Chapter 4: The Promise of Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Globalization Marjorie Johnson and Brian Hoelscher

 Learning how to become a skilled citizen  Emphasizes critical reflexivity, bridging the gap between learning and everyday life, understanding the connection between power and knowledge, and extending democratic rights and identities by using the resources of history.

 Democracy is not a thing…it’s a process. It is NOT free market and capitalism based.  Neoliberals (conservatives)--emphasis on market forces and profit margins…redefines the public sphere around privatization, deregulation, consumption, and safety. Big govt. is back since 9/11  Giroux advocates for the demise of capitalism in favor of the resurrection of militant democratic socialism (p. 70)

 The greatest threat to our children comes from a society that refuses to view children as a social investment and instead consigns 15.5 millions children to live in poverty, reduces critical learning to massive testing programs, promotes policies that eliminate most crucial health and public services, and defines masculinity through the degrading celebration of a gun culture, extreme sports, and the spectacles of violence that permeate corporate-controlled media industries.  Far too many schools have increasingly become institutional breeding grounds for commercialism, racism, social intolerance, sexism, and homophobia.

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 At the very least, critical pedagogy proposes that education is a form of political intervention in the world and is capable of creating the possibilities for social transformation  Learning is not about processing received knowledge but about actually transforming it as part of a more expansive struggle for individual rights and social justice.

 Education is about providing students with the skills, knowledge, and authority they need to inquire and act upon what it means to live in a substantive democracy, to recognize anti-democratic forms of power, and to fight deeply rooted injustices in a society and world founded on systemic economic, racial, and gender inequalities.

 Educators must not only critically question and register their own subjective involvement in how and what they teach, they must also resist all calls to depoliticize pedagogy through appeals to either scientific objectivity or ideological dogmatism.  Critical pedagogy is concerned about the articulation of knowledge to social effects and succeeds to the degree to which educators encourage critical reflection and moral and civic agency rather than simply mold them. This highlights the necessity for critical educators to be attentive to the ethical dimensions of their own practice.

 It appears that Giroux wants educators to counter the thought of democracy as being about free market and profit making and return it back to the thoughts of social justice, critical learning, ethical deliberation and civic engagement.  A critical pedagogy should, in part, be premised on the assumption that educators vigorously resist any attempt on the part of liberals or conservatives to reduce their role in schools to that of either technicians or corporate pawns

 Education is increasingly being vocationalized, reduced to a commodity that provides privileges for a few students and industrial training for the service sector for the rest, especially those who are marginalized by reason of the class and race.  It is crucial to stress the importance of democratic classroom relations that encourage dialogue, deliberation and the power of students to raise questions. Such relations don’t signal a retreat from teacher authority as much as they suggest using authority reflexively to provide the conditions for students to exercise intellectual rigor, theoretical competence, and informed judgments.  Not only do students need to understand the ideological, economic, and political interests that shape the nature of their educational experiences, they must also address the strong emotional investments they may bring to such beliefs.