Comments on "Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts"

Peter McLaren's "Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts" suggests that cultural and social constructs must be taken into account when dealing with students. This is an important concept to understand, but is most likely a difficult one for individuals to comprehend. In order to combat your personal prejudices against certain social cues and constructs you must be aware that these prejudices may exist in the first place--which is an amount of self-awareness and humbleness that is difficult to attain. The power structures that make up society are difficult to ascertain because they appear to be the natural state of the world. What critical pedagogy asks of teachers is to rewire the hierarchies of their mind—hierarchies that seem utterly natural and are therefore difficult to realize. But the difficulty of the task is equal to its importance. The classroom could provide a place to escape the politics of society; a politics that too often disenfranchises those who are without the social power and rewards those who know the “correct” cultural codes. The key to realizing the biases of your social conditioning is to be constantly aware of yourself and the history of your social class and how they can undermined an intention to be fair and understanding.

But what does all this mean practically? How do we combat the hierarchies of society in the classroom? How do we free the classroom from hegemony into Democracy (and be in accord with the Common Core Standards)? I am not quite sure the article adequately addresses this issue. There is also the problem that even if the teacher is able to make the classroom a more democratic state, the students themselves may still cling to the older hierarchies, inhibiting those with less power. I do not know how to address this issue—if it’s even an issue at all. 

Comments on "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" Chapter II

I have to say that Paul Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was the most exciting piece of educational literature I have ever read. According to my brief research, Freire was influenced by Karl Marx and Marxism in general, but he could have equally been inspired by William James’s essays Pragmatism, which I read this past year (for my own entertainment, believe it or not, though like Freier’s essay I wrote “wtf?” in the margins more often than I probably should have). In fact, I think this comparison may be helpful for those who may be resistant the Freier’s work because of its supposed relation to Marx—which, undoubtedly, would scare off many conservative educators still afraid of the Red Menace. This is especially true considering Pragmatism is known, chiefly, as an American philosophy (although I haven’t read Dewey, who was also a pragmatist, so maybe that comparison is more--though I believe he was also a socialist of some kind which may scare some people off as well).

Both James and Freire share a compassion for lived experience as opposed to abstract objectivity. Experience is fluid, it moves through different people at different speeds and different levels. To force one experience over the other is a kind of mental hegemony that robs them of their own unique experience. This is especially true in the field of English Language Arts, which begs—which requires—the confluence of discourse from a variety of sources. Experience, as James tells us, doesn’t come “ticketed and labeled” from the mind of the teacher. Freire, similarly, warns us of the dangers when “education thus becomes an act of depositing” these ticketed and labeled truths to students. Depositing information requires very little critical thinking. It robs the students of their experience. The way to combat this is communication and discourse between the teacher and student.

However, as revolutionary as all this philosophy sounds, I am not sure how to apply it to the actual experience of teaching or to classroom curriculum. This is especially true in the public school system, which requires a certain adherence to norms. As far as trying to relate Freire’s philosophy to the classroom, these are the only ideas I can come up with, none of which seem entirely revolutionary:

1.     Replace quizzes with one-on-one or small group discussion

2.     Provide students a time to reflect and ask them to share those reflections with the class/and or on a paper assignment

3.     Class journals

4.     Replace static problems with story problems

5.     Share my own intellectual limitations with the classroom

6.     Share my teaching process with the students

Also, I found this PDF online, entitled Transforming My Curriculum, Transforming My Classroom: Paulo Freire, James Banks, and Social Justice in a Middle School Classroom . I have not read this yet (just a quick skim), but it looks helpful.

   

English Language Arts Common Core Standards

I have two primary thoughts on the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts: The first one is that the Standards can provide a useful model that teachers can utilize in order to build a structured curriculum. I think this proves especially true for new teachers, who may feel aimless without a foundation to build upon. Personally, I would be grateful to have a sort of guiding template on what to teach my students. My second thought is that the Standards may restrict teachers in regards to idiosyncratic methods that may be helpful to the educational and personal growth of the students, but which do not necessarily conform to the Common Core template. The best teachers I had in high-school were of this idiosyncratic kind. The worst teachers I had were of the kind that too easily disconnected themselves from the classroom by rubric-ready teaching devoid of personality.

In my 10^th grade English class I had a teacher of the idiosyncratic type. On the first day of class he asked a student to stand on a chair and turn a poster upside down. The same poster was hung in every classroom and was emblazoned with a slogan that read something along the lines of: “As a teacher, I guarantee to connect the lessons we learn in class to your future in the workforce.” This teacher spent most of the semester lecturing, with the first 1/3^rd of the time spent on studying the Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave—and spent no effort connecting these “lessons” to the workforce. His personal, beyond-the-guidelines style of teaching was affecting and inspiring to many of his students. But this structure he built for himself was also extremely flawed. The students who were not impressed with his personal style or could not follow the lectures were left afloat and drifting. The lack of structure, goals, and standardization isolated most of the students.

In connecting the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts to my personal history of being an English student, I believe that the best teacher is one that can personalize their teaching style in a manner that is structured enough so that they are able to relay realistic educational goals to all their students. I believe that the Standards are structured enough to act as a guide, but are not too rigid that they disallow idiosyncratic teaching methods. 

Response to "Discussion in a Democratic Society"

If we expect future Americans to take the responsibilities and privileges of living in a democratic society seriously, then we must present them with opportunities to see how democracy works in the real world. Before reading the first two chapters of Brookfield’s and Preskill's "Discussion in a Democratic Society," I had not considered the connection between democracy and classroom discussion. After the reading, I began to see group discussions as a conduit in which students can learn how to function in a world composed of a multitude of voices, each one coming from a different perspective. In America's democracy, the marketplace of voices is voluminous: some are lost in the shuffle, others tend to domineer others (see: cable news), and many more do not want to be heard at all. While all types of people are welcomed (even the cable-news crowd...), I believe an ideal democracy would encourage all voices to be heard in a manner that is conducive to growth and understanding, and respects compromise and diversity while not losing the strength that can come with personal and steadfast conviction. This is the ideal democracy and it is also the ideal classroom.

But the ideal democracy, like the ideal classroom, is impossible. Just as people can be kind, observant, respectful, and intelligent, they can also be obdurate, close-minded, and disrespectful. These problems are not glossed over by Preskill and Brookfield. The most helpful aspects of the chapters involved practical ideas to help cultivate the best possible environment for classroom discussions and combat the problems that often occur in such an activity. I have come to the conclusion that there are two major reasons why many classroom discussions do not live up to expectations: lack of preparation and lack of/too much involvement by the teacher. In my experience, teachers do not adequately prepare students for discussion, nor do they inform the students of why they are performing this activity. The second reason for failure is that teachers are not involved in the discussion, but stand off aloof and unconcerned, which mitigates the importance of the activity. If the students are prepared for the discussion and know what is expected of them, they will be more comfortable sharing their thoughts with the class. If the teacher is involved in the discussion, acting an intellectual peer as well as a moderator, the discussion will be given the weight and order that is needed.

One suggestion by Brookfield and Preskill is the removing (or a thinning) of the veneer that separates the teacher from the student during these discussions (and, presumably, for the entire class period). The trick is to keep your authority as a moderator, a teacher, and a grader-of-papers, while also letting students see "behind the curtain", so to speak, at the mechanisms behind the activities and assignments that they will be participating in. I think this aspect can be terrifying to a lot of teachers who may not have good reasons for how they conduct the classroom. But being honest with both yourself and your students allows you to receive the input and criticisms that can act as a catalyst for change and improvement, keep you honest and pragmatic, and help measure the efficacy of your teaching methods.

Both chapters provided a lot of information that I feel will be useful in developing a philosophy of teaching that, hopefully, can be put to use successfully in practical situations.

Introduction Letter

I am an English Major who has (happily) stumbled into the world of secondary education. I find a future in this field to be both daunting and exhilarating. My real-world experiences in the classroom are unfortunately limited, so I hope to learn as much as I can from those who are more experienced. However, I also believe that I will be able to add to the classroom discussion by giving a different perspective from those students who are currently teaching.

Besides inexperience, I feel that my weaknesses are anxiety and confidence. I hope that this class will give me the tools to overcome those fears. My strength as a teacher is a genuine love and appreciation for the aesthetic and practical effects that literature can have on our lives. I believe I can be a great teacher if I learn how to communicate these passions to the students in a clear, concise, and helpful manner.

My goal in this course is to equip myself with the tools necessary to better myself as a person and as a potential instructor of English and Language Arts. I hope that after this class I will be more confident and comfortable in my ability to teach a classroom.