Ijtihad Network Being Wise and Faithful Muslim in the Contemporary World
This paper analyses postmodern theory of education writings and illustrates some of the problems and alternatives in the realm of education, through and Islamic perspective.
To achieve a better understanding of the theoretical foundations of educational change, I have consulted postmodern theory as a new contesting school of thought. Utilizing a socio-historical method, I have reviewed some of the most important writings by postmodernist thinkers to illustrate some of the problems and alternatives in the realm of education. My major concerns include the intellectual shift from modern to postmodern conceptualizations, the linkage between postmodernism and critical pedagogy, and possible progressing alternatives. Despite postmodern critiques, there exists a promising basis for creating a synthetic model which incorporates both modern and postmodern attitudes in educational change.
As a student of “culture and values in education,” I have pursued the interrelationship of these variables. Change is the common factor that results from their impact on each other. The paradox is that although changes may take place easily, the interpretation and evaluation may be more complicated. In this paper, I shall examine educational change as it has been explained in postmodern theories. This study is a complementary work of my previous paper about theories of socio-educational change. No modern theory remains impervious to suggestions for educational change. It is interesting to see how postmodern ideas have influenced theories of educational change.
Postmodernism has been at the core of most debated academic issues during the 1980s. Words with the prefix post like post-industrialism, poststructuralism, postmodernism and post-liberalism have been at the core of discussions among social thinkers. After an allusion to the theoretical and social origins of the formation of postmodernism and its expansion into various other disciplines, I shall deal with its impact on educational thought. Topics like postmodern offerings in educational change, postmodern educationalists, postmodernity and critical pedagogy and the evaluation of postmodern educational ideas are aspects which will be concisely discussed in this paper. Through a socio-historical analysis, I will attempt to analyze the difference between a modern and postmodern perspective in educational change. As I have realized, postmodernism has linked its language of critique to the language of struggle and educational change. However, we have to know that an appropriate balance between the “language of critique” and the “language of hope and possibilities” may help us to eradicate boring and frustrating ideas in existing educational theories.
Roots of Postmodernism (Theoretical & Social Origins)
Henry A. Giroux has alleged that postmodernism in its broadest sense encompasses both intellectual position (a form of cultural criticism) and an emerging set of social, cultural, and economic conditions which echoes the characteristics of the age of global capitalism and industrialism (Giroux 1988, 9). Postmodernists oppose philosophical systems of thought that provide some universal standard, as emerged in the works of Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, Georg Hegel, August Compte, and Karl Marx (Rust 1991, 616). Postmodernists are strongly influenced in their philosophy by concepts of existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Clues to the influence of previous currents in philosophical thought include challenges to conventional philosophy, an emphasis on singularity and particularity and a distrust of objective determinism (Ozman & Craver 1995, 365).
On an epistemological level, postmodernists tore down the certain and transcendent claims of modernist discourse to truth. This action resulted in discrediting the reliability of prevailing conceptualizations of what constitutes knowledge and truth (McLaren 1988, 53).
To have a clear understanding of postmodernism, we have to reexamine its modern background. Although largely regarded as a Western phenomenon, modernism conveys ideals like rationalism, humanism, democracy, individualism and romanticism which gradually but continuously have emerged in different places and at different times (Elkind 1995, 9). Modernism is a faith in rationality, science and technology which reinforces a belief in permanent, continual and progressive change and the unfolding of history. Education, consequently, serves as a socializing tool which legitimates codes by which the grand narrative of progress and human development will be infiltrated into future generations. Knowledge within the discourse of modernism portrays a Eurocentric boundary of culture and civilization. This culture and civilization has been scripted by the white males who offered models of “high culture” opposed to what the elite regarded as mass or popular culture.
Modernism was echoed in religion through Protestantism, in the arts through self-expression, in science by means of experimentation and in the political domain through democracy (Elkind 1995, 9). Postmodernism began as a challenge to this mentality and as a movement to restructure our social, political and cultural geography (Giroux 1988, 5-6). Although the term postmodern is primarily an American term, most of its initiators belong to European schools of philosophy, particularly France (Ozman & Craver 1995, 365). At a global level, postmodernism suggest that the world order is shifting from a bipolar to a multipolar power configuration. This has resulted in the emergence of global markets and world concern through local involvement (Rust 1991, 618-9). Postmodernism, in comparison to modernism, celebrates language rather than thought and honors human diversity as much as it does human individuality (Elkind 1995, 10).
