Critical Pedagogy

In the film The Matrix, humanity is reduced to serving as an energy source for sentient machines. Being physically plugged into the machines, most people are completely unaware of the constructed illusions fed into their minds, which keeps them under control. Humans would be a threat to the machine world if they became unplugged and cognizant of how people were being used to serve machine interests that had no regard for their humanity, needs, or welfare. Becoming conscious of the domination and hegemony found in the everyday experiences and discourses in which people live—and working toward a more just society—is at the core of critical pedagogy. This entry presents a definition of critical pedagogy and describes its implications for activists, teachers, and students.

Although there is no one comprehensive definition, critical pedagogy refers to the theory and practice of teaching and learning that raises the learner's awareness or “critical” consciousness about the constructed surface reality that people assume is normal, natural, and makes common sense. The knowledge and information—with its accompanying values, beliefs, and perspectives—given in schools and everyday life is presented as objective and neutral, when scholars such as Beverly Gordon, Henry Giroux, and Peter McLaren state that these are social constructions rooted in power relations within society. Critical pedagogy asks questions about these power relations and the nature of school knowledge.

Critiquing societal conditions to demonstrate the need for social reform is not new. The goal of W. E. B. Du Bois's series of critical studies on the plight of the American Negro was to “serve science” and to “encourage and help social reform.” His work predates the 1920s beginnings of the Frankfurt school and critical theory, in which critical pedagogy has its origins. Critical theory focuses on ideology, consciousness, and culture in society. Emerging during the rise of the Nazis, critical theory was concerned with the study of a [Page 479]world becoming less free as people were being dominated and alienated by the daily social discourses, texts, conditions, and practices of their everyday lives. Critical pedagogy helps the learner identify the constraints and controls reified in daily life by questioning social ideas and values, how beliefs are organized to form reality, and the ways that people make sense of the conditions of their lives within this reality.