Peter Mclaren

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · Department of Education

As a form of deregulated capitalism that has run amok, commodifying all that is in its path, and as a cultural means of commodifying Black and brown bodies, neoliberalism has taken a serious toll on the lives of working-class queer youth of color. Although it has hijacked spaces of cultural representation and material production, neoliberal capital...

Using the term 'recuperation' from their experiences working alongside activists in the 'occupied factories' of Argentina, the authors illustrate how 'occupied spaces' were transformed into 'recuperated' sites of pedagogical, cultural and artistic production. Focusing on the IMPA factory (Industrias Metalúrgicas y Plásticas Argentina) located in Bu...

This article surveys the recent political scene in the United States, paying particular attention to contradictions embedded in foreign policy and domestic initiatives. Also addressed are educational issues within the context of the struggle for both educational justice and economic justice. The author recounts, as well, some of his recent experien...

For the past several decades, Marxism has had a checkered lineage in the field of educational theory. Drawing on the work of Teresa Ebert, José Carlos Mariátegui, and the Marxist humanist tradition, this article constructs a defense of Marxist theory as the centerpiece for a revitalized revolutionary critical pedagogy.

This essay criticizes the media coverage of the election campaigns of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. It also comments on the limitations facing democracy in capitalist societies.

In this interview, McLaren reflects on different approaches to the field of critical pedagogy and lingers over interpretations derived from the work of Freire, underlining the need to reflect on practice itself in order to find ways which allow oppressed people to become protagonists in history. Likewise, this author states that part of his work is...

ReferencesSuggested Reading

Due to the fact that critical pedagogy constitutes a narrative of universal emancipation (at least those versions that have escaped attempts by postmodernists and neoliberals to domesticate them), critics on both the political left and the right not only have dismissed its politics as yet another example of the colonizing incarnations of the Wester...

In this article, the authors examine Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath on the people of New Orleans from a historical materialist perspective. In their analysis, the authors discuss Katrina in relation to capitalism's overall devastating consequences for the ecosphere as well as the global division of labor and its racialized social relations. Th...

Much of the 'mainstreamed' critical educational work in the United States, along with work in related fields, now appears woefully detached from historical specificities and basic determinations of capitalist society. In this article, McLaren and Jaramillo posit an alternative social vision of what the world should and could look like outside the v...

Participatory Activist Research, most often in collectives or Teams (PART) works axiologically with this notion of doing justice by and for those oppressed by the practices that need changing. This chapter intends to introduce you to action research (AR) broadly and then PART to take up Pat Thomson's suggestion of doing justice. Firstly we describe...

Critical pedagogy problematizes the relationship between education and politics, between sociopolitical relations and pedagogical practices, between the reproduction of dependent hierarchies of power and privilege in the domain of everyday social life and that of classrooms and institutions. In doing so, it advances an agenda for educational transf...

This article has been slightly revised from the introduction and postscript to Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy Against Empire (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). The article challenges the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and ties its recent history of political unilateralism and the War on Terror to the history of...

Yes Yes

Part of the problem faced by the educational Left today Is that even among the most progressive educators there appears to exist an ominous resignation produced by the seeming Inevitability of capital, even as financial institutions expand capacity in inverse proportion to a decline in living standards and job security. It has become an article of...

Four ethnically diverse faculty members in the field of education discuss the professional impact and personal affects of introducing critical themes of race, class, gender, and culture within their research and course offerings. Given that the professional outlook for university faculty of color in general, is grim, a willingness to imbue their re...

In this article, we argue that critical and revolutionary educational praxis is increasingly shaped by and through ecological politics and imaginaries. Indeed, given the pervasiveness of environmental crisis in our everyday lives and vocabularies, we argue that critical educators can no longer ignore questions of ecojustice. In keeping with a growi...

This article explores the dialectical relationship between the Bush administration's domestic policies and its deranged “war on terrorism,” which is being waged on a number of different fronts, for example, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and the United States. The authors argue that the Bush gang is using the external “international crisis” to overri...

This article discusses the political and cultural fallout following the illegal war and occupation of Iraq by the U.S. military and its allies, focusing on the lies, deceptions, and hypocrisy of the Bush Jr. regime and the media.

All across the country, critical educators are fighting on dozens of fronts, searching in both form and content for a coherent pedagogical expression that captures their opposition to what they perceive as major developments of world-historical importance. McLaren et al focus on expanding the concept so that it addresses both the urgency and the sc...

This article investigates the accountability movement in education in order to discover its meaning within contemporary capitalism. It demonstrates how trends in educational accountability reify the consciousness and creativity of students into simple scores and indices according to a logic of commodification, as well as reinforcing white supremaci...

"In light of the horrific inhumanity unleashed by war and global capitalism, Rosa Luxembourg’s famous challenge—socialism or barbarism—has never been more apposite as the world has clearly moved closer to the latter. On Mayday 2003, we must remind ourselves of the importance of solidarity and that the struggle for peace and justice goes hand in han...

The writers criticize the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military and political occupation of the country. They suggest a link between aggressive U.S. military posture and neoliberal globalization and contend that the current situation in Iraq is a metaphor for globalized capitalism across the world. The writers then consider issues surround...

Under the sign of the Stars and Stripes, the war against terrorism unchains the attack dogs of the New World Order in defense of civilization. In the pro- cess, the United States has crossed the threshold of militant authoritarianism and goose-stepped onto the global balcony of neofascism, befouling the Con- stitution along the way. As long as the...

"Michael Apple (this issue) offers a perceptive diagnosis of the new power bloc committed to neo-liberal marketized solutions to educational problems... I could not agree with Apple more that writers in critical pedagogy, in focusing mainly on school organization and classroom techniques(i.e., surveillance and social control), have ignored the most...

Cet article est consacre aux theses de J. McMurtry et a leur impact. L'A. met en lumiere toute la rigueur de l'analyse du systeme cpitaliste par McMurtry, qui en revisitant la doctrine marxiste se pose en penseur et theoricien social du XXIeme siecle

This article mounts a critique of neoliberal policy reforms from a Marxist perspective. Offering a spirited challenge to North American educators who see little if any merit in Marxist educational analysis, the authors maintain that a Marxist analysis of education worldwide is more urgent today than at any other time. The central argument is that M...

Globalization has hurt both developed and developing countries. Capitalism's relations of exploitation can hurt people of color in disabling ways. Discusses the relationships among race, gender, ethnic, and class identities in order to articulate a political framework that moves toward transnational ethnic alliances, abolishing the role of capital...

The globalization of capitalism has exacerbated the continuing reduction of education to a subsector of the economy. In the process, it has brought untold misery to the lives of millions of people through-out the world. Maintaining that critical pedagogy largely remains in the thrall of postmodern the-ory and politics, this article sketches out som...

1Sections of this essay has appeared in the following journals: McLaren, P. & Farahmandpur, R. (2001). Educational Policy and the Socialist Imagination: Revolutionary Citizenship as a Pedagogy of Resistance; Educational Policy, 15(3), 343‐378; McLaren, P. & Farahmandpur, R (2001). Teaching against Globalization and the New Imperialism: Towards a Re...

The authors of this collection, individually and collectively, decry the covert use of various “smoke machines” and “distorted mirrors” to hide important facts and divert attention from elemental issues of violence. Taking a comprehensive critical stance, each author addresses some of the fundamental societal problems underpinning the untenable sit...

As we lean into the gusty winds of the approaching millennium, squaring our shoulders and lowering our heads against an icy unknown, we discover much to our surprise that the future has already arrived; that it has silently imploded into the singularity of the present. We are lost in a crevice in the ‘wrong side’ of history, in a furious calm at th...

"To address this problematic, we offer a discursive intervention, or contraception, which works against the onslaught of violent regimes of signification. One branch of our argument suggests that discursive violence should be seen as a gift that must be canceled with a strategy that challenges its codes. In the following explication, we construct a...

Responds to an article on dichotomies in teacher education (SP 527 128), examining two additional issues: the construction of identity and critical citizenship in a world increasingly under the sway of globalization and in the thrall of commodity culture. Not discussing these issues diminishes the capacity of teacher education to participate in the...

"However, it is not the purpose of this article to map the shifting trajectories of these debates except to note one general question central to the thesis of this paper that has emerged from these debates: Given current structural and conjunctural conditions such as the capitalization of global culture, the privatization of subjectivity, free mark...

A review of Social Cartograpy: Mapping Ways of Seeing Social and Educational Change, edited by Rolland G. Paulson.

The present focus on diversity in multicultural education is often misguided because the struggle for ethnic diversity makes progressive political sense only if it can be accompanied by a sustained analysis of the cultural logics of white supremacy. A real revolutionary multiculturalism must consider the construction of subjectivities within relati...

A Marxist educator argues that democracy, social justice, and identity are radically eroded by modern globalized "hypercapitalism," and that standardization and routinization of culture has had serious, unfortunate consequences for students, teachers, texts, and societies. He proposes that critical pedagogy is one means of addressing this trend. (M...

Whole Issue. Incl. abstracts

The terms "Asian" and "Pacific Islanders" capture diverse historical relationships and a powerful cultural/linguistic diversity. Many Asian-Pacific Americans have succeeded despite monumental prejudices and obstacles, including the "model minority" myth promoted by conservatives to limit affirmative action. Chin's research explores a feminist analy...

Two activist teacher educators discuss the ravages of global capitalism, abandonment of American cities, breakdown of Keynesian economics, dismantling of the welfare state, and resulting dissolution of identities and entire lives. Schools must fight social injustice and racism. Teachers should pursue classroom-based research that investigates the s...

For the proletariat does not need all the thousands of little words by which the bourgeoisie masks class struggles in its own pedagogy. The ‘unprejudiced,’ ‘understanding,’ ‘empathetic’ bourgeoisie practices, the ‘child-loving’ teachers — these we can do without. (Benjamin, 1973: 32)

Contends that the Bush Administration's "America 2000" plan is a political and ideological statement that substitutes the logic of the market for the principles of democracy and ignores the need for multiculturalism in the schools. Provides some general recommendations for educational reform. (30 endnotes) (MLF)

Constructing an arch of social dreaming means developing a politics of difference that actively contests the devaluation of persons relegated as "others." In this connection, features of critical pedagogy, the role it plays in the struggle against current neoconservatism, and the importance of language are considered. (SLD)

The thrust of the most prominent proposals for educational reform in the 1980s has been to make the schools more efficient at servicing the needs of the dominant social order. In the meantime, a backlog of neglected social problems has developed which points up the need for schools to develop the critical faculties of their students. In fact, a wid...

Reviews "Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition" (Giroux, 1983), "Education and Power" (Apple, 1982), and "Education under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal and Radical Debate over Schooling" (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1985). Works illuminate relationship between schools, arena of culture, and economy; and enable educators to...

It's interesting…to see again how systematic or formal education, in spite of its importance, cannot really be the lever for the transformation of society…The problems of school are deeply rooted in the global conditions of society, perhaps the problems of discipline and alienation above all…I was thinking for example, of how a teacher working seve...

L a extensa, compleja y original obra de Paulo Freire (1921-1997) representa uno de los ejemplos más emblemáticos del enfoque crítico en educación. En nuestro artículo nos vamos a limitar a presentar los rasgos principales del enfoque de Freire, destacando, en particular, su concepción de la crítica. Para los lectores que se sientan estimulados a c...