CRITICAL THEORY AND HABERMAS

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CRITICAL THEORY AND HABERMAS
Rauno Huttunen Joensuu University
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CRITICAL THEORY

• Critical theory was that defined by Max
  Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of social
  science in his 1937 essay Traditional and
  Critical Theory Critical theory is social theory
  oriented toward critiquing and changing society
  as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory
  oriented only to understanding or explaining it.
  Horkheimer wanted to distinguish critical theory
  as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxian
  theory. This kind of CR is called as the
  Frankfurt School.

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CRITICAL THEORY

• In the late 1960s Jürgen Habermas of the
  Frankfurt School, redefined critical theory in a
  way that freed it from a direct tie to Marxism or
  the prior work of the Frankfurt School. In
  Habermas's epistemology, critical knowledge was
  conceptualized as knowledge that enabled human
  beings to emancipate themselves from forms of
  domination through self-reflection and took
  psychoanalysis as the paradigm of critical
  knowledge. This expanded considerably the scope
  of what counted as critical theory within the
  social sciences, which would include such
  approaches as world systems theory, feminist
  theory, postcolonial theory, critical race
  theory, performance studies, transversal poetics,
  queer theory, social ecology, and the theory of
  communicative action.

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Habermass communicative theory of action and
education
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Strategic versus communicative action

• Communicative action means interpersonal
  communication which is oriented towards mutual
  understanding and in which other participants are
  treated as genuine persons, not as objects of
  manipulation. Actors do not primarily aim at
  their own success but want to harmonize their
  action plans with the other participants.
  Opposite to communicative action is the concept
  of strategic action, which means calculative
  exploitation, or manipulation, of others. An
  actor who acts strategically seeks primarily his
  or her own ends and manipulates other people
  either openly or tacitly.

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• Social action
• ? \
• communivative strategic action
• toiminta
• ? \
• conceived open strategic
• strateginen action action
• ? \
• unconsciouss intentional
• deceiving deceiving (systematically (manip
  ulation)
• disturbed
• communication)

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Communivative teaching

• Pedagogical communication is kind of simulated
  communicative action and it is more simulated in
  early stage of education. When a teacher teaches
  seven years old pupils, the words "to the best of
  her ability" have different practical consequence
  than in the case of a teacher teaches twenty
  years old students. The value orientation is the
  same, but the practise or application of
  presuppositions of argumentation is different.
  When we understand communicative teaching in this
  way, as an exceptional form of communicative
  action, the concept of communicative teaching is
  looser than the concept of communicative action
  itself. I would like to think that communicative
  teaching - as an exceptional application of
  communicative action - still remains within the
  realm of communicative action.

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• This strategic teaching is a form of
  indoctrination (strategic teaching is not same as
  indoctrination), when a teacher tries to transfer
  teaching content to the students minds, treating
  them merely as passive objects, not as active
  co-subjects of the learning process. Then the
  teaching is in no sense the simulation of the
  communicative action but the pure strategic
  action

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• The aim is a communicatively competent student
  who does not need to rely on the teacher, or any
  other authority for that matter. In the
  communicative teaching, students are not treated
  as passive objects but as active learners. In the
  communicative teaching, a teacher and her
  students co-operatively participate in the
  formation of meanings and new perspectives. In
  the communicative teaching, the teacher does not
  impose her ideas on the students but rather they
  make a joint effort to find a meaningful insight
  regarding the issues at hand.

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• However, even my revised version of the method
  and intention criterion does not recognize the
  unintentionally or structurally caused
  indoctrination. Let us take example the Hitler
  Jugend assembly Germany in the 1930's. No matter
  how communicatively orientated the teacher or the
  Gruppenlieder was, elements of indoctrination
  were strongly present. The Hitler Jugend was a
  very effective training institution, and we
  cannot gain a comprehensive picture of its
  operations if we restrict our examination to the
  teachers intentions and methods. In some
  teaching situations, no matter what a teachers
  intentions and methods were, the outcome was
  still an uneducated (indoctrinated) person.
  Thus, it is clear that we need aspects of the
  content and the consequence of teaching.

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• The teaching content should not provide any easy
  answers but rather should improve students own
  power of judgement and capacity for mature
  deliberation. I consider content that limits
  students meaning perspectives and minimizes as
  opposed to increases students own power of
  judgement as indoctrinative. In the case of
  indoctrination, the teaching content tends to
  keep students at an immature stage. The
  non-indoctrinative teaching content gives
  students both the freedom and faculty to
  determine their own differentiated identity,
  worldview and conduct of life.

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• The modern individual is conscious of her
  capacity to change her own identity, and she
  possesses the perspective of many possible
  identities. This relatively open form of identity
  produce the pluralisation of life worlds and
  meaning perspectives.  People tend to grow up
  differently in modern societies. This corresponds
  with the situation that Emile Durkheim called
  organic solidarity (Durkheim 1984). In the stage
  of organic solidarity society need autonomous,
  independent, critical and professional individual
  personalities. My claim is that if educational
  institutions tend to systematically produce
  closed identities (which are necessary in a
  traditional society during the stage of
  mechanical solidarity), we can presume that these
  institutions impose some form of indoctrination.
  In modern or post-modern society, educational
  institutions should encourage a reflective
  attitude toward ones own identity.