Critical Pedagogies: Agenda in the Classroom

 When I started reading Anne George's chapter titled "Critical Pedagogies: Dreaming of Democracy" in the book A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, I thought, "Well, I am not going to write about this chapter." But here I sit, compelled to write about this very chapter. Because some things unsettle you in a destructively good way, and you just have to flesh them out on the page. 

The annotations in the margins of my book read something like this:

• Whoa...
• How should I feel that what I suspected about some classrooms is being said outright?
• Should the left or the right be running an agenda in the classroom?
• LOVE THIS
• But we have to live in the world, not just the world of ideas.

Obviously, I feel conflicted, curious, enamored, suspicious, interested, and dismayed. So, I better start writing, so I can figure out what I think. 

I can recall at times the feeling in some classrooms that the instructor had an ideology that I was supposed to not just identify, but also approve and, to some degree, adopt as part of my personal philosophy. I feel conflicted about this. On one hand, some of the greatest personal growth I have experienced in my life came though confronting axis-shifting ideologies in the classroom--namely, TRUTH that I was not taught previously or perspectives I had not been given an opportunity to see before that course. I am grateful for those challenging shifts. One example is when I took an American history course that focused on the narrative of our history from the perspective of marginalized voices, and I realized that the history I was presented with in public education was incomplete at best and purposefully false at worst. It changed my perspective and, perhaps, my life. The concept of the "American dream" changed for me, the view I had of certain holidays shifted, I felt betrayed somehow (I still have not fully articulated that last sensation). And I am so grateful. But my professor for that course was French and did not really seem to have an "agenda." However, I also took a course in which the professor seemed overtly and aggressively opposed to anyone thinking the Bible had any value in the world, and that was not a positive experience. The Bible, whether one accepts it as a divine document or not, is a work of literature that has stood through the ages as an important text. We read Shakespeare, partially because of its timelessness and what we learn about human nature, so why do we need to throw out the Bible as a valuable text? The professor was obviously more aggressive toward students who argued for its value, especially those who seemed to value it highly. It was tense, and I didn't feel like it was a situation in which there could be trust in between the students and the professor. 

In the George chapter, she offers some questions that were uncomfortable for me: Is the goal to produce radical student activists? How might we understand student resistance to leftist critique? Can we create democratic classrooms within traditional institutions? (80) She then goes on to discuss what a democratic classroom can look like, the arguments for and against coming to the classroom with a political agenda, and whether or not it is even possible to have a cohesive political agenda that is all-encompassing and correct. It was almost like I had peeked behind the curtain, if I can use such an image. I suspected that there are times when I was in a class to be indoctrinated with a specific ideology, and this chapter verified that indeed, that may be the case and that it may have been on purpose. Huh. Why does that feel so, I don't know, bad to me?

George says, "Because language and thought are inextricably linked, language instruction becomes a key site where dominant ideology is reproduced--or disrupted" (78). I love this statement, and I agree. Perhaps that is why I think that my role as an instructor of composed word means that I need to come into it with high respect for the fact that we are doing important work, and I need to check my motivation. I connected most with George's quotation of Amy Lee: "'The aim,' Lee insists, 'is not a definitive end (actual action, political or otherwise), so much as the development of critical process' that shows students the constructed nature of their worlds" (86). I think this encompassed what I witnessed in my American history class. I was exposed to the constructed view of my world, presented a chance to challenge it, and left to decide what conclusions to draw and what action to take on my own. But, as a composition instructor, asking students to compose their thoughts on the page is an act. I will be asking them to articulate what they think and put that out in the world on paper, and that is an act. So, the weight of that sits on my consciousness. I want that act to be theirs, by conscious choice, not by pressure to agree with the view from where I sit. I want my students to look at the view from where other people sit, and then decide if that changes the view from where they sit, I suppose. 

I do not write this to disagree that activism is good, that students need to be exposed to the idea that their worldview has been constructed by their exposure to dominant views and culture, and that they should act differently when they have had a chance to think differently. But I don't want to make them think like me. I believe the left and the right must exist, as I believe the yin and yang must exist, constant and change must exist, tradition and destabilization must exist. I believe that if I go into the room with "no personal political agenda," but a pedagogical goal of exposure to ideas and autonomy to think and act, then the students will trust me and each other when the stakes are high and the discussion feels risky (90). I think and act in the world much better when I have the freedom to think and act for myself, with as complete a set of information as I can obtain. And when I know better, I try to do better, And I want to believe my students deserve that opportunity as well. 

What I have done in the post is, essentially, what I want my students to do: encounter information that unsettles them or intrigues them, and then have a chance to flesh out what they think about it on the page. Then maybe come back later and realize that they don't see it the way they did before, and revise--or, flesh it out again. Listen, think, write, grow, rinse, repeat. We will see what I think in a year...