229
democratic values and procedures.
9. Service to others or an appreciation that it is an honour and a
pleasure to serve and help others.
10. Appreciation that – most of the time – others do the best they can
e.g. sense of realistic efficacy about citizen’ actions.
However, despite their highly informative insights for educators concerned with nurturing democratic and egalitarian values and practices, both the Frierian
1996 and Deweyian 1990 traditions, along with the current work that has been influenced by them, are potentially limited in the following ways. First, the
Frierian 1996 approach in all of its various and contemporary incarnations, is explicitly premised on the liberatory effects of conscientization; that is, on getting
students to be more cognizant of their roles as both contributors to, and potential liberators from, oppressive modes. However, this emphasis on conscientization via
classroom practices that, for example, encourage deep reflection, critical questioning, and textual deconstruction, no matter how nuanced, still stems from
the classic Marxist false consciousness presupposition. As Friere 1970, pp. 452- 453 argues:
Since the basic condition for conscientization is that its agent must be a subject i.e., a conscious being, conscientization, like education, is
specifically and exclusively a human process. It is as conscious beings that men are not only in the world, but with the world, together with
other men. Only men, as open beings, are able to achieve the complex operation of simultaneously transforming the world by their
action and grasping and expressing the worlds reality in their creative language. Men can fulfill the necessary condition of being with the
world because they are able to gain objective distance from it. Without this objectification, whereby man also objectifies himself, man would
be limited to being in the world, lacking both self-knowledge and knowledge of the world
As argued earlier in this thesis, this consciousness presupposition, false or otherwise, assumes a phenomenological ontology of human cognition that
overlooks important socio-cognitive dispositional forces, which play a powerful and unconscious role in individual perception, appreciation, and information
230 processing and filtering. These can potentially hinder or significantly constrain
individual conscious awareness and the overall effectiveness of conscientization strategies. As my empirical findings partly suggest, making people cognizant of
important political-economic issues and alternatives is necessary, but it is not sufficient in transforming them into more conscientious agents. Equally necessary
I will argue, but mostly overlooked in the Frierian tradition is the development of pedagogic practices specifically designed to target those deep-seated dispositions
of young people, which may block out political and social-justice concerns. That is, while some of the education practices typically associated with the Frierian
approach, such as dialogue and open discussion centred lessons, textual deconstruction, and learning about the history and struggles of oppressed peoples,
may help young people develop more critical, democratic, and socially progressive views and concomitant dispositions, these education practices may be
ineffective with students, particularly older teenaged ones, who have developed their own unique sets of strong valence dispositions which may predispose them to
be less appreciative andor receptive of politics and social-justice concerns for example, apolitical, self-interested, fatalistic, and apathetic dispositions. As
Bourdieu 2000, p. 172 argues, “while making things explicit can help, only a thoroughgoing process of countertraining, involving repeated exercises, can, like
an athlete’s training, durably transform habitus”. Second, the Deweyian 1997 approach, and much of the contemporary work that has drawn on it, tends to use
the term ‘disposition’ in vague ways that sometimes diverges entirely from the original cognitive definition. For example, Edgar et al., 2002 tend to conflate
dispositions with goals and objectives, while the Cohen et al., 2010 usage of the term as displayed in the abovementioned framework is unclear if it refers to
democratic dispositions that should be taught and cultivated to the extent that they are enacted automatically by students, or whether democratic dispositions are
merely values that students should learn and attempt to enact. This may be a minor pedantic point, but the concept of ‘disposition’ has a specific origin, application,
and consequent and important theoretical implications for how to generate them. Hence, if such guidelines as those suggested by Cohen et al., 2010 above are
meant to serve as an educational template for the development of the democratic and empathetic habits of minds of students, I believe that, for the sake of
conceptual and semantic clarity and precision, we need to be more exact with, and
231 explicit about, what is meant by ‘dispositions’ as I will be in the following section.
Furthermore, a more substantial potential limitation of the Deweyian 1990 approach is that it is meant to span a K-12 US education system UK equivalent of
primary to college education, where students are immersed in progressive educational settings from the very start of their education. While research suggests
that the teaching and fostering of civic and democratic values and dispositions is most likely to take root when initiated during school age, the exact age-grade as to
when it will be most effective, or more generally, what triggering mechanisms lead young people to develop a more critical examination of politics and society,
is still largely unknown Sherrod et al., 2002. As Sherrod et al., 2002, p. 265 have noted:
More developmental work is needed in fleshing out how, between the ages of 10 and 25, young people’s concepts of citizenship expand from
a focus on obedience and support of the status quo to a more critical appraisal of a citizen as one who would be irresponsible if she or he
blindly obeyed. What happens between childhood and adulthood that enables the young person to appreciate the importance of informed
consent, to support the exercise of good judgment including critique of the status quo?
Conversely, the age-grade when progressive education might be the least effective is also unknown, but like conscientization strategies, progressive education may
be less effective with students, particularly older teenaged students, who have already formed their own unique socio-cultural and political-economic schemata,
some of which may significantly hinder or potentially filter out pedagogic attempts aimed at fostering civic and democratic values and dispositions. Hence,
both the contemporary Frierian 1996 and Deweyian 1990 inspired critical and progressive pedagogies should take into account the potential socio-cognitive
dispositions of students who may not have benefited from an earlier exposure to political-economic issues and concerns, and incorporate strategies aimed at
targeting pre-existing dispositions which may hinder the fostering of empathetic, democratic, critical, and political values and dispositions. As Dewey 1897, p. 77
notes:
232 Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the
individual, the educative process will […] be haphazard and arbitrary.
If it chances to coincide with the childs activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the
child nature. Lastly, both the Frierian 1996 and Deweyian 1990 approaches may also
benefit from the inclusion of more explicit teaching about key substantive political issues. In the context of neoliberalism, my empirical findings would suggest these
should include comprehensive lessons on welfare policies and services, alternative political-economic systems and practices, and human nature that expose students
to the facts and empirical evidence relevant to these topics, and equip them with the ability to identify the errors or half-truths contained in widespread neoliberal
discourses. Such lessons tend to be absent from existing and more instrumentalist US and UK forms of civics and politics education Biesta Lawy, 2006.
8.2 Actual Typological Characteristics, Dispositions, and Potential Lessons
