176] Mind schooling race

Mind schooling race

Azly Rahman | Jul 28, 08 12:02pm

MCPX "To evolve into wiser individuals with enquiring minds, we must ask questions and reflect upon the answers suggested to us. If we are afraid to ask questions, our mind and consciousness will be owned and manipulated by those who think they have the right answers, or by those who wants to use force to tell us what the right answers shall be." – My thoughts on the nature of learning "I currently firmly believe that education should first be a dialectical and dialogical tool to mediate and resolve the contradictions between Existentialism and Cyberneticism, and of Cultures of Disabilities, ...and next be a Deconstructive-Reconstructivist tool and social force to engineer personal and social revolutions and progress towards the realisation of a personal republic of virtue, ethics, multiculturalism, and metaphysics; so that human beings endowed with the Natural Rights to be free may collectively become educated to rise above hegemony, domination, and oppression and in the final analysis, journey towards a Pastoral and Natural self ." - My personal philosophy of teaching I have some ideas on how we can evolve out of this current political quagmire and focus our attention to an ever-pressing national question: how best to educate the children of our nation. We need to have the states governed by Pakatan Rakyat to experiment with a new paradigm of educational reform. To showcase what "human capital revolution", "education across the life span" and "education for creative and critical consciousness" means. Not only to showcase one but to have a continuous improvement plan that uses data-driven and sociologically reflective techniques to engineer, nurture, and sustain such changes until education becomes the only means to educate the child to become a thinking, feeling, and reflecting human being skilled to live in harmony with people of different races and consistently exploring the power to transform the self. In other words, we need to interrogate our educational practices and see if indeed the one that is engineered by the current regime of Barisan Nasional is effective. We can embark upon a longitudinal comparative study – which states will progress better with a different set of idea of what education ought to be. The Yellow states of Pakatan Rakyat and the Blue states of Barisan Nasional can each be given five years to showcase improvement. We need to give them only these concepts to work on: "nature of the human beings", "nature of the human mind", "nature of learning and teaching", "nature of change", "nature of intellectual freedom", "nurture of human intelligence", "nurture of multiculturalism", and "nurture of class consciousness". Game on Let educational philosophers and planners and practitioners form each camp design their long-term strategies and pull together their experts and their resources. The ultimate goal after five years is to do this: which states will have the least drop-outs, least at-risk youths, least youths incarcerated, most globally-minded, most employable graduates, and more intelligent, more world-wise, and more emphatic leaders in society. Which states would have the best teachers with the best teaching skills and strategies, most engaged students, most creative classroom, most frequent integration of project-based learning strategies, most innovative assessment strategies, most inquisitive students, happiest learners, most-mentally resilient and gung-ho graduates, and most internationally-recognized awards? Which states would still have the most unmotivated teachers, most vandalised schools, most neglected students, most number of daily truancy cases, most absent teachers, most stratified schools districts, most wasted class periods, most under-funded schools, most number of tuition classes, most frequent interference of politicians who do not have any business interrupting schools, most mentally lethargic learners, and most unmotivated and unskilled graduates who still need to be coached during job interviews? That would be a good experiment in human and social transformation. We need an independent body of researchers to report on the state of educational improvement in these two set of states – the Yellow and the Blue states. The winner of the game will get to take over the entire operation of the Ministry of Education as well as the Ministry of Higher Education. The winner will get to set up another ministry – The Ministry of Human Intelligence, fashioned after Venezuela's, to look into education in the most comprehensive sense of its definition. We need benchmarks of success; those that would reflect national and international standards of excellence, equity, and empathy in education. These standards need to be met cumulatively and progressively, pegged meaningfully and authentically to SMART national and international standards. Point-of-no-return The current state of education in Malaysia, after fifty years of independence, lacks the excellence and the rigour, the political will to recognise equity and equal opportunity, and lack of empathy in looking at the class divisions forming in the process of schooling. It is slow in restructuring society based on the alleviation of poverty regardless of race. It has failed in its commitment to instill the spirit of Muhibbah; a concept the current government had asked children to sing to in the early 1970s. It is in fact using more sophisticated ways to divide and rule society so that the hegemony of race-based politics will continue to become a status quo. We are at a critical stage of "point-of-no-return" in education; our conveyor belt of nationalistic-tribalistic education philosophy guised under the name of "educational progress", is going haywire, sending our batch-processed children off tangent in this Rostowian ideology of educational progress. What a waste of talent and human capital. Instead of turning them into lotuses of learners that bloom, we are making them bricks in the wall. But first things first, as Steven Covey would say. Let us first commission a new study of drop-out/keciciran, using good qualitative and quantitative data next and find strategies to deal with it. Our nation is actually in danger of a major human development crisis, compounded by the current oil and food crisis. The revolution of March 8 needs a new means to sustain a good idea for human development and social change. It has the potential of political, cultural, and educational renewal. We Malaysians must all rise beyond the current pre-September 16 national-political crisis that is imploding and exploding multi-directionally against the backdrop of a world that is perpetually in crisis. Winning children But this proposed game of Yellow-Blue educational reform is not about creating and projecting an image alone. It is about our fear for our children's future. It is about our passion in education and how one can learn from educational practices worldwide. I believe talents are wasted. There are solutions that this current regime has not yet discovered. Our goal is to see children of ALL races progress. That's what any religion and humanistic philosophy teaches. Whatever success one's own children have achieved, that success formula MUST be applied to the children of others, especially of the poor. That's what a good philosophy of education should mean to us. We cannot discriminate any child; at all levels of his/her development. The mind is too precious to be under the control of the ignorant, the arrogant, and the xenophobic. Perhaps the state of Selangor as the most progressive state can show us the way forward in education; and the fruits of success shared with others. It can even be a hub for top notch and quality education that will link its institutions with top notch programs, institutes, and colleges worldwide. Perhaps this state can be spearhead the radical reform and see an intellectually sustainable culture emerging. Perhaps Selangor's state university UNISEL (Universiti Industri Selangor) can be the impetus for change; spearheading comprehensive reforms at all levels. The Barisan Nasional government has its own idea of what Malaysian education should look like; an idea closely tied to communal/race-based politics and the obsession with mind-control, obedience, and the lessening of critical thinking. It has its own competent Vice Chancellors that are working hard to have their institutions reach world-class status. But looking at things from a collaborative point of view, perhaps these two ideologies in education (the yellow-blue ideological-dichotomy) can one day be dissolved when the experiment's over. Ultimately bi-partisan thinking should govern educational change. Ultimately in education, philosophy will triumph over politics. When must we then embark upon this game of education – the race for excellence, equity, and empathy in education? It must be a game in which every child must come out a winner.

Brief Study of First Political Memory

ANALYSIS OF FIRST POLITICAL MEMORY OF GRADUATE STUDENTS AT TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION USING SELECTED PERSPECTIVES FROM THE MODERNIZATION AND NEO-MARXIST THEORIES

By

Azly Rahman

Written at Teachers College, Columbia University New York, Spring 1998

1.0 Introduction

Studies in political socialization have offered important insights into our understanding of how one gets socialized vis-a-vis the modern state as equally pertinent as studies which look at the socialization process concerning ethnicity, race, gender and class. Particularly fascinating would be the notion that the modern state as an abstract entity, although inherently containing of human actors, can be successful in maintaining its legitimacy by utilizing state apparatuses at its disposal; those such as the media, schooling system, and the armed forces among them, in order to carry out the maintenance and sustenance of its existential ideology bearing in mind the potentiality of its withering away.

In looking at the question of how one gets socialized politically, we frame our analyses and discussions within a framework guided by the following analytical foci:

i) the analysis of findings on first political memory of graduate students at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York from a convenient sampling of students registered in a course TF 4091 (Spring 1998);

ii) the interpretation of findings from selected perspectives particularly those of Modernization and Neo-Marxist in looking retrospectively the meaning inherent in the political socialization process;

iii) the rationale behind the choice of perspectives;

iv) the limitations and recommendations for further research.

In this analysis, we are guided by the question, “In what ways do Modernization and Neo-Marxist theories look at the role of the state in the political socialization process of the child?”

2.0 Data

The following represents the data selected to be analyzed. They are extracted from “Data Analysis Report on Political Socialization survey” which in total contained information categorized in the following components: 1) background information 2) political socialization 3) political interactions 4) citizenship and minorities 5) geographic scope of political news and 6) childhood political memories.

Sample (N)	94
Mean Age	31.08
Top five countries	United States of America Japan Korea China Norway
Mean of first age of memory	8.16

	Female	Male	Total
Rank 1	Literature/ Propaganda/ Iconography/Flag	Uniform	Literature/ Propaganda/ Iconography
Rank 2	-	Accent/ Linguistic/ Guns/Arms/ Weapon	Uniform/ Flag
Rank 3	-	-	-

Table 1: First Political Memory

The descriptive statistics on the different ages of political socialization and political memory was gathered through a combination of responses to an open-ended questionnaire (see Appendix A) which required short answer responses to the subcomponents of the major research questions. They were administered during two sessions (Section 1 and 2) of the Spring 1998 class “Comparative Education”. The sample consists of those primarily taking the course as a core requirement of the graduate program in International and Transcultural Studies. Prior to answering the questionnaires, a focus group interview was conducted in groups of 4-5 students facilitated by teaching assistants of this course. This exercise serves as a means to jog the memory of the would-be sample population.

We believe that the specific findings on early political memory is relevant to be understood in more depth not only to find out how Modernization and Neo-Marxists would view the socialization process but also how the child perceive his/her political weltanschauung. It is to be noted that the mean age of first political memory is 8.16; the early years of schooling and timely enough for political socialization.

3.0 Political Socialization, Schooling and the State: Modernization and Neo-Marxist Perspectives

We chose to look at the political socialization process from the Modernization and Neo-Marxist perspectives largely because they offer legitimate arguments in looking at the function of citizenship in a modern state. Corollary to this is the idea of what role schools should play. We look at the relevant literature pertaining to these perspectives.

Feinberg and Soltis (1992) in analyzing the contending perspectives—Structural functionalists, Marxists, and Interpretivists—noted that Modernization, a social and economic concept within the procedural function of schooling and the modern state is closely related to political socialization. They explained that within the structural functionalist paradigm, the state in its process of modernization rely on political socialization of its citizenry in order for them to carry out symbiotically, harmoniously and consensusly their role as democratic participants. The concept is both political and psychological and as noted by Feinberg and Soltis (1992):

it refers to the widening of a person’s political loyalty beyond the local group to the nation as a whole (p.25).

Through assimilation and political socialization carried out via mass schooling the child learns the meaning of social integration and solidarity so that he/she can become a good citizen of the pluralistic and democratic state.

The Structured Functionalist view on the role of education in a modern state purports that schooling must serve to maintain this development – based on social, economic and political fabric. Kelly and Altbach (1986) wrote about the worldview in relation to the Third World:

The field asked either how education functioned to maintain the social fabric of how it could be made to function, in the case of the Third World, to develop a nation state generally along Western models (p.314).

Illustrative of this view that modernization is but another stage of the inevitable development of a nation and that a modernizing state needed citizens socialized into modernity hence achievement can be formed respectively in classic work of this genre of Walt Rostow (1971) and David McClelland (1982). And in order to ensure political stability as a precondition of the growth and prosperity of the modern state, political socialization through formal and non-formal education must function as an instrument for such legitimacy. Thus, through signs and symbols and classroom knowledge, the citizen is socialized at the earliest age possible. We now look at political socialization.

We chose the Neo-Marxist perspective with the understanding that it provides the important component of cultural critique and hegemony then a pure Marxist one which perhaps naively look at merely class struggle as its main tenet in which the state is perceived as an institution of domination of the ruling class over the proletariat.

Feinberg and Soltis (1992) discuss Louis Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) in explaining the Neo-Marxists conception of socialization. The state legitimizes its existence, maintains domination over its citizens, and creates one-dimensionality in ideological formation via the employment and deployment of apparatuses ranging from newspapers to political parties (Feinberg & Soltis, 1992). The most important of all these institutions are the schools in that they function

to provide people with compelling reasons for doing that which they otherwise might not be inclined to do and which is essential for maintaining the current system of production relations and power (p.57).

Neo-Marxists thus would believe that signs, symbols, and all forms of apparatuses for knowledge construction and reality invention are but tools of the agencies of socialization to colonize young minds into the inherently repressive construct called the (modern) state.

Writings particularly which emerged in the 1970s and 80s, in the Neo-Marxist genre of critique of Structural-Functionalist perspectives center around the latter’s inability to explain issues of distributive injustices within the world capitalist system in general, and within states undergoing modernization in particular. As noted by Roland G. Paulston (1993), writing on the changing representation of knowledge in the field of comparative education, the structural functionalist orthodoxy gave way to heterodoxy after

it came under attack in the social sciences and in development studies from a combination of emergent critical and interpretive knowledge communities (p.103).

Thus drawing from Feinberg and Soltis (1992) and Roland J. Paulston’s (1993) explanation of the Neo-Marxist critique of the state as they relate to issues such as political socialization and mental colonization and their link with the structural functionalist view, we reiterate that the Neo-Marxist perspective would view education and political socialization as agencies of ideological domination and systematic and repressive means employed by the modern state to ensure that social reproduction is maintained for the benefit of the power elite.

We find that the scope of this essay would not permit an extensive discussion of the process by which authority is maintained by the state, as viewed from this conflict model of conceptualizing society. Nonetheless, we note illustrative studies particularly from The Frankfurt School of Social Research, which drew attention to the means and methods used in analyzing ideology within the modern state. Antonio Gramsci (1992) for example analyzed how the state maintains hegemony, Jurgen Habermas (1971) wrote extensively on the structure of knowledge produced by the capitalist system and through ideologiekritik as a method of demystifying such knowledge, one can come to understand the interests inherent in its production, and Max Horkheimer (1974) and Theodore Adorno (1991) analyzed the structure of authority and how the authoritarian personality is developed.

To recap the above brief illustrations of the main tenets from Modernization and Neo-Marxist perspectives on the role of education, schooling, and how they relate to the question of the means and methods of political socialization, we note that Marxism and Neo-Marxism emerged as disciplines of study to critique Capitalism, its offspring and hybrids and to offer legitimate systematic analyses of the innerworkings of the capitalist system. As perspectives, they respond to one another providing the necessary thesis and anti-thesis of social, political and economic analyses and as models, they provide a useful contrast between the assumptions that political socialization on the one hand, is consensual and systems maintaining, and on the other, conflictual and systems disequibriumizing.

How do these perspectives, by way of interpretation then, view the data gathered from the Political Socialization Survey?

4.0 Analysis of Findings

In analyzing the findings on the first political memory, we bore in mind the mean age of 8.16 of the respondents, 1967-68 as the range of year of the first political memory, and perhaps the largely middle-class background our respondents may have come from. We noted too the gender composition as well as the type of political memory derived out of the socializing process. The biggest population of the respondents is in the rank from the United States of America, Japan, and Korea. The following discusses the analysis from the two perspectives.

From the Modernization (Structural Functionalist) point of view we hypothesize that because nation-states like the U.S.A., Japan, and Korea all follow the laissez faire capitalist developmental model of liberal democracy, and because mass schooling have been institutionalized for a longer period of time, first political memory of the 8 – 9 year olds constitutes largely of presidential speeches and elections. Mass communication in these advanced industrialized countries is a powerful, consolidated, and institutionalized state apparatus (the notion of media as the fourth estate) for nation-building.

It would be apt to say that along the line of social and economic advancement in modernization, political socialization is engineered through the Developmentalist-Communication paradigm of the use of media in advanced and developing countries. Through print and electronic media and through the curricular content in social and citizenship studies, the democratic ideals are transmitted perhaps through the remotest areas so that powerful images such as the President and Prime Minister can be cognitively imprinted as visual neural connections so that every 8 or 9 year-olds can be initiated as citizens of respective advanced capitalist states. Particularly in the United States then the image of President Richard Nixon about to be inaugurated must be made immortalized as the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth; a nation which emerged out of Vietnam which Modernization theorists regretted not having been successfully defended against the Communist terrorists. The image of elections as a testament of the free world must have been successfully transmitted too as inseparable from the Presidency, two party politics, and free enterprise. This analysis of image making and memory training we believe can be made applicable to the analyses of those in Japan and Korea.

When applied to the case of China, the analysis from the modernization theory can illustrate a similar point albeit Communist China is governed via a Maoist-styled Communist system. The image of Chairman Mao Zedong and the 1966-69 Cultural Revolution must have been powerful enough for the respondents at that early age. Perhaps one may find it perplexing at some point to understand our relating of the Modernization perspective to the analysis of Communist China however, our point here is to briefly note that what we are analyzing is not the content of messages but the idea that via the consensual framework the maintaining of harmony in that nation-state must necessarily be the theme of political socialization as much as similar as in the case of corporate America.

The scope of this essay would not allow us to analyze the information in Rank 2 of which types of memory such as racism/ethnocentrism/classism favor predominantly. Suffice it is to say that these are perhaps characteristic of memories inherent in the so-called Third World nation-states which in the middle of the 1960s were merely beginning to be socialized into the ideals of modernization of which modernization theories would argue, would not be totally free from the challenges associated with their post-Independence status.

Thus, from the Modernization perspective, the type of early political memories of the 8 or 9 year-olds are characteristic of images necessary to be transmitted in order for political stability to be developed so that economic growth can be expected and social harmony cultivated.

We saw a different picture in our analysis from the Neo-Marxist perspective. Through this lens our analysis is aided by Louis Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatus (as cited in Feinberg and Soltis, 1992) who would view such types of political memory (Presidential/Prime Ministerial speeches and elections) as successes gained by the modern state in shackling the minds of the young into believing in the state. The state’s control of the media and schooling; the latter as a “mass babysitting enterprise” is seen as necessary to create, in Herbert Marcuse’s (1964) term “one-dimensionality” in thinking and in what Antonio Gramsci (1992) would term as hegemony.

Through the illusion of democracy, the few in control of the means of production have been able to guarantee its lifeline as a “necessary evil.” Young minds see the President of the United States adorned in his/her primary colors as one who is the epitome of the free-est nation on Earth but hidden from the view is the military-industrial complex which in the 1960s for example found it no longer profitable to finance Napalm-dropping operations in Vietnam and thus, after tedious deliberations on its cost-benefit of the war, had to pull out. Through media and education, the 8 and 9 year-olds are “protected” from this image of structural violence a much as graphic violence and explicit contents on cable television are labeled “R” and pornography on the Internet are filtered by “Net Nannies” form children of the age of “everything cyber”. Writings for example by Noam Chomsky (1989) and Michael Parenti (1993) we believe can best elaborate from the Neo-Marxist point of view how realities are invented in the modern capitalist system.

Neo-Marxists would view that such types of political memory, whether coming from children of capitalist America or Maoist China illustrate the need by the state to maintain legitimacy so that the unequal production in social economic distribution can continue to be hidden by the hype over “democracy”; a concept much defined, redefined, misused, abused, and mystified by those in power irregardless of their adherent to capitalism or variants of socialism. Neo-Marxists would see the form of image-making as “totalitarianizing” in its enculturizing means and goals a la George Orwell’s (1992) explication of totalitarianism in his novel Nineteen Eighty-four

We view thus the 8 and 9 year-olds as repressed and mystified as they possessed no alternative worldview of humane and communal governments since the repressive state apparatus is in control of the process and product of their thought-formation. We would analyze our respondents from the United States as the most repressed in terms of majority followed by those from Japan and Korea.

Similar limitations as in the case of analyzing the second and third ranks of first political memory via Modernization perspective, we note briefly that through the lens of Neo-Marxists we view “racism/ethnocentrism/classism” as illustrative of repressive political imagery from emerging Third World nations which follow the line of Western-led model of capitalist development.

In conclusion, from the Neo-Marxist perspective, we believe that Presidential/Prime Ministerial speeches and elections as important types of early political memory illustrate the gains made by the modern state in subliminally subjugating the minds of our 8 and 9 year-old respondents; a process successfully carried out through the use of media and schooling as repressive state apparatuses.

5.0 The Usefulness of Modernization and Neo-Marxist Perspectives

We chose Modernization Theory as a vantage point in looking at circa 1967-68 so as to lend justice to this important perspective of systems equity which dominate the thinking of leaders and practitioners in the field of nation-building. We view Modernization as a dominant ideology of social, economic, and political advancement then as it grew out of the ideological creativity of those who operated within the logical-positivistic paradigm. Even up to the time this essay is written, variants of Modernization Theory continue to be grimed in all their complexity and hybridity and the neo-classical economics view of production and reproduction in the virtually all spheres of human living continue to be defended, reconceptualized, and readjusted according to changing milieu – all these underpinned by its reliability and validity, obviously, within its own paradigm. We thus found this perspective useful.

We also chose the Neo-Marxist perspective for all the powerful critique it has enlightened us of the modern state as entity and of philosophy and politics of knowledge construction as ontology. We view Neo-Marxism and its variants and hybrids including post-Marxian analyses and radical post-modernist views inclusive, as anti-thesis to the thesis correlated to capitalistic development. The choice of Neo-Marxist rather than pure Marxist perspective is made in lieu of our understanding that questions of culture; hegemony, ideological mystification are important dimensions not adequately addressed by Marxists who view, in reductionist terms, the bourgeoise-proletariat and historical materialism as the only conflicts inherent in the analysis of the modern state. We find the Neo-Marxist view thus more palatable in our analysis of how the respondents were repressed at the tender age of 8 or 9 years old.

6.0 Limitations of the Study

Although we attempted to answer the main research questions using the two perspectives we claim as necessary and justifiable, upon closer analysis and scrutiny of the data, we find limitations in them.

Whilst modernization theory cannot adequately explain why behind the process of political socialization there exist another dimension called contradiction in that repression of consciousness is engineered so that social reproduction for inequality is maintained, Neo-Marxist analysis too has its shortcomings. This alternative view of the modernization perspective has its fundamental flaw in assuming that the first political memory signifies without doubt that the 8 or 9 year olds are “objects” of domination of the state. As such the Neo-Marxist analyst can fall into the same category as the naïve pure Marxist who fundamentally see class struggle as the main issue.

If the question for Modernization theory would be “who benefits?” or “cui bono?” in the attempt to politically socialize citizens of the modern state, then that for Neo-Marxist would be “Why claim that it is all a conspiracy?” in the state’s attempt to mystify and hegemonize. These two contradictions and inadequacies respective of the two theories then can be interpreted at best as reductionism and simplicitude ignoring the deeper complexities in the analysis of child political socialization as such.

Whilst theoretical adequacies as such can be discerned, the data gathered on the other hand too is fundamentally inadequate for satisfiable interpretation to be carried out. The sampling is not representative although perhaps representative for the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, the interview conducted was too brief thus limiting the amount of phenomenological responses to be produced and the setting was not conducive enough for the respondents to produce rich data excavated from the archeology of the mind from the archeological site of the political territory.

The above brief mentionings of the limitations of the study we believe represent “twilight zones” in our attempt to explain in more plausible detail the political memories of the 8 and 9 year olds. These shortcomings however can become potential fertile areas of investigation in this valuable inquiry into childhood political memories.

7.0 Agenda for Future Research

We believe that an even more advant garde, suitable and enlightening perspective in analyzing the data would be one based upon those from the “postmodern sensibility” as it pertains to understanding the child’s symbolic interactionism with his/her environment in that what signs and symbols mean when looked at semiotically. Is the child a passive recipient of images archetyped by the political socialization intent? What was happening cognitively in 1967 in the mind of the 8 or 9 year olds as it relates to their inner world; of interconnections in their brain’s neural network as they perceive and make sense of what would otherwise be claimed as “necessary” and “repressing” by Modernization and Neo-Marxists respectively?

Through simplicitude and reductionism as such inherent in these two perspectives, the child remained a “static subject” under study and thus an “object.” Through a more in depth interviewing perhaps within the methodology genre of ethnophenomenography and in the tradition of rigor characteristic of psychotherapy, we may be offered more information to work with. We can then, although the respondents’ answers are in retrospect, still discern important critical and creative intersubjectivities of meaning, construct cognitive maps to look at other variables such as the milieu, background of parental political socialization, nature of political messages transmitted, classroom constructed knowledge regarding political ideology and a host of other schematic information.

We believe then that perhaps we needed a way of interpreting based upon Complexity or Chaos Theory (see for example Gleik,1987) to justifiably capture holographically, semiotically, kaleidoscopically, and semantically the meaning of the respondents’ childhood political memory. All is perhaps in constant flux and vacillation, an experimental music video rather than still black and white photograph if we are to coin a metaphor for the subjective experience.

We therefore believe that our agenda for further research must be contextualized within this milieu called “postmodern sensibility” as an era ripe with theoretical perspectives able to address complex systems rather than reduce phenomena to “rabbit holes”—be they of shape structural functionalist or Neo-Marxists.

REFERENCES

Adorno, T. (1991). Freudian theory and the pattern of fascist propaganda. In J.M. Bernstein (Ed.) The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture. London: Routledge.

Chomsky, N. (1989). Necessary illusions. Thought control in democratic societies. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Feinberg, W., & Soltis, J.F. (1992). School and society (2^nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.

Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos. Making a new science. New York: Viking Press

Gramsci, A. (1992). Hegemony and separation of powers. Prison notebooks. European perspectives series. New York: Columbia University Press.

Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interest. Boston:Beacon Press.

Horkheimer, M. (1974). Eclipse of reason. New York: Continuum

Kelly, G.P., & Altbach, P.G. (1986). Comparative education: Challenge and response. In Philip G. Altbach & Gail P. Kelly (Eds.), New approaches to comparative education. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Marcuse, H. (1964). One-dimensional man. Boston: Beacon Press.

McClelland, D. (1961). The development of social maturity. New York: Irvington Publishers.

Orwell, G. (1992). Nineteen eighty-four. New York: Alfred Knopf.

Parenti, M. (1993). Inventing reality: The politics of the mass media. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Paulston, R.G. (1993). Mapping discourse in comparative education texts. Compare, 23(2), pp.101-114.

Rostow, W. W. (1971). Politics and the stages of growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Review of Peter McLaren

Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium Peter McLaren, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997. pp. 306
Review by Azly Rahman, published in Educational Researcher June-July 1999

Reading Peter McLaren’s passionate and insightful analysis of the current state of educational praxis one cannot escape from images of postmodernity as a backdrop of anomalies in the world we are in as the new millenium approaches. The domino-like collapses of the financial markets of the world beginning in Thailand in July 1997, nuclear tests in India and Pakistan, the revolution which brought Indonesian President Suharto down after 32 years of rule, hunger and starvation in North Korea, and the continuing intensified debates on race matters in America--- all these represent the chaos in the global economic order McLaren’s critical pedagogy can be relevant to those wishing to contextualize their understanding of political economy of education. McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millineum, albeit with its analytical flaws, is a passionate piece of work highly-charged with honesty in the manner McLaren positions his ideological standpoint throughout.

For a relatively slender volume of work on educational theorizing, Revolutionary Multiculturalism contains the essential ingredients of educational and social analysis which dissect capitalism from its transnational operating table right through the ideology of consumerism which pervades the hip hop culture and the issue of whiteness in American race relations. Including its introductory and epilogue sections, the book is divided into 10 chapters with several of them written in cooperation with critical theorist such as Henry Giroux , Zeus Leornado, and Kris Gutierrez.

In chapter 7, an interview with McLaren provides the reader with a valuable understanding of the ideological standpoint the author bases his work on; one in which McLaren narrates his development as a critical pedagogue and differentiates his commitment for struggle with those from the camp of postmodernism. If his passionate language ala’ Allen Ginsburg’s in the classic Sixties Beat-generation poems of “Howl” and “The Velocity of Money” and his unwavering rhetoric in the Freirian tradition throughout are not enough in demonstrating his honest alignment with Latin American Marxist discourse, McLaren laced his book with, among others a picture of him delivering a speech in honor of Che Guevara against a huge poster of the Cuban revolutionary leader as backdrop (p. 107).

McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism is a continuing legacy of the work of educators trained and committed to the cause of liberatory struggle against the dehumanizing tendencies of transcultural capitalism with its ideological state apparatuses such as the schooling system, the media and the politics of multiculturalism. McLaren’s is essentially a continuation of the dialogue of Paulo Freire, thrusted in its analytical context into the world of global capitalism and its interlocking web of domination the world over and within the United States. The critical educator’s ideological standpoint is made evident at the beginning part of the book in which McLaren situates his work within the larger framework of socialism and aligning it with theorists within that paradigm:

Critical pedagogy, in this sense, remains committed to the practical realization of self-determination and creativity on a collective social scale. When I think of critical pedagogy as a practice of liberation, I think not only of Paulo Freire, Augustus Boal, Rosa Luxemburg, Judi Borri, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X, for example, but also of Emilio Zapata… Like Zapata, critical educators need to wage nothing less than war in the interest of the sacredness of human life, collective dignity for the wretched of the earth, and the right to live in peace and harmony (p. 13).

It is within those standpoint and the honesty of linking his work with leaders and theorists of the Freirian tradition that McLaren’s work is worthy of attention. What is impressive about McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism is its fresh call for educators to redefine the term “multiculturalism.” It questions the fundamental pedagogical belief by educators, particularly those from North America, in looking at America as a “melting pot” unto which schooling and the curriculum must address and celebrate of its cultural differences without being aware of the political economic nature of schooling in America. McLaren believes that such multiculturalist thinking is not only reductionistic and avoids the issue of class struggle but also dangerous to the critical pedagogist’s struggle to dismantle political, economic, and social structures which are anathema to the true meaning of human liberation.

Only through the engaging in dialogue which demystify power and language of the power elite, deconstructing our understanding of race relations into one which includes class, race and gender, and reconstructing our hope and struggles for a transformation of the transnational and local capitalist order, can we realize the true meaning of praxis in the revolutionary sense of the word. McLaren attacks neo-liberalism of American democracy as “a hidden service of capital accumulation, often [reconfirming] the racist stereotypes already prescribed by Euro-American nationalist myths of supremacy … (p.8). Thus, chapter after chapter, McLaren provides the context of objectivity, which needed to be subjectivized and a newer understanding to emerge. Some highlights from McLaren’s work need to be mentioned.

In Chapter 1 entitled “Writing from the Margins: Geographies of Identity, Pedagogy, and Power,” written with critical theorist Henry Giroux, the authors draw attention to the kind of language needed for educator-activists to analyze power and domination in order that existing realities be understood and transformed. They claimed that “most educational theorists have been so caught up in describing the reality of existing schools that they have failed to take up the question of what it is that schools should be.” (p.19). Not only educators, they write, need to be equipped with the language of critical pedagogy which contains moral, ethical, and visioning frame of reference in their struggle for liberation but students need also be provided with such linguistic tools to “assume a critical distance from their more familiar subject distance.” (p.37). Only through the grasping of such analytical skills can both educators and students in the Freirian tradition, understand what oppression means and how they can work collectively across cultures towards a just and equitable educational, political, economic, and cultural transformation.

In Chapter 2, “Liberatory Politics and Higher Education: A Freirian Perspective,” which read like an essay in honor of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, McLaren provides a postmodern analysis of capitalism as it relates to the need for educators in higher education to pay attention to the Freirian perspective of critical pedagogy. McLaren notes that in the Freirian sense, “the university is invited to become truly plural and dialogical, a place where students are not only taught not only to read texts but to understand contexts.” (p.69). It is through the Freirian approach, McLaren asserts that the meaning of individuals as makers of history can be realized to counter the dehumanizing effect of capitalism in its attempt to relegate individuals as objects of history, particularly in “U.S. culture in which history has been effectively expelled from the formation of meaning and hope.” (p.73)

In Chapter 3, “The Ethnographer as Postmodern Flaneur: Critical Reflexivity and Posthybridity as Narrative Engagement,” McLaren described the difficulty of the urban ethnographer’s situating of his/her existence; as one attempting to critically analyze society in a postmodern setting he/she is also inescapably in. The postmodern flaneur as one whom has to mediate the tension between being a detached observer and one drowned in the sea of images, signs, and symbols within what is to be observed, must become a critical theorist in order to effectively do reflective sociology. Drawing heavily upon Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of reflective sociology and illustrating the chapter with excerpts from his flaneuriel notes, McLaren called upon the need for the urban ethnographer to recognize the importance of emancipatory possibilities in one’s nature of work. “Ethnography as postmodern flanerie need to be conjugated with the contingency of historical struggle in terms of establishing a posthybrid dialogism.” (p.94).

Throughout other chapters in Revolutionary Multiculturalism, the reader can expect McLaren and his co-authors’ analysis of language, power, and pedagogy in issues such as media control over the postmodern mind, hip-hop music and global politics. In each, the ideology to be scrutinized is described in language of postmodernity, as though McLaren is illustrating that the illusionary world of postmodernism must be demystified via explanations of its inner linguistic logic, using its own language---all these done in order for the claim for the superiority of Freirian critical pedagogy be made loud and clear. Thus, when talking about gangsta pedagogy in “Gangsta Pedagogy and Ghettocentricity: The Hip Hop Nation as Counter Public Sphere,” for example, McLaren writes like an insider well-versed in the development of this brand of popular culture, only in the end, to demystify its creativeness as another attempt by capitalism to capitalize on the expression of oppression among the African-American and Latino community.

Illustrative of McLaren’s consistency in providing a final analysis, he writes of the emerging and proliferating genre of music:

Gangsta rap’s relation to the corporate marketplace, its potential for expropriation, and its reproduction of ideologies historically necessary to commodity exchange – such as patriarchal ones – is an important issue that needs to be addressed. In other words, gangsta rap needs to be viewed not only as an ideological formation, cultural signifier, or performative spectacle, but also as a product of historical and social relations. (p.179)

Within such a framework of critical analysis, the author skillfully uses language of sophistication characteristic of many writing in the postmodern genre only to eventually return to a call far action insistently based upon the neo-Marxist framework. The power and the vigor of his oftentimes-long sentences are interspersed with first person narratives of his experiences, which he relates to the subject matter analyzed. It is within this stream of consciousness point of view and the chanting effect of his expose that Peter McLaren’s perspective is made constantly fresh in the reader’s mind and his arguments difficult to counter. One can almost see Freire alive in these powerful chapters and given doses of vitality by this popular Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based professor of Education and Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. But it is an irony that one needs to read McLaren back to back, dialogue with him in-between the pages, and let the images of dissent and call to a revolution be skillfully made alive through the written word, in order to locate counter-arguments to his claims.

To the critical reader, McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism’s strength can also be its weakness. Particularly significant is his overstated ideological standpoint, which sees the sorry state of society and education purely within his neo-Marxist bird’s-eye view. He attempts to mesmerize readers into believing that there are no significant effort made by grassroot movements, social activist groups, educators for social consciousness or even the struggling day to day teachers who are making significant changes, albeit incremental perhaps, to make the lives of citizens and school children alike happier, more creative, and critical. McLaren’s analysis is purely sociological hovering within the realm of theory attempting to grab the attention of policy makers in the social, educational and political spheres. He locates himself from the beginning, strategically from a new-Marxist paradigm, analyzes society and policies within this narrow perspectives and offer solutions which are ideologically apt to the framework he uses. McLaren, towards the end of the book, advocates “for the development of the ethical self as a way of living within and challenging the historical capitalism” (p. 284)

From what spiritual-metaphysical or ethical platform which can unite multiculturalists is not exactly clear in McLaren’s advocacy. McLaren repeatedly made the call as such in calling upon us to “unthink whiteness.” His call is even louder when his advocacy is laced with language of postmodernism epitomized perhaps in a passage as such:

What I am advocating, dear sisters and brothers in struggle, is a postcolonial multiculturalism that moves beyond the ludic, metrocentric focus on identities as hybrid and hypernated assemblages of subjectivity that exist alongside or outside of the larger social totality (p. 287)

What these terms mean, seemingly circular in their usage, and how one can comprehend a situation wherein society can levitate beyond such a condition are not entirely clear. Perhaps this can be possible in a scenario wherein society can be freeze-framed and the ethical segment of it extracted out of the ludic-metrocentric identitied habitat. Clear to McLaren’s understanding as a sociologist presumably, this is not entirely probable given the fact that society is a complex, intriguing and ever-changing amalgam of peoples with values shifting, pragmatism and relativism reigning, and feeling and emotions dictating. As such, the only permanent thing is change and the most applicable theory thusfar to analyze society is perhaps via Complexity or Chaos theory!

Thus, McLaren’s writing, as well as those who he collaborated with is somewhat weakened by the very framework he hoped to strengthen his sweeping analysis with; a framework weaved out of the fragile, ideologically-laden, and textualized semantic glitters of postmodern language. Though the author’s critical analysis is brilliant throughout, his is short of providing a scenario wherein a society of revolutionary multiculturalist has triumphed in destroying the old republic and what emerged out of the despotic is, one ethical and moral and constantly aware of another wave of transnational capitalistic world order. What would a society of the next millenium look like? The providing of such a scenario is what makes Revolutionary Multiculturalism yet another well-trumpeted rhetoric of post-Marxism attempting to subvert post-modernism.

Another fundamental anti-climax of McLaren’s grandiose staging up of such a frame of social analysis is perhaps, the absence of political dimension in his writing. Though his calls for action are indeed political as it relates to the subverting of grand narrative such as neo-liberal whiteness in social psyche and the use of multiculturalists-of-the-world-unite-and-revolt slogan, he failed to link his advocacy to political or non-governmental organizations progressive enough to carry the banner of revolution to its final victory in Washington. One may ask of the value of such revolutionary trumpeting without a concerted effort to harness the voices of the revolutionary multiculturalists into political grandiose carries forth by political parties. Virtually non-existent is this aspect of McLaren’s campaign.

To rally against an elusive oppressor such as transnational capitalism and to create a new order in America is virtually problematic, unlike perhaps in the case of revolutionary multiculturalist rallying against the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somozo in the late 1970s. In the former, the enemy is invisible yet pervasive, whereas in the latter, it is visible and exclusive! Perhaps McLaren conveniently applied the scenario of Latin American politics to that in North America, paradigmed his revolutionary analysis as such, and ended up making an overglossing of solutions to the problems he found. Herein Complexity theory can be of value in framing the issue of multiculturalism in the manner McLaren sees it. Aside from the contradictions in the analytical framework presented in McLaren’s work, Revolutionary Multiculturalism must still be read in its entirety and the powerful strands of the author’s argument to be put to use. Although the idea of multiculturalism’s revolutionary streaks is not revolutionary at all as they are inherent in each culture and need not necessarily be yanked out of the masses, the freshness of the Freirian tradition McLaren attempt to maintain must be applauded. What is novel and of commendable sociological analytical value is the postmodernist aspect of McLaren’s neo-Marxism.

Like many philosophical, metaphysical, and ethical systems in every culture which has responded to changes brought about by maturing of the capitalist ethos, the neo-Marxism according to Peter McLaren and his band of critical pedagogues has also responded brilliantly to such maturity. It is a jazz ensemble in a orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, an Indonesian gamelan troupe playing in a Viennese concert hall, and a hip hop group performing at the steps of the Lincoln Performing Arts Center in New York. And in these, the voices of the subaltern growing louder, with spectators and onlookers beginning to appreciate the beauty of the message conveyed. In corporate transnational America, the tune played by Freire and his band continue to become more refined, sophisticated and gradually permeated into the system of thoughts of multiculturalists; and Peter McLaren’s Revolutionary Multiculturalism, in the next millenium, may become a magnum opus for critical pedagogists all the more ready to sing tunes of dissent.

As the author writes in the epilogue:

… there is a spirit in the making that refuses to succumb to the lure of nationalism, a spirit that is rising up like a serpent of fire. It is a spirit that refuses to die. The world has seen this spirit before. And capitalism’s pinstripe gangsters would do well to tremble before its humble grander… (p. 301)

And it is that spirit Peter McLaren believes the next millenium will dwell in!

172] Smart schools vs. sick schools

Smart schools vs sick schools

Azly Rahman | Jun 9, 08 12:21pm

I read this excerpt of a MCPX AFP news story below with disgust. ‘... One-third of Malaysia's schools do not have water and electricity, a minister said, pledging to fix the problem by 2010.... ‘Deputy Education Minister Razali Ismail told Bernama that all 9,806 schools will have access to basic utilities by the end of a four-year education development plan....70 percent of schools already have access to water and electricity. The other 30 percent are mostly located in rural areas, but “we are confident the problem will be solved by 2010". ...Malaysia has implemented a series of five-year development plans with the aim of reaching developed-nation status by 2020..In the last national blueprint, announced in 2006, the government said RM1.15 billion would be spent to upgrade schools.’ All we continue to hear are slogans such as ‘2010', ‘Vision 2020', ‘developed-nation status’ and ‘billions of ringgit of funding’. These cloud our vision of what schools ought to be. It is as if there is a ‘manufactured crisis’ going on: keep schools impoverished so that the government can keep making promises using empty slogans. The aim: only this government can continue to help those poor schools. This is the nature of mystification we have been fed with all these decades. I recall then education minister Najib Abdul Razak making a statement about "smart schools" - that the first Smart School is being built at a cost of RM144.5 million. Apart from being wired, it would have a hostel for 800 students, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a hockey pitch, a hall and other facilities. Eventually all Malaysian schools will be operated on this concept. Now we hear that many schools do not have water and electricity supply, let alone computers to make the schools and students smart. I think our children deserve better than empty promises by the ministry in charge of human intelligence and social reproduction. What has that ministry done since Merdeka to allow schools to be left in such a state? What paradigm of nationwide school improvement has the ministry been using in order to create such a deformed version of democracy and education? Is it a strategic plan to ensure that children of the poor will continue to perform the worst under such conditions, and that schools equipped with state-of-the-art technologies are select ones for children of the elite? No wonder we have an increasing number of Mat and Minah Rempit, Along and gangsters - they were educated in the most deplorable circumstances perhaps. They were schooled in environments with teachers who are not committed and motivated, but also imprisoned in classrooms that do not have the basic amenities compared to ‘smart schools’. Overhaul long overdue It is simply unacceptable for this government to allow class stratification; schools not only become the stratifier of ethnic groups but also of classes of the poor, through the unequal distribution of resources. This is characteristic of the hideous form of schooling in Asian-style capitalist societies. How can we develop the child's intelligence to the fullest if schools are designed to fail them miserably? We must demand the exposure of the conditions of the schools - which schools get access to what and why. We must demand a comprehensive picture on why our schools are failing and unable to produce children smart enough to bring their intelligence, ethics, and problem-solving skills to the university and beyond an succeed in a world that is challenging. The new governments of the Pakatan Rakyat must undo what the Barisan Nasional (BN) government has done to the most under-privileged schools. They must gather data on what is lacking in the schools and how resources are shared. Certainly, if the situation has been exacerbated over the last 30 years of BN rule, how are we to see any changes in class and classroom stratification in the next 30 years? We see many projects like the Petronas Twin Towers, Multimedia Super Corridor, Monsoon Cup and Iskandar Malaysia carried out as fast, so that governmentally-linked companies can make money for the select few. Why does comprehensive school reform take ages to be implemented? This is the ‘prison-industrial complex’ approach we are taking in implementing national educational policy. By maintaining the sense of deprivation of the physical, psychological and intellectual aspects of the schools, we hope to produce more of those citizens who will be desperate enough to find ways be and become like the successful ones, but through desperate means. We are creating a larger underclass tempted by materialism in a system created to encourage conspicuous consumption - these citizens produced out of the smart schools-sick schools system. What then must we do to heal the system, to make our sick school smarter? This is for the education ministry and progressive parliamentarians to answer.

159] Election debates: Just do it!

Election debates: Just do it!

Azly Rahman | Mar 3, 08 2:48pm

During presidential elections in the United States, it has become customary for the main candidates (almost always the candidates of the two main parties, currently the Democratic Party and the Republican Party) to engage in a debate. The topics discussed in the debate are often the most controversial issues of the time, and some have said that elections can be won or lost based on these debates…. Presidential debates are held late in the election cycle, after the political parties have nominated their candidates. The candidates meet in a large hall, often at a university, before an audience of citizens. The formats of the debates have varied, with questions sometimes posed from one or more journalist moderators and in other cases members of the audience - from Wikipedia Malaysia’s government has rejected an Islamic opposition party's challenge to hold an American-style public debate between their leaders ahead of the March 8 general election, news reports said on Sunday. PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang recently dared Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to hold a televised debate similar to those held by US presidential candidates…But the Sunday Star newspaper quoted Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz as saying there was no place for such debates in Malaysia.. "We don't follow the American system in our country. We (the country's leaders) should be debating with villagers or town folks concerning local issues affecting them," she said in the report. - from Malaysia Today, March 1, 2008 What is the problem of having televised debates? I do not see any. The politicians for the ruling party and the aspiring parties are intelligent enough to hold debates for the benefit of the people who are also getting more intelligent. We have been independent for 50 years. We are no longer colonised by the British "bloodsuckers" who wanted us to become merely tools of their Empire. We cannot say that we are still not ready. Our politicians are mainly university graduates; some form Oxford, Cambridge, some form Harvard and Columbia, some from Monash and Australian National University, some from top universities in Asia such as University of Malaya. There is no reason why they cannot show the public that they can debate on critical issues facing the nation. We are having an elections at the time when America is having hers too. We should take this opportunity to emulate what is good from the world's most advanced liberal democracy. We must learn how they debate on election issues. It will be an exciting and education moment not only for the candidates but also for the nation. Sensitive issues I think the politicians and the people they want votes form are ready to listen to the pros and cons of arguments on the elections, I think we are even ready to talk about sensitive issues – on rights and responsibilities as citizens. Those who say we are not ready to debate are the ones not ready to debate. They are imposing their fear and ignorance on others. In debates, not just charisma will be a plus, but wit, intelligence, and good arguments that appeal to the audience count as well. Candidates will be given the chance to be scrutinized on all these qualities. My view is that if a candidate is ready to be nominated, he/she is ready to make a stand on issues and articulate them to the constituents. Only then we will know how to differentiate between street politicians and budding statesmen. In a debate, it is the appeal to reason, more than to emotions that will ultimately count. The outcome is how these candidates will best present the assets and liabilities of taking this or that stand. Role of universities I see Malaysian universities playing a role in hosting these debates. This will be a new dawn of world-classism as a standard to be achieved. I'd like to see all universities enriching the minds of the students with the "blue ocean" strategy of hosting events that will celebrate diverse political points of view. Every day before voting day can be a time when each candidate for parliament and state seats be given the platform to debate on issues. It would be good to listen to candidates of Umno debating with those of PAS, DAP, PKR or even with an independent. We can then teach our children what it takes to be a Malaysian politician. As an educator I have had the chance to train and groom debators. A number of them went on to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, Wharton School of Business, College de France and many top American and British universities. These are kampong kids trained in the rigour of public debates. They acquire the skills of argumentation through debates. Political debates event should be made open to the public. Schoolchildren, government servants, businessmen and women, homemakers/housewives and househusbands can all come and be educated of the issues before they cast their votes. There is no need to give them money, kain pelikat, kain batik, sacks of rice, Gucci and Coach handbags, vacation trips, or even huge contracts to make them vote – all will be about respecting the mind of the voters by turning them into intelligent voters who use rational arguments to make rational choices. Create debating culture We need to broadcast, telecast, simulcast, and podcast these debates not only for Malaysians to see but for the world to enjoy as well. If we can send a man into space and groom our Mat Rempits to compete internationally or send them bungee-jumping or skydiving in the North Pole, we should be able to set up political debates. Debates before election should become our culture. We have debating clubs in schools and in universities. We hear people debate on the streets, in warongs and coffee shops. We must elevate debates beyond these premises. I see that we will evolve into an intelligent society if we encourage public debates before the nation votes. We will become Athenians. We may even produce our own Ciceros and Sukarnoes or even Barack Obamas. We must debate all sensitive issues and desensitize the nation into making intelligent choices at every election. I suggest our universities host these televised and broadcast debates and show the public that our higher education institutions are not only world-class champions of diversity but also use the 'blue ocean' strategy to celebrate radical thinking in universities. "Just do it", as a Nike slogan goes.