week 4
CRITICAL THEORY IN EDUCATION Critical Theory in Education has emerged from the wider discipline of sociology, and focuses at the ways in which political ideology shapes Education as a way of challenging or maintaining existing scheme of privilege and social control within educational planning like any other social sector. It cross-examines the social, cultural, political and economic context of compulsory education to demonstrate how education is serving the dominant cultural interests in any society by developing generations whose members are unable to question or challenge the status quo, and merely accept the dictation they are given by any “Authority”. It took a special turn in twentieth century by building up the assumption that society as it is currently constituted under Capitalism is basically unjust, and exploitative. It maintains that those normative values through which societies are
15
operating and organizing must be challenged and changed if human beings are to apprehend their full potential. Drawing from sociological, psychological and anthropological evidence, critical theory advocates that a better society is possible, but can only be achieved through fundamental changes in values and dispositions, rather than cosmetic changes in the discourse, but that this change can occur within the life opportunities of each individual who is allowed to practice freedom. Its critical analysis is thus directed towards those structures and mechanisms which create and maintain the hegemonic normative values of society and through them the power status quo. The critical theorists soon found their way into the studies of education that were taking place in the mid of twentieth century. Critical theory in education thus throws a critical eye upon the history, the development
