm, the case that stands outside of (while standing in for) the rest of the set. Situated in‐between inspiration and implementation, I argue that active learning classrooms are the paradoxically strongest form of weak utopianism, leaving educational potentiality open while also representing a significant rethinking of the spatiality of the classroom. Active learning classrooms thus pose significant questions both for Agambenian philosophy of education in particular and critical pedagogy in general.     

批判教育学中的政治、理论与现实(下)

编者按:究竟如何理解英美的批判教育学思潮,尤其是近年来其阵营内部存在纷纷攘攘、似大有碎片化的趋势,本刊特约请当代批判教育学的代表人物之一,世界知名学者、教育思想家阿普尔教授,加州州立大学助理教授韦恩·欧,对批判教育学的历史、目前内部不同取向间的分歧以及在当代保守主义复兴语境中所面临的挑战和应对策略,予以全面的梳理和分析.批判教育学对于中国教育学界并不陌生,但是,对于它的历史缘起、理论全貌和时代境遇,我们少有系统和整体的关注.本文之于我们的价值不仅在于可略补此憾,更重要的是,它会启发我们反思,在中国时下教育改革的潮流中,我们的教育、政治、文化和经济内涵是什么?教育在社会的现实变革、社会的发展远景中,究竟应该扮演什么角色?因本文篇幅较长,故分上篇、下篇两次刊发,敬请读者谅解.