Critical Pedagogy: Where are We Now?: (299 Counterpoints)

Our educational system is in turmoil. Many would argue that it has been assaulted and oversimplified by the right. There is growing concern that we are becoming a liberal nation-state with an increasingly anti-liberal population and an electorate that is disinterested in politics. In this globalized world, the power of capital is so great that opposition to it is often discouraged and disheartened, leaving many citizens few political precepts by which to consider their institutions. This contemporary failure of vision has opened the way for the unimpeded return of the philosophy of the free market. As a result, social and educational policies are debated almost solely in terms of how they fit with the needs of the market. Social and ethical understandings are replaced by a failed economic theory that requires a radical constraint of our political and economic choices. Compassion for the poor, the market lets us know, is wrong-headed because any interference with the labor market will always result in unfortunate economic and social consequences. Moral issues are eclipsed by market needs. In Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? the contributors discuss how the field of critical pedagogy should respond to such dire conditions in a way that is theoretically savvy and visionary, while concurrently contributing to the struggle to improve the lives of those most hurt by them. Critical Pedagogy is essential reading for every classroom teacher and pre-service teacher. It is also a valuable tool for use in undergraduate and graduate-level classrooms.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Shirley R. Steinberg: Preface: Where Are We Now? - Henry A. Giroux: Introduction: Democracy, Education, and the Politics of Critical Pedagogy - Joe L. Kincheloe: Critical Pedagogy in the Twenty-first Century: Evolution for Survival - Philip Wexler: Religion as Socio-Educational Critique: A Weberian Example - Eric J. Weiner: Critical Pedagogy and the Crisis of Imagination - Kathleen S. Berry: Locations (or Not) of Critical Pedagogy in Les Petites et Les Grandes Histoires - Pepi Leistyna: Neoliberal Non-sense - Norman K. Denzin: The Politics and Ethic of Performance Pedagogy: Toward a Pedagogy of Hope - Juha Suoranta/Tere Vaden: From Social to Socialist Media: The Critical Potential of the Wikiworld - Kiwan Sung: Glocalizing Critical Pedagogy: A Case of Critical English Language Teaching in Korea - Jeff Duncan-Andrade/Ernest Morrell: Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom - Elizabeth Quintero: Critical Pedagogy and Young Children's World - Gustavo E. Fischman/Luis A. Gandin: Escola Cidada and Critical Discourses of Educational Hope - Frank Abrahams: Musicing Paulo Freire: A Critical Pedagogy for Music Education - Valerie J. Janesick: Reflections on the Violence of High-Stakes Testing and the Soothing Nature of Critical Pedagogy - Luis Huerta-Charles: Pedagogy of Testimony: Reflections on the Pedagogy of Critical Pedagogy - Lilia I. Bartolome: Critical Pedagogy and Teacher Education: Radicalizing Prospective Teachers - Peter McLaren: The Future of the Past: Reflections on the Present State of Empire and Pedagogy - Sandy Grande: Red Lake Woebegone: Pedagogy, Decolonization, and the Critical Project - Gregory Martin: The Poverty of Critical Pedagogy: Toward a Politics of Engagement - Noah de Lissovoy: Frantz Fanon and a Materialist Critical Pedagogy - William B. Stanley: Critical Pedagogy: Democratic Realism, Neoliberalism, Conservativism, and a Tragic Sense of Education - Donaldo Macedo: Reinserting Criticity into Critical Pedagogy.

About the Author :
The Editors: Peter McLaren, a professor at UCLA, is one of the earliest proponents of critical pedagogy. His publications, research, and teaching focus on critical theory, post-colonialism, critical pedagogy, and cultural studies. Joe L. Kincheloe is the Canada Research Chair at McGill University and the founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He is the author of many books on cultural studies, critical pedagogy, and cognition.

Review :
'Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now?' is, without a doubt, an impressive volume given the daring challenge of its contributing authors to the perverse reality of the world that mines the ontological directions of men and of women - a perversity shaped by the neoliberal thinking and the globalization of the economy. Each of the authors in this volume write from different perspectives as they follow closely or recreate the critical pedagogy proposed by Paulo Freire. The contributors courageously denounce the condemnation to a life of hopelessness that has been ruining peoples and nations - a hopelessness that negates the concretization of a possible utopia of a better and more just world - a hopelessness that destroys without clemency or compassion the greatest riches of human existence leading them to question: where are we now? Like Paulo Freire, they propose that we recapture and safeguard the greatest patrimony that justifies and gives meaning to life itself: our humanity. (Ana Maria Araujo Freire)