The Main Connections between Pedagogy and Critical Theory

This paper analyses connections between pedagogy and critical theory in the work of Henry A. Giroux. Locating the genesis of critical pedagogy in Giroux’s scholarship and accounting for its persistent exploitation of the intellectual legacy of the Frankfurt School have significant implications for how we understand the role of theory in education. Critical theory provides essential tools for developing pedagogies and forms of education that seriously engage with the ideas of emancipation, social transformation, and cultural struggle for a viable democracy and a rationally organized social life. The paper strongly opposes recent claims that critical pedagogy has lost its close connections to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, and that educational critique has failed to offer any positive vision of schooling, leading instead to cynicism and despair. Contrary to these views, it demonstrates how the key concepts of critical theory operate in Giroux’s discourse and how they allow him to construct a program of critical literacy and civic education that provides a rationale for rethinking schools as democratic public spheres where critical thinking and democratic skills can be analyzed and practiced