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Science and social justice |
The strange case of Lindsay Shepherd and Laurier University hit the news in 2017. During one class in order to illustrate how gender pronouns have caused controversy, Shepherd, a 23 year old teaching assistant, showed a clip of Canadian Psychology professor Jordan Peterson. The clip was of a TV show in which he discussed his opposition to legally enforced gender pronoun use.
After the class, a student (allegedly) complained about the video and the university launched an enquiry. Shepherd was asked to attend a meeting and was castigated by her employer for showing the video. The conversation, which Shepherd recorded, included this exchange:
Rambukkana: So bringing something like that up in class, not critically, and I understand that you’re trying to-
Shepherd: It was critical. I introduced it critically.
Rambukkana: Howso?
Shepherd: Like I said, it was in the spirit of debate.
Rabukkana: Okay, “In the spirit of debate” is slightly different than “This is a problematic idea that maybe we want to unpack”
Shepherd: But that’s taking sides.
The ‘critical’ schools
- Critical theory
- Critical pedagogy
- Critical discourse analysis
- Critical EAP
- Critical management studies
- Critical sociology
- Critical legal studies
- Critical race theory
- Critical whiteness studies
the role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance. Dominance is defined here as the exercise of social power by elites, institutions or groups, that results in social inequality, including political, cultural, class, ethnic, racial and gender inequality.
an approach to language teaching and learning which, according to Kincheloe (2005), is concerned with transforming relations of power which are oppressive and which lead to the oppression of people. It tries to humanize and empower learners…The major goal of CP, as Vandrick (1994) claims, is to emancipate and educate all people regardless of their gender, class, race, etc
…basically means to be more discerning in recognizing faulty arguments, hasty generalizations, assertions lacking evidence, truth claims based on unreliable authority, ambiguous or obscure concepts, and so forth.
I recently had a couple of papers published. One was titled ‘a critical look at NLP in ELT‘ and the other ‘A critical examination of perceptual learning styles in ELT‘. Both of these papers use ‘critical’ in the sense of something akin to scientific skepticism. Questioning the veracity of claims, asking for evidence to support arguments and evaluating claims. I would guess this is what most people understand ‘critical’ to mean.
In contrast, the ‘critical’ in Critical Pedagogy means something akin to ‘Marxist’. Proponents can be a bit coy about this, but Scholem (in Hammersley) notes that after the Nazi takeover of Germany, Marxists of the Frankfurt school fled to the US, a country not particularly welcoming to Marxism. There they adopted the term ‘critical’ to describe the kind of research they were interested in. Freire’s critical pedagogy is an example of this:
Freire’s philosophy was continuous with what has been euphemistically termed “western” Marxism, which embraces the quest for a sufficient theory of subjectivity identified in the post-war periods with the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt school, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology.” (Aronowitz)
- a concern with power relations in society (oppressed/oppressor dichotomy)
- a concern for a more ‘equal’ society
- a goal to not only criticise society but also to change it (praxis)
- a belief that examining society’s power structures will lead to actual social change
- an anti-capitalist (anti-neoliberal) ethos
- A dialectic approach
Critique of this program […] has tended to centre on the mechanisms of meta-analysis. We consider what Visible Learning puts to work in relation to cultural politics and find it closely aligned with agendas of neoliberalism, sexism and ableism…
That is, they are not going to criticise Hattie for factual errors but rather for having the wrong ideology. The journal in which it is published, ‘discourse studies in the cultural politics of education‘ may just sound like any other journal name but if we examine its scope we note that it:
adopts a broadly critical orientation, but is not tied to any particular ideological, disciplinary or methodological position. It encourages interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of educational theory, policy and practice
it is characteristic of CDA, and of much ‘critical’ work in the social sciences, that its philosophical foundations are simply taken for granted, as if they were unproblematic. This reflects the fact that, in many ways, the term ‘critical’ has become little more than a rallying cry demanding that researchers consider ‘whose side they are on’.”(1997:244)
Freire deals only in vague generalities. Oppression is never clearly defined. Freire concentrates on the oppression of the poor and fails to deal realistically with oppression as it is found at all levels of society. It is a mistake to see only the poor as oppressed and all others as oppressors. (Elias 1976)
If we start from the position that women are part of an oppressed class, then our research will tend to look for examples that support that narrative whereas a fact based approach may tend to throw up problematic data. For instance, a recent trend on twitter was for female PhD holders to affix ‘dr’ in front of their names. This was in response to a viral tweet from ‘Sci Curious’ about how male colleagues were far less likely than female colleagues to correctly address a female colleague. When the researcher actually checked her emails she found no difference.
Widdowson, responding to a critical paper, characterises such approaches as having an ‘epistemological intolerance‘ noting that:
There is here a sort of fundamentalism: a zealous adherence to a way of conceiving of the world based on an unthinking trust in the wisdom of the pronouncements of some guru, sage, or prophet, whether this be Karl Marx or Thomas Aquinas or Ron Hubbard.
The spread of a critical approach
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slides from RadicalKent EAP conference |
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‘White knowledge’ |
There is also a real danger that as critical approaches becomes influential, research which discovers uncomfortable truths will be censored or suppressed. There is evidence that this is already happening (see here and here). Alice Dredger‘s book Galileo’s Middle Finger documents a number of cases of this kind. She argues that Good research has “to put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second”.
I think it’s possible to worry that women or PoC often suffer discrimination without believing that there is a systematic ‘neoliberal’ conspiracy at work to keep them under the boot. It’s also possible to want to improve the world without assigning yourself either oppressor or oppressed status. As Widdowson puts it, “you do not have to be a critical linguist to have a social conscience”.
*It has been pointed out to me that the wording of this is not quite accurate. Freire does seem to talk approvingly of Mao’s China up to 1985 and never walks those comments back, but he doesn’t actually quote Mao in the main body of Ped of Opp.
Great article, and many excellent points, although I think you go a little far in the opposite direction! Isn't the search for truth above all things an ideology in itself and not necessarily the most humane at that? Also I wonder why you put neoliberal in quotation marks;isn't it a well attested economic policy which calls for low regulation, manifest in the ESL in zero hour contracts (at least where I come from) and the ease, unheard if in other professions, with which one can become a teacher? Also it is a coined termed by its advocates rather than its opponents! Nevertheless, a very interesting and thought provoking read as usual
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Hi, Thanks for reading and commenting. :)To answer your questions: I think we get a bit stuck on this \”everything is an ideology\” point. You may be right that the 'search for truth', the 'rationale mindset' the 'logical approach' types (me?) are guilty of being ideological. Where I draw the line is the idea that 'truth' is somehow partial. I believe there is an objective reality and that we can learn about it. Why 'neoliberal' in scare quotes? Well, your next sentence is why 😉 There is in fact an attested economic policy called neo-liberalism, but that's not, I think, often what people mean when they use the term. I think it's poorly defined and often just a 'booo word' for things someone might not like. You don't like tests? Then call them 'neoliberal' and so on. You can see an example of this in the post. Is the book visible learning 'neoliberal' in the sense you describe it? I'm not sure it is. I also think it's just a modern stand in for 'capitalist' now it's become (I think) somewhat unfashionable to rail against capitalism.
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I too believe there is an objective reality and we can learn about it, but I also believe that we can never remove our humanity from the equation…and what could be more human than teaching and learning a language? Truth for us is necessarily partial, if only because the picture is never quite complete, and our minds are limited.Of course, neoliberal is a boo-word in many contexts, and certainly seems dubious in the context you describe re. visible learning (although I haven't read the work in question so I will withhold judgement)…but with very real and visible consequences in its original context, and in ways which certainly affect the industry we work in, and our ability to plumb for the truth. So perhaps, there is a danger in being too critical about being critical, even as there is a danger in being too keen to be critical?Perhaps I have crossed the boundaries of good sense and am scaling the barbed-wired fence of condescension! Perhaps I need more coffee. Anyway, keep up the good work and have a good day sir.
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hahaha thanks for your reply :)It may be we're climbing the walls as it were. ;)I think it's probably sensible to criticise things like zero hours contracts or low pay in some parts of the ELT industry on their own terms. I personally don't find the addition of 'neoliberal' useful or necessary through I'm willing to concede that I might be in a minority here.
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I'm fascinated by the idea that there may be an objective reality out there. Encased as we all are in our own subjectivity, I wonder how we would ever uncover it? Is there any evidence to suspect that it may exist?
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Hi Russ,You obviously didn't read my comment on a previous post of yours regarding the common misreading of Freire, which you repeat (what have you got against Freire?) again saying he was some sort of Maoist foot soldier. I'll repeat what I said then:***You: 'Freire quotes Mao approvingly and writes in the pedagogy of the oppressed of his clearly revolutionary goals. He was a Marxist and in chapter three talks almost exclusively about 'revolutionary leaders' rather than teachers. He rails against \”the capitalist world\”.'Me: Everyone reads 'pedagogy'. This is the *wrong* book for teachers to read IMHO as yes, he veers towards Marxism in that book. But Freire is complicated: his thought contains lots of elements, not just Marxism, but also elements of Christian thought, German idealism etc.The book to read is 'Education for Critical Consciousness' where you'll read the following words which contradict , or at least complicate, the view of Freire as a doctrinaire leftist:'The sectarian, whether rightist or leftist, sets himself up as the proprietor of history, as its sole creator, and the one entitled to set the pace of its movement […] The sectarian wishes the people to be present at the historical process as activists, maneuvered by intoxicating propaganda. They are not supposed to think. Someone else will think for them; and it is as protégés, as children, that the sectarian sees them. Sectarians can never carry out a truly liberating revolution, because they are themselves unfree.' (Freire, 2008: 9)Freire here draws a clear line between radical thought – ie thought that questions things at the root – and sectarian thought from the right or left. That's an important distinction.***Also, there are plenty of books on neoliberalism, including Neoliberalism – The Key Concepts. Surely we can move beyond the lazy dichotomy that neoliberalism a) an all-powerful world-controlling beast, and b) a boo-hoo word for the left. Or move beyond the scare quotes at least.http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/10/24/book-review-neoliberalism-the-key-concepts-by-matthew-eagleton-pierce/You also seem to be having a go at Critical Pedagogy without realising that the 'other critical', that scientific 'critical', has also been taken to extremes. Remember the communities based on BF Skinner's behaviourist principles? They were hardly utopias.
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Hi DOS, I replied to you on twitter 😉
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Hi Paul, We had quite a long (and useful) discussion of this on twitter so I won't rehash it all here. 🙂
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