Our educational system is in turmoil. Many would argue that it has been assaulted and oversimplified by the right. There is growing concern that we are becoming a liberal nation-state with an increasingly anti-liberal population and an electorate that is disinterested in politics. In this globalized world, the power of capital is so great that opposition to it is often discouraged and disheartened, leaving many citizens few political precepts by which to consider their institutions. This contemporary failure of vision has opened the way for the unimpeded return of the philosophy of the free market. As a result, social and educational policies are debated almost solely in terms of how they fit with the needs of the market. Social and ethical understandings are replaced by a failed economic theory that requires a radical constraint of our political and economic choices. Compassion for the poor, the market lets us know, is wrong-headed because any interference with the labor market will always result in unfortunate economic and social consequences. Moral issues are eclipsed by market needs. In Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? the contributors discuss how the field of critical pedagogy should respond to such dire conditions in a way that is theoretically savvy and visionary, while concurrently contributing to the struggle to improve the lives of those most hurt by them. Critical Pedagogy is essential reading for every classroom teacher and pre-service teacher. It is also a valuable tool for use in undergraduate and graduate-level classrooms.
"Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? is, without a doubt, an impressive volume given the daring challenge of its contributing authors to the perverse reality of the world that mines the ontological directions of men and of women—a perversity shaped by the neoliberal thinking and the globalization of the economy. Each of the authors in this volume write from different perspectives as they follow closely or recreate the critical pedagogy proposed by Paulo Freire. The contributors courageously denounce the condemnation to a life of hopelessness that has been ruining peoples and nations—a hopelessness that negates the concretization of a possible utopia of a better and more just world—a hopelessness that destroys without clemency or compassion the greatest riches of human existence leading them to question: where are we now? Like Paulo Freire, they propose that we recapture and safeguard the greatest patrimony that justifies and gives meaning to life itself: our humanity." Ana Maria Araújo Freire
