The purpose of this study is to discuss logical relation between education and social revolution for liberation in One-dimensional Society (Herbert Marcuse, 1964).
If a society is oppressing and inhuman one, it is natural that education should act as...
The purpose of this study is to discuss logical relation between education and social revolution for liberation in One-dimensional Society (Herbert Marcuse, 1964).
If a society is oppressing and inhuman one, it is natural that education should act as emancipatory transformations. Education for social transformation is that it makes over-all new, type of man in his consciousness as well as his instinctive needs. The power of making like so is social construction of education. For new society will be constructed by this new type of man.
However, social construction of education can not but have limitations in that the regularity of a system concealing the logic of domination limits the emancipatory transformations of education, Education keeping on retaining the logic of domination in one-dimensional society reproduces and reinforces the prior domination ideologies, depoliticizes the subjects of education, and is subject to the ruling power. Inspite of the fact, the relative autonomy of education logically give to us the hope that the education can resist these contradictions and can have some revolutions against them. The social construction of education is the practical power revealing itself in dialectical relation between the system and education as well as between the structure and the agent. This power may break man with the established society, subjectize one dimensional man, and restore the relative autonomy of education. Therefore, the power is the humanism that will get rid of the gap between the present and the hopeful future. Marcuse's social criticism is based on this humanism.
The meaning of education implied in Marcuse's social criticism is possibility which would loosen the hold of enslaving needs in one dimensional society, and this meaning is expressed in his refusal to abandon the dialectic of agency and structure and his development of theoretical perspective that treats seriously the claim that history can be changed, that the potential for radical transformations exist. Although his critical argument is often criticize for elitist, speculative, and utopian approach, the value of his theory that argue the realization of liberal man must not, be reduced because of the fact, we must have the considerations the process of education is the process of interaction having together the give and take and many utopias that was thought impossible have been realizing by progressive challenges.