Further reflection on the challenges facing education and the development of a Critical Pedagogy

Outwith schools, in society in general, I feel that some of the major challenges facing learners and educators are "materialism and conformity" (Greene, 2003, p. 111) and the fact that "no population has ever been so deliberately entertained, amused, and soothed into avoidance, denial, and neglect" (Greene, 2003, p. 110). The result of this is a consumer generation who simply receive, who are unquestioning and who lack the capacity to look at things as if they could be otherwise. There is a lack of understanding as to the relationship between power and knowledge and the fact that “knowledge is always an ideological construction linked to particular interests and social relations” (McLaren, 2003 p. 83).

Before anything can be done to redress this relationship, it must first be recognised and, as Greene (2003, p. 111) states we do this by undertaking a process whereby we “learn to name” these things. It is only in recognising the barriers that individuals can be empowered to see different possibilities and imagine alternative ways of being. Imagination, and hence creative arts practice, is vital in this process for it is “the key to critical reflection, as well as a way to conceptualise a future in light of realities henceforth unknown; it is a means through which we can assemble a coherent world [because imagination] is what, above all, makes empathy possible… [it is the one cognitive capacity] that permits us to give credence to alternative realities. It allows us to break with the taken for granted, to set aside familiar distinctions and definitions” (Weiner, xxxx, pp. 73-74).

This has significant implications for the school curriculum and methodologies used, as Greene (2000) explains: “if the cultivation of imagination is important to the making of a community that might be a democratic community, then the release of imagination ought now to be one of the primary commitments of the public school. One of the primary ways of activating the imaginative capacity is through encounters with the performing arts, the visual arts and the art of literature.” (p. 169).

Greene, M., 2000. Imagining Futures: The Public School and Possibility. In: Carr, W., ed., 2005. The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Philosophy of Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Ch 12.

Greene, M., 2003. In Search of a Critical Pedagogy. In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 4.

McLaren, P., Critical Pedagogy: A look at the Major Concepts. In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 3.

Weiner, E., 2007. Critical Pedagogy and the Crisis of Imagination. In: Mclaren, P., and Kincheloe, J. eds., 2007. Critical Pedagogy: where are we now? New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Ch 3.