A FINAL TAKE ON A DIALECTIC DEBATE

Over the last few months, this blog has reviewed and compared the content of two mental constructs:  the natural rights construct and the critical theory construct.  These views and their points of disagreement constitute what professional academics in the field of curriculum studies debate. 

Actually, academics generally ascribe to the critical theory side of the debate and, on the other side, there are few academics, the educational establishment of administrators and officials as well as administrators within school districts. 

Perhaps, in this blog, the language used to describe critical theory was a bit more positive than the language used to describe natural rights.  The reader should remember that this construct has been readily dismissed by the great majority of Americans, irrespective of Bernie Sanders’ popularity during the 2016 election cycle.  It was determined, therefore, that a positive tone be taken in describing and explaining its tenets.  The reader, though, should not be misled; this writer is quite critical of critical theory.

A short anecdote gets at the very heart of what he sees as lacking with Marxian based models.  This anecdote refers to a situation that existed within the writer’s family.  Two of his family members lived in a condominium in Miami.  He would visit often and was well acquainted with the inner workings of the household. 

One of his relatives, a leftist thinking person, spouted often about the imminent demise of capitalism.  He is a patriotic person and does not promote violent overthrow of the system or anything close to that.  But he did see current political and economic conditions as fundamentally bankrupt and headed for inevitable doom.  He is a bright enough fellow, college educated, and has had his share of tough times.

The apartment was not extravagant although the monthly maintenance fees were a bit high due to a swimming pool located within the complex.  These fees included the shared water costs of the entire complex.  There were no individual meters to measure water consumption, so everyone shared equally in paying the water bill for the building.

The apartment these relatives lived in had two bathrooms, one being part of the master suite.  A significant leak developed in the bathtub of the master bathroom, resulting in quite a few gallons of water being wasted per day.  When asked whether anything had been done about the leak, the reply was always no.  This was the case for months.  It wasn't until the leak escalated and flooded the apartment that the issue was fixed.  And this writer said to his leftist relative, “That's why socialism won't work.”

It doesn't work because it lacks assigning personal responsibility for the upkeep, maintenance, and/or economic development of assets.  When something becomes everyone's responsibility, it becomes no one's responsibility.  Personal accountability is essential in any realistic model of the human condition.  Paying the costs, be they labor, money, or the care needed to account for the wear and tear of something held dear, is hard to bear.

With this backdrop, what are the problems with critical theory?  What is not the problem is the sincerity of those advocating this view, but it otherwise has serious problems.  To begin with, generations of Americans have overwhelmingly rejected socialist thinking with some exceptions (e. g., Social Security).  There is evidence that there is something to respecting the wisdom of so many.[1] 

Yes, a lot of that indifference, if not out and out disregard, has been fueled by a well-orchestrated propaganda effort by the business community aimed at anything approaching socialist policies.  While our nation has implemented socialist type programs, the nation can be viewed as right of center along the political spectrum and, as such, tends to reject socialist approaches to problems. 

Throughout most of its history, the existence of a viable middle class has given most Americans a vested interest in the existing system.  Yet, the almost total rejection of this construct as it applies to civics and curricular issues, in general, should say something about how, to most Americans, the theory lacks any sense.  As one of its chief advocates writes about the effect of critical pedagogy, “it has never been a major theme in social education.”[2]

While all this is seen to be true, one can still garner from critical theorists and pedagogues’ insights into the oppressive conditions from which the disadvantaged suffer.  This is no small contribution.  But in terms of providing a guiding view for how schools should practically go about educating our youth, this construct is a non-starter.

Among its problems is a lack of a singular message.  Critical pedagogy, for example, has a loose and, to some degree, contradictory foundation.  While the approach is influenced by the Marxian discourse of class struggle, its post structural/postmodern roots theoretically attack such mega-theories as Marxism. 

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.[3]

With such a diverse foundation, advocates have found it impossible to zero in on concrete curricular and instructional strategies.  They are, for the most part, constrained to making opaque theoretical arguments or reporting how prevailing conditions warrant our ire at the oppressive conditions that exist.

In terms of making their case about the oppressive conditions they perceive, they pursue several approaches.  For example, they might limit themselves to reciting statistics and descriptive accounts which document the mal-distribution of economic values in our society.  These accounts are analyzed according to race, gender, ethnicity, age and other categories, proving that certain groups are marginalized; these groups are castigated, in prevailing discourses, as “others.”[4]

This critique could also add other issues.  For example, this approach to civics tends to be a single-issue approach and disregards other areas of concern such as the degradation of the environment.  Another shortcoming is this approach’s disregard for the attempts that the American nation has made to meet the needs of both the laboring class and the disadvantaged.  One can argue that America is still a place where someone with modest beginnings can make something of him/herself. 

This latter point reflects problems with how exploitation is defined by critical theorists.  Perhaps a better definition, other than what is offered by Galtung (in the previous posting), is as follows:  an oppressive society is one in which acts denying reasonable liberty or equality occur and the victimized party(ies) have no political, legal, economic or other means, short of violence, to effectively fight against the offensive condition(s).  While this has been the case against certain groups in the past, it is not the US today.

A lot more can be said about both critical theory and natural rights construct.  Hopefully, the reader can gather the essence of what divides these educators.  But beyond that, the above reviews attempt to highlight what each of these constructs lacks in fulfilling its function to guide civics educators on what should be included in terms of governmental and political content.  The lack is so pronounced that another way or view should be considered.  This blog is dedicated to another view.

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                        [1] James Surowiecki,   The Wisdom of Crowds:  Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics. Societies, and Nations (New York, NY:  Doubleday, 2004).

[2] Cleo H. Cherryholmes, “Critical Pedagogy and Social Education,” 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.

[3] Ibid., 75.

[4] Donna M. Gollnick and Phillip C. Chinn, Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, 1998) AND Michael Apple, Cultural Politics and Education (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1996).

THE TOOLS: LANGUAGE AND PRAXIS

To conclude this short overview of critical theory – the topic of the preceding postings, – this entry will describe how its advocates see the construct contributing to the common good.  This is the answer to the final organizing question identified several postings ago.  As the antithesis to the natural rights construct, critical theory provides an alternative view of what education should be about.  By doing so, those who support critical theory see themselves as advancing equality, its trump value.

Sociologically, they place great stock in the role education can potentially play in enhancing the level of justice a society will exhibit in mostly capitalist nations.  The construct explains what is allegedly happening in schools:  the fulfillment of the “reproduction” function; that is, to provide the necessary instruction so that the existing social arrangements are maintained and carried into the future. 

Educational systems are established and maintained, according to this view, to reproduce the social arrangements that benefit the elite class(es).  This role of schools can be analyzed using either the Marxian concept of the superstructure (the compilation of societal institutions that are in sync with the economic institution) or the systems theory's concept of structural-functionalism (a la Talcott Parsons[1]).

In either approach, the schools take on a political role in that they are doing the bidding of the elites and assist in projecting messages of support of the exploitation that capitalism establishes.  This function is accomplished by using language. 

That language subtly promotes messages that contain supportive myths.  The myths promote beliefs that describe, hide, or obfuscate exploitation by portraying those practices as reflective of a rational paradigm.  For example, capitalist theory, according to the construct, espouses false promises of a just meritocracy.  It casts a blind eye as to whether the standards of meritocracy are either compromised or ignored. 

Not all students accepted into schools such as Harvard get in because they are the best students.  Not all CEOs become CEOs because they can add the most value to their corporations.  Many workers and many within the lower classes have been convinced by the elites that their cooperation leads to efficiency and a potentially better life for themselves in the future. 

This is a function of the language used by schools and other institutions. Critical analysts claim that capitalist policy fails to adequately reward the productive efforts of the laboring class which make the capitalist engine work.  Instead, the language used in schools diminishes this contribution and glorifies the contributions of the business owning class.  The schools, therefore, have voluntarily participated in the exploitative arrangement due to the false representations the elites have promulgated and reinforced in the classroom.

In their methodologies, critical scholars emphasize the study of language and how it is manipulated to acquire the aims of those who control language.  In addition, besides relying on rational dialectic study, Marxian advocates have, almost from its beginning, argued for not only studying exploitative relationships, but also promoting action; that is, action that is aimed at rectifying the exploitive policies and arrangements the elites have instituted through their surrogates. 

This activism is called praxis.  Praxis refers to “man's [or woman’s] conscious reshaping of nature and the creation of history via intellectual and manual labour”.[2]  It is a proactive posture, through action, to address the various forms of injustice.

An excellent work that not only describes this use of language, but further explains how education can strive for equality, is Paulo Freire’s book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  In that book, he explains several aspects of oppression and how schooling, as presently constituted, furthers it.

Praxis is described by Freire as those educational efforts that disabuse students from seeking to emulate the lives of oppressors; that encourages, instead, to work toward liberating not only the oppressed but the oppressors as well, in order that they and students can see the common humanity among all.  The oppressed, using their experiences, determine what the curriculum should be to make them and their teachers both students and teachers together.  This includes viewing education as distinct from “banking” information toward developing and implementing the strategies that will lead toward true liberation.[3]

In more common language, here, the call is for action that leads to an ideal society of justice.  There are those curricular professionals who have argued that a special focus needs to be directed at the impact of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference as well as socioeconomic class on education with its effect on one’s quality of life, on one’s outlook on life, and on the ability of the individual to develop a truly liberated life space.[4] 

Actions spurred on by reflection and commitment to achieving these just goals constitute praxis.  More recent writers have tamed the calls for praxis that include revolution or violent overthrow of the existing order.  For example, praxis proposed by Jurgen Habermas relates to establishing “ideal speech situations” in which what is communicated is done so in a completely non-coerced environment.[5] 

Such communication allows for the search of internal contradictions and gaps so that a new interpretation of social reality can emerge.  Belief in an ideal society provides a basis by which to criticize the dominant society over the following political standard:  power relations must not oppress any groups within a society.

What should be noted is that emphasis on praxis leads to a more contextual notion of what is true.  That is, beyond the use of dialectic analysis, critical scholars use praxis to devise successful strategies by which to challenge and reform exploitive relationships through the lessons that praxis reveals. 

Not to be too philosophical, truth can be seen by what is observed around us – a capability critical thinkers question vigorously – or it can be seen from the truth held by different perspectives (an approach more in keeping with critical theory).  These varying perspectives not only determine what aspects of reality are taken into our consciousness, but also further determine what new “truths” are sought by the questions one chooses to ask. 

The central argument of the critical pedagogues is that education should be about discovering the “true” exploitive relationships that exist in capitalist societies and devising and implementing the strategies that rectify those conditions.  The main tools are language and praxis.

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[1] Raymond A. Morrow and Carlos A. Torres, Social Theory and Education: A Critique of Theories of Social and Cultural Reproduction (New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995).

[2] Richard B. Bellamy, “Labriola, Antonio,” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, ed. David Miller (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell Publisher, 1996), 272-273, 273.

[3] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY:  Continuum Publishing Company. 1999).

[4] William H. Schubert, Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York,NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[5] Michael Pusey, Jurgen Habermas (London: Routledge, 1993).  Habermas' theoretical work is not limited to speech. He presents a highly-sophisticated model which incorporates ideas from Marx to Parsons.

CRITICAL THEORISTS' POLITICAL VIEW

While economics is the central concern of critical theorists, they speak the language of politics.  This blog is currently reviewing critical theory’s perspective on government and politics.  The political system, to Marxists, is part of the superstructure, the institution built upon the demands of the economic elites and relied upon to protect most directly their interests. 

Politics and government are counted on, in socialists’ plans, to determine the rules by which socialist practices will be established.  This posting will describe and explain the relationship between how critical theorists see their moral outrage over the exploitive practices in market economies and their view of government and politics.

          As pointed out in a previous posting, there are various intellectual sources that influence the political beliefs of critical pedagogues.  Those sources include Hegelianism, neo-Marxist thought, the Frankfort School of Social Research, the works of John Dewey (especially his later work), post structuralists, post modernists, Jurgen Habermas, and other leftist scholars.

Their epistemological bent opposes research methods common among natural rights advocates; that is, they discard behavioral or positivist (“scientific”) protocols.  They instead rely on rational processes – dialectical (logical) processes of thought.  If readers would like to read the works of recent critical pedagogues, they might look up Paulo Freire, Michael Apple, Bill Ayers, and Henry Giroux.

Stemming from the work of Lester Frank Ward in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the curricular approach known as social reconstructionism has influenced or guided the overall thrust of critical pedagogues.[1]  As the years have passed, more formal, leftist influences have made their mark on the works of critical theorists.

In the last posting, the point was made that to varying degrees, all critical pedagogues adopt Marxian ideas.  To understand the thrust of their work, one needs to appreciate how it reflects socialist thinking.  While this is true, one should keep in mind that some critical pedagogues are barely Marxists at all, but to contextualize their work, one is benefited by reviewing basic Marxian thinking.

At a minimum, the reader should understand the following concepts:  dialectical materialism, class struggle, surplus value, dictatorship of the proletariat, and superstructure.

Dialectical materialism refers to Marx's view of the sweep of history as recurring cycles of haves oppressing the have-nots.  At its essence, this development has placed entrepreneur class – the bourgeoisie – in power today.  The have-nots are the laboring class, or as Marx referred to it, the proletariat.  As with previous political cycles, Marx foresaw that the working class, the have-nots, will eventually overthrow the bourgeoisie. 

But with this revolutionary change, because of the historical factors characterizing this overthrow, the workers were to establish a political regime where no other class would exist.  Therefore, there would not be an exploitive relationship among the people of that resulting society.  This would end the cyclical nature of politics in human history. 

Class struggle is simply the clash of interests between the oppressors and the oppressed.  In the capitalist system, the oppressors are the business owners who own the means of production.  The oppressed are the working class made up primarily of mine workers and factory workers.  During the time Marx wrote, these workers, the proletariat, usually worked during severe conditions:  long hours and dangerous and odious environments.

Surplus value refers to the excess value of produced goods and services that workers create after the costs of production are paid.  Since the value of any produced good or service is value added to natural resources or unfinished goods by the toil of workers, that value rightfully belongs to the workers.  Under capitalism, the owners of the means of production call this value profit and “steal” it from the workers.  This is the essence of politics in a capitalist system.

Dictatorship of the proletariat is the resulting power arrangement after the workers overthrow the capitalist system in which only the interests of the workers will be recognized as legitimate.  All individuals in the production processes will be workers.  Since this will eliminate class struggle, the source of political conflict will disappear and eventually, the state or government will “wither away.”

Superstructure refers to the institutional arrangement in any given society with the economic institution being the foundation and all others constituting the superstructure.  In this way, the economic institution has enormous influence over the beliefs and assumptions held by those who control the major institutions. 

Crude Marxism holds that this is a one-way relationship in that the organizing beliefs of the economic institution basically dictate the beliefs of all the other institutions.  Moderate Marxism holds that the relationship is two-way, one in which the other institutions have, to some degree, an influence on the prevailing economic beliefs.

Both forms hold that the economic arrangements will at least provide the parameters in which all institutions operate.  This relation, in terms of civics education, is particularly important as it determines the policy by which government administers public schools and even regulates private schools.  Government policy will basically protect and promote the interests of those who own or control the productive forces of an economy.

Also, the institution of education will be ultimately controlled to advance the beliefs that sustain the position of the ruling class.  Currently, Marxists would point to the promotion of vouchers and charter schools as examples of the ruling class either taking over or sustaining control of public education.[2]

As pointed out, not every critical pedagogue buys into these Marxian ideas; consequently, many look to other sources to define how they see the political, economic, and social relationships in society.  The result has been that they have utilized influences from well-respected social scientists who range from Talcott Parsons to Sigmund Freud.  The reader is encouraged to consider this literature to see the breadth of these other influences.

Critical thinkers and researchers spend a lot of ink reporting and analyzing evidence they believe verifies their view of the social realities that occur in capitalist nations such as that of the US.  In education literature, for example, they provide statistical data and firsthand accounts about how a mal-distribution of income and other resources lead to educational disadvantages of one sort or another for the oppressed classes.  This, for them, signals exploitation and systemic barriers to true equality.

The purest of Marxists bristle at “liberal” solutions to these conditions.  They see programs like Head Start as merely capitalists' strategies to ameliorate the demands of the working classes and a way to forestall the eventual rise of the proletariat which will lead to the overthrow of the capitalist class – the manifestation of the “Marxist scenario.”

Others see liberal or progressive policies as part of a process by which a more socialist governance and economics are approached.  That is, they are socialist “light” policies that serve to making conditions better and at the same time, educate a populous on how socialism is a preferred mode of social policy.  For example, the self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders’ current support of Obamacare can be seen in this light.

Overall, therefore, critical pedagogues see politics as a battle between economic classes.  They complicate this picture with attempts to consider other sources of economic exploitation, such as discrimination and any other form of injustice.  Therefore, they are, for instance, vehemently committed to fighting racism and sexism.

Currently, one can see this battle over health care policy as demonstrating this class struggle.  For example, the bill that just passed the House of Representatives is being described as a tax cut for the super wealthy amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars.  One can see this example as how critical theorists see government and politics acting out in the US and around the world.

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[1] Herbert M. Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1983-1958, (New York, NY: Routledge, 1986).  In terms of Ward’s influence, see Kliebard’s book.  To be clear, Ward promoted the use of positivist protocols in social science research. 

[2] 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).  For this last point, see Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Ms. Ravitch is not a critical pedagogue and cannot be categorized as a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination. But in her book, she gives an excellent description of how business interests are helping to destroy our public-school system. 

A CRITICAL MORAL STAND

This blog is in the midst of reviewing the moral stand that critical theory espouses.  The reason is to convey the elements of that mental construct that stand in opposition to the natural rights position, the position that is dominant in American thinking about government and politics.  It is felt that comprehending this opposition completes an understanding of what is prevalent today.

With the natural rights position, the trump value of liberty precludes that construct from espousing any substantive stand over most moral questions.  That is the case because that position holds the singular value that individuals have the right to determine which values they adopt.  Therefore, most moral questions go wanting when it comes to counting on this construct to provide guidance; it is up to the individual to decide what is good and evil.

While this moral thinking prevails among natural rights advocates, there is no singular moral view among critical theorists and critical pedagogues.  What most critical pedagogues do share is some allegiance to Marxian ideals.  As such, to a large extent, this common core tends to influence the way adherents see the various moral questions facing societal conditions. 

To remind the reader, Marx’s focus was on the conflict of interests between the business owning class and the laboring class.  To some, the social forces dictating the conflict between entrepreneurs and laborers reflect historical forces and are mostly amoral.  That is, there is limited moral consideration when people are simply following their natures and promoting their personal interests that are defined by the position they happen to inhabit.  

These are purely historical factors.  History has placed people in such positions and they, along with all of nature, will simply develop according to deterministic laws.  But to most critical pedagogues, what is at stake are moral considerations.  Their commitment to the critical construct is based on more of a moral outlook. 

For example, those who follow liberation theology equate the inequality existing in developing countries to reflecting sinful behavior.[1]  But as a way of demonstrating what can be a critical theory argument, what follows is but one view or argument supporting a moral position to which critical pedagogues might ascribe – there are other arguments.

In a previous posting, there is a listing of mental orientations regarding equality.  One of them is equal condition.  If one is an adherent of critical theory, one would be significantly concerned with the observation that since the 1980s, within the US, there has been a definite shift in public sentiment toward that orientation.  That is an orientation that is associated with the natural rights construct and champions market determinations for economic policy. 

It states that all citizens are equal before the law; no one person should be advantaged by public action over another, and compensation for labor and property should be derived from competitive processes.  Therefore, public actions that are set up to provide public assistance under this orientation in its purest forms are judged to be immoral in that they take from some to give to others. 

This, according to critical theory advocates, defies equal condition or equal treatment in any meaningful way because it leads to such inequality in terms of material wellbeing.  This is borne out by an array of statistics.  For example, since 1980, there has been an overall increase in our national domestic product (GDP) of just under 200%[2] while the population grew by 42%.[3]  But when one considers how this increase has been distributed, one is confronted with disconcerting numbers. 

At this time, when there has been a largess, there has been a greater concentration of wealth, with most of the gains going to the upper income groups, especially the top 1 percent.  To add further injury, one should not forget the catastrophic effects of the Great Recession.  In other words, not all families are enjoying the new-found riches equitably, at least to any meaningful degree.

According to G. William Domhoff, in 2007, the top 1% of the US population owned 34.6% of the net worth and financial wealth of the nation. The next 19% owned 50.5%. That adds up to 85.1 % for the top 20% of the population, leaving 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80%.[4]  David Cay Johnston notes: 

The median income taxpayer – half made more, half less – made slightly less than $33,000 [in 2009] (and their average adjusted gross income was under $15,300, or less than $300 per week). The median income taxpayer would need 10.6 years to earn as much as someone at the low end of the top 1 percent.[5]

Yet Congress, from time to time, considers lowering the tax burden even further for the very rich.  President Trump’s latest proposal – as skimpy as it is – follows suit.

The “tide has risen, but not all boats have been elevated with that tide,” which leads one to the question of whether this disparity or inequality constitutes exploitation.  The term exploitation denotes an act that treats someone unfairly or unjustly.  But such a definition is subject to interpretation and is vague without some standard.  Many such standards have been offered in the literature concerning exploitation. 

A definition of exploitation that would garner the approval of many critical pedagogues is one offered by Johan Galtung.[6]  He sees exploitation as a relative concept.  That is, in any given society, he identifies exploitation happening when one group, usually an economic class of people, becomes wealthier at a faster rate than other groups. 

This allows for certain possibilities.  For example, you might see all groups becoming richer, but one group is getting richer at a faster rate or, in a more visible form of exploitation, one group is getting richer, but other groups are getting poorer. 

Applying this definition to the US, we can safely judge that exploitation is currently occurring.  But, of course, there are those who will seek to justify these conditions.  For example, one might believe that those groups that are getting richer faster are doing so because they are entrepreneurs and, due to their hard work, they deserve to become richer. 

Accepting that version, one’s inquiry should consider the assumptions of such a conclusion.  For instance, can one see common patterns among those who are and those who are not so advantaged?  Are there certain races, nationalities, religious affiliations, ethnicities, gender, or age groups that are more likely to be advantaged or disadvantaged? 

If this is the case, a student of these matters needs to ask certain questions unless he or she ascribes to the more genetic explanations for success (such as the racist beliefs of the KKK). 

If hard work is the key factor to the almost exclusion of all other factors, then success should be randomly distributed among all other classifications.  In addition, such practices as particular strategies in childrearing would be irrelevant in explaining the likelihood of success among those who are able to grasp the golden ring. 

What neighborhoods, schools, and other social platforms or milieus an individual is exposed to are equally irrelevant.  After all, the determining factor is hard work; that’s all that counts.  Yet one knows this is not true.  One need only look at the pains the rich take to control these other factors when it comes to rearing their own children. 

And once one accepts such factors in determining who is successful and who is not, one brings into play the formative forces pointed out by such writers as John Rawls.  That is, each person individually is, at best, minimally responsible for his/her individual success.[7]  One is fortunate if he/she has been born into or currently resides under the circumstances that lead to success.

So, a moral stand for critical pedagogues can be one based on fairness in which equality should be truly extended to all.  That is, to some meaningful minimum degree, there should be truly equal results, legal, social, and economic for all.  As such, critical theory advocates adopt the equal results orientation of equality.

This leads one to first recognize the existence of exploitation (the lack of equality), understand the basis for its existence, recognize the processes by which it is maintained and defended, and finally and probably most important, act to rectify the entailed injustices.

To give the reader a sense of what such thinkers promote, the following quote is offered: it is the first paragraph of an article that appears in an issue of the professional journal, Educational Researcher, a publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the largest professional organization of academic educators:

The United States is one of the most affluent countries in the world, yet U. S. students' average achievement tends to lag behind that of students in many other affluent countries.  How can this be? …  [T]he United States differs from other affluent countries in a crucial way that has received less attention:  It is the most economically unequal.  That is, income and wealth are more unevenly distributed in the United States than in any other society.[8]

Such concerns are common fare for professional educational journals. 

This reflects the popularity of critical arguments among this professional population in the academic ranks.  The above, in effect, offers a moral position for critical educators. 

Before leaving this description of critical theory’s moral beliefs, one can, in summary, say this review is anchored in a commitment to the value of equality as a trump value.  What does equality, according to critical theory, look like?

Equality, within this moral stand, is defined as a social and economic reality.  It is a societal arrangement characterized either by a population in which the people are basically equal in the ownership or access to material resources or they are closing the gap among the rates of advancement that the separate economic groupings of people within a society are experiencing.  This latter characteristic would address Galtung’s concern outlined above. 

To the extent a society approaches one or another of these conditions, it is moral; to the extent it falls short of these conditions, it is immoral.  This, if accepted, would be for critical pedagogues their moral belief and, as such, motivates what they strive to promote or enable in their political and educational goals.

The phrase, “if accepted,” is used because some critical pedagogues view these concerns from a deterministic perspective, rendering the whole concern amoral.  But for critical pedagogues who are not deterministic – and from this writer’s observation most critical educators in the US are not – in their orientation, this concern for equality, as just defined, constitutes their moral stand.

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[1] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation:  History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1988).

[2] “US GDP Growth Rate by Year,” accessed September 7, 2016, http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year .

[3] “US Population by Year,” accessed September 7, 2016, http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table .

[4] G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Sixth edition,   (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill, 2009).

[5] David Cay Johnston, “Beyong the 1 Percent,” Reuters, accessed September 7, 2016, http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/ .

[6] Johan Galtung, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Peace Research 8, (1971):  81-117.

[7] Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls:  A Theory of Justice and Its Critics, (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1990).

[8] Denis J. Condron, Egalitarianism and Educational Excellence:  Compatible Goals for Affluent Societies?, Educational Researcher 40 (2) (2011):  47-55, 47.  To provide background for this cited quote, at the time this writer came upon it, he was doing research.  He wanted to find an example of critical pedagogues' work.  He looked up the AERA's website and readily found this article.  He didn't need to look far.

A CHOSEN VIEW OF EQUALITY

For the same reasons this blog used in reviewing the natural rights construct, the place to begin describing critical theory is with its moral perspective.  That is, moral positioning is what motivates someone to devise or adopt whatever other elements this construct offers.  Stated another way, initially one should see what the theory defines as good and evil. 

Any construct entails standards that reflect values arranged in a hierarchical order.  Atop that arrangement is a trump value.  Natural rights holds liberty as the trump value.  Critical theory sees equality as the trump value.  Critical theorists might hold liberty as important, even highly important, but in situations when one of these values needs to be chosen over the other, critical theorists will choose equality above liberty or any other value when it comes to societal issues. 

By placing equality as the trump value, it will affect how critical theorists will judge other social concerns.  One example is that in their use of the term liberty, critical theorists tend to define it as a quality that, to be meaningful, depends on people being equal, not just in terms of standing “before the law,” but in terms of income and wealth. 

Short of that level of equality, politics becomes something beyond which lower-income citizens have influence in determining what public policy will be.  Therefore, public policy will be skewed against these citizens and, consequently, will offend their liberty. 

  This example indicates that equality means different things to different people.  To those who support the natural rights view, as well as others such as monarchists, liberty means something other than what critical theorists believe equality to be.  As a matter of fact, in the nation’s history, there have been several definitions of equality that different groups have favored.  Five of these definitions deserve one’s attention.

So, to provide some context for how critical theorists view equality, a quick summary of these definitions would be helpful so that one can better measure what they are advocating, especially in political matters.  One might be prone to think that all Americans, no matter how constrained, support equality, if only in the abstract.  Yet that is not the case.

At the beginning of the nation's history, it is safe to say that the founding fathers’ understanding of what equality was is not what most Americans today define equality to be. Their most “equality” prone advocates were probably in favor of what one could call “earned elitism.”

Actually, this societal attribute has changed as the nation evolved into what it is today.  As the years rolled by, certain views concerning equality, some supportive, some not, have sprung up, gathered support, and then lost that support.  One can detect in that history five general orientations concerning equality and all of them are not supportive of what one could reasonably consider equality to be.

Each view or orientation is a way of seeing what the relevant worth of an individual is.  The orientations are genetic elitism, earned elitism, equal condition, regulated condition, and equal result.  These orientations have been reflected in the political culture prevalent during the different eras of our history. 

Generally, the orientations are listed here in the order from the most non-egalitarian view, genetic elitism, to the most egalitarian view, equal results.  Here is a short definition of each:

Genetic elitism believes that nature has determined by the genetic distribution of skills and abilities who should lead.  From this state of affairs, leadership should be reserved for certain families.

Earned elitism believes that nature does determine who is gifted, but that leadership itself, in all realms of life, should be reserved for those who through their efforts demonstrate their skills and exhibit superior performances in their chosen fields.

Equal condition believes that everyone is equal before the law and that economic and other benefits should be distributed to those who perform marketable skills and the amounts of compensation should be determined by competitive processes.

Regulated condition believes that market processes or other competitive processes should determine basic distributive decisions, but that markets and other competitive processes can and do fail.  Therefore, these processes should be regulated so that all citizens are afforded basic opportunities and minimum living standards.  Mainly, the belief goes on to see skills as the result of arbitrary forces and that anyone can find him/herself in a significantly deprived state.

Critical theory promotes equal results.  Below, this bias is more fully explained.  What are the attributes of equal results?  Here is a list of its beliefs: 

1.      Personal abilities are primarily developed from genetic or social conditions not subject to a person’s control.  Therefore, people who secure very high incomes are exploiting conditions they have/had little control over creating or developing.

2.     Such exploitation reflects a randomness in the distribution of skills, opportunities, connections, family reputations, genetic makeup, historical context, and the like with which some might be advantaged to have.  To unequally compensate such advantages is judged to be unjust.

3.     Not only is this unequal reward system unjust at any level, but in advanced, capitalistic economic arrangements, one finds that some can earn in a few days what takes others a lifetime to save.

4.     Marketable skills and other prized assets in capitalist systems have little to do with a person’s merit as a person and, in turn, in allocating the rewards he/she can secure.  Instead, marketable skills or other arbitrary assets have little concern for human qualities and, therefore, the processes by which compensation is determined dehumanizes the affected individuals.

5.      All human labors are intrinsically equal and the compensation received for labor should be within narrow limits.  The only difference among the labors performed is simply that they reflect different roles.  Hard work is expected not only from highly compensated workers or business owners; laborers also engage in hard work. 

Therefore, labor should be seen in terms of equal value.  An example: the movie star who performs in front of a camera should not make so much more than the cameraperson.  Both are equally responsible for the product produced.

True, such beliefs are seen by many in this country as being highly un-American.  Yet these beliefs have been attractive to many Americans, albeit always a minority, at different times in the nation’s history.  As a matter of fact, some who have expressed these beliefs are/were considered as prominent individuals. 

One such American was Eugene V. Debs, a prominent labor leader and presidential candidate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Admittedly, his views were never that popular, but his positions reflected a tradition of thought that dates to political writers from the more obscure John Ruskin to, at least to some degree, Henry David Thoreau.

Yes, the above beliefs are Marxian-socialist ideals, but they are not unique to Marx.  They can also be found in the works of Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.  In America, such beliefs or ideals have been given more positive endorsement among the populous during times in which extreme exploitation of laborers was prevalent. 

Such times include the industrial revolution of the late 1800s or the Great Depression.  In the last election cycle, socialist Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign attracted a significant number of followers.  All socialists, at least to some level, espouse Marxian principles.[1]  It should be added that during those same times, there is also an uptick in nationalist sentiments – one can see that happening right now as displaced laborers in advanced countries feel threatened.[2]

While this Marxian source is common among critical pedagogues, its theoretical origins vary.  They can be from such sources as Tolstoy’s Christianity to Marx’s sense of science and scientific thinking which was influenced by Thomas Hobbes.  Marx claimed that the eventuality of a socialist state – one in which productive property would be owned in common – was an inevitable result of how productive forces would develop.[3]  Yet in all this scientific thinking, one can easily detect a moral claim lying below the surface.

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[1] For a dramatization of such advocacy in an American setting, see the film, Reds (Beatty), starring Warren Beatty, who was also the film's producer and director.

[2] One can cite the Marxian scenario in which laborers are displaced by labor saving machines – automation.  Add to that the competition from low wage countries (emerging countries) and one has the makings of a disgruntled labor class.  Many attribute these conditions for the election of Donald Trump.

[3] In Marx’s view, the development of society is simply the product of deterministic laws in which people, following their nature of being hedonistic egoists – a la Hobbes – and are simply pursuing their selfish interests. 

A CRITICAL TURN

A description of the natural rights construct and its effect on civics education would not be complete without reviewing the main critique of it:  the critical theory construct which is primarily supported by academics.  In the postings leading to this one, this writer has been reviewing the natural rights construct.  That review was completed with the last posting.  To use, advisedly, the language of its origins, critical theory is the antithesis of the natural rights view.

          What this and following postings will do is answer three questions:  what view of morality motivates an adherent to harbor critical theory beliefs? What view of government and politics does the construct describe and explain?  And how do the construct’s adherents view their contributions toward the common good?

But before beginning this brief view, here is a word of “warning.”  Unlike the natural rights construct, this construct has very little influence or presence in American classrooms.  Why?  A simple reason for this is that its ideas and ideals do not have much support among the American people.

For those who do find this construct appealing, there is a wide variance of support from being merely sympathetic with its concerns to a life-defining commitment to its tenets.  While any set of ideas will not garner complete support among those who are attracted to it – that includes the natural rights construct – this is even truer for critical theory. 

The fact that the construct is based on Marxian ideas – a set of ideas Americans have been historically antagonistic toward – goes a long way to explain this lack of support among the general population or lack of consistent support among its adherents. 

For most teachers and other establishment educators (administrators and workers at educational bureaucracies), Marxian positions tend to be considered un-American.  As such, those who support part or all of it might be seen by many or most Americans as less legitimate than what is warranted. 

To fully appreciate the natural rights view, one needs to understand what the view engenders in opposition.  So, here is, hopefully, a legitimate and respectful presentation of this other view, albeit a short one, for a reader who might harbor antagonistic biases.

If only a few teachers and school administrators support critical theory, also known as critical pedagogy, one can ask:  why bother with this view at all?  In the various schools of education on the nation’s college and university campuses, critical theory has become the dominant perspective and that is what, frankly, keeps it an active force in education. 

These educators run the teacher education programs at the nation’s universities and colleges.  While this is true, their lasting effect on incoming teachers is highly limited.  In most cases, students who are exposed to ideas that run counter to what has become accepted truth will tend to dismiss such messages.  They have little influence. 

Upon finishing these few years away from home at a higher educational facility, students return to accept teaching jobs either in their hometowns or in towns or areas nearby.  In their assigned schools, they reemerge among the milieu of other teachers and school personnel who hold beliefs and attitudes that are more familiar.  These beliefs tend to be antithetical to the beliefs espoused by critical pedagogues.  It turns out that these other co-workers have much more influence on these newly credentialed teachers.

But it is important to present this critical theory construct to the reader because parents and teachers should have general knowledge of what these scholars behind the ivy-covered walls are presenting.  While this writer is not a critical pedagogue, those who are have important ideas to offer.  They offer legitimate concerns and challenging ideas.  Their recommended approaches to curriculum should be given respectful consideration. 

They are sources of information about which typical citizens are not conscious.  They shed light on tilted policies that favor advantaged, economic groups.  These conditions are verifiable and they seriously question the levels of justice the nation extends to lower income segments of the population.  As such, critical pedagogues deserve the attention of any citizen who is serious about social capital.  Hopefully, the following postings will stir an increased level of interest among the readership.