top of page
Writer's pictureSarah Mischnick

Blossom as an Educator: Cultivate Your Craft & Flourish with Critical Pedagogy



The word kindergarten has always delighted me. Invented by the German educator Friedrich Froebel who recognized that children require attentive nurturing, the concept reimagined school as a “garden of children.” And, as an educator, this evergreen sentiment rings true for me. It may be a term for a grade level I could never teach (bless you, Ms. Duwe, how did you do it?) but nevertheless, kindergarten captures the spirit of my approach— I am a gardener, laboring always in the hopes that the life under my care will flourish. But perhaps the metaphor resonates so deeply because when the day is at an end I, too, have my sleeves rolled up, hair falling loose, and a smudge or two on my face.


unsplash.com/@jonathanborba

My classroom is my bit of earth, and I long for it to be bursting with growth, where ideas of all colors sprout from buried bulbs, each planted after a gentle brainstorm when the land was still sprinkled in drops of possibility.


Creativity is always in bloom, no matter the season. Students ground themselves in the rich soil of curiosity and end their day with a healthy coating of dirt on their hands. That’s the kind of education I want to cultivate for them, the kind that allowed the sprightly, young learner I used to be the chance to regularly get her hands dirty.


Though, to be honest, the messes I made at school were usually not ones that could be linked to the curriculum for that day. Teachers, Ms. Duwe included, often apologized to my mother incessantly at pickup for the shabby state of my appearance. She would always just wave them away and smile at the tousled kid scrambling into the backseat; marker stains up her arms, grass stains down her legs. Mom knew learning involved scuffed-up shoes and rumpled dresses, and I’m grateful. Her knowledge allowed me the freedom to really explore what learning was to me.


unsplash.com/@iantuck

And so, learning became a little escape, a place in my mind where I could always indulge in the sweet joy of discovery.


The freedom my mother passed on to me was the key to unlocking the door to a sanctuary of exploration, hidden in the back of my mind behind a curtain of vines that rustled gently in the breezes of my youthful imagination. When the door creaked open, the melody of a red-breasted songbird welcomed me into a world of green, a cool cosmos of creation. It was as if someone had spilled the perfume of springtime at my feet, and it filled my lungs as I stepped into the grove. A lush garden of learning tumbled about before me, and time seemed to disappear as I spent my days playing in the shade of ancient wisdom.


Are any of you on to me yet? I have stolen a garden... or rather, I’ve been blatantly using imagery and lines from one of those 90’s movies that charmed us all, The Secret Garden. I wasn’t too far into writing this piece before I realized that if I was going to unearth enough enchantment to articulate what learning meant to me, I needed to immerse myself in the magic of that film’s flora and fauna once again.


And watching the scenes that had deeply rooted themselves in the imagination of my childhood, Frances Hodgson Burnett captivated me once again with her timeless tale of wonder. And I’m just going to keep dropping obscure references to it until I have people to gush about it with, so… do us both a favor, drop everything, and just watch it, okay? That way when you circle back here, you and I will share the same visceral understanding of learning— one that is dripping with Burnett’s particular brand of magic.


For as everyone with the universe in their throat knows, learning should cast a spell on you, breathing life back into your spirit.

unsplash.com/@mganeolsen

The free exploration in the meadow of my mind taught me that, and I carried that age-old knowledge out into the world as I grew up. Eventually, it became the foundation upon which I began my work as an educator. With every new school year, I found myself standing in the doorway before my little patch of earth with the great aim to replicate the lush garden of my mind in the conditions of this particular classroom.


But as every gardener could tell you, no matter how hard you labor and how long you toil, you are never the only factor; the environment of your garden cannot be completely controlled, nor can it always be overcome. And as every teacher could tell you, although we are laboring harder than ever, we have never had less control of our garden’s environment.


Outside forces are working to mechanize the natural learning process we have spent years cultivating. They plow through the door, crushing our students’ wildflowers and carving the slopes up into endless, emotionless rows, each calculated to produce an exact amount of fruit by a particular deadline. They tinker with the temperature, shut out the sunshine, and demand that every blade of grass be collected, counted, and catalogued. They ignore the songs of the nightingales, muffle the whispers of the lilies, and discount what we gardeners know best— much of what happens in this little, green grotto is magic, pure and incalculable.


Yet, even in the face of those dominating forces, I always began the fall season with an earthy optimism, a belief that this would be the year I could save all those special spaces from the tilling of the tractors.


unsplash.com/@clar_san

My experience had finally blossomed into expertise, and this would be the year I could use that knowledge to protect the natural wonders of my classroom from the looming darkness of the testing season that lay ahead. The manufactured winter of standardization was coming, and this would be the year I conquered it.


I always spent months in anticipation of this encounter; usually by January, I was well into my prepping, planning, and printing for the next fall. And once the school year was over, I could really crank into gear. One Texas summer, I became a hot piece of neighborhood gossip. I heard the whispers as I walked by— Has that beat-up car been abandoned in the school parking lot? Or has some masochist spent June and July all alone in a building without air-conditioning?


Pretty perceptive, but not completely accurate... I wasn't alone, thank you very much. My burly bear of a dog could sometimes be found, splayed on the cool tile, lazily keeping his eye on me as I disregarded workplace regulations and the laws of physics themselves in an attempt to winterize every last inch of my garden. Otherwise, the neighbors were spot on. I was a single gardener in an empty school, sweating before the copier in a futile attempt to beat that school year rush. But it didn't matter how many hours I spent preparing my classroom and curriculum, I could never get ahead of the darkness, and the whole neighborhood could vouch that it was not for lack of trying.


unsplash.com/@zhangkaiyv

The frosty fingers of testing season crept through the cracks in the garden wall earlier every year, throttling life from young bulbs and leaving a trail of dead ideas behind them. As the barren months stretched on without sunlight, once fruitful plants withered before my very eyes. The icy chill of standardization kept my foliage in a perpetual state of frostbite. I kept promising that sunshine was coming soon, so soon. But I knew the truth: there would only be a couple weeks in May to celebrate learning in all its beauty and bounty, if we were lucky.


After a few years of this crushing cycle, it was clear to me that no life could thrive under such unnatural conditions.


My students were certainly not flourishing, and frankly, neither was I. Rolling up my sleeves and laboring harder wasn’t working. If I were to play a role in giving students the freedom to unlock their own world of botanical wonders and enchanting knowledge, I had to get to the root of these environmental problems. But where could a gardener like me dig up solutions?

Turns out, I needed the freedom to explore once again. The lush world of learning behind that old, familiar door was calling me back. And as I reacclimate to that mossy refuge, this time as an adult, I am learning not to expect exact answers; what I'm discovering is a bit more magical than that. Each time I return from my garden of learning, I am abuzz with old knowledge, new language, and a different perspective. Through sweet discovery, I have captured four of the most central principles to the magic of critical pedagogy, so go ahead and take them back under those ancient oaks in your mind. Perhaps, this knowledge will give you what gave me— a little bit of freedom to flourish.

 

Imagining Humanization

unsplash.com/@samburriss

Critical pedagogy first took shape in Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where in the first couple pages, an idea with a rhythm and rhyme planted itself in my mind— humanization is the people’s vocation, humanization is the people’s vocation. It’s not an exact quote, but it is the heartbeat of critical pedagogy, and it pulses through the rest of the book and all the theories it touches.

But what exactly does it mean? Let’s reframe it with gardening: plantization is the plants’ vocation. In other words, plants gonna plant. Their whole purpose is to flourish, to bloom to their fullest selves. But a single flower cannot accomplish a state of plantization on its own. When a gardener looks at their garden in bloom, they do not see lone plants, each on a singular path of its own. Gardeners know that this is an overgrown community of vegetation, each individually thriving because the environment is allowing each plant to engage in the plantization process all together.


So as far humanization goes, the garden teaches us two lessons: each of us is meant to experience life in its fullness, and in order to do so, we must cultivate an environment where we can all flourish.


Humanization is the people’s vocation, humanization is the people’s vocation.

When I first put my finger on that heartbeat, I knew it was the closest language I’d ever had to describe the nameless purpose I’d always felt pulsing through my veins, pushing me to be authentic, fueling me with the power to fight for my own freedom. That instinct for humanization manifests itself when children unconsciously express who they are, simply fulfilling their deep-rooted desire to bloom to their fullest humanity.


And so, as gardeners of those budding humans, humanization is at the heart of our work. Our duty is to build up those buttercups!

unsplash.com/@soheyl_dehghani

For just as every plant knows how to be true to itself, so does every child. We should value and trust their unique humanity, and teach them to value and trust it themselves. With humanization as our guide, teachers can give students a strong foundation of self-acceptance, one that is essential for a fruitful life.


But this foundational lesson comes with another— as one starts to recognize the inherent worth of their humanity as a matter of simply being alive, one also begins to realize that every other human is equally as worthy, as a matter of simply being alive. This knowledge is at the root of all those community-building activities we do to deepen our students’ sense of respect and justice. Teachers are engaging in the work of humanization on many fronts, even when they aren’t aware of it. Imagine what we can do when we are.


unsplash.com/@nate_dumlao

Doesn’t naming humanization in your life make your heart flower open a bit? Me, too. Profound insights like that are kind of Paulo Freire’s specialty, and I’ll let you know if their magic ever really wears off. By framing liberation as our legacy, he tapped into something that is both intimate and universal at once, something very human.

Humanization is a fitting term for that force fueling us ever onwards in this quest for liberation, and critical educators are committed to keeping that fight for freedom at the center of their work. In order to be part of this movement, you’ll need to reflect on what humanization looks like, perhaps in that hidden hollow of your imagination. In the Critical Pedagogy Primer, scholar Joe Kincheloe explains how developing your visionary skills in this way will benefit you in the classroom.


With this larger vision in mind...educators are empowered to identify the insidious forces that subvert the success of particular students. This ability is not generally found in typical educational practice.

Kincheloe, 2008 p. 7


To become a critical pedagogue, first you must forge a comprehensive understanding of liberty because, as Kincheloe notes, that vision of what freedom could be is what allows us to recognize those things in reality that diverge us from its path. And that recognition leads us to the next step on the road to becoming a humanizing teacher, the development of critical sight.

 

Seeing & Analyzing Oppressive Power


unsplash.com/@priscilladupreez

So, you've leaned on the doorframe and longed for your classroom to be a garden of freedom— check. Now it's time to begin identifying instances when reality does not meet that standard of liberation, and that begins with a discussion of humanization's counterpart, dehumanization.

This dark side of power manifests itself in societal forces that quash any natural outgrowth of humanization. Instead of allowing people to flourish in their freest forms, oppression attempts to rip out expressions of humanity by their roots.


unsplash.com/@kxvn_lx

A person can be stifled, in ways both big and small, on the basis of their sex, race, class, language, gender, religion, heritage, ability— the list goes on and on. And it is one we are quite familiar with, for we would not know our longing for liberation so intimately if it wasn't for our constant struggle against that onslaught of oppression. Those -isms are so commonplace that we often forget they are not guaranteed by the laws of nature; the grim reality is that racism, sexism, and classism are all man-made.


They are manifestations of power, wielded by people and moving through the world in dehumanizing ways. Since individuals can oppress one another by utilizing these power dynamics, those familiar -isms can also become baked into our society's institutions by people who establish enforceable laws, regulatory guidelines, and even unspoken rules.



Understanding how dehumanization is perpetuated by dominating powers moving through the world is central to critical pedagogy; for the sake of a flourishing garden, one must get to the heart of that manufactured winter and the suffering it causes. Joe Kincheloe contends that any educator who wants their vision of liberation to manifest in the real world as justice must gain knowledge of social contexts greater than the classroom.

unsplash.com/@framebuffer

To develop a sense of critical sight, you must learn to contrast the image you've cultivated of the good with your awareness of the bad.


The more you understand humanization as a concept and construct that vision of freedom in your mind, the more you will be able to see the invisible powers of domination weaving their way into your reality. This critical sight will allow you to locate the fingerprints of dehumanization, and paired with your knowledge of injustice, you will ultimately be able to trace them back to their oppressive source.


The classroom garden is the ideal place for you as a teacher to begin cultivating your capacity for critical sight, by learning to identify when the life in your care is being crushed under the heel of dehumanization. Kincheloe argues that teachers will "learn to see anew, to discern the role of values and power in knowledges originally presented as innocent. With their 3-D glasses, teachers who grasp these theoretical constructs can interpret and make meanings around the complex interaction of theory and practice." Therefore, critical sight will empower you to take up the highest calling for a gardener of children, to be a conservationist of humanity.


Learning to recognize all the different forms of dehumanization is essential, but to be a critical educator, the work cannot simply end with understanding. Indigenous scholar Sandy Grande explains where that comprehension must take us—

critical pedagogy aims to understand, reveal, and disrupt the mechanisms of oppression imposed by the established order, suturing the processes and aims of education to emancipatory goals.

Grande, 2004 p. 21


Once you develop an awareness of how repression manifests itself in your classroom, you cannot keep it to yourself. Grande asserts that since the true objectives of education are rooted in human freedom, it becomes the duty of the watchful educator to expose any forces that work against that intent, including those that are perpetuated by the schools themselves.


unsplash.com/@brookecagle


As a critical educator, your allegiance is to liberty alone, not to any system that engages in dehumanizing practices.


That's right, my friends. Now, you have theoretical grounds to resist those forces of dehumanization in your classroom. This is what I needed in my garden all those years ago, although I didn't know it. Back then, I had felt the invisible forces of oppression moving around me, but I did not know how to articulate the phenomenon on my own. Critical pedagogy gifts me, not only with the language to understand and articulate the forces overtaking our schools, but also with the justification that empowers me to take action against them each day.

 

Transforming the World

Ah, inhale that sweet inspiration, drifting in on the educational breeze. It does not smell of shallow encouragement, intended only to comfort but never sustain you. Instead, the air is rich with an earthy scent, one that reminds you that there is much work to be done.


Sandy Grande taught us that once critical pedagogues have an understanding of the human suffering around them, they must work first to reveal that oppression and then disrupt it. And that feels right, it sounds good... but what does all that look like? Luckily, Paulo Freire has some ideas. He argued that just as humanization is an inherent part of the human experience, so is our perspective as historical beings, creatures who have a natural capacity to discuss their past and present in an attempt to collectively construct their future. Freire believed that when we use the human gift of dialogue to share our knowledge with one other, we are participating in the great calling of humanity itself— the call to change the world.


unsplash.com/@thealmani

Or in the words of Freire himself, "to speak a true word is to transform the world."


Freire, 1970 p. 87


But surely this is just a philosophical musing, you say. This could not honestly be a central tenet of a social theory that is rooted in reality! Oh boy, does critical pedagogy have some surprises in store for you, my friend; the first of which will teach you that knowledge grounded in the human experience is as real as it gets. And while Freire's sentiment may come across as a platitude, it is actually speaking to something at the center of what it means to be human, something very real, yet currently without exact scientific explanation— language.



For while the capacity for language is one of those basic building blocks of human nature, even Noam Chomsky will tell you that scientists still know very little about it. On one hand, much about language is as mysterious as human life itself. Science does not yet have answers to questions like, "Why is it here? Where did it come from? How did it begin?" On the other hand, language is simply another ability, like the sense of sight, one in our body that we just naturally tap into. Chomsky equates our phase of language development to puberty— at a certain stage, the body just kicks into gear to develop naturally.


unsplash.com/@insungyoon

No one teaches us how to see, and no one teaches us to speak either, not really. Humans just naturally learn to express themselves through language, long before they ever attend a class on the subject. Through the educational process of human existence, we learn to use the words we have to express ourselves to the fullest degree that we want, all without a syllabus. And this is not only how we develop our language skills; we use all of our human abilities in this way, to the extent that they are helping us in our endless endeavor to tweak our reality, little by little. In that sense, language is just another medium through which humans create change in their world.


But Freire specifically chose language as the key to transformation because it unlocks our historical nature. Language provides access to both the lessons of the past and the ideas about the future, allowing us the unique, human opportunity to make informed choices in the present.

The potential for creating revolutionary change inherent in language can be harnessed through dialogue, one of the most powerful resources in the critical educator's toolkit. But dialogue is so much more than just a method for managing one's classroom effectively; it becomes a kind of lifestyle, an approach to others that engages them in meaningful conversations so as to both strengthen one's mission of liberation and to clarify it.


The only way dialogue can cultivate the fruits of true freedom is if you enter this shared space of language with confidence and humility, a unique balance we as conversational creatures were destined to hold. Informed by your critical understanding of humanization, you can be secure that the human force alive within you is worthy, individual, and just trying to bloom like everyone else's. This awareness should ground you in the same, equally deserving place as the rest of us, but with your own singular set of intelligences, abilities, and perspectives to bring to our collective goal of blossoming. You and all you have to offer are part of a great legacy, so speak up, for freedom's sake!

But you must not become overconfident and forget that fundamental humility piece; listening is just as essential to human nature as speaking. We each have chosen to cultivate certain types of intelligences, and for all the knowledge you have, there is so much more you don't. And that's okay— it's just the human condition. So open yourself up and be humbled by all the botanical wonders grown from the rich knowledge of the people around you.


unsplash.com/@littil_kuppi

Dialogue also offers a unique opportunity to take the budding ideas from the garden of your imagination and bring them out into the sunshine.


As you step out of your mind and cross the threshold into reality, in this new light, it is often difficult to unearth the correct words to communicate your thoughts to others. Only through dialogue can you continue to attune the fruits of your imagination to the real world environment, by allowing others to help clarify your homegrown truths. Their outside perspective may provide just the nourishment your thoughts needed to flourish in a completely new way, and you'll find yourself being enriched by an ever expanding world of human ideas. Keep that up, and the little green grotto in your mind will soon be bursting with life! But all that potential for transformation is not meant to be contained behind the door of your imagination for long; it's waiting for you to turn that doorknob and take action.


Dialogue is one of human nature's greatest mechanisms, a kind of conversational collider. Massive amounts of language streams through its machinery, each word saturated with atoms of potential transformation. Designed to cause those particles to collide, dialogue plays a major role in sparking kinetic change in the real world. Paulo Freire maintained that only by sparking language's aptitude for action can dialogue be used for its purpose in the pursuit of humanization—


When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter... It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action.

Freire, 1970 p. 87

unsplash.com/@anniespratt

All meaningful conversations are linked to actions that matter, actions that transform the world. But how can you know which actions to take? Freire is not going offer you exact answers on where to go next, simply because he trusts that engaging in true dialogue will lead you to them.


In its most authentic form, dialogue will discuss the present condition with the aim of changing that current reality in ways both big and small; if this is not the aim of the conversation, the people involved are disconnecting from their humanity. Dialogue will be most effective when all parties are working from a vision of humanization and utilizing their sense of critical sight.


With a deep, Freirean trust in the people, including yourself, you can feel secure that no matter how effective the chosen action turns out to be, if it was democratic then it was true. True, because it was the manifestation of genuine human instinct towards freedom, an authentic engagement in our great legacy of liberation.


If you use dialogue for its natural purpose of transformation, humanity will bloom wherever you step. You will discover truly meaningful ways to use your time, to use your space, to use your life.


And while everyone's contribution matters in this democratic pursuit of humanization, educators occupy a unique space in the movement, and it gives them the power to transform the world in a revolutionary way. You have the great opportunity to take the fruits of your labor as a critical pedagogue, your cultivated senses of imagination, sight, and transformation, and share them with your students. The freedom you offer them may be the key to the greatest possible discovery they could come across in the green grotto of their mind— true, human liberation.

 

Cultivating Critical Ability in Others


Education is one of the most powerful ways to transform the world. I know, I know— I'm preaching to the choir here, but the fact that teaching is largely overlooked and undervalued in the modern world just goes to show how many people still need to understand its true worth. We've got some teaching to do about teaching, y'all. Because, of course, not only do we engage in the fundamental work of helping young people develop their sense of self-worth and spirit of cooperation, we also cultivate in them the other necessary skills to live a life of meaning in our society. We are shaping generations of human lives as they are developing their consciousness in this world. The importance of our great responsibility should not be understated, yet we are surrounded by a discourse that downplays the work of teachers constantly.


unsplash.com/@dangngockha

Critical pedagogues argue this is because every institution with the power to create and sustain discourse on a great scale has people at the top benefitting from the current conditions of reality, people who do not want transformation to be a real option. But transforming the present to make room for more freedom is simply what humans do, and any attempt to suppress that instinct for liberation is oppression, plain and simple. In the way we have our society organized, education is a powerful institution like any other, with people at the top benefitting from its current state. And according to critical theorists, the current state of education is not aligned with learning's true purpose of humanization. In their present form, schools are not moving us towards a future of greater freedom.


If schools truly had a trajectory towards liberty, they would equip students for adult life with subjects like reading and science, but also with what lies at the heart of the human experience: the senses of imagination, sight, & transformation.


unsplash.com/@harrycunnningham1

The ability to construct a vision of humanization, to see the invisible movements of power streaming around us, to dialogue meaningfully with one another, and to transform the world, little by little, towards a future of freedom— these are the skills we want to pass on to the next generation. It is their birthright as human beings.


We were born to engage each one of those amazing capacities within us; we've just forgotten how. As Paulo Freire reminds us, if ideas are not in the language, in the discourse of a people, they are not being acted upon or maintained. Our natural human abilities to critically imagine, see the invisible, and transform the world are lost traditions. But education can be the institution that restores the lost parts of humanity to our community. Schools can be where Freire's vision of humanization takes root, and critical pedagogy can be our compass, for it points us always towards emancipation—


This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that oppression will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade.

Freire, 1970 p. 48


By giving students the opportunity in your classroom to contrast the oppression they face in their daily lives with the vision of humanization they work to cultivate, Freire argues that you will spark dialogue and other manifestations of action that will bring us all one step closer to freedom.


unsplash.com/@elijahhenderson

So, how will the critical values of imagination, sight, and transformation grow in your classroom garden?


In what ways can you cultivate your students' sense of identity and show them how to value one another on a deep human level? When can you squeeze in some room for simply imagining? How can you incorporate true dialogue into your unique teaching approach? What connections can you make between the curriculum and the lives of your students, and what frameworks can you offer them to make sense of their world? All those questions lead us our greatest challenge as educators— How can we teach our students to use all their knowledge and abilities to create a world in which they all can flourish?


Critical pedagogy is where creativity and transformational change intersect; with these questions guiding us, the possibilities to make a meaningful difference are truly endless. And likely just reading through that short list sparked particles of potential within you, planting seeds of electrifying ideas that I trust you'll allow to manifest in meaningful ways when they're ripe. But in all the excitement, do not forget to take deep breaths, to fill your lungs with that earthy scent on the breeze, to remind you of the work required for all that beauty to bloom.


Pulling dehumanization out by the roots in all aspects of education will take a revolutionary overhaul, a seemingly impossible task. But what's so new about teachers conquering the impossible, anyway? The impossible has been part of our routine since our first day on the job. But it's more than that. The impossible is what called us to this work in the first place— if you listen carefully, you'll catch the notes of the impossible in the tune of that red-breasted robin in your mind. The impossible is just part of that great call to change the world.


unsplash.com/@noahbuscher

People will try and tell you that all this Freirean talk of revolution and liberation is fanatical, but it just isn't. History tells us so.


Like every human before him, Paulo Freire longed to change and revolutionize the world he knew, just like every human since. Revolution isn't new or extremist- it's just the human condition to transform in action, something that becomes clear the more you study lessons from history. What is considered radical by many today was just an expected part of the fight for freedom in the past, but those facts are often (rather conveniently) left out of the discourse.


If you consider it radical to work towards further human liberation, then you must acknowledge the radical roots of the United States, founded by a people struggling for their freedom and equality.


unsplash.com/@anniespratt

If critical pedagogy and its ideals are radical, then so is the great American philosopher at the top of every syllabus of each education course in the country: John Dewey. Considered to be a critical pedagogue even though he was born a century before the movement was founded, Dewey was one of the greatest philosophers during the twentieth century. His approach was founded on the belief that democracy was more than just a form of government; it was an entire way of life, one with liberation at the center. According to Dewey, it was the job of education to sustain this nucleus of liberty—


Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.


The vision of humanization he imagined and worked towards was one where "free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality." Dewey knew in order for that image of liberation to manifest in real life, society must be organized around democracy. Only when the power of the government is in the hands of all the people can it to be wielded to build that ideal world of equality. Not only must educators believe that this far-off vision is possible, but according to Dewey, we must actually prioritize the realization of this vision by advancing the ideals of equality and freedom in our classrooms—


The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education.

Dewey, 1916.

It is your job as an educator to push the bounds of freedom in your classroom towards a world of further liberation. Do not be discouraged when you are told that your vision is too far-fetched, too idealistic, or too radical; John Dewey would say that just means you're doing something right. But he'd also remind you to follow the tenets of critical pedagogy and allow that ideal to blossom from your imagination and actually manifest in your classroom. The rebirth of democracy in this generation like all the generations before it will require action be taken; domination is not dismantled otherwise.


So do not hold onto your vision of the good, merely to comfort yourself. Let it spur you onwards towards authentic action and true transformation, towards a revolution of humanization.



Even though he wrote in the 1920's, long after the Revolutionary War had been won, John Dewey knew that revolution in this country was far from over, for this was not yet the land of equal opportunity from his vision. And since we find ourselves reaching that same conclusion today, we must identify the forces of dehumanization keeping us from that ideal and revolutionize the systems they hide within. Dewey believed that education was at the heart of this humanizing uprising, saying—


Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things that existed earlier.

This is what it means to be an educator: Imagine what a 'better condition' looks like, identify what does not match that condition, transform that condition into a better one. Do this all in dialogue with your community, and teach your students to do the same. This type of critical education will provide your students not only with the freedom to explore that world of learning in their imaginations, but also the cultivation to wield their unique abilities to manifest the botanical wonders from their minds in ways that humanize the world.

 
unsplash.com/@icons8

As you work to protect your classroom garden from the forces of dehumanization that have not permitted you and your students the freedom to flourish, you will learn techniques for life that you can pass on to those young learners.


This is the educational process of their birthright, for every human is destined to join in this great legacy of learning. Viewing education in this way, as a purely human manifestation with a distinct human purpose is what critical pedagogy wants you to do, not just with schools, but with every aspect of our society.


Now is the time to restore our institutions to their most humane form, so that only the meaningful remains. This revolution of restoration must begin with education, which means it starts in our classrooms.


The ideas blossoming in the minds of today will be the ones springing up at our feet in the world tomorrow. The world is ours to cultivate with all kinds of humanizing flora and fauna, but we need to learn how. Through critical pedagogy, humanity can bloom.

 

References:

Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy & Education. ch. 7

Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. p. 43, 87,

Grande, Sandy. 2004. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social & Political Thought. p. 21

Kincheloe, Joe. 2008. Critical Pedagogy Primer. p. 7, 8


Cover photo: unsplash.com/@courtneymcook


Comments


bottom of page