Can a book that opens with a chilling description of Che Guevara’s brutal execution speak to the topic of “radical pedagogy?” Surprisingly, yes—and that is precisely the point. In Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of the Revolution (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), Peter McLaren sets out to boldly re-annex the image of Che Guevara and the territory of critical pedagogy. Having been usurped by pop culture as a “fashionable rebel,” McLaren strives to resurrect the real Che Guevara and his revolutionary message. For McLaren, Guevara embodied the quintessential radical teacher: an educator willing to make any sacrifice to enlighten, and uplift the oppressed. While Guevara lived and died by the sword, McLaren insists that his extreme methods were tempered by erudition, and justified by necessity. Guevara’s words and deeds assert profoundly that education is indeed a battleground.
Just as McLaren recovers Che Guevara from the purgatory of pop consumerism, he also rekindles the radical urgency of Paulo Freire. While Freire lacks Guevara’s romantic rebel status, still, in the years since his death, Freire’s message has suffered from a similar dilution and transformation . We have arrived at a point, according to McLaren, when just about any deviation from standard classroom procedures has come to be characterized as Freireian radical pedagogy. In response, McLaren reasserts the unequivocally subversive foundation of Freireian pedagogy: education is a vehicle of change. A radical pedagogy must pave the way for the oppressed to improve their lot—to profoundly change their world. Any teaching strategy that fails to meet these requirements cannot claim to be new, much less radical, and (McLaren makes eminently clear) certainly cannot claim a rightful connection to the lifelong struggles of Paulo Freire or Che Guevara.
McLaren, Peter, 2000. Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of the Revolution. Lanham, MD.:Rowman and Littlefield.
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