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Join Date: Mar 2008
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liberation vs domination
Please let me know what you think of my essay and what changes you recommend.
A Radical Approach to Education
All education has an intention, a goal, which can only be political. Either it mystifies reality by rendering it impenetrable and obscure – which leads people to a blind march through incomprehensible labyrinths – or it unmasks the economic and social structures which are determining the relationships of exploitation and oppression among persons, knocking down labyrinths and allowing people to walk their own road. So we find ourselves confronted with a clear option: to educate for liberation or to educate for domination.
This is a quote Hooks used in her essay “Pedagogy and Political Commitment: A Comment” to open everyone’s eyes to the idea that to be fully educated one must experience education of liberation. It also argues against education of domination, which is the source of conformity and prevents the development of intellectual freedom and expression. On the other hand, education of liberation is the freedom to think critically and analytically and to recognize and understand cultured myths. Only through liberation can one free himself from the structures of domination: imperialism, racism, and class exploitation, and I agree with this radical approach of education of liberation.
A radical approach to education means to go to the root. When you experience education of liberation there is a dialog, a discussion. You discuss a topic very deeply, just as you are going to the root of it. The point of going to the root is so you have the knowledge of the topic needed to make your own decision. This is liberation because you are free from being brainwashed into thinking like others. My experience in education up until high school was education on domination. The teachers were only interested in teaching my peers and me straight from the book, so we could succeed academically. There was no discussion in class, the teachers just gave us the material and information we needed, and we did our best to get a good grade. The reason I think I experienced education of domination is that I went to a public school, and at most public schools the administration is afraid of education of liberation because they have to follow strict policies established by the school board and government.. At private schools the teachers have a lot of freedom in terms of deviating from what is normally expected and challenging students to think outside the structure of a narrow course of study. My English teacher’s class right now is completely education of liberation. He gives us a topic which we discuss very deeply. He asks many questions that make us think, but he never gives us the answers because we have to form our own.
Domination provides us with answers that we are supposed to believe without questioning. According to the quote from Hooks’ essay “leads people to a blind march through incomprehensible labyrinths.” What this means is that domination makes people believe something without really understanding it, or asking questions. Domination is all about being told something, while liberation is being asked something. In domination other people have control over you, but in liberation you have the control, and you have the answers.
The loss of control in education of domination is strongly illustrated in the short story, Expelled by John Cheever. It is about a prep school that is very conformative. “It was just a preparatory school trying to please the colleges” The headmaster doesn’t care about students unless they fit his image of an athlete or someone whole will be admitted to Harvard. The school’s priorities are not in line in real methods of education, they are more on the superficial side. For example they were more interested in the tower that everyone could see, instead of books that students could learn from. The speakers, that the school invited all said the same thing. Politicians always talked about how great our country is and never gave advice on how we could improve it. Sometimes education can be a painful experience, we are told about imperfections and people don’t like to think about that. Teachers at the prep school, such as Margaret Courtwright taught things just so they could get good grades, or do well on the SATs and get into a good college. “Her interpretation was the one accepted on college-board papers.”
The teachers at this prep school didn’t have any discussion when they taught, they dominated the students telling them what and how to think, this is how I would be getting taught if I still went to my old school. For example one of the teachers at my old school taught Algebra 2, and if you didn’t achieve your answer the exact same way that she did, she marked it wrong. Although the students at my old school were getting the right answers, they were not doing it exactly how she wanted, and this aggravated the teacher very much. At the prep school teachers would tell their classes that they would only answer questions that they thought were significant. This prevented the students from learning more that what was given to them.
The school did not seem like they wanted their students to learn ideas that didn’t agree with the school’s. On Veterans Day they invited a Colonel to come and talk. They expected him to glorify war because of all of the medals he had, but instead he told the ugly truth of war. Because the Colonel didn’t glorify war the administration didn’t want to invite him back. Another example of an attempt to achieve liberation was a history teacher, by the name of Laura Driscoll. She wasn’t as worried about the students memorizing dates as the other teachers were, and she also didn’t think much of America. The whole faculty loved America and because she didn’t she was fired. “They didn’t like people to disagree.”
Just like the Colonel and Laura, the main character Charles, a student at this same exclusive prep school is expelled for disagreeing. He felt uncomfortable and hypocritical trying to play the rules of the game at this school. He would not conform to others, being himself was his main priority. What Charles was missing out on was the opportunity to express himself as an individual with his own ideas. He was not interested in making high grades just to please the faculty or other individuals. His classes, teachers and peers were all conformed and did things that were very routine. Bored and unchallenged Charles flunked out of this school. Charles needed a new way of education while at the same time remaining free from conforming. His answer was the education of Liberation which creates dialog between the teacher, and the student, and sometimes even just in one person’s mind. It allows you to be yourself, make your own decisions, and have your own ideas. The education of Liberation requires Critical thinking, and Analytical Thinking. You look at a whole in order to make a judgment or you pull it apart, break it down, and look at it.
The education of liberation is what is taught in Toni Cade Bombara’s short story. A teacher takes her young students all of which are in the lower class to an expensive toy store. The students see the toys and are amazed that there are people who can actually buy these highly priced objects. This story illustrates the social faults of our country. The teacher gives this experience to the students to hopefully motivate the children to work harder to achieve this social lifestyle that many lower-class citizens feel they can’t reach. This teacher is giving them this experience so they are liberated to reach a new level. She wants to get them to ask themselves questions and formulate their own answers. This questioning and forming your own answers is the essence of education of liberation.
Bell Hooks wants people to question things, and create answers to those questions also. Although she sees another way. In Hooks’ essay Pedagogy and Political Commitment: A Comment she is very critical of our educational system. Many of the points that she makes are valid and I agree with. Her early years as a student she is reluctant to leave her black school. I believe that leaving this all black school was a form of liberation because now she isn’t influenced all by the same kind of people. She believe that the privileged white people dominate and oppress blacks. As an educator her goal is to create dialog with students and open their minds to be able to think analytically and critically. She seems to be a strong advocate for political change and wants to use the classroom to influence her students. A very significant quote from Hooks that gives a brief but complete expectation that she had of her class and wants from the whole world is, “the most important learning experience that could happen in our classroom was that students would learn to think critically and analytically, not just about the required books, but about the world they live in.”
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