History and Education

Curry Stephenson Malott is a professor of educational foundations and a union leader at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-author of Marx, Capital, and Education: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Becoming (Peter Lang, 2015). As a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation Dr. Malott is an activist in the proletarian camp of the global class war.

• Contents: Foreword; Drawing Class Lines Through Critical Education: A Proletarian Program for the Current Crisis – Introduction: Lenin and the Withering Away of the State – The Global Class War and the Contradictions of Capital – Marxist Historiography in the History of Education: From Colonial to Neocolonial Schooling in the United States – The Crossing of Class Lines: Confronting Critical Pedagogy in Defense of Communism – Right-to-Work Laws and Lenin’s Communist Pedagogy – Communist Padagogy: Centering Marx’ General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.

«With unapologetic commitment to a communist future – a world beyond predation and capitalist exploitation, beyond wage slavery and national oppression – Curry Stephenson Malott takes a hard look at the twentieth century, challenges and then upends the popular clichés and comforting euphemisms constantly spun by apologists caught in the thrall of capital. In History and Education Malott promotes a pedagogy that begins with truth-telling, and proceeds to courageously name this political moment as a time of increased immiseration and proletarianization on a global scale, and of imperialism in precipitous and fatal decline. Malott’s ‘communist pedagogy’ offers a curriculum of struggle, a way forward through the wreckage all around us. History and Education will open your eyes, wake you up, and likely blow your mind. But even if you debate or dispute Malott’s account, you’ll be starting in the right place.» (Bill Ayers, former Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Author of several books including Teaching Toward Freedom and Public Enemy) «We live in exciting times – people are pouring into the streets to demand decent wages and a union, justice for victims of police brutality, an end to racist mass incarceration and so much more. Pedagogical theory helps organizers build these struggles into mass movements of millions. History and Education offers important insights for those who seek to change the world.» (Walter Smolarek, the Black Radical Organizing Collective (BROC))«For decades the educational Left and critical pedagogues have run away from Marxism, socialism, and communism, all too often based on faulty understandings and falling prey to the deep-seated anti-communism in the academy. In History and Education Curry Stephenson Malott pushes back against this trend by offering us deeply Marxist thinking about the circulation of capital, socialist states, the connectivity of Marxist anti-capitalism, and a politics of race and education. In the process Malott points toward the role of education in challenging us all to become abolitionists of global capitalism.» (Wayne Au, Associate Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell; Editor of the social justice teaching magazine Rethinking Schools; Co-editor of Mapping Corporate Education Reform: Power and Policies Networks in the Neoliberal State)«Curry Stephenson Malott is a scholar committed to the global working class struggle. In this volume he fearlessly and unapologetically challenges critical pedagogy by centering the oppressed and global working class in his analysis and synthesis. What distinguishes this work in progressive education is the way in which Malott draws on important theorists and revolutionaries, most notably Harry Haywood, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin, and in the process, advances radical pedagogy. In the end Malott dares to demand that the working class and oppressed deserve an educational praxis and paradigm that serves their educational needs and liberatory interests.» (Kashara White, Party for Socialism and Liberation)«Eight years after the global capitalist crisis modern societies are treading down a dangerous road. In this context Curry Stephenson Malott addresses important questions such as, what is the state and what role does it play in the revolutionary process? Do we need a Marxist theory of the state today? What has historical experience shown? What can critical approaches to education gain from Marx? In this text, Malott, with considerable clarity, scholarship, and passion contributes to the unraveling of these and other questions. Along the way, he makes crucial interventions in debates about what counts as radical in