The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 63
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 3
How did Wokeness come about? Here on the New Discourses Podcast, we’ve dedicated hours and hours to uncovering the roles of neo-Marxism (or, Critical Marxism; or, Critical Theory), postmodern Theory, Marxism, Hegelianism, and other dimensions of Leftist thought. The role played by Critical Pedagogy, and in particular the Marxian Theory of Paulo Freire, has not been fully discussed, however. The role played by this line of Marxian thought cannot be ignored, however, because, as James Lindsay puts it in the forthcoming book Race Marxism, Critical Pedagogy is the plow, planter, and fertilizer that enabled Wokeness to grow in the first place. This is evident when we understand Freire’s line of thought on the purpose and approach to education, but what’s less well understood is the aspect of faith and hope (“Critical Hope”) Freire brought back into Marxian Theory. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, join James as he dives into the introduction to Paulo Freire’s 1985 book, The Politics of Education, in order to better understand Freire and his influence. This podcast is the third in the developing Critical Education Theory series on the New Discourses Podcast and the first of many focusing on the figure and thought of Paulo Freire.
Critical Education Theory Series:
Part 1: Education’s New Marxist Commitments
Part 2: How Education Turned Critical
Part 4: Paulo Freire’s Prophetic Vision for Education
Part 5: Critical Education: What Is Culturally Relevant Pedagogy?
Part 6: Critical Education: Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
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Previous episodes of the New Discourses Podcast are available here.
6 comments
Hoping this doesn’t come off as a nit-pick, but it is within the social sciences that Friere is 3rd most cited author, not the humanities. This includes economics, history, anthropology, psychology, poly sci, linguistics and more.
For what it’s worth, the same study showed that pre-1950, the most cited work was Das Kapital, followed by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
Please also check out this website which features an interesting perspective on child-birth, child-rearing, education and cultural altogether. It features the work of many researchers who in one way or another were/are appalled at the way we treat babies toddlers and children, or how our culture destroys the intrinsic biological intelligence of all of us, beginning in the womb.
http://www.ttfuture.org
Among others it features the work of these three researchers.
http://www.wombecology.com
http://www.vioence.de/index.html
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP98.html
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/EE.html
You may appreciate this 1992 book The Politics of Liberal Education and in particular the chapter by the ever prophetic pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, Two Cheers for the Cultural Left
https://books.google.ca/books?id=Cds_cZtYcScC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=richard+rorty+two+cheers+for+the+cultural+left&source=bl&ots=nMaRxeqT2P&sig=ACfU3U23aqYTaYBfCPssEwPgwd5uQch3tw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqo5OdoL_1AhXkkYkEHetDC8cQ6AF6BAgQEAM#v=onepage&q=richard%20rorty%20two%20cheers%20for%20the%20cultural%20left&f=false
This quote in particular seems jaw-dropping (and disturbing) in retrospect:
“Hirsch and I would, I think, agree that the primary and secondary schools should continue to pass along most of the conventional wisdom of the previous generation-to socialize the children by inculcating the standard, patriotic, upbeat, narrative about our society, it history, and its values. In the first place, there is no chance of getting them to do anything else; the system of local school boards insures this, and any other system of control would probably be worse. Even if Henry Giroux someday succeeds William Bennett as Secretary of Education, as I hope he may, he will not be able to prevent precollege education from being nine parts socialization to one part liberation. Nor should he try, since you cannot liberate a tabula rasa; you cannot make a free individual out of an unsocialized child. You can gradually alter patterns of socialization, but cultural revolution, in which the government tries to turn the children against their parents by promulgating a new primary and secondary curriculum, has not proved to be a good idea” (p. 236 – 237).
I wonder if you or any of your readers are familiar with the two books written by Iain McGilchrist, namely:
The Master & His Emissary The Divided Brain & the Making of The Western World which was/is arguably one of the most important philosophy books published in the West for a very long time. It is based on a 14 year long research project.
And his recently published more-than-wonderful
The Matter With Things Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.
Re the first book and the topic of the left brain, all of the usual philosophical and religious/theological chit-chat is now done within this left brained Spirit-killing reductionist paradigm. Indeed the left brained cultural and political extensions are in the form of both cultural and political materialism, and of course atheism.
As a matter of interest the Master book was favorably reviewed on this website http://thehumandivine.org which is inspired by the work of the prophetic visionary William Blake who was one of the original critics of the then emerging Spirit-killing philosophy, religion and culture.
To see infinity in a grain of sand.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
At another related level modern quantum science tells us that everything is light, that all of reality – every person, every object, every iota of space and time – is nothing but waves of light in an ocean of radiant light.
What then are the all-the-way-down-the-line cultural implications of the fact that everything and everyone are spontaneous modifications of fundamental light or that E=MC2? The “new” enlightenment will only begin when these radical implications are taken fully into account.
We tend to think of nature in the terms of material processes has defined by the now archaic Victorian materialism . But how do we bring true religion and esoteric spirituality out of the closet – or, really the cultural concentration camp to which they have been relegated by all the barbaric and absolutist propaganda of scientific materialism.
What is the significance of E=MC2 for the human body-mind-complex.
How do we promote and establish cultural ideals that enable all men and women to function and grow as light or energy rather than lifeless matter?
What about our understanding and application of biochemistry, biophysics , human anatomy, human life, human culture?
How do we make medicine out of the understanding that the human body-mind-complex is a pattern of energy?
How do we practice ordinary diet, sexuality, and social relations (with their always complicated politics) on that basis?
The analysis I am most familiar with traces the infiltration of Wundtian psychology into U.S. academia and in particular the teachers’ colleges. This occurred over the first half of the 1900s. In the context of this analysis, that earlier infiltration lays the groundwork for the more “modern” thinkers of more recent times.
All of this theoretical work does little to advance the cause of book learning, classroom learning, or the subject of teaching. It was more or less obviously a political push which I don’t assoicate with Marxism per se, but with what Marx stood for which was basically a very irresponsible way of being a person and a citizen.
The reason why I never understood Freire and Hegel is because they were both full of shit. You need some sort of Rosetta Stone to understand them. I finally figured out that I wasn’t the problem.