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.

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[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.

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[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.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XV

 

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

This blog, as a parting observation in the last posting, pointed out that critical theory has developed into two schools of thought.  The one is reconstructionism and the other is reconceptualization. [1]  Both share certain ideas and claims, but they do vary enough to be considered separately.  This posting will address reconstructionism and the next will describe reconceptualization.

          Some credit John Dewey with the founding of reconstructionism and its heyday was during the 1930s – years that coincided with the Great Depression.  As it applied to education – which was Dewey’s main concern – it was/is based on the belief that learning should mostly emanate from one’s experiences.  Further, those recollections of experiences should be reorganized – that is, reconstructed – so that they provide students with added meaning and direction in facing current conditions and subsequent experiences.

          Paulo Freire, whose work was just reviewed in this blog, illustrates how this prescription can be implemented through school instruction.  That would be one approach, but as one reviews how this school of thought has been considered by others, there has been various approaches derived from reconstructionist ideas.  There are those who promote social reforms.  And these other efforts are targeted at those conditions that have rendered the working class being exploited by oppressive conditions.  Low wages, long oppressive hours, unsafe working conditions, child labor were among the conditions they would strive to change in the 1930s and beyond.

          There were those among the reconstructionist groups who encouraged teachers to work in organizing others to join socialist or communist labor movements.  They tended to argue that teachers should teach their students what they deemed to be the follies of capitalism.  And there were those who pushed for teachers to do all these roles, but they added that such actions, even in the days of hostile labor strikes and demonstrations, should be performed without resorting to violence – they believed it was not necessary.[2]

          The overall educational aim was to enhance the ability of students to change themselves so as to allow them to generate the insights necessary to understand their conditions – as being oppressed – and be motivated to work toward the transformation of society.  National figures leading this movement included George Counts and Harold Rugg.  They expressed the belief that education could and should be a medium by which to create and promote a new social order.

          The curriculum for which they advocated conceived of education as a force to institute a new spirit for education, one that could be applied to the whole curriculum.  Yes, that curriculum would still teach the basics – reading, writing, math – and the academic disciplines – in the social studies that would be history, government, geography, economics – but to present them in such a way that it would promote this new social order.  In so doing, it would be characterized by a social/communal, as opposed to an individualist, focus.  That is, it would emphasize cooperation, not competition.

          Inherent with such an approach is its ideal vision of society.  That would be an organic (interdependent) view that calls for an interdisciplinary mode of research.  It would disfavor epistemology based on specialization that one associates with positivist/scientific studies that schools generally teach even today.  That is, in seeking reconstruction, one puts aside the use of detached disciplines – which the advocates of the natural rights view favor – and apply multidisciplinary lessons.

But what should be pursued should be done within the context of self-actualization or a proactive effort to have students discover who they really are.  What prevails, though, is something else, i.e., a younger generation – not exclusive to today’s youth – that is overly influenced by cultural and other forces – encapsulated in the prevailing discourses of the day and that affect them at subconscious levels.  Consider today the force of pop culture.[3] 

And added to that general aim in content is the utilization of instructional processes critical pedagogues call praxis.[4]  That praxis should be conducted through sensitivity and penetrating criticism where students actively evaluate what they experience.  And one can add that in relation to social studies – particularly civics – this approach, even if one does not ascribe to it, does offer a good deal of useful ideas. 

Advocates argue that the nation could stand for a good dose of “social self-realization” that could be assisted by adopting various instructional suggestions from the critical approach.  Yet, this school of thought did not enjoy much currency in the US in the thirties or since.  There was the adoption of texts written by Harold Rugg back in those years, but they ran into controversy during the fifties and were removed.

 Why were they removed?  Business groups found them offensive.  This blogger can share a bit of firsthand information on this score.  No, he did not teach in the fifties but does have a copy of one of those books – America’s March toward Democracy – and judges it to be fairly mainstream.  As evidence, here is a passage taken from the beginnings of the book:

 

...[F]or at least two centuries and a half [before the Revolution] there was a more widespread spirit of individual liberty in America than in the Old World of Europe and Asia. By that we mean that the Americans were much freer to live and work as they pleased. The chief factor introducing this spirit was the frontier. … On the frontier men and women were forced to depend upon themselves for their living. There was no one else to rely upon for help. … We say that there grew up a spirit of self-reliance, of initiative, of democracy. And this frontier spirit of individual liberty played a most fit important part in changing the American government to the needs of the changing American civilization.[5]

 

A passage resembling the Communist Manifesto?  Not really.

          It reminds this blogger of the natural rights construct which guides what is taught in history and civics classes today.  In the introduction to the book, Rugg does claim that the text aims to encourage problem-solving activities, and a review of its content – way short of reading every page – this blogger does not find any open-ended problems students are called upon to solve.

          Reconstructionism’s advocates on college campuses during the ensuing years did verge on being radicals – at least some of them.  During the Cold War – especially during the “McCarthyism years” – they were actively hassled and subject to various punishments by the authorities – denial of tenure, FBI investigations, criminal prosecutions, etc.[6] 

More recently, while more success has been experienced by reconceptualization followers, one can find reconstructionist ideas filtering onto published works in professional journals – at least in terms of the topics being addressed.  And with this noting of reconceptualization, the other school of thought, this blogger brings this posting to an end and points out that that school of thought will be the topic of the next posting.

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[1] William H. Schubert, Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986). Most of the descriptive comments in this and the next posting rely heavily on ideas presented by Schubert.

[2] See Progressive Education and Social Reconstruction, Encyclopedia.com. Website: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1/g2-3468301130.htlm .

[3] “Popular Culture,” Central Community College (n.d.), accessed May 3, 2023, https://libguides.cccneb.edu/popculture#:~:text=As%20the%20name%20implies%2C%20popular,conduct%20themselves%20and%20so%20on.

[4] See “Judging Critical Theory, VII,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, April, 7, 2023.

[5] Harold Rugg, America's March Toward Democracy (Boston, MA: Ginn and Company, 1937), 8-9.

[6] Ellen Schrecker, “Political Tests for Professors:  Academic Freedom during the McCarthy Years,” The University Loyalty Oath (October 7, 1999), accessed May 3, 2023, https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/symposium//schrecker.html.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XIV

 

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

With a good look at Paulo Freire’s ideas concerning education – that of a critical pedagogue – one can now take a closer look at what critical theory promotes.  One word about Freire – to contextualize his contribution – the nation he represented was Brazil.  While Brazil has become highly advanced, it is still classified as a developing nation since it still does not provide adequate healthcare and clean water to all of its population.[1]  So, one should keep that factor in mind when considering his arguments.

          This and the next posting will get more closely at the diversity of ideas or focuses critical theorists hold.  One commentator that points to this variety, as he describes and explains the construct, is William Schubert. [2]  He does emphasize that critical theorists do agree on certain principles. 

He mentions agreement on the need for praxis as Freire mostly describes it as striving for the transformation of a society (instead of working toward marginal changes).  In their understanding of praxis, they see it as an action to attain emancipation and empowerment – their terms – of the oppressed.  In part they achieve this by questioning the structures of the power arrangements in each nation.  And looming over all of this is a value system that prizes equality of results – or as they term it, social justice – as a trump value.

Praxis views knowledge in a particular way.  That is, it is derived from constructive processes which investigate the social realities that the oppressed experience.  And the approach students are to take utilizes a multidisciplinary approach (history, political, economic, and social sciences) applied to reality as it evolves in given places and times – as opposed to universal conditions.

Regarding “learning,” knowledge is perceived differently.  Here it is the product of deconstructing existing claims – the product of oppressor discourses – and reconstructing them in more real contexts as perceived by the oppressed.  Obviously, this view of knowledge is that it is the product or created by the mind constructing it.  As such, it rejects reductionist research protocols.[3]

In its purity, this view of knowledge counters the positivist view which is what natural rights advocates promote.  In its total form, a positivist approach favors the impartation of knowledge through the efforts of experts with sanctioning credentials.  Instead, critical theorists argue that knowledge should be the product of self-derived knowledge taken from personal and intimate relationships and their related experiences.

And on this point, critical theorists do not accept the claims of positivists that being that positivists objectify their subject matter and strip their biases from their findings.  According to critical theorists, positivists are equally affected by their personal biases as demonstrated by the long history of faulty claims proffered by these experts. 

This critique holds that positivists see the function of scientifically derived social knowledge is not to better interpersonal relationships, but to be applied to clinical relationships by social technicians or to advance the interests those who fund such research as multi-national corporations.  And this can be said of not only the conclusions they derive from their research but also the questions they pose.

Bottom line is that the results of this sort of “studies” are a false consciousness.  In its stead, would be a liberating education, an education that helps people achieve emancipation from the inherently debilitating condition or state of affairs.  Through the years, this line of thinking has gone through changes including the evolution of two schools of thought:  reconstructionism and reconceptualization.

Reconstructionism has remained truer to its Marxist origins – not to deny it has its differences with that source – while reconceptualization has open itself to the influence of a variety of sources including existentialism, psychoanalysis, and a stronger aversion to pure scientific research.  Next posting will delve into these ideas and how they have affected the whole critical theorists’ view of civic issues.

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[1] Mar Z. Luna, “10 Most Developed Countries in Central and South America,” Homeschool Spanish Academy (October 13, 2022), accessed April 29, 2023, https://www.spanish.academy/blog/10-most-developed-countries-in-central-and-south-america/.

[2] William H. Schubert, Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  Most of the descriptive comments in this and the next posting relies heavily on ideas presented by Schubert.

[3] According to this blogger’s understanding, not all critical theorists totally reject the contributions of positivist studies one associates with scientific approaches.  All of them do question its value as being the sole source of knowledge.  It should be noted that Freire does not dismiss the social sciences but argues their application in a multidisciplinary way.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XIII

 

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

In the attempt to share with readers how critical theory is expressed in the educational community, this blog has described Paulo Freire’s educational approach.  To begin, this application is called critical pedagogy and the purpose of relating Freire’s contribution is to provide a working sense of what it takes to be a critical pedagogue.  He provides, if not a pure version of critical theory, an insightful view of what critical pedagogues mean by people being liberated.

          To be honest, this blog’s effort has not been an extensive presentation of Freire’s argument but a basic one.  Enough of one so that an interested teacher can begin experimenting with Freire’s more practical prescriptions and if readers are interested, his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, can offer a more complete exposition of his views.  It addresses the challenges teachers will face if they initiate his ideas in the classroom.

          Mixed in with Freire’s critical thoughts are natural rights beliefs – the approaches, to a noticeable degree – blend one with the other.  What one can clearly discern, though, is that Freire does not have a natural rights sense of liberty, one based on individualism.  The critical bent leans toward a communal sense of liberty and, in this mode, Freire writes of cycles where teachers and students perform each other’s roles in the classroom.  The same, in a different fashion, pertains to the oppressed and liberated oppressors where both strive toward attaining their humanity.

          And here is a general principle of this construct:  Those involved must, in communion, exert their effort to accomplish the transformation from a reality of oppression to one of liberation.  They must accomplish it; it cannot be done for them, and it cannot be done alone.  In this, Freire strays from other critical theorists.

          The usual writers of that construct and in the fashion of Marxists, speak and write of collectives not communal arrangements, unless the two are equated.  This blogger feels the two are distinct.  A collective subsumes or mostly subsumes the individualism of those involved for the sake of the collective.  Communal retains individualism in terms of a person’s self-dignity.  Why?  Because the common good is or will be compromised if that dignity is sacrificed.

          Writing in this vein, Christopher Ferry writes of the need for teachers to trust students, for them to accept them for who they are, including their limitations, while working with them to transform them and their reality toward liberation.[1]  In terms of this distinction, one can appreciate an overlap between Freire’s ideas and the ideas of federation theory.

          If and when others step in and attempt to instill or create a liberation for those who are oppressed – the “savior” role – that in effect objectifies those who are to benefit from such attempts and, therefore, end in failure.  The process, in its very nature, demands dialogue and trust among those involved.  Yes, there is a role for empirically derived knowledge, but from the life experiences of those involved. 

These are the themes the previous postings pointed out which are essential to true school reform even if one finds fault with Freire’s overall message.  One does not need to be a critical theorist or critical pedagogue to appreciate, for example, the function of discourses.  And the dialogues or discourses are to be on-going that strive to expose the slew of myths the oppressors promote, e.g., that entrepreneurial opportunities exist in abundance. 

Along with these exposures is discovering and informing those involved of various strategies such as existing policies or practices that divide the oppressed.  So, leftists or liberals often attempt to uncover quick paths to success or power which by-pass hard earned partnerships among the oppressed – short cuts to some.  Results of such efforts are unaccomplished goals or new forms of oppression or other parties inflicting other forms of exploitation who, through their discourses, promise “liberation.”

And then, according to Freire, there are governmental programs – e.g., welfare – that artificially anesthetize the oppressed and tend to further divide them.  What critical pedagogy strives for is not cradle to grave assistance.  Along with its condemnation of undue concentration of wealth, this form of enlightenment sees wealth as power and that power is exercised, in part, to deny opportunities for the oppressed.

So, what determines liberation.  Liberation exists in societies where no small percentage of the population – the elites – can dictate or unreasonably influence the laws of the land and/or how the laws are enforced.  According to Freire, true equality includes all segments of the population having equal say in what those laws are, how they are administered, and how they are interpreted.

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[1] See Christopher Ferry, “When the Distressed Teach the Oppressed:  Toward an Understanding of Communion and Commitment” (n.d.) accessed June 11, 2021, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268749403.pdf,