How Critical Theory Has Affected Modern Education

Reframing Education to Dismantle Tradition and to Serve Revolution Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher. While not necessarily a “member” of the school of the early critical theory, he was certainly a fellow traveler of the critical theorists. The last eleven years or so of his life he served in prison (1926–1937). He founded, and for a while led, the Italian Communist Party. In his Prison Notebooks, he spoke at length about the place of “intellectuals” in the society as a whole. The Prison Notebooks begins with a section titled “Intellectuals,” followed by the section “On Education.”1 One of Gramsci’s key points is that each socioeconomic class produces its own set of intellectuals.2 So every group of intellectuals is essentially class specific. Gramsci was trying to work out what is the role of education. He desired a change from the older “Jesuitical school” of Italy, but in some ways Gramsci was strikingly traditional. He advocated hard work, traditional (in a sense) philosophy, the importance of logic, and other related ideas. He almost advocated what is often today called “classical education.” But he was in fact wanting to see a change from the trad...