Abstract
John Dewey conceptualized the classroom as a laboratory for building democratic societies. We might revisit such an approach to pedagogy and public education as we grapple with teaching in the face of overlapping threats to human survival. It is no longer “radical” from a scholarly perspective to suggest that a sustainable future for the human species will require alternatives to capitalism and the coercive state. How can our classrooms be repurposed as engines for social change? Can they be drivers of resistance and laboratories for alternatives? This chapter will explore such counter-hegemonic strategies, and argues for a markedly more public education. Beginning with the classroom as a pedagogical place, this chapter then widens the perspective to the local outside, to the regional, to the global
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Notes
- 1.
See McLaren, Pedagogy of Insurrection. Also see Apple, Can Education Change Society?; Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy.; Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education.; Darder, Baltodano, and Torres, The Critical Pedagogy Reader for extended definitions discussions and critiques of critical pedagogy as an applied practice and body of theory.
- 2.
Gruenwald, “The Best of Both Worlds,” 10. Also see Johnson, “Place-based Learning and Knowing.”
- 3.
Klein, This Changes Everything.; Parenti, Tropic of Chaos.; Ehrlich and Ehrlich, “Can a Collapse of Civilization Be Avoided?”; Ehrlich and Ehrlich, “Future Collapse.”
- 4.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], Climate Change 2014, 64.
- 5.
Parenti, Tropic of Chaos.
- 6.
OXFAM, “An Economy for the 1%.”
- 7.
Economist, “Towards the End of Poverty.”
- 8.
OXFAM, “An Economy for the 1%,” 6.
- 9.
Telesur, “Death Toll Rises in Oaxaca as Govt. Represses Teacher Protests.”; Telesur, “200,000 Doctors to Join Teachers in Mexico National Strike.”; Dillingham, “Mexico’s Classroom Wars.”
- 10.
Dewey, Experience and Education.
- 11.
Chomsky, Chomsky on Democracy and Education.
- 12.
Dewey quoted in Chomsky, Chomsky on Democracy and Education, 25.
- 13.
Also see Adreski, Max Weber on Capitalism Bureaucracy and Religion. Quote from Armaline, “Building Democracy Through Education, 161.
- 14.
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
- 15.
McLaren, Pedagogy of Insurrection.; Apple, Can Education Change Society?; Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy.; Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education.; and Darder, Baltodano, and Torres, The Critical Pedagogy Reader.
- 16.
Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy, 1.
- 17.
Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
- 18.
Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy, 2–3.
- 19.
Graeber, Debt.
- 20.
Armaline and Glasberg, “What Will States Really Do for Us?”; Armaline, Glasberg, and Purkayastha, The Human Rights Enterprise.
- 21.
Giroux, Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, 1–2.
- 22.
Mills, The Sociological Imagination.
- 23.
Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks.
- 24.
Telesur, “Death Toll Rises in Oaxaca as Govt. Represses Teacher Protests.”; Dillingham, “Mexico’s Classroom Wars.”
- 25.
Dillingham, “Mexico’s Classroom Wars.”
- 26.
Magaña, “Educational Reform and Repression in Mexico.”
- 27.
Telesur, “Death Toll Rises in Oaxaca as Govt. Represses Teacher Protests.”; Dillingham, “Mexico’s Classroom Wars.”
- 28.
Telesur, “Mexican Mayor Who Supports Oaxaca Teachers Survives Bomb Attack.”
- 29.
Mexico News Daily, “Oaxaca Protesters Detain Two Police.”
- 30.
Telesur, “World Organizations Condemn Repression Against Mexican Teachers.”
- 31.
Telesur, “200,000 Doctors to Join Teachers in Mexico National Strike.”
- 32.
Telesur, “Ayotzinapa Parents Attacked as They Join Mexico Teacher Protests.”
- 33.
Dillingham, “Mexico’s Classroom Wars.”
- 34.
National Indigenous Congress and EZLN, “From Within the Storm.”
- 35.
For detailed information on the CFA negotiated contract (2014–2017), and the history of contract negotiation (“the contract archive”), please see the CFA website: http://www.calfac.org/contract.
- 36.
See average salary calculations here: http://www.calstate.edu/hr/employee-profile/2011/faculty/salary.shtml.
- 37.
Brekke, “$142,448.33.”
- 38.
Manni, “The Salary You Must Earn to Buy a Home in 27 Metros.”
- 39.
Crutchfield, “Serving Displaced and Food Insecure Students in the CSU.”
- 40.
Rosanna, “1 in 10 Cal State Students Is Homeless, Study Finds.”
- 41.
Guastella, “Class is in Session.”
- 42.
McLaren, Pedagogy of Insurrection, 61.
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Armaline, W. (2017). Public Education Against Neoliberal Capitalism: Illustrations and Opportunities. In: Shannon, D., Galle, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pedagogy and Place-Based Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50621-0_9
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