Critical Pedagogy and Social Justice

Implementing multicultural education from the perspective of critical pedagogy, social justice pedagogy, or critical multiculturalism, requires the unlearning of what we think we know and responding to the unique needs of each classroom. Critical pedagogy is the process of learning and unlearning and conscientization. An effective multicultural teacher is constantly unlearning that they think they know about a particular culture, language, lesson, and student. They relearn, not in the light of how they "should" do something but in the light of how something works best at that moment. Truisms are challenged and the effective multicultural educator must be prepared to have what they know challenged, proven insufficient, and rebuilt every year.

Critical multiculturalism is the concept of seeing into and beyond the complexities of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is more than the celebration of various surface cultures and means to endeavor to understand why people think and act the way they do. This requires the educator to not only look into the cultures of their students but to examine their own national and gender culture and explore how it effects their teaching and interactions.

Conscientization is the power to recognize that you know what you know, and the courage to use it. The educator may encounter various negative social structures that need to be challenged for the good of the students, such as gender or racial socialization, group silencing or marginalizing, thought schooling, and more. Following one's conscientization engages the educator in pursuit of social justice in pedagogy. wink uses a great example in her text "Critical Pedagogy" where an instructor is to teach a lesson containing material they know to be outdated and scientifically inaccurate. Without a developed sense of conscientization the educator may simply slog the students through the material and be done with it. However, the educator CAN bring the fact that the material is outdated to the department and make a case for removing it from the curriculum.

John Dewey "linked education to democracy" expanded the understanding of multicultural education through pragmastism (a philosophy of usefulness and practicality largely based on merit). Dewey felt that to be an effective citizen in a democracy one needed to be educated, intelligent, and participate in social and political life (Russell 2013). Though in 1916 gave little weight to history, except in the light of the present, he felt contemporary citizens and society where complementary. In his work on Democracy and Education he wrote "the one thing every individual must do is to live; the one thing that society must do is to secure from each individual his fair contribution to the general well being and see to it that a just return is made to him (Dewey 1916). By the end of his life and work Dewey sought to provide educators with strategies for reaching students that would honor each child's individual strengths and interests, thereby providing the basis for individualized instruction, multiculturalism, and special education (Davis, ND), and these strategies are inherent in the modern multicultural classroom.

Like Dewey, Paulo Freire was a strong advocate for multicultural education and is best known as an influential theorist of critical pedagogy through his work "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Freire believed that education was the right of all and not "a gift from the oppressor to the oppressed" (Russell 2013). He advocated for critiquing of the educational system, arguing "there can be no teaching without learning and no learning without teaching". This suggests that if the education system and educators do not learn from and adjust to their pupils the system is ineffective at best. Freire himself admitted that he was forced to update his own book and relearn gender neutrality when women responded to his book negatively; they felt their voice was omitted from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Wink 2005). In today's classroom educators recognize his contribution by actively learning from their students as often as the students learn from them. A teacher "unlearns" their schooling, socialization, and tendencies to marginalize or silence, to reach every student in a way that is effective and beneficial.

------------------

Au, W., Bigelow, B., & Karp, S. (Editors), (2007). Rethinking our Classrooms - Volume 1. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools Ltd.

Davis, Donna (ND) John Dewey (1859-1952) - University, Education, Philosophy, and Students - JRank Articles. Retrieved from http://social.jrank.org/pages/199/Dewey-John-1859-1952.html#ixzz2LIlgas86

Dewey, John (1916). Democracy and Education. Norwood, MA: Norwood Press. Retrieved from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Democracy_and_Education

Russell, C., (2013). Pedagogy and social justice PowerPoint. Retrieved from Blackboard.com.

Wink, Joan (2005) Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World (Third edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Image credit: Tim Raynor at http://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/unlearning-in-crisis-and-change/