Radical heroes

: Gramsci, Freire and the politics of adult education. Coben, Diana. (1998). New York and London: Garland publishing.

Forward (pp. vii-x, Joe Kincheloe)
Kincheloe stated that radical adult education focus on pedagogical intervention to develop practical forms of resistance to escape constraints of hegemonic power placed in people's lives. From his stance, therefore, adult educators are "facilitators of empowerment" (p. x).

Radical heroes in an age of uncertainty (pp. 3-8)
Criticizing the theoretical weakness of adult education, Coben pointed out as its reasons that the widespread assumption that education has to do with children and young people resulted in a low research profile and even in that research, most focused on political theory; in addition, the education of adults has dealt with practice in a field and thus theory has been placed in a back seat.

Against this background, Coben read Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire to theorize adult education in the political context. Specifically, she examines Gramsci's educative concept of politics and Freire's political concept of education liberating the oppressed.

Antonio Gramsci: politics as educative (pp. 9-52)
Coben explored Gramci's educative concept of politics focusing on "hegemony" and "intellectuals". (Then, education)

Although Gramsci was not the first Marxist to use the term hegemony and the precise meaning is contested, Coben agreed that "Gramsci's concept of hegemony is a major contribution to Marxist theory and key to an understanding of his educative conception of politics" (13-14). His concept of hegemony is a way of a state's ruling and comprises the "'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group" (SPN:12, as cited on the page 15). Important to this concept, Coben noted, is that the state maintains its hegemony by presenting dominant class interests as universal:

It is true that the state is seen as the organ of one particular class, . . . But the development and expansion of the particular group are conceived of, and presented, as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all the 'national' energies. In other words, the dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate groups, . . . (SPN:183)

Coben stressed Gramsci's attention to the state's ethical role in education as a means of maintaining hegemony. Gramsci put it, "Every state is ethical in as much as one of its most important functions is to raise the great mass of the population to a particular cultural and moral level . . ." (SPN: 258).

This particular level of achievement corresponds to the productive force and thus to the interests of the ruling classes, emphasized Coben.[Think about NCLB, the achivement is for what?] For Gramsci, therefore, education interweaves with the maintenance of hegemony. He put:

Every relationship of 'hegemony' is necessarily an educational relationship and occurs not only within a nation, between the various forces that comprise it, but in the entire international and world filed, between complexes of national and continental civilizations (FSPN:157, cited on the page 17)

Putting forward the notion that "all men are intellectuals" (SPN:9) as his theory of the intellectuals, Gramsci pointed out that their intellectual function should be developed through experience and education, noted Coben. Here rejected is the idea that intellectuals are independent of class and social context. Instead, Gramsci conceptualized organic intellectuals as opposed to traditional. Organic intellectuals are rooted in their class and perform an educational role to organize the class hegemony over society, whereas traditional intellectuals are intellectuals of the ruling class. Gramsci stressed that despite the difficulty of producing working-class organic intellectuals, the creation of such intellectuals was key to social revolution.

[Reading this passage, I think of the notion of elite professors OP students mentioned. Here the elites are far from the students' class, yet the instructors are seen as elite intellectuals, which can be categorized as traditional intellectuals according to Gramsci, although the two concepts, traditional and organic, are not mutually exclusive in Gramsci (Quintin, 1980; Coben, as cited on 19.)]

p. 22

Coben sharply pointed out that for Gramsci, the organization of hegemony of a subjugated class was key to opposing the ideological structure of a dominant class. The process of organizing the hegemony suggests Gramsci's idea of adult education. One of the activities that Gramsci empathized for the organization was a forming cultural group through journalism. This cultural group "aims to spread an integral conception of the world through various journalistic activities" (SCW: 430, as cited 23-24). Defining this type of journalism as "integral" one, Gramsci elaborated:

[Integral journalism is] one that seeks not only to satisfy all the needs (of a given category) of its public, but also to create and develop these needs, to arouse its public and progressively enlarge it. (SCW: 408, as cited on 23)

In his term, culture means "thinking well, whatever one thinks, and therefore acting well, whatever one does" (SCW:25). Here, culture means praxis, informed action (Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed). More clearly, he wrote, "Study and culture for us are none other than the theoretical consciousness of our immediate and supreme goals, and the way in which we will succeed in translating them into action" (FSPN: xxxiii, cited 33).

For Gramsci, education is organizing culture and this organized culture becomes hegemonic. He summarized the tasks of cultural organizations:

"Its task is to offer a forum for a through and popular discussion of the economic and moral problems which life brings or will bring to the attention of the proletariat" (SCW: 23, cited 32)

His criticism on philanthropic institutions for adult education further illuminates his perspective on adult education:

[We need] the detailed work of discussing and investigating problems, work in which everybody participates, to which everybody contributes, in which everybody is both master and disciple" (SCW: 25, cited 34)

This perspective also suggests that the process of education is similar to journalism.

Coben concludes Gramsci's perspective on education:

"The education of adults, broadly conceived in Gramscian terms, is a means through which revolutionary organic intellectuals may be developed and equipped to undertake the crucial, painstaking work of organizing revolutionary hegemony" (p. 50).

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FSPN: Further selections from the Prison Notebooks/Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by D. Boothman. Mineapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (1995)

SPN: Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart (1971)

SCW: Selections from cultural writings. edited by D. Forgas and G. Nowell Smith, translated by W. Boelhouwer. London: Lawrence and Wishart. 1985

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Paulo Friere: Education as Political (53-114)

His ideas of adult education are well explored in two articles, "The adult literacy process as cultural action for freedom" and "Cultural action and consicentization" published by Harvard Educational Review (1970) and later as a book titled Cultural Action for Freedom (Harvard University Press, 1970).

Coben noted that for Freire, conscientization is the aim of education and the concepts of praxis and dialogue are its two principles. Freire wrote, "Consicentization represents the development of the awakening of critical awareness" (EPF: 19). He wrote that typically poor people are concerned only with survival and fall prey to magical explanations because they do not understand true causality (EPT). He argued that this tendency is characteristic of people trapped in the "culture of silence", which Coben explains, "unable to discover and articulate their view of the world and therefore unable to act to change it" (p. 73). For Freire, the goal of conscientization is characterized by "the depth in the interpretation of problems; by the substitution of causal principles for magical explanations; by the testing of one's "findings" and by openness to revision..."(EPF:18) In fact, this is what researchers try to do. Thereby, Freire suggested that concientization, the aim of education, should enable individuals to undertake these perspectives of doing research in their everyday life. For Freire, in other words, the conscientization is the process of interrogation and dialogical forms of life (EPF:18, as cited 75).

Limitations of Freire's concept of oppression, in particular, from the feminist perspective, Coben argued:

"Lacking an understanding of power, his model of oppression is just too simple and indiscriminate to accommodate the multifaceted and contradictory nature of differential power relationships in terms of gender, class or any other social category" (p. 97)

Coben takes a critical stance on Frerie's pedagogical process, criticizing the divisional pedagogical relationship: "the learner is constructed at the outset as passive, silent, ignorant, unaware, inexperienced, possibly fearful but acquiescent. By contrast, from the outset the educator is active, in control, free, aware, experienced, wise, fearless and self-sacrificing" (112-113). Further, Coben described this relationship as a sexualized one, the educator cast as the male lover and the learner as the female virginal beloved. This interpretation led her to the following conclusion of the concept of conscientization:

"This feminization and, to an extent, also, infantilization of the learner is the nub of the inequality at the heart of the Freirian pedagogical relationship. Conscientization, which Freire conceives as an act of love, is revealed as at best a consensual but unequal coupling, at worst an invasion, a rape" (p. 113). [ I would argue that participatory research should overcome this dichotomy by achieving mutual goals through research. Researchers/Facilitators are not an educator. This situation can lead to another form, more liberating, less assumptive, of adult education.]

Criticizing his universalist concept of oppression devoid of consistent class analysis as well as patriarchal leardership for revolution, Coben raised an essential question: "It is not enough to say that political leaders, or educators, must commit class suicide and devote their lives to the people. Without a clear political framework such action is a sacrifice, but to what end?" (p. 113)

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EPF: Education: the practice of freedom, Writers and Readers, 1976.
CAF: Cultural action for freedom, Penguin, 1972.
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Gramsci and Freire: apologias, critiques and interpretations (pp. 148-202)

I also would argue whether the literacy program that Freire advocated systematically leads to conscientization, self-reflection and criticality. Brian Street (CHECK OUT Literacy Theory and Practices (1984) Cambridge University Press.) Criticizing the "great divide" between literacy and illiteracy, he argued that self-reflection and critical thought were seen in nonliterate societies, undermining Freire's assmuption of literacy as a ground base for critical enlightenment (cited p 154).

Quoting Kidd and Kumar (1981) and Kidd and Byram (1982), Coben cautioned pseudo-Freirian adult education, which substitutes a concern with poverty with a liberatory concern with oppression, which corresponds to the argument that M.D. James (1990, Demystifying literacy: reading, writing, and the struggle for liberation, Convergence, 23(1), 14-26) made.

Coben noted the link between participatory research and adult education, quoting Ted Jackson (1981, Convergence, The influence of Gramsci on Adult Eduction, Convergence, 14(3), 81-6). Here, tracing participatory research around the world, he interpreted participatory research as an attempt to apply Gramsci's work to the field of adult education.

Coben read Peter Mayo's (1994, Synthesizing Gramsci and Freire: possibilities for a theory of radical adult education, Int'l journal of lifelong education, 13(2), 125-48) analysis of Gramsci and Freire as a foundation for a radical theory of adult education.

Again, Coben took on critical stance on Freire, arguing:

Freire's vision of the oppressed as humanized (civilized? redeemed?) through a process of conscinetization initiated and controlled by a born again leader/educator, motivated by love, may be inspirational for those who identify with the educator/leader/lover, but what of the other, the oppressed, who has not sought--any may not want--the educator's love or leadership?

Gramsci and Freire: Radical Heroes? (203-223)
Finally, Coben asked whether we need heros for adult education for social change and urged us to go beyond "hero worship" (p. 222) toward a politics of adult education engaging with purpose, process and content within the context of social change. In this light, she suggests that raising intellectuals "to practice their capacity for self-reflection" (p. 222) is a more sound purpose of educational activity in contrast with revolutionary commitment.