Henry Giroux i „Królewska droga” pedagogiki. Wstęp do analizy związków między pedagogiką krytyczną a studiami kulturowymi

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary reconnaissance of the fields in which critical pedagogy of Henry Giroux coincides with the analyses of culture as an educational environment carried out within cultural studies. Divided into three parts, the argument begins with outlining the intellectual map of Giroux’s thought whose multifariousness and broadness of humanistic perception do not exclude the possibility of discerning its directory ideas. Such a major idea is to be found in his pedagogical concern with youth whom educators suppose to be the future warrant of democracy’s life. Unfortunately, the perspective of young people’s development towards a responsible participation in public and cultural life seems to be getting more and more implausible nowadays. The culprit to be blamed for this state of affairs is - in the most general view - contemporary culture as dominated by neoliberal ideology which if indeed exerts pedagogical influence, it does so solely through pedagogy of commerce, market values, and the promotion of consumption; a pedagogy that creates subjectivities by commodifying them. The essay concludes with a suggestion that the „royal road” that Giroux proposes pedagogy to follow brings it quite close to philosophy, rendering various types of cultural persuasion the main object of its critical reflection and assigning it the Foucauldian task of creating the histories of the different ways in which human beings are culturally turned into subjects.