Critical pedagogy

A critical multicultural social studies is envisioned as a potential way to counter the business plan for education, and other such ill-conceived antidemocratic shenanigans, through a Marxist and liberatory pedagogy where market forces are problematized as inherently undemocratic. Leading the neoliberal charge to ensure public education serves the needs of capital through their business plan for education is the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In the state where Southwestern University is located, such gentry - namely, large landholders, farmers, and ranchers - are most powerful. The connections between teacher education and public school policy in the United States are as clear as the connections between the process of value production and white supremacy. The hidden curriculum of National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), therefore, has a chilling effect and is engendering a culture of fear where professors tend to feel powerless at mounting an effective anti-NCATE resistance.