Learning to think: Critical Pedagogy

If you trace back in educational history, origins of Critical Pedagogy can be traced back to the time of Plato and Socrates. They recognised the importance of discussion for human interaction and for education

However, it was in the 1960s and 70s that Critical Pedagogy truly emerged as a theory and a distinct field of study, which was pioneered by the works of Paulo Freire.
But, the question is, If these ideas about teaching have been around for so long, why have the teachers not changed yet? Why we still circle around traditional teaching methods? Are traditional teaching methods that bad?

In the traditional approach to teaching methods, the teacher delivers explicit instruction and subject matter during the class. There are few students who question themselves about the subject matter and then there are students who blindly follow the instructions just to get through the class. With the increasing number of students and the limited time for a single subject, traditional way is more effective. But, does this method actually serve the main purpose of learning? do students learn?


If you just think about exams, YES students to learn how to answer the questions in the exam and get a good grade. But If you think about actually learning the concept NO.


Quote Paulo Freire ” Intellectuals who memorize everything reading for hours on end … fearful of taking a risk speaking as they were resiting from memory fail to make a connection between what they have read and what is happening in the real world… “


Because what I believe is explicit instruction does not allow students to develop as critical thinkers. One thing I observed as a TA is students can answer quantitative questions but if you ask the same question qualitatively they get stuck . Because most of the time what happens is you memorise the theory and you have explicit instructions to solve a problem but, you never question the theory and learn the concept behind it.
That is why it is important to promote critical thinking in the classroom and encourage students to question to make classroom highly interactive. It is better to have students who ask questions analyse and learn, rather than having unquestioning receivers.
As Carol Dweck demonstrates it is important to promote a growth mindset in the classroom, not a fixed mindset.
So, given the importance of an implicit classroom, LEARNING TO THINK is as important as the basic knowledge you get.

Diversity

What is racism?

If you ask this question from the community I grew up. I think half of the people will struggle to answer this question. Because this is a topic we do not talk about back in my country. That does not mean we are an anti-racist country. People are racist most of the time, but yet no one talks about it or care to comment on it. So they are uncomfortable to talk about racism. I still can not pinpoint the reason why we do not talk about racism.

So it was a new experience for me to talk about racism after coming here. In the beginning, these conversations were really awkward because I did not know what to say. But what I realized over the time is it becomes easier to talk about it when you here so many deferent ideas or thoughts from different people and when you feel conferrable to talk about it. You become confident enough to talk about what you felt or been though. This is an advantage you get in a diverse community.

Something I always believe is, the subject matter is not the only thing students should learn in the classroom. Therefore, diversity is important in the classroom, it brings different personalities to the classroom. At the same time, it is important for the classroom to be a safe and comfortable place for students to learn and to speak, without races religion or gender being a factor. I quote from inclusive pedagogy post:


“The human mind depends on unconscious mental shortcuts and generalizations”

I think this is something we all can agree with. People generalize things so easily and they are biased to what they feel right or good. But this is not always true. In fact, most of the time out generalizations are wrong. Most of the time that’s what society has decided not our selves. kind of similar to the autopilot mode Shankar Vedantam talk s about in the book The Hidden Brain. A great example is children as young as 3 linked white faces with positive attributes and black faces with negative attributes – science writer Shankar Vedantam The Hidden Brain interview. I doubt that kids as young as 3 years would have ever had any positive or negative experiences with any of these people. This is what they have learned (unconsciously)from the society they live in. As Vedantam says, it is better to put race on the table, to ask [children] to unpack the associations that they are learning so that it helps us shape those associations in more effective ways. More diverse the class more benefit the students would get because they can listen and discuss with different personalities. So that they learn through everyone’s experience and ideas rather than just blindly following the society.