Critical Pedagogy

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

Meaning

Critical pedagogy is also called as ‘conscientization’ or ‘education for critical thinking’. The English term "conscientization" is a translation of the Portuguese term conscientizacao, which is also translated as “conscience raising” and "critical consciousness ". The term was coined by Brazilian educator, activist, and theorist Paulo Freire in his 1970 in his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. According to him critical consciousness or education for critical thinking is a popular education and social concept to address a state of in-depth understanding about the world and resulting freedom from oppression.

Objectives/Goals of Critical pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is particularly concerned with reconfiguring the traditional student/teacher relationship, where the teacher is the active agent, the one who knows, and the students are the passive recipients of the teacher's knowledge (the banking concept of education). Instead, the classroom is envisioned as a site where new knowledge, grounded in the experiences of students and teachers alike, is produced through meaningful dialogue (Dialogical Method).

Critical pedagogy considers how education can provide individuals with tools to better themselves and strengthen democracy, to create a more egalitarian and just society and thus to deploy education in a process of progressive social change. It involves teaching the skills that will empower students to become sensitive to the issues like caste, ethnicity, regionalism, gender, class and other cultural differences in order to foster critical thinking and enhance democratization, peace and harmony. In other words education for critical thinking or conscientization helps the students be aware of fundamentalism, fanaticism, social disparity, social injustice, women rights/education, social issues, human rights, terrorism, etc.

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." Realizing one’s consciousness ("conscientization") is a needed first step of "praxis," (action) 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."

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 non-racialism 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.

Champions of Critical Pedagogy

Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, John Holt, Michael Apple, etc.

Critiques of critical pedagogy

This approach has its critics. They attack the methodology, the goal, and appearances. Below are some hypothetical contrary views:

• 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.
• 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 in that the student now includes him-or-herself in a small number of people who know the "truth", and thus everyone else is viewed as ignorant or uninformed.
• 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.
• Such a high degree of distrust in generally accepted truths will create or perpetuate irrational conspiracy theories.
• 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.
• Critical pedagogy is, in many instances, a movement in opposition to revolutionary or marxist movements. Much of critical pedagogy focuses on culture, language, and abstractions about domination rather than criticizing the centrality of class, alienation, and exploitation.
• Rather than "liberating" student thought, teachers replace a cultural bias with their own bias as if it was the work of evil.

PAULO FREIRE (1921-1997)

Introduction

Philosophy and education are the two sides of the same coin. One is incomplete without the other. They complement each other. Philosophy influences curriculum and education changes philosophy. Since the time of great Greek philosophers we have seen the influence of philosophy in designing the curricula of education. Down the line many philosophies emerged and there has been a paradigm shift in education. New education thinkers have been rising and they have tried and are trying to make education more contextual and relevant. This assignment is an attempt to look into the contributions of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire in the field of education.

Life

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire, popularly knowns as Paulo Freire was born in Recife the capital of Brazil’s Northeast Province, one of the most impoverished parts of the large Latin American Nation. Although raised in a middle-class family Freire became interested in the education of the poor people of his region. He qualified as a lawyer and developed a teaching ‘system’ for all levels of education. This ‘system’ brought about Freire’s exile in 1964, following seventy-five days in prison, after having been accused of being a ‘revolutionary and an ignorant’. He then spent four years in Chile and one year in the United States of America. In 1970 he moved to Geneva where he worked for the World Council of Churches. In 1980 he returned to Brazil to‘re-learn’ about his country. On 3 January 1989 Paulo Freire was appointed as Secretary of Education. He has written many articles on education. His major writings are Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Education: The Practice of Freedom. On 2 May 1997, aged 75, Paulo Freire died of heart failure

Philosophy of Education

Living and working with the impoverished, illiterate masses of people Paulo Freire gained a deep understanding of their lives and of the effects of socio-economics on education.

Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education has their origins in a myriad of philosophical currents such as phenomenology, existentialism, Christian personalism, humanist Marxism and Hegelianism. He was highly influenced by lawyer and philosopher Rui Barbosa, physician Carneiro Rebeiro and Brazilian intellectuals. He participated in the import of European doctrines and ideas into Brazil, assimilated them to the needs of a specific socio-economic situation and thus expanded and refocused them in a thought provoking way even for the intellectuals and educational thinkers of Europe and North America.

Freire developed a ‘system’ of education that focuses on the student’s environment. Learner must understand their own reality as part of their learning activity.

For example, a student should not be content with phrases like ‘Muthuraja likes to play with fire-crackers during Diwali). The student should understand Muthuraja in his context; find out where are the fire-cracker factories? who worked or who are working to produce the fire-crackers? and who profited from this type of work? Teaching children means taking into consideration their social and family environment as well.

Aims of Education

Freire was opposed to the then prevailing education system (the banking concept of education). Education was only for the bourgeoisie and it was oppressive. The poor masses were denied of educational right. The majority of people were living in abject poverty. The goal of Freierian education was to raise conscious, creative action and reflection of the oppressed masses about their cultural and social liberation. According to Freire educational goals should be:

1. How to facilitate radical transformation of the social structure.
2. Development of a critical consciousness.
3. To discover and implement liberating alternatives through social interaction and transformation via conscientization – process by which people achieve a deepened awareness, both of socio-cultural reality that shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality.

Education as an instrument in the process of development of consciousness depends on two basic attitudes and activities, namely criticism and dialogue - a critical consciousness is typical of societies with a truly democratic structure. These claims depend on the assumption according to which ‘human reason’ is perfectly capable of discovering truth. In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freier mentions three major themes: conscientization, revolution and dialogue and cooperation between the spirit of vanguard and masses in order to maintain the spirit of revolution.

Freire’s educational thrust centers on the human potential for creativity and freedom in the midst of politico-economic and culturally oppressive structures. It aims at discovering and implementing liberating alternatives through social interaction and transformation via conscientization – process by which people achieve a deepened awareness, both of socio-cultural reality that shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality. It involves praxis understood as the dialectic relationship of action and reflection. Freire proposes a praxis approach to education in the sense of critically reflective action and critical reflection based on practice.

Curriculum

Paulo Freire was deeply convinced by Mao’s saying, “We must teach the masses clearly what we have received from them confusedly.” People have better understanding of the reality around them. They are not able to organize their perceptions; articulate them clearly, plan corrective action, execute and sustain it. Therefore, according to Paulo Freire commitment and opinion, which is curriculum must come directly from the people and must be prepared by them. People should describe the world and reality around them, create values rather than receive them and thus develop their understandings and commitments for action. The curriculum should be society oriented and society centered. As such the starting point for organizing programme content should be the ‘present’ existential, concrete situation.

Teaching Method

Believing in people’s inborn talent for reasoning, Freire experimented with his pupils’ visual and auditory sense ‘domains’ while they were learning to read and write. In one of his experiments, he talked to his illiterate housemaid about a slide that projected a picture of a boy and the Portuguese word for boy menino on to the wall. Going over and over again the individual syllables of the word and then repeating of the word menino, he observed that his housemaid discerned that the word itself as not broken up into syllables and thus learned that the word was composed of syllables.

During the course of experiments Freire realized that it was not sufficient to begin with an intensive discussion of reality. Illiterate people are strongly influenced by their failure at school and in other learning environments. To reduce these hindrances and set in motivation, a motivational impetus he conducted an experiment with distinction between the abilities of human beings and animals in their particular environments. Freire reported that just after twenty-one hours of literacy training one participant was able to read simple newspaper articles besides writing short sentences. The slides aroused great interest and motivated the participants. The experiment was brought to end after thirty hours. Three participants had learned how to read and write. They could read short texts and newspapers and write letters. Thus was born Freire’s Method of Training. The steps of Freire’s Method of Teaching are:

1. The educators observe the participants in order to ‘tune in’ to the universe of their vocabulary.
2. An arduous search for generative words and themes takes place at two levels: syllabic richness and a high degree of experimental richness.
3. A first codification of these words into visual images, which stimulated people submerged in the culture of silence to emerge as conscious makers of their own culture.
4. Introduction of the ‘anthropological concept of culture’ with its differentiation between man and animal.
5. The decodification of the generative words and themes by a ‘culture circle’ under the self-effacing stimuli of coordinator who is not a ‘teacher’ in the conventional sense, but who has become an educator-educatee in dialogue with educatees-educators.
6. A creative new codification which is explicitly critical and aimed at action, wherein those who were formerly illiterate now began to reject the role as mere ‘objects’ in nature and social theory. They undertake to become ‘subjects’ of their own destiny.

Freire advocates dialogical method in teaching. A variety of multi sensory-stimulation techniques such as graphic and audio-visual aids including charts, diagrams, maps, pictures, slides are advocated to educate the people and conscientaize them. The substance or the content should be defined by the people. This is possible if the leaders employ the dialogical method. Dialogue with the people is the first step in education. People should describe the world and reality around them, create values rather than receive them and thus develop their understandings and commitments for action. Their understandings, needs only to be recognized, interpreted, discussed and refined.

Freire suggests interdisciplinary method of teaching. He has stated a ten-step cyclical process assisted by an interdisciplinary team of specialists in human problems to develop and deliver the thematic content. It involves the codification and decodification of people’s understandings reality in which they live. The team work among the groups is called ‘culture circle’.

Role of Teacher

On cannot learn if the new knowledge contradicts one’s context. The educator who is not familiar with the world of the educatee cannot attempt to change latter’s attitude. The educator should know the context of the educatees. The educators should observe the students in order to ‘tune in’ to the universe of their reality. The teacher was to begin to understand the social reality of the people, and develop a list of generative words and themes which could lead to discussion in classes.

In his experiments Freire observed that it was necessary to show pictures that referred to people’s actual problems and to read and write words that expressed these problems. The educator should use a variety of multi sensory-stimulation techniques such as graphic and audio-visual aids including charts, diagrams, maps, pictures, slides, study groups, action groups, round-table discussions, debates and the distribution of themed flesh cards to arouse the interest in the students and motivate them.

The educator should have dialogue with the educatees on the themes related directly to their needs and difficulties and they read and write words to express their problems.

Limitations

Paulo Freire was deeply touched by the plight of the illiterate and impoverished masses of the poor, the oppressed and the down trodden. The bourgeoisie exploitation was at its peak. They designed the curriculum that befitted them. Education was highly politicized. In such political situation Freire comes up to conscientize the people through education. Therefore, he has chosen a direct political approach. His educational principles are more revolutionary in nature. His method of teaching is more apt for the informal education, adult literacy and mass awareness programmes.

Merits

1. Freire is relevant in developing countries where a large mass of people are below poverty line, illiterate and oppressed.

2. He is especially true in case of adult, non-formal and extension education programmes.

3. His teaching techniques are highly effective in conscientizing the people.

Demerits

1. Education is highly politicized. He has chosen a direct political approach.
2. His principles are more revolutionary in nature.
3. His method of teaching is more apt for the informal education, adult literacy and mass awareness programmes than in formal education.