I'm with Mark--after reading his post "Help! I'm in the Bamboozlizer!" I'm realizing the lack of profundity in devising a pedagogy around the whole idea of empowering students. Of liberating students. Etc. Yes, Mark, I agree: these ideas are part of the basic package of why we teach writing to begin with.
So, why critical pedagogy? Sometimes it seems these pedagogies develop as reactions to extremists teachers the writers have met, or have imagined might exist. I get that. I think we've probably all met one or two of those in our ongoing jaunt through education. The teacher that is so light-headed with glee over completing his dissertation that he's insufferable to learn from because he, surely, knows everything there is to know about this-or-that topic. Or, as George's article suggests, critical pedagogy is reacting to the "back to basics" movement of the 80s, where a "teacher-proof curriculum [was needed] to restore excellence to the schools" (95).
I wonder, how much of our education pedagogy exists out of teacher need to combat or cope with poorly-reasoned politics?
That aside, part of me feels like I've heard this tune before. Pedagogy after pedagogy is about putting some of the power in the hands of the students. Is about de-centering the classroom. Is about valuing and embracing the real, living, breathing, thinking students who sit around you in class and creating something that caters to their needs.
I suspect that this can be a radical notion for the non-teacher. But as someone who has had the opportunity to stand in front of and attempt to guide a group of students to some set of goals, my only thought is Yeah, DUH.
Perhaps I am digressing. Perhaps I am missing the thrust of critical pedagogy. I find it interesting, but necessarily self-conflicting, and George acknowledges as much in her article. In order for critical pedagogy to be used and to liberate students, the teacher MUST be in control. The teacher DOES know more than the students, and that's why she's standing up there, guiding them out of dark into the light of freedom. And, as a teacher that uses such a pedagogy, I will be deciding that the students SHOULD be liberated from something, even if they aren't much interested.
(Although I suppose that is the case with anything we teach--students are often resistent, but we press on.)
What I DO like from this pedagogy is Shor's "power-sharing moves" (106). The idea of having the students determine what the class policies are regarding grading and attendence intrigues me--if they do it, they'll be even more accountable to it. I've wished many times this first semester of teaching, that I had had a formal conversation with my students on classroom expectations.
Again, though, this doesn't seem new. Isn't this just another leg or branch of a huge, over-arcing pedagogy that says, value your students and consider them when you teach? We are just parsing this grand concept into tidy pedagogical packages, but I'm more interested in the worldview that governs all of it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
"I'm more interested in the world view that governs it all." Profound statement. I don't think critical pedagogy necessarily can be reduced to yet another version of student-centered, student-valuing pedagogy. In my mind, critical pedagogy does arise from a belief in social justice and democracy, and a belief that education equips students to take part in a democratic society and to work for justice. The critical pedagogue needs humility in order to avoid becoming a propagandist or a tyrant. (No doubt teachers in the old Soviet Union or in North Korea think they are advancing the ideals of the state and might even see themselves as advancing high ideals.) The critical classroom must be open, a democratic forum, a place to examine ideas, to consider evidence, to put national and human ideals to the test. But I think the critical teacher and critical students must be willing to question the traditions and practices of their society. Not because the teacher is "right" or "smarter than the students," but because the teacher sees the principles of democracy and human rights as worth living by. It's easy to turn civics education into nationalism, into flag-waving patriotism, and that's dangerous. But it would also be dangerous to turn it into a dogmatic boot camp for revolutionaries. Ask ourselves this: if we lived during slavery, or during the extermination of the American Indian tribes, or during the Inquisition, or during McCarthyism's worst excesses, and we were teachers, what would our responsibility be? Whatever your answer, consider this: we live in such times right now. There are great evils, injustices, oppression, and discrimination all around us. So what is our responsibility as educators?
Post a Comment