scris de Bojana Piskur

Education for critical consciousness

We are not taking the Freirean perspective on critical consciousness for granted. It is based on the western conception of the autonomous individual (an enlightened elite guiding the others). Even though Freire is a starting point for us we are also trying to move beyond his ideas and look into the evidence of how people have governed themselves instead, through what Theodore Shannin called “vernacular revolution” (vernacular means not of foreign or learned formation but native, indigenous). The Radical Education project therefore supports the creation of “open spaces” (Vanessa Andreotti) – these are spaces where participants can talk about issues that affect their lives, reclaim the right to question received knowledge and participate in constructions of alternative visions of the future.

Equality!

One of the important lessons that can be drawn from radical education is the question of equality and understanding how inequality functions. It is inequality that pedagogies usually display to us; between the knowledgeable teacher and the ignorant student. Ordinary pedagogical reason is, as Ranciere put it, based on two fundamental axioms: first it is necessary to begin with inequality in order to reduce it and second: the method of reducing inequality is to conform to it by making the objective a form of knowledge. The success of the knowledge that reduces inequality comes from the knowledge of inequality.

Reference: Jacques Ranciere: Nevedni učitelj: pet lekcij o intelektualni emancipaciji. Zavod EN-Knap, zbirka Prehodi, Ljubljana 2005.

http://radical.temp.si

See Radical Education I here.

Nici un comentariu | Print This Post | Email This Post