Welcome to 'Critical Pedagogy and the New Humanities.' This blog was created for us, by me, Robin Brown, as part of the graduate seminar Cl-CSDS 8910 at the University of Minnesota this spring, as a space to collaborate and create knowledge together.
Each week, we'll determine exactly when required posts and comments are due, and what topics we're engaging. You are also welcome and encouraged -- both you in the class, and you who may have stumbled upon this blog from elsewhere -- to post or comment at any time. We simply ask that everyone, students and non-students alike, follow the four rules for cooperative conversation set down by the linguist H. Paul Grice...
1) QUALITY. You are free to express any viewpoint on any issue, but you must back any statement you make with sufficient evidence. This will often mean citing material: articles, websites, books, or other relevant sources.
2) QUANTITY. Express your viewpoints thoroughly, with good argument and evidence; at the same time, avoid writing unnecessarily long or repetitive posts.
3) RELATION. Keep your posts and comments relevant. Read other people's posts -- including our posting assignments -- before you write posts or comments, and we'll keep a much more coherent conversation going.
4) MANNER. Write as clearly as possible. The point is to make yourself clear to the rest of us, and to convince of the truth of your arguments.
...as well as one fifth rule of our own:
5) RESPECT. Please respect all participants in the discussion at all times -- even (or perhaps especially) when you must respectfully disagree. The issues around what and how we teach are highly charged on many levels, but no flame wars, please!
And as always, if you have any trouble posting, or understanding posting assignments, or in any other way, feel free to contact me.
BTW: I know we all know all this. But I posted it here by way of showing how one might set up a public blog for a class, head off trouble before it happens, and at the same time give a little guidance on how to transcend the screed, rant or Twitter-update forms that tend to shape early blogging.
ReplyDeleteDear colleagues,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the first couple of chapters from Freire’s book, my goals for this class have been slightly changed from the goals I initially had started to think of.1)The “banking method” of education that Freire talks about is something that is of vital importance to me. How can we see the relationship between a teacher and student in a constructive way other than seeing the teacher as a vessel of knowledge that is to be consumed by the “ignorant” student? From the classes I have taught so far, I have seen that whenever I encourage for a dialogical exchange most likely the people who are going to participate are the ones who would anyway. I think that in order for the dialogical approach to work, there needs to be trust between the teacher and the student so that the student can bring in his/her experiences to learn. Here, I am thinking of Aristotle (as you will all see through the semester I tend to use much of him as well as of Plato, and Hegel): is learning an “imitation of an action,” like tragedy is for Aristotle? If that is the case, then the student needs to familiarize what he is learning so that he can have a deep knowledge of the thing he/she is learning. If on the other hand there is some critical distance from the object of his/her knowledge (very much like Brecht suggests with his V-effekt), then the student should not “identify” with the object of the knowledge he/she is getting, like an actor would not completely get lost in the character. Now, I know I am talking in theater terms that not all of you might be familiar with, but my point is this: is there a separation between personal and social? Which brings me to my second concern/goal for this semester:
2)How can I make the material on the syllabus more appealing to the people who do not care, while teaching what I consider important, and without trying to make them think like me (what Robin referred to as creating his clones)? My biggest problem is that even when I am teaching I still feel like a student and in my attempt to initiate a conversation with the students, I tend to get thrown away by these interactions. For this reason, I hope that I get to learn how to be in control while at the same time, not assume any sort of authority. This fear might come from an acting background where you (at least I was) taught to listen very carefully to the other person and not take anything for granted. ‘To be in the moment,’ as a director once told me. Well, sometimes being ‘in the moment’ when teaching is tricky, as students might carry the conversation into a whole other topic.
3) The more I read from Freire, I got the impression that he suggests that the classroom is about the student and not about the teacher. That said, it is very hard to get to know everyone and see through them, what teaching method to use to be heard from people that you are very different from. For instance, I fear I will never be able to teach to Siberia, to people who are not sitting on the front row; to people who are not participating. Being someone who always loved school and saw it as another ‘stage,’ I cannot understand how someone would not be fascinated to open up and engage in stimulating discussions among his/her fellow students. This might be a long process but I think the more prepared a teacher is the more likely is that Siberia will extinct, and the people who used to be there will find new ways to be part of a group. I was thinking of what hooks says, “School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.” Coming from a place where school was also an escape for me, I want to create a trusting atmosphere in a classroom where everyone is able to reinvent themselves and find the sort of people they want to be. This is challenging as I want to make sure I want to be able to teach students the way that is helpful to them individually. Thus, in the Socratic “know thyself” I would say that “know others” is what I believe a teacher should try to do. I want to be able to teach in Siberia, even though I’ve never been there.