Critical Literacy: The Radical Illiterate Returns

In my second blog, I shall introduce the profound impressions of Paulo Freire on my outlook on education, a beacon in the world of philosophy of education. The principles he carefully adumbrated have given the spark to innumerable teachers and learners in ways of developing the human mind and gaining experiences through the phenomenon of educational literacy. Through and through, Freire's educational philosophy exudes the humanism based on critique. In this way, as many have found and so have I, that education is a process which can truly invoke change, not only cognitively but intellectually. His principles have given voice to the voiceless. From my second reading of his text the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, my ideas are reinforced with his full vision.
I shall also examine Elborg's thought provoking ideas as he suggests the employment of Freirian pedagogy to the Library, in particular to what he terms Information literacy.
Finally I shall draw the implications and discuss how relevant the theory of critical pedagogy is to the field of Library Science. I still remain the radical illiterate as there is a lot to learn yet.
Freire applies important philosophical principles as the basis for his theory of critical pedagogy centred upon existentialism and phenomenology. For Freire, Education has a telos, namely freedom, what he calls 'liberation'. The pedagogy he propounds to underlie his philosophy of education is 'critical' by which he sees to make education in societies an important process of change. This process must be critical in order for the learner to understand the world and make meaning. The critical function of education based on transformational dialectics encompasses Sartre's theory of consciousness which Freire's terms the relationship between I and the Not-I. Thus in critical pedagogy 'otherness' is pivotal towards any educational transformation. The idea of otherness is a central plank in the critical philosophy of education which applies social-psychological principles, particularly social-interactional, to develop the learner's self-hood. Critical Literacy therefore implies the development of complex cognitive tools built within the educational pedagogy framework with social, psychological, cultural and philosophical perspectives and empathy.
Freire similarly suggests the combination of thought and action, philosophy and praxis as a basis of educational transformation. He calls the banking concept of education which limits learning through instrumentalist approaches in classrooms. It is a pedagogical paradigm which imposes ideas upon learners not allowing awareness and criticism to develop in the learner's minds. In the banking concept, ideology is covertly hidden within educational methodologies which leading to passivity and subtly laying it dormant in the learner's mind. Whereas critical pedagogy based on dialectical method allows the opportunity for critical engagement which leads to uncovering the ideology, questioning its basis and problematising it. The logical outcome of the application of the banking concept pedagogy is the systematic replication of dominant ideology of a particular group and its vested interests thereby re-establishing the political and cultural status quo in the wider society. This can be racial, cultural, ethnic, religious, economic or any ideology. Whereas the starting point for critical pedagogy is the understanding of the learner's ontology and historical situation, as well as her social and economic conditions. Understanding this, the teacher then leads the learner to seek authenticity and freedom. In the Aristotelean sense politics and the political world are realities which the critical pedagogy fully takes into account. Two important issues underpin the critical pedagogy. The function of criticism is fundamentally social and the role of culture is to create new subjectivity (Eagleton). Both inform the view of critical educational method.
The principles of critical pedagogy are highly relevant to the cultural environment of the Library, to which Elborg employs the term Information literacy. Libraries are not 'neutral cultural spaces' Elborg alleges rightly. He critically identifies the reductionist banking model of education with its sterile and passive universe of information and culture taken largely for granted leading to prescriptive approaches in several structures of the library's institutional hierarchy. The very structure of the library, its acquisition and storing of knowledge, cataloguing and classification, reference services and management suffer the passivity of learning through information.
Elborg calls for a new approach in the libraries moulded upon the principles of Freirian critical pedagogy. This approach demands the librarians to understand and employ these principles through 'extensive' knowledge of pedagogies, cultures and discourses of the communities of higher education, affirming the information seeker's historical background and ontology. This awareness would similarly be able to problematise the socio-cultural direction of the library and view its cultural and political roles. Hence it moves away from the prescriptive nature of seeking knowledge in the libraries to more engaged and critical modes.
Information literacy in this manner would thus provide epistemological and critical foundations for the central questions of technology, discourse, knowledge and identity of the community which lay at the heart of the library. Otherwise, the banking model of Information literacy would divorce students as agents from their social, psychological, cultural and economic contexts. This is reflected in Howard Gardiner's theory of 'multiple intelligencies' which takes into account the cognitive standing of each learner, rather than privileging a group of students with a blanketed model of intelligence to compare others with.
The significance of literacy in society cannot be understated as Bourdieu attests that "students accrue cultural capital through education". But what literacy is prioritised, whose cultural capital becomes privileged in society and which are marginalised, lead to the pedagogical question whether a student's 'primary discourse' is affirmed or challenged and excluded by the educational institutions.
In the library, information also embodies a 'Grammatical Dimension' through its communication mode, i.e. the organisation and structure of information itself in such forms as MARC, and Subject Headings. It also therefore begs the question what information is privileged over others within seeking of knowledge through grammar and technology sophistry.
An added component to Information literacy could be the value of games which Gee claims provide the context for literacy practice and gameplay, through the immersion and interactive digital environment as a mode for achieving literacy. He suggests three key contexts in which video games act as a pedagogy for literacy through semantic domains where meaning can be situated and literacy can occur.
To sum up, I argue for espousing Freire's Critical pedagogy and Elborg's Information literacy, as a basis for the Reference Library, a place where knowledge is sought. Reference in the library is through and through a political act, where any small query has a significant educational validity in the learner's mind. It cannot be dismissed as a factual or negligible question. The questions anticipate a full-fledged critical pedagogy, taking into account the learner's stand point of her 'primary discourse'. It is a moment upon which Brunerian scaffolding takes place and leads on to the possibilities and presaging of further structuring. Libraries and reference in particular are places where a life long learning and love of knowledge can be inculcated. These can be later built for the seeking of the Good, the Beautiful and Truth. Reference can be a liberating moment.

1st Blog- The Illiterate Blogger Sets Out

This is a first attempt at a blog. My ignorance is my forte, quest for a meaningful world, my telos. Such levels of technological illiteracy does not pale nor damp my quest. Technology- which I have never used that extensively, has given me ample space of silence. Even without technology, not poorer have I been as the mind can never rest and it seeks to venture through distant horizons in order to open and reach them. If I cannot reach, atleast I tried. My eyes have gazed at the space above in the blue orb and stars. They have not been focused on to the deeper and darker space within the web. For my premier try at a blog, I ruminate upon how the social and the symbolic are constantly bridged, never do we as humans take the skewed view of one forsaking the other. From the lofty heights of the experience of oneself within one's place in the universe, to the rudimentary interactional social ground of day to day life, a vast bridge is intellectually spanned. Education is central to this. Within the spanning arc, meaning is not given but is sought, discovered and shared. No one can own or claim it, but we can create meaningfulness and share it. The giveness of meaning, is the ossification of ideology structured in the mind. To uproot the ideology would take the entire span of one's life, or perhaps never. Hence one can die in ignorance through the claims to ownership of meaning. To understand what is human, is to jettison all claims to meaning. From the radically-illiterate-itinerant in New York 2nd February 09