On February 14th we were asked to come up with ideas to create our ideal high school. Some of the dimensions we were asked to looked at and think critically about were curriculum, staff, teaching methods, and infrastructure. By brainstorming with other students and critiquing our current education system and being able to come up with innovative ways to change and improve the system, this activity worked as critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is the idea that we should be able to look at the flaws in our education system and think, and speak about ways that could improve the system and then take action in order to make a change.
During the activity we were able to reflect on the parts of the education system that we saw were not working for students. Being students made this much easier. While doing this activity this is one of the main points I really thought about. As students were are always immersed in the education system. It was so easy for us to see where the faults were and to come up with ideas that could improve our own learning. Students should have more input into their own education. However, we are usually among the last to be asked an opinion from when it comes to our own education. But as the activity continued I could tell that we definitely are the ones that should be asked about what needs to be changed. We were never short of ideas, in my group, of what could be changed or improved. The three of us in my group all happened to be in the same boat: we wanted to go into the field of teaching but our schooling had not helped us enough to be able to be competitive when applying to the program. One of our main points was that during our years in school we should be able to count volunteering towards a credit. This not only benefits the community but also creates a more well rounded student who has better credentials for their future.
When all the groups were finished and ready to put our ideas on the board it was incredible to see all of the ideas that people had come up with that we had not even considered. This really brought home the concept of critical pedagogy because we were able to look at and listen to other people's ideas on how we could change our education system and then were able to discuss the ideas and say how they might or might not work. This kind of dialogue is exactly what Freire was talking about. Freire made the statement, "Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which men and women transform the world" (Freire 2000, p88). Here's a debate that other students started online about something that they felt that the schools system should change!
One of the trends I noticed in the final product of our activity was that all of the groups ideas had something to do with furthering interaction within schools. One group came up with idea to have a round table-like atmosphere in the classroom to accommodate discussion rather than having some people's backs to others. One group look at the infrastructure of the building and created areas where students taking certain subjects could congregate and share ideas. Even our idea had this aspect of interaction. We came up with the idea of a suggestion tree, where students suggestions come into play in what they learn and how they learn it. This interaction between students and teachers needs to happen in order for the education system to work at its best, and student/student collaboration is also needed for it to work. No matter what we seemed to be looking at whether it be curriculum, staff, teaching methods, or infrastructure, there was a definite connection between all of them and a need for more interaction. This activity showed us that by collaborating our ideas into a web where we could see how all of our ideas could work together.
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