Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts

My life was surrounded by subcultures growing up. Poetry Slam performers bashed American societal norms, punk bands playing late night dive clubs screamed everything wrong with today, and liberal parents loved Eastern philosophy. Everything McLaren presented in his chapter on “Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts” was something I could connect to and be familiar with. The same things that the artist were shouting about society and culture controlled by the rich to belittle the poor, education as a tool of manipulation, and a push for self-promotion/empowerment were all present in this chapter. I think it is incredibly valuable to teach students in this way. Emancipatory education is a dangerous route to take however. You want to give students freedom and the knowledge of the control of wealth and power in society, but you do not want the school system to collapse into anarchy. The school board/principal could find out you were teaching, what might be worded as “radical ideas,” to students and upsetting parents and faculty. On the other side of the fence, teaching students about power and oppression could belittle your own ability to teach them effectively. They could easily see you as the dictator and shift into thinking that you are a teacher therefore you are the tool of the oppressors putting these social pressures on them. Teaching “radical ideas” can be a very fine line and as I was reading all I could think of is how dangerous it would be for someone to teach emancipatory education in an affluent white school district or a low-income minority population. Putting a mirror up to society may sometimes release a dangerous beast that is out to get you. McLaren speaks on the dominant cultures ability to attempt to oppress any subculture and make everyone subordinate, complacent, beings under its control, so teaching in a dialectical nature is a skill we must be very tactful in using. That being said, I love the chapter McLaren takes what Freire says about the oppressed and makes it much more understandable and penetrable, at least for the background I came from. It is much easier to understand Freire after seeing this from a prospective of our own society and would love to find a way to implement at least some practice of dialectic education in my own classroom.