Critical
Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts by Peter McLaren examines:
the importance of theory, critical pedagogy and the social construction of
knowledge, forms of knowledge, class, culture, dominant culture, subordinate
culture, and subculture, cultural forms, hegemony, ideology, prejudice, etc. He
does an incredible job of bringing to light the major concepts of critical pedagogy.
Like listed above, he breaks this down into categories and does an incredible
job of explaining his beliefs. Ideology is the one category of these terms that
stood out to me. I found it intriguing how he brought to light how ideology
permeates all of social life. I agree with his statement. So much of what we do
as educators can be directly or indirectly be linked to our ideology or as he puts
it, the ideology we have is a result of our culture upbringing. McLaren, towards
the end of this category, goes on to pose a few questions for his readers. These
questions are for teachers and they are not simple questions. He wants the
teacher to ask the why question, why do we teach this way or that way? Why are
we following this way of thinking? In the end, it all boils down to: our ideology.
McLaren wants educators not to be afraid of asking
questions. Just because we (teachers) have been teaching a certain way for many
years and every other teacher we knows has too, this doesn't mean we shouldn't question why we are doing these certain practices. The teacher needs to
open themselves up to the reality that many of these teaching practices are not
carved in stone, but are, in reality, socially constructed. Here I agree with
McLaren wholeheartedly—teachers need to be critical thinkers. No teaching
practice should be taken for granted. I know that—as a future educator—I want
to question every teaching practice and ask the why question. I have always
been interested with asking why. Therefore, this article was somewhat of a
dense read because it had lots of information that made me stop and think deeply.
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