Using the Master’s Tools

Posted in Philosophy of EducationSocial JusticeTeaching on Nov 01, 2009 - 06:47 PM

My first week into teaching after my year in graduate school, I was filled with grand ideas and ideals as to what I would do in my classroom to help my students liberate themselves from the intellectual shackles of US public education. I entered my classroom and my school with the belief that my students and I would revolutionize the educational experience in Detroit forever--no hyperbole intended. This is how deeply I believed in my students and their potential to be positive change agents in a world which deemed them failures or equally insulting, average at best.

Critical pedagogy was my tool of choice: an educational philosophy accredited to the late Paolo Freire, which reconstructed the educational experience into one that liberated both student and teacher instead of subjugating the former beneath the latter. The traditional model of education is a banking method wherein the teacher is seen as the sole owner of knowledge and the student as a pail to be filled with said knowledge. With critical pedagogy, both teacher and student meet within the same problem-space and engage in a mutual learning experience in theory helping to develop independent thinking in students and more of a facilitator role for teachers.

My first week in my classroom in front of my students, I gave them a short speech on how our classroom would be led by them and their voices safe to be heard here. I would never ignore a question and I would trust that they are aspiring to always try their best. To prove my sincerity and my trust in them, I asked them to move from their assigned seats (assigned to them by their previous teacher who, as the previous post quoted, prided himself with the fact that they did not move without asking him first) and sit wherever they liked. With eager hesitance, my students stood and slowly moved to sit next to--of course--their friends. As the volume of giggles and gossip steadily increased, I called for their attention to remind them, "Remember, I trust you're choosing seats that are best for your educational experience." I said this with a warm smile and the students smiled back and we were all happy.

Oh, how quickly things change. Chaos unlike any I have ever experienced in my professional career ensued.

It took one day for Audre Lorde's words to echo in my head: "For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change."

I began to question her logic; I could use the master's matches and set his house on fire, couldn't I? Should the master's tools be totally ignored when they have been the only tools known to the subjugated? Could the bridge to liberation be built with the master's tools? The events that took place in one chaotic week begged me to ask these questions.


For more information on Critical Pedagogy and Paolo Freire, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed

Tags for this entry:
education reform, k-12 education, critical pedagogy, audre lorde, safe space, paolo freire, facilitation, liberation

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