TEACHING MARX: THE SOCIALIST CHALLENGE
Announcing a
forthcoming book: Teaching Marx: The
Socialist Challenge
Edited by Curry Stephenson Malott, Mike Cole and John Elmore
To be published
by Information Age Publishing
Critical Construction: Studies in Education and
Society, see: http://www.infoagepub.com/series/critical-constructions
Series Editor:
Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University
“There is
growing disillusionment with a social system where increasing productivity
leads only to increased gaps between rich and poor, where reductions in social
programs (retirement, health care, education) are the chief response an
uninspired political sector can muster, and where non-sustainable exploitation
of the Earth continues undiminished -- in short, as the looming, world-wide
economic crisis draws nearer, the essays in Teaching
Marx: The Socialist Challenge are critical reading. It is time for our
teachers to prepare students not to take their place in an increasingly corrupt
economy, but to bring about the fundamental changes we need to build an
equitable, prosperous, sustainable future” -- Dr. Dennis Vickers, Humanities
Department, College of Menominee Nation, Keshena , Wisconsin
“Teaching Marx: The
Socialist Challenge is an extraordinarily important text at this juncture
of world history. Functioning as more than just another pedagogical weapon to
be used against the ideological structures of death and social
hallucinogenics manufactured by the transnational capitalist class, it is
a book that can provide fecund opportunities for teachers to re-learn how to
put social and economic justice front and center in the agenda for educational
reform by putting Marx front and center, where he belongs” -- Peter McLaren,
Professor, UCLA and author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of
Revolution
“Teaching Marx: The
Socialist Challenge provides a useful starting point for understanding the
origins of today's global crisis of capitalism. Our work in public schools to
encourage respectful dialogues between Indian and non-Indian students about
local conflicts over land ownership, through the TERRA Institute, should
encourage cooperative action to find common interests. This book reminds
us to move those specific discussions to explorations of the causes of
conflicts over land, including the imperatives of global capitalism” -- David
Stanfield, TERRA Institute, www.terrainstitute.org
“As this book so clearly and illustratively points out, the
work of Marx has always served as a critical tool for identifying and scraping
away the residue of commodity relations as a means to an end of revolutionary
purpose, and teaching Marx is therefore keynote to education becoming able to
serve as a tool of liberation and revolution. The reasons for why this is
so are very clear in the book. As its authors successively and in detail
clearly point out, we are ‘educated’ to believe that we live in a meritocracy
where god-given abilities and hard work afford position and reward, and the
work of social institutions like the school play a key part in this. These
institutions, as ideological apparatuses of the State, barrage us with
propaganda and bombard us with ideas inside practices that are designed to
convince us all that at the head of the equation of the constitution of the
social and economic order is the work, skills, ideas, knowledge and commitment
of individual people themselves and that the effort and competences of these
individuals determine social position and the possibilities for economic reward
and even social justice for all.
Put directly and simply, the book shows us how the public
has been hoodwinked by the school and other social institutions to believe in
the ethics of capitalism and its central ideological tenet that the present
social order is natural and in the end inevitable and beneficial for us all.
However, as well as critiquing the work of the school as an instrument of
reproduction, the book also shows how and why the education system could and
should challenge the anti-democratic perspectives that disguise and defend the
current social relations of production and the ideological and material needs
of the capitalist class. It offers that is an educational challenge to the
inevitability and “correctness” of capitalism by showing how its laws can be
made visible to ordinary people so the oppressive power of the capitalist class
can be more correctly identified, challenged and defeated. In this
way the book both poses the question and provides answers concerning what role
education can play in a possible future revolutionary moment: both as a
“true” education as an act of liberation and as a dialectic lens for
critiquing the world in which we live. Used appropriately the book can become a
clear and fundamental ingredient for helping to create the possibilities for a
more egalitarian and socially just world” -- Dennis Beach, University
of Gothenburg , Sweden
“This collection by Malott, Cole and Elmore’s is a very
timely contribution to the current revival of Marxism in education. The authors
engage seriously with the ideas of Marx – from his theory of capitalist crises
to the increasing impoverishment of the working class – and debunk many of the
commonly held myths about Marxism. The compilation of writings provide a
devastating rejoinder to those who believe that we can only make changes within
the present system and show how this crisis has made discussion of socialist
alternatives, in education and society, an urgent necessity. They argue that,
in Marx’s words, the educators need to get educated and find ways – through
their students, through what they teach, and through their political activism –
to feed into wider movements of social change” -- Marnie Holborow, author on
Marxism and Language, Dublin City University, Ireland.
“A spectre
haunts the contemporary capitalist classroom: the ghost of Karl Marx. This
volume explores the implications of opening the classroom door to Marx’s ideas,
theories and outlook on capitalist and post-capitalist life. It does this in an
engaging and thought-provoking manner, providing conceptual foundations and
inspiration for teachers seeking to generate a critical edge and relevance to
classroom activities in the current crisis of capital. Malott, Cole and Elmore
have produced a book desperately needed by teachers, students, teacher-trainers
and administrators in educational institutions dissatisfied with the
apologetics and evasions of mainstream capitalist pedagogy” -- Glenn Rikowski Senior
Lecturer in Education Studies, University of Northampton, UK.
**END**
‘Human Herbs’ – a new
remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs
Posted here by Glenn
Rikowski
All that is Solid for
Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
