Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning (Critical Studies in Education Series) [Paperback]

Henry A. Giroux (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0897891562 | ISBN-13: 978-0897891561 | Publication Date: August 30, 1988

"Teachers as Intellectuals is a book for all practitioners and all members of the general community. Giroux demands reader involvement, transformation, and empowerment. He helps understand that the political relationship between schools and society is neither artificial nor neutral nor necessarily negative. Rather, school personnel have a positive and dynamic political role to play." Educational Leadership "We are fortunate to have these ideas expressed so clearly and in one place. It is a very useful book." . . . Choice

Editorial Reviews

Review

“We are fortunate to have these ideas expressed so clearly and in one place. It is a very useful book. . . .”–Choice

“[Offers] educators ways for reflecting critically on their own practices and the relationship between schools and society.”–The Education Digest

“Teachers As Intellectuals is a book for all practitioners and all members of the greater community. Giroux demands reader involvement, transformation, and empowerment. He helps us understand that the political relationship between schools and society is neither artificial nor neutral nor necessarily negative. Rather, school personnel have a positive and dynamic political role to play.”–Educational Leadership

Product Details

• Paperback: 285 pages
• Publisher: Bergin & Garvey Paperback (August 30, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897891562
• ISBN-13: 978-0897891561
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wish it were read more widely, October 12, 2001

By 

Bakari Chavanu - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning (Critical Studies in Education Series) (Paperback)

I read this book when I first read this book about five years after I started teaching. By then I was able to see just what Giroux is getting at in this book: teachers in this country are mainly trained to be technicians about their subjects rather than intellectuals. In other words, most teachers--and I base this on observations of my colleagues--are so focused on the academic content they teach that they have so little awareness of other academic disciplines and the larger world in which they teach. They see teaching as a tool for helping students get certified, not as a tool for improving the world.

Giroux argues that the role of teachers and adminsitrators is to become "transformative intellectuals who develop counterhegemonic pedagogies that not onoly empower students by giving them the knowledge and social skills they will need to be able to function in the larger society as critical agents, but also educate them for transformative action. That means means educating them to take risks, to struggle for institutional change, and to fight both *against* oppression and *for* democracy outside of schools in other oppositional poublic spheres and the wider social arena."

Thus, Giroux situates teaching in a true democratic process, in which the classroom is one of the few public institutions in which an exchange of ideas and utopian visions can take place. But for this to happen, teachers will have link their knowledge of the content they teach with other academic and social contents. In other words, an English teacher should work to be aware of politics, history, science, art, and other disciplines, rather than just focusing on the teaching of novels and the discipline of writing.

The only problem with this book is that the writing is dense, so it's sadly not reaching the audience who should be reading it. Cultural critic bell hooks does a little better job with the same subject in her book "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom." She use personal anchedotes and a little more accessible language to argue the nature of teaching.