Talking Points 10

EMPOWERING EDUCATION: Critical Teaching for Social Change

Ira Shor

1) If the student's task is to memorize rules and existing knowledge, without questioning the subject matter or the learning process, their potential for critical thought and action will be restricted.

2) Not encouraging students to question knowledge, society, and experience tacitly endorses and supports the status quo.

3)Whose history and literature is taught and whose ignored? which groups are included and which left ouf of the reading list or text? From whose point of view is the past and present examined? Which themes are emphazized and which not? Is the curriculum balanced and multicultural, giving equal attention to men, women, minorities, and nonelite groups, or is traditionally male-oriented and Eurocentric? Do students read about Columbus from the point of view of the Arawak people he conquered or only form the point of view of the Europeans he led into conquest? Do science classes investigate the biochemistry of the students' lives, like the nutritional value of the school lunch or the potential toxins in the local air, water, and land, or do they only talk abstractly about photosynthesis?

Shor's article is powerful and achieved its goal by sparking a desire in me to flip the education of this country upside down. Im sick of never being taught about anything that happend in our history from both points of view. World War 2 is taught only from the Jewish or Allied forces point of view. Why? Im not saying I agree with the Nazi point of view but it would be beneficial to learn it, would it not? What about the American Revolution point of view from the English? Or, even the point of view of Blacks during the civil war and the fight to abolish slavery. We always here about these "heroic" whites who faught the rest of their race to get rights for slaves, but what about the slaves who were fighting for it, aren't their opinions and voices even more powerful? Why is history such a male-dominated, white point of view? Where is the female perspective, the "minority" perspective, the perspective of other cultures, religions, or even sexualities? Where is gay history in our history classes? Where is Harvey Milk? He's in a movie played by Sean Penn in the only medium "allowed" for the study of other's rights and history. History is a milk carton where 90% of the past is listed as missing in the picture on the back.