In California and other states, neo-Marxist ideologues are using "ethnic studies" as a Trojan horse to indoctrinate students in a divisive ideology. The author asserts that state and district policymakers must not permit this enterprise to take root and that merely saying no is not enough; the best defense is a good offense. New…

In this article, we posit a Marxist critique of the way that neoliberal capitalism has thwarted the possibility of comprehensive education. We begin with an explanation of the unique productive capacity of human labour, and the centrality of labour power for capitalism. We go on to show the importance of the education system for continually…

Through the use of horror movie motifs like zombies and mad doctors, "The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" (2015) stands in drastic contrast to other young adult dystopian properties like "The Hunger Games" (2012), for example, in that "Scorch Trials" uses allegory as a means to comment on neoliberalism, alienated…

Foundational to Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was the influence of Marx's theory of historical materialism. Vygotsky's work radically rejected the traditional approaches of developmental psychology. The ZPD centralized the importance of potential development not only by measuring or testing what a child could perform, but a tool to…

Digital distraction has become a prominent concern in the world of education, as evident in the growing trend of banning mobile phones. Since laptops are practically indispensable to contemporary schooling, however, banning these devices remains a rare and controversial response. Far more commonplace is the deployment of classroom rules and…

This piece critically follows David Bakhurst's 2009 article "Reflections on Activity Theory" in light of recent developments in the field. It sketches three directions for further research. First, it examines his identification of "two strands" of activity theory (AT)--the philosophical, which he associates with E.V. Ilyenkov…

The present research study attempts to investigate Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" and "No Longer at Ease" in terms of Gayatri Spivak Marxist-Post colonialist conceptions of subaltern, colonial discourse and false consciousness. In Postmodernist fiction, there is anxiety that historical concerns such as the scale of…

This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci's theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality…

In this interview, Curry Malott and Derek R. Ford discuss their new book, "Marx, Capital, and Education: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Becoming." The interview begins with a general inquiry into their intellectual backgrounds as scholar-activists and, importantly, comrades. The authors then discuss the process of collaborating together…

Part one: This article is the first part of a project concerned with developing a Marxist critical pedagogy that moves beyond a critique of capital and toward a communist future. The article begins with a brief survey of and intervention in the contemporary historical and political moment as it pertains to the potentiality of a communist pedagogy,…

Among the most important questions critical educators can ask today are the following: Can schools play a role in making a more just society possible? If not, why not? If so, what can they do? These questions provide the basis for this article by Michael Apple, as well as for the books under discussion here. The books by David Blacker, John Marsh,…

In the first three sections of this paper we comment on some of the ideas developed in the forum papers, pointing out possible misunderstandings and constructing new explanations that clarify arguments we made in the original article. In the last section we expand the discussion raised in the original paper, elaborating on the limits of the use of…

In the first three sections of this paper we comment on some of the ideas developed in the forum papers, pointing out possible misunderstandings and constructing new explanations that clarify arguments we made in the original article. In the last section we expand the discussion raised in the original paper, elaborating on the limits of the use of…

In this article Paul Warmington examines the dystopian analyses pervading recent work by David Blacker, John Marsh, and Pauline Lipman. Their unsettling depictions of education under late capitalism bear witness to irreversible economic and environmental malaise, the colonization of education by neoliberalism, and the unsustainability of faith in…

In this article Clayton Pierce reviews three books representative of the recent neo-Marxist literature on education: David Blacker's "The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame," John Marsh's Class Dismissed: "Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way out of Inequality," and Pauline Lipman's "The New Political…