Shor's Education is Politics

This week post is based on an article called Education is Politics by Ira Shor. This week post is gonna be different from what I normally post. I’m going to jot down some quotes and about it. Wow…I’m so excited…LOL…here we go now…

I. “For this empowering pedagogy, I will propose an agenda of values, each to be discussed in detail, which describe it as:

•                    Participatory

•                    Affective

•                    Problem-posing

•                    Situated

•                    Multicultural

•                    Dialogic

•                    Desocializing

•                    Democratic

•                    Researching

•                    Interdisciplinary

•                    Activist”

(pg.17)

Shor proposes a agenda to maintain a empowering pedagogy. While I agree with most of the described steps, I am not sure about the desocializing part of the agenda. From what I’ve learned, is to not fall into stereotypes and land somewhere in the social area of a classroom. I attempt to create a duel identity that can be used in and out of the classroom which allows for both educational and social happiness at once…

II. "In school and society, the lack of meaningful participation alienates workers, teachers, and students. This alienation lowers their productivity in class and on the job. I think of this lowered productivity as a performance strike, an unorganized mass refusal to perform well, an informal and unacknowledged strike." (pg.20)

As many can tell, I don’t like to talk in class and I think that participation isn’t the only way to determines students learning. I feel that group discussion is a good alternative, but there are other ways the students can show they are learning the subject. Everyone has a voice that should be heard but if a student is uncomfortable then they should have the time to warm up to the students and teacher.

III. “Situated, multicultural pedagogy increases the chance that students will feel ownership in their education and reduces the conditions that produce their alienation. In the case of women, minorities and  non-elite whites, who comprise the majority of students, democratic education should reflect their culture, conditions, needs, and history. Doing so will encourage their participation in intellectual study. But participation is a means, not an end, in this program for empowering education. There is a challenging goal to the participatory process I am suggesting: to discover the limits and resources for changing self and society.” (51)

Students that have a foreign language as their first language come into schools and already feel alienated because they don't speak the language that everyone else is speaking. If teachers bring the language into the classroom then the students wouldn't feel so alienated and they would feel welcomed and want to participate instead of not wanting to talk at all.

(Am I doing this type of post correctly? …Iunno…I’m in a rush to get to a family Easter dinner…DEUCES)

I don't like this article...it's weird