The Alienation of Fact: The Positivist Legacy, Post-Truth, and Education

• In Event: 35.066 - Confronting Authoritarianism: The Necessity of Critical Pedagogy and Paulo Freire in a Post-Truth Era (Featuring Henry Giroux)

Abstract

This paper by Kenneth Saltman details the relationship between social and educational repression and the revival of positivism through the standards and accountability movements and the use of contemporary technology. The paper contends that the current crises of truth and agency and the prospect of responding to them depend in large part on replacing the positivist approach to knowledge with critical pedagogical ones.

Author

• Kenneth J. Saltman, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth