Blog #9

From the Viewing and Reading of:

"Paulo Freire" 

(a 15 min documentary)

"Engaged Pedagogy" 

(chapt 1 of Bell Hooks' teaching to transgress)

"How did they do that?" 

New York Collective Radical Educators Inquiry to Action Groups

 Some quotes and notes:

• Freire:  “banking system” of education - all students need to do is consume information fed to them by a professor and be able to memorize and store it.
• critical pedagogy - commitment to society and self.  well being; scholarly health; our own health.
• gaining critical consciousness as students understand selves 
• Concientization in the classroom:  critical awareness and engagement.  a conviction that every student and teacher is to be an active participant, not a passive consumer.
• Education = the practice of freedom.  Freire’s work affirmed that education can only be liberators when everyone claims knowledge as a field in which we all labor.  
• Hanh’s philosophy of engaged Buddhism, the focus on the practice in conjunction with contemplation.
• - teacher = healer
• - Friere focused on the mind; Hanh’s offered a way of thinking which emphasized wholeness, a union of mind, body and spirit.
• teachers must actively be committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students.

 Questions:

1. Is it realistic for Freire's pedagogy to be implemented nationwide?  Teachers come in with their own philosophies and thoughts around their own teaching pedagogy. 
2. It makes sense to me that a teacher needs to be constantly self aware, self conscious and always self actualizing in order to be the best they can for themselves and their students.  It makes sense to me that all human's should be doing the same (self actualizing) to be the best they can be for themselves and as members of society and all that it encompasses; but, is it realistic for us to think that each member of society will get there?  Some people are more open to this approach than others.
3. I wonder if current Societal norms, expectations, and movements play a central role in the Pedagogy of best practices for learning and movement?  
4. Hasn't it been proven through research of learning acquisition and best practices that when the students are paired with more knowledgeable others and the content is meaningful to the students that more learning will occur?   
5. Freire's philosophy can work well; but do you think self-actualization may be difficult for some to obtain due to pre-existing Societal roadblocks?