Death of Critical Pedagogy by Passion
Yesterday I had a troubling experience in class. We had an introductory tutorial and I asked my students to introduce themselves. I asked three basic questions: "What is your name?", "Where do you come from and what is your educational history?" and lastly, "What are your passions? What do you love and hate most?"
The answers from students were often perennial and do not invoke surprise or query, except for the odd few who had a passion for snakes and toads as preferred pets. There were, however, two students who gave me alarming answers to the last question and invoked discomfort amongst a few others. The question of passion was met with: "I love God and I hate the Devil."
To most academics who are not (traditional) theologians, this answer to one's passions would evoke both alarm and danger. We understand that passion is quite an inexplicable phenomena. As such, it is an affectivity that is indeterminate in language and chaotic in its description. Passion is like an orgasm whereby the point of departure and the point of 'death' is imminent and it totally consumes an individual. At that moment of passion, the grammar of eroticism fails us and we are left with a 'feeling' that is unutterable, indescribable, incomprehensible, and undefinable. The problem with passion, as it is with its boon, is the force of consumption on subjectivity. In other words, one is so absorbed and exhausted by one's conviction, attention and fuelling of this 'feeling' that one has disabled critical thought on the subject matter.
Passions are not necessarily deter-minants to critical thought. They may act like woodchips to a bonfire of intellectual discovery. However, when that passion is laden with dogma, oppressed by bigotry, and sutured within canon and doctrine, it strikes an alarming discord for critical pedagogy. For those who 'Love God and hate the Devil', they unconditionally love the fantasy of metaphysics, leaving the material world to mythic notions of good and evil, and often than not, propogates the hegemony of religion. And I fear... I fear most for their passion of ignorance.
Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux, just to name two influential thinkers, have been at the frontline of critical pedagogy. The value of an anti-oppressive pedagogy is a dialogical process whereby the act of speaking is engaged with the freedom to resist and politicise. This act of subversion, deviance, and the un-silencing of abjection is immediately placed on a fragile plane of negotiation when dogmas and doctrines overrules a student's ability to think beyond epistemic constrictions such as conservatism and ideology.
Have I reason to fear? Have I reason to be alarmed? Have I now reason to set defences against this danger? Yes, yes, yes. I am not yet ready, but I must expedite my tactics because I see the debacle of hate that might emerge in a class full of students who seem too certain, too arrogant, and too ready for attack against another point of view. The fear is at once for the dogmatic who will learn nothing and challenge everything according to scripture; the fear is for the 'open-minded' who will pounce, tear and mutilate another's beliefs because they have yet to learn self-reflexivity. These fears are enough to chill the heat of my passion for pedagogy.
The answers from students were often perennial and do not invoke surprise or query, except for the odd few who had a passion for snakes and toads as preferred pets. There were, however, two students who gave me alarming answers to the last question and invoked discomfort amongst a few others. The question of passion was met with: "I love God and I hate the Devil."
To most academics who are not (traditional) theologians, this answer to one's passions would evoke both alarm and danger. We understand that passion is quite an inexplicable phenomena. As such, it is an affectivity that is indeterminate in language and chaotic in its description. Passion is like an orgasm whereby the point of departure and the point of 'death' is imminent and it totally consumes an individual. At that moment of passion, the grammar of eroticism fails us and we are left with a 'feeling' that is unutterable, indescribable, incomprehensible, and undefinable. The problem with passion, as it is with its boon, is the force of consumption on subjectivity. In other words, one is so absorbed and exhausted by one's conviction, attention and fuelling of this 'feeling' that one has disabled critical thought on the subject matter.
Passions are not necessarily deter-minants to critical thought. They may act like woodchips to a bonfire of intellectual discovery. However, when that passion is laden with dogma, oppressed by bigotry, and sutured within canon and doctrine, it strikes an alarming discord for critical pedagogy. For those who 'Love God and hate the Devil', they unconditionally love the fantasy of metaphysics, leaving the material world to mythic notions of good and evil, and often than not, propogates the hegemony of religion. And I fear... I fear most for their passion of ignorance.
Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux, just to name two influential thinkers, have been at the frontline of critical pedagogy. The value of an anti-oppressive pedagogy is a dialogical process whereby the act of speaking is engaged with the freedom to resist and politicise. This act of subversion, deviance, and the un-silencing of abjection is immediately placed on a fragile plane of negotiation when dogmas and doctrines overrules a student's ability to think beyond epistemic constrictions such as conservatism and ideology.
Have I reason to fear? Have I reason to be alarmed? Have I now reason to set defences against this danger? Yes, yes, yes. I am not yet ready, but I must expedite my tactics because I see the debacle of hate that might emerge in a class full of students who seem too certain, too arrogant, and too ready for attack against another point of view. The fear is at once for the dogmatic who will learn nothing and challenge everything according to scripture; the fear is for the 'open-minded' who will pounce, tear and mutilate another's beliefs because they have yet to learn self-reflexivity. These fears are enough to chill the heat of my passion for pedagogy.
posted by Insouciantfemme at 7:45 pm
1 comments
