"Here's what I have in mind: instead of this vast, subordinated enterprise called "freshman comp," we would recover writing as a rhetorical and social act of making meaning, constructing the self in society, producing culture. Concretely, when students come to campus, their writing requirement is to affiliate with a project."
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The penultimate week of classes
As we approach the end of this spring semester I realize how much I'm looking forward to reading within the spheres of rhet-comp that I find most compelling. I'm envious of Ben and Tim's future in the fall and am stoked to hear from them what the experience is like. In the meantime, I think this forum will be a really cool space to test out ideas and see what seems to take hold and what doesn't. As an extension of the discussions that Ben and I have in person, I'm just stoked to have a place to bring and unravel these thoughts and notions. I think it's likely that we'll all be bringing our own diverse backgrounds and out approaches will be idiosyncratic and unique, and were that not the case I think we'd learn less. Allright - enough bluster from me. Here's Shor in 1997 interview with Graff in JAC. So I have to be honest and say that I'm more unsure than comfortable with some critical pedagogy, only in the sense that I don't know if it work for me. What Shor posits here though I find really strong:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
One thing I might add to this (and I cut off a lot more from his quote) is not just producing culture but 'critiquing' it, as well as 'interpreting' it. What, as a culturally constructed student/human/man/woman, am I agreeing to? What makes me say yes, or no?
ReplyDeleteOne more thought - 'subordinated' is such a loaded term here! It is so f'ing true. At the NEMLA conference I was just at this is all I wanted to talk about but no one seemed to care! WTF? (ha)
ReplyDeleteAJ! thanks for posting. i wanted some action on this and that's why i made it today, so i'm glad you jumped right in.
ReplyDeleteyour post makes me think of two things:
1. i loaned out my Pedagogy of the Oppressed to a physics teacher, Tom, from NY that was with me in Turkey. after months of struggle with the text and his emailing Aronowitz to ask for a mentorship, this was his final response, emailed to me this morning: "I don't know if this is an oxymoron but: I think that I am a political liberal but an educational conservative. I could not finish Friere's book and I tried to read something by Aronowitz with equal lack of success. I can't understand what they are saying." any response? what sort of problem is this? what is Shor saying?
2. that leads to this question: what is critical pedagogy? i don't know if it can be defined except for in the abstract--and maybe that's Tom's struggle. my initial, abstract reaction is that critical pedagogy is a state of mind the teacher takes with them into the classroom and that it, among other things, is a deep state of solidarity with the students and their struggle to find meaning/voice/access/understanding/purpose. i think it is also an acknowledgment that the teacher is not ordained to be the only expert in the classroom. this is easier said than done and i can't say that i've been practicing critical pedagogy this semester.