Henry Giroux and Public Pedagogy

What, you may be thinking, does this post have to do with LGBT issues?  Well, I believe that blogs and other social media sites are, in fact, forms of public pedagogy, and, if we don't know the history of public pedagogy, then we can't effectively use public pedagogy to advance our cause.  So, my next few posts will focus on the history and theory of public pedagogy.  This one focuses on Henry Giroux and his contribution to the theory of public pedagogy.

Two lines of theory in the field of public pedagogy influence my dissertation: critical public pedagogy as outlined and defined by Giroux (2000) and feminist public pedagogy as outlined and defined by Brady (2006).  In Giroux’s works identifying, creating, and defining critical pedagogy, he notes that post-Reagan Era school reform should be about creating

a new public philosophy of education…a philosophy of the postmodern era…a philosophy that is decidedly concrete.  It is one that embraces a politics of difference that links questions of history and structural formations, that views ideology and human agency as a source of educational change, and that integrates macro- and microanalyses with a focus on the specificity of voices, desires, events, and cultural forms that give meaning to everyday life. … a theoretical openness and a spirit of hope, a belief that schools are places where students can find their voices, reclaim and affirm their histories, and develop a sense of self and collective identity amidst the language of larger public loyalties and social relations. (Giroux and McLaren, 1989, xi – xii)

Thus, Giroux gives the agency of public intellectualism to students as much as to parents, educators, reformers, politicians, media, or anyone involved in decision-making or action in and around schools.  In his writings, Giroux typically focuses on faculties and students in higher education settings, looking at reforms related to “put[ting] more power into the hands of faculties and students” (Giroux 2003, p. 10).  For him public intellectuals are those who engage in pedagogies of everyday learning “following the work of Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall” where “the primacy of culture’s role as an educational site where identities are being continually transformed, power is enacted, and learning assumes a political dynamic as it becomes not only the condition for the acquisition of agency but also the sphere for imagining oppositional social change” is taken up (Giroux 2004, p. 60).  My dissertation takes these key elements of Giroux’s work on students of higher education as public intellectuals and asks, Can all students be seen as public intellectuals?  In fact, shouldn’t all students be seen as public intellectuals?  That is, from pre-K through higher education, in our social democracy where “the primacy of culture’s role as an educational site where identities are being continually transformed, power is enacted, and learning assumes a political dynamic as it becomes not only the condition for the acquisition of agency but also the sphere for imagining oppositional social change”, shouldn’t all students be seen as public intellectuals who have a say in how and why they are educated and about what is educative for them as individuals?

So, let’s back up a bit.  What is public pedagogy?  According to Sandlin, O’Malley and Burdick (2011, p. 342), “the term in its earliest usage implied a form of educational discourse in the service of the public good.”  In other understandings throughout the RER review of literature on the term “public pedagogy”, Sandlin, O’Malley and Burdick find uses of the term “public pedagogy” in contexts for learning outside the curriculum, staging youth activism, sexual equality, resisting dominant pedagogies, and popular culture.  The term public pedagogy, according to Sandlin, O’Malley and Burdick comes into mainstream educational use through Giroux’s purposing of it for reference to the hegemonic power of media and popular culture as cites of socialization.  Giroux entered public pedagogy work through popular culture discourse, but his work with neoliberalism and public pedagogy more directly influences my dissertation, as it ties back to the role of the student as public intellectual. According to Sandlin, O’Malley, and Burdick (2011), Giroux believes that public pedagogy creates a democratic space between youth and adults in which power is negotiated, and this is where the work of my dissertation draws its hypotheses.  In my dissertation, Giroux’s notion of a democratic politics addressing the relations of power between youth and adults is paramount, as the stories being told by transgender adults of their youth may represent power struggles between themselves and school adults seen as power figures.

Again, Giroux’s work on neoliberalism as public pedagogy is more important to my dissertation than his work on popular culture.  According to Sandlin, O’Malley and Burdick (2011), “The overarching concern in Giroux’s more recent work is the articulation of the global, extensive operation of neoliberalism as a public pedagogy that reproduces identities, values, and practices, all under the sign of the market.”  As a trans* individual, I find no place for myself in mainstream media nor in the mainstream market, especially in the field of education.  Textbooks do not address trans* history nor do they feature famous and important trans* individuals throughout history.  Who am I kidding?  In education, we still struggle with admitting lesbian and gay individuals into our history and literature lessons.  Giroux (2004b) says, “The violence of neoliberalism can be explained through the existential narratives of those who experience its lived relations as well as through conceptual analyses provided by intellectuals”.  I don’t believe that explaining neoliberalism is a solution to the problem it presents, but I do believe that until we shed light on it as a problem, it will remain a problem.  In my dissertation, narratives of trans* individuals will seek to explain the lived relations of neoliberal hegemony and intellectual analysis will seek to explain the violence inherent in our neoliberal education system.

References

Brady, J. F. (2006). Public pedagogy and educational leadership: Politically engaged scholarly communities and possibilities for critical engagement. Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy, 3(1), 57-60.

Giroux, H.A. (2004a). Cultural studies, public pedagogy, and the responsibility of intellectuals. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1(1), 59-79.

Giroux, H.A. (2004b). The terror of neoliberalism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.

Giroux, H.A. (2003). Public pedagogy and the politics of resistance: Notes on a critical theory of educational struggle. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(1), 5-16.

Giroux, H.A. (2000). Public pedagogy as cultural politicis: Stuart Hall and the ‘crisis’ of culture. Cultural Studies, 14(2), 341-360.

Giroux, H.A. & McLaren, P. (Eds). (1989). Critical Pedagogy, the State, and Cultural Struggle. SUNY Press, New York.

Sandlin, J.A., O’Malley, M.P., & Burdick, J. (2011). Mapping the complexity of public pedagogy scholarship: 1894-2010. Review of Educational Research, 81(3), 338-375.