Possibilities or problems who's to say.

Abstract

Critical pedagogy is teaching which aims to help students identify and disrupt the social systems which perpetuate inequity. This essay details the experiences of a teacher, school, and community surrounding a critical pedagogy writing assignment for high school seniors. Although the assignment seemed engaging, it was met with resistance. Two significant and related problems surfaced from analysis of the assignment: 1) the teacher's lack of communication aggravated existing distrust between the schools and the community and 2) the African American community and the school proceeded to address the issue in a manner of mutual distrust, squelching what could have been a rich critical pedagogy inquiry.

Introduction: Trust and Critical Literacy

The issue of race is one that few teachers approach. Florio-Ruane et al. (2000) call issues such as this "hot-lava" topic--topics that evoke discomfort and suspicion and are difficult to talk about. And yet the work of opening up, examining, understanding, and challenging difficult issues such as race and class can and should be a component of education. Critical pedagogy is a way of teaching which places questioning and critiquing the inequitable structures and systems of society at the center of instruction.

Critical pedagogy classrooms invite students to construct personal meaning through purposeful talk about issues of social justice. Critical pedagogy teachers work to build trust and respect in the institutions their discourse examines while continuing to deeply examine the injustices perpetuated by these very institutions (Beck, 2005; Lankshear and McLaren, 1993). Through critical pedagogy, students develop critical literacy, which Ciardiello (2004) describes as "a set of literacy practices and civic competencies that help the learner understand that texts represent particular points of view while simultaneously silencing other views" (138). According to McLaren (2003) critical pedagogy

   Asks how and why knowledge gets constructed the way it does, and
   how and why some constructions of reality are legitimated and
   celebrated by the dominant culture while others clearly are
   not (p. 196).

Lewison, Flint, and Van Sluys (2002) synthesized critical pedagogy by describing four dimensions: The first, disrupting the commonplace, involves broadening the texts read in classrooms to include popular culture and media. Readers interrogate texts for their ideologies, the ways they position readers, and the ways language and texts are used to reproduce inequity. The second dimension, interrogating multiple view points, involves examining texts from a variety of social, political, economic, cultural, and other perspectives. Through critical pedagogy, individuals interpret texts and the world with a variety of lenses, and identify voices which may have been silenced or marginalized. The third dimension, focusing on sociopolitical issues, involves individuals' abilities to situate themselves, their experiences, and texts they encounter in larger social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Critical literacy is achieved as readers participate as active, empowered citizens. The fourth dimension, taking action and promoting social justice, is often seen as the ultimate goal of critical pedagogy. By understanding language and how it works, individuals help shift society in more just and egalitarian ways. The layered nature of inquiry inherent in critical pedagogy has participants examine complex incidences of injustice and marginalization by questioning power, defining problems, reflecting, taking action, and transforming (McLaughlin, 2004).

When teachers engage in critical pedagogy, they invite students to read, write, talk, research, and question a variety of social systems and the role they play in constructing inequality. Gregory Michie (1999) describes critical literacy assignments that he engaged in when he asked his eighth graders to examine episodes of talk shows such as Jerry Springer for the ways those shows purport to help people, but serve only to further exploit them. He used critical pedagogy when he taught his students the techniques of video making--how screen shots and audio and color and positioning work in ads and movies to construct positive and negative images. As the students made their own movies, they understood both the features of the genres and of filmmaking that skew representations of poor and minority communities.

Kim Huber (Leland, Harste, & Huber, 2005) engaged in critical pedagogy in her first grade classroom when she asked her students to read and respond to a variety of picture books which portray difficult and "hot-lava" issues such as homelessness, racism, the internment of Japanese Americans, and the civil rights movement. At first apprehensive that her students would not "get" the books or that they would find them disturbing, she actually noted many positive outcomes. She found that students were already grappling with many of these issues, that they were able to make complex inferences about the texts, and that their writing even improved. After a year of reading these texts, students began to see possibilities for taking action in their communities. Recently, a teacher in our community attempted to engage her students in critical pedagogy by having them explicitly examine the relationship between power and language through critique of three challenging words: nigga, bitch, and queer.

The Assignment and Its Rationale

In a small town in Mississippi, a high school teacher, Ms. Runnell, recently asked her class of high school seniors to read an essay by Yvonne Bynoe entitled The N-Word: We're Talking Out of Both Sides of Our Mouths (2001) which critiqued the use of the word "nigger" by African Americans. Ms. Runnell provided several prewriting and thinking prompts which asked students to focus on the essay's arguments, vocabulary, and audience. She also engaged her class in discussion about words and their power. After these activities, the students were given the following essay prompt about powerful words:

   Essay. Words like nigga, bitch, and queer are examples of words
   that originally carried a pejorative meaning but have been
   adopted by the very groups insulted by the term. Bynoe's essay
   offers the example of black Americans using the N-word. In
   defense of the use of these racist, sexist, homophobic terms,
   those adopting them argue they rob the word and their oppressors
   of their power if they can control the term themselves. In
   a short essay, explain whether you agree with such an argument,
   or [reject] the pejorative term. Focus on one of the terms
   mentioned above.

The assignment is an example of critical pedagogy because its ultimate aim is to examine the relationship between language and power, particularly power relationships which perpetuate inequity through the promulgation of ideology. Inequality, that is, unequal access to power, to capital, to resources, is in part maintained by the ideology of the dominant groups. Ideology, according to McLaren (2003), can be defined as "the production and representation of ideas, values, and beliefs and the manner in which they are expressed and lived out by both individuals and groups" (p 205). Critical pedagogy helps us to understand how ideology is shaped and defined our use of language. The words we use both reflect and perpetuate our understanding of the world, an understanding shaped by the dominant ideologies that govern our use of language. In other words, the words we have available to use and the ways we use them construct our very belief systems, and in turn, shape our value systems, our beliefs, and how we behave in the world.

Ms. Runnell's essay assignment asks students to examine the ideology of language in-use, and to understand and think critically about the ways in which groups of individuals attempt to disrupt the dominant ideology (the oppression of African Americans, gays, and women) by engaging in new language systems. Ms. Runnell was engaging in critical pedagogy because she was asking her students to think about language by asking who gets to define what words mean. Who gets to decide how words are used? Can the meanings of words be changed? Should they? Who stands to benefit and who to lose if we change the meanings of words like queer and bitch and nigger? In this way, the assignment was much more than a vocabulary lesson, but a step in challenging the discursive practices that perpetuate inequality. Except, Ms. Runnell never got to finish her lesson.

Results

Ms. Runnell's assignment may have been a step in working to understand how our social systems perpetuate division. Unfortunately, before this could happen, some members of the African American community heard of (but did not see) the assignment. According to newspaper reports, one of the students in Ms. Runnell's class told a youth leader at her church about the assignment. The youth leader, in turn, contacted the director of the community's Justice Coalition, an organization of African American leaders interested in making sure that African American citizens are treated equitably. The youth leader told the Justice Coalition's director what he had heard about the assignment, and together, they contacted the local chapter of the NAACP.

The president of the local NAACP, after hearing of the alleged assignment, scheduled a meeting with the teacher and the principal. It appeared the NAACP President did not have complete information or factual understanding of the assignment, since the paper quoted him as saying,

   The N-word was the main object of the assignment. The teacher
   pulled an article from the internet, written by an African
   American woman, pointing out the contradictory use of the
   term--how African Americans are offended when whites use it, but
   African Americans may use it freely among themselves. (Daily News,
   2004, para. 5).

According to newspaper accounts of the events, when these African American leaders attempted to address their concerns at the school, the principal's demeanor was one of distrust and perceived disrespect. According to the NAACP President, the school principal did not conduct the meeting professionally. The NAACP leader said, "The principal ignored us for half an hour, left us standing in the foyer. When he finally called us in, he didn't introduce himself, he pointed out who he knew and who he didn't know--pointing at each of us" (para. 7). Still, the meeting proceeded with conversation about the assignment.

The NAACP President was upset about the content of the assignment, stating, "... unless you have experts in the field doing it, if you're taking what I consider the most volatile word in the English language and throwing it around loosely, you can lose control" (para. 13). The NAACP president reported that when Ms. Runnell tried to defend herself or to engage in dialogue about the assignment with the NAACP representatives, the principal would not allow her to speak. She was told that she was only there to listen. At the end of the meeting, the teacher was required to abandon the assignment, to apologize to any students who may have been offended by the assignment, and to write a memo to be read in all classrooms explaining that the assignment was not intended to offend anyone.

Distrust Turned Possibility to Problem

Based on this chain of events, two problems were uncovered. First, the teacher's lack of communication to parents and the local community about the assignment aggravated existing aspects of a lack of regular parental communication and involvement in the schools. Ms. Runnell was caught in an already existing pattern of one-way communication between the school and families, particularly minority families, which serves to exacerbate distrust. Based on hearsay, community leaders and members so distrusted the dominant culture that they decided this was assignment would not be tolerated in the schools before they ever considered the pathways of trust such critical discourse might clear between two cultures. Had Ms. Runnell reached out to parents in the school community to explain her intent in the assignment before she distributed the work to students, the demise of the N-word assignment may not have occurred.

Community Opinions and Trust Issues

The opinions of the NACCP community leaders were supported by members of the African American community. African American community members reported in interviews that they had concerns about the assignment.

A 34-year-old, African American, male football coach told us, "The teacher was wrong for that. She might as well resign because she is going to get fired. Kids have no business writing about that." When asked why, the coach hesitated, and asked, "What color was the teacher?" Asked if that would matter, he paused, and replied, "No, it wouldn't make a difference what color the teacher was. The teacher was wrong. She should not have asked the students to write about that. We can and they can't. That's just how it is." This coach was more uncomfortable with the lesson because it was being taught by a white teacher.

A 63-year-old African American grandmother who had heard of the reported writing prompt through the news media commented that "It is an offensive word and should not be used in the schools. Sixteen and seventeen year old children are not capable of handling that word." She acknowledges that teens may use the n-word, "... but not in mixed company. They also use the 'F' word but that does not mean it is acceptable or appropriate. Some words are just inappropriate." Even if the point of the assignment was to explore and understand the word and its relationship to power, this grandmother was adamant, "That word has no place in the school. The teacher was wrong."

In spite of the presence of other pejorative terms, (queer, bitch) this assignment represented a racial issue, and was rejected or resisted as a misuse power by the dominant culture which typically establishes the meaning and use of words. Evidence to that end is clear in their "what color was the teacher" and "not in mixed company" statements. In the context of the state of Mississippi, these individuals' distinctions between the races may be legitimized. In 2005, school districts within the state still support separatist ideas during typical school activities. For example, although increasingly rare, some school districts in our state have separate proms for African American and Caucasian students, elect both an African American homecoming queen and a Caucasian homecoming queen, and have stipulations that if an African American student holds an elected position one year then a Caucasian student will hold the position the following year. In many of our communities, race continues to define and divide us.

The concept of resistance can help us to understand the opinions of this football coach and grandmother. Resistance theory contends that individuals reject, or resist, knowledge that would position them in positions of inequality (Giroux, 1981). Resistance theory also states that individuals often resist the very practices which challenge oppression and dominance. One means of resistance, as observed in this case, is to ignore or refuse to acknowledge discomforting issues. But perhaps the assignment was also met with such resistance because it asked students to challenge the very roots of knowledge and who constructs that knowledge. In essence, Ms. Runnell's assignment asked the students to understand that knowledge is relative, not absolute; that language is a construction; and that words shape reality. It asked the student to take charge over their use of language, and, in turn, their world.

Conclusion: The Possibility in Critical Pedagogy and Language

Ms. Runnell's assignment offered many possibilities. The assignment asked students to think, explore, and understand the power of language, and, more importantly, to challenge the dominant culture's definition, use, and misuse of words. However, the hot-lava topic of race evoked discomfort and suspicion from the community that Ms. Runnell apparently did not foresee. In this case, the silencing occurred before learners could even begin to understand complex critical issues under examination in the assignment. Contrary to the aims of critical literacy, students were unable to find voice, recognize barriers to power, or to even begin to cross borders of separation. Hopefully, the discomfort from the experience will not deter Ms. Runnell or others like her from engaging in such important critical literacy practices. One solution is for a teacher facing this type of critical literacy activity to engage the distrusting factions of the community in dialogue first. Reaching out to parents for their support before engaging in critical pedagogy might be a first necessary step. Clearly, students, teachers and others need to discuss issues of race if we are to experience further growth as a society. Growth is sometimes an uncomfortable process but the only way we can begin to grow is to take away the heat from "hot lava" topics by talking about them.

References

Beck, A. (2005) A place for critical literacy. V48 n5 p392-400 Feb 2005. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

Bynoe, Y. (2001). The n-word: We're talking out of both sides of our mouths. Originally posted at www.africana.com Retrieved March 10, 2005 from http://www.urbanthinktank.org/nword.cfm

Ciardiello, A. (2004). Democracy's young heroes: An instructional model of critical literacy practices, v58 n2 p138-147 Oct 2004. Reading Teacher.

Daily News. (2004). English class assignment at SHS elicits concern over racial issues. December 17, 2004.

Florio-Ruane, S., Raphael, T., Glazer, J., & McVee, M. (2000). Narrative, culture, and identity. In Hoffman, J. (Ed.) 50th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.

Giroux, H.A. (1981). Ideology, culture, and the process of schooling. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Lankshear, C. and McLaren, P. (1993). Critical literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern. Albany: SUNY Press.

Leland, C., Harste, J., Huber, K. (2005). Out of the box: Critical literacy in a first grade classroom. Language Arts 82 257-268.

Lewison, M., Flint, A. S., & Van Sluys, K. (2002). Taking on critical literacy: The journey of newcomers and novices. Language Arts 79 (5) 382-392.

McLaren, P. (2003). Life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

McLaughlin, M. (2004). Critical literacy as comprehension: Expanding reader response. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

Michie, G. (1999). Holler if you hear me: The education of a teacher and his students. New York: Teachers College Press.

Debra Lindsey Prince, Mississippi State University

Devon Brenner, Mississippi State University

Kay Brocato, Mississippi State University

Prince, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Educational Research, Brenner, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of reading, Brocato, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations.