Henry Giroux
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READING AND TEACHING HENRY GIROUX Amarjit Singh and Clar Doyle Prepared and Designed by: Samir Muhaisen Graduate Student Faculty of Education Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada A1B 3X8 Table of Contents FOREWORD This book is built on Giroux’s work, which we have collected and collated, and it covers the period from 1979 to 2005. Over this time, Giroux’s thinking and writing show a remarkable evolution. The following section of the book is the material for Reading Giroux. This section of the book lays the foundation for our work in education and culture that will be shared in Teaching Giroux 2 READING AND TEACHING HENRY Table of ContentsGIROUX Introduction Henry Giroux Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Six Three Four Five Classroom Teaching Education Democracy Ideology Curriculum Teaching Internship Higher Graduate Schooling Culture Pedagogy Education Research Cultural Chapter Three in Chapter Four in Cultural Students Capital a Nutshell a Nutshell Production Cultural Reading Teachers Higher Studies Education in a Guide Nutshell Language Race Voice Gender Chapter One in a Chapter Two in a Nutshell Nutshell 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION In many instances, Giroux is able to show that he can cut through the logic and unmask the ideology of new right and neo-liberal democratic claims: “Within the discourse of neo-liberalism, democracy becomes synonymous with free markets while issues of equality, social justice, and freedom are stripped of any substantive meaning” (2004, p. xviii). We are reminded by Henry Giroux and Susan Giroux of the need to balance this reality by advocating a “rationale for the important and necessary use of the democratic imperative to expand individual and collective capacities to self govern”(2004, p.38). 4 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION We believe that Giroux’s writings, along with the work of other notable educational and social theorists, have had a tremendous influence on everyday thought and action. The editors of Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope rightly claim that Giroux’s work is prodigious and multidimensional. However, these editors do manage to put Giroux’s work in quite a neat shell when they claim that his struggle for a radical democracy, “involves the effort to expand the possibility for social justice, freedom, and egalitarian social relations in the educational, economic, political, and cultural domains that locate men, women, and children in everyday life” (p. ix). 5 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION As Peter McLaren acknowledges, in the forward for Teachers as Intellectuals, it is difficult to do justice to the scope and critical depth of Henry Giroux’s work. As we probe Giroux’s notion of teachers as transformative intellectuals, we realize that he means that they “understand the nature of their own self-formation, and have a future, see the importance of education as a public discourse, and have some sense of mission in providing students which they need to become critical citizens” (1993b, p. 15). 6 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION In other words, Giroux asks, how do we get to be the people we are? Such questions make any examination of the transmission of curriculum seem facile. Giroux is digging deep now. He no longer is willing to ask the easy questions. Part of his emerging answer is that power can be seen “as a concrete set of practices that produces social forms through which distinct experiences and subjectivities are shaped” (1997a, p. xi). Giroux has proven himself to be the explorer as opposed to the mere navigator. 7 READING GIROUX Reading The Immediate Table of Contents Table of Contents READING THE IMMEDIATE CHAPTER ONE Education Schooling Students Teachers Language Voice Chapter One in a Nutshell 9 Education Table of Contents Table of Contents EDUCATION Building on the work of Cornelius Castoriadis and Raymond Williams, Giroux argues that, "Education, in the broadest sense, is a principal feature of politics because it provides the capacities, knowledge, skills, and social relations through which individuals recognize themselves as social and political agents" (Giroux, 2004, p. 115). 11 Table of Contents Education Broad Definition A Feature of Politics Exceeds the A collectively limits of produced set educational of experiences institutions that provide: A- Critical B- Dynamics to understanding for construct alternative everyday political cultures oppression Table of Contents EDUCATION Giroux & Aronowitz encourage educators to ask, what is “the nature of education and what it means as a process of social and, hence, self-formation” (1993, p.126). According to Giroux and Aronowitz, this means that educators need to involve themselves with social movements and groups that work in oppositional public spheres outside of schools, around broader educational issues. Giroux and Aronowitz use the term schooling to mean that which takes place within institutions that are directly or indirectly related to the state through funding or regulation. Education, on the other hand, is much more broadly defined, and is not limited to established institutions but can take place at many other sites. It is important to Giroux and Aronowitz that we begin to destroy the myth that education and schooling are the same thing and that “expertise and academic credentials are distinguishing marks of the intellectual; and, equally important, such educational work could also promote critical analyses of schooling itself and its relations to other institutions included in the state public sphere”(p.129). 13 Table of Contents EDUCATION In an ideal fashion, at least from a critical perspective, Giroux and Aronowitz view education as representing “a collectively produced set of experiences organized around issues and concerns that allow for a critical understanding of everyday oppression as well as the dynamics involved in constructing alternative political cultures” (1993, p. 127). Ideally, such forms of learning and action would be directed toward the elimination of class, social, and gender oppression. Such intellectual development and growth, with its focus on the political, functions “to create organic intellectuals and to develop a notion of active citizenry based on self-dedication of a group of learning and social interaction that have a fundamental connection to the idea of human emancipation (p. 127). 14 Table of Contents Education in Social Debate Table of Contents EDUCATION Giroux believes that there are authentic opportunities, in varied public spheres, to help develop collective power and in turn such power can be used in the development of alternative cultures. The alternative cultures, then, can get lived out in new forms of social relations and practices. We usually do not talk about education in this way. However, when we peel back the what-are-we doing- today layers of education, we are really talking about producing meaning and cultures. Education, in the way we are talking about it here, becomes a vehicle for social mobility for those who are “privileged to have the resource and power to make their choices matter—and a form of social constraint for those who lack such resources and for whom choice and accountability reflect a legacy of broken promises and bad faith" (Giroux, 2003b, pp. 80, 81). In the introduction for Critical Pedagogy, the State, and Cultural Struggle, Giroux and McLaren spell out their view of public education in North America. They claim that the debate is fundamentally about the relevance of democracy, social criticism, and the meaning of our future lives. Giroux and McLaren believe that we have “failed to recognize the general relevance of education as a public service and the importance of deliberately translating educational theory into a community related discourse capable of reaching into and animating public culture and life”(1989, p. xiii). 16 Table of Contents Geroux’s observation of education Table of Contents EDUCATION Giroux and McLaren are blunt in their claim that conservatives wish to rewrite the past from the perspective of the privileged and the powerful. We can readily see this in so many of the writings that represent, and are often funded by, the conservative wing in our democracy. These writings often disdain the democratic possibilities of pluralism, as well as the forms of pedagogy that critically engage issues central to developing an informed democratic public. Giroux and McLaren go on to state that there is little talk about the ethical and political demands of democratic culture and public responsibility. They believe we need to create a language of possibility. They further believe that such a language, coupled with a proactive political imagination, will resuscitate the goals of self-determination and social transformation. This is a hope far beyond propping up the status quo. The debate over education must not be about profit and elitism but about a wider struggle for democracy. 18 Table of Contents EDUCATION In an earlier writing, Giroux drew on a classical definition of citizenship education to claim that “a model of rationality can be recognized that is explicitly political, normative, and visionary. Within this model, education was seen as intrinsically political, designed to educate the citizen for intelligent and active participation in the civic community” (1983b, p. 321). In a more recent writing, Channel Surfing (1997b), Giroux strongly asserts that in today’s world, citizenship has been replaced by an agenda that puts focus on creating consuming