Liberationist teachers in my opinion, are trying to get
students to think outside of themselves. Learning about the world, how it
affects them and how they can have an effect on the world are important ideals
in a liberationist classroom. In the text by Fenstermacher, liberationists have
a goal to “free the mind,” which in my opinion is a noble goal. A liberationist
teacher would combine topics from multiple subjects in one lesson.
The problem that I think exists though, is that when only
one teacher out of 6 or 7 each year is trying to ‘free the minds’ of their
students, children will still be programmed to think in the traditional way. If
the liberationist style of teaching were to be truly effective in long term
goals, students would have to belong to a school where all teachers utilized
this method in some form or another. Mixed methods are always better in my
opinion. One specific teaching style to the extreme will either cause problems
or get boring.
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ReplyDeleteI think that the avoidance of programming is impossible. As bad as it might be to say that, children will pick up what they are used to.If teacher's all tried to teach to free the mind the students would all become acclimatized to the new approach and therefore programmed to think that way. I think a teacher can break through that initial programming, but I think it can also take its toll on the person the teacher is trying to teach. Looking at it from a biological standpoint, humans like to remain in a homeostatic state. Breaking through the programming would mean making waves in there homeostasis and when all else fails and things get hard they will most likely revert to what they know and is comfortable for them to. I also thing children are programmed on many levels. An education wide level is the one we spend the most talking about but it is true that the first day in a classroom the teacher sets the tone, students accept that and so out of the 7 classes they may have in a day, they will be programmed for different behavior in each one.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to being a German teacher just because I will have a chance to get the to think about creative language and I'd like to incorporate other subjects in the class because I want them to be able to discuss issues in the German language which, if any of my students ever go to Germany, they would need to know.