Before I started reading Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy, I thought it would be boring and hard to understand. Even though it was long, I enjoyed reading about the two literatures that have “shaped much of the writing in the educational foundations over the past two decades” (45). It was definitely interesting to read about how they were alike and different, and really made me think about what type is better to teach in a classroom.
After reading the article, I think that critical thinking is the best method to use in a classroom. In my opinion, students need to not only have the capacity and skills to seek reasons, truth, and evidence, but also the drive to seek them. Students can be smart and think critically without this drive, but the drive ultimately allows them to learn more. Furthermore, teaching students to think critically allows them to come to their own conclusions, which is a great skill to have. In a time when many students just think and do like their friends, teaching critical thinking allows them to come up with their own views about certain things.
While I think critical pedagogy has good intentions, I don’t think that it should be taught in a school setting. One of the reasons I believe this is because critical pedagogy teaches students to challenge and transform institutions, ideologies, and relations. In a school, this would be catastrophic. High school students already question adults and authoritative figures and think they know everything, so why teach them something that would make it worse? I understand that students need to be willing and able to act to change something that they don’t believe is just, but at this age, teenagers believe that a lot of things are unjust. Another reason I don’t believe in teaching critical pedagogy is that it “seems to come dangerously close to prejudging what conclusions must be” (54). Finally, critically pedagogy teaches students to think politically, and while this can be good, the school is not a setting in which this should be taught. Students should do this on their own time when they will not be affected by the opinions of other students.
Since I’m not a teacher yet, these opinions just apply to what I think right now. Perhaps when I am a teacher, my ideas about critical thinking and critical pedagogy will change, but for right now, I think that critical thinking is the better of the two to teach in school
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The Blue Blog » Blog Archive » Response to Amy Marsh’s Comments: Burbules and Berk
// Apr 3, 2006 at 10:04 am
[...] I have a few things to say in response to Amy Marsh’s comments on the Burbules and Berk reading about critical thinking and critical pedagogy. I, too, see critical thinking as a method that could have very positive results for students as they learn how to consider things from different perspectives and collect evidence to come to informed conclusions. However, I don’t think that critical thinking without critical pedagogy would be as beneficial to students, as the evaluation of evidence should go beyond just what is “true” or not. If we come to the conclusion in my classroom that minorities are still underrepresented in government, for example, I don’t think we should stop there. Instead, we should think about why this is and what institutional factors are at play. This is, as Amy says, thinking politically, and yes students will hear the opinions of the students around them, but isn’t that what life is like? Students already hear their parents talk about politics, and they probably hear their peers talk about it outside of the classroom, so any political conversation in the classroom won’t be the only influence on students. [...]