652
PAFl...TISAN REVIEW
a basis for thoughtful dialogue and debate. Instead, it is a problem to be
overcome.
In
fact this problem - "the problem of resistance," as it is
called - is a major theme in transformationist writings on pedagogy. Jim
Merod writes that "the first resistance any teacher confronts is the stu–
dent's defense against the threat of change" and places this resistance
within the context of "the collective nature of defense structures ... the
cultural and ideological matrix that frames social action." "When the
culture at large or the neighborhood that has powcrfully informed the
precritical intellect becomes an opponent for the somcwhat stumped
teacher," writes Merod, "such opposition constitutes a defense that
dampens the possibilities of bringing distrustful students to the threshold
of critical imagination."
To their credit, some teachers who share transformationist goals
worry about the latent authoritarianism within politicized teaching.
While advocating an "anti-hegemonic teaching" that "addresses students
as socially and historically inscribed subjects who can be agents of social
transformation," University of Connecticut professor Maria-Regina
Kecht argues that "instructional methodology should not subordinate
the students" but should allow students to "represent their own worlds
and perspectives." Similarly, Carnegie Mellon University professor David
R. Shumway holds that "although teaching theory means teaching
Marxism, feminism, and other politically motivated discourses, it also
means teaching students not to accept uncritically what their teachers tell
them."
The transformationist proposes to mold students into, among other
things, radical egalitarians; but to do so would give teachers authority
over students that is incompatible with radical egalitarianism. The dicta–
torship of the proletariat may have been replaced by the dictatorship of
the professoriate, but the dilemma remains the same - how to achieve
anti-authoritarian ends by authoritarian means.
In
spite of its language of "critical thinking" and "liberation," criti–
cal pedagogy limits rather than opens inquiry.
It
assumes the finality of a
single set of political commitments, an assumption that is epistemologi–
cally unfounded and untenable. Critical pedagogy also fails ethically be–
cause it treats other human beings as less than free and rational elements
to be respected. At best, it is paternalistic; at its worst, disingenuous and
manipulative.
