[Note: This posting is subject to further editing.]
An advocate of critical
theory continues his/her presentation …
To remind readers, this
blog, in reviewing the claims of natural rights construct, described how its
advocates demonstrate a bias for science – both natural and behavioral. In terms of human behavior, they rely almost
exclusively on scientific protocols, or a bias that one could call scientism. This exclusivity was critiqued as going
overboard and disregarding other modes of research – cohort studies, case
studies, surveys, phenomenological studies, etc.
Basically, the point was
that such loyalty invites an array of critiques and critical theorists are not
shy in expressing them. For instance,
they or anyone who might question this centrality of science, might question
how the scientific approach might address the question: what is the correct balance between security
and liberty? Surely, scientific studies
can offer one an array of insights that could be helpful with answering this
question, but it cannot directly answer it.
David Hume, the
philosopher of the 1700s, warned people that it is hazardous to jump from
empirical or factual claims – upon which science relies – to determine value-based
opinions or conclusions. When it comes
to considering goodness, one ultimately must base one’s beliefs on sentiments
or emotions. Of more recent time, David
Brooks writes:
One
could go on: We've tried feebly to reduce widening inequality. We've tried to
boost economic mobility. We've tried to stem the tide of children raised in
single-parent homes. We've tried to reduce the polarization that marks our
politics. We've tried to ameliorate the boom-and-bust cycle of our economies.
In recent decades, the world has tried to export capitalism to Russia, plant
democracy in the Middle East, and boost development in Africa. And the results
of these efforts are mostly disappointing. … [These efforts rely] on an overly
simplistic view of human nature. Many of these policies were based on the
shallow social-science model of human nature.[1]
This blogger agrees with this concern – that
the powers to be, the elites do over rely on science in such settings as one
finds in corporate boardrooms.
He has attempted to inform readers of this blog
as to certain shortcomings derived from such reliance, but critical theorists
go further. But before getting into that
directly, certain contextual factors need to be reviewed. For example, this negativity toward science needs
to be understood as an extension of critical theorists’ aversion to the natural
rights view’s augmentation of the individual.
That focus flowed naturally from developments
of scientific and technological advancements during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. To just highlight
the most prominent examples, there were Newtonian mechanics, industrial
developments such as Ford’s assembly line, and the resulting bureaucracies
which isolate individuals within well-defined roles.
Along this line, Neil O. Houser and Jeffrey J. Kuzmic write:
One
problem with such a worldview is that it promotes and perpetuates separation
and isolation rather than community and connectedness. Some scholars have
argued that the prevailing modernist [natural rights] paradigm is responsible –
either directly or indirectly, in part or in whole – for the finds of reductionistic
thinking underlying dualistic conceptions of self and society, disconnection
between humans, non-human life, and the physical environment, and the almost
inexorable quest to acquire, control, dominate, and consume ...[2]
Summarily, this concern, according to many of its critics, is that an
over reliance on science has encouraged a good deal of dehumanizing practices
both in relation to social and physical conditions.
And one can add that this view has left the individual not
only isolated but objectified. How? By significantly assisting in the issuance of
policies – by private entities and government – and of social protocols at places
of work, businesses, schools, and other social environments that in many cases relegates
the individual to an identification number.
The bulk of instruction, according to critical pedagogues,
should be aimed at pointing out how dehumanizing this type of individualized
attention actually is. Instead, not only,
in terms of education (especially in civics education), should instruction
strive to address the true interests of students – individually and
collectively – but use those interests and related realities as springboards.
That is, teachers should use problematic situations and/or
conditions that students actually experience to initiate lessons or units of
instruction and follow that with content that relates to the springboards so
that students can be knowledgeable of the facts regarding those conditions.
The belief is that such content will be found to be relevant
to students’ interests and, therefore, they will be more likely to be motivated
to engage in the lessons such an approach entails. In addition, the content points out how
students and their parents are subjected to institutional oppression which
might include income factors or factors relating to the availability of public
services.
In
civics or government classes, students can inquire into relevantly civic laden
material and question the underlying oppressive practices and discourses of the
dominant society. Armed with that knowledge, students can engage in action,
praxis, that attempts to right those wrongs.
Such actions, once performed and evaluated, provide additional useful
insights as to the make-up of their social realities.
Through
such instruction, the aim is to transform students. The hope is that they progress through the
courses and become reform-minded people who are knowledgeable of how society,
as it is, practices or allows oppressive conditions. Once they are sufficiently transformed, they
are to work toward achieving or helping to achieve socially just resolutions to
those oppressive challenges.
But
not only are they to be cognitively able and emotionally disposed to do such
work, but they are also motivated to work in collective arrangements with
fellow citizens, often in communal, collaborative, and cooperative arrangements. And with that notion, this blog is getting
closer to reviewing the work of Paulo Freire.
Not
in the next posting, but the one that follows it, the work of Senhor Freire
will begin to be described and explained.
The goal of this and the last few postings has been to set readers’
minds to think sufficiently congruent with what Freire offers – please don’t
think of it as being manipulative. The
concern of this blogger is that these words are written in a highly individualistic
environment, and to give Freire his due, a bit of transforming or
contextualizing is perhaps necessary.
[1] David Brooks, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and
Achievement (New York,
NY: Random House, 2011), xiv-xv, emphasis added.
[2] Neil O. Houser and Jeffrey J. Kuzmic,
“Ethical Citizenship in a Postmodern World: Toward a More Connected Approach to
Social Education for the Twenty-First Century, Theory and Research in Social Education, 29, 3 (Summer 2001),
431-461, 439.
No comments:
Post a Comment