By Wayne Au
Noted Marxist educator, activist and implementer Wayne Au explains how he came to understand modern American education’s role in perpetuating existing power structures, how curriculum can be changed to offer students new perspectives, and what role educators play in education activism. It took me longer than I thought I needed to fully digest this book, but it was well worth the time.
The book augmented my understanding of Marxist-Leninist views on education expressed in the Communist Manifesto and State and Revolution. Au went into detail about how class antagonisms are represented in curricula and what problematic attitudes teachers have towards avoiding topics based on class antagonisms.
Education, today as was for the last century, is never truly divorced from social intervention. It is one of the means by which power dynamics are maintained in their status quo of unequal political rights among citizens. He concludes, as with Marxist thought, that there is no conflict between academics and activism.
