Can we trust learners to learn on their own?

Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach inspired by Marxist critical theory and other radical philosophies, which attempts to help students question and challenge posited "domination," and to undermine the beliefs and practices that are alleged to dominate. In other words, it is a theory and practice of helping students achieve "critical consciousness."

The goal of critical pedagogy is to challenge conservative, right-wing and traditionalist philosophies and politics. Critical pedagogy developed in the 1960s and '70s as a reaction amongst academics of an activist, radical left-wing inclination to the repeated failure of socialist governments around the world to deliver on their promises of economic equality. Critical pedagogic educator Ira Shor defines critical pedagogy as:

“Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional cliches, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. (Empowering Education, 129)”

In this tradition the teacher works to lead students to question ideologies and practices considered oppressive (including those at school), and encourage "liberatory" collective and individual responses to the actual conditions of their own lives.

In his article titled; The Standards of Critical Digital Pedagogy, Sam Hamilton makes a statement that “Educational standards limit the consciousness towards which critical pedagogy aims.” He continues to say that critical digital pedagogues at all levels of education must familiarize themselves with standards regarding Information and Communications Technology (ICT) literacy. Standards for ICT literacy represent a key component of cultural and political oppression with which all of our students must become critically conscious. I share the view of Paulo Freire which he published in his article Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he says that “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction.” This is amazing because it forces both teachers and students to redefine their roles so that they are not limited to be either bankers making knowledge deposits or empty bank vaults passively receiving those deposits.

This is clearly seen in The Independent Project, where eight students started a school-within-a-school that they ran themselves. This proved to their teachers and the whole world that kids can be trusted to learn on their own. The learners who started this project mention that the main reason they started this project was because school was simply not a happy place for them. Teachers were not inspiring them and were not pushing them to take initiative of their own education. They were tired of being boxed and categorised. The learners realised that if learning was to take place, they needed to make decisions about how they wanted to learn. Ted Sizer says that “Inspiration, hunger: these are the forces that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is create the most likely conditions for them to flourish and get them out of their way.” This is exactly what the teachers did when they allowed these learners to start this project. Educators need to make kids feel incharge of their education. Children want to learn, they have that desire and hunger to acquire information and our job as educators is to facilitate the process of learning. Hence, Technology-mediated self- directed distance learning should be implemented more. \instead of fearing the unknown, why not try something new seeing that the current system is failing us.