Abstract
Shelia L Macrine’s edited volume, Critical Pedagogy in Uncertain Times: Hope and Possibilities, presents itself as an intervention into the current phase of neoliberal capitalism, where critical pedagogy is often conceived of as a force for a more humanistic and democratic future and as an instrument for unveiling the oppressive nature of capitalism. Incidentally, this volume also serves as a celebration, marking 40 years since the landmark publication of Paulo Freire’s seminal text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Macrine brings together ten chapters in two sections, many of which are by some of the most esteemed scholars and activists in critical pedagogy, as well as a foreword by Stanley Aronowitz, and an afterword by Gustavo E. Fischman.
The foreword by Stanley Aronowitz outlines a framework of critical pedagogy based on three goals for what he calls “radical democratic humanism” (p. ix). The first and second goals are self-reflection and being critical as undergirding elements of human consciousness—these goals are covered in the book's first section. In the book's second section, the overall goal is concerned with agency and the role of critical pedagogy for reinstating “education as a public good” (p. 6).
In the book’s first section, Chapter 1 begins with Henry Giroux, who reinvigorates Noam Chomsky’s call for the responsibility of intellectuals. Within the neoliberal context, Giroux argues that subjects in higher education have gained importance “almost exclusively through their exchange value on the market” (p. 16), where higher education has subsidized corporate training while enslaving students with debt. Giroux’s response is for intellectuals to connect their labor to social problems in order to defend the public sphere.
In Chapter 2, Kenneth Saltman outlines the disaster impulses of neoliberalism through a back door privatization framework. Back door privatization, according to Saltman, has occurred through disaster, illustrated by No Child Left Behind of 2001, Renaissance 2010 in Chicago, IL, rebuilding education in Iraq after the US invasion, and rebuilding education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Saltman’s chapter leads to Chapter 3, where Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo articulate a revolutionary critical pedagogy situated within a critique of political economy, in which a Marxist humanist approach can help one break through the boundaries of capitalism. McLaren and Jaramillio read this Marxist humanistic approach into Latina/o education, where students serve capital through a perfidious binary in the US education system between Americanism and un-Americanism.
In Chapter 4, Donaldo Macedo works to unmask the illusions associated with prepackaged Western democracy spread through the instrument of US foreign policy. The most notable example provided is the 1973 US backed dictatorship in Chile, which led to the first neoliberal experiment fueled by the Chicago Boys and Milton Friedman. Macedo argues that prepackaged democracy has, in part, been perpetuated by scholars’ self-censorship. Then in Chapter 5, Ramin Farahmandpur argues that, while domestic funding for public education has been curtailed, democracy has served as a blanket concept disguising capitalism’s expansion through the War on Terror. Farahmandpur argues that with funding cuts, public–private partnerships have risen, where students are socialized as commodities for the market in order to reproduce the exploitive nature of capital.
The second section of the book begins with Chapter 6, where Shelia Macrine interviews Ira Shor. Shor is a professor of composition/rhetoric at the City University of New York. He is best known for helping pioneer the field of critical pedagogy in North America, adapting many of the insights provided by Paulo Freire. Shor situates critical pedagogy within a critical literary framework and argues that the way we speak and are spoken to through media help to shape and form us as beings. And social transformation begins with understanding the use, intent, and interests served by communication. By examining the underlying assumptions of language, the status quo can be challenged from different critical theoretical perspectives (e.g. feminism). In Chapter 7, Maxine Greene then argues that educators can best challenge the status quo as facilitators of hope. Greene believes that hope is an instrument for a more socially just world, which can be fostered by teachers who question the reduction of education to job training and corporate compliance.
In Chapter 8, Antonia Darder cautions against prescriptive and simplistic interpretations of critical pedagogy. Instead, Darder argues for us to think more deeply about the range and depth of critical pedagogy by articulating the international War on Terror through the lens of a culture of terror. Darder argues that forging critical pedagogy within the culture of terror requires critical reflection of how the conservative and liberal parameters guard against effective acts of resistance. Reproductive forces have a tendency to rearticulate democratic dissent as a terror of dissent, because it threatens capitalism. For Darder, critical pedagogy helps educators situate classroom learning within the larger political, economic, and cultural context of society.
Chapter 9 provides a treat into the possibilities of critical pedagogy with the first English translation of Paulo Freire’s 1985 lecture on Amílcar Cabral, the African freedom fighter from the late-1950s to the early-1970s. Freire admits that Cabral was “a very good Marxist, who undertook an African reading of Marx, not a German reading of Marx” (p. 184). Cabral and his comrades led resistance movements in Africa against anti-imperialism for Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands until his assassination on 20 January 1973. Freire was most impressed by Cabral’s “capacity to know beyond his immediate surroundings and to imagine the not yet” (p. 171), and for Freire, this capacity represents one of the central purposes of critical pedagogy.
Finally, in Chapter 10, Noah De Lissovoy attempts to aggregate neoliberalism by arguing for a unified global force of resistance. For De Lissovoy, globalization, first, refers to the current phase of neoliberal capitalism and, second, it refers to the “withering of the nation-state system as the primary framework for organizing social and political life” (p. 189). Critical pedagogy’s goal, thus, is to unite a global “culture of opposition that would be equal to the global scale of capital itself” (p. 202) and, therefore, unite global resistances against capitalism and for humanism.
Macrine should be praised for her effort to assemble this collection of papers representing voices in critical pedagogy. These voices comprise many of the pioneers of critical pedagogy, including the founder of the field, Paulo Freire, and his comrades Antonia Darder, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, and Donaldo Macedo. With the more recent taming of critical pedagogy, Critical Pedagogy in Uncertain Times: Hope and Possibilities provides a reference point for critical scholar-activists, especially those new to the field, to gain a comprehensive understanding of how critical pedagogy helps to situate education within the larger political–economic and social context. And with the recent flourishing of Peter McLaren’s revolutionary critical pedagogy, taken up by bourgeoning critical scholar-activists, like Curry Malott and Derek Ford, the book serves as a springboard for advancing this new line of revolutionary critical pedagogy.