Critical Pedagogy

            When I took Critical Methodologies (Engl 273) at Eastern it was undoubtedly the most difficult class I have ever taken. It has also undoubtedly been the most useful class that I have ever taken. I guess it was so hard for me because the theories we were working with are incredibly hard to pin down into straight lines and perfect shapes. Understanding what hegemony means is not the exact science that I want it to be and I have never gotten to a point of knowledge where I could say, “Okay I get it now; this is the hegemony of the society, and this is the way it works.” It just isn’t something I can quite wrap my head around and while that provokes a lot of thoughts and introspection about who I am in this hegemony, it doesn’t really help me understand the texts I was reading. And I don’t know if it can help me understand educational theory either. But I am trying.

            This reading is really interesting and I am embarrassed to say that I could not dedicate enough time to reading it for me to feel like I have fully grasped it. I feel like it is a reference material that I can come back to again and again to help strengthen my understanding of many things, including education. But it is also a great reference for other pursuits as well. When I look at the world we live in, the society we believe in, and the future we are working toward it is helpful to understand just how the human systems work. When we read literature we might examine how the imaginary world works on the page and discover what makes the characters tick. But in the end the whole point is to compare the made up world with our real world and see what this work of literature can teach us about ourselves, and our “human nature”.

            These pedagogical perspectives will help us to reveal how our classrooms work, how our schools work, and in a greater sense how our society works. Education is how we build a better world. So what are we building it into? Why do we teach the way we do? And perhaps more importantly: How can we teach our students into a better world?