Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism (review)

When I was in school, "imperialism" meant ancient Rome or eighteenth and nineteenth century Great Britain. As far as my high school and college textbooks were concerned, Rome was in the curriculum because it was a 1,000-year power that, along with ancient Greece, laid the foundation for Western Civilization. I learned how Rome changed dramatically from a republic to an empire in its rise to power. The British Empire was central because it gave birth to that rebel child that became the United States of America. Although that child has grown to become the epicenter of a new kind of empire that shakes the whole world, you would be hard pressed to find the United States defined as an empire in our schools' adopted textbooks and official curricula.

Pedagogy and Practice in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism, a collection of four essays that Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo have co-authored in recent years, works to counter that omission. In these unprecedented times of sole-superpower militarism and growth-at-all-costs capitalism, critical educators have needed McLaren's bold words of resistance, and we can be glad that he continues to co-write with Jaramillo and other promising voices of a revolutionary critical pedagogy.

It's rare in writing on pedagogy to come across this kind of critical perspective that is not afraid to connect the signs of our times with empire. The authors view the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina in the context of global capitalism in crisis, making important connections between foreign and domestic policies. War-torn Iraq has become a goldmine for U.S. and British oil interests, and post-Katrina New Orleans is open for the businesses of gentrification and school privatization like never before. Faith in the market has become a global religion, and education is far from immune from free-market fundamentalism.

Three important themes emerge from these four essays. First, capitalism has become a global empire fueled by anti-democratic policies of neoliberalism. Second, education is never neutral with respect to the power of empire. Third, hope lies in an anti-imperialist, Marxist-driven but non-dogmatic critical pedagogy that fosters a democratic and humanist socialism. The authors construct these themes with disciplined research and poetic passion. The urgency of their message is deeply unsettling, but their hope for creating a more humane world is liberating. They call for an approach "that puts the struggle against capitalism (and the imperialism inherent in it) at the center of the pedagogical project, a project that is powered by the oxygen of socialism's universal quest for human freedom and social justice" (20).

While reading these essays, a skeptic might ask why an educator needs to learn about the nuances of the global economy and about the historic and current processes that make capitalism ubiquitous. Teachers, one might say, are practitioners who have enough to do without becoming concerned about the economic problems of the world. This focus on practicalities, though, tends to turn teachers into technocrats in politically sterilized institutions of rote learning. Certainly, the policies that make up No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have that very effect, and its focus on standardization and testing seems designed to ensure that no child learns to develop thinking skills to question the status quo. The authors note that, under NCLB, four testing companies profit while struggling schools fall into the hands of corporate and religious sponsors. In addition, the Bush administration's support for publicly-funded vouchers for private and parochial schools fits with the goals of neoliberalism, in which teachers and students alike are viewed as potential commodities. If students, parents, and teachers make these connections, they can work to transform the system that breeds their alienation toward school and work. The authors give an example of such a coalition opposing testing in Los Angeles through the Center for Education and Justice. This group "has mobilized the Los Angeles Unified School...