In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Henry Giroux discusses the challenges facing education in an increasingly polarized political aspect. He argues that the pandemic has intensified the focus on instrumental rationality and the politics of disposability, undermining the civic and democratic role of education. Henry also emphasizes the need for educators to foster a "pedagogy of resistance" that empowers students to challenge oppression, reclaim imagination, and build a more just future.
**Note. This episode featuring Dr. Henry Giroux was co-produced with the Global Transformative Education Network.
In this insightful episode of Conversations4Citizenship, we had the honor of engaging with Dr. Henry Giroux, a distinguished scholar in critical pedagogy. Dr. Giroux, who holds the prestigious position of Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at McMaster University, shared his profound thoughts on a range of topics concerning education, democracy, and resistance.
Dr. Giroux began by discussing the politicization of the pandemic and its impact on education, emphasizing the need to recognize and name the problems that have intensified, such as the instrumental rationality and politics of disposability. He highlighted the importance of understanding education's democratic imperatives and the challenges posed by the pandemic, including the casualization of faculty and the alignment of education with corporate values over civic virtues.
The conversation then shifted to the concept of space in education, where Dr. Giroux elaborated on the need for classrooms to be places of courage, safety, and shared values. He stressed the importance of translating knowledge into action that connects private troubles with larger social issues.
Dr. Giroux also addressed the role of hope versus despair in education, arguing that despair is a form of depoliticization that educators must challenge by fostering a sense of agency and possibility in students.
The discussion touched upon resistance education, the impact of political and economic conditions on the ability to resist, and the importance of collective action and social movements in empowering individuals to become politically engaged.
Dr. Giroux critiqued the ideology of Trumpism, describing it as a form of upgraded fascism that threatens democracy through its promotion of whiteness, Christian nationalism, and educational terror.
The episode concluded with Dr. Giroux's thoughts on the privatization of education, the importance of public education for democracy, and the need to invest in children and the future. He also shared insights into his current work on the burden of conscience and the dangers of reducing all activities to commercial interests.
This episode is hosted by Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong. Please subscribe to the podcast through Apple, Google, Spotify, or Amazon Music. You may also follow @c4c_ed on Twitter. We look forward to hearing your feedback. If you would like to explore participating in our podcast and submit your blog post to the C4C, do not hesitate to reach out through the online participation form or email us at conversations4citizenship@gmail.com
Stella Micheong Cheong 00:05
Hello everyone, and participants from around the world, it is my honor to introduce Prof. Henry Giroux, for today's Q&A session. Dr. Giroux holds the prestigious position of Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and is the Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University in Canada. An internationally renowned writer, cultural critic, and one of the most cited Canadian academics in the Humanities, Dr. Giroux has dedicated his career to exploring the intersections between society, culture, and education. His work critically examines how media and public pedagogy shape democratic values, youth culture, and the politics of resistance in contemporary society. Dr. Giroux's prolific contributions include authoring or co-authoring over 65 books and numerous scholarly articles, where he passionately advocates for the role of education in empowering individuals and fostering a democratic society that values social justice and human rights.
Today, we will dig deeper his recent work, "Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance," which offers a critical examination of the current educational and political landscape. This text examines how right-wing educational forces, embodied in Trumpism and other neo-fascist ideologies, threaten historical memory, critical agency and the prospects for an emancipatory democracy. Dr Giroux argues for a "pedagogy of resistance" in diverse educational sites that would empower the public to challenge oppression, reclaim the radical imagination and build a more just, equitable and sustainable future.
Before we begin, I kindly ask you all to turn off your screens except when you are asking a question, focusing on audio will help save bandwidth and ensure a smoother experience for everyone. Thank you for your cooperation, and without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Henry Giroux. Good morning, Henry. How are you doing?
Henry Giroux 02:47
Good morning, Stella.
Stella Micheong Cheong 02:49
Thank you so much for joining us. Alright everyone, shall we jump in? I'm gonna start us off if you prefer, I'm really interested in your thoughts or your reflections on pandemic. So, the pandemic, though not intended to be political, as undeniably politicise every aspect of quarantine, from vaccine to border closures. in even the most established democratic societies, this trend seems to be leading to intensified political polarisation during post pandemic with ‘us vs them’ mentality gaining traction, (as observed by Karl Schmidt). In this context, given your work on pedagogy of resistance, I'd love to hear your thought on how educators like us can implement this approach within our classroom and in our students daily lives, for instance, informal education or non-formal education, to counteract the so-called politics of hate or political polarisation.
Henry Giroux 04:05
Well, I mean, it seems to me that the first thing you have to do is you have to name the problem. And I think in many ways, what we've seen in the last four or five years is an intensification of a kind of instrumental rationality and a politics of disposability that has become suddenly more intensive. I mean, I think that, you know, one of the things that we've lost visa vie the pandemic, is what the purpose of education is really about in terms of its democratic imperatives. I mean, it seems to me that we now talk about zoom. Now, all we talk about now, sort of, you know, what is it what does it mean to link education to the workforce, I mean, the culture of positivism but had been so powerful in many ways, undermining the civic virtues and the civic nature of education has become so intensified in light of an emergency, which is defined as a medical problem. but it's also an ideological and political problem by virtue of who's affected, who has access to resources to deal with it, how education intervenes in some way to name that relationship in ways that exposed the contradictions of, of democracy within an ongoing, what I would call as authoritarian climate. So that's the first issue. And the second issue is, to what degree has it imposed a kind of learned helplessness on both faculty and students? And I think in many ways, it's intensified. The notion of faculty is simply a casual labour force, I mean, with the pandemic came a rethinking and re intensification of in my in my estimation of modes of governance that are highly neoliberal, in that the law aligned to increasingly with corporate values, and increasingly take away positions from faculty that give them any control over the over their own labour, whether it means intensifying the casualisation of faculty, and limiting tenure jobs. And increasingly redefining what tenure is and how you get it, and how it becomes professionalised. Aligning it more with grants and corporate interests than with civic virtues and with scholarship that reaches out to the public. So I think all of those things matter in terms of making visible and institutions that increasingly no longer serves that democratic imperative. And now, given the history of the last few years, has increasingly become more concentrated in the hands of relatively few people and aligned with an ethos that is more oriented towards capitalist values and it is towards democratic values.
Stella Micheong Cheong 06:45
You're right, Henry. Naming the problem is crucial. The pandemic definitely intensified this focus on instrumentalization, pushing civic values aside. I agree – more than ever, educators need the autonomy to foster those civic values in students, helping them engage citizenship in a complex world. Thank you for brilliant response. Okay, Piers.
Piers von Berg 06:45
Professor Giroux, could I please ask you about your use of the word space and the idea of space in your book. You mentioned in the introductory chapter, about how pedagogy is a struggle over public and private spaces. And sorry, just to introduce myself, I work at in the city of Birmingham in the UK, I work in an inner-city university where the majority of our students come from low income and ethnic minority backgrounds. And so I tried to use critical pedagogy in my teaching, I wish to use forum theatre and image theatre as ways in which students can and can raise the critical consciousness of students. But my question is, it's whilst I can do that in the classroom, I find that there's a struggle for the space with my with my colleagues, that is the space that you're referring to, perhaps also, our relationships with our colleagues trying to rediscover a sense of collective critical consciousness amongst us as faculty, as well as the critical consciousness that we're working on with our students. And that's that gap. That's my question. Thank you very much.
Henry Giroux 08:14
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Piers. It's a great question. I mean, it seems to me when I talk about space in the book, it takes on a number of registers, right? I mean, at one level, as space becomes increasingly privatised, it becomes more difficult to talk about it as a social phenomenon, that in some way raises fundamental questions about shared values working together. And, and thinking about schools as public goods. Secondly, it seems to me that space in the classroom should be a place that's both courageous and safe. Meaning it should be a place where people are allowed to ask questions and be accountable for the questions that they ask, and in some ways, be able to learn to take up the knowledge that they have, and to be able to translate that knowledge in ways that link private troubles with larger social considerations. So I think this notion of space is a place of translation. A place that moves beyond the self and allows people to, in some way believe that all problems are not simply individual problems, is really a fundamental question that needs to be addressed, particularly since your space is increasingly individualised. It's increasingly privatised and increasingly narrowed, so that even bodies are not occupying those spaces anymore. I mean, they're spaces that are increasingly being invaded by a technology that seems to suggest that that we work alone, you know, and that surveillance maybe is become the only thing that matters in that space. And that space is really geared towards commercial relationships and not towards shared values and shared understandings. The other the other question is, how do we create a space for students in which it seems to me They're not labouring under a kind of intensive need to simply survive. I mean, in what way? Does the school provide adequate resources, not just in terms of access, but in terms of being able to be healthy, to not be hungry, to have wherever they need assistance in terms of the skills that they're learning to provide those resources for people? Where does where are the spaces, but faculty to come together collectively, and rather than to be cut off in our classrooms or visa vie off computers? And not really be able to understand that what we do is a collective endeavour and not just simply an individual endeavour? How do we redefine the notion of professionalism and get it away from this increasing instrumentalism? That seems to suggest that we have no relationships with each other, our only relationship is basically with with forms of governance, that seemed to suggest that we don't really count that much anymore. So I think the space it's the question of space is a place of security is a place of courage. It's a place of shared values as a physical space that matters as a space that's constantly one that we struggle over in some way to align it with the most democratic values that matter. And especially critical pedagogy matters. I mean, a space where we recognise that what's at stake in that space, is basically the production of not just simply knowledge, often very selected, to say the very least, rather than production of agency, the production the struggle over who counts what identities look like, what does it mean to be a citizen? What does it mean to relate to each other? What does it mean to understand history? Well, what does it mean in some fundamental way, to basically engage in the kind of shared values that allow us to recognise that we have to address the world in ways that interconnect us aligned with questions of social justice, equality and freedom?
Stella Micheong Cheong 11:59
Okay. Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for your answer and Piers, thank you for your question. And Susan, do you have any question?
Susan Gollifer 12:12
Hi, can you hear me? Yes, yes. Okay. Hi, thank you very much. My name is Sue Gollifer, and I'm travelling at the moment. So I'm not going to put on my camera. But I just wanted to say that I think that you know, a lot of the issues that that you're addressing, and the questions that have been asked before, are really important to all of us as educators. And this this notion of space. For me, it's a place of security is interesting, because not everyone feels safe at the same time, in the same space. And I'm working on a paper at the moment that is looking at the role of human rights, education, and what that can play in the current global and local crisis that seems to characterise lived realities. And I at one point in the book, you refer to Arendt as saying the aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions, but to destroy the capacity to for many, and I was relating this to my experience of designing a course, at the School of Education, University of Iceland that and it aims to encourage students to engage with social and ecological concerns using a human rights frame. And, of course, that includes the contentions and the contradictions of human rights and AI. And it made me think reading that, that I suppose we also have to be careful not to destroy the capacity among students to develop moral and political convictions that challenge totalitarian education because of the despair that can develop when discussing injustice and despair that can also generate into complacency. And I know you talk about Freddie's pedagogy of hope, not as an antidote, but as a warning to unleash imagination. And I wonder if you could just, perhaps expand on this from the perspective of an educator, the role of Hope versus the role of despair, and how that impacts on our work as educators?
Henry Giroux 14:11
I think, in many ways, you know, we have to take up the question of despair as an eminently educational and political issue. I mean, despair is really a form of this deep politicisation because it seems to suggest that the future is nothing more than something that mimics the present. And there basically is no hope. There's no alternative but the systems in which we find ourselves sort of anchored in a notion of common sense that suggests that there's no point in even questioning the intellectual, ethical and political foundations that support them. But I think that without hope, there's no sense of agency and without agency, there's no sense of hope. So, I think that when we make despair, unconvincing and unsettling, and we questioned the possibility He's for reimagining a different world in which we live, something profound often happens to students. I mean, it seems to me that when they can figure out and without help, in some way that they not only need to understand the world, but they can make a difference in the world. And that what their voices matter and their voices matter, not just individually, but collectively, and that there are instances historically, and there are instances in the contemporary world around the struggle for human rights and justice, in which we see models of people doing this. And I think that, you know, when we can do this bridging work, we can enable students in some way to make connections between their own lives and every, you know, in the world in which they find themselves. I think that that's enormously important. Sorry about that. So yeah, so I think that I don't think that pedagogy can just simply be a language or critique, I think it also has to be a language of possibility. And I think that we have to provide students with options in some way to see beyond the current set of arrangements, the unsettled, so to speak, and to speak in ways that suggest that not only does hope matter, but that they're the the engines of hope, if I can, the agents of hope, and that we sit, we've seen it throughout. We've seen it. We've seen it throughout history. And we and it's something that we need to address.
Stella Micheong Cheong 16:30
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do agree. And then, thank you for your answer, Henry, and next Raxona, do you want to ask?
Raxona Khanum 16:43
Thank you so much, and welcome. Dr. Giroux, it's really great to hear from you. An only because I doubt I'm definitely engaging in Resistance Education of some sorts, whether I've been in myself, or because I love to teach my students about it. But there's two aspects of resistance, which is what I wanted to ask you about today that I have wondered about, and I'm worried about. And also because I'm a parent of a young child, female who I'm thinking about, you know, every time she's on social media, how much political thought and independence independent thought Is she really getting from any of this stuff. So while there's an educators parents, I'd be interested to know what you think about this, sort of the term resistance that we'll be working with. You know, we're working with the word term resistant as we all want, resist, but I'm somewhat aware of the fact that people don't always want to resist, and they choose not to resist. And that is something that I see students doing all the time. They don't want to take the course, for example, that encourages independent thought they want to take the ones that have given them more money. So how do we think about and deal with? Not with students and staff avoiding resistance as a choice? How do we deal with that? And my second question is almost related to that. It's related to what people said, And so today, but I'm yeah, I'm excited. I teach at Birmingham City University as well with peers. So my question is also related to some of the students that we teach over law, social backgrounds, and also myself I was that resistance can sometimes come from I know, you will disagree with this, but can also, especially with nowadays, the cost of education, and the inflation and the cost of everything, to be honest, who can afford resistance anymore? Isn't it easier to just follow the follow the line to the to the job, just as you said, it's about selfish thinking of people looking out for themselves? I absolutely think that that's part of it. But can people afford to resist anymore? Is it not that they don't want to, but they can't, they simply can't afford to resist. But thank you very much for answering my questions. Thank you.
Henry Giroux 19:01
Let me see if I can unravel this. I mean, it seems to me that, you know, one of the challenges that we face as educators is to basically deal with students who in some way have internalised forms of oppression, that are fundamentally at odds, not just what it means to live in a democracy be informed, that taken seriously in the struggle over it, but really don't have a language that in some way is capable of challenging that. And I think that one of the things that we do as educators and we need to do as educators is offer students a different kind of language, a language that's critical, a language that respects the histories that they come from a language that's contextual, a language that in some fundamental way, deals with deal with different set of values and convinces them that not only do they have some control might have some control over the conditions that bear down on their lives, but that it's imperative to do so. I mean, I think that we often have to, I think we often find ourselves dealing with narratives that in some way, both touch young people, and at the same time, challenge them. Get them to think in ways that are unsettling. Get them to think in ways that push against the grain that expand the possibilities of the radical imagination. That's the pedagogical challenge that we deal with. I don't think that we should be deterred by the fact that students come in and have no interest in resistance whatsoever. I think our challenge is to basically unsettle that assumption, and do everything we can to make it clear that by not challenging those, the world in which they find themselves that there are cost. And those costs are inequality, their poverty, their, you know, destruction of civic culture, a world that basically is marked by massive inequities, and that they don't have to be that way, that these are social, historical constructions, these are political constructions, and that in some way they need to be addressed. So I, for me, it's often it's not a question of challenging their identities, it's a question of challenging the common sense assumptions that drive their lives. And generally I find, they don't have a language to do that. And when they're introduced to languages that unsettled them, that introduced them, we introduced them to language that are critical languages that touch their lives, languages in which they can identify themselves, and in some way, expand beyond the assumptions that they have. That's the pedagogical challenge, and seems to me. And we can do that in a variety of ways through different forms of literature, by using film, by getting them to write and become accountable for the consequences of the assertions that they make, that there's a whole range of things that obviously can be done. I think the other issue is, is equally important. And I think that simply, I think there are two things. And for me, it's organised around the question of time, you know, time can be a luxury or it can be a deprivation. And I think that people who are struggling to survive, often don't have a lot of time, in some ways to be politically engaged. And I think that raises a political question that goes beyond the question of character, to say the least. And that is, you can't have simply political rights and individual rights without economic rights, that people need to be able to eat, that they're certainly they need to be able to have adequate health care, they need to be able to live in decent places to live. And without those, you don't have a democracy. And you have certain people who now disappeared, they disappeared in the language of deprivation, they just disappear in the language of inequality. They disappear in the language of poverty. So we're not just talking about individuals who basically, you know, labouring under a politics of survival, and really don't have time for politics. We're talking about a politics that deliberately shapes conditions in ways that de politicise them so they aren't affected. So there's a logic question there that we need to begin with. And that is, how do you deal with inequality? How do you provide the forces and the conditions in which people can recognise that they've been written out of the narratives of democracy, the other side of this is that there are people who suffer or a deprivation, who still are political and who do find strength, and communities and communities of resistance, who do find strength with social movements that are addressing what they do, whether it's the Black Lives Matter movement, or movements for economic sustainability, or movements against capitalism. I mean, what we need to convince people who are in those positions is they're not alone. And that they don't have to deal with this problem is simply an individual problem. That basically there are collectives out there that are working religious, political, economic, that are doing everything they can to provide the conditions so enable people to become actively and engage political citizens.
Stella Micheong Cheong 24:03
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's good. Thank you so much, Henry, for brilliant answer and I also, I always struggle to handle students' narrative. This is really important issue. I think so. And Adam, do you have question?
Adam Peter Lang 24:23
I do. Thank you very much, Henry. And greetings from West London. Well, it's quite sunny, but very windy. I just wanted to ask you, I'm just trying to get my Yeah, I just wanted to ask you. It's very interesting what you say about education and pedagogy. I just want to ask you a little bit about structures. That's a work of it with somebody called Dr. Jordi Collet Sabé and Professor Steven Ball and they basically say that they think that school and universities are particularly schools are harmful to young people, and they say they've not changed in over 200 years. As you know, hospitals have, but schools haven't basically operated in the way in which they've done for many, many years. And that's basically saying that that's not good enough. And therefore, we need to look at what you're talking about the space that's provided, but we look at pedagogy but actually go back to the drawing board and, and basically replace schools. They don't come up with an argument yet as to what that is to be. But I think it's quite interesting. It's slightly different from the sort of parallel for de schooling society. It's a war for odium approach to things. I just wondered what you thought about the structures of universities and schools, and whether they are capable of responding to the challenges that you put before them? Or they're not?
Henry Giroux 25:43
I mean, I don't think it's possible to talk about education outside of a larger set of socio-economic and political considerations. I mean, you know, schools basically reproduce capitalist citizens. That's all it was authoritarian citizens in different countries. I don't think that schools are basically by default sites of democracy. But I also think the sites of struggle, and I don't think that education simply takes place in schools. I don't want to under, under emphasising anywhere, the structural nature of education in terms of understanding it within larger social, political, and economic formations, but I do have trouble. And I've always had trouble with the notion that schools are nothing more than sites of moral and political reproduction. I think that's an argument for the spirit. And I think it also is an argument that basically under underestimates the possibility of resistance within those schools, I don't think education is going to change the forms of domination that we find ourselves, but I think it can raise the consciousness of people can play a role in doing that. So it seems to me I don't want to underestimate the role of schools as agents of within particular social formations and the reproductive work that they do. But I also want to mock the fact that they are sites of struggle, and I don't want to turn away from them. I don't think that by labelling them as simply agents of domination, that we should turn them over to the right, or should we should turn them over to the Neo Nazis, or should we should turn them over to the white supremacist? I mean, I think they're very important institutions that I need, I think we need to understand that without being pollyannish, essentially, about what they do. Because it seems to me when we do that, we're not going to be able to understand that if you really want to change and move towards a more democratic socialist society. It's not just about changing schools. It's about a massive social reform, a reformulation of social change itself, as opposed to reform ism, you know, I don't want to reform the system, I want to change the system. But I think that schools occupy one place. I think there's another issue here. And I think the other issue is, we need to be enormously careful about equating power simply with domination, I think the left often has a tendency to do that. I mean, boy, Joe was better on this, you know, he was quite clear that intellectuals have to recognise that in the, in many ways, forms of domination, not only economic, but they're also you know, as he said, you know, they're also intellectual and pedagogical in Lyon, on the terrain of persuasion and engagement. And I think that, you know, culture matters, and education is central to politics. And I think the left, in many ways has failed around that issue. I don't think they've seen education is central to politics, I think they've been so absorbed with structures, particularly economic structures, that they have failed to realise that the right actually took over that terrain, you know, rather than very, very systematically, as, as we all know. And I think we need to really rethink the role of neoliberalism as an educational force, for instance, and not just simply as an economic force, we need to rethink the role of schools as something other than prisons, as places that basically produce particular kinds of narratives and shaped particular identities in particular forms of agency. So I think your question is really important. And I and I, and again, it's not and I'm sure you agree, I think you agree. So I meant to say schools are simply we can ignore them as structures. I think we have to define them as more than that. And, you know, whether we're talking about ideological state apparatuses, or we're talking about what Seawright Mills talked about, in terms of the importance of cultural apparatuses, but we need to really figure out how they link and articulate with other cultural apparatuses, that, particularly the social media, and ways in which forms of agency are being shaped that, for instance, can believe in the United States 45 million people believe the election was stolen. I mean, you know, you're not going to understand that simply to structures, right. But at the same time, you can't ignore the structures of power that basically are in charge of these cultural educational apparatuses.
Adam Peter Lang 29:55
Thank you very much. That's very interesting response. Great. I haven't actually had time to read your book. But I will get back to looking at that now, in the light of what you said. Thank you very much indeed, Henry.
Henry Giroux 30:07
Sure. Thanks, Adam.
Stella Micheong Cheong 30:08
Thank you. Henry and Adam. That's really great question. And then okay, Piers,
Piers von Berg 30:18
Jump in if there's no other questions. Henry, could I ask you about positionality. So there was, in one of the later chapters of your book, you acknowledged how Paulo Freire acknowledged his own errors around the language that he used and Pedagogy of the Oppressed around feminism. And I know that some of the critics of critical pedagogy have said that often, the critical pedagogy we're using in the classroom can actually simply just be a reflection of ourselves in some way. Now, I don't think that's necessarily a limitation. But what I wanted to ask you is that, again, from my own context, I'm often the only person who is white, middle aged, often male in my classrooms. And I'm struggling to try and have empathy with my students who come from very different backgrounds, both in terms of class, race, and their own family histories and Heritage's. Given the context that you set out so persuasively at the start of the book, how can we as teachers, try and make those bridges that you talked about, to try and understand more the backgrounds that our students come from when they quite simply live in different parts of the city to me, and, and I just see them in the classroom, they're not around for extracurricular work, because they're back doing jobs, or they've got carrying responsibilities, or they're not allowed to leave the neighborhoods? I think you understand my, my concerns, and any advice or ideas would be very welcome. Thank you.
Henry Giroux 31:55
I mean, I it's an important question. And I think it goes to the heart, in some ways of what Paulo has talked about, and I tried to talk about for the last 40 years. And that is the question of context. You know, and the question of history. And I think that, you know, in this book, as I've said, in a number of books, you know, for me, there's the question of how do you make something meaningful to make it critical to make a transformative, and I think that to make it meaningful, you have to understand where students come from, we have to understand something about their lives, something about the communities that inform who they are, they wear those attributes, right? I mean, their cultural capital matters, but we live in institutions, that often says, particularly for working class, Black, Brown students, immigrants, I mean, we say that culture doesn't matter. And that we sort of just without being so conscious about this, about our own privileges, and how they work in the classroom, and how they inform the histories in which we find the institutions in which we find ourselves. We seem to think that students basically that difference doesn't matter. That context doesn't matter, that history doesn't matter. And so I do everything I can to try to relate to those students in ways that take into consideration who they are. And you know, what their history is about what their, what their concerns are, you know, and what ideas they had, what they, how they know it for me, there are two or three issues here. One is, how do you address the fact that for many students, questions of difference translate into a question and making them voiceless? How do you allow them to be able to narrate themselves as Edward Saeed once said, you know, what, what stories do they have to tell? So that they can assert their agency outside of the politics of deficits? Right, what does it mean to be black and three working class and to be a woman? I mean, what does it mean to enter into a discussion in a particular way that might challenge the dominant narratives of the classroom with the school? What opportunities? Do we open up for that? In what ways do we suddenly plug into the problems that young people are facing in different ways in which they're being written out of the scripted democracy? How do we address that? I mean, I think that the greatest crime is not being so conscious about simply our own privileges. I think the greatest crime is to treat pedagogy as a methodology and not as a project. One that's contextual, one that has to be concerned with the voices that people bring to the classroom, one that has to be concerned with different relations of power, one that has to be concerned with encouraging notions of agency and using material that relates to people's lives, and giving them the opportunity to respond to that material so that those differences become clear, within a space that's courageous and safe. I mean, I have students in my classroom, you know, they have the right to page papers in different groups at different points in the semester, and everybody reads So, then we come in, and we date we, they talk about them, and then we talk about them. And it's so it seems to be that what I'm concerned about with these students is providing them with a space in which they can in some way assert who they are, without any fear of being dehumanised humiliated. You know, you know, I have, for me, I tell them a story about my own life, right. I mean, you know, as a working class kid, and all of a sudden, I found myself in a middle class culture, in which I didn't know the language. And I saw my deficits in ways in which they define me. And I had to flip the script, you have to flip the script. I mean, eventually, I saw this stretches that deficits, you know, in my neighborhood, we touch each other, we talk, we lived in communities, there was a notion of solidarity. They weren't deficits at all, they were strengths. And I think that what we what I talk about with my students is the ways in which the deficits that are dominant cultural often projects become so normalised that we internalise them without thinking about them and how unjust that is. And I think, at least for me, it seems to work. Because I'm very sensitive, not just sensitive about what I bring to the classroom, because I make clear what I bring to the classroom. I'm more concerned about who's listening, you know, and who's being given the opportunity to challenge what's being said, in ways in which their own sense of agency is nourished, and becomes empowered.
Stella Micheong Cheong 36:34
Wow. Yeah, that's good. That's really good. And following up... Okay. Reem, do we have any question?
Reem Ben Giaber 36:45
Yes, sorry. Can you hear me or see me? I don't know if (Yeah, we can see, I can see you.) Okay. Hi, very nice to hear you speak Dr. Giroux, very little bit starstruck as well. But I'll try to make some sense. So yeah, I mean, I guess I'm interested in the, in this idea of something that Piers mentioned earlier, this idea of space. And something that I've been reading a lot in John Dewey's the public, and its problems, which is this idea of community. And for it to be effective to really actually be a physical concept like space in our community being a physical or neighborhood kind of idea, rather than, you know, which is very often how we see space or community. Now, especially in the internet, that we might connect across borders, and across contexts and across things. And we just focus on maybe an issue that we all care about, but it is diluted, like in terms of what we can do. Because when it is so thin, I suppose the community, it's hard to imagine how we can act. So you know, how we can act in this physical space? So and maybe that's also connected to the idea of what a school is, or what a school there was, was it? Peter Adams, sorry, earlier was talking about, you know, if schools are aural, like a place where it's only the reproductive of the current the status quo? Or? Or is it also a place where you can kind of, you know, it's an embodied community, and really, obviously, and then you can just act within that. So I guess my question is, especially when there are these crises across the world right now, and some of them are global crises, like the climate and also things that are happening in Palestine, Israel right now. But you know, and you want to act, but you are here, you're not there. And globally, you're here, not everywhere in the ether, like, how do you do that? How do you? How do you act within? I mean, is basically, is it always going to be back to the neighborhood? Or are we just really supposed to start buckling down into our own little spaces?
Henry Giroux 39:08
I, for me, at least, you know, I think that what you're touching on, which I think is very, very important, is really about not just simply what do we called the eclipse of the public, right? And how dangerous that is, in particularly in terms of creating totalitarian forms of terrorism. But it's about the death of the social. And, and when I talk about the death of the Social, I'm talking about, particularly a system that does everything it can to basically destroy the social and destroy public goods and destroy those spaces where people can get together. So we're not just talking about some kind of abstraction, we're spacing out now is sort of elongated over the over the digital networks. We're talking about actual places like healthcare communities, community support that are being destroyed under the under the aegis of a form of neoliberal capitalism that wants to privatise everything, everything. Secondly, it not only wants to privatise everything, it wants to elevate self-interests to a national interest. So this ideology is really pernicious. Thirdly, it wants to suggest that all problems are private problems. So with the notion of individualism is so strangulated today, that it simply becomes a foot soldier, ideologically, in the elimination of public goods, and the language of public goods and the language of the social. And it seems to me we need to confront that head on. It's not just that we're not simply embodied anymore, in ways in which, you know, we can actually see each other in a space where communities felt community has to be felt, right? I mean, and I don't want to underplay in some way, you know, the possibilities of the internet. But I also want to make it clear that in some ways, it really has accentuated the death of the social, you know, a like is not a community. That's for sure. And, and it seems that we have to ask ourselves, why is community so dangerous that? Why is it dangerous? What is it about the power of interconnections that threatened ruling elites? Why is there a war being waged on public goods, and more fundamentally, who benefits from this? Well, with the staggering inequality we see everywhere, with the attempt to destroy every public institution that matters, who benefits is basically a ruling financial elite. I don't want to sound rude about that. But at the same time, that's the reality. And so that's your question about the neighborhood is really part of a logic question. And that is, how important is the social? How important? Is it to happen to connections? How is it? What is it to believe that the mall is not the most important public good, where people can meet? Or Starbucks, you know, where are the institutions that promote that notion of solidarity? And how does it trickle down into communities, so that we can see it at every, every political level? We can, in some way gauge its importance. This is an enormously political question for me an educational question. I mean, I think this notion of strangulating individualism, the elevation of self-interest to, you know, to our godlike phenomena, the elimination of public goods, this goes right at the heart of what it means to destroy democracy. You destroy solidarity, you destroy public goods, you individually individualise all problems, and you lose the possibility of not only translation, connecting smaller issues to larger social considerations, but you kill the spaces of dialogue, and you feel the spaces of community.
Stella Micheong Cheong 43:05
Thank you so much Henry and Reem. And then yeah, I agree the community is really important. At the same time, it's quite dangerous situation these days. I have another question about the concept Trumpism, is not about your own concept that Trumpism but as a foreigner, and I really wonder about the exact meaning of Trumpism. Why is important? Or why is it significantly important, that Trumpism in the field of education?
Henry Giroux 43:43
It's important because it basically it's an ideology that once was sort of on the margins of society, but now is at the centre of power. And that is it's an ideology of whiteness, Christian nationalism, white supremacy. And it seems to me an ideology of educational terror and censorship. And I name it Trump isn't not to suggest that it began and will end with Trump. But the suggestion that Trump has brought to the surface of American society, a legacy of oppression, particularly racial oppression, that had been sort of subdued, but now it's become a badge of honour. I mean, now what we see with the collapse of neoliberalism, and its inability to, you know, raise people up, provide social mobility, distribute wealth. It's an alternative to fascism. It blames blacks, it blames immigrants, you know, it blames women. It is views freedom as being detached from social responsibility. It undermines the space of the social. So it seems to me that what I'm trying to make clear, is that what it's not my term, as you suggested, but it's an upgraded form of fascism, that we need to record United's for which Trump has become an organising a centre, so to speak. And we see particularly what the in the in the United States where we see it globally. I mean, we see it happening with Modi. With Hindu nationalism, we see it in Hungary, where, you know, Hungary has now become a model for not allowing what he calls mixed races, Orban. We see it in it, we saw it in Brazil, until the recent election, we see it in Italy. But in the United States, I particularly focus on the United States, because the United States, it provides a form of legitimation that then is taken up internationally, in ways that we haven't seen before. So Trumpism really is a way of trying to understand historically, the emergence of this new Neo fascism, and in some ways, trying to look at the ways in which it impacts not just simply, educationally, but a whole range of institutions.
Stella Micheong Cheong 46:01
Oh, yes, yeah. Thank you so much. And, Wendy, do you have any question?
Wendy Hughes 46:10
Well, yes, I'm particularly interested in what's happening in Ontario, in terms of privatisation in schools, and I don't mean, just the more private schools, which there seem to be in urban centres, but also specialised programmes in public schools, and fee-based enrichment and extracurricular programmes in, in public schools. And I've been struggling to figure out how to confront this in my, in my own work, and I've settled on, or I've been looking at the idea of interculturalism, as a way to try to confront it by saying, you know, there's, instead of looking at your kid and thinking, What can I do in terms of getting them to the most elite school and, and the best university and so on this kind of private, individual capital that you're talking about? And replacing it with this idea that what education should be all about is getting along with others? And can we focus on those intercultural ideal deals? Can we measure them? Can we put more emphasis on those outcomes in schools, as opposed to, you know, how well you do in STEM research or, you know, English language, test scores, whatever, by shifting the focus on what we're measuring? And I'm wondering what you think about that, and how you think it's best to challenge this individual narrative?
Henry Giroux 48:18
I think it goes back to the question of what schools are for. And I think that schools are not about simply embracing the self interest in particular children. I think that schools if they're going to be seen as democratic institutions, cannot be seen as social sorting machines. And I think that when we talk about how programmes are now being emerging, that allegedly benefit the brightest and the best, these are often class and racially determined. I mean, this is part of a hidden curriculum that's been going on for a long time. And it's a hidden curriculum that basically says that schools are not basically for the public good. They're basically for the privileges of those who have the money to enhance the education of particular children. So I think you need to confront this head on. This is about a question of Paul. And it's about a question of vision. And I think the degree to which we ignore those two things is a breach of which we really don't have the language to address how schools under those circumstances are not democratic institutions and social sorting institutions. And in social sorting institutions, they renege on the possibility of what a public education should be. And I think we need to be reminded that you can't have a democratic public education when you have structures of inequality built into the educational system itself, that often privileged, very privileged students, or talk about elitism in ways to suggest that the vast majority of students are incapable of those kinds of programmes and that we should basically settle for that. There's nothing democratic about that that's been going on for a long time. But I think it needs to be made visible in terms of its anti-democratic tendency. sees in terms of the way it reneged on schooling as a public good, and the way in which it in it in shrines and solidifies certain notions of stratification that a terribly anti-democratic, in many ways, and basically are always on the side of private education. I mean, this is a form of privatisation that takes place within the public educational system, just as charter schools, basically, in some ways, speak to that issue, you know, only certain students can really benefit. And let's create the structures that make that possible. It creates modes of stratification all along the school from staff, the faculty who they teach from students who has access. Again, it's a social sorting machine. And it's often in many ways motivated by questions of racial and class and social discrimination. And I think we need to, we need to make it visible, and we need to name it as such.
Stella Micheong Cheong 51:02
Thank you so much, Henry. Thank you, Wendy, for your question. And we only have time for one or two questions, then I will. Yeah, I will need to wrap up this session with Henry. Piers and Kamille, Piers, you're first.
Bruno Botelho Costa (Piers reads on behalf of Bruno) 51:25
This is a question from Bruno Botelho Costa from Brazil is listening in on my WhatsApp because he couldn't link in Brazil, we are facing a severe shortage of teachers, low wages, overloaded classrooms, lack of books, computers, and libraries. All that has been identified as strong reasons for a real need for four times more teachers than the current number by 2030, according to national statistics, but the questions that you point to ideologically and culturally speaking, may all play a role. What do you think on this? And thank you for being with us from Bruno. Thank you very much.
Henry Giroux 52:05
It's an important question, because it's really about investments. And it seems to me that young people in neoliberal societies are seen as a short-term investment and a long term investment. And what that means is that the societies and what willing to put money into the military, and into a whole range of issues that have very little to do with public goods, and those public goods suffer. And I think that what we're talking about here is the way in which public schools’ public education is being defunded. Purposely. And I really need to stress that. I mean, the right wants public schools to fail, because they don't believe in public schools. They call them government schools; they call them Marxist schools. They call them socialist because it goes on and on. All you have to do is listen to the nonsense that comes out of the right in the United States. But you also hear that in Brazil and other places, and I, and I think that what we're talking about is a question of priorities, in terms of how resources and wealth are going to be used in a society, and how we measure democracy and society. One way of measuring it is to measure it by the way in which we invest in our children and invest in the future. And so what we're seeing with schools being underfunded with a lack of teachers, the lack of resources, is really a very deliberate systemic attempt to destroy public schools and to say they're failing and to privatise them. So I think this issue, as it's been articulated in that question, is descriptive. It's not analytical. That's the problem. But yes, there's a problem. No teachers, not enough, no resources. But the real issue here is political. The real issue is what are the forces that are contributing to this? And how do we address it? How do we talk about the need for funding public? How do we talk about the attack on schools in ways that link it directly to what he's talking about? That that needs to be said? And that needs to be understood if we're going to fight the problem? Thank you. I mean, there's one more issue I'm sorry, the other the other. The other issue is that, and this is very important, and I don't want to underplay the importance of that question. And that is, we need to convince people that school’s matter for democracy. That means we need to convince people that it's not about simply your children. It's about all children, and it's about society in general. So we need to get away from this question of personal interest where people might say, I don't want to pay taxes because my kids don't go to school. Well, you don't have informed young people, you don't have a democracy. So what's at stake here is much larger than simply sum the lack of resources. What's at stake here is a destruction of public education and its vitality to a strong and vibrant democracy itself.
Stella Micheong Cheong 55:02
Thank you so much. Yeah, I believe we need to convince people to cultivate informed citizens. Okay, Kamilla,
Kamille Beye 55:10
Thank you so much for your presentation. I am just loving everything that you're saying. So I have a question regarding education and international spaces. And so I'm thinking about, at least my work in Liberia, particularly. And I want to know, what do you think about Global South nations who are trying to examine the colonial relationship with education? Like, how do they support? How do we support the unlearning of the certain Western ideologies when we have like NGOs, going in presenting scripted curriculum or taking over large sections of an education system, and obviously, administering Western, particularly American education. So this whole idea of talking about a death of the social, I feel like it's happening in mass with American NGOs, pushing American education into the spaces as they try to re-embrace their own cultural and ethnic beauty in their learning systems? Just want to know what your thoughts were on that?
Henry Giroux 56:10
Well, I think it's an enormously important question, because it not only calls for a history that makes colonialism visible, but it also calls for a history that makes visible how colonialism is impacted through education itself. So it seems to me to make that visible is the first step in being able to say, hey, look, there's nothing neutral about this. It operates on a set of values that are enormously Western, in some ways, in the worst sense. And that, how do we begin to talk about education emerging from the communities in which education is invested? How do we do that? And how do we both incorporate elements of other forms of education, while at the same time creating narratives and modes of education that speak to our own histories, our interest, and a notion of national and global inequality? So it, it seems to me, there's two things going on here. One is, in what way? Does that form of education, you've mentioned colonial education, further contribute to enormous inequalities in wealth, power and knowledge that now mark the world we live in? And secondly, what does it mean to talk about the creation of international bodies of education, in the service of the public good, for which an awareness of colonial education absolutely becomes a central feature of that most bet movement? Thank you. Sure. You bet.
Stella Micheong Cheong 57:36
In conclusion, honestly, Henry I have to tell you, I blew my mind. Thank you so much for incredibly insightful presentation, your all arguments, I love your all arguments and also the terms in this book. So would you like to share with us a little bit about what you are currently working on? Or is there anything you'd like to mention that we have not covered?
Henry Giroux 58:12
No, no. I mean, I, first of all, I'm honoured. I mean, I, you know, we're, we're all in this together, right? You know, it isn't a matter of some waters, knowing more than others. It's a matter of all of us trying to figure out collectively, you know, how we can make education central the politics itself, because it's really at the heart of what it means to create an educational system worldwide, that in some way operates in the interest of democracy, there's no question. I mean, this is a really difficult struggle. And you know, the end of humanity, it may be crucial to whether or not humanity comes to an end soon. And so I don't want to underplay in any way, the urgency of the struggle, but I also want to emphasise the collective nature of it, and the need to cross boundaries and be border crossers, in order to deal with it. This is an international problem. It's not simply a problem that's rooted in different ways in particular countries. In terms of my own work, I mean, I'm writing a book and finishing it up on the question of conscience, the burden of conscience. And I think that we've lived in a system for too long, that starts with something very dangerous. And what it starts with is that economic activity and all activities can be removed from social cost, that matters, the social responsibility no longer matter, that everything has to be reduced to the metrics of commercialism and exchange and profit. And I think that basically is one of the most poisonous ideologies that exists because it becomes a legitimating fact if we're not looking at so many of the injustices that it causes, and what we need to do to basically address those injustices. So, you know, there goes my summer. So, yeah, okay. Listen, thank you. First of all, thank you very much for the questions. They were all wonderful. And I always learned something from this. So I think that doing it collectively always matters.
Stella Micheong Cheong 1:00:12
All right. Well, thank you so much. And Piers, I hand over to you.
Piers von Berg 1:00:17
Thank you again, Henry. And just at the very end of our talk, please may I share this detail about our next upcoming event, where we will be exploring the questions from today in much more detail, with Bruno joining us from Brazil, Maria from Canada, Ricardo from Germany and Rowena from London, but also drawing on her work in the Philippines. It will be on Monday, the 13th of May at 3pm. That's British summertime. And we'll send around an email with a link. And if you have any questions, please contribute to them to the Google Form. Thank you.
Henry Giroux 1:00:52
Alright. Bye. Bye, everybody.
Stella Micheong Cheong 1:00:53
Thanks again for your time. Have a lovely day, Henry.
Henry Giroux 1:00:53
Okay, Stella. Thank you. Bye bye.
Stella Micheong Cheong 1:00:53
I’m closing the episode. I am Stella. thanks for listening to Conversations4Citizenship. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe Conversations 4 Citizenship. And look for us on Twitter @c4c_ed (conversations4citizenship). A transcript of today’s Q&A session with Dr. Henry Giroux can be found www. conversations4citizenship.com. This episode featuring Dr. Giroux was co-produced with the Global Transformative Education Network. Thank you all. Take good care! Bye.