In the Classroom of the Critical Mind
“Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue, there is no communication, and without communication, there can be no true education….For the truly humanist educator and the authentic revolutionary, the object of action is the reality to be transformed by them together with other men – not other men themselves. The oppressors are the ones who act upon men to indoctrinate them and adjust them to a reality which must remain untouched.”
– Paulo Freire, from Pedagogy of the Oppressed
“The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.”
– Allan Bloom, from The Closing of the American Mind
The controversial, enormously popular 1981 study by Harvard paleontologist Steven Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, puts forth a thesis of an educational system still largely predicated on antiquated notions of biological determinism – if no longer directly at work, its long fingers reach deep into the functional deployment of our curriculae to young people. It is a discussion at length about intelligence as a concept – one that draws into quick relief the continued prevalence of a notion of innate inferiority. In a parallel institutionalization to our social adoptions, we see in Gould what he refers to as the “fallacy of reification” (not dissimilar to Althusser or even Durkheimian adoptions of collective consensus) in the translation of abstract notions like IQ and other ability-gauging means into data collection on which policy can be built. This misuse and reliance upon questionable data is behind much of what troubles our schools – but what of the individual teachers? Is there no room, no hope?
How does this link up with the rhetoric of race and economic disadvantages? According to Jonathan Kozol, white parents are loathe to allow their sons and daughters to attend the same schools as the disadvantaged black children – in a story that reads like the fear of leprosy’s spread, Savage Inequalities posits these parents’ assumption of Gould’s predicate in their pockets, which are necessary to the upkeep of their own schools in their own districts, and that the school boards and so forth are paralyzed without their support. While the text’s oversimplification of the issue is duly noted, Kozol is in fact seconding Gould’s thesis, in so far as is it so widespread as to have reached the parents of other children in more well off homes. What is not covered is the loophole wherein the system does little to correct this mistake, an initiative which finds considerable scientific ground (as is desirable) in Gould’s analysis to counter this error. Kozol’s take on the situation depicts a beleaguered Chicago Panel on Public School Policy and Finance in a vain and desperate attempt to convince these hard headed parents otherwise, to no avail. He describes a situation in which these [read: evil!] white parents refuse to see the truth, so deep-seated is their innate discrimination. As he bemoans, “the truth is that few middle-class parents in Chicago, or in any other city, honestly believe this. They see the poorer children as a tide of mediocrity that threatens to engulf them. They are prepared to see those children get their schooling in a metal prefab in a junkyard rather than admit them to the beautiful new school erected for their own kids.”
From the Foundation and Center for Critical Thinking, a nonprofit predicated on this notion, we find the useful concepts of “egocentricity” and “sociocentricity,” which are, basically, other ways to explain to the lay person the processes by which he or she, even as a child, has begun to unwittingly (and perhaps unwillingly!) appropriate the hegemonic ideologies of his of her society. In my classroom, I have seen again and again the process of critical thinking bring my students around, of their own accord, to a new relationship with the “reality” of which they were so recently certain.
Because discussions are run on the grounds of open dialogue and ultimately subjective theory, the students are encouraged to counter any of my suggestions or beliefs as well as their own, and thereby in the process discover the flexibility of narrative, definition, and rhetoric. As they begin to recognize their own ability to manipulate this information they become increasingly cognizant of the tendency of the definitions with which they engage on a daily basis to shift for the functionality of various governing bodies, structures, laws, and individuals. Crucial to this are an above the board negotiation with our egocentric and sociocentric modes, which can often be a difficult process.
An engagement with critical discourse is one that releases the student from the processes by means of granting them the ability to recognize them. Of course this is not posed as the be-all-end-all solution to the issues as herein stated, and surely many of players in the thorough integration of these tendencies in our ideological self-narration are in fact critical thinkers, as well, but herein is posed merely a tool towards change. I contend that these slight adjustments in outlook have the potential to, in widespread application, trickle up as effectively as the other trickles down.
Freeing the discursive voice: stories and observations from the classroom
I’ve been developing and teaching a course over the past five semesters that focuses on critical reading and writing approaches – I refer to both the class and the process as “writing to learn” – and so it is. To serve as a little background, the majority of these students are in the sciences, and come from more countries and backgrounds than you can imagine. They come in with enormously different skill levels and attitudes, academic ideas, intentions, etc. And they demonstrate a healthy, at times near boiling level of indignation at their lot.
What the majority of these students share is a tendency towards hostility in the form of complacency regarding the education system they find themselves in. some find the issues they are currently facing are the continuation of those they have come to expect in primary and secondary public education in New York. Those not from the U.S. are contending with racial and class stereotypes both in their social, academic, and otherwise everyday lives that are often at odds with differences as experienced in their home countries. The level of education received in many of these countries (and the degrees of formality therein) are sometimes radically different than ours, in particular in our public system.
What I have come to recognize in this complacency is in large part a negation of the self, or, in the very least, a negation of an empowered self-image of the Student as Scholar. Scholarship has become the least of many of my students’ concerns – a usually accidental occurrence. Most of these students are fiercely committed to making good grades and being successful – but unfortunately they have been conditioned to differentiate between this and actually “learning” the material.
Many have become accustomed to classes in which they expect to learn nothing and go home and teach themselves (memorization style, forgotten soon after) … quite linked to this is the curricular reality in which there is little to no writing in many of these classes, despite much evidence that the act of writing in order to cement and explore concepts significantly increases both deeper understanding and retention of material, irregardless of discipline.
However, with increased focus on success and GPA (both for material/practical purposes such as future employment and maintenance of scholarships) the nose stays close to the grindstone, despite deep-seated resentment and feelings of impotence regarding the situation. Many of these students end up with the conception that they are individually less skilled, or that they “dislike” the act of scholarship, but without exception I have found that this is because few to none have been given the opportunity to reconceptualize the process, or to apply themselves to the task of thinking critically.
It often comes down to that. They are shocked, later, when we’ve broken down many of their barriers and misconceptions, to realize how little they were thinking – both in class as well as in their daily lives. Skills for reading and writing critically, (my secret goal all along) it turns out are powerful tools for empowerment in every avenue of their lives.
We do an exercise in which they are to think about complaints they have in the administration, curriculum, physical plant, etc. at CCNY. The point is that the constant aggravation of “it is always cold in the library” or “there is no WiFi in all of the NAC [bldg]” can lead to “WHY is it….” and that in response to this that they had critical, implementable ideas, that could be fielded to appropriate authorities and effect change.
In addition to this the students are given critical readings such as “What is a nation?” wherein culture, race, and nationality are put in perspective as social constructs necessary for bureaucracies and power to function, as well as those addressing contemporary education practices. We also read the New York Times, which less than 1% ever felt capable of previously. These new ways of thinking and new ideas cannot help but seep into their daily lives.
The students come to me explaining how their perceptions of other students, words, books, and themselves changes as a result. Rules for “technical” and other formal writing (the supposed point of the class) I argue can only follow. In the beginning there is resistance – at the end, with rare exception, hearty agreement.
A few anecdotes:
A Dominican student reports having watched a Spanish-language debate for the upcoming Presidential election with his family. After running up to me in the hallway to relate his revelation, he explains breathlessly: “And then! Professor, I considered our methods for critically evaluating what we hear…” This was a story of how, suddenly the rhetorical manipulation of the political speeches (another mid-semester discussion) became clear. He at once recognized this, realized what the group with which he had watched this event was consuming unquestionably, and saw: the illusion of words vs. intentions.
“I could understand what they wanted us to think they were saying, and realized what was being left out, and why they were focusing on these things. My family was getting excited and I stopped them and asked these critical questions and it totally changed everyone’s way of hearing the politicians. I can’t believe how many people must be hearing it the other way!”
A student from Trinidad explained how she was helping her young cousins with their schoolwork and taught them the critical writing “steps” I developed and teach the students to demystify long passages that seem difficult or complicated – even the youngest (a five year old) was listening, who later told his mother, reading the paper, to “cull and gather” in order to understand. [steps to setting aside main points and differentiating from factual bases].
Another student, from Yemen, employed the tripartite system I teach for visual presentations in another class – he felt so confident in the method that he included a poem he’d written both in Arabic and in translation, and presented and spoke the verses in front of a large audience. Earlier in the semester he would look at the floor and speak quietly.
Finding their voices is empowering beyond what they thought this class could do, and I am happy beyond my wildest dreams to be the conduit to these strong selves. Small victories! You need not change world hunger, as much as you might like to. But it is in these small steps, in the reality of immediate connection, in the fact of being there, that we can live in parallel to the superstructure, somehow not as contained by it in our ability to see its pulleys and gears.
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