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This post is the opinion of the the author and does not necessarily represent The Good Men Project.
I have never forgotten one essential point my educational psychology professor related to my class back at San José State University when I was working toward my Secondary Education Teacher’s Certification in 1970. His point crystallized for me the intent of true and meaningful learning. My professor explained that the term “education” is derived from two Latin roots: “e,” meaning “out of,” and “ducere,” meaning “to lead” or “to draw.”
“Education,” he said, “is the process of drawing knowledge out of the student or leading the student toward knowledge, rather than putting or depositing information into what some educator’s perceive as the student’s waiting and docile mind”—what the Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Reglus Neves Freire termed “the banking system of education.”
I would ask, however, what effects have our neo-liberal age of standardization, corporatization, privatization, and deregulation of the educational, business, banking, and corporate sectors have on learning?
Standardized curriculum and testing were initially intended to gauge students’ progress, but have, unfortunately, metastasized into benchmarks for student advancement through the educational levels, for teacher accountability, as well as criteria for school funding from the government.
According to the so-called “Allocation Theory” of education, schooling has turned into a status competition, which confers success on some and failure on others. Our schools have morphed into assembly-line factories transforming students into workers, and then sorting these workers into jobs commanded by industry and business. In so doing, educational institutions legitimize and maintain the social order (read as the status quo). Schools drive individuals to fill certain roles or positions in society, which are not always based on the individuals’ talents or interests.
Education, as I have gained from Freire, is a path toward permanent liberation in which people became aware (conscientized) of their multiple positionalities (identity intersectionality), and through praxis (reflection and action), transform the world.
Educators, to be truly effective, must spend many years in self-reflection and must have a clear understanding of their motivations, strengths, limitations, “triggers,” and fears. They must thoroughly come to terms with their positions in the world in terms of their social identities: both the ways in which they are privileged as well as how they have been the targets of systemic inequities. They are not afraid of showing vulnerability and admitting when they are wrong or when they “don’t know.” They have a firm grasp of the content area, and they work well with and are accessible to students and their peers.
Educators, to be truly effective, must spend many years in self-reflection and must have a clear understanding of their motivations, strengths, limitations, “triggers,” and fears.
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Realizing that students come from disparate backgrounds in terms of social identities, and that students learn in a variety of ways, educators must be “culturally competent,” and must be informed on the historical and cultural backgrounds of diverse student populations, pedagogical frameworks, theories of cognitive development, personality types, preferred sensory modes of learning, and others.
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In the ideal classroom, the overriding climate is one of safety. This is not, however, the same as “comfort,” for very often, comfortable situations might feel fine, but are not necessarily of pedagogic value. “Safety” in this case refers to an environment where educators facilitate a learning process: one in which one can share openly without fear of retribution or blame; where one can travel to the outer limits of one’s “learning edges” in the knowledge that one will be supported and not left dangling.
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The critical multicultural / social justice classroom poses exceptional challenges, or more importantly, opportunities to find creative solutions to address not only potential but actual student resistance to course materials and concepts, for we touch upon some very personal and potentially triggering issues related to identity, social inequities, and critical histories that for many reasons are not often investigated in other coursework.
Very often, a single semester course may not provide the educator sufficient time to fully appreciate the true growth or impact of their endeavors, but it can at least provide the opportunity for the planting of a seed, for overall, the role of the educator is to excite, to motivate, to develop or enhance in the student a continuing and life-long quest for learning.
Critical multiculturalism / social justice education is far more than my academic interest and focus for me. On several occasions, I have been asked the following question: “Are you a professor / educator, or are you a community organizer/activist, a writer, a theorist, or a researcher?” I always answer “Yes, all of the above,” for I view critical multiculturalism / social justice as providing a seamless connection to all these elements in my life. And I attempt to practice what I teach.
In addition to teaching the 3 Rs (Reading, wRiting, and ‘Rithmetic), we need to teach students how to investigate issues around Self Awareness: how to “Read” the Self and “Solve” social, emotional, and ethical problems.
I cannot think of any other profession where one reads and discusses ideas with others and (sort of) gets paid for it.
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Last semester, I asked students in my university Educational Psychology class to answer the following question by raising their hand: “How many of you have a parent or guardian who wakes up in the morning thinking to themselves, ‘I have a job I love and I’m looking forward to going to work?” Of the approximately 100 students in class that day, exactly seven raised their hands.
I usually still answer that question in the affirmative. I cannot think of any other profession where one reads and discusses ideas with others and (sort of) gets paid for it. I love the opportunities for learning and engagement that I have as a professor.
I see how “education” and “schooling,” however, as currently constituted contradicting its own methodologies by primarily focusing on grades in the service of eventual jobs and economic security for the educational consumer, and in so doing, we have diminished in many of our students the joy of learning for learning sake, and learning for the sake of understanding themselves and the world around them.
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