What is Critical Pedagogy?

There is yet to be a consensus on who started critical pedagogy, however most people site Paulo Freire, a Brazillian educator, as the founder of critical pedagogy. Freire was known for his emancipatory methodologies teaching Brazillian farm workers and laborers to read. His approach to helping these people become literate was to begin with what they already know and to construct the curriculum around what his student felt they needed to know to facilitate their own liberation. Freire felt that traditional forms of education were ineffective in transforming oppressive social structures, in response to traditional education he coined the term "banking education" and he positioned his theory around education, "problem-posing education," as the antithesis to banking education. In his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire defines banking education as:

"education becoming the act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits that the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat (72)."

To the contrary, Freire suggest problem-posing education (read: critical pedagogy):

"In problem-posing education people develop the power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world, with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation (83)."

There are many educators who have contributed greatly to foundations of critical pedagogy and there are even more present day theorist and practicioners who are consistently developing new theories around the best ways to address injustice and promote equity in education through the use of critical pedagogy. The following are just a few of the foundational theorist who have deeply influenced my work and the work of so many others:

Paulo Freire, The Frankfurt School, bell hooks, Antonia Darder, Ira Shor, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux. Currently, some of the more influential people in the feild of critical pedagogy are, Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade, Ernest Morrell, Michelle Fine, Julio Cammarota, Pedro Noguera, Patrick Camagnian, Dr. K. Wayne Yang, just to name a few.

In Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell's book, "The art of Critical Pedagogy," they define Critical Pedagogues as educators who promote "education that is rooted in the existential experiences of marginalized peoples; that is centered in a critique of structural, economic, and racial oppression; that is focused on dialogue instead of a one-way transmission of knowledge; and that is structured to empower individuals and collectives as agents of social change (49)."

The following video is taken from the "Freire Project". This short 2 minutes video includes many of the foundational and contemporary theorists of critical pedagogy and describes what critical pedagogy is, why we need it, and some of the challenges critical pedagogues face.