Dear David and everybody-
Here is my two cents in replying to your thought-provoking question.
I think that the definition of critical pedagogy as "directed primarily
toward the oppressed classes" is a bit too narrow and essentialist. I think
that critical pedagogy is about dealing with personally felt and recognized
injustice in whatever form and whatever social groups it occurs including
but not limited to injustice inflicted by the person him- or her-self.
Although it is true that there are socially structured injustices but
injustice occurs among "oppressed classes" as well. In my view, Friere's
term "conscientizacao" highly appealing to person's feelings is aimed to
capture that. Also, Foucault's insistence on constant critique of any
"solution" as potentially harmful and oppressive for some people under
certain circumstances is going along the same lines.
Maybe, I'm so ambivalent of "the oppressed classes" rhetoric because my
personal Soviet experience but I worry when oppression and justice get
structurally divided among social classes and social groups without denying
the existence of structural injustice and oppression.
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David H Kirshner [mailto:dkirsh@lsu.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 11:42 AM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Critical Pedagogy: For the masses, only?
>
>
>
>
>
> Hello all.
>
> While there seems to be a lull in the action, I'd like to slip in a
> question I've been struggling with over the past couple of months
> concerning the distinction between critical or liberatory pedagogies that
> seek for broader social transformation and what I call "learning
> pedagogies" that seek for outcomes of individual learning. This
> distinction, according to Burbules & Berk (1999) is rooted in the
> perspective of critical pedagogy that individual learning as dependent
upon
> social emancipation:
>
> For critical pedagogy ... self-emancipation is contingent upon social
> emancipation. It is not only a difference between an emphasis on the
> individual and an emphasis on society as a whole (Missimer 1989/1994;
> Hostetler 1991/1994). It is rather that, for critical pedagogy,
> individual criticality is intimately linked to social criticality,
> joining, in Giroux's phrase, "the conditions for social, and hence,
> self-emancipation" (Giroux 1988, 110). (Burbules & Berk, 1999, p. 55)
>
> Thus critical pedagogy is based on a need for conscientizacao, ( "learning
> to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take
> action against the oppressive elements of reality," Freire, 1970/1995, p.
> 17, quoted in Gruenewald, 2003, p. 5) that is not a part of the usual
> agenda of the learning pedagogies.
>
> What is clear from this is that critical pedagogy is directed primarily
> toward the oppressed classes. My question is what guidance, if any, does
> critical/liberatory pedagogy offer us that is relevant to the educational
> project conceived more generally than at the level of a particular class,
> for instance that would be applicable for teaching students who are not
> part of an oppressed class?
>
> Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.
>
> David Kirshner
>
> Burbules, N., & Berk, R. (1999). Critical thinking and critical pedagogy:
> Relations, differences, and limits. In T. Popkewitz & L. Fendler
> (Eds.), Critical theories in education. New York: Routledge.
> Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of
> place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3-12.
>
> _____________________
> David Kirshner
> Department of Curriculum & Instruction
> Louisiana State University
> Baton Rouge LA 70803-4728
> (225) 578-2332 (225) 578-9135 (fax)
> dkirsh@lsu.edu
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