rbahruth who-is-at claven.idbsu.edu (Robert Bahruth)
Robert Bahruth (rbahruth who-is-at claven.idbsu.edu)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 12:03:18 +0100
I am a firm believer that all education is political and, whereas some are
critically aware of the politics, others operate as "intellectual dupes" to
quote Crichton, implementing the invisible politics of others. As the
saying goes, the last thing a fish would discover is the water in which it
swims. A similar notion by Kinneman is that "Perhaps the greatest obstacle
to school reform is the fact that we all went to school." I anchor my
discipline in critical pedagogy and constructivism, which problematize the
politics of education, the ideological issues and a shift in focus from
teaching to learning. I agree with Giroux's call (1988) for teachers as
intellectuals rather than as technicists and support Paulo Freire's notion
of teachers as cultural workers. I also feel that reductionist approaches
to teaching and learning are unnatural and ineffective and therefor would
argue for integrated learning experiences anchored in the contextual
realities of learners. Through my own research and scholarship I have come
to the realization that the politics of education is most evident in the
mechanisms used to reproduce the status quo which have produced a
one-size-fits-all educational system as the dominant paradigm responsible
for the academic assasination of far too many children almost by zip code!
As Chomsky has asserted "class" is still a four letter word in the
vocabulary of those who benefit from the way things are. I am an advocate
of bilingual education because I have found learning a second language is
an excellent way for people to discover the water in which they swim. I
find political meaning in the acceptance of the paramount failure to teach
foreign languages in America.