Interview with Peter McLaren, education theorist
A pedagogy of liberation
From a Marxist approach, criticizes McLaren this American University, where he observes budget cuts and the advance of "a covert privatization." Promotes a "critical pedagogy" that transforms the teacher-student relationship. By Julian Bruschtein
McLaren is Canadian and he teaches at the University of California (UCLA). "Educational complex, the military-industrial and law relate to each and everyone is connected, making a very combo dangerous. "The description of the present university in the United States belongs to Professor Peter McLaren, renowned Marxist theorist of education, driver of a "critical pedagogy" as opposed to the "pedagogy of desire." Speaking to Página/12, McLaren-Canadian origin but with an extensive career in the U.S. - said its experience in the American educational system and pinpoints your idea about teacher-student relationship as "one of the axes for emancipation. "
- What is the state of American higher education in the context of crisis of capitalism?
"In theory there is a system of public and private universities, but the public are under a covert privatization. For example, University of California (UCLA), where I work, is a public university, but received many contributions from private institutions that influence the academic. Although income from the private sector, cut salaries by eight percent and libraries are closing on Saturday, imagine that a university like UCLA says it has no funds to open a library, but obviously it does have the money to rebuild the basketball arena. In California, the electoral and political projects promise a better education for all social classes and have not only betrayed them constantly. On the other hand, there are other universities that are considered successful such as Harvard, which are supported by private money. They take as an example in the public and therefore is a process of privatization.
- Does this influence between the public and private system is irradiated on the work of teachers?
-educational complex, the military-industrial and industrial-related legal including all United States are connected to form a very dangerous combo. The right has introduced a law in several states that prohibits teachers speak from the political point of view with a different opinion of the majority ... These laws have not succeeded, but we are being pushed by the right. It is worrying, too, that the faculties of education and training will not exist in the U.S. It is an idea that you can hear from some governors, who in their states are trying to get the teacher training colleges and is issued in the private sector. The argument used is that education schools have not improved the education sector.
-You specializes in critical pedagogy. What are the main concepts?
-critical pedagogy is beyond the concept of necessity, unlike the pedagogy of desire, which focuses on the well-being, pleasure, and has a relationship intimate with capitalist structures. For example, in the classroom would be talking about the transfer of the teacher's desire to reject the neo-liberal structures, but this is only the emotional level, the emotional sense of someone who rebels against the norms of everyday life. Instead, critical pedagogy is to develop our knowledge so that you can understand the material conditions of experience. Basically, it is critical pedagogy of liberation, freedom from want, and is essentially a materialist critique. Then, the critical consciousness exists outside of this pedagogy of desire, for which the most significant is what the teacher feels. Is a might be called post-classical pedagogy. The ruling class avoids dealing with reality, with reality on the other, because the misery of others is the cause of the prosperity that is practicing pedagogy of desire is the condition which gives the possibility to have prosperity in their teaching desire.
- On the pedagogy of desire which is the focus of teacher-student relationship?
-Primarily, there is an attempt to free the students of the economic situation they encounter. The attempt is to free the student from the stress you feel on an emotional level. The purpose of pedagogy of desire is not to understand what is happening in daily life, but it is a seduction. It's an emotional investment in education in order to assert power. Instead, critical pedagogy is about the social knowledge and what is not spoken. It also investigates what is not, in order to bring out specific details and meaningful representations of our lives. This reveals the way in which the abstract object representation of the international division of labor reports all cultural practices in society.
- And how established teacher-student relationship critical pedagogy?
"The point is that critical pedagogy is not set in desire, but in the revolutionary love. Love can only exist between people that are the same, they share certain ideals and commitment to the poor. And is this moral affinity, where the teacher and the students learn from each other-that is the conditions of possibility of love at the sites of daily experience under capitalism, under capitalist social relations, institutional relations and structures that are no spaces and do not promote equity, but the opposite. Revolutionary love can exist only in the struggle to transform this relationship. In contrast, the pedagogy of desire works against the construction of a revolutionary love because you can not celebrate what not unknowable. I think these are the differences. Critical pedagogy tells us of being in space or space of liberation, but is at the site of the community and the site of emancipation. One can not approach the question of emancipation without separated from the logic of modernity.
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