"One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it." - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Key takeaways:
1. Paulo Freire was a Brazilian Marxist who applied Marxist theory (Critical Theory) to education. His Critical Pedagogy (Marxist teaching methods) is a means to radicalize students into activism
Freire's Critical Pedagogy took the American university system by storm in the 1980s and 90s
2. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, academics infused Critical Pedagogy with Marxist theories of culture, race, sex, and "gender." This marked a shift away from radicalizing students on the basis of economic "class conflicts" and toward radicalizing students on the basis of "identity conflicts," i.e. Marxist conflict theories of culture, race, sex, "gender," etc.
3. Today, teachers practice Critical Pedagogy in the form of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Queer Theory (QT), Restorative Justice (RJ) and Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (TSEL)
4. Critical Pedagogy uses identity-based Marxist teaching methods to groom children into "social justice" activism
Freire's Critical Pedagogy took the American university system by storm in the 1980s and 90s
2. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, academics infused Critical Pedagogy with Marxist theories of culture, race, sex, and "gender." This marked a shift away from radicalizing students on the basis of economic "class conflicts" and toward radicalizing students on the basis of "identity conflicts," i.e. Marxist conflict theories of culture, race, sex, "gender," etc.
3. Today, teachers practice Critical Pedagogy in the form of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Queer Theory (QT), Restorative Justice (RJ) and Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (TSEL)
4. Critical Pedagogy uses identity-based Marxist teaching methods to groom children into "social justice" activism
What is Critical Pedagogy and where does it come from?
Paulo Freire is a titan in the field of education. The Brazilian Marxist educator’s influence on U.S. education cannot be overstated. Freire is the citation for all of U.S. education. You can’t earn your teaching degree in America without being touched by Paulo Freire’s Critical Theory and methods. You find his influence in every nook and cranny of U.S. education, from how teachers are trained to design and implement curriculum to how schools now discipline students (Restorative Justice). Freire is the guy who makes the act of teaching CRP, CRT, QT, RJ, and TSEL to children possible. To not know Freire is not to know anything about what’s happening in schools today.
Paulo Freire argued that normal educational practices literally “deposit” society—with all of its oppression and “dehumanization” (as Karl Marx would understand it)—into learners. Freire argued that traditional educational methods taught learners to accept and reproduce the unjust status-quo of society without question. In this sense, traditional curriculum and teaching methods brainwash learners into what Freire called a magical consciousness (often called a “false consciousness” in Marxist literature). Someone with a magical consciousness doesn’t understand how oppression works, how oppressed they are, or how to answer the Marxist’s revolutionary call. Being the Marxist theologian and activist that he was, Freire felt compelled to develop a Marxist theory of education that could reveal the call of revolution to those charged with advancing humanity to the next stage of History.
Freire claimed that the true purpose of education was to help learners cast off their magical consciousness and push them to develop critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is the belief that one must “read” sociopolitical conditions critically and take action. What this means in layman’s terms is that someone who has critical consciousness believes that everything in society is designed to oppress them, and the only way to see “the truth” about the world is to become a Marxist who practices critical theories. A person who has developed critical consciousness is woke (a critical constructivist in Marxist jargon), meaning they have awakened to the “prophetic vision” of the postmodern neo-Marxist faith. Freire said the purpose of this consciousness is to denounce the existing world in a critical way so that it announces the possibility of a transformed new world premised on neo-Marxist “liberation.”
People who have critical consciousness are religious fanatics hell-bent on breaking society and steering us toward the end of History. This is not hyperbole. Henry Giroux, a close friend of Paulo Freire and one of the most influential educational academics in all of North America, once described Freire’s Marxist faith and methods as the “view [that] the kingdom of God [is] something to be created on earth.” If that’s not clear enough, Giroux has also said:
Paulo Freire argued that normal educational practices literally “deposit” society—with all of its oppression and “dehumanization” (as Karl Marx would understand it)—into learners. Freire argued that traditional educational methods taught learners to accept and reproduce the unjust status-quo of society without question. In this sense, traditional curriculum and teaching methods brainwash learners into what Freire called a magical consciousness (often called a “false consciousness” in Marxist literature). Someone with a magical consciousness doesn’t understand how oppression works, how oppressed they are, or how to answer the Marxist’s revolutionary call. Being the Marxist theologian and activist that he was, Freire felt compelled to develop a Marxist theory of education that could reveal the call of revolution to those charged with advancing humanity to the next stage of History.
Freire claimed that the true purpose of education was to help learners cast off their magical consciousness and push them to develop critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is the belief that one must “read” sociopolitical conditions critically and take action. What this means in layman’s terms is that someone who has critical consciousness believes that everything in society is designed to oppress them, and the only way to see “the truth” about the world is to become a Marxist who practices critical theories. A person who has developed critical consciousness is woke (a critical constructivist in Marxist jargon), meaning they have awakened to the “prophetic vision” of the postmodern neo-Marxist faith. Freire said the purpose of this consciousness is to denounce the existing world in a critical way so that it announces the possibility of a transformed new world premised on neo-Marxist “liberation.”
People who have critical consciousness are religious fanatics hell-bent on breaking society and steering us toward the end of History. This is not hyperbole. Henry Giroux, a close friend of Paulo Freire and one of the most influential educational academics in all of North America, once described Freire’s Marxist faith and methods as the “view [that] the kingdom of God [is] something to be created on earth.” If that’s not clear enough, Giroux has also said:
The notion of faith that emerges in Freire’s work is informed by the memory of the oppressed, the suffering that must not be allowed to continue, and the need to never forget that the prophetic vision is an ongoing process, a vital aspect of the very nature of human life. In short, by combining the discourses of critique and possibility Freire joins history and theology [emphasis added] in order to provide the theoretical basis for a radical pedagogy that combines hope, critical reflection, and collective struggle. (Giroux, H. (1985). Introduction. In P. Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation. Bergin & Garvey Publishers. (pp. xvii).)
Paulo Freire applied critical theory to education to break what he considered a ruling class mechanism for maintaining the status quo. He developed a Marxist vision of what education should be--education for critical consciousness.
At its core, Paulo Freire’s Marxist theory of education is a Marxist theory of knowledge. Freire calls into question what knowledge is, who defines it, who certifies it, and who determines what knowledge is taught in the classroom. For Freire, only the oppressed have “true” knowledge of their “concrete” conditions, and traditional educational methods only serve to ignore this “true” knowledge while forcing learners to accept “the truth” as society wants them to see it. The oppressed (and children) are already knowers, though they don’t know what their knowledge, which is their lived experience, means because that has been hidden from them. In the critical classroom, no “true” knowledge exists outside the “true” knowledge of the Marxist analysis of oppression and the “truth” of Marxism. Thus, Freire’s critical theory of education is all about privileging the “lived experiences” of students who “know” the “truth” of their “concrete” realities. Broadly speaking:
critical education seeks to expose how relations of power and inequality (social, cultural, economic) in their myriad of forms, combinations, and complexities, are manifest and are challenged in the formal and informal education of children and adults. In its most robust form, it involves a throughout-going reconstruction of what education is for, how it should be carried out, what we should teach, and who should be empowered to engage in it. (Gottesman, I. (2016). The critical turn in education: From Marxist critique to poststructuralist feminism to critical theories of race (1st ed.). Routledge. (p. xii).)
Freire described his critical theory of education as “liberatory” and “humanizing,” by which he means teaching people how to liberate all people from oppression and humanize (as Marx would use the term) the world. The explicit goal of Freire’s methods is to motivate learners to become awakened (or Woke) revolutionary activists charged with denouncing everything and, in so doing, announcing the “prophetic vision” of the communist utopia that follows.
One of the basic questions that we need to look at is how to convert merely rebellious attitudes into revolutionary ones in the process of the radical transformation of society. Merely rebellious attitudes or actions are insufficient, though they are an indispensable response to legitimate anger. It is necessary to go beyond rebellious attitudes to a more radically critical and revolutionary position, which is in fact a position not simply of denouncing injustice but of announcing a new utopia. (Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. (p. 54))
Freire puts his educational theory (read: cult religion) into practice through critical pedagogy. We’ll discuss the application of critical pedagogy in the "How It Works" section of this website. For now, it’s essential to know that education schools picked up Freire’s critical theory of education and critical pedagogy after the "critical turn" in education, which means they have been pumping out critical educators (those who received a critical education) for decades. This is not an exaggeration. All education schools in the United States push Freire’s Marxist theory of education and pedagogical practices in their programs. Freire’s theory dominates our education schools, and critical educators believe that the only way to reduce inequality and achieve “social justice” is to push kids to develop critical consciousness and become political activists.
Critical Pedagogy has two primary functions: Theory and Practice
Theory
1.) To apply Marxist theory to education; to argue that the U.S. education system serves to reproduce an oppressive order; to claim schools and classrooms are sites that must be contested and radically transformed
Practice
2.) To use education to awaken a Marxist revolutionary consciousness (critical consciousness) in children; to teach children to "read" the world as Marxists do; to develop a duty of conscience that pushes children into radical social justice activism
Critical Pedagogies of culture, race, sex,
and "gender"
Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy was brought to the United States, expanded upon, and situated into a North American context by Henry Giroux and others throughout the 1980s. Initially, Marxist educators used Critical Pedagogy to program college students to critique, disrupt, and dismantle capitalism. But things changed in the 1990s as Marxist theories of culture, race, sex, and "gender" rose to prominence in the American university system.
Marxist academics and educators quickly incorporated Marxist theories of culture, race, sex and "gender" into their teaching methods (Critical Pedagogy). For example, Critical Race Theory allowed educators a means to analyze, teach, and practice radical politics in a racial dimension of identity.
These Marxist academics and educators have spent the last 30 years pushing radical educational theories and practices into the American K-12 system. You would be hard pressed to find an education school in America that doesn't teach future educators about Paulo Freire. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a recently credentialed teacher that hasn't been introduced to and encouraged to practice Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory, whether they recognize that or not. The nation's largest teacher's union, the NEA, pushes Critical Pedagogy, Culturally Relevant Teaching, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory into every conceivable aspect of children's education. Radicals have captured the U.S. education system. Marxists produce the scholarship that justifies their own practices, they push their theories into the accrediting bodies, and they determine what's happening in your child's schools.
Marxist academics and educators quickly incorporated Marxist theories of culture, race, sex and "gender" into their teaching methods (Critical Pedagogy). For example, Critical Race Theory allowed educators a means to analyze, teach, and practice radical politics in a racial dimension of identity.
These Marxist academics and educators have spent the last 30 years pushing radical educational theories and practices into the American K-12 system. You would be hard pressed to find an education school in America that doesn't teach future educators about Paulo Freire. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a recently credentialed teacher that hasn't been introduced to and encouraged to practice Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory, whether they recognize that or not. The nation's largest teacher's union, the NEA, pushes Critical Pedagogy, Culturally Relevant Teaching, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory into every conceivable aspect of children's education. Radicals have captured the U.S. education system. Marxists produce the scholarship that justifies their own practices, they push their theories into the accrediting bodies, and they determine what's happening in your child's schools.
"It" is practiced in schools
It is Critical Pedagogy.
It is Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
It is Critical Race Theory.
It is Queer Theory.
It is Restorative Justice.
It is Transformative Social Emotional Learning.
It is Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
It is Critical Race Theory.
It is Queer Theory.
It is Restorative Justice.
It is Transformative Social Emotional Learning.
Educators practice Critical Pedagogy to bring Marxist theories of race, sex, and "gender" into classrooms.
Want to learn more about Critical Pedagogy?
Major Works
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
The Politics of Education by Paulo Freire
Education for Critical Consciousness by Paulo Freire
Schooling In Capitalist America by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
The Critical Pedagogy Reader by Antonia Darder
Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling, A Critical Reader by Henry Giroux
Critical Pedagogy Primer: Second Edition (Peter Lang Primer)
Additional Publications:
Teacher activists (Critical Educators) talking about practicing Critical Pedagogy in their classrooms.
"It's not in schools."
@LoganLancing
Copyright © 2024 The Lancing.
Copyright © 2024 The Lancing.