subject: Critical Education Is Not A Unitary Phenomenon [print this page] The discourse of CP, however, is the discourse of liberation and hope; it is the discourse of liberation since it questions the legitimacy of accepted power relations and recognizes the necessity of going beyond arbitrary social constraints; it is also the discourse of hope since it provides the potential for marginalized groups to explore ways of changing the status quo and improve their social conditions. In applied linguistics, CP is an acknowledgement both of the socio-political implications of language teaching and at the same time the possibility of change for both students and teachers, two groups of people who are either left out of any serious Links Of London treatment of the profession or represented superficially detached from their real-life experiences. For these people, CP is liberating in the sense that it legitimizes the voices of practitioners and learners, and gives them scope to exercise power in their local context. At the same time, it can be viewed as the discourse of hope, since by taking the classroom as the point of departure, it helps the marginalized to explore ways of changing society for a better, more democratic life:
Critical education is not a unitary phenomenon. However, its major variants in K-I2 education in the UScritical literacy, critical pedagogy, and critical whole language practice ...are united on at least the following very general aim: to help students to read with and also to read against... critical literacy is not just about interrogating texts; it is also about 'real world realities' and the role of language, power and representation in injustice ... education for a democracy should not be about the development of products or even consumers, but about preparation for public citizenship, for civic agreement.
The conservative forces that control education and society at large have tried to keep critical ideas out of school curricula and classrooms. Coursebook contents and teaching methods have been cautiously selected to make sure that only socially refined topics are addressed. As a result, E IT has not been completely responsive to the demands made by a CP, and still language teaching is viewed mainly as a cognitive activity with few socio-political implications. Even when the social dimensions of language are acknowledged, the social reality of language learning and teaching is represented from a narrow perspective where social context is only treated as who is talking to whom about what. The complexity of the social conditions students and teachers find themselves in is not given serious consideration and some Links Of London Charms of the grim facts that are part of the human condition, such as poverty, disease, domestic violence, racial, or ethnic discrimination, are ignored. If education in general and ELT in particular are going to make a difference, then the totality of the experiences of learners needs to be addressed.
Language teachers can play a more active social role by including themes from the wider society in their classes, and by drawing the attention of their students to the way marginalized people feel or act, creating the context for positive action and a heightened awareness of the plight of those who are not us, but 'them' or 'others'. They can also incorporate themes from students' day-to-day lives to enable them to think about their situation and explore possibilities for change. The following sections include some suggestions as to how teachers can transform their classes into more critical settings.
