Engaged Pedagogy, Enraged Pedagogy: Reconciling Politics, Emotion, Religion, and Science for Critical Pedagogy

Book excerpt: Students, teachers and schools are under attack. The assault comes in the guise of ‘accountability’ and ‘choice’, cloaking itself in the ‘scientifically-proven’ with an over-emphasis of data. It combines a vilification of organized labor along with a promotion of the irrational, while readily blurring the line between utopia and dystopia. The attack abuses education as it disseminates self-serving propaganda, simultaneously covering up inconvenient truths like the United States government’s long and storied relationships with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in the Wars on Terror. It suppresses solidarity and compassion while it champions a divisive form of selfish individualism. Engaged Pedagogy, Enraged Pedagogy seeks to counter these attacks and expose the ideological impulses behind them. Marshalling critical pedagogy and an ethic of care with the notions of justified anger and the intellectual warrior, the book explores the non-antagonisitc dualisms between faith and science, reason and emotion; it deconstructs social texts ranging from ‘80s action films to dystopian literature as it uncovers the ideologies that structure and order our lives; it explores and champions the democratic potential of dialogue, mutuality, and authority, while challenging left essentialism and identity politics. The book also features an interview with Joe Kincheloe, a seminal figure in the field of critical pedagogy.