On Critical Pedagogy

Alongside Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux is widely considered to be the founding father of critical pedagogy. This classic work represents his best writing on critical pedagogy spanning the past 40 years. The 2nd edition includes four new chapters covering the rise of fascist culture in America and across the globe and the dictatorship of ignorance in the age of Trump and post-truth.This impassioned work opens by discussing critical pedagogy in schools before extending the notion to the educational force of culture, politics, and society. Giroux analyses the increasingly empirical orientation of teaching, focusing on the culture of positivism and examines some of the major economic, social, and political forces undermining the promise of democratic schooling in both public and higher education. He argues against the tendency by both right wing and neo-liberal interests to reduce schooling to training, and students merely to customers. He points to the increasing attack on pubic and higher education by right-wing populists and the Trump administration in an age of growing authoritarianism. Giroux also considers the legacy of Freire and issues a fundamental challenge to educators, public intellectuals, and others who believe in the promise of radical democracy.

“Represents a re-articulation of the work of a prolific writer who has argued the case for critical pedagogy since the 1970s.”

It is impossible to do justice to Giroux’s tremendous work … Take hold of the book, feel the weight of its historical reckoning in your hands … then venture into the depths of the human condition and the need for an educated escape. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies
Highly recommended for all pedagogues who are keen to counter the negativities of neoliberal ideologies in educational sites and practices by guiding their students towards criticality and alterative futures. Sadia Habib, Goldsmiths University, UK (of the first edition)
[Giroux] is one of the foremost scholars of critical pedagogy. Angelo Letizia, Notre Dame University of Maryland, USA
Gary Clemitshaw, University of Sheffield, UK (of the first edition)
In the midst of growing authoritarianism worldwide, Giroux’s On Critical Pedagogy, pushes fiercely against the encrusted walls of a hegemonic culture of education that brutally imprisons the minds, bodies, and hearts of students, at all levels of the educational enterprise. Utilizing the language of critique, he eloquently counters efforts to undermine critical pedagogy and, in so doing, powerfully reinscribes the fundamental significance of education to any democratic vision of schooling and society. ANTONIA DARDER, Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics and Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University, USA

Henry A. Giroux is University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University, Canada. He is the author or co-author of 67 books including The Terror of the Unforeseen (2019), The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism (2018) and Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (2021).

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