There are many
branches to critical pedagogy these days. The basic idea of
critical pedagogy is to help the learner develop the ability to question,
and challenge, the status
quo. This is quite different from the traditional (instructivist) way
of doing things, where you were expected to learn what the institution
said you should believe. Whether that institution was the school,
or the government, or your company.
I am horrified at
the number of times I hear people tell me about how they have taken their
companies Health and Safety training, and that therefore they know that
such-and-such a behaviour is OK. They have been victims of (bad)
instructivism. Examples include clear breaches of the DSE
regulations, ignoring trip hazards, very unsafe practices with ladders
and so on. What they have not
received is education.
To my mind, critical pedagogy is
all about education. You are not educated unless you look at all
the information you get passed to you with a critical eye. Sure, it
is easier to just accept what people tell you, but if you do I am afraid
you have abdicated the process of thought and become less conscious as a
result.
Watch the evening
news, and question what the reporters are saying. Often they will
contradict themselves in the space of one of their reports. More
often they will state some statistics, but not how significant they are,
or what the sample size was. They will frequently use ambiguous
language which is open to multiple interpretations.
