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.