Study On The Thought Of Michael W.Apple’s Critical Educational Philosophy

Michael Apple, whose thoughts have been attached more and more importance in educational theories in recent years, was the founder and representative of Neo-Marxism educational school in contemporary America, and led in criticism education research in North America. As a educational theorist and educational philosopher of neo-Marxism, with his theories based on Marxism, Apple absorbed knowledge sociology, analytic philosophy, critical theories, cultural studies, post-modern philosophy and other related fields, at the same time, accepted theories of Western Marxism, the movement of British New Left Wing, and the new educational sociology, which led to the construction of his own thoughts system with unique characteristics.In terms of Apple’s educational philosophy, criticism is an important feature of his philosophy; both theoretical characteristics and practical value of his educational philosophy are related to the feature. The source of the feature is the Apple Question, namely whose knowledge is the most valuable one, which gained full attention and affirmation. The raise of the question and the pursuit of its answers expanded the horizon and research direction of education theories from education category to a wider social field. The theory he used is the Marxism ideological criticism. In order to remove the blindness of the ideology, the ideological theories, with critical and revolutionary genes in nature, was aimed at helping people to establish correct consciousness by criticism, so that people can realize the truth of this world, then obtain the liberation. The idea that education is a neutral science was deeply suspected by Apple, who combined the critical education research with a strong Marxism orientation. Apple tried to take the ideology as a breakthrough and critical tool, so that he can analyze the idea that education is unrelated to policy. By understanding the intergrowth and development relationship of ideology and education, Apple believed that people should analyze education under the background of society, policy, economy and culture, so that they can remove the ideological blindness of the reasonable, legal and natural education, reveal the hidden ideology and companies it represented. In this way, people can reach the aim of educational criticism.That is to say, ideological theories are the most important theoretical basis for Apple’s educational criticism. Therefore, this paper firstly made a general consequent introduction on the source and development of the ideology. Combined with ideas and thoughts of previous philosophers, especially Marx and his ideological successors, the paper described the emergence and evolution course of the ideology, explored previous philosophers’different understandings of it and its multi-vocal connotations, and strived to distinguish the internal relation between the ideology and education itself.Knowledge reflected the value and meaning of education. Apple’s criticism on education began from his thoughts on the knowledge and legality of education, around which the second part of this paper opened a discussion. Apple didn’t believe that there is knowledge of Neutrality and Value-freedom in the world, and he thought that what kind of knowledge is the most valuable put forward by Spenser was actually using the effectiveness of knowledge to replace or cover the legality of knowledge. Knowledge and power are closely linked; therefore, the interest, power and ideology in social lives are closely and intricately linked with knowledge, determining the construction of knowledge to some extent. Legalized official knowledge was resulted from the combination of social inequality and the state power, while the technical knowledge praised by contemporary capitalism was the mainstream ideology and the power game of capital.As a kind of state institutions, public schools were inevitably established on the basis of social mainstream ideology. The third part of this paper explained Apple’s criticism on the hegemony operation mechanism of educational ideology mainly from two aspects. The first one was to reveal and understand the educational methods, educational operating models, educational supervising mechanisms and educational controlling measures of the ideological hegemony by investigating schools acted as hegemony organizations of ideology and their reproduction mechanism. The second one was to analyze the resistance to ideology reforms and hegemony during the educational process, so as to highlight the anti-suppression in daily education lives and the value of organic intellectuals that teachers had been seeking for.Apple’s educational criticism didn’t end up with the criticism and reveal of the educational realities and his final purpose were reform and construction. Therefore, his theory of criticism education research would go to practices, and regard the real life of education as the conscientious pursuit and action strategy of researchers, from which the fourth part of this paper started a discussion. Apple’s pursuit of social status from a scholar to an activist was not only the result of real political conditions and personal experience, but also the externalization of his oriented political practice and consciousness of his status choice. To maintain the vitality and reality of the ideology, Apple conducted a deep reveal, comprehensive understanding, firm resistance and sharp criticism on the ideology and education policies of the right wing in America, and put forward the reform opinions of independent democratization. In order to realize the theoretical purpose of coming from practices and then directing practices, and to keep the moral commitment of changing the world, he began to face democratic education actions and practice in the world, and was devoted to construct the global cultural pluralism of criticism with the scope of internationalization through advocating the construction of democratic schools and the spread democratic education experiences, so as to strive for benefits for the oppressed globally to collapse the world social fascism.In view of that, all of Apple’s theory study and practice action were to rebuild the social mission of education, to promote the popularization and deepening of democratic education, to make the free people realize the social fairness and justice foundation, all of which had become the ultimate goal and unremitting pursuit of Apple’s theories from the ideology to educational criticism. The fifth part of this paper opened a discussion.As a new Marxist and a criticism educational philosopher, Apple had a lasting wide and profound impact in the world. In addition to the persuasion and attraction of his theory, it also lay in his sense of justice and social responsibility; his attention to the culture of a real democratic society, pursuit of political concomitant, and the efforts to intervene reality; his proposal of many real problems that a truly democratic society needed concerning system reform; his responsibility and mission consciousness to the history and the reality. Apple’s philosophical thoughts and profound theories on education problems and the social reality, and his conscious involvement and active participation in the education reality and political activities not only left us some experience to explore the existing problems, but also brought about many substantial inspirations for our education theories and reform practices.