James D. Kirylo

James David Kirylo is professor of education at the University of South Carolina who teaches courses that examine concepts associated with critical pedagogy, curriculum theorizing, teacher leadership, diversity and literacy. Among other books, he is author of Teaching with Purpose: An Inquiry into the Who, Why, and How We Teach, A Turning Point in Teacher Education: A Time for Resistance, Reflection and Change (with Jerry Aldridge), and Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife, which is one of the most comprehensive texts in English on the life and thought of Paulo Freire, significantly contributing to Freirean scholarship.

Educator Influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and other progressives, Kirylo suggests that education is not a neutral enterprise but a highly charged political affair, largely dictated by the voices that have the most capital power. More often than not, according to Kirylo, these particular voices have propagated a view of education and the notion of school reform as one that has morphed into a language that can be characterized as corporate speak.

Kirylo argues there are those who have become so enamored with the convenience of explaining school reform with detached terminology such as outcomes, results, performance, monetary rewards, takeover, competition, and comparing and contrasting that they have created a system analogous to describing a for-profit corporation, resulting in the creation of "winners" and "losers," ultimately fostering what he describes institutionalization of the depersonalization of education. Consequently, in order to ascertain the accuracy of who the winners and losers are, the infrastructure that protects that interest has to be secured. In the end, Kirylo suggests this type of system fosters the objectification of school-aged children, possesses an extraordinarily distorted view of what is educationally important, and largely blames teachers for anything that ails education. Moreover, this type of system has fostered a subtle and not-so-subtle move systematically to deprofessionalize the notion of teacher education and the teaching profession in general, all of which reduces teachers into mechanical functionaries, seriously preventing them from fostering critical thought, innovation, and creativity in actual classroom practice. Not only asserting that to be called an educator is an incredible responsibility and an earned privilege requiring involvement in the political process, Kirylo argues that schooling is a complex affair, suggesting educators collectively unite in challenging systems that propagate a corporate point of view of education. Kirylo has meaningfully contributed to the discourse of critical pedagogy and curriculum theorizing, and its link to liberation theology.