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

by James Lindsay

Freire’s purpose with the generative concepts approach is to hijack academic lessons and turn them into opportunities to have discussions about politically relevant topics on his own Marxist terms. That is, the lesson itself, be that reading, writing, history, mathematics, science, religion, or otherwise, merely becomes a pretext and a vehicle for introducing ideas that will then be discussed in order to facilitate the “conscientization” process and thus the Marxification (psychological damage or destruction, followed by brainwashing) of the student. A real education is a political (Marxist) education, remember, and the purpose of such an education is to conscientize the “learner.” This is only possible if class time is largely, if not wholly, devoted to talking about politically relevant topics, and this is most easily achieved by hijacking existing curricula to enable it.