The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 84
Critical Education Theory Series, Part 16
This episode of the New Discourses Podcast continues 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 part, James Lindsay presented the ideas in the seventh chapter of that book, where Freire makes clear that education is really meant to be about conscientization, which is to say becoming Marxist. The previous parts of this series, covering the earlier chapters of the book can be found here, here, here, here, and here.
In this episode, James takes up the eighth chapter of The Politics of Education, wherein Freire describes what he calls “The Process of Political Literacy.” That is, in this chapter, Freire explains explicitly that political literacy, which is called cultural competence or racial literacy today, should replace the usual, actual literacy in education. Join him to understand how Freire didn’t just Marxify education but made the entire Marxist project of transforming society and man the centerpiece of his educational project.
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6 comments
I’m waiting for you to give up on this line of exploration, James.
It seems to me it is wearing you down and giving you a sour attitude.
At least pause it and take some time to study something more uplifting.
Harvey Jackins started out as a Communist and unionist. Apparently he bumped into Dianetics in 1950 (as many did, including my grandfather), didn’t understand it, but though he could ride its coattails to popularity.
Dianetics was popular because people who understood it could get results. Even some people who didn’t understand it got results! Dianetics is not Scientology, and there was no church until 1954.
I suggest that James keep his references to Scientology to a minimum until such time as he has been properly trained in its theory and methods. Though I think it is an important subject, it has amost zero relationship to what we are seeing today with the rise of Wokism.
“The real and, to me, inexcusable danger in dianetics lies in its conception of the amoral, detached, 100 per cent efficient mechanical man – superbly free-floating, unemotional, and unrelated to anything. This is the authoritarian dream, a population of zombies, free to be manipulated by the great brains of the founder, the leader of the inner manipulative clique. Fortunately for us this is an unattainable dream, on the rocks of which every great authoritarian leader has sooner or later met his fate. We have learned by this time that a human being cannot exist without effective human relationships, which must fulfill some of his healthy emotional dependencies; and that mechanical, detached self-sufficiency does not exist except in a psychotic state.
Excerpt from Dianetics: A Cure for All Ills, 1950 book review by Milton R. Sapirstein, M.D. as published in The Nation.”
http://thedianeticsscam.weebly.com/
> I suggest that James keep his references to Scientology to a minimum until such time as he has been properly trained in its theory and methods.
Where online would I find training in its theory and methods — and which ones? Scientology is generally structured as a mystery cult, where you need to advance in rank (and keep paying) in order for the secrets of the next level to be revealed. As a result, the theory and methods known to new initiates are necessarily different than those of the inner circle.
> Though I think it is an important subject, it has amost zero relationship to what we are seeing today with the rise of Wokism.
There’s no centralized Church of Wokism, Inc, and you don’t have to tithe. But former members of Scientology have described their experiences in terms of an authoritarian cult where coercive social controls were common. Which seems apropos.
As usual, helpful, thoughtful analysis. You’ve nearly convinced me that the Newest Left is really still Marxist. Question: knowing where you are going puts you on the “Right”. But what separates human beings from animals (according to Marx and Freire) is the “project” (Heidegger?) or vision or imagined end or destination as found only in the human imagination. That seems contradictory, unless the projected end is still only a negation of what is rather than a vision of what ought to be. Thus, we never arrive at final resolution, synthesis, since we always remain in an antithetical mode, no? Is that still Marx?
I hate the communists also …
Thanks James