Discerning Critical Hope in Educational Practices

‘Hopelessness is entirely the wrong reaction to critical research that exposes the deep-seated, complex and resilient nature of the inequalities that shape, and are shaped by, education systems. This important new collection brings together scholars from different nations and different traditions to explore the realistic, critical and inspirational hope that drives activists forward in their search for liberatory and equitable education.’ - David Gillborn, Director, Centre for Research in Race & Education (CRRE), University of Birmingham, UK.

‘Instead of being bathed in utopian hope, education has become the dumping ground of neoliberal ideology, modes of governance, and policy. Discerning Critical Hope engages, interrogates, and affirms the notion that educated hope is the precondition for not only modes of pedagogy and education that are faithful to the precepts of justice and human rights, but also to the primacy of politics and democracy itself. This book is a must read and offers a counterpoint to a neoliberal culture in which cynicism and despair have become a permanent fixture.’ - Henry Giroux, Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Canada.

‘This collection on critical hope in education needs to be sampled for its delicacy and probing. There is an expansive erudition at play when authors engage movingly and disruptively with meanings of critical hope to avow their contingency with a view of education that foregrounds the emancipatory potential of the social. In quite promising leaps the authors offer dynamic and ontologically profound conceptions of education as a persistent encounter with the ethical. And the hope remains in the prevalence of a just education that exists in a cultural space from within, yet situated in the amazement of what is to come.’ - Yusef Waghid, Professor of Philosophy of Education, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.