Critical pedagogy

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Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate. In other words, it is a theory and practice of helping students achieve critical consciousness. Critical pedagogue Ira Shor defines critical pedagogy as

"Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse." (Empowering Education, 129)

In his book, Critical Pedagogy (2008, second edition), Joe L. Kincheloe helps us understand the central dynamics of critical pedagogy:

"Advocates of critical pedagogy are aware that every minute of every hour that teachers teach, they are faced with complex decisions concerning justice, democracy, and competing ethical claims. While they have to make individual determinations of what to do in these particular circumstances, they must concurrently deal with what John Goodlad (1994) calls the surrounding institutional morality. A central tenet of critical pedagogy maintains that the classroom, curricular, school structures teachers enter are not neutral sites waiting to be shaped by educational professionals. While such professionals do possess agency, this prerogative is not completely free and independent of decisions made previously by people operating with different values and shaped by the ideologies and cultural assumptions of their historical contexts. These contexts are shaped in the same ways language and knowledge are constructed, as historical power makes particular practices seem natural—as if they could have been constructed in no other way." (Chapter 1).

Later in this same work Kincheloe lists the basic concerns of critical pedagogy:

  • all education is inherently political and all pedagogy must be aware of this condition
  • a social and educational vision of justice and equality should ground all education
  • issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are all important domains of oppression and critical anti-hegemonic action.
  • the alleviation of oppression and human suffering is a key dimension of educational purpose
  • schools must not hurt students--good schools don't blame students for their failures or strip students of the knowledges they bring to the classroom
  • all positions including critical pedagogy itself must be problematized and questioned
  • the professionalism of teachers must be respected and part of the role of any educator involves becoming a scholar and a researcher
  • education must both promote emancipatory change and the cultivation of the intellect--these goals should never be in conflict, they should be synergistic
  • the politics of knowledge and issues of epistemology are central to understanding the way power operates in educational institutions to perpetuate privilege and to subjugate the marginalized--"validated" scientific knowledge can often be used as a basis of oppression as it is produced without an appreciation of how dominant power and culture shape it.
  • education often reflects the interests and needs of new modes of colonialism and empire. Such dynamics must be exposed, understood, and acted upon as part of critical transformative praxis.


Contents

[edit] Background

Critical pedagogy was heavily influenced by the works of Paulo Freire, arguably the most celebrated critical educator. According to his writings, Freire heavily endorses students’ ability to think critically about their education situation; this way of thinking allows them to "recognize connections between their individual problems and experiences and the social contexts in which they are embedded."[1] Realizing one’s consciousness ("conscientization") is a needed first step of "praxis," which is defined as the power and know-how to take action against oppression while stressing the importance of liberating education. "Praxis involves engaging in a cycle of theory, application, evaluation, reflection, and then back to theory. Social transformation is the product of praxis at the collective level."[2]

Postmodern, anti-racist, feminist, postcolonial, and queer theories all play a role in further explaining Freire’s ideas of critical pedagogy, shifting its main focus on social class to include issues pertaining to religion, military identification, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and age. Many contemporary critical pedagogues have embraced postmodern, anti-essentialist perspectives of the individual, of language, and of power, "while at the same time retaining the Freirean emphasis on critique, disrupting oppressive regimes of power/knowledge, and social change."[3] Contemporary critical educators, such as bell hooks appropriated by Peter McLaren, discuss in their criticisms the influence of many varied concerns, institutions, and social structures, "including globalization, the mass media, and race/spiritual relations," while citing reasons for resisting the possibilities to change.[4] Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg have created the Paulo and Nita Freire Project for International Critical Pedagogy at McGill University [5]. In line with Kincheloe and Steinberg's contributions to critical pedagogy, the project attempts to move the field to the next phase of its evolution. In this second phase critical pedagogy seeks to truly become a worldwide, decolonizing movement dedicated to listening to and learning from diverse discourses from peoples around the planet. Kincheloe and Steinberg are intent on not allowing critical pedagogy to become merely a North American phenomenon or a patriarchal one. In this listening and introspective phase critical pedagogy becomes better equipped to engage diverse peoples facing different forms of oppression in emancipatory experiences. Taking a cue from Sandy Grande and her discussion in Red Pedagogy of the fruitful negotiation between indigenous peoples and critical pedagogy, Kincheloe and Steinberg envision such dialogue with peoples around the world.

[edit] Examples

[edit] History

During South African apartheid, legal racialization implemented by the regime drove members of the radical leftist Teachers' League of South Africa to employ critical pedagogy with a focus on nonracialism in Cape Town schools and prisons. Teachers collaborated loosely to subvert the racist curriculum and encourage critical examination of religious, military, political, and social circumstances in terms of spirit-friendly, humanist, and democratic ideologies. The efforts of such teachers are credited with having bolstered student resistance and activism.[1]

[edit] Literature

Authors of critical pedagogy texts not only include Paulo Freire, as mentioned above, but also Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Joe L. Kincheloe, Howard Zinn, and others. Educationalists including Jonathan Kozol and Parker Palmer are sometimes included in this category. Other critical pedagogues more known for their anti-schooling, unschooling, or deschooling perspectives include Ivan Illich, John Holt, Ira Shor, John Taylor Gatto, and Matt Hern. Much of the work draws on anarchism, feminism, marxism, Lukacs, Wilhelm Reich, post-colonialism, and the discourse theories of Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault. Radical Teacher is a magazine dedicated to critical pedagogy and issues of interest to critical educators. The Rouge Forum is an online organization led by people involved with critical pedagogy.

[edit] Critiques of critical pedagogy

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This approach has its critics. Below are some hypothetical contrary views with critical responses:

  • "Teachers that use this method will often bias the class towards an anti-status quo position instead of allowing them to decide if they agree or disagree with the situation at hand. In essence, they teach students to agree with their own personal views rather than actually letting them form their own views." (Response: if critical pedagogues teach students to agree simply with the perspectives of critical pedagogues and not analyze situations for themselves, they are violating the prime directive of critical pedagogy)
  • "This approach to understanding the nature of society is often presented in a very intellectual fashion. When an individual attains the interest to find out the validity of the statements he or she inherently must consider himself or herself separate from the rest of society. Critics will describe such a self-image as being elitist and will attack critical pedagogy for its intellectual snobbery (Response: yes, critical pedagogues believe in intellectualism, in being a learned person, in cultivating the intellect in a rigorous manner. They would argue such learning, such intellectualism is no vice. No critical pedagogue argues that being learned separates one from society; on the contrary it moves the individual much closer to the society in question because he or she knows more about it. Critical pedagogues believe the notion of some final truth is profoundly complex and are suspicious of transcultural and transhistorical pronouncements of final truth. Elitism is antithetical to the critical pedagogical position. When a critical pedagogue embraces any form of elitism either consciously or unconsciously he or she has violated the spirit of the discipline.)
  • "The goal exceeds the desire to instill creativity and exploration by encouraging a destructive disdain for tradition, hierarchy (such as parental control over children), and self-reliance." (Response: critical pedagogues are very respectful of emancipatory types of tradition from a variety of cultures. No critical pedagogue believes that parents never need to exercise forms of restraint over children--such a position would be silly. Parenting and teaching involve a delicate balance between freedom and restraint. As John Dewey argued years ago, "baby does not know best."
  • "Such a high degree of distrust in generally accepted truths will create or perpetuate irrational conspiracy theories." (Response: critical pedagogy promotes a healthy questioning of who benefits from particular social relationships. Such questioning is a healthy dimension of democratic practice. It is not a form of irrationality.)
  • "Critical pedagogists selectively pick icons to interrogate and subvert: for example, Thomas Jefferson but not Martin Luther King." (Response: critical pedagogues ask questions of any social or political pronouncement. Certainly Martin Luther King's work is questioned along with Herbert Marcuse's or Thomas Jefferson's perspectives. Any critical pedagogue who accepted Dr. King's work on face value would be violating the basic principles of critical pedagogy.)
  • "Many people involved in critical pedagogy have never been involved in serious struggles for religious, military, political, and social justice, and have instead used the field to build themselves a small publishing cabal rather than a social, political, and religious movement." (Response: critical pedagogues engage in a variety of cultural work from knowledge production to labor organization to service to various communities. Critical pedagogues respect and value diverse ways of contributing to emancipatory practice. They try not to create hierarchies around what forms of emancipatory work are more important. Different individuals have their idiosyncratic strengths, and criticalists believe they should work for emancipatory social change in their own individual way. Establishing new venues and outlets for liberatory knowledge is viewed as a valuable contribution to social change.)
  • "Critical pedagogy is, in many instances, a movement in opposition to revolutionary or marxist movements as easily seen in its roots in Catholic base communities of Latin America, created to stave off the potential of class war. Much of critical pedagogy focuses on culture, language, and abstractions about domination rather than criticizing the centrality of class, alienation, and exploitation." (Response: critical pedagogues have always viewed class and class oppression as a central focus of their work. They also understand that race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, and ability-related issues are very important. They see no conflict in addressing oppression in all of these interrelated areas especially as they express themselves insidiously around issues of culture and language.)
  • "Rather than "liberating" student thought, teachers replace a cultural bias with their own bias as if it was the work of evil."(Response: if critical pedagogues replace one set of biases with an ill-considered body pseudo-truths, they are very bad critical pedagogues.)

See the work of critical pedagogues Henry Giroux, Joe L. Kincheloe, Donaldo Macedo, Shirley Steinberg, Antonia Darder, Lourdes Diaz Soto, Deborah Britzman, Peter McLaren, Patti Lather, Sandy Grande, Ira Shor, Stanley Aronowitz, Tony Monchinski, and many others for insights into the preceding issues.

  • Giroux, H. (1997). Pedagogy and the politics of hope: Theory, culture, and schooling. Boulder, CO: Westview.
  • Giroux, H. & S. Aronowitz (1985). Education under siege. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
  • Kincheloe, J. (2008). Critical pedagogy. 2nd edition. NY: Peter Lang.
  • Macedo, D. (2006). Literacies of power: What Americans are not allowed to know. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview.
  • Macedo, D. & S. Steinberg (Eds.) (2007). Media literacy: A reader. NY: Peter Lang.
  • Steinberg, S. (2001). Multi/intercultural conversations: A reader. NY: Peter Lang.
  • Darder, A. (1991). Culture and Power in the Classroom. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
  • Soto, L. (Ed.) (2000). The Politics of Early Childhood Education. NY: Peter Lang.
  • Britzman, D. (1991). Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
  • Kincheloe, J. & S. Steinberg (2007). Cutting class: Socio-economic status and education. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Kincheloe, J. (1999). How do we tell the workers? The socio-economic foundations of work and vocational education. Boulder, CO: Westview.
  • McLaren, P. (1997). Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium. Boulder, CO: Westview.
  • McLaren, P. (2000). Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the pedagogy of revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. NY: Routledge.
  • Lather, P. (2003). This IS your father's paradigm: Government intrusion and the case of qualitative research in education.

http://www.coe.ohio-state.edu/plather/

  • Grande, S. (2004). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
  • Aronowitz, S. (2003). How class works: Power and social movement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  • Monchinski, T. (2007). The politics of education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.


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[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Issues in Freirian Pedagogy

[edit] References

  1. ^ Wieder, Alan (2003). Voices from Cape Town Classrooms: Oral Histories of Teachers Who Fought Apartheid. History of Schools and Schooling Series, vol. 39. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-6768-5.