Carrie’s TEBlog

After reading “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy,” I am a little unsure what I think about them. I think that they are good ideas which contain their own flaws. I truly liked critical pedagogy because it is more about taking action. It says that critical thinking is about finding a passion to search for reasons, truth, and understanding of the world, while critical pedagogy is about being able to interpret the world and willing to change it. To me, I think as teachers we should be teaching both but focusing on action. Someone who can only interpret the world and desires to do nothing more will not help society. Someone who desires to create change in power structures and so forth is what we need. As teachers we should be helping students see what is real, and how they can change it. I think this is a slightly hard thing to convey. Perhaps though if we promote using tools (i.e. books) that did not always promote one way of thinking, then we would begin to help uncover new things about the world for our students. Or if we can help students learn to explore and analyze things they are told, we can help them learn to question the world. I think with teaching we just need to instill in the students passion. They need to learn passion to get where they want to go no matter where it is. Perhaps by believing in a theory and truly living it will inspire others to want to believe in it as well. I think in general that is what teachers are, models for the students to learn from. If we believe in our students and that change can happen, then the students are way more likely to believe it too. I think critical thinking and critical pedagogy should be used as models for teachers to perform for their students.