February 22, 2006
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MAJOR: Education
COURSE: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Due to the fact that I work 40 hours a week, I haven’t had the pre-requisite free time that I’d like to sit for a consistant period of time and just read, and talk to people. If I did, I’d be able to more clearly articulate the problems of education and how they prevent the develoment of a sweet-ass world, chock-full-of fun and creativity and community.
Critical pedagogy…check it out on wikipedia
This phrase is the one that’s been just out of reach of my fingers for too long. Critical pedagogy. It goes hand-in-hand with critical thinking, which goes hand-in-hand with critically analyzing everything we take for granted, especially those human creations that work against what we as human beings want, and pay lip-service to.
The beauty of “critical pedagogy,” which basically means a way of teaching in which the students are actually critically analyzing their own reality, is that it ultimately leads to the realization that the opposite of critical pedagogy is un-critical pedagogy, and that’s the norm. Either you’re in school to understand how your reality is built, and what your reality is, or you’re not. And it’s beautiful because the very people who criticize education and society for being full of uncritical thinkers, are generally the supporters of uncritical pedagogy that maintains the status quo.
Critical thinking tends to lead to pessimistic and somber realizations, and I don’t believe all education should be this way, since despite any bad situations we should always seek to find joy and celebration in life (as Benjamin Frnaklin once said…beer is proof that god exists and wants us to be happy!). But…there is no longer any doubt in my mind that there is an absolute shortage of critical teaching in education, particularly at my alma mater Washington University, and as a result, we have a critical shortage of critical thinking and thus critical action by young people.
I doubt there’s too many alumni like myself who still read the school’s student paper, but to me that paper serves as a clear indication that something is seriouslly off balance. Rather than seeing articles and opinion pieces critically disecting the school system or our larger culture, the large majority of the paper are just cliche student antecdotes about beer, sex, and chicken tenders.
The beauty of aging, is that it gives a person an opportunity to see the reality of things that came before. As a kid, college seemed to be a place full of intellectuals, but now looking back, each passing year as I become more of the college student I never was, I see just how ignorant and naiive college students are. And this is no criticism of “young people,” as I ultimately still associate myself with college aged kids, as much as every age that I’ve been through. Nor is this genearlize every student as being the general type of student who was either unknowing or unable to think critically about things like the school, community, and political world around us. But, to me, the benefits of aging are that I have the credibility of having experienced a larger and larger number of developmental stages in life, from teenager, to college student, to twenty-something…and there’s many more to come. But sadly, in society it requires age to gain respect, and I’m finally sensing that while I have not “aged” in the sense of shedding the skin of my younger self, I naturally receive more credibility because I am older. I can not only talk about the irrelevancy of college to life after college based on external observation, I am now living proof of this gap. And with that credibility, I hope to dispense of the notion that “age matters,” because the views that I will spend the rest of my hopefully long life expressing, are essentially the same views that I had at age 12, when I first got sent to the principle for being acting out in class, or as I now see such behavior, the beginnings of becoming a “critical thinker.”
…..lastly, if you have not received an e-mail from me with the intro to my book “College Daze,” but would be interested, please e-mail me at dan_lilienthal@yahoo.com and i’ll send you the intro. It seems the most progress I will be getting are from those still in their first few years of college or the end of high school, as my writing will probably benefit those people the most, and I can hopefully steal some of that youthful energy and natural desire to critically analyze how we live, to help spread this little project around. thanks all.
-dan
Comments (4)
“…because the views that I will spend the rest of my hopefully long life expressing, are essentially the same views that I had at age 12…”
Without change there can be no growth. Are you claiming that you’ll have the mind of a twelve-year-old for the rest of your life? Are you suggesting that you’ll be inflexible in your opinions?
Age DOES matter. Respect is earned, not freely given, and it takes time to earn respect.
does this mean we should disrespect children? are their views inherently less valid than the views of someone who has been alive older? if my superior at work is younger than me, who should respect whom? age matters less than the quality of what a person brings to the table.
in some ways…i do hope to have the mind of a 12-year old, infinately curious, questioning everything, playful, hopeful….
My experience of teaching in a city school shows me a couple of things.
First, teachers and administration have lowered their expectations…and I am in a goosd school, but still diverse. Kids are allowed to give too much lip, because the priviliged white administration easily jump to the conclusion, “I had a stable home and money growing up, these kids act this way because they don’t.”
I lacked much of that growing up and I never gave my teachers anything about it. I am sure it manifested itself in different ways, but never direct disrespect. Teachers would not stand for it.
I don’t have disciplinary problems in my classes. I am just concerned, because outside of the inner city, people are not going to tolerate disrespectful shit and outside of academia, you make no fruitful connections in life with an inner city upbbring sob story. I love my kids, even though my time with them has been short. I see so much potential and I want what is best for them.
Second, there are too many black kids with IEPs. Blacks should not be more likely to have learning disabilities than europeans or asians. Blacks or not racially inferior, yet they have a higher incidence of IEPs. Some say it is lead poisoning, but poor asians and Europeans live in equally poor, if not worse housing. I don’t think its lead poisoning. It is entirely social. Parent(s) must have certain expectations for their kids, teachers must have high expectations no matter the background, and parents have to invest the time of making the connections, waiting out the nights, and making sure their kids work the system in NYC that success only comes from making into elite high schools. To me, unless blacks are more apt to be stupid, which I refuse to believe, blacks as a group have a higher incidence of not respecting education. I know this is blunt, but I would happily justify poor test scores with a condemnation of laziness and lack or respect than what others do, which is assert blacks are more learning disabled and invisible forms of racism are doing it. There is racism, but it is the racism that you are unable to try. Prove them wrong.
Furthermore, they are handing out too much learning disability IEPs. Parents think that it gives their children an advantage: easier tests, more teacher attention…It destroys your child’s education. Teachers, whether they admit it or not, give up on you and teach you less. It is time that for the truly unable children to be left back and stop dragging everyone else down. Otherwise, the alternative is for teachers to lower the standards for everyone immensly and in exchange give up on ALL children.
I will continue to have high expectations for my kids. The kids see that and they also see that I am intellectual of sorts. That makes them think I am a little wierd, but they also respect that I am talking to them about intellectual things, and thus view them as intellectuals. This has manifested itself from everything from political to racial discussion.
I understand I am young and idealistic. For that reason, I might be totally wrong. Honestly, I am just calling it how I see it right now.
When I leave my current placement, I am going to miss them. Hopefully, I have as good as a time if not better experience teaching at highschool. Maybe I will visit them afterwards. Dan, if you want to meet up, let me know. Our working times and locations are not going to match up much longer!
One of the units in the education degree in the first year at the uni I teach at is called Critical and Cultural pedagogy. It is a great unit and it is proving to be the catalyst for critical thought applied to everything that follows. We are really pleased with this.