James Lindsay - The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freires Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education

Copyright 2022 by James Lindsay

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First edition: December 2022

Cover copyright 2022 New Discourses, LLC.

Paperback ISBN: 9798355360108

Hardcover ISBN: 9798355360269

Imprint: Independently published

Published by New Discourses, LLC.

Orlando, Florida

https://newdiscourses.com

For Tiffany and Tina and all the moms fighting for liberty for our children

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

In the wake of the horrific school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, people across the nation were grasping through their shock and horror for answers and for solutions. Little is more terrifying than a school shooting. Little, also, is more divisive.

Predictably, everything split along party lines in the wake of the tragedy, which meant Democrats pushed as vigorously as ever for gun control while Republicans defended the value and necessity of the Second Amendment. Many parents, easily the constituency most shaken and in need of answers and workable solutions to keep their children safe in schools, were caught in the middle.

Indicative of this kind of political posturing, just two days later, on May 26, Democratic State Senator Tiara Mack (she/her) of Rhode Island, who bills herself as a queer educator, donut lover, and abortion fundraiser on her Twitter profile and who later became (in) famous for a viral self-promotional campaign video of her standing on her head in a bikini and twerking upside-down, tweeted a picture of a hundred or two children and teens lying on the ground at the Rhode Island Statehouse with the following caption:

Students from a few Providence schools walked out today and laid down for 3 min [sic] outside the RI State House [sic]. Will we pass common sense [sic] gun legislation this session in RI?

Typical political profiteering, sure, a bit classless, one might think, and think no more, but theres important context lurking behind this political stunt. Erika Sanzi, outreach coordinator for Parents Defending Education, pointed out a glaring elephant in the educational room soon thereafter, also on Twitter, in a broadcast response to Macks tweet.

94% of Providence students arent proficient in math.

86% cant read or write on grade level.

Legislators who never talk about student outcomes proudly use students during school hours as foot soldiers for their activism.

Haunting the scene of the activist stunt promoted by Mackno doubt organized and facilitated by activist teacherstheres a story of abysmal academic failure in Providence schools. Children in Rhode Island seem to be learning almost nothing except that when something big happens in the news, its time to pull a performative political stunt in order to attempt to get ones political way, nearly always for left-wing causes.

Whats going on here? Parents deserve to know. Our children deserve far better than this. Our nation and its future depend on correcting it. Well, theres actually a simple answer. The overwhelmingly primary reason 94% of Providence students are failing mathematics and 86% cannot read or write at grade level but can turn out by the hundreds to a left-wing political demonstration at the Rhode Island Statehouse during school hours is unambiguous once understood: education has been stolen right out from under us and from our children. This theft of education has a purpose; it enables a counterfeit to replace it. The mechanism and description of this gigantic educational ripoff can be summarized in a single sentence: Our kids go to Paulo Freires schools .

Chances are that unless youre a Brazilian, an educator, or deep into the front lines of the battles in the culture war, or a happy listener to my podcasts, you have never heard of Paulo Freire and have no idea what this means. Well, you need to. Paulo Freire is easily the most influential name in education in a century, and as a result, as I said, our kids go to Paulo Freires schools . Almost all of them do. In this guidebook, I hope to introduce you sufficiently to Paulo Freires theory of education, which dominates all colleges of education in North America today along with most K12 schools, to help you understand why, when I saw the two tweets quoted above, I immediately knew what was going on. The schools in Providence, Rhode Island, are Paulo Freires schools, and Marxist activists posing as teachers and politicians are coordinating to take advantage of the output of that fact to stage a huge political demonstration using Providence children as happy and willing props. In turn, these children are being conscientized as activists for causes useful to Marxist political agenda items.

As you will see, these students were participating not only in activism, as demanded by Freirean education, but they were also learning to decodify the alleged deeper political circumstances of a school shooting. That is, they were learning to adopt the political framing of the activists posing as their teachers and state representatives. The tragedy in Uvalde was being falsely presented to them as a codification of the actual political circumstances of their own lives in the United States and Rhode Island in 2022. They were learning Freirean political literacy even while their schools fail them almost completely in actual literacy. This is by design in a Freirean school, despite palatable marketing to the contrary.

The overwhelming adoption of Paulo Freires crackpot theory of education, which has become known as Critical Pedagogy, may relate to but cannot directly explain the rise in school shootings, inexplicable failures of law enforcement, or many other tragedies. It does, however, almost completely explain why our schools are failing to teach our children basic skills like reading, writing, and mathematics while succeeding at turning them into a new activist class for Leftistand only and explicitly Leftistcauses. This is what Freires educational theory is designed to achieve. Students are meant to be facilitated into Leftist political activism, and other student achievement outcomes are quite literally an afterthought. Education is a pretext; Marxist activist grooming is the point.

The catastrophe of Freirean education is difficult to overstate. In fact, its best stated by Freirean educators themselves, as they attempt to salvage the disastrous method from its own programmatic failure. Consider the following description from the German adult education institute DVV International ( Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband ), which attempted to study the implementation of Freirean pedagogy in the Nigerian context in 2007.

Stage Two: The Selection of Words from The Discovered Vocabulary

From the discussions of the learners, the Generative Words written by the team of facilitators were: resources, money, abundance, crude oil, stealing, pocket, begging, plenty, poverty, suffering, frustration, crying, hunger, crisis, dying, death.

These words were later depicted in pictorial form showing the concrete realities and situations in the lives of the people. The pictorial display provoked an emotional state of pity and anger among the discussants, some of them could not talk, while most of them were moved to tears asking the question: Why! Why! Why! Why!

Stage Three: The Actual Process of Literacy Training

After the completion of stage two, it came as a great surprise to the facilitators, that the discussants were not willing to participate in the literacy teaching/training process. They were in a state of emotional wreck. They were furious, angry, shouting and restless. They were shouting Change! Change! Change! Cursing furiously those who have, in one way or the other, contributed to the suffering of the people. The bottom-line: acquisition of basic literacy skills did not make any meaning to them and in fact was irrelevant, with some of them asking the facilitators: