The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire's Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education

by James Lindsay

What society currently regards as “education,” to Freire, is therefore a process of social and political grooming into maintaining the existing elite class, either by grooming its next generation of oppressors or by conditioning its next generation of oppressed to accept the terms of the existing society. This creates an oppressive social structure between the educated and uneducated that is established by that upper caste to benefit themselves and imposed upon the lower, putting them intrinsically in class conflict across the educated/illiterate line. The goal of a genuine education for Freire, then, is the awakening of the critical consciousness of this state of affairs in the underclass together with their own revolutionary consciousness by which they will eventually overthrow the unjust system. Everything else is false education that should be replaced by his own (Marxian) methods.