Critical Democracy Research Articles

CIES Bibliography 2011

CIES Bibliography 2011

Henry Giroux and the Arts

Henry A. Giroux is well known for pushing the definitions of education. From his early forays into what has been termed the ‘New Sociology of Education’ in the early 1980s to his more recent discussions of ‘public pedagogy’, Giroux has methodically challenged existing orthodoxies. This essay will focus on the interdisciplinary broadening of Giroux ‘s work in the early 1990s, especially his scholarship on the arts as it reflects the inclusive thinking that subsequently drove his contributions to critical theory, cultural studies, media, and radical democracy, as well as the field of education. In a period fraught with controversies over the role of teachers and artists in public life, Giroux forged new connections between these two embattled groups. Advancing the common figure of the ‘cultural worker‘ as a facilitator of change, Giroux argued for ’Artists as Teachers' and ‘Teachers as Artists’. This work inspired many in the arts and education, especially those with activist leanings, to see beyond definitions and conventions that had confined or isolated their efforts.

An Ethics of Recognition in Global and Teacher Education: Looking through Queer and Postcolonial Lenses

Global education and teacher education struggle to address a wide range of objectives surrounding curriculum. Some of these objectives are market-driven while others emphasise critical democracy. A theoretical framework is presented that combines literature from queer theory and postcolonial theory to better understand curriculum through a poststructural ethics of recognition. Recognising individuals and groups beyond normalising discourses and creating third spaces are the main themes of this ethics in curriculum work and global teacher education. These interpretations are illustrated with a brief example of a teacher education project that encouraged dialogue about global inequities and colonisation between pre-service teachers in the Philippines and the United States.

What type of global community and citizenship? Tangled discourses of neoliberalism and critical democracy in curriculum and its reform

Countries around the globe are responding to the pressures of globalisation, standardisation, accountability and market rationality. In curriculum reform, we theorise these pressures as neoliberal cosmopolitanism because they are intended to promote a new type of entrepreneurial citizen that navigates an increasingly interconnected global community. However, there is resistance to these pressures by educators who promote a global community based upon principles of critical democracy and multiculturalism. Because public schools are a powerful regulatory force in society, this curriculum struggle between neoliberal and democratic intents is increasingly significant. It is a struggle that defines the size, scope and qualities of our future global community. We used principles of critical discourse analysis to examine brief examples in two countries, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. Our examination illustrates how, although these countries have very different contexts, curriculum often sends competing messages related to neoliberal and democratic intents. Our analysis has implications for curriculum reform and changing understandings of our global community.

Indigenous Education for Critical Democracy: Teacher Approaches and Learning Outcomes in a K-5 Indian Education for All Program

This article focuses on how three dimensions of critical democracy preparation (place-based geographical knowledge, social and political awareness of American Indian history and culture, and orientations conducive to the development of personal connections with American Indians) were impacted by different instructional approaches introduced when implementing an innovative Indian Education for All education program at a K-5 school in Montana. Student-learning outcomes were measured through pre- and post-intervention tests of place-based and social/political knowledge and a short survey of personal orientations. Instructional approaches across first-grade through fifth-grade were identified through interviews and participant observation. In their own ways, participating teachers, working in partnership with Salish tribal educators, demonstrated that Indigenous education contributes to critical-democracy learning. The specific outcomes of the Indigenous-education program varied according to the different instructional approaches teachers elected to pursue. Instructional comparisons showed that combining place-based instruction with guided reflection on personal connections with American Indian people through “boundary-breaking” approaches that aim to bring about critical consciousness ignited the most impressive changes in learners’ orientations. The research findings offer particularly valuable insights for teachers striving for equity and excellence in elementary schools with American Indian populations.

Critical Multiculturalism and Deliberative Democracy

The discredit of multiculturalism in contemporary discussions about cultural diversity and democracy is problematic since allegations of multiculturalism’s failure and undemocratic consequences are used to justify a (re)turn to assimilation throughout Western societies. Rejecting assimilationism as either desirable or inevitable, this article challenges the alleged incompatibility between multiculturalism and democracy. It makes the case for a (re)conceptualisation of both multiculturalism and democracy in ways that can provide the foundations for inclusive communication. To this end, the article endorses, first, a specific kind of multiculturalism, namely, critical multiculturalism. Critical multiculturalism defines culture in structural and relational terms, underscoring the superficiality with which multiculturalism has been deployed in Western societies. Secondly, the article examines the constraints that liberal and republican models of democracy impose on a fair politics of cultural diversity. It argues that, largely due to its communication emphasis, Habermas’s deliberative democracy is particularly receptive to the demands of critical multiculturalism.

Radio and the Art of Resistance: A Public Pedagogy of the Airwaves

The politics of the airwaves should be of vital concern to critical democracy, given the expanding realm of neoliberalism and its deeply homogenizing impact on social, political and economic relations everywhere. In light of the privatizing forces that control the media today, the article considers the manner in which community radio can provide public pedagogical spaces for often marginalized community voices to challenge the official public transcript of social life dictated, more times than not, by the powerful and wealthy leaders who shape public discourse. Here independent radio production is discussed as an important tool for building community relationships and as a viable alternative for supporting civic participation and critical forms of public engagement.

Practicing Critical Democracy: A Perspective from Students

Through the experiences and voices of three high school students, this paper contributes to the conversation about utilizing a critical framework for civics education. Findings reveal that the traditional approach to civics education offers a strong content base, but fails to prepare students to expand notions about “good” citizens who are active participants in the democratic process. A critical approach that values civic participation through deliberation better prepares students to find multiple ways to participate in local, national, and global contexts.

Critical Pragmatism and Deliberative Democracy

Critical Pragmatism and Deliberative Democracy

Education for Critical Democracy and Compassionate Globalization

In reflecting on the dilemmas of globalization, Nicholas Burbules and Carlos Torres ask, “is globalization merely deleterious, or are there positive features associated with its practices and dynamics?” This is certainly a difficult question; globalization is very complex and complicated and there is little consensus on its contours, dimensions, and impact. Among educators, it is largely unexplored. Most of my students and colleagues have little idea about the meaning of globalization, and critical conversations about it are conspicuously absent in prevailing educational reform proposals. Similarly, while some educational philosophers have been writing about globalization, it has not significantly affected how we think about our larger purposes or our field of study. Yet globalization has many negative consequences that ought to trouble us, and even make us rethink our passions and priorities. For example, it is not hard to show that the unfettered expansion of freemarket capitalism, a defining feature of globalization, has made the suffering and social injustice in our world markedly worse. We see growing gaps between the wealthy and the poor, loss of job security, exploitation of workers, privatization of public goods and services, environmental destruction, diminishment of biodiversity, disruption of indigenous cultures, loss of community, increased global homogenization, and ultimately, the almost complete subordination of the developing world to the needs and desires of transnational corporations.

"To remain an Indian": lessons in democracy from a century of Native American education

What might we learn from Native experiences with schools to help us forge a new vision of the democratic ideal - a critical democracy that respects, protects, and promotes diversity and human rights? In this fascinating portrait of American Indian education over the past century, the authors critically evaluate U.S. education policies and practices - from early 20th century federal incarnations of colonial education through the contemporary standards movement. In the process, they reveal the falseness of fears attached to notions of dangerous cultural difference, and convey the promise of diversity as a source of national strength. Featuring the voices and experiences of Native individuals that official history has silenced and pushed aside, this text: proposes a theoretical framework of the safety zone to explain shifts in federal educational policies and practices over the past century; offers lessons learned from Indigenous America's fight to protect and assert educational self-determination; overturns stereotypes of American Indians as one-dimensional learners; argues that the struggle to revitalize and maintain Indigenous languages is a fundamental human right; and, examines the standards movement as the most recent attempt to control the dangerous difference allegedly presented by students of color, poor and working class students, and English language learners in U.S. schools.

Media Education and the Practice of Democracy

They do say that all ideas have their time, and in media education it seems that it is the time for democracy. Books and papers begin to appear and there are conferences with democracy in their titles to replace a focus on the postmodern, or identity. There seems to be a general consensus that democracy is a ‹good thing›. But, as with most other significant terms which hold centre stage for a while, they need to be interrogated with some care. For some more critical educators democracy takes its place alongside Gandhi’s comment when asked about Western Civilisation – he said it would be a good idea. The ‹practice› of democracy takes on a poignant, ironic, desperate or cynical cloak in the light of recent world events and the rise of terrorism as a political weapon. It depends where you stand. Democracy is not something that thrills the hearts and minds of the vast majority of citizens who live in nations who declare themselves to be democratic. Apathy and cynicism work together against democratic growth. But so do governments whose declared democratic aims pay scant attention to the people they are supposed to represent. And then there are the ‹democratic› exercises which supposedly involve the people in a conversation (‹we are listening› they say) which results in the status quo being implemented by politicians with morally superior physiognomies. After all, they say, we did ask your opinions. We did ask you to participate. And so democracy staggers from crisis to disaster...

Commentary: How Media Education can Promote Democracy, Critical Thinking, Health Awareness, and Aesthetic Appreciation in Young People

Media literacy education is at a watershed moment around the world. We are making the inevitable and gradual turn to changing what we do in classrooms to make education more student-centered and responsive to children's and society's real-world needs. In the pages ahead, the author explores the goals of media education and why it is important, how it is developing in the United States in comparison to the rest of the world, and how media education can promote critical thinking, democracy, health, and aesthetic appreciation.

Inventing Geography: Writing as a Social Justice Pedagogy

A critical geographic pedagogy of writing can help students participate in public life by gaining access to the means of knowledge production. Drawing on pedagogical and composition theory, this article analyzes student papers from an introductory-level geography course to show how geography teachers can create assignments that broaden the scope of student agency and expand access to power. This is one way to promote social justice in the classroom because it fosters habits and skills of critical citizenship and participatory democracy instead of passive, consumption-oriented attitudes. Students are better able to position themselves as active members of a community and as agents in the process of critically reshaping knowledge about the world.

From patriotism to critical democracy: shifting discourses of citizenship education in social studies

The state of citizenship education in Australia continues to attract media attention as evidenced by two recent newspaper headlines, Students take apathetic view of democracy and Teach young about democracy. These headlines were reporting on the latest findings of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) on school students understanding of democracy. As a part of a 28‐nation civics survey, the ACER found half of Australian students had no grasp of democracy (ranking them behind countries like Poland, Cyprus and the Slovak Republic); lacked clarity about the Constitution, elections, voting systems or the role of groups like trade unions; were unwilling to engage in politics; and believed politics was relatively unimportant

Platonic EntanglementsThe Odyssey of Political Theory: The Politics of Departure and Return. By Patrick J. Deneen Socratic Citizenship. By Dana Villa Plato's Democratic Entanglements. By S. Sara Monoson The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy. By John R. Wallach Ruling Passion: The Erotics of Statecraft in Platonic Political Philosophy. By Waller R. Newell

Platonic Entanglements<i>The Odyssey of Political Theory: The Politics of Departure and Return</i>. By Patrick J. Deneen <i>Socratic Citizenship</i>. By Dana Villa <i>Plato's Democratic Entanglements</i>. By S. Sara Monoson <i>The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy</i>. By John R. Wallach <i>Ruling Passion: The Erotics of Statecraft in Platonic Political Philosophy</i>. By Waller R. Newell

Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy and Aesthetic Individuality. By Morton Schoolman. New York: Routledge, 2001. 348p. $85.00 cloth, $24.95 paper

Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy and Aesthetic Individuality. By Morton Schoolman. New York: Routledge, 2001. 348p. $85.00 cloth, $24.95 paper

The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy By John R. Wallach. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. 468p. $65.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.

Not only is the practice of a genuinely Platonic political art compatible with a commitment to democracy, but, according to John Wallach's ambitious book, it furnishes a needed critical resource that can help tap the unfulfilled potential of democracy at the present time. Wallach's unconventional thesis emerges from his critical historicism, a method that attempts to carve a mean between the relatively ahistorical readings of Popper, Strauss, Arendt, Derrida, and Rorty (among others) and the radically historicist readings more typical of classicists and ancient historians (pp. 21–23). Whereas the latter tend to subordinate Plato to the historical and political forces of his time, the widely disparate interpretations of the former cohort view him as either “authoritarian” or radically “self-mocking.” In either case, Plato is portrayed as an antagonist to the freedom and equality of democratic life. To release the Platonic political art from the grip of these influential but debilitating interpretations, Wallach seeks to navigate between the ahistorical elevation of theory (logos) and the historicist subordination of theory to practice (ergon), focusing instead on the dissonance of the logos/ergon relation itself.

The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy. John R. Wallach

<i>The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy</i>. John R. Wallach

The platonic political art: a study of critical reason and democracy

The platonic political art: a study of critical reason and democracy