Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom

Writing a narrative essay for another class recently, I switched my topic three times. When I sat down to write the first two times, my fingers would not move, but when I finally allowed myself to write on a topic I cared about I felt free. In the end, I produced something I can be proud of. I was reminded of this experience while reading “Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom”..

The topic that I ended up embracing was one close to my heart and something I had actually experienced. I had to connect my real life with the topic in order to produce my best work. Therefore, I definitely hope to one day create a similar experience for my students. Though, the traditional school system may not value certain strands of popular culture, our students do; and our job is to serve our students as best as we can.

Further, I thought that one of the best parts of the curriculum presented was how it touched on the particular situation that the students are in and empowered them to act within it. The central idea of critical pedagogy is to push students to a higher level of thinking and to encourage them to contextualize their learning by showing them ways to apply it.

Another awesome, but subtle aspect of the curriculum, is how each unit built upon each other. The units not only allowed students to carry over their previous skills, but also created a productive, civil environment necessary to reach deep understanding of controversial topics. For an example, had the teachers started the school year by showing Time to Kill, they may have had a very negative reaction in the classroom. Also, had they asked the students to create the magazine, which later became the final project, at the start of the school year, they would likely have poor student interest resulting in a bad product. The fact that the students were themselves interested in creating such a magazine, shows that the methods of critical pedagogy are successful in allowing students to recognize their place in society and act within its means in order to speak up against oppression.

Therefore, in order to “help make students more critical consumers of all information… and to give them the skills to become more capable producers of information” (7) the first step is to ensure that we, ourselves are such critical consumers and capable producers of information. Sadly, the list of “hegemonic texts” on page 6, fails to address the most important “‘sacred’ texts” and sources that “serve to limit and constrain, or control actions or thought”--  media, advertisement, and social media. The latter disseminators (and producers) of information can potentially entrap people in an “information net” if they lack the critical thinking skills promoted in critical pedagogy. This “information net” can be stretched even further and constrain all information an individual is exposed to; it is largely self-created by our cultural and political beliefs, our experiences, people around us; pretty much all information we choose to expose ourselves to and choices we make as consumers. In terms of social media, (and perhaps the internet as a whole) the “information net” is largely self-constructed by websites’ collection of personal information and it’s use in selecting the information an individual is further exposed to (through cookies - browsing history/patterns, and tendencies as a user). For an example, I log onto facebook and “like” the band Nirvana. Soon, facebook suggests that I “like” a similar in genre band “Foo Fighters”. Thus, I’ve successfully limited the variation in the genre of bands that facebook exposes me too with a single click. This is clearly dangerous when attempting to be “critical consumers” of information. So we should always consider if we are being obstructed in our goal of being “critical consumers”.