Posted on 07/13/2014 8:16:38 PM PDT by beaversmom
[Morgen: Geoffrey is a regular commenter who we invited to post on occasion, based on his depth of analysis and clear writing ability. The ground war over the future of our nation's values is being waged in our school systems, and people like Bill Ayers are generals in this war. As they are wont to do, they mask their philosophies and strategies under the cloak of academic research and arcane terminology. Geoffrey's piece is a great primer on the core of liberal (socialist) strategy to subvert the education of our children.]
The motivational and foundational philosophical theorems of the American Left’s political, social and educational views are ‘Critical Pedagogy’ theory and ‘Cultural Marxism’. Bill Ayers is simply an influential, ‘celebrity’ advocate of these ideologies.
The Critical Pedagogy Movement is coming to a school near you and it means to change the world.
One child at a time.
Most people have never heard the term, ‘Critical Pedagogy’. That is intentional.
Anyone not involved in the educational community would have little reason to be aware of this leftist theory of education. If it were merely a theory however, there would be little reason for concern.
The primary assumption of critical pedagogy is that disparities between individual and social group outcomes in life are due to entrenched societal oppression. So, if anyone or any group has ‘more’ than another it is because they are either oppressing others or benefiting from the ‘oppression of the masses’.
Thus, all whites benefit from an unjust social system and, as a result are inherently guilty of racism.
Advocates implicitly deny any definition of the ‘pursuit of happiness’, which does not result in equality of outcome. That necessarily limits American’s liberty and their pursuit of happiness to the politically correct calculus of Critical Pedagogy theory.
Pedagogy is defined as ‘the art or profession of teaching’. That definition is sometimes shortened by advocates into ‘the teaching’. The theory of critical pedagogy was first fully developed and then popularized in 1968 by the Brazilian educator and influential theorist Paulo Freire. His seminal work, the Pedagogy [The Teaching] of the Oppressed, was highly influential within the US leftist academic community and in 1969 Freire was offered a visiting professorship at Harvard University.
His subsequent work was highly influential with the Bill Ayers of the world. One might think of Paulo Freire as the Saul Alinsky of the US leftist educational community. Critical Pedagogy is the educational arm of the ‘social justice movement’, which is the political arm of “liberation theology”, all of which are aspects of ‘Cultural Marxism’.
Some of the basic tenants of critical pedagogy are:
ALL education is inherently political A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the foundation for all education Race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are important domains of oppression The purpose of education is the alleviation of oppression and human suffering Schools must not hurt students–good schools don’t blame students for their failures Good schools don’t judge the beliefs students have about their life’s experiences Part of the role of any educator involves becoming a researcher into social oppression Education must promote emancipatory change
Sixteen of the top educational schools in America are heavily influenced by Critical Pedagogy and are shaping the future leaders of our educational system. This belief system is now spreading out of the colleges into our K-12 systems and being promulgated by radical teachers as its ‘agents of change’. It’s a well-organized, widespread movement, firmly entrenched in many Universities and its advocates are actively seeking to spread it worldwide.
Thus, most recently in Minnesota the agenda of radical teacher education came to light; The University of Minnesota redesigns teachers. Here is what the Univ. of Minnesota’s new teacher certification program requires:
Students are required to adopt “race, culture, class and gender” identity politics in order to be recommended for a teaching license.
Students must accept that teachers’ lack of “cultural competence” is a major reason for many minority students performing poorly in Minnesota schools.
All prospective teachers have to meet 14 “outcomes”, as well as “assessment” methods to assure they had achieved the outcomes. The first outcome is typical: “Future teachers will be able to discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, hetero-normativity, and internalized oppression.” [Think carefully upon that terminology, it's quite revealing]
Other highlights deserve attention:
“Future teachers accept that they are privileged or marginalized depending on context.”
“Future teachers will recognize & demonstrate understanding of white privilege.”
“Future teachers are able to explain how institutional racism works in schools”
“Future teachers can construct and articulate a sophisticated and nuanced critical analysis of [the American Dream]…. In pursuing this analysis, students will make use of…the following:
o Myth of meritocracy in the United States o The historical use of scientific racism to justify assumptions of fixed mental capacity o History of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian values o History of white racism, with special focus on current colorblind ideology
Students are evaluated and graded on whether they conform to the “race, class, gender” agenda. They must, for example, write a “self-discovery paper” in which they “describe their own ethno-cultural background.” They must describe their own prejudices and stereotypes, question their “cultural” motives for wishing to become teachers, and take two “cultural intelligence”-type assessments. They are graded (for example) on “the extent to which they find intrinsic satisfaction” in “cross-cultural interactions.”
Students must not only demonstrate changed thinking — they must become activists. They must learn that schools are “critical sites for social and cultural transformation.” One outcome reads: “Future teachers create & fight for social justice even if only in the classroom”
Future teachers are required to subscribe to the prescribed ideology, “Every faculty member at our university that trains our teachers must comprehend and commit to the centrality of race, class, culture, and gender issues in teaching and learning, and then frame their teaching and course foci accordingly.”
The goal of critical pedagogy is social transformation, which is the product of the practice of social ‘justice’ at the collective level. Social transformation is accomplished through indoctrination of the young, leading to social transformation of the larger society as succeeding generations inculcate the ‘lessons of awareness’ transmitted to them by their ‘teachers’.
Teachers are urged not to mince words with children about the evils of the existing social order. They should portray “homelessness as a consequence of the private dealings of landlords, an arms buildup as a consequence of corporate decisions, racial exclusion as a consequence of a private property-holder’s choice.” In other words, they should turn the little ones into young socialists and critical theorists.
Young, impressionable children are no longer being taught to feel good about being Americans. Their schools teachers, who traditionally embody socially approved values, are teaching them to be ashamed of being Americans.
Spreading out from the schools that teach our teachers, this ideology is being inculcated into our nations’ K-12 schools and is anti-American in the most profound meaning of the term. It is a movement that is teaching future generations that capitalism and traditional American values are intrinsically evil.
Critical pedagogy and its advocates, in their vehement antipathy toward capitalism, private property and traditional American values amount to a classic fifth subversive column, no less dangerous to freedom than Communism. Its advocates are seeking to transform western societies by covertly indoctrinating our young, through an essentially clandestine and subversive transformation of its culture.
Then the teacher added a wrinkle to this assignment. We not only had to consider Ken Robinson's ideas, but he added Paulo Freire to the mix. I had never heard of Freire before, and once I found out that he was a Marxist it coloured my opinion of him right off the bat. I tried to look at his writing objectively, but I found it dark and not appealing at all.
So I'm completing this assignment tonight, and I've got a pretty good handle on it, I think.
The things I look at from the left on the internet all paint Critical Pedagogy as something warm and fuzzy. I don't see much written on it from the right side of the spectrum, but I did find one article in relation to Eric Cantor and Paulo Freire from 2013 that was posted on FR:
Eric Cantor throws in the towel, praises Bill Ayers’s favorite radical Marxist
FR posted article
And tonight I found this article from the right side of the spectrum.
I'm sharing this for thoughtful comment. I'm interested in hearing from people that know about Paulo Freire and also those that don't. And if anyone is familiar with Ken Robinson, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on his ideas, too.
Good film here if you have never seen it.
http://www.obamasrealfather.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrrnkKmUzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmP2GeUdrg4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBtwR36G2Pg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOmzTLdr_m4
‘Cultural Marxism’
Interesting term. Mention it too often, and you might get called an R-word. “Frankfurt School” will up the ante even more. It’s about indoctrination and propaganda, and it’s working. The Left owns the media and academia. Any hope will involve bypassing those institutions. They are gone.
Bump
I wonder if there’s any serious organized opposition to this stuff within academia. Those U of Minnesota teacher certification requirements are incredible.
I don’t even see opposition directly taking on the theory from conservative pundits. If anyone has an example of a conservative pundit/intellectual directly talking about Paulo Freire and the left’s love affair with him, I would love to read it!
But I think the education establishment is so heavily dominated by the left, that I don’t think there is much out there taking this on from the right side of things. Maybe at a place like Hillsdale you could find discussion of it.
I’ll have to do a search of Freire and Hillsdale and see what pulls up.
BTTT/BFL
The termites are busier than ever.
The government money (research grants and student loans) won't last forever. Once it dries up, this nonsense will stop.
This sounds like something out of the old Soviet Union!!
Remember 60 million Russians were liquidated before it imploded due to the lies it was built upon.
If this isn’t a call to homeschool, I don’t what is. Get your kids out of the government indoctrination centers, do it now and do not look back.
Our universities, many of them taxpayer supported or supposedly religious, have been turned into Ayers-style Marxist reeducation centers, suppressing free speech and enforcing collectivist, anti-capitalist economics.
Remarkably, people who think of themselves as "conservative" readily pony up the $30 or $40 grand annually to subject their kids to this abuse. I'm beginning to think the Left thrives because the Right is brain-dead.
Read up on Paulo Friere.
Basically, inspired by Fanons’ post-colonial African Marxism.
If you look at their plan from back in the 50s, you can see it unfold under Obama.
Bascially, drag down capitalism by engorging the lumpenproletariat.
Here are some modified excerpts on a presentation I gave several years back on Friere:
Brief bio highlights:
Appointed “Director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service” in home state 1946
1962 applied his theories to teach impoverished workers to read and write in 45 days
After military coup, was jailed & then exiled in 1964
1967 Wrote “Education as the Practice of Freedom”
1968 Wrote “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”
After fellowship at Harvard, moved to Switzerland as Education advisor to World Council of Churches (ecumenical organization)
Also advised on education reform in several poor countries
1979 returned to Brazil, joined Worker’s Party
1991 Paulo Friere Institute form to foster “popular education”
Died in 1997
Major postulates of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”
“Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which argues against the “banking concept of education” in favor of a liberatory, dialogical pedagogy designed to raise individuals’ consciousness of oppression and to in turn transform oppressive social structures through “praxis.” “ (http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/freire.htm)
What does this mean?
Education aimed at the lumpenproletariate ( the poorest of the poor).
Note the predominance of postmodern, feminist, anti-racist, post-colonial, & gay issues in education.
Also note that this relies on the existence of a lumpenproletariat - raise their standard of living and you put yourself out of business.
Along with the three R’s, they are to be radicalized through deconstruction of the moneyed power structure (critical pedagogy)
Note how history texts basically emphasize the evil of Columbus (killing millions through pestilence), but promote leftist and marginal historical figures because they are “diverse”. Also note how they will not tolerate any deconstruction of those they promote (they’ll call you a racist).
Students will “discover” their own learning with teacher as facilitator (dialogical pedagogy).
(Influenced such movements as “invented spelling”, teaching of ebonics, investigations in math as opposed to rote learning of multiplication tables, open classroom experiments, etc.) Basically, why Johnny can’t read or add.
Liberation Education - Education as “consciousness-raising” (students encouraged to link personal experiences to social and political trends and knowledge)
The poor’s political education is more important than the “mere” transmission of knowledge and skills.
Strongly influenced by anti-colonial texts such as “The Wretched of the Earth” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wretched_of_the_Earth )
We all know how decolonialization of Africa turned out - Marxist and Muslim dictatorships, and horrors of Nigerian, Somalian, Sudanese, and Zimbabwean politics.
A little glossary of key concepts in Frieran theory:
Alienation - Domination of people by power elites
“Banking” Education - Tabula rasa (the young mind as a blank slate)
Codification - Representation of learner’s situation
Conscientization - Movement toward:
Critical Consciousness - Awareness that challenges the status quo
Empowerment - Result of liberatory education - consensus
Liberatory (Popular) Education - Worldview: Challenge rather than adapt
Participatory Research - Production of knowledge by learners
Philosophical Underpinnings
Liberation Theology - Jesus as Redeemer and liberator of the oppressed
(This is contrary to Catholic doctrine as inciting hatred and violence in the class struggle. (e.g., World Council of Churches funding of violent and Anti-Semetic groups), and focuses on materialism (economic class)
Plato - Socratic Method
But biased toward only questioning capitalism
Rousseau - Child as Active Learner
Dewey - Criticism of the transmission of “mere facts”
Hegelian Phenomenology - examining consciousness’ experience and eliciting the contradictions that come to light (dialectic)
Vygotsky - Zone of Proximal Development
Marx / Lenin - lumpenproletariat as anti-colonial force
Rust never sleeps
Why is Ayers still alive? He should have been eliminated long ago. In ANY OTHER civilized country, his actions of the past would be more than enough to eliminate the rabid dog. Not here, we make him a “hero”, interview him for TV, etc. as he continues on his merry way to assit odumbo in his plan for total destruction.
Sir Ken is one among many people who see the symptoms of the underlying education problem, and think that giving speeches will cure the disease.
The problem is deep-seated and fundamentally institutional. We currently have an government-owned K-12 education system with about 50M students and 10M adults largely run according to the dictates of a central education authority, the Department of Education.
Large institutions work for mass production. McDonalds works because every Big Mac is pretty much the same (by design) as every other Big Mac. No innovation is required. Just follow the rules precisely and the Big Mac will come out the same every time.
Children are not Big Macs. Every child comes out of the womb unique, and acquires more differentiating attributes every minute of its existence. To think that one standardized process would work for 50M unique children is insanity. To support the learning of an individual child requires individualized attention.
This homogenization of education leads to a culture of infantilization. In Ben Franklin’s day, kids moved on to adulthood in their early teens. Now, thanks in large part to our modern education system (and our modern economy), kids barely leave home before they’re 30.
Our whole society needs a “Reset” button.
Excellent post. Thank you.
Thank you for your information.
Thank you for your thank you. :)
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