"A multicultural approach values diversity and encourages critical thinking, reflection, and action. Through this process, students can be empowered as well. This is the basis of critical pedagogy. Its opposite is what Paolo Freire called "domesticating education," education that emphasizes passivity, acceptance, and submissiveness. According to Freire, education for domestication is a process of "transferring knowledge," whereas education for liberation is one of "transforming action." Liberating education encourages students to take risks, to be curious, and to question. Rather than expecting students to repeat teachers' words, it expects them to seek their own answers."
Nieto, Sonia. Language, Culture, and Teaching. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2002. Print.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Monday, November 18, 2013
Rigor, de rigeur
Our American education system has been shivering and cracking with newness against the crusts and rinds of traditional molds. The Common Core, project-based learning, and a new way of thinking about teaching, learning, and (more philosophically) about what a public education should and can do is wafting from district offices, lingering like smoke over the cynics and idealists to equal degree.
Between the furtive glance and the furrowed brow of doubting practitioners, there hangs a word that many utilize to combat the trajectory of the new and fluttering ideas. Rigor. Administrators want the reputation for it, teachers are evaluated for it, and yet rigor seems to go largely undefined or thought of generally as how strenuously students are made to work. At least linguistically, I have found an irony in the way we are trying to incorporate the idea of "rigor" into what is meant to be a more flexible and exploratory mode of learning.
rigor (n.) 
late 14c., from Old French rigor "strength, hardness" (13c., Modern French rigueur), from Latin rigorem (nominative rigor) "numbness, stiffness, hardness, firmness; roughness, rudeness," from rigere "be stiff"
I think most educators today would balk at the idea that we need more "stiffness" in our classrooms, though the word itself seems to draw to the forefront more questions than answers about what education could and should be in the public classroom. If we are allowing more student freedom for exploration, are we losing the idea that we put our noses to the grindstone and do the hard and tedious work? Furthermore, if we want more flexibility of how students see and apply and integrate information, is there a place for the stiff, hard work that was characteristic of the strict old school? Is there a way to think about rigor in a new way, some new definition for our new pedagogical purposes?And it is in this conversation that we begin to unearth a wider point of conflict in educational philosophy among educators and with the public at large: is it the purpose of school to create obedient producers and consumers, or to set them free from the constraints of ignorance and a passive receipt of knowledge? I would suggest that the challenge for the next generation of teachers is to step forward and offer a vision for a hard-thinking, tenacious pedagogy that will not rely on fact collecting, but rather on the more challenging task of seeking truth in a flexible and mutable world of ideas.
On a personal note, I overhead a conversation of older teachers discussing the idea of rigor in the language classroom. There was a cynicism about projects and Common Core and the 21st century collaborative idea; it permeated the group, tainting the beating of beautiful idealism, covering it over like a tacky veneer, dismissing out of hand the possibility of a new way forward. Does the jadedness come with age and fatigue, or can enthusiasm and desire be kindled, our brittle bones seasoning like bundles of wood over the course of time?
If there are any practitioners who would respond, perhaps you might consider offering a picture of what rigor means in your discipline, and how it may or may not coincide with new ideas about collaboration and inquiry.
Between the furtive glance and the furrowed brow of doubting practitioners, there hangs a word that many utilize to combat the trajectory of the new and fluttering ideas. Rigor. Administrators want the reputation for it, teachers are evaluated for it, and yet rigor seems to go largely undefined or thought of generally as how strenuously students are made to work. At least linguistically, I have found an irony in the way we are trying to incorporate the idea of "rigor" into what is meant to be a more flexible and exploratory mode of learning.
I think most educators today would balk at the idea that we need more "stiffness" in our classrooms, though the word itself seems to draw to the forefront more questions than answers about what education could and should be in the public classroom. If we are allowing more student freedom for exploration, are we losing the idea that we put our noses to the grindstone and do the hard and tedious work? Furthermore, if we want more flexibility of how students see and apply and integrate information, is there a place for the stiff, hard work that was characteristic of the strict old school? Is there a way to think about rigor in a new way, some new definition for our new pedagogical purposes?And it is in this conversation that we begin to unearth a wider point of conflict in educational philosophy among educators and with the public at large: is it the purpose of school to create obedient producers and consumers, or to set them free from the constraints of ignorance and a passive receipt of knowledge? I would suggest that the challenge for the next generation of teachers is to step forward and offer a vision for a hard-thinking, tenacious pedagogy that will not rely on fact collecting, but rather on the more challenging task of seeking truth in a flexible and mutable world of ideas.
On a personal note, I overhead a conversation of older teachers discussing the idea of rigor in the language classroom. There was a cynicism about projects and Common Core and the 21st century collaborative idea; it permeated the group, tainting the beating of beautiful idealism, covering it over like a tacky veneer, dismissing out of hand the possibility of a new way forward. Does the jadedness come with age and fatigue, or can enthusiasm and desire be kindled, our brittle bones seasoning like bundles of wood over the course of time?
If there are any practitioners who would respond, perhaps you might consider offering a picture of what rigor means in your discipline, and how it may or may not coincide with new ideas about collaboration and inquiry.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)