Critical Pedagogy

This article presents an overview of critical pedagogy, an educational theory positing that schools are inherently biased and perpetuate social imbalances of power. Often, students internalize these biases based on hidden curriculum, or implicit lessons about behavior, morality, patriotism, and so forth. According to critical pedagogy, teachers must instill in their students critical consciousness—an awareness of these imbalances and a commitment to eradicating them in pursuit of social justice. Yet, in order for critical consciousness to occur, the teaching paradigm must change, from the banking model, in which students are discouraged from challenging authority or thinking independently, to the liberatory model advocated by Brazilian educational theorist Paolo Freire. Classroom applications of critical pedagogy include content analysis of the media, demystifying print, process drama, as well as the use multiple sources of knowledge, such as popular culture and everyday texts.

Multicultural Education > Critical Pedagogy

Overview

Critical Pedagogy is an educational theory based on the idea that schools typically serve the interests of those who have power in a society by, usually unintentionally, perpetuating unquestioned norms for relationships, expectations, and behaviors. In order to combat these taken-for-granted biases in schools, teachers and students must constantly question their world, both inside and outside the classroom. At its heart, critical pedagogy is committed to the transformative power of education for individuals and society as a whole, with the ultimate goal of creating a more equitable and just society for everyone. Because of its emphasis on diversity and rethinking the status quo, critical pedagogy has been embraced by advocates of multicultural education.

Critical pedagogy first gained popularity in the 1960s through the work of Brazilian educator Paolo Freire. Although trained as a lawyer, Freire worked as a young man teaching literacy to poor farm workers, and he later developed a system by which literacy could be taught in as few as forty-five days. A great motivation for his teaching the disadvantaged to read was in order to secure for them the right to vote, which at the time in Brazil was limited to those who were literate. Based in large part on these experiences working with the downtrodden, Freire began publishing his theories of education and social justice, the most renowned of which was Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970).

Critical Consciousness

One of the most important concepts stemming from Freire's work is critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is an awareness of the invisible oppression in society combined with a dedication to combating this oppression through education and activism. Historic examples of hidden oppression are readily recognizable, such as the status of women or African Americans during early periods in America's history, when their disenfranchisement went largely unquestioned. Yet it is more difficult to recognize these inequalities in one's own era. In the US today, for example, a critical pedagogue might point to English-only legislation, which aims to restrict public services such as education and the law to English speakers. While adherents of such legislation (e.g., the organization US English) argue that these laws are beneficial to immigrants in that they motivate them to acquire English, a critical approach would dispute this claim. Critical pedagogues would assert that such legislation succeeds only in keeping upward mobility and membership into mainstream America out of the hands of immigrant groups. For Freire, teaching students critical consciousness is the moral responsibility of the teacher and is necessary for positive social change to occur.

In another major contribution to the field, Freire describes a dichotomy between how most schools work—the banking model of education—and how schools should work—the liberatory model of education. In the banking model of education, the teacher is the source of all information and knowledge, while students are considered to be blank slates. Teachers in this model thus make 'deposits' of knowledge into students' mental 'banks.' For Freire, the banking model is destructive on a number of levels. Crucially, rather than encouraging critical consciousness, it works to reproduce the hegemony, or taken-for-granted power structures, of the school and society at large by devaluing inquiry, skepticism, and disagreement. In contrast, in the liberatory model of education advocated by Freire, knowledge is thought to be diffuse, coming from a variety of sources and rooted in a skepticism of traditional voices of authority. Teachers following this model value their students as people with unique experiences and knowledge of their own, and they work with students as partners in learning to set group goals and expectations.

The Hidden Curriculum

Many scholars have elaborated upon Freire's ideas or developed their own approaches to critical pedagogy. In particular, Henry Giroux is considered, with Freire, a founding father of critical pedagogy and is known for his work on the concept of the hidden curriculum. For Giroux, much of what is learned in school is not part of the official curriculum but rather is absorbed by students through a kind of socialization process. The hidden curriculum involves not only subtle behavioral rules such as sitting still and facing forward while the teacher talks, but also ideas about what constitutes 'good' and 'bad,' 'hardworking' and 'lazy,' and a wide range of other value judgments. Rather than universal, these notions are specific to particular groups and cultures and in many cases reinforce ideas that are unfair to minorities and other disadvantaged. For example, a student who comes from a culture in which frequent verbal interaction between teachers and students is the norm—and a sign of engagement—may be quickly dubbed a troublemaker and written off as a 'bad' student.

Alternative Materials

Teachers can integrate critical pedagogy in their classrooms in a range of ways. A primary strategy is for teachers, rather than relying exclusively on traditional textbooks, to use multiple sources of knowledge, including online materials, comic books, current music, television, and film, as well as other forms of popular culture. The use of these kinds of alternative materials in the classroom is important to critical pedagogy for several reasons. First, popular culture occupies the interest and time of many students and thus constitutes a good deal of their body of knowledge. Respecting this prior knowledge is a central tenet of critical pedagogy and can be effective in linking new lessons with what students already know. Second, studying media depictions in the classroom can help students recognize pervasive but taken-for-granted stereotypes that abound. Third, the use of popular art forms, such as rap or street art, in the classroom can serve to overturn these stereotypic messages by giving voice to people who, due to their color, ethnicity, economic status, or gender, have not historically had an official voice in places like school textbooks. Students themselves can be encouraged to create their own popular art as a means of self-expression and as a possible means of creating social change. Finally, many teachers feel like they have undergone a gradual deskilling, or loss of control of the educational process, as the result of the curriculum and materials being dictated by others. Incorporating multiple sources of knowledge can be empowering to teachers by giving them ownership of their own curriculum and classroom.

Applications

Content Analysis of Media

Content analysis of media can be used to help students become aware of the stereotypes which surround them. For example, students can watch a popular sitcom and make note of a wide variety of representations. In particular, they can pay attention to the intersections of attributes: What kinds of jobs do the women hold in the show? Is there a difference in the ways in which people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds speak? How is humor, intelligence, or education mapped onto the show's diversity? Crucially, even 'neutral' news depictions are often replete with stereotypic representations. By watching segments of the nightly news, or by looking at the print media, students can compare and contrast the treatment of different topics or individuals.

As with many strategies used in critical pedagogy, a crucial component is turning the in-class experience into a means of creating social justice outside of school. With this goal in mind, following a media analysis and discussion, students might be given the opportunity to write to television and film producers, actors, or newspaper editors, with concerns they have regarding specific depictions within a particular program or publication. Or they could be encouraged to make a short documentary to share with their school regarding their discoveries.

Demystifying Print

A term coined by Klein, 'demystifying print' refers to the process by which educators teach their students to read with a critical eye. Teachers can regularly emphasize to students that much of what is written, even if presented as fact, is an argument stemming from a particular point of view. By regularly asking questions such as 'Do you believe/agree with the author?' and 'Do you see any flaws in the author's argument?' teachers can encourage students to read critically both in school texts as well as other written materials they encounter in their daily lives.

History class is particularly well-suited to activities aimed at demystifying the written word. To illustrate this idea, the history teacher can explain, for example, that textbooks in Great Britain teach the American Revolution as a rebellion rather than as a noble fight for freedom. Omissions also are part of an argument, and teachers can challenge students to ask whose histories are missing from textbook coverage of a particular topic. For example, why are so few women discussed during the coverage of the Civil War? What does their omission mean, for our understanding of history, for our understanding of the hegemony of knowledge, and for the formation of future generations of leaders?

Everyday Texts

Everyday texts are spoken or written materials that we are surrounded by in our day-to-day lives, and they include news pieces, popular movies and books, food and toy packaging, and advertisements of all kinds. Everyday texts are so pervasive that we often take them, and their hidden assumptions, for granted. Teachers can effectively incorporate everyday texts into the classroom for many purposes, including by challenging students to become aware of the stereotypes and entrenched power structures that exist in our culture.

Vazquez and co-authors give an example of an impromptu analysis of a particular everyday text—a poster advertising the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), or Mounties,' with her kindergarteners. One student noticed that there were no females depicted on the poster, and the teacher allowed students to have an open conversation on their beliefs about the occupational differences (or lack thereof) between women and men. One student in particular found the issue compelling and decided to write a letter to the RCMP, asking 'Could you please change the poster because there are girls in the Mounties.' A father of one of the kindergartners, himself a Mountie, assured the class that the letter had been received and that if the media in charge of the poster did not take the initiative to change it, then the female Mounties would certainly see that it happened.

This example illustrates not only the pervasiveness of stereotypes and the usefulness of deconstructing everyday texts, it also shows the power of the individual and the teacher to create a better world, one of the basic tenets of critical pedagogy.

Multiple Sources of Knowledge

From a critical pedagogical point of view, knowledge is subjective and experience-based, and most of the materials used in classrooms present a very limited range of perspectives. Multiple sources of knowledge, including oral histories, blogs, graffiti art, and rap, can express viewpoints and voices that do not appear in textbooks and canonical literature, and they are hence central to constructing the critical classroom.

Process Drama

The use of drama as a cross-curriculum methodological tool has been supported by many educational theorists—for its ability to integrate creativity with content, to reach students who typically are not engaged in the traditional classroom, to tap into the talents of underperforming children, and to encourage interaction among students who might not otherwise communicate with one another. Process drama, a teaching tool which involves unscripted, imaginary scenes acted out by both students and teacher, is beneficial for these same reasons, but also encourages students to engage critically with classroom materials and the world around them.

In process drama, students act in response to a reading they have been working on, or to a topic that concerns or interests them. A student is typically given the director's chair and charged with casting and elaborating upon the plot. Teachers participate as well, according to the students' direction. Often, scenes are re-enacted multiple times, using different actors or endings.

The value of process drama for critical pedagogy is that in allowing students to guide the form and content of the drama, they are able to explore actively the problems and ideas they encounter in the classroom and make them relevant to their lives. It also pushes students to consider multiple points of view by enacting a range of roles and outcomes. Process drama also encourages problem solving by working through a scenario multiple times from a variety of perspectives.

Viewpoints

Critiques of Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy has been critiqued for a wide variety of reasons. One of the most significant critiques contends that critical pedagogy is really just the banking model of teaching in disguise. Opponents argue that critical pedagogues lead students to take the teacher's own, progressive or even radical, viewpoint as the uncontested 'truth.' In doing so, they deny legitimacy to students who hold different, especially more socially conservative, points of view, even when those students have arrived at their opinion through in-depth and careful inquiry. In response to this critique, Freire & Macedo (1995) clarify the position of critical pedagogy, stating that it is the job of the educator to make their positionality, or non-neutrality, clear to students. Rather than pushing a single point of view, Freire & Macedo state that a teacher must "debate various views without imposing any," and furthermore, that it is "an ethical duty for educators to intervene in challenging students to critically engage with their world so they can act upon it…" (p. 390-391).

Opponents have also pointed out that the literature on critical pedagogy can often be difficult to understand. They contend that the movement will never succeed at a grassroots level if students of education have difficulty deciphering the message due to unnecessarily complex language. Furthermore, they argue that such language goes against the progressive message of critical pedagogy by assuming a voice of absolute authority. bell hooks, while deeply influenced by Freire, calls for an 'engaged pedagogy' which eschews the elitist language of the academy. Yet advocates of the continued use of the vocabulary believe that such language is crucial. They argue that a nuanced and specific set of terms is necessary for expressing the approach clearly. In addition, they point out that students of education may have to struggle with the assigned readings, but that for many, the struggle pays off in a deep understanding of and commitment to critical pedagogy.

Finally, some critics argue that critical pedagogy fails in the classroom by operating in the theoretical realm alone and not providing its potential practitioners with specific teaching strategies. They question the value of a counter-hegemonic teaching philosophy that cannot be implemented when teaching, for example, kindergarteners. In defense of critical pedagogy, Kanpol (1994, p. 138) points out that such laying out of how to "do it" goes against everything the theory stands for and "would simply be an act of deskilling." In order to give some direction to teachers, however, he and other critical pedagogues have offered very general techniques (several described above) and sample units to help exemplify how critical pedagogy might be done in the classroom.

Terms & Concepts

Banking Model of Teaching: Brazilian educational theorist Freire coined the term 'banking model' to indicate the teaching style that dominates Western schools. In the banking model, the teacher 'deposits' knowledge into students' 'banks'. Students are thus seen as passive recipients in the learning process. Students are also seen, in the banking model, as empty vessels, without meaningful knowledge or experiences of their own outside of what the teacher imparts to them. The banking model stands in contrast to the 'liberatory model of teaching.'

Critical Consciousness: A notion developed by Paolo Freire, critical consciousness indicates both an awareness of society's often hidden oppression as well as a commitment to act against it.

Deskilling: Deskilling refers to a teacher's loss of control over the teaching process. In most schools, teachers are charged with implementing a curriculum developed by someone else, using pre-packed educational materials, in pursuit of educational goals they had no hand in creating.

Hegemony: Hegemony is the dominance of one group over another. It is largely taken for granted and is hence implicitly accepted by those who are dominated. In schools, hegemony is reproduced through the curriculum and other practices. Critical pedagogy calls for an increased awareness of and resistance to this hegemony.

Hidden Curriculum: The hidden curriculum of a school or a classroom is that which students learn not through explicit teaching of the outlined objectives but through implicit lessons about what 'counts' as intelligence, good behavior, citizenship, and so forth. Opponents of the traditional schooling process and its hidden curriculum argue that education effectively reproduces hegemonic values and norms, while simultaneously training students not to think critically or engage fully in their own education.

Liberatory Model of Teaching: To counter the hegemony of the 'banking model,' Freire proposed the 'liberatory model' of teaching. In this model, learning occurs through dialogue between teacher and student, rather than through a unidirectional depositing of knowledge from teacher to student. In this model, goals and expectations are co-created by teacher and students, and new roles and emerge, such as the teacher-student and the student-teacher. Knowledge and learning comes from multiple sources and do not simply reflect the norms and values of the mainstream.

Multicultural Education: Multicultural education is a pedagogical theory that takes a pluralistic society as the norm and emphasizes the importance of embracing cultural diversity in the classroom. Furthermore, it is the duty of schools, according to advocates of multicultural education, to offer an equitable education to all students, not just to those whose culture is aligned with that of mainstream society. Critical pedagogy and multicultural education thus overlap in their basic tenets and goals.

Popular Culture: The term popular or 'pop' culture is often used in contrast with 'high culture' such as opera or ballet. Popular culture, unlike 'high culture,' typically does not require special training for its enjoyment, nor, in some cases, for its production. Furthermore, it is often mass circulated and takes up a significant part of many people's lives, in the form of movies, television, novels, comics, video games, websites, and so forth. Rather than silly or inferior to 'high culture,' popular culture is considered by critical pedagogy to be significant both because of the fact that people are preoccupied with it as well as because of its capacity to allow a wide range of people to express themselves and to be heard.

Social Justice: The concept of social justice in critical pedagogy is based on the idea that teaching is inherently a political and transformational act and should be used to create a more just and equitable world.

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Suggested Reading

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