1st Edition

Presence Of Mind Education And The Politics Of Deception

By Pepi Leistyna Copyright 1999
    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    276 Pages
    by Routledge

    Widely misunderstood and misinterpreted at its most basic level, critical pedagogy provides a lens through which educators and students are better able to examine and interact with the real, underlying power relationships that structure our world. These educational politics determine how we make meaning of commonplace events, the purpose and goals of public education, the structure of our schools, the preparation our teachers receive, the way students are perceived and treated, and the curricula our schools employ.Taking up the ever-shifting cultural and political landscape in the United States, Presence of Mind addresses how power manifests itself within and across different social and educational terrain and, covering a number of contemporary topics and polemics that are central to teaching educational theory and practice. Pepi Leistyna argues that it is imperative that both students and teachers take ownership of educational practice by developing theoretical frameworks that historically and socially situate the deeply embedded roots of racism, discrimination, violence, and disempowerment in this country to better understand their roles as educators and citizens. Featuring dialogues with Paulo Freire and Noam Chomsky and a glossary of critical pedagogical terms, Presence of Mind is an accessible introduction to the basic tenets of critical pedagogy, as well as an advancement in thought in social theory.

    Foreword: Critical Pedagogy and the Project of Exemplary Prophecy, Preface, Acknowledgments, Memorial to Paulo: What's Past, What's Present, a Look into the Future: Remembering Paulo 1921-1997, Back to the Basics: An Introduction to the Fundamental Tenets of Critical Pedagogy, Examining the Underlying Conceptual Framework of Various Models of Multicultural Education, Critiquing and Appropriating from Four Mainstream Models of Multicultural Education, Concluding Comments, Notes, Presence of Mind in the Process of Learning and Knowing: A Dialogue with Paulo Freire, Notes, Racenicity: Whitewashing Ethnicity, Education, and the Public Mind, The Fragmentation of Race and Ethnicity, The Racist View of the Relationship Between Race and Ethnicity, What Is Racenicity? The Social Construction of Whiteness: The Yardstick of Ethnicity, The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same: Contemporary Ramifications of This Racial Hierarchy, White Ethnic Unconsciousness, The Myth of Ethnic Identity Among Assimilated Whites, Racenicity in the Shape of Cultural Resistance, Racenicity in the Shape of Internalized Oppression/ Cultural Alienation, The Invisible Ideology, Racenicity and Education, Notes, Demystifying Democracy: A Dialogue with Noam Chomsky, Notes, Veritas: The Fortunes of My Miseducation at Harvard, The Confines of Language, The Price You Pay, The Social Construction of Not Seeing, Becoming a Gatekeeper, Anti-Intellectualism as the Norm, Breaking Free, Conclusion, Notes, Reading Between the Lines of E. D. Hirsch Jr.'s Core Knowledge Sequence, Professional Biography, What Are Hirsch's Views on Culture, Multicultural Education, Common Cultural Literacy, and Language? Conclusion, Notes, Afterword: A Pedagogy of Entrapment, Glossary, References, Index

    Biography

    PEPI LEISTYNA is assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, in the Department of ESL/Bilingual Studies, where he teaches courses in cultural studies and language acquisition. He conceptualized and coedited Breaking Free: The Transformational Power of Critical Pedagogy.