Critical pedagogy

'Critical pedagogy' is a teaching approach which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that support the proposed domination. In other words, it is a theory and practice of helping students achieve critical consciousness. In this tradition the teacher works to lead students to question ideologies and practices considered oppressive (including those at school), and encourage liberatory collective and individual responses to the actual conditions of their own lives.

The student must begin as a member of the society (society including religion, national identity, cultural norms, or expected roles) they are cynically studying. After they reach the point of revelation where they begin to view their society as deeply flawed, the next behavior encouraged is sharing this knowledge with the attempt to change the oppressive nature of the society or withdrawal from society.

Topics Introduced

To encourage students to change their view from accepting the social norms (often viewed as being gullible) into being independently critical (viewed by outsiders as being cynical or skeptic) the instructors often introduce challenges to heroic icons and self-edifying history using contradictory reports or external points of view of the same subjects.

Generalized Examples

To encourage students to become critical the instructor might use these tasks to challenge the generally accepted paradigm of the student's society:

• Encourage the student to investigate a just war, in which their society was considered heroic, by studying the society and politics of the antebellum rival.
• Encouragement to students to explore issues of power in their own families.
• To lead students to examine the underlying messages of popular culture and mass media.
• Require the evaluation of existing controversies in contemporary society, such as the relative merits of U.S. government spending on atomic weapons versus international health programs.
• Ask whether the metaphoric emperor is, in fact, clothed.

Real-world examples of concepts often introduced to generate critical thinking:

• A challenge to the reverential mythology around Christopher Columbus and leading students to investigate primary sources by and about the historical figure. Possibly suggesting sources such as the Black Legend, or other sources that cast more disconcerting views on the legacy of his efforts.

Results

A prevailent attitude that develops through this method of teaching is that the bulk of the student's society are unaware of the negative aspects of their lifestyles, nation, or cuture. This is due to the typical person's lack of initiative to question the authorities that suggest, declare, or withhold information about the unpleasant side or detrimental results of the society's expected behavior or actions.

As an example, someone who follows this means of learning about the United States culture may develop a view that most people in Western society are sleepwalking through a nightmarish culture of consumption, obedience, and propaganda, and that they need to be awakened.

Call to Action

Most instructors encourage students who have reached the state where they are enlightened to share their knowledge in an attempt to reveal the failings of the society to foster positive change.

Examples

Famous Quotes

Buddha, Dhammapada, Loka Vagga, verse 167

• Do not follow a life of evil; do not live heedlessly; do not have false views; do not value worldly things. In this way one can get rid of suffering

Jesus, Bible, Gospel of Matthew chapter 16, verse 26

• For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

• I knocked and the door opened, but I found I'd been knocking from the inside.

Movies

In the movie, The Matrix, the setting is an artificial construction of oppression that instills complacency of it's captives through a form of virtual reality. The movie's initial conflict is the protagonist coming to grips with this truth by suspending belief of the reality he has accepted as unquestionable.

Music

Paul Simon, Kodachrome

• When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it's a wonder I can think at all - Paul Simon.

Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall part 2

• We don't need no thought-control <sic.>... All in all, you're just another brick in the wall- Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2".

Literature

Famous authors of critical pedagogy texts include Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Peter McLaren (http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/pages/mclaren/). Much of the work draws on feminism, marxism, post-colonialism, and the discourse theories of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault.

Critics of Critical Pedagogy

This approach has it's critics. They attack the methodology, the goal, and appearances. Below are some contrary views.

• 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 they inheirently must consider themselves separate from the rest of society. Critics will describe such a self-image as being elitist in a way which excludes the bulk of society thus preventing progress.

• The goal exceeds the desire to instill creativity and exploration by encouraging detrimental disdain for tradition, necessary heirarchy (parental control over children), and self-isolation.

• One clear result from becoming so distrusting of generally accepted truths creates or perpetuates conspiracy theories.