Resource link:

Link:/s/1woxczw78bbbgpbyzfwwrjhrha

Extraction code: jjja title: crossing the border

Author: Henry Giroux

Press: East China Normal University Press

Publication year: September 2002

Page count: 337

Content introduction:

Henry Gill is a famous contemporary American educational theorist. For educational theorists in China, reading this book will be a strange manager, which is different from many educational theoretical works we have come into contact with in terms of form and content.

In the book, the author uses the research results and methods in the fields of post-modernism, post-structuralism, feminism, cultural studies and literary theory to criticize various ideological trends popular in American education since the 1980s, thus reflecting on schools, school education, education and pedagogy. This book covers a wide range and puts forward new views on educational functions, teachers' work, curriculum and border pedagogy.

This book is a compilation of a series of papers published by Henry Gill from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, which reflects the turn of his political science research and theoretical research. In Gill's view, the field of vision of various critical education theories is very narrow. Although they accepted some new theoretical perspectives, they did not broaden them. It is they who make the education sector rigid and extremely closed. In order to change the school, and then change the broad social order, critical education theory urgently needs to establish new connections, adopt new paradigms, and open up different spaces by finding new allies. Most important educational journals are slow to respond to theoretical debates and academic viewpoints in many other academic fields. Therefore, they are less and less aware of the main problems facing public schools, higher education and society. However, the real reaction of theory to reality is that under the political framework of cultural differences, educational problems are being raised in other fields, which makes this declining field see new hope. Gill believes that radical education does not refer to a discipline or knowledge system. It refers to a special educational practice and a special attitude of questioning various accepted systems and assumptions. Generally speaking, the basic premise of radical education comes from the crisis of social theory.

The book is divided into two parts, the first part is school education and cultural politics, and the second part is cultural workers and cultural pedagogy, which are elaborated in five chapters respectively. As the author said in the introduction: "This book tries to broaden our thinking on school education, education, pedagogy and culture and politics. To this end, it tries to get rid of the traditional rules and regulations on how to write and read such books in form and content. " Therefore, Gill's theory covers a wide range, including pluralism, modernism, post-modernism, feminism and post-colonialism. Each chapter has its own research perspective and can be read independently of other chapters. Moreover, the book also tries to form a new discourse, and puts forward a brand-new question, a brand-new analysis and a brand-new form of moral exposition. Gill believes that it is an urgent and important task to create a new language to rebuild the platform of cultural and educational debate. Because of new goals, new problems and new values, it is very necessary to form the possibility of establishing new confrontation and new forms of struggle.

In the book, he mainly expounded the following views:

1. Re-understanding of educational function. Henry Gill opposed the concept of educational function that appeared in the United States since 1960s and was mainly advocated by neoconservatism. He is opposed to positioning the educational function as training skilled workers, promoting industrialization and transmitting the core values of western civilization, and opposing the depoliticization of school education. He advocated that education should strive to cultivate citizens with critical spirit and play a greater role in building a new critical democratic society. The politicization of educational function is the basic concept he repeatedly emphasized.

2. Re-understanding of teachers' work. In his view, teachers are not only the transmitters of existing racial experience, but also intellectuals and cultural workers. Teachers should dare to admit their own values and actively participate in the extensive social struggle to build critical democracy with other cultural workers.

3. Re-understanding of the curriculum. The author opposes taking the school as a place to convey the core values of western civilization, rejecting the suppression of mass culture by elite culture, opposing the unification of culture and emphasizing the diversity and heterogeneity of culture. He believes that the original school curriculum centered on white culture excludes women, ethnic minorities (races) and other alternative experiences, experiences, stories and history, and excludes students' personal experiences. He advocated re-understanding the value of these "alternative" experiences and making them win their due position in the school curriculum.

4. Discussion on border pedagogy. Border pedagogy is an important concept repeatedly mentioned in his book, which is the root of his obvious difference from other radical educators. Border pedagogy opposes the fixed boundaries between disciplines, different fields of social life, education and social life, knowledge (curriculum) and students' experience, race and race, power center and edge, and recognizes and actively promotes the changes of these boundaries. Gill believes that only such education and teaching methods can enable students to truly master the knowledge and skills needed to criticize a democratic society, and thus become brave citizens.

As described in the book, education is not so much a universal rule as a form of culture and politics, which re-establishes the relationship between theory and practice. This means paying attention to the complexity of the relationship between educational theory and the particularity of the environment on which it depends. Educational theory is not a substitute for the special practice of a specific subject in a specific social, political and cultural environment in history. Its particularity and value lies in that it successfully provides a language, cutting off the commercial links between theory and practice, education and teaching, and schools and critical public culture. In the book, Gill didn't flaunt the meaning of political correctness, but he did point out all kinds of injustices from a political perspective and tried to avoid repeating the means that led to these injustices. Gill advocates that education is a kind of discourse. Through social criticism, it makes people aware of the serious threats to schools, key cultural fields and democracy itself, thus expanding the principles and practices of human dignity, freedom and social justice.

This book attempts to examine these problems by constructing a new paradigm, so as to re-understand education and pedagogy and their significance to cultural differences, radical democracy and the new politics of a new generation of cultural workers. Gill expanded the scope of cultural workers to those engaged in law, social work, architecture, medicine, theology, education and literature. The purpose of this is to redefine the concept and practice of cultural work by emphasizing the importance of politics and education. It is characterized by putting forward a kind of political imagination, which expands the possibility of creating a brand-new public sphere, in which the principles of equality, freedom and justice will become the most basic organizational principles for building their own relationship with others.