Our final article, the first two chapters from Ira Shor’s Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for
Social Change, was very interesting to read because it effectively tied
together everything we have read and discussed over the course of the semester. I kept noting in the margins when I would see
something from a previous reading pop up, and by the end, I think just about
every one appeared. I will come back to
that in a minute, though.
At the very beginning, Shor asks: “Can education develop
students as critical thinkers, skilled workers, and active citizens? Can it promote democracy and serve all
students equitably?” (p. 11) Shor argues
that it can, though not through the traditional curriculum instituted in so
many schools. The traditional curriculum
is an authoritarian model in which the people in power have selected what will
be taught and what will be left out, and then these rules and knowledge are
transferred one-way to students through teacher-centered methods. In this model, students are “educat[ed] … into
dependence on authority, that is, into autonomous habits of mind or into
passive habits of following authorities, waiting to be told what to do and what
things mean” (p. 13). Students’ natural
curiosity and critical thinking skills are slowly stamped out as they progress
through school. The students feel
alienated from the curriculum, particularly when their own cultures and
languages are left out. Students also
feel as though they are being taught at, and the methods of memorizing and
regurgitating facts turn them off of schooling and pursuing knowledge
altogether.
Shor argues instead for “a curriculum that encourages
student questioning, [in which] the teacher avoids a unilateral transfer of
knowledge. She or he helps students
develop their intellectual and emotional powers to examine their learning in
school, their everyday experience, and the conditions in society” (p. 12). He defines this method of empowering
education as “a critical-democratic pedagogy for self and social change. It is a student-centered program for
multicultural democracy in school and society” (p. 15) – the purpose of which,
as he quotes Banks as saying, is to “help students to develop the knowledge,
skills, and values needed to become social critics who can make reflective decisions
and implement their decisions in effective personal, social, political, and
economic action” (p. 16).
This is achieved by encouraging students’ participation in
their education through problem-posing, which enables them to think critically
and reflect on subject matter and how it relates to society. “Participation provides students with active
experiences in class, through which they develop knowledge that is reflective
understanding, not mere memorization” (p. 21)
When students are able to explore material and question what they are
learning, it promotes positive feelings toward learning and their
education. This is made more effective
when the curriculum is “situate[d] … in the themes, knowledge, cultures,
conditions, and idioms of the students” which then “increases their ability to
participate, because they can begin critical reflection in their own context
and their own words” (p. 44 & 45).
This requires the inclusion of multicultural and diversity elements, to
that the curriculum and the classroom become the “windows and mirrors” in which
students can see themselves and others.
“Situated, multicultural pedagogy increases the chance that students
will feel ownership in their education and reduces conditions that produce
their alienation” (p. 51).
As I mentioned above, I was able to draw connections between
this article and almost every previous reading:
Johnson:
“Traditionalists … present standard canons of knowledge as universal,
excellent, and neutral. They do not
present them as historical choices of some groups whose usage and culture are
privileged in society. Instead, the
central bank is delivered to students as a common culture belonging to
everyone, even though not everyone has had an equal right to add to it, take
from it, critique it, or become part of it”
(p. 32).
SCWAAMP: “When we
participate in critical classes … we can reflect on reality and on our received
values, words, and interpretations in ways that illuminate meanings we hadn’t
perceived before. … As conscious human
beings, we can discover how we are
conditioned by the dominant ideology” (p. 22).
Delpit: “The teacher
is the person who mediates the relationship between outside authorities, formal
knowledge, and individual students in the classroom. Through day-to-day lessons, teaching links
the students’ development to the values, powers, and debates in society” (p.
13).
Kozol: “School funding is another political dimension of
education, because more money had always been invested in the education of
upper-class children and elite collegians than has been spent on students from
lower-income homes and in community colleges” (p. 15).
McIntosh: “Because it
deposits information uncritically in students, the banking model is
antidemocratic. It denies the students’
indigenous culture and their potential for critical thought, subordinating them
to the knowledge, values, and language of the status quo” (p. 33).
Rodriguez: “[Cooper]
demonstrated the potential of community discourse and showed students that the
conflict between their home language and the academic idiom might not require
them to deny their linguistic roots” (p. 49).
Collier: “The
students created an orthography for their indigenous speech while critically
studying the official idiom of Standard English. In the process, they developed critical and
creative abilities that had eluded them before” (p. 52).
August: “The
empowering teacher who denies universal status to the dominant culture also
denies emptiness in students. They are
not deficits; they are complex, substantial human beings who arrive in class
with diverse cultures; they have languages, interests, feelings, experiences,
and perceptions. The responsibility of
the problem-posing teacher is to diversify subject matter…” (p. 32)
Kohl: “These [negative]
student affects are commonly generated when an official culture and language
are imposed from the top down, ignoring the students’ themes, languages,
conditions, and diverse cultures. Their
consequent negative feelings interfere with learning and lead to strong
anti-intellectualism in countless students as well as to alienation from civic
life” (p. 23).
Kohn: “Education can socialize students into critical
through or into dependence on authority, that is, into autonomous habits of
mind into passive habits of following authorities, waiting to be told what to
do and what things mean” (p. 13).
Christensen: “The
goal of problem-posing dialogue is critical thinking and action, which starts
from perceiving the social, historical, or cultural causes of problems in one’s
life … The first step in promoting action outside the classroom is to transform
education inside the classroom.”
Auerbach & Wallerstein’s quote.
(p. 43)
Kahne & Westheimer:
“Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men upon their
world in order to transform it.”
Friere’s quote. (p. 33)
Kliewer: “Human
beings do not invent themselves in a vacuum, and society cannot be made unless
people create it together” (p. 15).
This book was published 20 years ago, and many of the
educational reformers that Shor quotes throughout the reading were published
long before that – Dewey published his ideas on progressive education 50 years
ago! If these methods are as positive
and effective as they certainly seem to be, why don’t we see more of it in
schools today? Shor refers to Bowles and
Gintis, saying “to them, schooling supports existing power and divisions in
society by sorting students into a small elite destined for the top and a large
mass destined for the middle and the bottom” (p. 19). He later adds, “there is also political
opposition to student participation because it challenges power relations in
school and society” (p. 33). I don’t
like it. Why is this so difficult to
change? I realize that, to some extent,
as teachers our hands are tied by elements such as the common core,
standardized testing, and the decisions made by those who have never taught (or
barely so). However, the tools we’ve been
given through this course will help me do my best to offer my students an
empowering experience, even if it is only in my own classroom.
Point to Share: On
page 15, I highlighted this quote: “The goals of this pedagogy are to relate
personal growth to public life, by developing strong skills, academic
knowledge, habits of inquiry, and critical curiosity about society, power,
inequality, and change” – and then I wrote “Dr. Bogad” in the margin. Find yourself wondering what an empowering
curriculum would look like in an actual classroom? Think back through our semester in this
class. :)