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

by James Lindsay

The overwhelming adoption of Paulo Freire’s 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 Leftist—and only and explicitly Leftist—causes. This is what Freire’s 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.

Freirean pedagogy is used to steal education. Freirean pedagogy is a cult indoctrination, though, and its purveyors are its cultists. It cannot be wrong. This is why the conclusion to this paper, documenting the obvious disaster of the Freirean approach, recommends applying it, though more cautiously, in literacy programs in the future. It shall not be abandoned. Why? The method doesn’t fail at its primary objective, whatever it does with its stated objective, which is little more than its sales pitch. The method very successfully and efficiently achieves political conscientization; of that there can be no doubt.