Reconstructing Critical Pedagogy: Exploring Alternative Pedagogical Paradigms, IntellectualActivism,

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Reconstructing Critical Pedagogy Exploring
Alternative Pedagogical Paradigms,
Intellectual-Activism, and Critical Educational
Theory

• Reiland Rabaka, Ph.D.
• University of Colorado at Boulder

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Critical Pedagogy

• Emphasizes the ideological dimensions of teacher
  work and how education is employed in class
  exploitation and class struggle within the
  capitalist economy
• Challenges capitalists claims that education is
  neutral
• Reminds radical educators that there is a big
  difference between (neo)liberalism or reformism
  and anti-capitalism or anti-imperialism

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Critical Pedagogy

• Links education to self and social transformation
• Connects education to critical consciousness
• Intensely explores the political economy of
  education in light of global capitalism
• Emphasizes that capitalism exacerbates and
  perpetuates racism, sexism and heterosexism/homoph
  obia
• Advocates that both teachers and students become
  active agents in their own education and
  liberation
• Draws heavily from Marxism and puts forward
  democratic socialism as an alternative to
  contemporary capitalism

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Critical Social Theory

• comprehends the established society
• criticizes its contradictions and conflicts
• creates and accessibly offers ethical and
  egalitarian (usually democratic socialist)
  alternatives

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Critical Social Theory

• Accents
• what needs to be transformed
• what strategies and tactics might be most useful
  in the transformative efforts
• and,
• which agents and agencies could potentially carry
  out the transformation.

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Critical Social TheoryThe Dialectical Dimension

• Dialectics is the art of demonstrating the
  interconnectedness of parts to each other and to
  the overarching system or framework as a whole.
  Hence, critical theory encourages
  interdisciplinarity and the breaking down of
  arbitrary artificial academic boundaries and
  intellectual barriers.

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Critical Race Theory

• Emphasizes the centrality and political economy
  of race and racism, especially with regard to
  European imperial expansion, Enlightenment,
  modernity, and postmodernity
• Accents the interconnection of racism with
  capitalism and sexism
• Endorses a race/gender/class approach to
  historical and contemporary social and political
  phenomena

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Critical Race Theory

• Extremely critical of
• white supremacy
• white privilege
• white normativity, white neutrality, and white
  universality
• claims of white racelessness
• state-sanctioned (or, legal) racial domination or
  discrimination (institutional racism)
• racism in education, religion, and the medical
  industry

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Feminist Pedagogy

• Explores womens contributions to educational
  theory and praxis
• Points to patriarchys impact on educational
  theory and praxis
• Employs gender and the critique of gender
  domination and discrimination as a point of
  departure
• Marxist-feminism and socialist-feminism emphasize
  the interconnection of sexism with capitalism
• Black feminism and other anti-racist feminisms
  engage ways in which racism and sexism intersect
  in the lives of women of color

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Feminist Pedagogy

• Some feminists, particularly feminists of color,
  have developed theories that speak to the special
  needs of women within racist, sexist, and
  capitalist societies
• Explores the political economy of patriarchal
  pedagogy or male-centered teaching
• Links womens liberation to critical education
• Often warns against privileging class over gender
  (a lá many male Marxist pedagogues)

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Reconstructing Critical Pedagogy

• It seems highly questionable, if not downright
  silly at this juncture in the history of theory,
  to seek a theoretical Holy Grail that will serve
  as a panacea to our search for the secrets to
  being, culture, politics or society
• Theories are, among many other things, optics,
  ways of seeing they are perspectives which
  illuminate specific phenomena. However, as with
  any perspective, position or standpoint, each
  theory has its blind spots and lens limitations,
  what contemporary critical theorists call
  theoretical myopia
• A reconstructed and re-radicalized critical
  pedagogy must be grounded in critical conjunctive
  analysis that explores the incessantly
  intersecting nature of racism and sexism and
  capitalism and colonialism, among other forms of
  domination and discrimination

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Reconstructing Critical Pedagogy

• New critical pedagogy should be
• more multicultural
• transethnic
• transgender
• sexual orientation-sensitive
• non-Western European/white American/Eurocentric
  pedagogy-, theory-, and philosophy- focused
• Grounded in pedagogical paradigms produced by
  critical educators and intellectual-activists of
  color
• Interdisciplinary
• Connected to contemporary anti-racist,
  anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, and
  anti-imperialist movements

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W.E.B. Du Bois

• Born February 23, 1868
• Educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of
  Berlin
• Studied philosophy, history, politics, and
  economics
• First African American to earn a Ph.D. from
  Harvard University

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W.E.B. Du Bois

• Eighty year publishing career from 1883 to 1963
• One of the first scholars to seriously study
  African Americans retention of African culture
  and contributions to American culture
• Died August 27, 1963

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W.E.B. Du Bois

• Philosopher of race
• Critical race theorist
• Male-Feminist
• Marxist/Socialist
• Political Scientist
• Critical Sociologist
• Pan-Africanist
• Anti-Colonialist
• Critical Pedagogue
• Historian

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Du Bois and Africana Studies(Re)Defining an
Interdisciplinary Discipline

• Major architect of Africana Studies
• Interdisciplinarian
• Multi-Methodologist
• Critical Social Theorist
• Academic Outsider
• Political Exile

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Du Bois and Africana Studies

• History
• Religion
• Philosophy
• Sociology
• Politics
• Economics
• Psychology
• Education
• Art (Music, Dance, Theater, Literature, etc.)

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Du Boiss Conceptual Contributions

• Double-consciousness
• Cultural education
• The Talented Tenth
• The Guiding Hundredth
• Pan-Africanism
• Black Marxism
• African Socialism (Ujamaa)
• Semi- or Quasi- Colonialism
• Male-feminism

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Major Scholarly Books by W.E.B. Du Bois

• The Philadelphia Negro
• The Souls of Black Folk
• The Negro
• Darkwater
• The Gift of Black Folk
• Black Reconstruction
• Black Folk, Then and Now
• Color and Democracy
• The World and Africa

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Scholarly Volumes and Periodicals edited by
W.E.B. Du Bois

• The Atlanta University Studies
• The Moon
• The Horizon
• The Crisis
• Phylon

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Major Autobiographical Writingsby W.E.B. Du Bois

• The Souls of Black Folk
• Darkwater
• Dusk of Dawn
• In Battle for Peace
• The Autobiography
• of W.E.B. Du Bois

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Du Bois and Critical Educational Theory

• The College-Bred Negro (1900)
• The Negro Common School (1901)
• The College-Bred Negro American (1910)
• Report from the First Conference of Negro
  Land-Grant Colleges for Coordinating a Program of
  Cooperative Social Studies (1943)
• The Education of Black People (1973)
• Du Bois on Education (2002)
• Published over 100 articles on education

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Du Boiss Major Works on Women

• The Work of Negro Women in Society (1902)
• The Black Mother (1912)
• Suffering Suffragettes (1912)
• Votes for Women (1912)
• The Burden of Black Women (1914)
• Woman Suffrage (1915)
• The Damnation of Women (1920)
• The Freedom of Womanhood (1924)
• Sex and Racism (1957)
• Greetings to Women (1959)
• Published over 60 articles on womens rights and
  gender justice

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W.E.B. Du Bois creative writings include five
novels, several volumes of poetry, short stories,
and plays

• A Litany of Atlanta
• The Song of Smoke
• The Quest of the Silver Fleece
• Dark Princess
• The Ordeal of Mansart
• Mansart Builds a School
• Worlds of Color
• The Comet
• The Optimist
• Chamounix

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W.E.B. Du Bois participated in several social
movements and political organizations

• Pan-Africanism
• Niagara
• NAACP
• New Negro
• Harlem Renaissance
• Civil Rights
• Womens Liberation
• Anti-War/Peace

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Du Bois discourse simultaneously challenges

• traditional disciplines
• conventional critical theory
• and
• non-traditional (or new) disciplines

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Du Bois and Africana Critical Theory

• Du Bois contraction and creative combination of
  Africana and non-Africana critical thought
• Africana intellectual history
• The history of Africana ideas
• The history of Africana philosophy
• Africana Studies contributions to critical theory

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Ella Baker, 1903-1986

• BA, valedictorian, Shaw University
• Civil rights (racial justice)
• Womens rights (gender justice)
• Democratic socialism (economic justice)
• Life-long commitment to radical social
  transformation
• Student-centered social theory (links education
  to liberation)
• Worker-centered social theory (links labor to
  liberation)

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Ella Baker, 1903-1986

• NAACP
• SCLC, worked with MLK Septima Clark
• SNCC
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP),
  worked with Fannie Lou Hamer
• Collective leadership
• Participatory democracy

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Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

• BA, Alabama State College
• Civil rights activist
• NAACP
• Highlander Folk School
• Sparked Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) with MLK
• Anti-Apartheid Activist
• Established the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute
  for Self-Development

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Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

• Claudette Colvin (age 15, arrested March 1955)
• The Womens Political Council (WPC) initiated the
  bus boycott
• African American ministers followed the lead of
  the WPC
• African American churches, cab companies and
  other black-owned businesses supported the bus
  boycott (self-determination)
• Clifford and Virginia Durr, some whites supported

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Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

• 50,000 African Americans in participated in the
  Bus Boycott
• The boycott lasted 381 days
• Fired for her civil rights activism
• Parks deplored the custom of having to enter the
  front of the bus to pay the fare and then having
  to exit to reenter at the back of the bus.
  Frequently, white bus drivers pulled away before
  black riders could reboard at the back of the bus.

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Septima Clark, 1898-1987

• BA, Benedict College MA, Hampton University
  also studied at Columbia University
• Studied at Atlanta University with W.E.B. Du Bois
• NAACP
• Civil rights activist
• Radical Educator, emphasis on adult literacy and
  democratic empowerment
• Faculty, Highlander Folk School (1957-1960)

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Septima Clark, 1898-1987

• Citizenship Schools
• Ella Baker encouraged MLK SCLC to hire Clark
  and tap the Citizenship Schools
• Literacy Liberation
• Echo In My Soul (1962)
• Ready From Within Septima Clark and the Civil
  Rights Movement (1986)

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977

• Sharecropper
• Radical voter registrant
• SNCC field worker
• Co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
  Party (MFDP)
• Powerful orator
• Political Activist

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977

• Linked literacy with political economy
• Life-long commitment to radical social
  transformation
• Ran for Congress in 1964
• Fought for workers rights, especially farmers
  rights
• Founded the Freedom Farms Corporation in 1969
• Member, Executive Committee of the United
  Democratic Party of MS

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977

• Radicalism grounded in her religious beliefs
• Opened all of her speeches with a spiritual,
  usually This Little Light of Mine
• Challenged racism within the Democratic Party
• Widely credited for the part she played in the
  political transformation of the Democratic Party
• Continued to her civil rights activism even as
  she was dying of cancer

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977

• Hamer was defiant and seemed to develop a deeper
  conviction to her cause with each new attack or
  set of attacks
• Hamer appeared to resist with a renewed sense of
  courage and commitment to human, civil, and
  womens rights
• Similar to Victoria Gray, Hamer drew from her
  religious beliefs and African American folk wisdom

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977

• Hamer was fired and evicted for registering to
  vote
• Hamer was shot at and had to go into exile
  because of her civil rights activism
• While in exile Hamer decided that racism must be
  met with radical anti-racism, political activism,
  and social organization

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Fannie Lou Hamer, 1917-1977

• Winona, MS, 1963 Hamer brutally beaten racial
  and sexual violence/violation
• Some of Hamers injuries were permanent she lost
  sight in her left eye and suffered irreparable
  damage to her kidneys
• Lawrence Guyot was also severely beaten attempts
  were made to burn his genitals

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Malcolm X
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Malcolm X, 1925-1965

• Emphasis on education for both self and social
  transformation
• Emphasis on political education
• Nation of Islam (NOI)
• Organization of African American Unity (OAAU)
• Anti-racism (emphasized the political economy of
  race and racism)
• Pan-Africanism
• Democratic socialism

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Malcolm X, 1925-1965

• Helped to radicalize the Civil Rights Movement
• Offered frustrated African American youth an
  alternative to non-violent protest, civil
  disobedience, and passive resistance
• Radical, risk-taking leadership style
• Consistently encouraged his audiences to be
  active agents in their own education and
  liberation
• Father of the Black Power Movement

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Reconstructing Critical Pedagogy Exploring
Alternative Pedagogical Paradigms,
Intellectual-Activism, and Critical Educational
Theory

• Reiland Rabaka, Ph.D.
• Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in
  America
• University of Colorado at Boulder