A Trojan Horse in Our School Houses?
Ethnic Studies or Liberated Ethnic Studies?
Is either usefully educational?
Recently a Minnesota legislator touted a new ethnic studies curriculum that would “empower students to be agents of positive change for an equitable future.”
How did education in the US come to mean that there should be such a very specific outcome? This is far from the usual vague ‘good citizen’ outcome.
This advocates that education in the US should result in students becoming agents of change. This thinking began with Paulo Freire’s approach to education which linked education to action for change. Called critical pedagogy it led to interpretations that became increasingly structured to ever narrower ends.
Education was to be designed to promote “critical consciousness” — “the ability to recognize and understand racialized oppressive social and political conditions and to act to change those conditions.”
Freire failed to distinguish the role of the teacher from that of the student. Although awareness and problem posing are part of his pedagogy - in his pedagogy both are used to determine an outcome of what the student should become — an agent for change.
Contrast this to how Caleb Gattegno’s pedagogy describes the teaching role and its impact on students. “ It is a teacher’s responsibility to create situations and challenges that invite students to use their innate learning powers to master academic subjects with the same verve and alacrity we all, as babies, display in our early learning. Essentially, if we teach ourselves everything we know, it follows that teachers should practice a pedagogy that directly supports the process. … Eschewing practices such as telling the students answers or, somewhat more subtly, controlling their responses with leading questions, teachers who subordinate their teaching to their students’ learning attend to the process of learning and leave the focus on outcomes where they belong, with the learner. “
When even the most harmonized ethnic studies program becomes a lightning rod for vitriol and controversy, and when state and local education boards are bombarded with pros and cons laced with dog whistles, it becomes difficult to see or decide what education in a democracy could be at its best. At its best, education empowers students to see their own abilities to learn and eschews a pre-determined outcome for what path a student chooses.
We do seek to achieve some predetermined outcomes given that students are spending days and years in schools. These include attitudes and habits that enhance individual thriving and as well - contributing to the common good.
NOTES
1 MN Womens Press, Developing the Ethnic Studies Curriculum; October 2023
2 Pedagogy of the Oppressed
3 UC’S PROPOSED ETHNIC STUDIES REQUIREMENT IS SERIOUSLY FLAWED. https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2022/06/30/ucs_proposed_ethnic_studies_requirement_will_indoctrinate_not_educate_110742.html
4 Biography of Dr. Caleb Gattegno. https://www.educationalsolutions.com/caleb-gattegno-biography#:~:text=Created%20dozens%20of%20revolutionary%20educational,Tangible%20Math%20for%20teaching%20mathematics
