The Language of Possibility: Henry Giroux's Critical Theory of Education

The Language of Possibility:

Henry Giroux's Critical Theory of Education

Han, Ill-jo

Assistant Professor

Kumoh National University of Technology.

With his relatively recent succeeding writings, Henry A. Giroux has tried to develop a

new critical theory of education, revaluing the recent development in the radical theories

of schooling. There he suggested a new theory of resistance and schooling which

contains an understanding of how power, resistance, and human subject can be central

elements in the struggle for social justice in schools and society. His major theses seem

to be: (1) that both classical and neo-Marxisms are too limited to class and economism

to consider various conflicts in the highly advanced capitalist society, ( 2) that major

social reproduction theories of schooling are inadequate as a foundation for a critical

science of schooling, and (3) that a new theory of resistance is needed that emphasizes

the role of human agency in schooling. Here I exam in each of his major theses with the

purpose of clarifying his ideas of critical pedagogy. To analyze his views is a meaningful

task because Giroux himself is very reluctant to be simplified, and because his theory is

an important turning point in the development of critical discourse of education.

I. Critical Theory and the Death Knell for Marxism

Giroux gets his theoretical foundation from critical theory in social philosophy. For him,

the notion of critical theory has a two-fold meaning, first as "the Frankfurt School" theory,

and second, as a process of ongoing self-conscious critique that does not dogmatically

cling to its own doctrinal assumptions.1) In a sense, the first meaning of the notion is an

example of the second. For we can see a common attempt on the part o f all members

of the Frankfurt School to rethink and radically reconstruct the meaning of human

emancipation, a project that differed considerably from the theoretical baggage of

orthodox Marxism.2) Giroux's favouring for the Frankfurt School and his knelling for

orthodox Marxism are easily understood in this point. Within the theoretical legacy of

critical theorists such as Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, Giroux finds a sustained

attempt to develop a theory and mode of critique that aims at both revealing and

breaking with the existing structures of domination.

For the Frankfurt School, orthodox Marxism assumed too much while simultaneously

ignoring the benefits of self-criticism. It had failed to develop a theory of consciousness

and thus had expelled the human subject from its own theoretical c alculus.3)

If Giroux admits the theoretical legacy of the Frankfurt School, it is certain that his

theoretical orientation will be Hegelian because critical theorists of the Frankfurt School

stress the Hegelian dimension of Marx's thought.4) They refute the 'economistic' model of

Marxism, through which the cultural, ideological, and political 'superstructure ' is seen as

determined by the workings of the economic 'base'. While studies of superstructures,

that is, the development of 'ideology-critique', and the analysis of 'the culture industry'

took on pessimistic overtones because of the failure of revolutionary movements in the

West, and particularly because of the rise of Fascism, Giroux criticizes the disabling

pessimism of radical educators as an arid functionalism.5)

The main reason Giroux sounds the knell for Marxist educational sociology is the

inappropriateness of basic assumptions that characterize Marxism: the primacy of the

economic sphere in shaping society, and the primacy of class as the exclusive referent

for understanding history and dynamics of domination and struggle.6) One consequence,

Giroux argues, has been the devaluing of politics, ideology, and culture in both

theoretical and practical terms. Another problem has centered on the inability of Marxist

theory to free itself from forms of class and historical reductionism.

The point is that Giroux applies this criticism not only to orthodox Marxism but also to the

more recent Marxist development that has produced a critical assessment of the original

theory.7) To this, Liston responds that it is incorrect to claim all classical and revisionist

Marxists share the characteristic s Giroux attacks although he agrees that there are

Marxist writers guilty of one or a combination of Giroux's charges.8) Giroux's

encyclopedic listing of "Who's Who" in Marxist theory, accompanied by quotes from the

works of specific authors, demonstrates that Marxism has indeed dealt with a variety of

topics and issues. Giroux responds that the issue that concerns him most is not whether

or not Marxists have incorporated new ideological concerns in their work and modified

traditional ideological presuppositions, but whether they have done it adequately or to a

degree that makes the core assumptions of Marxism problematic.9) In my understanding,

both men seem to have right reasons for their own assertions but only differ in their way

of seeing the issue. Liston understands that neo-Marxists have incorporated or modified

traditional Marxism, and maintains that this fact must be understood as the extension or

development of traditional Marxism. Giroux's view is that Marxism as a category and

method of inquiry is identified by a set of core assumptions and the core assumptions

characterize the Marxist problematic, and that if we think the notion broadly enough to

include the categories beyond the core assumptions, the very notion of Marxism

becomes meaningless. So it is very likely that there is no area of compromise between

the two.

Giroux's claims that Marxism devalues politics, ideology, and culture, that it falls into a

trap of scientism, an d that it is locked into a two-class mode of analysis become helpful

pivot for Marxist-oriented educational sociologists wishing to overcome traditional

Marxism's theoretical limitations. Giroux identifies the theoretical failures directly related

to overreliance of radical educational theorists on Marxist discourse.10) First, hegemony

as used by radical educators is almost exclusively referred to as class domination. This

leads to simple economic reductionism and class analysis of schooling.11) In most cases

the rationality in question is reduced to the reproduction of class relations. The important

fact that t he conflict over schooling may be informed by other forms of struggle appears

lost in their analysis. This theoretically restricted view of hegemony has resulted in the

failure to grasp race-, gender-, and age-influenced cultural forms. Second, radical

Marxist educators have reduced the concept of ideology to the logic of domination, and

as the result, have failed to grasp its potential to empower specific groups to engage in

social change.12) That is, they have failed to emphasize the critical and emancipatory

side of ideology. Third, radical educators have largely failed to develop an organic

connection either to community people or to critical movements, i.e., oppositional public

spheres. Finally, Marxist discourse has failed to question the role that teachers play

either as organic intellectuals or as political contestants who come out of a specific set of

class, gender, and racial experiences.

All these failures Giroux indicates seem difficult to affirm practically, because his

distinction of Marxists is based simply on their theoretically idealized assumptions from

the start of the argument. Anyway, he requires that the task of radical theory should be

to see Marxism, not as a dogma kept valid for all times under any condition, but as a

critical "way of seeing".13) This reminds us of the Hegelian dialectic.

II. Critical Analysis of Reproduction Theories

In the 1970's, one of the major organizing ideas of socialist theories of schooling has

been Karl Marx's concept of reproduction.14) Radical educators have given this concept a

central place in developing a critique of liberal views of schooling. More over, they have

used it as the theoretical foundation for developing a critical science of education.15) So

far, according to Giroux, the task has been only partially successful. This

incompleteness is the reason why Giroux tries to redirect its way. According to radical

educators' charges, schools came to be portrayed as reproductive in three senses.16)

First, schools provided different classes and social groups with the knowledge and skills

they needed to occupy their respective places in a labor force stratified by class, race,

and gender. Second, schools were seen as reproductive in t he cultural sense,

functioning in part to distribute and legitimate forms of knowledge, values, language, and

modes of style that constitute the dominant culture and its interests. Third, schools were

viewed as part of state apparatus that produced and legitimated the economic and

ideological imperatives that underlie

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