JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, IX

 

[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.

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[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.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, VIII

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

 

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation …

This blog has been reviewing how the nation’s prominent view of governance and politics has been challenged by a leftist perspective.  The prominent view is the natural rights view, and the challenging view is critical theory.  The dominant view bolsters the rights of the individual and can be most succinctly summarized as the belief in the right of the individual to do what that person wishes as long as by doing so the person does not interfere with others having the same right.[1] 

The challenging construct, critical theory, in counter distinction, does not centrally rely on individual liberty, but on equality as its ultimate or trump value.  As a concept, it serves to organize what this left of center theory espouses. It has been considered as radical equality in that, in its uncompromising form, it strives to establish equality of results.  Succinctly, that is, the theory advocates for all people, to a meaningful degree, be able to enjoy equally what a society offers, its benefits. As Marx stated it:  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

While mainline critical literature does not address education extensively, there is an educational branch to it, that being critical pedagogy.  And to further this tie between theory and educational practice, the concerns of critical theory overlap or can be considered related to civics’ topics. If one merely considers the above description, one can see the connection.  Overlapping topics include multiculturalism, sexism, classism, and even teacher training among other concerns.

In the following quote, the following point is made: civic issues underlie what is typically reported in critical research and advocacy.

 

What remains unclear in the debate within critical pedagogy is the relationship (or tension) between utopian thought, values, and pragmatic theory. In other words, while the postmodern and poststructuralist critiques have led many radical educators to accept the problematic and contingent nature of values – including those of radical democracy – there remains an inclination on the part of critical educators to employ such contingent values (e.g., emancipation, freedom, empowerment, democracy, justice, solidarity, etc.) as the basis of a utopian view to orient sociocultural formation. [2]

 

This is a fancy way to say critical educators are immersed with the nuts and bolts of what constitutes civics education.

But a question remains:  in what way does critical theory challenge directly the claimed threat that natural rights view poses on equality?  The basic position of the dominant view sanctions that people go about their business as they think best if they allow others the same leeway.  This seems fairly neutral or not offensive.  Critical theory does not agree. 

Its advocates claim that natural rights view encourages and upholds the prevailing distribution of power, dominance, and wealth which is highly and unjustly concentrated in the upper classes and among the dominant racial/ethnic group.  That group would be Anglo white men and to a lesser degree, Anglo white women.  In that mode of argument, natural rights proponents further support pure capitalism and an almost total reliance on positivist studies – science – as the source of what one needs to know or how one should go about securing such knowledge (a claim also known as scientism).

In critical pedagogy – as a central attribute – insists that students engage in targeted inquiries in which they question, research, analyze (in holistic ways), and form workable conclusions as to the degree the dominant group is oppressive.  Of central importance would be the following: 

 

·       the ongoing deprivation of equality as is evident in the resulting societal conditions one can readily observe,

·       the ongoing socialization of oppressive values among not only the upper segments of society but also the oppressed segments,

·       the maintenance of legitimacy of the system among all segments of the population through the use of language, and

·       securing the processes of value formulation on an individual basis with little or no concern for the consequences such socialization (instruction) has had on the interests of the total populous.[3]

 

Summarily, schools and their instruction, under the dominant view, are to advance the interests of the upper classes or other advantaged groups to the detriment of those not so advantaged.

Under this challenging view, critical theory, on what should students concentrate their attention?  Critical theorists would have people’s attention, including students, on language through the discourses one encounters among the populace.  Prevailing uses of language, they feel, set up the context elements in which people’s thoughts develop and actions occur.  How people talk about things goes a long way in setting the parameters of what is acceptable and expected among them.  In addition, such effects, to a great extent, happen on subconscious levels.

Valerie Pang, Geneva Gay, and William Stanley[4] share examples of how ongoing living occurrences affect the common ways people judge prevalent oppressive conditions. They report that in their reflecting or acting, in relation to minorities or other non-advantaged populations, the dominant society participates in a range of unjust practices and policies that maintain the conditions that sustain these unjust relationships.  Often this happens quite subconsciously. These writers identify several ways this happens.

Here is a partial listing of those ways:

 

·       One, they include community formation where exclusion of unwanted members is accomplished. That exclusion can be on ethnic, racial, social, and cultural grounds. The plethora of gated communities can be seen in this light.

 

·       Two, the dominant group in America, Anglo men and women, are usually unaware of the advantages they enjoy in society. As such, they are not cognitively or emotionally aware of the systematic disadvantages under which oppressed groups suffer.

 

·       Three, the “bootstrap” myth (ability to gain suitable income levels through effort and hard work), which is dependent on a significant level of individualism, ignores the essential role community support plays in assisting the advantaged members of the society. The dominant natural rights discourse utilizes language replete with reductionist, oversimplified beliefs. As for the “American Dream,” what meaning does that image have in the complex world of inner cities and their realities?

 

·       Four, too often the accepted rationalizations embedded in the dominant discourses make it psychologically impossible for prejudicial members of the dominant group (a significant subgroup) to see themselves as prejudicial. Instead, they can convince themselves that the blame for the economic misfortune of others is due, in their version of the truth, to non-factors such as the culture of poverty. The standard policy has been to destroy the culture of oppressed people and assimilate them to mainstream norms and ethos which can be described as replete with mythological language.

 

·       And five, ample, subtle incidences of segregation still plague the nation as when, for example, minority students are inordinately encouraged to choose vocational courses and programs in schools. Constantly seeking “magic bullet” solutions which do little to solve the complex public-school woes can be seen as part of this deceiving language.[5] Critical pedagogy claims that the dominant discourse supports all of these oppressive realities.

 

As for the meaning of the term, discourses, first one needs to consider the context in which the term is used.  That is, critical theorists are referring to privileged members using language, in its various forms, to maintain not only their privileged positions in society, but also the continuance of the system that allows for their positions to exist.  In that they sponsor verbal strategies aimed at presenting their preferred states of affairs to seem rational and natural. The language used portrays myths as obvious facts in describing not only a view of what is, but also of what should be.  Their language reflects how they wish society will continue to function.

Critical theory and, in schools, critical pedagogy has been at the forefront of identifying and attacking oppressive language. Defenders of the dominant language and of the social conditions that language protects have attempted to delegitimize those who critique them.  These attacks, in turn, use different linguistic strategies that include the claim that many of these attacks are examples of “political correctness.”

Of late an array of new terms seem to be expressing opposing claims where one side might use the term “woke,” the other might blurt out “gas-lighting.”  The discourse battles continue quite aggressively and this blogger, for one, finds trying to keep up with the terminology a challenge in and of itself.  Possibly continuing these blog efforts will insist he stay abreast of these linguistic turns.

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[1] While Locke is the often-cited source for this view, actually a distinction between Locke’s contribution and that of Thomas Hobbes can be made.  The first is more respective of duties associated with those rights (and of natural law), while Hobbes is not.  Unfortunately, according to this blogger, too many Americans in their beliefs side with Hobbes.

[2] Lisa J. Cary, “The Refusals of Citizenship: Normalizing Practices in Social Education Discourses, Theory and Research in Social Education, 29, 3 (Summer, 2001), 405-430, 417.

[3] 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.

[4] Valerie O. Pang, Geneva Gay, and William B. Stanley, “Expanding Conceptions of Community and Civic Competence for a Multicultural Society,” Theory and Research in Social Education, 23, 4 (Fall 1995), 302-331.

[5] See Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2010).  Ravitch is not a critical educator, but her study of the failure of current efforts to solve public-school problems, through market solutions, convincingly supports the claim being made.