This is a reply to six "Theory and Research in Education" commentators on views I expressed in a 2013 "Theory and Research in Education" piece about priorities in philosophy of education today. The first section is about a concession to my critics; the second, about various misconceptions in their views. The third section…

This conversation between Peter McLaren and Petar Jandric brings about some of the most recent and deepest of McLaren's insights into the relationship between revolutionary critical pedagogy and liberation theology, and outlines the main directions of development of McLaren's thought during and after "Pedagogy of Insurrection." In the…

In "Postphysical Vision: Art Education's Challenge in an Age of Globalized Aesthetics (AMondofesto)" (2008) and "Beyond Aesthetics: Returning Force and Truth to Art and Its Education" (2009), jan jagodzinski argued for politics that go "beyond" representation--a project that radically questions visual culture…

Michael Young's recent paper in this journal is correct; there is a profound crisis in curriculum theory, and to be intellectually viable into the future the field must strive to "bring back" in empirical study of curriculum. Also by ignoring the empirical content of knowledge and access to it in mass education systems throughout the…

In the May 2011 edition of this journal, Curry Malott contributed an essay review of Jean Anyon's "Marx and Education" (2011). The author would summarize Mallot's critiques of her book as follows: (1) she didn't write the book that he wanted her to write; (2) she didn't cite the authors that he wanted her to cite; and (3) her work is anti-Marxist…

In the shadow of triumphalist and hubristic capitalism, many adherents to critical pedagogy promote "democracy" as a kind of anti-capitalist challenge to inequality, oppression and exploitation. However, American culture has gone global, immersing the world in the received wisdom of a variety of liberalisms or in the reaction formations of…

This is a panoptic paper in five parts. In Part One, Immiseration Capitalism, I examine the current neoliberal cum neoconservative austerity capitalism and its "class war from above", in particular its resultant relative immiseration and its absolute immiseration, with particular reference to Greece, Ireland, Britain and the USA. In Part…

This paper contributes to arguments for the potential of Giddens' structuration theory in educational research. It illustrates how "conceptual schemes" from structuration theory were applied to the author's empirical research on a type of alternative educational practice in India, "private school outreach". It shows how…

The book "China Is Unhappy" that made the list of best sellers not so long ago is blowing like an icy wind in spring and is poisoning the nation's mental state as though laden with a virus of unhappiness. Those who are most susceptible to it are groups of underage persons with mentalities that are still fragile and young people who have…

Henry A. Giroux is recognized as one of the fifty most significant thinkers on education in the 20th century. He is also considered a scholar of immense influence in a number of fields internationally, hardly an inconsequential accolade in a century noted for a glut of educational and social thinkers. Yet, its wide-ranging and ever-expanding…

As part of a critical analysis of Paulo Freire's work, this paper argues that, Freire's critical, liberatory pedagogy as conceived in "Education as the Practice of Freedom" (P. Freire, 1982a), coherently systematized in "Extension or Communication" (P. Freire, 1982b) and carried out through "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (P. Freire, 1974) into his…

Despite Stanley Fish's assertion that the interpretive communities basic to his theory of literary and legal interpretation are "engines of change," it seems clear that in Fish's conception of change, "plus ca change, c'est plus la meme chose." In particular, Fish denies that the legal profession can achieve the more…

Critical social theory is a multidisciplinary knowledge base with the implicit goal of advancing the emancipatory function of knowledge. It approaches this goal by promoting the role of criticism in the search for quality education. Through critical social theory in education, quality is proportional to the depth of analysis that students have at…

Teaching economic geography is not a matter of replicating textbook models. It requires engagement with the ever-changing global economy, which often puts the lie to existing theory. It demands that the teacher break down the economy into its major parts, in a way that students can grasp. This does not mean abandoning theory; on the contrary, it…

The criticism movement against Pragmatism began in the early 1950s, and it did not end until the latter part of the 1970s. This movement plays a key role not only in popularizing philosophy study, but also in establishing the leading position of dialectical materialism in the academic world of China. In addition, it left a large amount of valuable…