Is Transformative Learning the Trojan Horse of Western Globalization?

Abstract

This article raises a number of questions intended to disrupt the “banking process” that now characterizes how the ideas of Freire, Dewey, and critical pedagogy theorists are passed on to the next generation of teacher educators. These questions include: What assumptions are shared by transformative learning theorists and the neoliberals promoting the globalization of the West’s industrial, consumer-dependent culture? Does the hegemonic nature of neoliberalism, with its emphasis on new markets, technologies, and a consumer lifestyle, also require a constant process of transformative learning? Are the silences in the thinking of transformative learning theorists shared by the promoters of Western globalizations—silences about the cultural beliefs and practices that are chief contributors to deepening the ecological crisis and about the ways in which the world’s diverse cultural and environmental commons are being undermined? What is the double bind in transformative learning theories that excludes learning about the commons?