Immanent Critique in Political Education: Indoctrination or Emancipation?

This article assesses whether critical political education, which immanently criticizes society, is able to avoid the challenge of indoctrination. For this purpose, the article reconstructs premises of critical political education, contemporary theories of immanent critique, and criteria of indoctrination. Moreover, the article constructs a didactic approach of immanent critique of capitalism in political education and examines it using Habermasian criteria of indoctrination. According to the study, immanent critique in political education can be both indoctrinative and critical of indoctrination depending on how successful teachers are in applying the didactic principles of self-reflectivity, controversy, and dialogic teaching. Therefore, the challenge can be avoided.