Response to Kim, "Critical Pedagogy"

Is critical pedagogy trying to lead students to view the world in specific ways or does it encourage them to form their own opinions?

I don't think critical pedagogy is attempting to indoctrinate students. All people accept certain things to be true about the world, and teachers are assigned to teach their students what they believe to be true about the world. Most elementary schools teach that 1+1=2, but we don't accuse them of trying to indoctrinate students into believing that 1+1=2. This is because we trust teachers to teach things that they believe to be true. Of course, some points are more contentious than others. Most of our class came to the conclusion last week that a teacher should not teach creationism in schools just because he or she personally believes it to be true. However, a religious belief is rooted in faith alone, whereas oppression is something people experience in the world. When people have experienced something, they know that it is true. Therefore, I think it is acceptable to teach students how they can be conscious of the power dynamics they exist in and how to challenge them.


Question: What is the distinction between a teacher teaching a relatively benign belief like "1+1=2" and a teacher teaching a controversial belief, such as creationism?

Why Don't We Value Life Experiences as Evidence?

In class, we starting talking a little bit about how, as a society, we generally value scientific facts, logic, and objectivity. While these things are important, we also devalue things like emotion, intuition, and personal experience as evidence. This is interesting, because we have ideas about scientific research being objective, when it often isn't. Scientific research is controlled, funded, and validated by an elite group. Science also changes over time, so it is not always correct. For example, science has been used historically as a way to validate racist ideas (scientific racism). Clearly, this is not objective and non-biased. So why do we put science up on a pedestal? I'm not anti-science, and I'm certainly not suggesting we disregard all of the great things science has to offer us. But there is more to understanding the world than learning facts. For example, we can learn about the world through experiences. These experiences are valuable, and can be used as evidence for knowledge. Sometimes, science ignores certain groups, rendering their experiences extremely valuable, because it is all they have.

My question is the title of this post: why don't we value life experiences as evidence for knowledge?

Response to Kim, "Pedagody and Race"

Thank you for bringing up this topic. This is a common theme I have noticed in social justice circles. For example, second-wave feminism has been criticized for not being inclusive to women of color, lower class women, queer women, etc. I think this happens because it is a privilege to be able to sit around and discuss oppression. Additionally, the language used in these circles can be very inaccessible to most people, especially underprivileged people. This becomes a problem, because something that is supposed to be (and, I think, genuinely is) concerned with liberating an oppressed group isn't even accessible to said group. The faces of human rights movements (such as the civil rights movement, feminist movements, gay rights movement, etc) are typically people who are pretty privileged. People who are underprivileged are probably too busy trying to survive to participate in these movements. They also may not have the language to participate in discussions about these issues because of education inequalities.
I think a way to combat this problem is to make the language we use to discuss these issues more simplistic. I am not suggesting we "dumb down" our ideas though; the ideas are still very complex, and underpriveleged people are very capable of grasping them. However, making the language inaccessible while we talk about them alienates people who deserve to be a part of these discussions.

Question: What are some other ways we can make these movements more accessible to underprivileged people?