Unschooling Critical Pedagogy, Unfixing Schools

Though conservatives and criticalists perhaps espouse different values and social assumptions as rationale for reforming schools, they both seek to "fix" schools. Unschooling Critical Pedagogy, Unfixing Schools argues that in this move to fix, they both either deny or misread the material dimension of schooling, thereby unnecessarily limiting possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In order to unfix schools, making them dynamic and critical places of engagement, educators must review and revive their critical roots through Marx to overcome the educational necrophilia that has simply overwhelmed schools through the material conditions both within and without. Critical pedagogy is insufficient for such a project, with some iterations of it becoming errors of commission. Moving from Marx to Althusser to Illich, Unschooling Critical Pedagogy, Unfixing Schools concludes with a recommendation for unschooling in schools which requires getting students out of schools as much as possible.

John E. Petrovic is Professor and Program Coordinator for the Social and Cultural Studies Concentration in the College of Education at The University of Alabama. He earned his PhD from University of Colorado in foundations of education, specializing in philosophy and policy studies. He has been President of the Southeast Philosophy of Education Society and Secretary of the American Educational Studies Association. He has served on several editorial boards including those of the American Educational Research Journal, International Multilingual Research Journal, and Thresholds in Education. He is Executive Editor of Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education. He is author of A Post-liberal Approach to Language Policy (2015) and his recent edited volumes include Indigenous Philosophies of Education Around the World (co-edited with Roxanne Mitchell, 2018) and Citizenship Education Around the World: Local Contexts and Global Possibilities (co-edited with Aaron Kuntz, 2014). Petrovic teaches courses on multicultural education, language policy, and philosophy of education.