In the case of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I started to write it exactly at the beginning of 1968 - at the start of the second or third year of my exile. The social justice pedagogy or critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and theorist, was the platform from which critical theory found its voice (Freire, 1970). The feminist pursuit of social and political equality, social justice for all oppressed groups, and continuous validation of feminist knowledge are at once bound by and transforming critical and liberatory pedagogies (Brady, 2003).Ĭritical theory is based on the idea that oppression or disenfranchisement of a group or an individual occurs through externally imposed or internally imposed factors (Freire, 2000 Giroux, 1983). However, feminists are bound to a trajectory that has and will continue to engage in "a shattering of Western metanarratives" (Weiler, 2003, p. Weiler asserts that feminist interests are aligned with "the vision of social justice and transformation that underlies liberatory pedagogy" (2003, p.
Indeed, these tensions are evident in the socio-economic divisions that have come to characterize contemporary partisan politics in the U.S.A.įeminists are challenging the institutions and theories that uphold and defend the status quo, and they are also examining "the critical or liberatory pedagogies that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s" (Weiler, 2003, p. Although certainly not universal, there is an enduring social undercurrent that tolerates oppression when it benefits one class of people over another, particularly when the social majority identifies with or strives to become a member of the powerful group. Tacit agreement exists among powerful or influential contingents that their worldview is to be dominant. The single most profound aspect of these epistemological, social, and political changes is based in the ironic history of postmodernist movements: An oppressed group may not understand the roots of their disenfranchised position, nor be able to conceptualize ways to address what appears to be a normative condition. "We are living in a period of profound challenges to traditional Western epistemology and political theory" that are in evidence in every aspect of modern life, and that are especially profound in the field of education (Weiler, 2003).
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