Higher education, critical pedagogy, and the challenge of resistance

Abstract

This article argues that the educational force of the wider culture in the age of a raging pandemic, economic populism and authoritarian nationalism has become a force for promoting a fascist politics, a widespread assault on the welfare state, and a hatred of those groups marginalized by race, class, and religion. At stake here is a further assault on civic culture, civic literacy, and the recognition that a democracy cannot exist without informed, engaged, and critical citizens. We argue that educators, especially those working in higher education, need a new language for thinking about how democracy and politics should provide a new way of thinking about the centrality of critical pedagogy to the production of the ideals of democracy, critical agents, economic equality, and social justice. The article concludes by calling for a pedagogy of hope, one infused with a new vision of the future, support for young people who are leading the struggle for economic and social justice, and the widespread adoption of pedagogical practices that will create the agents and the conditions that will enable collective struggles and emancipatory transformative changes.