Marxist Education

Wayne Au is an Associate Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell, and he is an editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools. He is the author of several books and curriculum guides on radical pedagogy including Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice.

"In A Marxist Education, Wayne Au reveals the method he has applied for years to understand structures of education that have made him one of the most insightful voices nationally in the struggle for education justice. Au boldly illustrates to educators and activists how Marxism is a dynamic tool for resisting the ways schooling has been used to reproduce racism and oppression."--Jesse Hagopian, author of More Than a Score"Shattering myths and misconceptions about Marxism in every chapter, Wayne Au shows how Marx’s method has guided his pathbreaking research on the racial politics of education policy and his work as an activist and organizer for educational justice."--Brian Jones, Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture"Au’s purpose is to upend the dogma of common sense, to analyze the educational catastrophe before us and the seeds of the struggles we will need to mount in order to imagine and then enact just schools; his method is dialectical-materialism; his insights are profound and plentiful. The result is an essential book for these times, a weapon to carry to the next school board meeting, the picket line, or the barricades."--Bill Ayers is the author of Demand the Impossible and Teaching Toward Freedom

• General Contents1.Introduction(revised intellectual biography plus more typical introductory remarks and context, need, placement of this work)2.Against Economic Determinism(revised paper on Neo-Marxism and what I characterize as a misreading of Marx to begin with)3.Critical Reflection in the Classroom(dialectical conception of consciousness exists as individual book chapter in an edited collection and in Chapter Two of Critical Curriculum Studies)4.Curricular Standpoint(revision of existing versions as edited book chapter, aspects of chapters 1, 5, & 6 ofCritical Curriculum Studies and TeachersCollege Record article)5.Epistemology of the Oppressed(revised paper on Freire and dialectical materialism)(to be written-articulatedacross other books/articles)7.Meritocracy 2.0: Neoliberal multiculturalism and the Racial Project of High-Stakes Testing8.Vygotsky and Lenin on Learning9.Education & Inequality-Relative Autonomy10.Dialectical research methods11.Conclusion-Reflections on practice