CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY, III

 

Hopefully, the anecdote involving this blogger’s family and shared in the last posting serves as a basic grounding for the remaining points this blog makes concerning critical theory/pedagogy.  The claim here, in a few words, is that Marxian beliefs while having useful ideas and even ideals, is judged to be, in its basic assumptions, wrong and that goes a long way in explaining why polities guided by its precepts end up sacrificing liberties and relying on dictatorial governance. 

Yes, critical theory does not solely utilize Marxian precepts, but to the extent it does, there is this lingering concern.  And in that vein, implementing those arguments as a guiding force for civics education, at its basis, becomes highly suspect and this blogger believes, rightly so.  The challenge is:  how does one infuse instruction with a concern for the oppressed and their oppressive conditions,[1] yet maintain a strong commitment for liberalized, democratic rule?

With that note in mind, this blogger wishes to convey a foundational problem that critical pedagogues have created and in which they seem mired.  To a certain degree, they suffer from a contradictory foundation.  As such, these meaningful contradictions preclude this view from serving as a guiding force that its advocates strive to establish.

An example of this counterproductive element is that while the approach is influenced by the Marxian emphasis on class struggle, it is prone to adopt many elements of pedagogic ideas by such writers as Freire[2] (reviewed in a series of previous postings), along with post structural/postmodern concerns that directly attack, theoretically, such mega-theories as Marxism. In this line of thought, Cleo H. Cherryholmes writes:

 

Critical pedagogy is a vague and ambiguous term. … [C]ritical pedagogy has referred to curriculum theory's “reconceptualist” movement … This movement has never been unified and continues to defy easy description. In the United States it is historically related to such “reconstructionist” educators of the pre-World War II period … It also exhibits influences from various western European intellectual developments that range from phenomenology to critical theory to post-structural and postmodern thought. Recently, critical pedagogy in the United States has incorporated ideas from literary criticism and theory, various strands of feminist thought and practice, and pragmatism.[3]

 

This varied foundation means that its actual implementation has found it difficult to interpret their ideas toward developing definite curricular and instructional strategies.  To date, what seems to be the extent of their efforts is to make changes in the content they recommend or insert in textbooks – which have become easy targets for conservative policymakers (e.g., the governor of Florida) to attack and prohibit.

            To date, the effort has been made to argue that oppressive conditions either exist or have existed in the history of this nation.  A lot of the effort has centered on race – in how African Americans, Asians, and indigenous people have been exploited.  This has been done with content material depicting individual incidents of such occurrences – e.g., the events surrounding the Montgomery bus boycott in 1959. 

Or the lessons can inform students of statistics and descriptive accounts which document the maldistribution of income and wealth.  These accounts are analyzed according to race, gender, ethnicity, age, and other categories, proving that certain groups are marginalized; they are castigated as “others” in prevailing discourses.[4]

And yet another approach is that critical pedagogues use what are known as qualitative studies, usually utilizing interviewing techniques that uncover or shed light on social or school conditions which place some marginalized groups at a disadvantage.  While this blogger judges these approaches to have value, their use lacks solid connections to – heaven forbid – positivist studies which also have value.

But to date, one is hard pressed to find application of more substantive content reflecting the approach’s more theoretical concerns.  A great deal of attention of these writers is dedicated to epistemological questions. That is, critical literature invests a great deal of theorizing on the question of how students learn what they learn or how they know what they know.

Culture and language become, in these epistemological efforts, central concepts or factors. Lisa J. Cary captures the flavor of this literature:

 

[For example, several writers in this vein] call for a study of the underlying epistemological assumptions and normalizing practices of anti-racist and multicultural education to work against the assimilationist tendencies of institutionalized efforts. Whiteness is a culturally constructed epistemological position of dominance. [It engages in othering] all considered non-white and creating the possibility of excluding them through objectifying and pathologizing their racial constructions. The epistemology of whiteness is a culturally advantaged standpoint from which to maintain positions of privilege and power.[5]

 

Without a direct and clear exposition of how the nation exemplifies how oppressive these advocates claim the nation to be, the message is not effective and does not hit home with the prevailing student population.

          Why?  It fails because:

 

·       There are just too many cases of success from humble beginnings to glibly rate the US as an oppressive nation.

·       The prevailing language of the nation supports this rags to riches discourse – e.g., it pervades the media.

·       While there are oppressive practices not just in the US but across the advanced nations, the common belief is that such is the way of the world – look at what exists in non-developed countries.

·       And part of the established view that while oppression is regrettable, there are governmental programs established to assuage the more egregious aspects of its ongoing condition (read welfare programs and the like).

 

While such messaging might be considered wanting – such provisions do not solve the inherent problems – one might be hard pressed to classify the US and other Western nations as oppressive societies albeit the oppressive conditions and practices they sustain.

Relative to this discussion, defining the terms oppression and oppressive society would be helpful. Here, the concern is what critical pedagogues might offer as a definition: Oppression is any condition in which an individual or group is subjected to unjust treatment and that holds down those affected in terms of economic, social, and/or political conditions. All societies have, within their state of affairs, suffered from examples of oppressive acts or conditions.

That is, the definition offers a low standard for allocating an oppressive status to a nation – it pertains to all nations.  Here is what this blogger believes is a better definition:  An oppressive society is one in which acts of oppression occur and the victimized party(ies) have no political, legal, economic or other means, short of violent revolution, to effectively fight against the offensive condition(s). 

Such a definition can easily be applied to southern states through slavery and after during pre-civil rights movement years – some would argue the term still applies to all of the US in how it treats African Americans.[6]  Yet, one can also argue extensive policies have been put in place to address what is offensive with existing conditions.  The only point here is that there exists some level of nuance and one is hard pressed to comment without being categorized as supporting oppression or fighting it.

But generally, through the 1990s, the nation was meeting many of the conditions that one could consider oppressive. In the new millennium, though, one can argue that a regression has been taking place in those efforts. This blogger has cited many of the income and wage shifts in favor of upper classes that characterize that development.

The nation now has an extended and what seems to be chronic unemployment among certain groups that adds to the concern, and these extend to white groups who manned many manufacturing jobs. But still, there are significant, institutionalized means by which people can do things to meet their disadvantages.

For example, what is being offered?  There are meaningful self-improvement opportunities.  The community college movement, for example, is no small contribution – it has opened college level education to many who otherwise would not consider such an option.  And of course, there are political means toward changing government policies that either provide opportunities or are influential in promoting them in the private sector.  Other types of actions or policies can be listed, but for the purposes here, the point is made.

That is, given the definition and how one measures things (highly influenced by one’s biases), one can make the argument that while the US has oppressive qualities, this blogger believes that it is not an oppressive society.  Perhaps a review of a recent historical development would be of further help in describing what this blogger believes exists.  That is the economic downturn that started in 2008. 

Back then, the nation had just had an enormous blow to the economic system. Part of that condition was caused by monumental debt in the private sector. That included households.  It led the nation to a recovery period that lasted about eight years – some think that the nation is still recovering.  But within common conditions, with complete stabilization, the economy would not be able to generate the level of demand that will allow Americans the level of economic growth to meet the oppressive conditions that seem to be in place.

As long as conditions improved within the US, this blogger believes the nation would regain its march toward becoming a more perfect union.  But critical education makes the claim that under the current system, oppression has been a reality and is chronic and institutionalized.  They claim that society needs to be transformed, although to what is often not clear as well as how to get there.  By relying on a more unrestricted definition of oppressive society, they believe a useful curriculum, under such a construct, should be geared toward such a transformation.

And with that targeted purpose, such a definition would skew efforts to address oppression in the classroom to only conditions where injustice is practiced.  This is not a complete study of the US and demeans the successful efforts of those people and their sacrifices to make this a more just society.  For example, relating such information as ranking of nations according to median income is telling statistic. 

Behind only Luxembourg, UAE (oil rich country), Norway, and Switzerland, the US has the highest level of median income based on international dollars – a fictitious domination created for purposes of such comparisons.[7]  The US leads in many of the efforts to promote and institutionalize just practices, to provide securities and opportunities extended to marginalized groups, and to advance just practices abroad. 

While many of these are continuously under attack, they are part of US policy.  These aspects of the American story are valid, and an honest curriculum should include these more equalizing efforts along with portrayals of those incidences and institutions that have created and sustained injustices which have besmirched this nation's history.

Let this posting add one last word concerning this focus on unjust conditions within this nation’s politics and history. A critical approach seems to assume that students have an innate concern for justice. The reasoning seems to be that once students are exposed to the socialization practices of dominant agents in the learning processes of a culture, when they depict exploitive practices, they will naturally be offended and motivated to find remedies for such conditions.

This is particularly true, they say, if students are negatively affected by any oppressive practices. Appeals to their sense of justice and their realization that all of society is negatively affected when groups are victimized by such acts and discourses will motivate students to participate in any effort to right the wrongs.

Critical pedagogues rely on relevancy and empathy to involve students in the value questions they ask in inquiry exercises that these teachers facilitate in class. This blogger is afraid that this assumed, almost automatic response underestimates the psychological factors involved and he finds this to be a dubious assumption. His next posting will address this last shortcoming.

---

            [1]This blogger writes “infuse instruction with a concern for the oppressed,” if readers recall. Marx himself, at least in his theorizing, did not see socialism take hold until conditions predicated that it was in the self-interest of labor or the working class to institute a socialist state. That is why the theory was seen as scientific and foretold an inevitable outcome. It did not depend on the altruistic motives of the participants or on them realizing that their participation would fulfill their true sense of themselves – their humanization. This latter aspect would come about only after socialism took some hold and the opportunities to have such growth were naturally present.

[2] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 1999).

[3]Cleo H. Cherryholmes, “Critical Pedagogy and Social Education.” in Handbook on Teaching Social Issues: NCSS Bulletin 93, eds. Ronald W. Evans and David Warren Saxe (Washington, DC: National Council of the Social Studies, 1996), 75-80, 75.  Efforts to unite the movement under a set of ideas persist to this day.  See for example, “Critical Pedagogy: 8 Key Concepts You Need to Know,” The Necessary Teacher Training College, November 4, 2022, accessed May 18, 2023, https://www.dns-tvind.dk/critical-pedagogy/.

[4] See, for example, Donna M. Gollnick. and Philip C. Chinn, Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, 1998) OR Michael Apple, Cultural Politics and Education (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1996).

[5] Lisa J. Cary, “The Refusals of Citizenship: Normalizing Practices in Social Education Discourses,” Theory and Research in Social Education, 29, 3 (Summer), 405-430, 422-423.

[6] One very convincing argument in this vein is offered by Isabel Wilkerson.  See Isabel Wilkerson, Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents (New York, NY:  Random House, 2020).

[7] “Median Income by Country 2023,” World Population Review (n.d.), accessed May 17, 2023, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country.

CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY, II

 

Hopefully, readers keep in mind the positive points this blogger shared in the last posting concerning the critical theory/pedagogy construct while he expresses his misgivings with that view.  To place what is coming into some context, here is a short anecdote – it highlights what is wrong with basic Marxian notions which one finds at the base of critical theory.

          Surely Marxian advocates will find fault with this story’s application to their ideas and ideals, but the blogger believes that the story is relevant.  It harkens to a situation with which his family members lived – it’s a true story.  He regularly visited their condo unit in Miami.  He was familiar with the goings-on of their situation in the condo.  One of his relatives, a fairly bright young man, held vibrant leftist ideas and strongly believed that capitalism was on its last legs.

          Readers should not consider him, the relative, as unpatriotic, but he surely wasn’t an NRA-MAGA type of person.  He didn’t seek or even wish for a violent overthrow of the system or anything resembling that happening, but he did judge prevailing political and economic conditions as basically leading to bankruptcy and doom.  He was an educated young man who had faced various challenges – a hard luck story.

          The unit these relatives lived in was not in any way luxurious, but given their income, the monthly maintenance fees were a bit high – the complex has a swimming pool (that these relatives never used).  Included in the fees was a shared water cost item; that is, the bill to pay the water usage was shared by all of the apartments equally.

          The apartments themselves were modest – three bedrooms, one a master suite which had its own bathroom along with another bathroom accessible through a short hallway.  This story is about the master bathroom where a significant leak in the sink’s faucet developed.  One can estimate that the leak was responsible for wasting several gallons of water per day.  When this blogger visited, he would ask if anything had been done to fix the leak and the answer was always no.

          This situation lasted for months and unfortunately, one day graduated from a leak to an ample flow, so much so that it flooded the apartment and leaked into the unit below my relatives’ fourth-floor unit.  Of course, this demanded that these relatives fix the problem.  The situation prompted this blogger to tell his young relative that this is why pure socialism won’t work – unless the system ascribes personal responsibility to each person or party, then needed actions will not be performed – be it in fixing a leak or any other costly problem.

          Without personal responsibility for upkeep, maintenance, and economic development of assets, then no one is apt to take on those responsibilities.  Economists call such costs as external costs.  When some chore is everyone’s responsibility, it, in effect, becomes no one’s responsibility.  Or stated in other terms, personal accountability is essential in any demanding situation be it in teamwork settings or in the upkeep of some assets, such as water faucets in condo units.

          Keeping people accountable turns out to be essential when it comes to shared living or work conditions.  When costs are shared – be they labor, money, or the wear and tear on some asset – it is difficult to bear those costs and they are easily put off or entirely neglected.  Not only do costs need to be perceived as personal, but they also need to be seen as immediate before people are willing to make the investment to fix or change whatever needs changing.

          And this even affects how people react to health challenges.  When it comes to protecting or maintaining people’s most precious asset – their lives – they readily put off what needs to be done to maintain healthy states of being – e.g., in many cases of obesity or in not maintaining a good exercise routine. 

Surely, these relatives did not foresee the ensuing flooding taking place, but my young relative – the Marxist – could understand that by not fixing the leak, he and the rest of that household were wasting an asset to the detriment of the collective, all those residents in the building who were sharing the cost of water usage.

As the facts above indicate, the problem was not addressed until it was personally felt and in full force.  With that as context, this blogger will begin to describe and explain what he sees is wrong with critical pedagogy.  He does not question the honesty, sincerity, or even the patriotism of those who harbor the attributes of this construct – he even agrees with several of its elements.  But that doesn’t minimize how serious he believes the shortcomings are.

And by the by, while he would never insist someone agree with something because everyone feels or believes in that way, he would suggest that that fact should be considered.  If the collective wisdom of the American people recurringly finds this construct wanting – even feeling animosity toward it – one should be wary of its validity or its prudence.  Yet, as this blogger has stated elsewhere, a lot of the hostility, if not disregard, toward Marxian ideas has been fueled by well-orchestrated propaganda efforts by the business community.

And as for the construct’s effect on civics’ curricular choices, Cleo H. Cherryholmes wrote, “it has never been a major theme in social education.”[1]  Yes, currently these ideas have captured some attention in the national media as conservative jurisdictions have proposed or implemented policy to ban its ideas from the classroom[2] – a move that is generating a good deal of controversy.  In this last regard, the upcoming months might prove to be interesting.  Watch Florida, for example.

---

[1] Cleo H. Cherryholmes, “Critical Pedagogy and Social Education.” in Handbook on Teaching Social Issues: NCSS Bulletin 93, eds. Ronald W. Evans and David Warren Saxe (Washington, DC: National Council of the Social Studies, 1996), 75-80, 75.

[2] See for example, Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufmann, “Yes, Critical Race Theory Is Being Taught in Schools,” City Journal (October 22, 2022), accessed May 13, 2023, https://www.city-journal.org/article/yes-critical-race-theory-is-being-taught-in-schools.

CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY, I

 

Up to this point, this blog has shared a series of postings that inform readers of a construct – critical theory – from the perspective of someone who supports it.  That is, this blogger has been attempting to place himself in that frame of mind as best he can – that’s right, he’s not a critical pedagogue.  But with this posting, this blogger reclaims this platform and shares his ideas and evaluative notions concerning that construct.   What follows is a critique. 

Often the term critique is cast as a negative evaluation – sharing what’s wrong with something.  But more accurately, and as used here, a critique can offer a viewpoint that is quite positive in its ideas or claims.  With that proviso, this posting will review what this blogger likes about critical pedagogy before reviewing his opinions about how the construct falls short from what is needed.

          He is gratified that critical pedagogy – along with critical theory – places an emphasis on the disadvantaged.  In addition, he finds it useful that this construct dethrones the centrality of individualism and that it questions the natural right’s assumption concerning the rationality of people.  Below, in this posting, is a summary explanation of each of these judgements.

          But first, there is some context to review.  Here are some statistics which give credence to what the former senator, John Edwards, argued in his abbreviated run for president some years ago.  That is, he claimed that there are two Americas:  in one, there are the rich and in the other, there are the rest.

          Upon reflection, this is another way to inform people about a Marxian observation.  Marx stated that there are the “haves and have nots.”  America has, in its popular view, claimed that there is a third group, the “have-a-littles,” or what is usually called the middle class.  But this third group is being diminished; some claim it is becoming extinct.  The belief here is that the nation is not there yet, but there are numbers that strongly suggest that the nation is headed to such a dichotomy as Edwards and Marx claim.

          According to CNBC, “The top 1% owned a record 32.3% of the nation's wealth as of the end of 2021 …  The share of wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans, likewise, has declined slightly since before the pandemic, from 30.5% to 30.2%.”[1]    In 2014 the following distribution was reported:  top 1% = 35%, next 4% = 27%, next 5% = 11%, next 10% = 12% OR stated differently:  Upper Middle 20% of the population = 11% of the wealth, Middle 20% = 4%, and Bottom 40% = less than 1%.[2]  So, from the middle class level to less than 1% level (80% of the population),  Americans share less than 16% of the national wealth.

Compare that to 1976 when the top 1% had 23.9% percent of the national wealth[3] and one senses a trend toward the elimination of the middle class as the very rich are absorbing more and more of the national wealth.  This blogger particularly thinks the following statistic from the ought years gives a telling picture of the imbalance: The top .01 percent of income earning households, which numbered about 11,000 households, earned more money than the lowest 25,000,000 households.

And with those numbers one can easily ask:  is the nation starting to look like a developing country in terms of income and wealth distribution?  The effects of the country’s economic woes – be they intense during downturns, or less during times of prosperous growth – prove to be overwhelming to the disadvantaged members of American society. 

Of course, financial imbalances within the citizenry – experience demonstrates – have negative consequences.  Crime occurs more often in low-income areas.[4]  Common sense, given the price of medical care, tells one that the incidence of disease or spread of it is more apt to occur in low-income areas.  And again, there is research to back up this claim.[5]  Low income and low levels of wealth can be associated with many social ills.  Therefore, one can easily reach the conclusion that ill distribution of both affects the health of societies including that of the US.

Ironically, not only do Marxist and/or critical theory writers make these claims, but elite theorists agree, the difference being that these last commentators find little wrong with that reality.  Be that as it may, critical pedagogues make it their point to highlight these conditions.  And they should be highlighted, and federation theorists and their supporters (like this blogger) would agree in that their trump value is societal health or welfare. 

Critical theory also draws one to the collective nature of social reality.  The reconstructionist advocates believe meaningful civics as being a study in how alliances need to be formed in order to accomplish the transformation which they seek.  By doing so, critical pedagogues draw upon the curriculum and, therefore, the student away from the tacit message that all social accomplishments revolve around the individual.  This positive quality is not positive because it bolsters collectivist views, but because it points out an important reality.

That is, the construct questions the bias that holds that social policy should be aimed at heightening the role of individuals and the sanctity of individual rights.  Again, as this blog pointed out when reviewing the natural rights construct, that sanctity of the individual is that construct’s ultimate value and is judged here as a basis for many of the nation’s ills – most particularly, in how it feeds the nation’s current polarized politics. 

How?  By encouraging people to demand societal benefits from the perspective of individual aspirations, shunning the claims of groupings or other arrangements. From more self-centered needs, communal perspectives are lost and with that loss is that aspect of humanity that recognizes the need for such commonality.  The lacking humanity would be insensitive to suffering and injustice. When trampled, these concerns are dismissed or degraded at the cost of making all of Americans less human.

The last bit of positive critical thought this blogger finds appealing is how its advocates have introduced a practical way for people who are concerned over justice, or the lack of it, to study related issues without employing scientific approaches.  The prevailing mode of study calls for behavioral protocols.  Instead, critical theorists – including critical pedagogues – seek richer modes of study that do not limit themselves to reductionist analysis of correlated occurrences of abstracted factors or variables. 

Yes, there is a place for such studies, but they should not be the sole method of doing research.  Since critical researchers’ initial attempts at having American schools consider not just behavior, but focus their study on consciousness and subconsciousness, this more encompassing approach to the study of human affairs is no longer limited to only leftist academics. This shift is becoming more popular among educational and other researchers.   This might not include studies by formal business organizations, but more so among other bureaucratic entities such as school districts.

To give readers a more concrete sense as to what business thinking has been, here is what the conservative pundit, David Brooks, writes regarding the current state of what that sort of thinking has been:

 

[W]hen [Lionel Trilling] noted that so long as politics or commerce “moves toward organization, it tends to select the emotions and qualities that are most susceptible to organization. … As a result, “it drifts toward a denial of the emotions and the imagination. And in the very interest of affirming its confidence in the power of the mind, it inclines to constrict and make mechanical its conception of the mind.”

Rationalism looks at the conscious mind, and assumes that that is all there is. It cannot acknowledge the importance of unconscious processes, because once it dips its foot in that dark and bottomless current, all hope of regularity and predictability is gone. Rationalists gain prestige and authority because they have supposedly mastered the science of human behavior. Once the science goes, all their prestige goes with it.[6]

 

In short, where broader views of social study exist there now exists a real challenge to positivist studies that rely exclusively on measuring behavior as the sole methodology to the scientific study of human affairs. A lot of credit should be extended to critical theorists and, in education, to critical pedagogues for this shift.  But in corporate centers, behavioral methods still rule the roost.

And that is what this blogger believes are positive elements of the critical theory construct.  The next posting will begin to describe and explain what this blogger finds wrong with that construct.

---

[1] Robert Frank, “Soaring Markets Helped the Richest 1% Gain $6.5 Trillion in Wealth Last Year, According to the Fed,” CNBC (April 1, 2022), accessed May 10, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/richest-one-percent-gained-trillions-in-wealth-2021.html#:~:text=The%20top%201%25%20owned%20a,from%2030.5%25%20to%2030.2%25.

[2] Wealth Inequality in the United States,” Wikipedia (n.d.), access May 10, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20accumulation%20of%20wealth%20enables,bottom%2050%25%20held%202.6%25.

[3] Josie Green, “How Wealthy Was the 1% Each Year Since 1976,” 24/7 Wall Street (February 10, 2022), accessed May 10, 2023, https://247wallst.com/special-report/2022/02/10/how-wealthy-was-the-1-each-year-since-1976/2/.

[4] For example, Lilik Sugiharti, Rudi Purwono, Miguel Angel Sequivias, and Hilda Rohmawati, “The Nexus between Crime Rates, Poverty, and Income Inequality:  A Case Study of Indonesia,” Economies/MDPI (2022), accessed May 10, 2023, file:///C:/Users/gravi/Downloads/economies-11-00062-v2.pdf.  This article’s authors offer this study as exemplary of the general claim being made here.

[5] For example, Gabriela R. Oates, Bradford E. Jackson, Edward E. Patridge, Karen P. Singh, Mona N. Fouad, and Sejong Bae, “Sociodemographic Patterns of Chronic Disease,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine (January 2017), accessed May 10, 2023, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5171223/.

[6] David Brooks, The Social Animal:  The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (New York, NY:  Random House, 2011), 227 (emphasis added).

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XVI

 

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation[1] …

 

With the last posting describing one school of thought under the general construct critical theory – that being reconstructionism – this posting will describe the second school, reconceptualization.  Of the two, reconstructionism has a more collectivist orientation, while reconceptualization leans more toward an individualistic perspective.  Yes, the two share many aims, but the latter emphasizes addressing more directly questions of consciousness.

          How do the two, more specifically, share in the goals and claims they make?  Here is a list of overarching, common attributes:

 

·       they both have an organic and holistic view of people and society,

·       they have a constructional view of knowledge as explained by this blogger in his explanation of constructs,[2]

·       they place an emphasis on personal experiential knowledge,

·       they recognize the power of pre-conscious knowledge,

·       they use the humanities as a source of knowledge (more so with reconceptualization),

·       they place in priority personal liberty with responsibility and higher levels of consciousness (driving one’s consciousness toward self-actualization – again, more so with reconceptualization),

·       they value diversity and pluralism as both a means and ends,

·       they advocate a need to reconstruct social and political processes, and

·       they set forth a new language.

 

But here is how reconceptualization differs from reconstructionism.  During the later years of the twentieth century, life and culture changed drastically from the Great Depression years of the 1930s.  And in those later years, reconceptualization picked up steam.  For one, it applied more recent curricular approaches and adopted its language to a new set of sensitivities and insights (for example, using terms such as “deconstruct”).

          It also employed different categories of consciousness such as gender, race, and sexual orientation as well as socio-economic class, this last category being what reconstruction featured in its arguments.  Reconceptualization advocates point out how these other groups have their own views concerning oppression and oppressive conditions – some are like class-based ideas and views of realities and others differ.  That is, in particular they often vary from class-based views in their consciousnesses regarding oppression.

          Other points of difference include:

 

·       in terms of curriculum, reconceptualization does not hold it as a final product but as an experience, preferring the verb form of curriculum, currere,

·       its advocates rely to a greater degree on psychoanalytic (preconscious) study in analyzing pedagogic conditions and needs,

·       and these advocates are leery of scientific efforts at “discovering” targeted explanations and instead depend on more holistic, as opposed to analytic, understanding.

 

On this last point, reconceptualization advocates see science, as it is mostly practiced, to be overly aimed at problem-solving and tends to support bureaucratic, shallow efforts.  As such, it is a research approach that seriously tends to obfuscate efforts at forming enriched understandings or meanings.  In this, with his problem-posing form of study, the late Paulo Freire can be considered more of a reconceptualization educator who promoted holistic research. 

Irrespective of what their critics claim regarding their approach, reconceptualization advocates argue that their work is value free and not meant or aimed at indoctrinating their audiences, be they students or social activists.  They also boast of broadening their perspective by freely incorporating a larger array of literature such as poems, novels, short stories, and plays – do not be surprised if one finds in their work references to visual arts as well.

          Other points of distinction with reconstructionism are that reconceptualization often relies heavily on existentialism[3] and phenomenology.[4]  It is more focused on individual development as it often centers on self-actualization.  There, the theoretical ideas of Abraham Maslow are recurringly employed.

          This blog has observed that reconceptualization tends to be more in line with the natural rights view than what reconstructionism has been and probably not more so than when its advocates rely on perceptional claims of Carl Rogers and Arthur Combs.  These advocates, while still maintaining the moral and theoretical differences with the natural rights view, do take on a more individualistic view than the more traditional reconstructionist approach.  More concretely, they tend to cater to individuals’ whims and biases.

          Beyond these differences, critical pedagogy overall has had significant influence on higher education in both the US and Europe.  Starting in the 1960s (coinciding with the protests against the Vietnam conflict), its corps of supporters have engaged in various healthy – sometimes unhealthy – debates over various concerns.  Those concerns include community, diversity, social justice, and a host of other concerns over perceived instances of oppression.  Often their discourses relate these concerns to establishing or maintaining societal health.

          For those readers who follow the news of late, they can verify that these issues are or are becoming more central to the national discourse.  Various “red” states are taking a more proactive approach to counter the efforts of critical theorists and have taken on the ill-defined term “anti-woke” to summarize the concerns and antagonism for what critical advocates tend to favor.  And some of this has been affecting civics curricular efforts including the banning of books and other media.

---

[1] This posting heavily relies on the work of William Schubert.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[2] This blogger has in several postings given a definition for the term, construct. For example, posting dated November 22 or 23, 2010, “A Default Construct,” and can be found in Blog Book First Hundred, accessed May 6, 2023, BLOG BOOK FIRST HUNDRED - Google Docs, 67.  It gives a shortened definition.

[3] General belief in individual existence – investigative effort to determine what is the nature of being, particularly as it applies to individual human beings, as one experiences reality in this ultimately indeterminable world – and in total freedom and responsibility.

Existentialists point out that people are constantly faced with choices in which there are no known laws, ethical standards, or traditions to show the way. This makes life a state of being that inevitably produces anxiety.

[4] Study of consciousness as it relates to being. Founded by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger; it can be a somewhat opaque philosophy. For the purposes here, though, the interest is in its contributions to how one’s mental acts, consciousness, handle   the very nature of things in the practical world. It therefore is an alternative to empirical sciences.