18th Street Arts Center

Peter McLaren: Global Capitalism and the Crisis in Education – Peter McLaren is a Professor of Education of Graduate School in the Division of Urban Schooling, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Through his writings and lectures, McLaren had given a second interpretation to the notion of critical pedagogy first developed by Paulo Freire (1921-1997). McLaren addresses the crucial role that teachers can play in helping students become critical thinkers. He proposes spaces where students can project alternatives to capitalism, analyzing how revolutionary movements in the past became instrumentalized. McLaren will speak about the effects of global capitalism in the current crisis in education and introduce us to his Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy.

Peter McLaren is a Professor in the Division of Urban Schooling, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author and editor of forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters. Professor McLaren’s writings have been translated into 20 languages. McLaren was the inaugural recipient of the Paulo Freire Social Justice Award presented by Chapman University, California. The charter for La Fundacion McLaren de Pedagogia Critica was signed at the University of Tijuana in July, 2004. La Catedra Peter McLaren was inaugurated in Venezuela on September 15, 2006 as part of a joint effort between El Centro Internacional Miranda and La Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. Professor McLaren made international headlines when he was targeted by a right-wing extremist organization in the United States and put at the top of the “Dirty Thirty” list of leftist professors at UCLA. The group offered to pay students a hundred dollars to secretly audiotape McLaren’s lectures and those of his fellow leftist professors. Professor McLaren’s work has been the subject of two recent books: Teaching Peter McLaren: Paths of Dissent, edited by Marc Pruyn and Luis M. Huerta-Charles (New York: Peter Lang Publications) [translated into Spanish as De La Pedagogia Critica a la pedagogia de la Revolucion: Ensayos Para Comprender a Peter McLaren, Mexico City, Siglo Veintiuno Editores] and Peter McLaren, Education, and the Struggle for Liberation, edited by Mustafa Eryaman (New Jersey: Hampton Press).