resonant lhemes in which the notions of family, nation, duty, self-reliance,
and standards often add up to a warmed-over dish of Parsonian
consensus and cultural reproduction. In educational terms, school
knowledge is reduced to an unproblematic selection from the dominant
traditions of "Western" culture, Rathex: thm viewing culture as a terrain
of competing knowledge and practice, conservatives frame "culture"
wilhirl the axis of historic& ceflainty and present it as a storehouse of
twasured goods constituted as canon and ready ta be passed ""dwn" to
deserving stltdents.6 Na suryrisingly, peclagom in this inslance is often
reduced to the process of transmitting a given body of knowjedge with
student learning squarely situated 'm, ""mastering" the ""basics" and appropriate
standards of bebaGor,
If the new conservatives view authority as a positive and inhemndy
traditional set of values and practices, 1el"fis.t educatarrs almost without
exception have taken the opposite position. In this view, authority is frequently
associated with an unprincipled aulttoritarianism while freedom
is sometl-xing that is defined as an escape &orn authority in general.
Authority within this perspective is generaUy seen as syrlonymorls with
the logic of domination, This position has been endlessly repeated in
radical critiques in which schools are often portrayed as factories, prisons,
or warehouses for the oppressed, While there is a strong element of
tmlh in the notion that schools comribute to the reproduction of the
status quo, with all of its characteristic inequalities, it is nevertheless inaccurate
to arwe that schools are merety agencies of damination arzd
reproduction. Missing from this discourse is any understanding of how
authority might be used in the interests of an. emancipatory pedagogy;
The agony of this position is that it has prevented radical educators from
appropriating a view of authoriq that provides the basis Eor a progmmmatic
discourse kvirhin schools. One consequence of this position is that
the Left is bereft of a view of authority that aZXows for the development of
a theoretical strategy through which popular forees might wage a politicat
struggle within schools in order to accumulate power and to shape
school policy in their om interests, The irony of this position is that the
Lef 'S politics of skepticism translates into an anti-utopian, overburdened
discourse that undermines the possibility of any type of programmatic
political action.7
Liberal theorise in education have provided the most dialectical view
of the relationship between authority and education, This tradition is
exemplified by bnneth D. Benne, who has not only argued for a dialectical
view of authority, but has also atlerrlpted to display its relevance for
a critical pedagog. Benne first defines authority as ""a function of concrete
human situations in which a person or group, EulfiXling some purpose,
prqject, or need, requires guidance or direction from a source out
Sedang diterjemahkan, harap tunggu..
