New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 7
Anywhere in North America, chances are our kids go to Paulo Freire’s schools. Who is Paulo Freire? Paulo Freire is a Brazilian Marxist and Liberation Theologian who remade literacy education according to his ideological programs and thereby ruined it. His ideas were imported to North America in the 1980s and have been steadily colonizing education ever since. Now, his work has been so influential on the “Critical Pedagogy” (or, “Critical Education Theory”) movement that virtually all teachers are trained in his ideas and implement them in classrooms across the nation. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks down what this unfortunate turn in education means for schools and our kids.
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6 comments
There is much value in this “bullet” yet much conflation. Has education every really been neutral? Does the introduction of language referenced (Dick & Jane ; Slum) really involve problematizing at the stage of Dick & Jane language learning? To me, it is not the what but the how that is a concern. Surely it is undeniable that “othering” is a facet of human interaction and that generally, those “othered” are disadvantaged. I find myself agreeing with the essential point while noting that “relevance” in learning really does matter (I would have been far more interested in science has it been taught in terms where I could see it as relevant rather than strictly rote learning (for my young eyes, with no purpose in my life). There is a space between Victorian scholastic methods (no less oriented toward producing a certain type of citizen) and the cultish model described here. The catch is: what does that look like?
There is a “Paolo Freire Social Justice School” in Chicopee, MA. That is the “school’s” actual name for all who pass by it to see. Indubitably, practically everyone who doesn’t have kids enrolled in it sees that sign and is totally clueless about what its “moderators” are doing to those kids.
An excellent article on the Golden Age of Maoism (which inspired Freire among others):
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/euripides-mao-and-qutb
The Chestnut Tree Cafe – 1984
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016146818408500307
You may appreciate this video on Communist takeovers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3LTrqv3sFE
You would love this quote.
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/946407