Teachers as Intellectuals

Henry Giroux's collection of essays Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning represents the evolving arc of radical and critical educators and theorists' efforts to critique and affirm the essential role and agency of teachers and students in the struggle to create a emancipatory education and practice grounded in democratic principles of justice and equality. These essays, influenced by cultural and social reproduction theory and theoretical perspectives of radical and critical theorists such as Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci, Stanley Aronowitz, Peter McLaren, and Ira Shor, reflect a critical pedagogy emphasizing the importance of individuals as social actors and change agents. Giroux was among the first theorists to develop and define the [Page 870]term critical theory as a vehicle for moving beyond the prescribed vision of schools as mainly sites of reproduction of social inequities, to one of schools as important contradictory sites within which teachers and students choose to accommodate or resist the traditional and oppressive language and structure of schools. An important feature of these essays is Giroux's rejection of the traditional view of schools, curriculum, teaching, and learning as neutral and apolitical processes set apart from the larger social contexts in which they are constructed and negotiated. Rather, Giroux argues that schools are public spheres reflecting the larger society in which social, cultural, and political struggles are simultaneously reproduced, resisted, and transformed in an ongoing struggle of democratization. As a social, cultural, and political space, schools become a place in which teachers and students participate in a viable democratic process of resistance; an emancipatory practice grounded in student empowerment.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this book is its conceptualization of teachers as transformative intellectuals. This portrayal becomes particularly compelling in light of current education reform models that, by defining education as training, contribute to the deskilling and devaluing of teachers through a limited curriculum and high-stakes testing.

The use of the term intellectual as it applies to teachers differs from traditional and elitist definitions of intellectualism. As intellectuals, Giroux's teachers are viewed as agents and advocates to develop more democratic and inclusive pedagogy, that address moral and ethical questions about the purpose of education as an authentic and evolving democratic enterprise. This examination of the emancipatory, intellectual teacher in collaboration with empowered students challenges traditional views of teaching and learning as technical and decontextualized. The practices of critical educators and teacher intellectuals reflect a perspective that rejects the notion of education as a value-neutral process, thus making transparent the political and structural dimensions of schools as places of social production and reproduction. Schools are recognized as political sites, and the intellectual labor of teachers must include speaking and acting in ways to disrupt and remap hegemonic arrangements. For Giroux, such a remapping demands a collective and critical interrogation of historically oppressive structures embedded within the purposes and practices of schools as well as the larger society. This critical practice is grounded in a living vision of schools as democratic public spheres linked to the larger struggle against various forms of political, economic, social, and pedagogical oppression. In this enterprise, a language of critique is combined with a language of possibility and hope, providing a blueprint for revisioning schools as one of many contested sites of democratic possibility, and teachers and students as indispensable agents in the struggle to create the conditions necessary for critical consciousness.

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