Volumizer

Migrating University: From Goldsmiths to Gatwick

14 -15th September 2007

Location: Tent on the back field, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK

No Detention, No Deportation!

No Borders in Education!

Freedom of Movement for All!

With reference to the previous blog, I shall be speaking at the following:

The Challenge of Critical Pedagogy

Friday 14 September 2007

Goldsmiths College, University of London

Panel 2

2.00-4.00

Glenn Rikowski

The Rikowski web site, The Flow of Ideas, is at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy (CP) questions the relationship between education and politics, between socio-political relations and pedagogical practices, in short:  the correspondence between power hierarchies in the social world and the hierarchies that mark and define educational institutions at large. Moreover it challenges the ubiquitous desire of policy makers for a non-politicized, neutral educational context, free of all social and cultural conflict. This kind of pedagogy calls for educators and learners to consciously problematize existing forms of curriculum, school policy, educational philosophies, and pedagogical traditions, while at the same time research their own circumstances and propose educational alternatives that reflect the needs and goals of their specific learning communities. Critical pedagogy is not a sole body of work, it has grown from a plurality of voices and it responds to a multiplicity of cultural and geographical situations. However, underneath it all, it aims to radically
democratize both educational sites and larger social formations.

In the last few years critical pedagogy has experience a peculiar destiny: on the one hand some of its exponents and practices have been institutionalized in both the academic curriculum and as "successful strategies" for fighting poverty in the spirit of "sustainable development"; on the other hand, some of its proponents and their concerns have been pushed aside from the current academic and political canon. The purpose of this session is to discuss the legacies of critical pedagogy a considerable number of years after Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Illich's Deschooling Society. If lately CP has been associated with the "problems and realities" of the underdeveloped world, we want to explore its significance for contemporary British society in the context of a mainstream debate on education that makes the dichotomy between inclusion and quality an almost insuperable one. We want to draw from scholars and practitioners with established expertise in multiculturalism and immigration, anti-racist practice, citizenship education, gender and feminism, adult education and post colonial education to asses the challenges and possibilities of critical pedagogy from New Cross to Mayfair and from Newcastle to Portsmouth in the context of a society increasingly aware of immigration, cultural and religious difference, immaterial labour, non-liberal conceptions of democracy and new social disparities.

Francisco Carballo, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Currently listening : Deadwing By Porcupine Tree Release date: 26 April, 2005

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