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9. Critical
Theory and Educational Technology
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9.8 PROBLEMS WITH CRITICAL THEORIES OF EDUCATIONCritical theories are not without their critics. Perhaps the major criticism of them is that they fail to provide rational standards by which they can justify themselves, by which they can show themselves to be "better" than other theories of knowledge, science, or practice. Their ongoing problem has been to present a normative base for rationality that is not distorted by particular social ideologies (Held, 1983). More bluntly, Gibson (1986) says that critical theories suffer from cliquishness, conformity, elitism, immodesty, anti-individualism, contradictoriness, uncriticalness, and naivety (p. 164). Perhaps this is the same sense that Hughes and Hughes (1990) have when they say of Habermas's theory of communicative action that it "says much about rational talkers talking, but very little about actors acting: Felt, perceptive, imaginative, bodily experience does not fit these theories" (p. 144). Likewise, critical theories have been maligned for their dense language (Goodman, 1992). Philip Jackson's (1980) complaint still has appeal: "Terms like ... hermeneutics get tossed around as though everybody but a fool is intimately familiar with their meaning" (p. 379). Counter arguments to these issues of language include claims that a call for clearer and more accessible language is anti-intellectual, a new "language of possibility" is needed, and oppressed peoples can understand and contribute to new languages. Some feminist criticisms of critical theories have been especially powerful. Critical theories can be as narrow and oppressive as the rationalization, bureaucratization, and cultures they seek to unmask and change. Remember that Weiler (1991) said of Freire that he has a privileged position and believes in universals (p. 469). In one of the best known analyses of critical pedagogists, Ellsworth (1989a) says they often are so tied to their vision of the truth that they fail to see themselves as one of many voices, and they fail to understand that their enlightening of the false consciousness of others may be a form of dominance, not liberation. Her comments and the vitriolic responses to them by McLaren and Giroux are given an enlightening reading in Lather's (199 1) Getting Smart. Further, Bowers (1993 ) points out that leaders for the emancipatory tradition in liberal education--Paulo Freire, Ira Saber, Henry Giroux, Maxine Greene--are remiss because they:
Bowers (1993) thinks critical pedagogists are particularly at fault for ignoring the ways in which their liberalism contributes to a declining ecology:
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