The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 73
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 9
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues into a third part a long miniseries exploring Paulo Freire’s landmark 1985 book The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation, and it is embedded in the broader Critical Education Theory series here. In the previous parts, James Lindsay presented the ideas of the first four chapters, revealing both how religious Freire is and how Marxist. Part 1, covering the first two chapters of the book can be found here, and Part 2, covering the following two chapters can be found here.
In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay reads the entirety of chapter 5 of The Politics of Education, which seems out of place at first because it addresses “the role of the social worker in the process of change.” Not only is this chapter also profoundly religious, it reveals two points very clearly that are crucial to understand if one is to understand Critical Pedagogy (thus what’s happening in schools). First, Freire is reproducing basic Marxist Theory with knowledge (as understood by formal education within the existing system) as the special form of bourgeois property. Second, Freire is erasing the distinction between education, which he says must be sociopolitical to be authentic, and social work, paving the way for the Social-Emotional Learning programs of today, especially Transformative SEL. Join James to dig even deeper into what it means that our children all go to Paulo Freire’s schools.
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Previous episodes of the New Discourses Podcast are available here.
9 comments
Woke is more of a field carrier principle where its social engineers know it has a life cycle. Spikes of activism & decay, in that sense regarded as unstable. Thus a social engineering phenomenon its designers would wish to inhibit at strategic points. In fact now seems like such an interlude of decay. Woke attracts a narrow set of non professional / public persons demographics. From wholly politically unwashed persons, to those of longer experience whose reactions are somewhat identical, but who have learned to help smother any dysfunctional arguments the less experienced are activating. When it comes to the professionals, there are people in governments with skill sets that are only suitable for the humble task of cheerleading – and we might note that this variety of human has got a work strain of propaganda to help protect that tiny skill set. Other professionals are far more entrenched among the privileged elite, either as adoptee’s – there are some sad cases of highly elevated low skill set persons – or as conductors of the woke orchestra for the social engineers themselves. Every component of woke seems to have been contrived as a safety bubble around this or that new order strategy. It makes little difference if the protection needed is large or small. The intricacy of the social engineering phenomenon is detailed enough for any of its parts to meld into its whole at all times.
In literal terms then an elegant design that is greatly intelligent at its designer level. Care must be taken to avoid accidental demarcations to the key phrases. For instance – for greater awareness against this misanthropy to grow, it does not make sense to regard ‘Transformative’ – Critical’ ( < James pointed that out already ) – Pedagogy – Andragogy- etc – name any of the words & terms which have become the staple diet of this particular wave of social engineering circa 1995 – present. The unfortunate fact is that the education required in order to increase awareness is disadvantaged by systematic prohibitions of words & terms that just happen to be in use by the propagandists.
Words and terms must remain open in order to be available for positive interpretation of the right and decent way to be humans. For instance transformative learning has to be open and available to everyone that opposes marxist transformation and so forth – it would be a mistake to close things down as if the neuro linguistics are in charge of certain words & phrases, or that equate only to the negative class war.
It is less complex to deal with the entanglement by calling out phase 'stereotypes', – well as it were. But it isn't effective.
Current estimate of those who homeschool is around 10% and growing. The tipping point is 16%, what does this pose for the head posers of formal education? Answer: unemployment.
Guess who may have been the inventor of the term “racists” as a slur against political opponents – Leon Trotsky!:
https://media.gradebuddy.com/documents/3158420/3b3eb5f5-f35e-49d6-81b1-2350cd41c528.pdf
Now that’s what I call a deconstruction of the power of language!
I thought you may appreciate this.
https://mobile.twitter.com/epkaufm/status/1271023029812973568
Thanks again , James , for illuminating how disgusting this movement is. Too bad McCarthy was an alcoholic .
Oh yeah , this is extremely threatening. Everything into today, with the screaming in their riots , their disgusting insults , all the idiots who are happy to tear our society down to make way for their ideology , the absolutely insidious attempt to introduce sex training into k-5 , etc , comes from this bullshit .
It’s absurd the press secretary to the president , breaks down crying to defend this horrible attempt to brainwash kids about sex in k-3 against the wonderful fight De Santista is .bringing to the table in Florida.
We are in big trouble right now
It’s psyche all right.
My father got into Social Work in the 1950s. He got a doctorate in the 1960s, thanks to a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Why was the mental health industry interested in social work professors?
So, my own view is that the thread we are trying to find through all this is psychology, or more generally “mental health.”
However, psychology from the end of the 19th century was not about the psyche but about the minds of animals. Humans were seen by modern psychologists as special animals. The problem was to husband them and properly train them, not set them free. This is the huge mistake made that has led us down this path to Wokeness. The Woke seek “liberation” in the framework of living as farm animals. Thus all they really seek is a kind of pitiful anarchy, or else a new form of slavery under a new name, where all the animals get the same amount of food and never have to go to the slaughterhouse.
So I will reiterate that both “sides” share essentially the same blind spot; the psyche. Neither the Woke nor its critics recognize the existence of a psyche (spirit) that seeks freedom and a measure of dignity, in spite of its numerous errors over its many lifetimes of existence.
Even if we recognized this gap in our understanding, we would still come up with two “sides.” But it would be more clear, I think, about which way was up. Freedom and dignity are up for a spiritual being, while slavery and degradation are down. Still, there would be some who would argue for slavery!
Other than autocrats and people who love classism, why anyone would find the “The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation” threatening is beyond me.
Hello Michael
What is your definition of an Autocrat ? The singular flesh and blood being or the phenomenon ? This is a sincere point, since it is somewhat impossible for any democracy to the phenomenon given that any collective reasoning certainly does not conclude with a strategy that is open to debate until the next review. Thus assuming the forum is not a weak minded U turn prone catastrophe, the conclusion democrats rich is a position set in stone for X period – his the collective reason has in effect transformed into a abstraction that is from that point on Autocratic – in phenomenological terms. This is what paradoxes do & why we class them as such. One can argue and argue that any artefact derived by a democratic process is thus a piece of democracy. It is – but paraconsistently isn’t = Paradox. It is true that a living human autocrat doesn’t intend to implement the democratic path to their X to Y period of say policy or whatever, The fact remains that rigid positions, no matter how they were obtained become the rule/dogma/immovable/immutable. Thus unless there is a viable logic to show that several humans are incapable of forming dogma ( since only i autocrat can ) – them we either accuse Democracy the phenomenon or Autocracy the phenomenon. To class the presence of a human body as some kind of demarcation would be nonsense. The end product of the democratic process no longer resembles democracy. Michael i’m not debunking = its a paradox = there is a phenomenology.
Concerning Freire i do recall writing some sort of post on this platform a month or more ago, claiming the man isn’t as relevant as he seems – well when it comes to the issues this site discourses on. My feeling is that the man didn’t plot with the hidden entities that spread research funding around generously in return for detailed texts concerning how to make class war. For instance the sociologically based war against the people some like myself noticed from 1995 and many have only noticed since the latest UK PM dropped an income tax bomb days ago. The boundary conditions in us sociological are for the same old reasons Michael. Europes aristocrat class want to rule the entire continent as one collective government. Will they grapple with the autocratic paradox ? – no they’ll appoint a supreme autocratic leader stating the rest are democrats = Democracy. That supreme leader will consult others who are hidden away perhaps, if so that isn’t democracy either. But there will be a glimpse of democratic orientation, but the layer below, who address the leader. – The Autocrat. Hence its very convenient since it can be said there is democracy right?. The trouble is it won’t be when it is subsequently worked from the top down i.e each of those answerable to the top, responsible to govern a zone. From a singular prospect = Autocratically administer that zone. And this hierarchy continues down – and then we understand it is possible to grapple with many descriptions due to the arcane parallel going on. If we have any sense we’ll regard this as a paraconsistent hierarchical order along with the double bound political reasoning these esotericists implement.
Thus – there are so many conditions which are being decoupled into binaries it becomes ludicrous to approach an understanding this form of organisation in accordance to concepts that cannot possibly describe such mutable order. We all understand the exponential potentials simply from 2 onward . Entropy only requires that basic element. Therefore to merely know of some democracy & assume that autocracy is thus banished is rather pointless. Democracy is the most compatible phenomenon to it, since autocracy is its negative coupling = its binary partnership, its opposing force, its bond.
Democracy rule of many – Autocracy – rule of one. Manipulating the Law with respect to Democracy is based on abusing the relationship between it & the opposing force.
Ad this was my point when i remarked slightly on Freire. His work is so idealistic, and in such a particular way, that its very open to malicious intention by social engineers. Personally i do not feel Freire set out to disrupt or that he designed work to order, for purposes of academic propaganda at the request of social eineering projects such as Iragaray might for example. Bu there are who will implement Freire negatively, with malice against the people, for autocratic goals warped in a democratic outer. In parallel way like earlier described ofc, so that it seems like democracy in action, occults the autocratic nature of the project. This kind of outbreak infests numerous countries. The UK has taken to outsourcing to ‘charities’ ( quangos) matters which belong in government ministries. And it is such location that are spreading the cultural quasi marxism’s. its fake Marx – the left ing version always was . There are almost no conclusions one can draw from that. Surely government doesn’t;t want to be identified as the source of the outbreak in the UK.
Put it this way. Conformation concerning what map aberrations along to when it comes to what is possible to connived when there is really a parallel system of logic in place becomes the phenomenon & proof of such topography isn’y coming any time soon. Though we’ll hardly be using our mins well should we be unable to put into terms reasonable probability concerning logical explosion = the paraconsistent probabilities.
My personal feeling is that nothing worthy of any decoration close to a ‘truth’ is possible at all unless those forced to decode abstractions become accustomed to paraconsistent logic. Not for is own sake, but because the establishment refuses to speak the truth.
The point being – even at the best of times it debatable what those static results of a democratic process are during the intervals they are immovable rule. For if we do not employ awareness of such paradox, others will & they’ll take the liberty of doing as thou wilt the autocratic segment of the coupling.
We are now approaching the fifth anniversary of the Evergreen meltdown.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College