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British Journal of Educational

Studies
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On Critical Pedagogy. By Henry

A. Giroux
a
Gary Clemitshaw
a
University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam
University
Published online: 13 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Gary Clemitshaw (2012) On Critical Pedagogy. By

Henry A. Giroux, British Journal of Educational Studies, 60:3, 278-280, DOI:
10.1080/00071005.2012.714542

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2012.714542

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 278 REVIEWS
work on teachers’ lives, in that it enables the reader to get a sense of how each teacher’s
identity and the values and attitudes they bring to their practice have been shaped by their
wider experiences. What these stories highlight is how art teachers all have a relationship
with art itself and that this relationship shapes how they see their practice as teachers of
art. Moreover, this relationship can also be seen to impact on their personal lives. In addi-
tion, these teachers have all been on their own personal journey which has shaped their
views about themselves, and their identity as an artist and as an art teacher; key features
of this personal journey involve what they learnt about the nature of art and teaching art
from their own experiences of being taught art and their initial training and early career
experiences of teaching art. What is evident is that all these teachers had to discover their
own personal framework for their practice as an art teacher, and the narratives presented in
this book provide a rich account of key events and insights in their journeys which shaped
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their practice.
In considering pedagogical implications, Hickman highlights several key points. These
centre around the inherent nature of the creative processes that underpin art education,
and that fostering and releasing pupils’ creativity of itself imposes a style of teaching that
is more collaborative. At times, references are made by Hickman to the type of relation-
ship art teachers develop with their pupils, in which notions of caring and empowering
appear to be particularly important. I must add here that it is surely no accident that projects
based around art education feature so numerously and widely as part of schemes aimed at
re-engaging disaffected youth in their education and supporting troubled pupils who require
sympathetic and therapeutic care.
This is a fascinating book that will not only be of great interest to those involved in
art education, but also to those more generally interested in how teachers’ life journeys
towards becoming a teacher and their subsequent views of their professional role impact on
the nature and success of their own practice as a teacher.

University of York CHRIS KYRIACOU

© 2012, Chris Kyriacou
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2012.714540

On Critical Pedagogy. By Henry A. Giroux. Pp 183. London: Continuum. 2011. ISBN

978-1-4411-1622-2 (pbk).

This book represents a re-articulation of the work of a prolific writer who has argued the
case for critical pedagogy since the 1970s. The argument for critical pedagogy owes much
to Paul Freire, and this book acts as a brief introduction to his work and significance. Critical
pedagogy also draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci in its analysis of power and culture,
tracing its influence on education in its broadest sense. Critical pedagogy insists that edu-
cation should be considered within the context of power and the dominant interests that
power represents. It calls on progressive educationalists to pursue a practice which exposes
these interests and empowers learners to think critically, to act as critical citizens, to make
a commitment to social action so as to promote social justice and freedom and to embrace
the vision of a global democracy. The book offers a critique of contemporary neo-liberal
society and its pernicious effects on education, primarily within the context of the USA,
but which has applicability in other national contexts, not least England and the wider UK.
 REVIEWS 279
It is divided into four initial sections: the first (chapter 1) contextualises the tradition
of critical pedagogy in contemporary conditions, criticising the neo-liberal forces of
privatisation, commodification and consumerism. These produce a common-sense of anti-
democratic forces which restrict the public consideration through education of justice,
equality and freedom, reducing teaching to a transmission model serving a culture of
conformity. This dissolves education’s opportunity to be a democratic public sphere. The
second (chapters 2 to 4) considers pedagogy within a damaging culture of positivism, mov-
ing to consider what Gramsci offers for a conception of the hegemonic cultural challenge
that critical pedagogy faces and explores a definition of legitimate teacher authority within
the tradition of critical pedagogy. The second part closes with an attempt to integrate the
materialist and post-modern critiques of neo-liberalism. The third (chapters 5 and 6) offers
an analysis of the development of what Giroux terms the government of youth through ‘the
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logic of punishment, surveillance and carceral control’ (p. 91), presenting a dystopian eval-
uation of US governance described as the merging of the ‘market state with the punishing
state’ (p. 90). This section ends with a call for higher education intellectuals to resist the cor-
poratist transformation of universities so as to ‘reclaim education as an ethical and political
response to the demise of democratic public life’ (p. 100). The fourth section (chapters 7
and 8) counter-poses neo-liberal influences on education with Paul Freire’s contribution
to critical pedagogy which, let us be reminded, calls for education to serve the practice of
freedom. A final fifth section (chapter 9) is a republication of an interview with Giroux first
published in 2006.
The prose is polemical and powerful and as such resembles a political manifesto for
critical pedagogy and for democracy threatened by neo-liberalism. In this polemic one
might criticise the book’s tendency to repetition, but more fundamental reservations might
consider how far the text tends towards caricature or utopianism. Whilst its analysis and
evaluation of the neo-liberal influences on education, democracy and the public sphere
has meaningful resonance, especially in the midst of the current economic turmoil and the
destruction of the material conditions of vast populations in the name of the economic order,
one might question whether the processes at work which secured the neo-liberal transfor-
mation were as conspiratorial and monolithic as suggested. The empirical references to
wealth inequality, educational failure and youth incarceration rates are undoubtedly mean-
ingful and demanding of concern, criticism and political action. But one might also consider
whether the period before the ascent of neo-liberalism, a historical reference point for much
of the argument, was actually so secure and established in its commitments to democratic
public benefits. Could this sense of progressive energy and commitment be more thinly
based on a very brief, but still marginal, flourishing of radical educational politics from the
mid-60s to the early 70s?
The thrust of this manifesto for critical pedagogy is for a conception of progress and
emancipation based on struggle. This might miss a more subtle analysis of the contingent
play of power, domination and subordination and their instabilities in contemporary condi-
tions. We are all, critical pedagogy might suggest, duped and exploited by ‘the seriousness
of government deception’ (p. 136), apart, that is, from the critical pedagogy vanguard.
We need a ‘project to theorize the (opposing) regulatory and emancipatory relationships . . .
[of] . . . public pedagogy’ (p. 137), but, perhaps, the identification of points of agency and
even resistance requires a less binary and a more nuanced analysis. Whilst Giroux makes
gestures to Derrida’s concept of ‘democracy that is to come’ (p. 76), he is impatient with
theorists who should ‘distinguish professional caution from political cowardice and recog-
nize that their obligations extend beyond deconstructing texts’ (p. 148). This might be seen
 280 REVIEWS
as a less than sufficient attempt to integrate into critical pedagogy the full implications of
post-structuralist ideas and their rejection of notions of universal truth and morality, notions
claimed from a position of exile deemed virtuous by critical pedagogy.

University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University GARY CLEMITSHAW

© 2012, Gary Clemitshaw
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2012.714542

Education in South-East Asia. Edited by Colin Brock and Lorraine Pe Symaco. Pp 348.
Oxford: Symposium Books. 2011. ISBN 9781873927564.

It is always good to see collections such as this one bringing together descriptions and
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analyses of diverse education systems in an important region of the world. As the Editors
point out, all the countries represented in this book, apart from Timore-Leste, are members
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This is an interesting regional
bloc containing countries on every level of the 2011 Human Development Index ranging
from Very High (Singapore, Brunei), to High (Malaysia), Medium (Thailand, Philippines,
Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) and Low (Myanmar). This diversity of development
contexts provides a good basis for comparison.
Added to these country studies there are five thematic chapters that examine gen-
der, higher education, language policies, quality assurance and sustainable development
across the region. The stated rationale for these is ‘to highlight issues that are of regional
significance’ (p. 9).
In terms of the country studies there is not a single template but each author focuses on
issues of relevance and importance to the particular context. As expected, the focus differs
somewhat and to some extent this can be explained by the development issues that are most
salient. Singapore and Malaysia, for example, are focused on human capital development
for the knowledge economy while Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar still struggle with partici-
pation rates and infrastructure. These differences are important to understand in a region of
the world that is characterised by diversity rather than uniformity. The religious and philo-
sophical influences alone – Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism – also highlight the diversity
of the region that is often masked by the geographical concept of ‘Asia’. Indeed, reading
these chapters it becomes clear that despite influences such as globalisation each country
context is unique and responds to particular local issues as it seeks to provide education for
its citizens.
As instructive as the cases are in this collection they are also somewhat dated, with
2007 representing the most recent reporting date in most chapters. There is now a second
wave of educational reform in many Asian countries including Singapore, Thailand and
Brunei and in places such as Vietnam there is now a significant emphasis on higher edu-
cation reform. This suggests that the landscape of education in the region is fast changing
and, while this book makes a contribution to better understanding, it already needs to be
updated.
Finally, while the cases and the themes are interesting in themselves it would have been
good to have seen a final chapter attempting a cross-case analysis to distil the essential fea-
tures of regional efforts in education. In particular, such an analysis can provide insights
that transcend the cases themselves. For example, what are the common features of educa-
tional provision in the region, how important are cultural values in this provision and what