A Marxist Education

Praise for Critical Curriculum Studies:

“If Wayne Au wanted to ‘revitalize’ curriculum studies—it worked! Articulating the complex simply, this unique and insightful contribution successfully explains the electric relationship between what we learn and what we do. This is a must read for those interested in knowledge and possibility.” —William H. Watkins, Professor, College of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago

“This is an essential book for anyone interested in the politics of knowledge and education that aims to be transformative rather than reproductive of current social conditions. Summing Up: Essential.” —E. W. Ross, University of British Columbia, in CHOICE

In A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World, professor and education activist Wayne Au traces both his own development as a Marxist educator, as well as the development of Marxist educational theory. Arguing that dialectical materialism is at the heart of Marxist theory, Au uses dialectics to not only analyze the relationship between capitalism and schools, but also to understand teaching, learning, and curriculum. In the process, A Marxist Education challenges the idea that Marxism is Eurocentric, reclaims noted educators such as Lev Vygotsky and Paulo Freire as being within the Marxist tradition, and integrates racial and feminist traditions into analyses of education, consciousness, and power.

Wayne Au is a Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell and a long-time author and editor for the social justice teaching magazine, Rethinking Schools.