Chapter 4: Marx, Teacher Education, And The Corporate University

—P. Freire

If Freire’s statement is used to frame an analysis of the current state of education within the United States, one baleful truth clearly emerges; mis-education resulting in oppression defines the schooling experience of the vast majority of American youth. This is not a natural phenomena, it is a necessary circumstance dictated by advanced capitalism. Developing the criticality to recognize, and the agency to challenge, systems of political, cultural, and economic domination have always been pre-requisites to creating a society in which human freedom is fully realized, but such an agenda seems especially necessary in a society where the bottom 40% of the population (120 million people) owns just 0.3% of the wealth and the average net worth of the richest 1% has doubled (to $18.5 million) since 1982 (Domhoff, 2012). To teach for liberation is to teach students to see these inequities and, more importantly, to comprehend the social, political, and economic systems that generate them. Put directly, for education to exist as a critical pathway to liberation students must be provided with the opportunity to critique the anti-democratic hegemony that is produced by capitalism. Without this capacity, schools are surely to produce yet another generation of citizens that willfully march into the corporate slaughter house with nothing to defend themselves but the look of pleased ignorance upon their faces; mindless geese simply awaiting the plucking. Only when teachers are equipped and inspired to fully realize the transformative power of education, by engaging students in the realities of their own lives, can liberation truly take place. Given this circumstance, the constant effort by the Bourgeoisie to de-professionalize teachers, vocationalize the school curricula, and destroy public education through various neoliberal privitization schemes, should come as no surprise. Exposing future teachers to the work of Karl Marx has never been more critical.