[Note:
This posting is subject to further editing.]
An
advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation …
Of late this blog has been reviewing the elements
of critical theory. In doing so, the blog
has claimed that this leftist view has posed the most prominent challenge to the
natural rights construct. Natural rights
view is currently dominant and mostly guides what civics classrooms present
students in way of content.[1] The challenging view, critical theory, has
been around for ninety years in various forms, and is finally having some
actual influence in the US and is generating reaction from certain conservative
parties – e.g., consider Governor Ron DeSantis’ efforts in Florida.
Even
non-advocates of this view might consider a number of their arguments worth
their consideration. For one, many would
sign up for instituting interactive instructional strategies as opposed to what
one usually finds in classrooms, what critical theorists call a “banking”
strategy. In this, critical educators
fall in line with progressive pedagogues who, for example, promote both open
ended research and community involvement activities.
What differentiates critical strategies from more
mainstream progressive ones is that critical educators target their efforts
almost exclusively to what they consider exploitive conditions. In terms of clarifying this distinction,
consider what critical educators claim their approach strives to accomplish:
The
students – no longer docile listeners – are now critical co-investigators in
dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students
for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the
students express their own [a two-way influence]. The role of the
problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the
conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa [opinion] is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the
logos [reason].
Whereas banking education[2]
anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a
constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter
strives for the emergence of
consciousness and critical intervention
in reality. [3]
To distinguish themselves, as indicated by this
quote, critical pedagogues claim they engage in “problem-posing.”
And
as indicated earlier in the blog, the problems posed and studied arise from the
oppressive realities that confront the students. Included in this approach is to encourage
students to form a solidarity with their classmates – fellow oppressed
comrades. Being action-oriented, this
approach has a dual aim: transforming
the oppressive nature of the situation and having students become fully
humanized as they interact with each other and deal with their plight.
And central, according to critical pedagogues, is discourses
– the powerful dialogues in which people engage. Transformation toward liberation relies on
words that communicate what the real world is and is to function in people
becoming truly human. It surely does not
rest on sentimentality or as a tool to manipulate others. Instead, it communicates humility, not
arrogance. Among its messaging, it
states a faith in humankind, not an unrealistic faith, but one that comprehends
and deals with the foibles and short sightedness people tend to employ.
As
part of this mode of communicating, the discourses should promote horizontal
arrangements – a real equality – instead of vertical arrangements in social as
well as political relationships. To use
common parlance, the process should lead to honest partnerships where true
respect for others and their views are held.
For part of the highlighted reality is an area’s history –
its background – which includes how the structural realities of an area were
formed and maintained. In the current
frame, what exists is that background’s product and includes the views
entertained by the oppressed and the oppressors. So, a major aspect of the transforming
process is for the current generation to decode the situations that people experience. And the educative effort is geared to see the
real nature of how and why they became and are oppressed sans the manipulative
language the non-liberated oppressor employs.
Paulo
Freire describes the oppressor discourses as language that utilizes oppressive
generative themes. These themes deserve
a bit of explanation. “In the process of
decoding, this analysis of meaning corresponds to the stage we call the
‘description of the situation,’ and facilitates the discovery of the
interaction among the parts of the disjointed whole.”[4] The aim is to discover the dialectic forces
impinging on people’s well-being – the hows and whys in which they do so.
And
even if one is tempted to get boughed down on the particulars – the specific
people or things in situations – the focus needs to be on the whole – the
abstract composite one confronts. That
is what is known as generative themes, and if oppressive, they are oppressive
generative themes. In that mode, liberating
education has students and others inquire into people’s thinking about the
realities they face, and their corresponding action – their praxis. They need to replace the oppressive
generative themes with liberating ones.
The
oppressed need to leave behind their self-image as objects. In its stead, they become subjects who are
drivers of what becomes real. That is,
these students are to become drivers of what is to be; they, through their
study and action, discover (1) their felt needs, (2) the abstractions embedded
in the codification of the language that has veiled their reality, and (3) commence
to communicate the totality of that reality.
As
indicated in previous postings, this process is ongoing. Its general gist is for those involved –
which might include liberated, former oppressors – to introspectively inquire
as to the reasons why they have been seeing reality as they have. If possible, this can be assisted by the
services of experts from the disciplines of psychology and sociology. With this sort of help, an interdisciplinary
approach should be maintained.
Freire, on this score, writes,
Once
the thematic demarcation is completed, each specialist presents to the
interdisciplinary team a project for the “breakdown” of his theme. In breaking
down the theme, the specialist looks for the fundamental nuclei which,
comprising learning units and establishing a sequence, give a general view of
the theme. As each
specific project is discussed, the other specialists make suggestions.[5]
And with that Freire
discusses another element of critical pedagogy, that being interdisciplinary
analysis. The resulting studies take on
a thematic form that originates from the people and are directed at them as
challenges they need to resolve. Again,
as earlier in this blog it was stated, what one sees here are processes of
study-praxis-study, recurring cycles.
They continue in this mode as people stake out different futures.
To update this account, let this posting add another quote from
the Freire Institute recently retrieved from the internet:
People can be passive recipients of knowledge —
whatever the content — or they can engage in a ‘problem-posing’ approach in which
they become active participants. As part of this approach, it is essential that
people link knowledge to action so that they actively work to change their
societies at a local level and beyond.[6]
And
that is why this posting is entitled “Problem-Posting.”
[1] For this blogger’s more extensive argument concerning
this point see Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics: Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation
(Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas Civics Books,
2022), available through Amazon.
[2] Banking education was explained in the
previous posting. It basically refers to didactic teaching.
[3] Paulo
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
(New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 1999), 62, emphasis in the
original.
[4] Ibid., 86.
[5] Ibid., 101. These teams, this blogger assumes, are
organized at a national level for the recurring types of problems students
identify with their self-analyzing efforts in the classroom.
[6] “Paulo Freire,” Freire Institute (n.d.) accessed
March 26, 2023, https://www.freire.org/paulo-freire#:~:text=Freire%20developed%20an%20approach%20to,educational%20process%20is%20never%20neutral.
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