Critical Pedagogy the McLaren Way!

As I have reread McLaren I find that I don't agree with many things that he has to say, but then he does cause me to ask many questions about education today.

McLaren (2003) tells us that schools need to promote student empowerment and self-transformation. His parochial education showed empowered students issues of social justice as a means of sustaining , legitmizing, and reproducing dominant classs interests directed at creating obedient, docile, and low-paid future workers (p.70). He then goes on to talk about the Marxist view of schooling, which claims that schools simply reproduce class relations and possibly indoctinate students into becoming greedy young capitalist (p.70). This was a statement that I don't agree with. I do not believe that this is what is happening in our school systems. If a child has aspirations to dream and achieve large goals, this does not make them greedy young capitalist, and the goal of the school would never be to produce low-paid future workers.

Critical pedagogists asks how our everyday commonsense understandings, our social constructions or subjectivities get produced and lived out. In many schools in the U.S. Science and Math is becoming imperative to prepare our youth for "big businesses", but the question is, who is this helping? Who is being hurt from this? What is the relationship between knowledge taught in school and the social class?(p.72). Perhaps this type of thinking is starting to change since the next paragraph talks about the public unlikely to vote for a woman or a black President. That time has come. IN 2008 a black President has been elected.

McLaren refers to hegemony and the dominant culture, the social class in control. That students learn what the dominant culture wants them to learn. The subordinate class actually conforms to the dominant class without being aware of it. Do we question what is taught in our schools? Do we question the curriculum that is shaping the minds of our children? Since the start of this class I have been questioning some of my son's classes. The purpose, the way it is being taught, they style of the teaching. Parents do need to become more involved in what their children are learning.

Is there hegemony in an inner city, predominantly black school? Do they teach that whites are better? Are they taught that they are the subordinate group? Are they taught that they will ultimately be the lower class and struggle to make ends meet? Or, is their curriculum the same as in a white, upper class, suburban school? Are they taught about the discrimination they and their ancestors have endured? All questions that I would not have asked without reading what McLaren had to say.

In Sleepy Eye we have a 30.7% Hispanic population in our school. At one time none of the spanish (Hispanic) traditions were talked about in the school. Over the years I find that the Hispanic kids are doing dances that represent their culture, we are recognizing their holidays, the girls are have Kincineras (not sure how to spell that) and they are inviting their friends, whom are mostly white, to take part in their celebration. My son was just involved in one and it was an awesome experience. Hispanics are becoming proud of their culture and sharing it with the community of Sleepy Eye.

McLaren points out three types of knowledge. Technical knowledge, which is measured by IQ quotients, SAT tests, reading scores, etc. Practical knowledge is acquired through describing and analyzing social situations and is geared toward helping individuals understand social events.This is also a way to evaluate student behavior. The critical educator looks for emancipatory knowledge which helps us to understand how social relationships are distorted and manipulated by relations of power and privilege. It creates the foundation for social justice, equality, and empowerment. (p.73).

I didn't understand this until I turned the page and it talked about how Americans see themselves and how other countries see Americans. We are taught that we are a superior country, justice for all, equal opportunity, the land of the free, the sky is the limit, but how do other countries view us? As a terrorist regime? As a failing country? We only teach our youth the "good" about our country and eliminate telling them anything different. This made me start to believe some of what McLaren had to say.

McLaren claims that empowerment means to not only help students to understand and engage the world around them,but also enable them to exercise the kind of courage needed to change social order where necessary. (pg 85). Can the institution that educates them teach this? McLaren futher states that we must look at the kind of knowlege we construct about women and minority groups in our school text books. Do we promote stereotypical views that reinforce racist, exist and patriarchal attitudes?

Is there a hidden curriculum in schools? Whites are better than blacks. Men are smarter than women? We must make sure that this is not being taught in our classrooms. Will boys have higher SAT scores, will girls be less committed to their careers? Is their sexism in the classroom where boys will work toward the top end jobs and girls will conform to low paying jobs? McLaren says that the hidden curriculum, then, refers to learning outcomes not openly acknowledged to learners. (p.88).

Are we in the process of social reproduction? Will working class students become working class adults? will middle class students become middle class adults? (p. 89) Do you become of a product of what you are taught? As I look at myself, my parents, my friends, for the most part we are all middle class with very few of us who have moved to upper class status.

Jacques Lacan suggests that ignorance is not a passive state, but rather an active excluding from consciouness.(pg. 92). We are ignorant to what we don't know. We are ignorant to what we aren't being taught. We are ignorant because we believe what we are taught and do not question it.

Yes, McLaren has helped me look at education with a critical eye.