Post 9/11 Approaches to Pedagogy

There are many instances where, despite our best intentions, we fail to educate our students in a manner which builds trust and well being. The tremendous stress and societal pressure which modern students and teachers face has created a need to reevaluate some of our pedagogical methods. As the relentless spectacle we call modern society catapults us forward, and the news cycle thunders on about impending environmental calamities, governmental corruption, financial collapse, deportation, and the loss of health care, we must make a greater effort to strengthen the relationships that we find ourselves immersed in. Each day, we have an opportunity to help ease some of the anxiety and trauma associated with navigating through the post 9/11 world, and it is my hope to develop and implement a type of "relationship theory" in my educational practice which would assist in this enterprise. Somewhere within the infrastructure of education, there seems to be a latent inability to obviate the malaise and despair which is virtually ubiquitous on most college campuses throughout the United States. The challenge we face in these turbulent and uncertain times is to bring a commitment of authentic care back into the framework of our day to day relationships - despite the brutal setbacks, and often contrary demands placed upon us by modern dog-eat-dog capitalism. As a starting point for this pedagogical approach, students must be elevated to a place of shared respect and value which is commensurate with their teachers. Authoritarian and dictatorial teaching models are ultimately detrimental to the development of genuine care, and pedagogical styles that rely on these models should ultimately be phased out.

Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire speaks on this need to reform education in his book Pedagogy of the Opressed [HB+] - for a quick synopsis that even the French Situationist Guy Debord would love, please watch the video below.

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"Only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students thinking. The teacher cannot think for his students, nor can he impose his thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication."​ Paulo Freire (Richter 72)

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Now that we're getting this party started, I'd like to introduce a brilliant woman to the conversation, and hear what she says about meeting Paulo Freire. We will also highlight some of her views on education. 

"Gloria Jean Watkins (born September 25, 1952), better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks", [which she prefers not to be capitalized], is derived from that of her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks" 

("bell hooks" Wikipedia)

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"The focus of hooks' writing has been the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination."

("bell hooks" Wikipedia) Here are a few quotes:

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"Feminist education – the feminist classroom – is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is visible acknowledgement of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university. Most importantly, feminist pedagogy should engage students in a learning process that makes the world more rather than less real." (Richter 81) "Another important issue for me has been that each student participate in classroom discussion, that each student have a voice...whether a class is large or small, I try to talk with students individually or in small groups so that I have a sense of their needs. How can we transform consciousness if we do not have some sense of where the students are intellectually, psychically?" (Richter 83)

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If we're going to build meaningful relationships in the classroom, we can transition to a "problem posing" method of education, this can prepare our students for a better way of learning than what Freire described and criticized as the "banking method of education" - of memorizing data and pretending that it's knowledge. Let's hear what the famous University of Chicago English professor Gerald Graff says about the banking method of education, and his take on teaching the conflicts.

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"What first made literature, history, and other intellectual pursuits seem attractive to me was exposure to critical debates. There was no single conversion experience, but a gradual transformation over several years, extending into my first teaching positions, at the University of New Mexico and then Northwestern University. But one of the first sparks I remember was a controversy over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that arose in a course during my junior year in college" (Richter 42-3) When we're able to look at literature from multiple theoretical angles, we can get more out of the experience for our students, and provide a richer more satisfying learning environment. 

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ON EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS - RETRO EDITION

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Although technology changes rapidly, the process of learning has certain recognizable constants - we know for example that a poem is made up of a series of syllables, and that these syllables can take on a variety of complex meanings depending on how they're strung together. The magic of the classroom is that we can discuss the words on the page with our classmates, and uncover some very insightful thematic associations if we really allow ourselves the freedom to get creative. When there is a healthy relationship between the student-teachers and teacher-students the imagination is allowed to roam, and the possibilities are truly exciting. The next video here is a blast from the past featuring Brown University professor Robert Scholes; the technology may be outdated, but the process of instruction is still very much relevant to teaching models we are implementing today.

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"Now, more than ever, the graduates of our schools and colleges will live in worlds different from those in which they were born and went to school. A discipline called English must help them prepare for unknown conditions. The best preparation we can give our students will be the highest level of competence as readers and writers, producers and consumers of the various texts they will encounter."

Robert Scholes (Richter 113)

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Here's a great example of a modern high school teacher, Joe Ruhl, using the most up to date pedagogical, tools and coupling it with the use of the latest computer technology.

I think we're standing on the verge of getting it on, but it only matters if we care about the shit that's going down.

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"We must redefine 'theory' itself from within our own black cultures, refusing to grant the racist premise that theory is something that white people do, so that we are doomed to imitate our white colleagues, like reverse black minstrel critics done up in whiteface. We are all heirs to critical theory, but we black critics are heirs as well to the black vernacular tradition. Our task now is to invent and employ our own critical theory, to assume our own propositions, and to stand within the academy as politically responsible and responsive parts of a social and cultural African American whole."​

Henry Luis Gates Jr. (Richter 177)

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How are all these films and images related? Sounds like we need some pedagogical guidance:

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 Works Cited:

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"bell hooks". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks

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Richter, David H. Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. Bedford/St. Martens

             2000

Strickland, Ronald."Confrontational Pedagogy". https://blackboard.sdsu.edu/webapps/blackboard               /execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_3741562_1&course_id=_300964_1

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