Table Of ContentAdvance praise for Teaching Marx
Disillusionment with a system where increasing productivity leads only to increased
gaps between rich and poor, where reductions in social programs (retirement,
health care, education) are the chief response an uninspired political sector
can muster, and where non-sustainable exploitation of the Earth continues
undiminished—in short, as the looming, world-wide economic crisis draws nearer,
the essays in Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge are critical reading. It is time
for our teachers to prepare students not to take their place in an increasingly
corrupt economy, but to bring about the fundamental changes we need to build an
equitable, prosperous, sustainable future.
—Dr. Dennis Vickers
Humanities Department
College of Menominee Nation
Keshena, Wisconsin
Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge is an extraordinarily important text at this
juncture of world history. Functioning as more than just another pedagogical
weapon to be used against the ideological structures of death and social
hallucinogenics manufactured by the transnational capitalist class, it is a book that
can provide fecund opportunities for teachers to re-learn how to put social and
economic justice front and center in the agenda for educational reform by putting
Marx front and center, where he belongs.
—Peter McLaren
Professor, UCLA and author of
Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution
Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge provides a useful starting point for
understanding the origins of today’s global crisis of capitalism. Our work in
public schools to encourage respectful dialogues between Indian and non-Indian
students about local conflicts over land ownership, through the TERRA Institute,
should encourage cooperative action to find common interests. This book
reminds us to move those specific discussions to explorations of the causes of
conflicts over land, including the imperatives of global capitalism.
—David Stanfield
TERRA Institute
www.terrainstitute.org
This collection by Malott, Cole and Elmore is a very timely contribution to the
current revival of marxism in education. The authors engage seriously with the
ideas of Marx—from his theory of capitalist crises to the increasing impoverishment
of the working class—and debunk many of the commonly held myths about
marxism. The compilation of writings provide a devastating rejoinder to those who
believe that we can only make changes within the present system and show how
this crisis has made discussion of socialist alternatives, in education and society,
an urgent necessity. They argue that,in Marx’s words, the educators need to get
educated and find ways—through their students, through what they teach, and
through their political activism—to feed into wider movements of social change.
—Marnie Holborow
author on marxism and language
Dublin City University, Ireland
Teaching Marx
The Socialist Challenge
A volume in
Critical Constructions: Studies in Education and Society
Curry Stephenson Malott, Series Editor
Teaching Marx
The Socialist Challenge
edited by
Curry Stephenson Malott
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Mike Cole
Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln
John M. Elmore
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.
Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data is available for this book at www.loc.gov.
Copyright © 2013 Information Age Publishing Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Foreword ...............................................................................................ix
Curry Stephenson Malott, Mike Cole, and John M. Elmore
Introduction: Rethinking Educational Purpose—The Socialist
Challenge .............................................................................................xv
Curry Stephenson Malott
Section i
The Larger ConTexT
1 Marx, Marxism and (Twenty-First Century) Socialism ......................3
Mike Cole
2 The Crisis in Marxism: Language, Agency, and the Problem
of Marx’s Authorial Voice ...................................................................27
Brad Hollingshead
3 Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist
Challenge and The Historical Context ............................................103
Curry Stephenson Malott
Section ii
a MarxisT ChaLLenge To CapiTaLisT sChooLing
4 Marx, Teacher Education, and the Corporate University ..............143
John M. Elmore
vii
viii contents
5 Critical Multicultural Social Studies and the
Socialist Challenge ............................................................................161
Marc Pruyn and Curry Stephenson Malott
6 “Shut Up! He Might Hear You!”: Teaching Marx in Social
Studies Education ..............................................................................207
E. Wayne Ross and Greg Queen
7 Seeking Liberatory Possibilities in Science Education ...................233
Andrew Gilbert
Section iii
soCiaL CLass and sTudenT perspeCTive
8 “Class” Discussion: Social Class, Communication and the
Classroom Environment ...................................................................259
Carrie Freie
9 Student-Teaching as an Emerging Marxist ......................................273
Eric Gerard Anderson
Section iV
TwenTy-FirsT CenTury soCiaLisM in praCTiCe
10 The Role of Higher Education within the Socialist Revolution
of Latin America ................................................................................327
John M. Elmore
11 Education and Twenty-First Century Socialism:
The Venezuelan Alternative to Neo-Liberal Capitalism ................343
Mike Cole
Afterword: Teaching Marx in the N eo-liberal Age ........................363
John M. Elmore
Foreword
Curry stephenson Malott, Mike Cole,
and John M. elmore
We are in the midst of yet another crisis in capitalism. In the United King-
dom, we have the most right-wing and ideologically driven government
since Thatcher, using the crisis to drive through a social counter-revolution:
to drastically diminish workers’ rights and living standards, the latter having
been pushed back thirty years (Shaoul, 2012), and to undermine the wel-
fare state. In the United States, President Obama, whose initial record did
not live up to the expectations of many on the Left, is increasingly driven by
right-wing republicanism and other corporate interests. At the same time,
there are developments in Latin America, in particular Venezuela, which
are heralding the dawn of a new politics, and recovering the voice of Marx,
but with a twenty-first century socialist focus, thus giving hope to the lives of
millions of working people throughout the world. This is why the world me-
dia is intent on discrediting President Hugo Chávez; and insisting that ordi-
nary people have to pay the cost of the crisis in capitalism. The Arab Spring
and the Occupy movement also show signs of an anti-capitalist movement
in embryo. In Greece, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe (even
France), the austerity-stricken working-classes are pushing for real existing
socialism. It is therefore not surprising that the ruling class of Greece is in-
creasingly supporting the neo-Nazi, fascist Golden Dawn party threatening
civil war should they lose power as a class. Now, is a prescient time to bring
twenty-first century socialism to the educational institutions of the world, to
teach Marx across the curriculum and across the globe.
Teaching Marx, pages ix–xiii
Copyright © 2013 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ix
