Class in Education: Knowledge, pedagogy, and subjectivity

223 Pages·2009·2.09 MB·English

by  Deborah Kelsh

Class in Education
Knowledge, pedagogy, subjectivity
Edited by Deborah Kelsh, Dave Hill
and Sheila Macrine
First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2010 Deborah Kelsh, Dave Hill and Sheila Macrine for editorial material
and selection. Individual contributors, their contribution.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Class in education : knowledge, pedagogy, subjectivity / edited by Deborah
Kelsh, Dave Hill, and Sheila Macrine.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Educational sociology. 2. Critical pedagogy. 3. Educational
equalization. 4. Social classes—Economic aspects. I. Kelsh, Deborah. II.
Hill, Dave, 1945- III. Macrine, Sheila L.
LC189.C545 2010
306.43s—dc22 2009009253
ISBN 0-203-87093-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0-415-45027-6 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0-203-87903-X (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-45027-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-87093-8 (ebk)
Contents
List of figures vii
Notes on contributors viii
Foreword xi
E. SAN JUAN, JR.
Introduction 1
SHEILA MACRINE, DAVE HILL AND DEBORAH KELSH
1 Cultureclass 6
DEBORAH KELSH
2 Hypohumanities 39
TERESA L. EBERT AND MAS’UD ZAVARZADEH
3 Persistent inequities, obfuscating explanations: reinforcing the lost
centrality of class in Indian education debates 66
RAVI KUMAR
4 Class, “race” and state in post-apartheid education 87
ENVER MOTALA AND SALIM VALLY
5 Racism and Islamophobia in post 7/7 Britain: Critical Race Theory,
(xeno-)racialization, empire and education – a Marxist
analysis 108
MIKE COLE AND ALPESH MAISURIA
6 Marxism, critical realism and class: implications for a socialist
pedagogy 128
GRANT BANFIELD
vi Contents
7 Globalization, class, and the social studies curriculum 153
E. WAYNE ROSS AND GREG QUEEN
8 Class: the base of all reading 175
ROBERT FAIVRE
Afterword: the contradictions of class and the praxis
of becoming 196
PETER MCLAREN
Index of names 202
Figures
6.1 Strong historical materialism 140
6.2 The dimensions of spacio-temporal extension and ontological
generality 144
6.3 The three-dimensional modal operation incorporating vantage
point 145
7.1 Fred Wright cartoon, ‘So Long Partner!’ 163
7.2 ‘CEO Pay,’ from A Field Guide to the U.S. Economy 164
Contributors
Grant Banfield teaches educational sociology and qualitative approaches to research
in the School of Education at Flinders University, Adelaide. His intellectual
interests lie in the application of Marxism and critical realist philosophy to the
problems of education, schooling and “critical” pedagogy in contemporary capital-
ist society. Grant’s research interests center on contributing to the development
of emancipatory social science and practice directed towards the realization of an
ecologically sane and truly human future.
Mike Cole is Research Professor in Education and Equality, and Head of Research at
Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK. He has published widely in
the area of education and equality, racism, and Marxism and educational theory.
He is the author of Marxism and Educational Theory: origins and issues, (2008), the
editor of Professional Attributes and Practice for Student Teachers, 4th Edition (2008),
and Education, Equality and Human Rights: issues of gender, “race,” sexuality, disability
and social class, 2nd edition, all published by Routledge.
Teresa L. Ebert’s writings include Ludic Feminism and After and The Task of Cultural
Critique. She is co-author (with Mas’ud Zavarzadeh) of Class in Culture and co-ed-
itor of two volumes in the Transformation series on Marxism and postmodernity
and on Marxism, queer theory and gender. The essay on “hypohumanities” in this
book is an excerpt from the book she has co-written, titled Hypohumanities.
Robert Faivre teaches a range of courses for the English Division at Adirondack
Community College, State University of New York (US), where he is a Professor.
His interests are in the intersections of reading and class, and he is working on a
book that develops a materialist theory of reading.
Dave Hill is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Northampton, UK,
and Chief Editor, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, at www.jceps.com.
He heads the independent e-Institute for Education Policy Studies, at www.
ieps.org.uk. He is the Series Editor for Education and Neoliberalism, and for
Education and Marxism, both published by Routledge. He lectures worldwide
on Marxism and Education and on Radical/Socialist education.
Notes on contributors ix
Deborah Kelsh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education
at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York (US). Her scholarship focuses
on the question of class in relation to the production of knowledge and pedagogy.
She has publications in several journals, including The Red Critique and Cultural
Logic, and a chapter in Feminism and Composition Studies (1998). She is working on
a book on materialist pedagogy.
Ravi Kumar teaches sociology in the Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia
University, New Delhi. He has experience working with the students’ movement
and other grassroots movements in backward regions of India. His publications
include The Politics of Imperialism and Counterstrategies (co-edited, Delhi: Aakar
Books, 2004); The Crisis of Elementary Education in India (edited, Sage, 2006); and
Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences (co-edited, Routledge: New
York, 2008).
Peter McLaren, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author, co-
author, editor and co-editor of approximately 40 books and monographs. Several
hundred of his articles, chapters, interviews, reviews, commentaries and columns
have appeared in dozens of scholarly journals and professional magazines since the
publication of his first book, Cries from the Corridor, in 1980. His work has been
translated into 17 languages. He lectures internationally and is a member of the
Industrial Workers of the World.
Sheila Macrine, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Curriculum and Teaching
Department at Montclair State University in New Jersey (US). Her scholarly
interests focus on connecting the cultural, institutional and personal contexts
of pedagogy, particularly as they relate to the social imagination and progressive
democratic education. She writes about the relationships among the complex
social issues of difference (race, class, gender and disability, etc.) within urban
schools and the political economy of schooling within the broader context of
post-industrial capitalism.
Alpesh Maisuria is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.
He teaches across a range of Education Studies modules. His specialization is
the sociology of education, particularly the analysis of “race” through social class,
adopting and developing a classical Marxist perspective. Alpesh has also published
papers exploring the private sector’s involvement in education. He has recently
explored the “war on terror” and its linkages to capitalist relations of produc-
tion, particularly exploring Critical Race Theory and the Marxist concept of
racialization.
Enver Motala was a lawyer for the independent trade union movement during the
apartheid era and also played a significant role in the anti-apartheid education
movement. After the first democratic elections, he was appointed the Deputy
Director-General of Education in the province of Gauteng. He is presently an as-
sociate of the Education Policy Consortium for whom he has coordinated research
x Notes on contributors
projects on democracy, human rights and social justice in education in South
Africa. He has also done similar work for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Greg Queen is a social studies teacher at Fitzgerald High School in Warren,
Michigan. He is co-editor of The Rouge Forum News and has made numerous
presentations at professional meetings, including the National Council for the
Social Studies and Michigan Council for the Social Studies. He is the lead author
of “‘I Participate, You Participate, We Participate…’: Notes on Building a K-16
Movement for Democracy and Social Justice,” published in Workplace: A Journal
for Academic Labor (www.workplace-gsc.com).
E. Wayne Ross is Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the
University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of numer-
ous publications on curriculum theory, politics of education, and critical pedagogy.
His edited books include Battleground Schools: an encyclopedia of conflict and contro-
versy (Greenwood, co-edited with Sandra Mathison), Neoliberalism and Education
Reform (Hampton Press, co-edited with Rich Gibson) and Democratic Social
Education (RoutledgeFalmer, co-edited with David Hursh). He is a former day-
care and secondary school teacher and a co-founder of The Rouge Forum (www.
rougeforum.org).
E. San Juan, Jr. heads the Philippines Cultural Studies Center, Storrs, CT (US). He
is Emeritus Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Ethnic Studies at
various universities. He was a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard
University, in Spring 2009. His recent books are In the Wake of Terror (Lexington)
and US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave).
Salim Vally is a member of the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg,
South Africa. He was a regional executive member of the high school South
African Students Movement until its banning in 1977. He is the spokesperson of
the Anti-War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Committee, serves on the
boards of various non-governmental and professional organizations, and is an
active member of various social movements. Vally is also the coordinator of the
Education Rights Project which works with communities in many townships
and informal settlements around the country.
Mas’ud Zavarzadeh is author of several books including Seeing Films Politically. His
new book, Totality and the Post, will be published early next year.
Foreword
E. San Juan, Jr.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the ruling classes of the industrial-
ized world celebrated the end of class struggle and the proverbial immortality of the
capitalist world-system. But scarcely had its first decade ended when disaster struck.
Behind the illusion of a permanent market utopia lurked internal decay, a precipitous
meltdown. September 11, 2001 was just a portent of the impending breakdown. With
the slide of the US and the world economy into an unprecedented impasse, a crisis
reminiscent of the 1929 Wall Street crash, but much more all-encompassing given the
“flat world” of globalized finance capital, we are faced with a lesson that should have
been learned when Marx and Engels invoked the “specter” of revolution in their 1848
Manifesto – the lesson of class struggle as the necessary framework for understanding
world history and its laws of motion. It is one we need today in order to grapple with
and make sense of the contradictory currents and tendencies traversing our daily
lives, for which this book is a timely heuristic and guide.
The contemporary situation is indeed even worse than in 1929, or since World
War II (as Kevin Phillips observes [2008]). In her lead essay, Deborah Kelsh sums up
the sharpened class contradictions in the US and around the world hidden behind
pluralist, post- and neo-Weberian mystifications. Kelsh uses the astutely formulated
concept of “cultureclass” to denote the way in which the dominant ideology obscures
private property – that is, the private ownership of the vital means of production
and the private appropriation of material wealth (aggregated surplus value) produced
by workers – on which class exploitation is grounded. “Cultureclass” prevents the
people from acquiring the necessary knowledge of the totality of social relations of
production – a knowledge of the internal contradictions inherent in a crisis-ridden
capitalist society. This knowledge equals class consciousness, enabling a radical praxis
of critique to transform society. “Cultureclass” separates culture and plural identities
from their roots in “the inequitable binary relation of owning,” the foundation of
capitalist production and exploitation. Preventing a critical analysis of property
relations, “cultureclass” serves as the ideological instrument of finance-capital based
on the commodification of knowledge, culture, ideas, etc. for corporate profit and
capital accumulation. “Cultureclass” is the neoliberal privileging of minds detached
from labor, subordinating the call of every person’s “freedom from need” to the “free-
market” demands of status-obsessed consumerism.
Kelsh’s theorizing of “cultureclass” at the opening of this volume is crucial in