handbook of public pedagogy

List One
A non-exhaustive list of books I vividly remember from childhood:
Anne of Green Gables. Bridge to Terabithia. Little Women. The Narnia Chronicles. The Secret Garden. The Lorax. A Wrinkle in Time. The Lord of the Rings. A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Where the Red Fern Grows. A Little Princess. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Yearling. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank. Little House on the Prairie.

List Two
The ones out of those I haven't ever reread as an adult because even thinking about them makes me sniffle quietly to myself and need a bowl of ice cream as cold but yummy comfort:
Bridge to Terabithia. Where the Red Fern Grows. The Yearling.

List Three
The ones that I reread as an adult and didn't get angry at:
The Lorax. A Wrinkle in Time.

As you can see, that's a short list. Especially when you consider that if I made List One longer, List Three wouldn't change much. It's sort of mind-boggling that as a mixed-race kid living in a suburb of Pittsburgh and going to inner-city schools, I managed to identify with Anne and Jo and Alice and Lucy and Sara and Laura, but somehow I did it.

In "Problematizing 'Public Pedagogy' in Educational Research," Glenn C. Savage critiques the way that others, particularly Henry Giroux, theorize in what Savage labels an "enveloping negativity," where they perceive popular culture/public pedagogy as an overwhelming, universalizing, all-encompassing force that act to maintain and perpetuate dominant ideological discourses (109). Savage argues that this stance ignores the existence of resistance to those discourses and posits power as an above-down force which must be opposed, rather than something possessed in varying measures by many that ebbs and flows.

Although Savage does not directly reference Freire at any point, some of the critique he levels against Giroux is similar to part of my contention with Freire: There is an implication that within formal education lies the potential for bringing its students to the "right" way of thinking so that they can resist the dominant discourse.

The primary thrust of Savage's piece seems to be that both literally the term "public pedagogy" and the concepts that some theorists have tied to that term are not helpful for authentic analysis, nor are ideas of emancipating "individuals from the repressive pangs of 'public pedagogy' and everyday life" (113). This argument is taken up and expanded by Carmen Luke in "Introduction: Feminisms and Pedagogies of Everyday Life," as well as by Robin Redmon Wright in "Unmasking Hegemony with The Avengers." Both Luke and Wright emphasize the importance of avoiding the search for a unifying principle, an idea that Elisabeth Hayes and James Paul Gee also address in their discussion of "Public Pedagogy Through Video Games," where they consider what critical thinking really means. Hayes and Gee go on to define it as "gaining the tools to analyze what they are learning in terms of 'interests' and the distribution of 'social goods" (191). My attempt here is to try to mediate between these views, and that attempt is still in progress.

While the idea that there is a "right way" of thinking that I am to disseminate unto my students so that they may see the light and thereby become free is one I withdraw from, I'm not sure that I can fully agree with these critiques, either. Savage's argument seems to be one of semantics, to a significant degree; "public pedagogy," as indicated by this very volume, has been defined in a number of ways by a number of people, and not all of those definitions presume the existence of the powerful oppressor and the impotent oppressed. What terms he would prefer to use is not made entirely apparent by his essay, and it would have benefited from a clearer distinction between his objection to terms versus his objection to concepts.

Luke, Wright, and Hayes/Gee all seem to posit the presence of fundamentally resistant texts within popular culture and resistive acts by people with regard to such texts, however, and this I think is questionable in much the same way that Savage problematizes Giroux. Just as the idea of mass culture as a monolithic entity experienced by all in the same coercive way is too simplistic, so too is the presumption that it is possible for something created within and as part of popular culture to be wholly free from dominant ideology. For example, Wright notes in passing "the indisputable fact that Honor Blackman," who played Cathy Gale on The Avengers, "is a very beautiful woman," and seems to feel that this relates to the impact of presenting a character who refused to conform to gender roles (140). However, Wright never goes on to explore what it means if these shows that are texts of resistance nonetheless maintain a demand for feminine beauty.

On a related note, if we consider Hayes and Gee's definition, that seems to leave very open the possibility that critical thinking may well lead to the continued-but-now-deliberate support of hegemony. To clarify what I mean by this: I absolutely believe that it is in the best interests of nearly all members of society to oppose oppression and destroy hegemony. However, if this were an easy conclusion to come to, then more people would come to it. What makes it difficult is that our entire social structure and society is built around maintaining hegemonic dominance, so it requires significant effort for people to see such dominance as anything other than normal and acceptable. Thus, while Hayes and Gee may be correct in that becoming a producer puts a person in a position to consider the distribution of social goods, if being a producer necessarily led to a critical consciousness, capitalism would make resistance to domination less likely, in contrast to most theories of social justice.

Perhaps the real issue is with our desire to find the answer. According to Savage, Giroux paints all corporate activity and mass culture as the wrong, while Wright and others are very willing to see any resistance as wholly opposed to hegemonic dominance, and both views seem to be questing for a solid answer as to how we can define dominance versus resistance, as though they are two mutually exclusive items and cannot exist in the same places—an odd approach for any work in a volume titled The Handbook of Public Pedagogy, which implies a number of contradictions and consistently-debated territories in its very premise.

discussion of pedagogy of the oppressed

Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire

In his introduction to Freire's seminal work, Donaldo Macedo remarks upon the omission of Freire's work from the curricula of the majority of educational programs in United States institutions, charging that the omission is due to the "'academic selective selection' of bodies of knowledge" (16). The institution of higher education in the United States tends to promote the furthering of institutionalization, not the questioning of social institutions; as such, a work like Freire's is fundamentally antithetical to its purposes. Freire's argument is that education is either normative, acting to reinforce the social structure that maintains a state of oppressors and oppressed, or transformative, helping people come to the state of critical consciousness necessary to change the world. The majority of the book consists of his explanation of how revolutionary leaders (i.e., teachers) can appropriately engage with the people to help them reach critical consciousness.

If Freire's main points were Facebook statuses, I'd "like" them. A lot. I'd probably become a fan, if Facebook hadn't decided that liking something and being a fan of something were the same thing; as it is, I officially like Paulo Freire. Freire's explanation of the mindset of the oppressor is one of the clearest I have ever encountered: "Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to [the oppressors] like oppression…For them, to be is to have" and "the oppressors cannot perceive that if having is a condition of being, it is a necessary condition for all women and men" (57-58). While Freire was writing about conditions in Brazil, as he engaged in literacy work with Brazilian peasants, this explanation resonates in the contemporary United States, as the privileged argue against universal health care—indeed, as they argue against any measures designed to provide the oppressed any modicum of what they themselves would never agree to go without.

The denouncement Freire provides of the "banking model" of education, in which students are the passive recipients of knowledge who arrive empty-headed to be filled with facts imparted by the teacher, is integral to a concept of education as liberatory. Education in the United States seems to move further and further away from that concept; rather than perceiving education as helping students become able to engage in a process of critical inquiry about themselves, their society, and the very education they participate in, education becomes a way to train students how to take their place in the world. An example: "Tracking" students from kindergarten through high school, where based upon an "objective" evaluation of their abilities which is itself constructed by standards based upon the normalization of privilege and inequality, some students are encouraged to go to college while others are trained (rather than educated) to take up a role in the workforce. Standardized tests measure how well students are retaining the knowledge poured into their heads like Jell-o into a mold, with no consideration of whether they can apply that knowledge, much less whether they are able to assess the ideological biases of the information provided.

All this is in direct contradiction to Freire's argument that true education requires teacher and students to engage in dialogue, to learn from each other and together create meaning. And so, we have a population wherein the majority of people do not vote…while those same people distrust the government they are choosing not to participate in. We have an educational system wherein teachers bemoan their students' apathy and mistrust…while those same teachers would never trust their students enough to engage in a dialogue with them about what they want to learn. Some might object to Freire's argument on the grounds that it is unabashedly ideological: His goal is a revolution. To that objection, I would point out that everything is ideological; the idea that knowledge, education, or teaching can be without ideology is a myth perpetrated to support a system in which the doctrine of the status quo is without bias, while any challenges to that doctrine are fanatical, reactionary, irrational, unrealistic, and most likely immoral.*

And yet, I have some points of hesitation about Freire's work.

First: For all that Freire argues for theory/praxis and reflection/action being meaningless without each other, he provides little in the way of concrete examples of how one would go about applying this pedagogy. I spent 31 pages in Chapter 4 wondering exactly what "decoding" and "codification" meant until we finally encountered an example. In the introduction, Macedo claims that the "call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one" (23). To put it simply, I disagree. For those questioning the use of words like "oppression" or "revolution," I tend to think that Macedo's suggestion is correct, but at many points, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is simultaneously repetitive and unclear. Do I think that Freire's pedagogy can be applied to any and every form of education? Yes. Absolutely. Does he provide a clear explanation of how that can be done? Not so much.

Second: I am uncomfortable with the emphasis on humans-as-different-from-nature and its accompanying implication that part of being human is controlling nature, that "a decisive attitude towards the world" results in "separation from and objectification of the world in order to transform it" (100). In some ways, it seems almost as though Freire not only accepts but actively argues for replacing the domination of persons with the domination of nature. While I certainly am not advocating for seeing the world or nature as conscious, and as something that lacks consciousness, it does not require care and respect for personhood in the way that humanity must, I am reluctant to support any proposal for absolute objectification of that which is living, both on moral and on practical grounds (as the result of objectification of and control over the world has not been notably positive to date).

It is this second objection that is the stronger of my issues, because both that and the occasional implication that it is possible to guide others to a realization of objective reality make me somewhat dubious about whether the heart of Freire's theory is genuinely entirely oppositional. This may be more a problem of my interpretation or the translation from the original than a flaw in Freire's work, so to illustrate this, let me quote two passages which appear very close to each other.

Consider "If humankind produce social reality (which in the 'inversion of the praxis' turns back upon them and conditions them), then transforming that reality is an historical task, a task for humanity," versus, "Just as objective social reality exists not by chance, but as the product of human action, so it is not transformed by chance [emphasis mine]" (51). I have inverted the order of these sentences from Freire's text. The second sentence seems to me to be at best unclear and at worst directly contradictory to the first. If we produce social reality, then how can it be objective? It does not exist apart from us, and for each observer, it would appear different, would it not? It may be that "objective" is being used here in a sense that I am not correctly interpreting, but similar references to objectivity and reality appear several times in Freire's work, and each time, I wished that Freire would have chosen to explain in more depth what he means by "reality" in this context or how ideas of objective reality fit into his overall framework.

* Subsidizing farmers, corporations, and military contractors is capitalism. Ensuring that people don't starve is socialism. Maintaining highways and police departments is capitalism. Improving public transportation options is catering to those who are too lazy to work and get a car. White people are just people—they're the majority. Brown people are people of color, people with a race, people who need to be explained—they're the minority (even though there are far more brown people in the world than white people). "Men" means people. "Women" means women.

of games and learning

A few weeks ago, I sent a panel proposal in to CCCCs with a couple of other people on video games and learning.

Right now, I'm doing training for TypeWell, which basically involves unlearning everything I've ever done in typing since I first took keyboarding in fourth grade.

A bunch of short words are abbreviated to one letter, and you leave the vowels out of long words. This is surprisingly difficult; I'm learning that I do not in fact have an innate grasp of what consonants are in words like "superintendent" or "department." On average, I type around 100 wpm. Currently, I need to type 3 sets of 20 sentences at 96 wpm with fewer than five errors per set.

I am failing miserably.

This makes me unhappy. I don't cope well with failure.

The more I do this, though, the more I think about my proposal. It is entirely possible that CCCC's response to our proposal will be some polite version of "die in a fire kthxbye." These things happen. But I'm going to stick with this. I think it's important.

Here's the short version: Most people who look at gaming in connection to pedagogy are trying to figure out how to use gaming in the classroom. Those who are looking at what gaming generally teaches us about how we learn (e.g., James Gee) are mostly looking at "hardcore" games (e.g., WoW, GTA4, or CoD)--basically, the games that have a steep learning curve and require a bunch of hours to complete. Casual games, on the other hand, are supposed to be easy to learn and easy to play (e.g., Bejeweled, Geometry Wars, or Canabalt).

The thing is, casual games are crazy addictive. How many posts do you see every day from your Facebook friends playing Farmville or Family Feud? Probably a looooot--so many you might start wondering if anyone works during the day anymore. And unlike Farmville or Family Feud, some of them require a very high level of skill. Playing is easy. Winning...not so much.

Think about Tetris, one of the most addictive games ever made and one of the most popular; it's been on almost every game console and computer system since its release in 1985, and knockoff versions abound on the internet. The rules are incredibly simple, but that doesn't mean it's an easy game. Similarly, Trials HD, my game of choice for the last year or so, is really, really addictive.

Like I intend to spend 10 minutes playing before I go to bed and it's two hours later before I put down the controller addictive.

Like I get so involved my palms sweat and I end up shaking after a long run addictive.

Like I yell at the TV and swear at myself for screwing up and still keep saying, "I'll just try this one more time" addictive.

So what makes Trials HD something I play voluntarily, whereas despite the common themes of yelling, swearing, and sweaty palms, I will literally go scrub my toilet to put off having to do TypeWell training?

Well.

Here are three reasons.

1.) When I die in Trials, I explode spectacularly. It's kind of satisfying, in a bizarre way. If you're gonna go out, you might as well do it with a bang, right?

2.) If I screw up in Trials, I can curse, hit the back button, and restart the whole level. In the end, I have to do it perfectly all the way through for the gold medal, so why waste my time if I've already screwed up?

3.) Competition. Everyone's at least a little competitive. In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that I'm not everyone. I want to win. Some people say that it's not whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game. Those people are people who lose. Don't get me wrong: I'd never cheat. Because if you cheat, then you lose the right to talk smack to the losers, and that's an integral part of winning.

The leaderboards on Trials let me see exactly how close I am to beating my friends, and watching my name lag behind anyone else's (because second place is the first loser) gives me motivation like you wouldn't believe.

TypeWell? It has none of that. None. When I screw up, I get annoyingly patronized by a computer elf named Kyp (I am not making this up; trust me, when I make things up, there are usually zombies, aliens, or at least desserts involved). If I screw up, I still have to finish out the set of sentences even though I know I've already lost. I don't have competition: It's just me and Kyp. I fail or I get a checkmark. A checkmark. Not a gold medal. Not an achievement. Not a glorious gloating opportunity.

I just get to move on to the next lesson.

Pedagogical tool fail.

Now, if you'll excuse me...I have some scores to beat.