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).
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