| This work examines and evaluates substantial and on-going debates within radical pedagogy, surrounding its role as a moral, political, and emancipatory practice. Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and Larry Grossberg are highlighted specifically to show how radical pedagogy calls for progressives to rethink the contribution of education as both a force for democratic social life and a practice for understanding and combating the neoliberal and neo-conservative takeover of public spaces. Radical pedagogy is currently oriented towards an educational project that provides students with the means to understand, engage, and shape the symbolic and institutional conditions that influence their lives. Working alongside these discussions, this project highlights how radical pedagogy often does not adequately account for the ways in which highly active bodies in classroom-based education are implicated in various forms of discipline and control. In order to draw attention to forms of discipline and control, this project deploys a Foucauldian genealogical account of the pathologization of 'AD/HD' as it is defined in the context of concrete classroom relations. As a secondary thread, radical pedagogical theory is juxtaposed with post-structuralist theories of social and political change. The latter is advanced for its attentiveness to the difficulties associated with carrying out radical social change while working within the state form. As one possible way of challenging the pathologization of 'AD/HD' in classroom-based education, this thesis concludes with a brief discussion of non-hierarchical, counter-public forms of community based education. |
