(2016). Meglio di ieri: Educational Films, National Identity, and Citizenship in Italy from 1948 to 1968. Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, v8 n1 p78-90 Mar. This article examines a series of educational films and documentaries produced between 1948 and 1968 that document the activities of the Italian state. These films, which record the dedicated and arduous work of the Italian government and administration, had two functions. First, they informed students and the general public about the democratic structures, institutions and aims of the new republic, promoting a fresh and convincing vision of national identity. Second, they served to obscure and rewrite the collective national memory of Fascism and Italian involvement in the Second World War. These films thus reveal the fine line between public information, political propaganda, and civic education…. [Direct]
(2016). Investigation 8th Grade Students Secondary School Cognitive Structure about Principles of Ataturk through Word Association Test. Journal of Education and Training Studies, v4 n11 p151-162 Nov. The purpose of this study is to present the connections between the concepts in perception and cognitive structures of secondary school 8th grade students for principles of Ataturk. Word association test is used in data collection. The number of the total participants in this research is 190. A frequency table is formed for the data obtained in the research, then obtained frequency data has been analyzed by using inspiration 8.00 program. According to the results of the research; it has been observed that the most repeated words are irreligion, fascism, racism, festival, contemporaneousness, Islam and religion. The data obtained in the result part of the research has been compared with other studies. As the result, it has been determined that the word association test is an measurement tool which is appropriate for learning how the students attribute mean to the concepts…. [PDF]
(2020). Challenging Bigotry in the Freirean Classroom. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), v33 n2 p212-228. In order to understand the current social, cultural, and political period of ascendant racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, classism, and xenophobia — personified in the actions and statements of the current President of the United States — and its relationship to education, Ken McGrew suggests that the scholarship of Paulo Freire is particularly helpful. In this essay he positions his use of Freirean inspired pedagogy in the history of the social foundations tradition in education. He reflects on opposition to the foundations project, drawing upon his own teaching experiences and those of other scholars. Classroom experiences like those described in this essay, including institutional responses to them, are identified as locations of struggle with larger agendas — which include neoliberal efforts to repress the social foundations tradition in teacher training and advance banking education — to manipulate, divide, and dominate the lower-classes. He observes that the radical… [Direct]
(2016). The "Convitti Scuola della Rinascita" (The Boarding Schools of Rebirth): An Innovative Pedagogy for Democracy in Post-War Italy (1945-1955). Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, v52 n1-2 p188-200. In 1945, Italian society was in crisis. Twenty years of fascism and the aerial bombing and military offensives of the Second World War had left the civilian population suffering and the nation in need of reinvention. In this difficult context, certain anti-fascist intellectuals devised the interesting pedagogical experiment of the 11 Convitti Scuola della Rinascita (Boarding Schools of Rebirth) for adult learners, mainly those who had been partisans engaged in the Italian resistance during the war. This article reconstructs the birth of the Convitti within the general framework of education, war and reconstruction. It investigates the arduous search for and development of an adult education curriculum–outside the traditional models–suited to the ethical and political reconstruction of students. Finally, it situates the Convitti and their demise amidst the dilemmas that affected both the ruling classes and the teachers called to redefine their role in a newly democratic Italy…. [Direct]
(2018). Soka Education as a Theory of Leadership: Implications for the Preparation, Practice, and for the Re-Structuration of the Modern Principalship. Management in Education, v32 n3 p102-108 Jul. This research poses two interrelated questions. How important is it for the formation of democratic ideas about educational leadership that the group or individual promoting those ideas is operating within a democratic political environment or, to the contrary, in the absence of one? And second, in the case of the latter, what are the available resources–historical, educational, philosophical, and transnational–for a countervailing vision of educational leadership, one rooted in precisely those democratic forms that have failed to find a hospitable environment in the home country: in the case of this research, feudal Japan in the 1930s and 1940s when a heightened form of militant fascism ruled the country. The strength of an idea, especially one that emerges in an inhospitable environment, that draws its strength from a kind of stress of opposites, and that survives the political machinations against it, may in selective cases be sufficient enough to overcome the structural limits… [Direct]
(2014). "Against Fascism, War and Economies": The Communist Party of Great Britain's Schoolteachers during the Popular Front, 1935-1939. History of Education, v43 n2 p208-231. The Popular Front line made the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) a more hospitable place for "brain workers." The emphasis the line placed on mass ideological and cultural struggle against fascism meant that they became important allies to be won for the working class. As the principal transmitters of ideology and culture to the masses, schoolteachers could be perceived as being at the forefront of the anti-fascist effort, just as important as the academics, artists, writers and musicians more traditionally associated with the pull of British communism in this period. But communist schoolteachers on the whole avoided the exploration of socialist ideas in their professional practice. Rather, their primary focus was on achieving the greatest possible unity against fascism in their profession. This stance largely excluded critical discussion of the theory or practice of the education of children under capitalism, such as combating imperialist bias in textbooks; ending… [Direct]
(2020). A New Deal: The Coronavirus Pandemic and Rebuilding Higher Education. Albert Shanker Institute Government supported higher education in the United States evolved from sponsoring knowledge in the public interest, from what was once the provenance of a select few based on inherited privilege, to a democratic expansion of access based on merit. In the process by the mid 20th century until our present, public higher education provided pillars supporting social stability after the political turbulence of the first half of the 20th century (e.g., fascism and Stalinism). Additionally, it was the foundation for research and workforce training requirements of an increasingly complex post-World War II economy. Meanwhile, it recycled money through our economy sustaining consumer demand and business growth. The present erosion of support for public higher education, therefore has troubling implications for maintaining social cohesion; social mobility; the research and training required to respond to national security challenges (e.g., infrastructure to manage crises, such as with… [PDF]
(2012). Recuperating Democratic Spaces in an Age of Militarisation and a \New Fascism\. Policy Futures in Education, v10 n6 p601-615. This essay provides a comprehensive overview of Henry Giroux's contribution over the years to critical thinking in education and beyond. It focuses primarily on Giroux's recent works concerning the changing nature of the State (from the social to the carceral and neoliberal state), the war against youth and children, the culture of militarisation, torture, the emergence of a \new fascism\, the corporatisation of schools and higher education and the need for intellectuals to extend their work beyond the confines of academia to engage as public intellectuals, as well as the roles of critical pedagogy and cultural studies in this regard. The article draws on a range of writings, including both academic and more \public\ writings from such outlets as \Truthout and Counterpunch\. While much of what is written presents a bleak picture of the current international socio-economic scenario, Giroux's work is infused with a sense of hope and agency. It is inspired by a view of a world not as it… [Direct]
(2013). Fred Clarke's Ideals of Liberal Democracy: State and Community in Education. British Journal of Educational Studies, v61 n4 p401-415. This paper examines the continuity and changes in Clarke's ideas about the State and community in education, especially in relation to a rapidly changing political situation in England in the 1930s and 1940s. His ideas evolved in the intellectual context of British idealism. Moreover, in response to the threat to democracy arising from Fascism or Totalitarianism, the distinction between the State and community was a key theme in Clarke's ideals of liberal democracy. Additionally, this paper also proposes the implications of Clarke's ideas for future educational development…. [Direct]
(2018). Previously Engaged: A Foucauldian Genealogy of Student Engagement in Composition Studies. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University. This study is a philosophical genealogy of the term "student engagement" as it has appeared in composition studies. It attempts to account for the fact that student engagement has become something of a virtue in educational and composition studies, despite the fact that the term is problematic due its lack of definitional clarity and circular understanding of pedagogy (explained in greater detail in chapter two). Inspired by Foucault, this study employs a genealogical analytic to create a counterhistory of student engagement, suggesting that its principles have existed long before educational theorists coined the term, tracing its practices back to the 1940s in composition studies. Far from being the humanistic and student-centered practice that it is commonly viewed as, this study situates student engagement practices as emerging from various discursive and political desires/needs, especially as a way to ideologically counter the rise of Nazism and fascism in pre-World War… [Direct]
(2011). Education Policy as Proto-Fascism: The Aesthetics of Racial Neo-Liberalism. Journal of Pedagogy, v2 n2 p173-194 Dec. We argue that neo-liberal educational policy has emerged as a proto-fascist governmentality. This contemporary technology relies on State racisms and racial orderings manifested from earlier liberal and neo-liberal practices of biopower. As a proto-fascist technology, education policy, and school choice policies in particular, operate within a racial aesthetics that connects ultra-nationalisms with microfascisms of racialized bodies. We discuss historical examples of liberal school segregation and residential schools in relation to contemporary examples of chartered ethnic-identity schools to illustrate the complexities of proto-fascist education policy…. [Direct]
(2013). Collective Memories of the Second World War in History Textbooks from China, Japan and South Korea. Journal of International Social Studies, v3 n1 p34-60. Informed by recurring international controversies, this study explores representations of the Second World War as official history in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean secondary-level textbooks and theorizes about how they influence and function as collective memories about this time period. Using grounded theory, it finds that the examined Japanese textbooks tend to present the Second World War in chronological order with a passive voice and avoid discussing why the war occurred and how it ended. The examined Chinese textbooks develop narratives in chronological order as well, but thematic units are structured to highlight the coalition of Mao's Communist Party and Chang Kai-Shek's Nationalists as the decisive factor in the victory against Japanese imperialists contributing to the worldwide fight against fascism. The examined Korean textbooks tend toward a single, patriotic perspective of a people that overcame Japanese colonialism and developed as an independent nation, often ignoring… [PDF]
(2012). The Politics of Encyclopaedias. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, v10 n2 p314-344 Oct. The paper assesses the political credibility of three encyclopaedias (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia of Marxism and Wikipedia) in relation to three chosen topics (Friedrich Engels's biography; the political philosophy of fascism; and, the discipline of social psychology). I was interested in discerning how entries are represented and critically evaluated within each encyclopaedia. What epistemological foundations are at work? What type of information is privileged and what is marginalised? And, most importantly, how effective are the descriptions in terms of demystifying capitalist social relations? My findings suggest that the political narratives of Encyclopaedia Britannica are the least intellectually credible of the three. Whilst all three possess weaknesses, a combination of Encyclopedia of Marxism and Wikipedia should provide a thorough and, by and large, trustworthy starting point for any analyst investigating social phenomena…. [PDF]
(2009). Introducing Giovanni Gentile, the "Philosopher of Fascism". Educational Philosophy and Theory, v41 n6 p640-660 Oct. This essay aims to introduce Giovanni Gentile to scholars of Gramsci studies broadly and Gramsci-education studies more specifically. The largest part of the essay explores Gentile's academic life, his philosophical agenda, and his political career. Having established a basis for understanding the educational reform Gentile enacted as Mussolini's first Minister of Public Instruction, the essay then surveys the substantial contemporaneous and contemporary English-language material about it. The essay engages this literature only lightly and briefly in conclusion, for the primary purpose of illustrating the danger of eschewing it…. [Direct]
(2014). Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy and the Permanent Crisis in Community Colleges. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology, v5 n2 Article 3 p29-44. The historical failures of Marxism in the twentieth-century came in three forms: the inability to account for the rise of fascism and Nazism; the establishment of authoritarian regimes where "communist" revolutions had occurred, largely in pre-industrial societies from barely post-feudal Russia to peasant-based China and "developing" nations such as Vietnam; and the incapacity of the proletariat to develop class consciousness and foment class conflict in advanced industrial societies, where Marx and his followers knew capitalism to have arisen and where they assumed it would first be transcended. Seeking to understand these failures, yet to preserve and apply foundational elements of Marx's thought, the "critical theorists" of the Frankfurt Institute–at home and in exile–drew on additional sources including Hegel and Freud to diagnose the pathologies of modernity, though rarely to offer restorative treatments for Enlightenment values or Marxian… [Direct]