DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY
vol.9, no.1,
(March 2003)
Editorial
Paideia was at the centre of political philosophy
in the past, from Plato to Rousseau―a tradition which, as the late Castoriadis
pointed out, died in fact with the French Revolution. However, the need to
revisit paideia today, in the context of the revival of democratic politics
after the collapse of socialist statism, is imperative. This is the reason the
present issue of D&N is entirely devoted to the crucial question of
education, which is one of the main victims of present neoliberal globalisation.
It is hoped that the significant contributions on the matter, from various
political perspectives within the Left, will initiate a rich dialogue that will
continue in forthcoming issues of the journal.
The discussion opens with a
paper (Takis Fotopoulos)
aiming to consider the institutional preconditions of a democratic
paideia, both at the social level and the educational level itself. A basic
tenet of the approach adopted by this paper is that
education
is intrinsically linked to politics as the very meaning of education is assumed
to be defined by the prevailing meaning of politics. On the basis of this
thesis, the paper then moves on to
examine a transition strategy for the move from present (mis)education, as it
evolved in modernity, to a democratic paideia, through an emancipatory education
process.
Douglas Kellner’s bright paper attempts
to develop a critical theory of
education for the new millennium. His argument is that a democratic
reconstruction of education should synthesise perspectives of classical
philosophy of education, Deweyean radical pragmatism, Freirean critical
pedagogy, post structuralism, and various critical theories of gender, race,
class, and society. Such a critical theory inevitably draws on the Hegelian
concept of theory as well as on Marxian critique of ideology. Furthermore, as he
rightly points out, such a democratic reconstruction should also meet the
challenges posed by important technological, demographic and socio-political
changes in the present era of neoliberal globalisation, which creates new social
divides based on education. However, as the libertarian critique of education is
ignored whereas, at the same time, the present socio-economic system as well as
the technologies developed to meet its needs are taken for granted, one wonders
whether a critical theory of education -- although completely adequate as far as
improving the present system of education is concerned—would be sufficient
enough to deal with the huge challenges that the transition to an alternative
democratic society creates.
Peter McLaren develops a very powerful critique of critical pedagogy which he
rightly accuses on account of its present purely reformist character. As he
aptly points out, ‘critical pedagogy has become so completely psychologized,
so liberally humanized, so technologized,
and
so conceptually postmodernized, that its current relationship to broader
liberation struggles seems severely attenuated if not fatally terminated’. He
proposes instead the development of a critical revolutionary pedagogy, which
will be enthused by Marxist class analysis and historical materialism. No doubt,
all sections of the radical Left (including the libertarian Left) will agree
with the author’s insightful analysis of reformist education and the
imperative need for emancipatory education (if we see it as an integral part of
the transitional process towards a liberated society) to be inspired by a form
of antisystemic analysis, as part of an antisystemic movement. However, the
point of dispute is whether Marxist analysis is the appropriate tool for this
purpose, given its one-dimensional character which focuses on one aspect of the
power spectrum: the economic one. In other words, one may argue that
although economic dominance is a crucial form of dominance in a social
system based on a market economy, still, the other forms of dominance
(political, military, ideological, cultural, sexual etc.) can not simply be
reduced to means in exploiting the subordinate units, (not even 'in the
last instance'), as they constitute ends in themselves and important components
of the privileged position of the dominant social groups. In this sense, the
concepts ‘exploitation’, ‘class struggle’ etc constitute the particular
in comparison to the much broader concepts of dominance/ subordination.
The issue therefore is whether we need today a new democratic pedagogy
based on a project for a genuine (inclusive) democracy that aims at the
elimination of all forms of subordination, either they are based on economic
power, or any other form of social power.
Henry A. Giroux’
starting point in an perceptive paper on the need for what he calls a
‘pedagogy of educated hope’ is the present ‘marketisation’ of education,
following the marketisation of society in the era of neoliberal modernity. This
implies, as he aptly puts it, that ‘as the space of criticism is
undercut by the absence of public spheres that encourage the exchange of
information, opinion, and criticism, the horizons of a substantive democracy
disappear against the growing isolation and depoliticization that marks the loss
of politically guaranteed public realms in which autonomy,
political participation, and engaged citizenship make their
appearance.’ His conclusion is that the overriding political project at issue
suggests that educators and others produce new theoretical tools for linking
theory, critique, education, and the discourse of possibility to creating the
social conditions for the collective production of ‘realist utopias’.
Although one may raise some serious reservations on the author’s welcoming of
the post Marxist idea of ‘democratization’ in the sense of
‘the struggles over social citizenship, particularly those struggles
aimed at expanding liberal freedoms, the equality of resources, and those forms
of collective insurance that provide a safety net for individual incapacities
and misfortunes’, and possibly his implicit adoption of the postmodernist
stand on universalism, still, his call to fight the profound anti-utopianism
that marks the era of neoliberal globalisation is significant.
Peter Pericles Trifonas’ insightful
paper
gives
a postmodernist view of the ethics of knowledge and research based on the works
of Derrida and Lyotard. As he rightly points out, the external financing of both
education and research in today’s universities is a crucial factor determining
their direction, i.e. their very nature. This is why, he aptly concludes, ‘academic
responsibility therefore must take into account not only the duty to questions
of knowledge and truth but to the nature of who that knowledge will serve and
how’. However, one may raise some reservations on his unqualified adoption of
the postmodernist thesis that it was the ‘principle of reason’ that
‘tended to guide the science of research toward techno-practical ends’ i.e.
towards technological determinism. Instead, one may argue that this determinism
was the inevitable effect of the attempt to ‘objectify’ reason in the form
of an objective science—an attempt that characterised even liberatory analyses
like the Marxist one. Furthermore, one may argue that the orientation of
research ‘as an instrumental process of usable outcomes for human progress’
is not an inevitable implication of the principle of reason but, instead,
that it was the effect of the use of objective reason as a means to
Progress, which was the main imaginary signification of
the growth economy—the offspring of the market economy. In other words,
it could be argued that it was the requirements of the growth economy in terns
of optimizing efficiency for greater productivity that established efficiency as
the main principle of production organisation rather than, as Lyotard argues,
‘the quest for technical apparatus that required an investment of capital and
energy’.
Finally,
in the Dialogue section, John Sargis, in an excellent intervention on the
discussion on liberatory ethics that D&N began in the last issue, shows the
crucial interconnection and inner dynamic between emancipatory education,
Paedeia and Democracy with particular reference to the US educational experience.
Takis Fotopoulos,
Editor