# Critical Education is Brainwashing
Controversial claim: Critical Pedagogy is Brainwashing (or Thought Reform).

With Critical Pedagogy, one is sending a child off for 30-40 hours per week in a brainwashing center. Critical Pedagogy has infected virtually every school and is unambiguously brainwashing.

## What is Critical Pedagogy
- Combination of Critical Theory and Education Theory
- Specifically the application of Critical Theory to Educational Theory

## Gottesmann
By 1992, Paulo Freire's influence (Critical Pedagogy) had located itself everywhere within education and education schools.

Radicalization posing as education adapted through Henri Giroux's more North American context, having adopted the western theories of the EUropean Theorists:
- Neo-Marxists
- Postmodernists

He was a big fan of Marcuse and Derrida. He also relied on Foucault and dabbled into some of the other Critical Theorists. He was a Critical Marxist who adapted Paulo Freire's radicalizing form of miseducation to be something we call critical Pedagogy today.

## Joe Kincheloe
- American professor at McGill developed Critical Pedagogy more than any theorist.
- "The study of oppression in education"
- "Race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism shape the nature and purpose of education"
- Created evolving set of stages to what Critical Pedagogy should be and how it should be
- Listen to the oppressed about the notion of oppression and how to fight it

Coined: The Decolonization of Curriculum and Education

He picked up where Freire's left off - it was a third-worldist project and Kincheloe was very involved in that.

### Critical Constructivist Epistemology
- Critical pedagogy, critical neo-marxism and postmodernism
- Attached to Joe Kincheloe by name
- Jordan Peterson called this Postmodern Neo-Marxism
  - Constructivist portion is postmodernist and linguistic
  - Critical part is critical theory
  - Together, this is Woke

#### Dissemination
Incubated, formulated and delivered through Critical Pedagogy in education. A radicalization program posing as education.

## Allison Bailey
**Privilege-preserving Epistemic Pushback (Allison Bailey, 2017, Hypatia)**
### Critical Thinking:
- "...based on a set of traditions rooted in Epistemic Adequacy (knowing what you're talking about, getting correct answers, hunting down the most accurate and verifiable relationship to the truth that you can)"
### Critical Pedagogy:
- is about analyzing power dynamics
- CP education is designed not to teach people how to attain epistemic adequacy, but instead to gain competence in analyzing Power Relations
- rooted in the Neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt School

### Joe Kincheloe
From **Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy, an Introduction**
For Paulo Freire, the way Critical Pedagogy works is that you create a generative theme which is supposed to engage the students to want to learn, but it generates an opportunity to have radicalizing political discussions. Some themes:
- The presence and performance of the Drag Queen is a "Generative Learning Opportunity" (the shock, awe, drama, fun, glitter, sparkles, noise, lights to generate conversations about Queer Theory)
- Jonny riding to the amusement park - 50 miles to go math problem.
  - Generative themes: amusement park, mom and dad, car
  - "Who's ever been to an amusement park? Why haven't some people?"
  - Amusement park: opportunity to have the discussion and to bring up socioeconomic disparity and identity vis-a-vis race, queer/normativity, etc
  - Car: environmental discussion
  - Mom & Dad: Feminism and Queer Theory

Critical Pedagogy is designed to create as many generative opportunities as possible to do radicalizing political conversations on Marxist terms with kids.

#### Quote
"The generative theme is a topic taken from students' knowledge of their own lived experiences that is compelling and controversial enough to elicit their excitement and commitment. Such themes are saturated with affect, emotion and meaning because they engage the fears, anxieties, hopes and dreams of both students and their teachers.

Generative themes arise at the point where the personal lives of students intersect with the larger society and the globalized world."

#### Breakdown
- Emotionally engaging => Thought-reform/Brainwashing
  - Tap into emotional centers during the learning opportunity
  - Know the social circumstances and psych profile
  - Make it relevant to the life they are living
  - Elicit narcissism / make them feel self-centered and important (following self-esteem culture)
- Teachers/Facilitators:
  - extract from learners the generative them
  - facilitate them through the process:
    - codification
    - problematization
    - decodification (radicalize / see through a Marxist interpretation)
- Controversy: division and choice to create difference
- Commitment: choose a side from division the controversy creates
  - Intrinsically divisive - classroom struggle session
  - Facilitates brainwashing in social and emotional environment (SEL is brainwashing)
- Affective: affect the emotions. Saturated with affect, emotion and meaning -> for fears desires hopes and dreams.

### Example
`Amusement park as a generative theme`
- Kids are afraid that they're being left out
- Taps into fear of unfairness
- Anxiety that the world they live in is not fair for them
- Hopes and dreams of getting to have fun at an amusement park
- Compelling and controversial topic that elicits their excitement
- Commitment to make things fair so all kids can enjoy amusement parks, including themselves


## Kevin Kumashiro
**Against Repetition: Addressing Resistance to Anti-Oppressive Change and the Practice of Learning, Supervising and Researching (2002)**

"Repeating what is already learned can be comforting and therefore desirable. Students learning things that question their knowledge and identities can be emotionally upsetting. For example suppose students think society is meritocratic, but learn that it is racist. Or think that they themselves are not contributing to homophobia but learn, in fact, that they are.

In such situations, students learn that the ways that they think and act are not only limited but oppressive. Learning about oppression and about the ways they often unknowingly comply with oppression can lead students to feel paralyzed with anger, sadness, anxiety and guilt. It can lead to a form of emotional crisis.

Once in crisis, a student can go in many directions. Some which lead to anti-oppressive change, others that may lead to more entrenched resistance.

Educators have a responsibility to draw students into a possible crisis."

### Breakdown
Critical Pedagogy leads children to form identity and emotional crises:
- exploitation and facilitation of generative themes
- fills children with anger, sadness, anxiety and guilt
- Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Make them into activists - push children into personal crisis to spur them into working towards positive social change.

#### Reactions
- Facilitate children into an emotional state
- State causes a reaction
- Put them into a choice between Communism and Reactionary Fascism

#### Facilitate the elements of interpretation
You could just not brainwash the students, but their plan is to have teachers facilitate it into the "right" direction.

Facilitator brainwashes children to interpret emotionally arousing circumstances:
- cognitive dissonance
- emotional dissonance
- anxiety
- depression
- fear
- the different hopes and fears that they're having tapped into by the emotionally manipulative brainwashing program, and making sure it goes into a correct form of thought. In other words, thought-reform for "anti-oppressive change" or as D'Angelo had it -> a "lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-critique and social activism.

#### Crisis

"Educators have a responsibility to draw students into a possible crisis.".

- Drag children into crisis
- Create psychological arousal states for thought reform
- Counteract crisis with Social Emotional Learning
  - SEL presupposes Marxian worldview, but teaches it under the pretense of being a means of dealing with one's emotion
  - SEL's self awareness:
    - You might be a girl in a boy's body; racial oppression everywhere
    - You have a role in these conflicts - you can be a part of the solution which also solves your negative emotion
    - Make decisions against power dynamics / climate change
    - Master these complex social dynamics (Marxian conflict) to gain the sensibility which allows you to fit in socially