Blue Collar Pedagogues : Democracy , “ Vocational ” Schooling and Antonio Gramsci ’ s Organic Intellectual

This article argues for the utility of a public pedagogy centered in a Gramscian notion of the organic intellectual. Implications for technical and career-based schooling are explored. Critical pedagogy, more specifically, a border-crossing-civic literacy, is presented as a model for the transformation of vocational education. A special focus is placed upon the work of Michael Apple and Henry Giroux and their emphasis upon the interrelationship between education, culture and contested publics. Introduction: Pragmatism, Vocationalism and Critical Education Academic freedom is a well accepted aspect of university tenure and the university’s status as an independent knowledge producing community. However, within the college system the relationship between institutional function and critical thought is much less clear. The granting of collegiate degrees, the increasing prevalence of inter-institutional transfers and the vocational nature of professional training makes distinguishing the functions of higher educational institutions increasingly problematic (Grubb & Lazerson, 2005; Skolnik, 2003, pp. 9, 11). Moreover, given the social, symbolic and cultural capital associated with colleges and their close affiliation with working and middle classes, the conventional vocational model makes it increasingly difficult to outline the precise relationship between vocational training and civic education (Coben, 1998; Santoro, 2005; Lakes 2005; Lewis, 1998; Pinto, 2007; Grubb & Lazerson, 2005; Rehm, 1989, p. 111; Tarrant & Tarrant, 2004). In contrast to a narrow technical conception of education and the familiar tripartite division of educational institutions into public, college and university systems, there are significant practical and theoretical insights to be offered by an educative model which incorporates “technical” knowledge into a broader public framework (Jarvis, 2008; Rehm, 1989; Lewis, 1998; Steinberg & Kincheloe, 1996; Kincheloe 2004). Primarily, this means creating a form of critical vocational literacy in opposition to the “functional and socially reproductive [educative] model” which has conventionally mediated learning in the collegiate context (Pinto, 2007, p. 193). Such a model is intended to address the serious issues surrounding vocationalism’s relationship to class and race-based forms of inequality, as well as the difficulties it poses for broader efforts to resuscitate critical thinking skills among the broader populace and within post-secondary institutions (Rehm, 1989, p. 111). In this regards, some impetus for a critical vocational model can be found in Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s conception of the organic intellectual, both in its original formulations, and as part of critical pedagogy’s contemporary notions of “public” and “transformative” intellectuals (Giroux, 1999; Apple 2003, 2004; McLaren, 2005; hooks, 1994, 2003). A key unifying theme – particularly as presented within the work of Michael Apple and Henry Giroux – is the notion of democratic citizenship which provides a means of relating knowledge to the hegemonic mechanisms of cultural and economic reproduction. For universities and colleges alike, then, civic education provides the basis for recognizing the importance of critical publics and the exigencies of a critical, civically-minded pragmatism (Kincheloe, 2004). Rather than taking solace in critical pedagogy’s newfound status as a discipline finding increasing acceptance within the Academy, the present paper seeks to undertake a critical assessment of the field’s theoretical inheritance as a means of determining the types of collaborative projects consistent with its democratic, egalitarian principles. Among the key presumptions which inform such a position are: i) the idea that contemporary democracy is in a state of deep, protracted crisis; ii) the belief that corporate culture has infused authoritarian principles throughout the entire educational spectrum, at the expense of the civic conception of education as a public good; and, iii) the contemporary militarization and commodification of the public sphere and popular culture which requires that those committed to “deep democracy” pose concrete strategies as a means of resuscitating the conventional linkage between an educated citizenry and robust democracy. If autonomy is derived from communal forms of organization, then, what kinds of solidarity are possible for intellectuals seeking to forge critical alliances across institutions, work places and learning cultures? To what extent has vocational education become a force for conformity and constraint as opposed to being “about treating individuals as adults and educating them so that they may mature and develop as responsible persons playing their full part in the world” (Jarvis, 2008, p. 5). In light of such challenges, the present paper undertakes a tentative exploration of possibilities for enhancing the viability of contemporary democracy through cross-cultural and interinstitutional allegiances as a means of reconceptualizing education as a public good. A central aim is to foster collaborative, integrative approaches to the perennial problem of dealing with the discomforting reality of “two worlds of schooling, partly overlapping, one preparing for college and the other for jobs” as we attempt to forge a more pragmatic and principled conception of education which is skeptical of arbitrary distinctions between the pragmatic and the political (Goodlad in Rehm, 1989, p. 109). Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony and the Organic Intellectual Since knowledge is inherently social, a responsive comprehensive pedagogy requires that we consider the broader question of the integration of “technical control” and “intersubjective communication” in the areas of knowledge formation, application and transmission (Habermas, 1973, p. 8). In this vein, the work of Antonio Gramsci (1891 –