Let's try this again

Well. It has been awhile since I last posted. The thoughts have not stopped though. They just have been channeled other ways I guess you could say. Lots to share regarding thoughts of critical pedagogy, race, class, language and education of course. New thoughts coming around the sociological side of education also. I will begin with a book I just finished The Art of Critical Pedagogy. This will take a few posts to get out, but want to start with the suggestion to just READ IT.

Critical pedagogy is one of those things that seems at times so lofty you must ask, can you really even put it into practice? Then if you put it into practice, is it still critical pedagogy? The whole theory vs. practice thing is nothing new to conversations around critical pedagogy. The Art of Critical Pedagogy does many things. The one thing it does arguably the best at is challenging us to wrestle with the theory of Freire, Giroux, Shor, McLaren and others, while at the same time examine a few experiences where it is clear the ideas of critical pedagogy are working. Within the specific context of urban education the role of critical pedagogy is not only a transformative practice, but also a means to challenging the status quo and beginning to shift the oppression that is U.S. public education.

In the next few posts I will discuss several areas of The Art of Critical Pedagogy and then also begin to think about and look for responses to how critical pedagogy is working in urban contexts across the U.S. and what it will truly take to begin more dialogue around the disparities in public education.

In the words of Jonathan Kozol, "An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true." In the next few posts, both ideas about critical pedagogy from The Art of Critical Pedagogy and also ideas of inequity, inequality and disparity stemming from much of Jonathan Kozol's work will be discussed.