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Radical Love handout (originally shared via the NCTE Connected Community website for the CCCC 2014 in Indianapolis)
Radical love is essential to countering the primary detriments to emancipatory education. These include the following, as shared across the three educational sites I draw from in my larger project, which are an urban research university, a private university with a religious affiliation, and a four-year art and design school:
—Adherence to grading policies, rather than negotiations contextualized to classroom practices as linked to true educational processes of human development rather than the empty accumulation of so-called skill sets and the arbitrary systems of evaluation which accompany them in schools. This is only becoming increasingly more difficult with the encroaching implementation of common core standards and other education deform efforts of those who Henry Giroux calls, in his recent book Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, the “plutocrat reformers.” As Giroux makes clear, “They have disinvested in critical education while reproducing notions of ‘common sense’ that incessantly replicate the basic values, ideas, and relations necessary to sustain the institutions of economic Darwinism [….] Pedagogies that unsettle common sense, make power accountable, and connect classroom knowledge to larger civic issues have become dangerous at all levels of schooling” (20).
—The critique-based education at the art and design school is supposedly amenable to grading across all the disciplines, and critique can serve as a vital component to feedback and human growth, but within the authoritarian framework of status-quo education, I feel it’s perhaps more often in service of the culture of grading or what Alfie Kohn has called the “tail of assessment” that “comes to wag the educational dog.” Critique that is not encouraged as part of a practice of radical love merely dehumanizes; however, critique as theorized and demonstrated to be part of a practice linking love to equality is rightly a discourse practice, a tool in this linkage. Critique that is not offered through acknowledgment of social struggle and for the wider intent of improving everyone’s conditions involved but only to pull out stylistic concerns and matters of form and taste is not critique at all.
—A fear of the values students actually place on reading and writing outside their narrowly defined fields holds sway at the private four-year institution, where 84 percent of students are either majors in the nursing program or one of a couple smaller health-related technical fields. Any pedagogy designed for teachers to question literacy practices with students was itself questioned, not only because of an administration that grew increasingly anxious over shrinking humanities majors but also because students themselves were highly resistant to classroom methods which strayed from lecture and quizzes of rote-learned body parts, essential building blocks in nursing, yes, but utterly devoid of social value if not also examined critically.
—The urban research university developed what I call a “Freirean-lite” pedagogy in which the framework of “aesthetic caring” appears to operate. I say “appears” because final concerns over form and academic rigor tended to prevail during assessment, but were challenged at each step along the way, from curriculum design committees to norming exercises for portfolio review to assessment meetings themselves, by seemingly caring instructors with little actual institutional authority who nonetheless contributed to a highly reflective culture.
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Kinds of pedagogical practices as informing and / or leading from a stance of radical love (certainly only the beginnings of a better, more inclusive list):
—Kathryn Valentine’s efforts on teaching plagiarism as “identity work” in which she focuses on acknowledging what comes to be called academic dishonesty in all its forms as simply other, differently valued, discourse practices which are then used to further distinguish and demonstrate the different social uses and values of all literate practices, rather than merely disposing of the offending body.
Valentine, Kathryn. “Plagiarism as Literacy Practice: Recognizing and Rethinking Ethicla
Binaries.” CCC 58 (2006): 89-109.
—Patrick Camangian’s work with autoethnographies as a “strategic pedagogical tool for students to examine the ways they experience and explain their identities—who they are, what they stand for, and why—and to recognize their racial, cultural, and gendered social relations” (183). Autoethnographies are distinct from the literacy narratives common in basic writing classes, which ask students to tell the story of their facility with reading and writing practices which, much like any autobiography then, does not “compel authors to foreground their experiences in relation to a larger social group” (Camangian 183) nor detail their relations with these powerful social forces (reading and writing).
Camangian, Patrick. “Starting with Self: Teaching Authoethnography to Forster Critically Caring
Literacies.” Research in the Teaching of English 45 (2010): 179-204.
****
Freire wrote that “Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 77-78). Approached honestly and consistently, dialogue creates within all classrooms the beginning of the new ontology, the way of teachers and students begin together in the educational process. I have used the handout “On Dialogue as Educational Practice,” taken from Paula Allman’s book Critical Education Against Global Capitalism, in all of my classes for several years to help begin the slow transformation of these social relations. On Dialogue as Educational Practice:
Freire says that dialogue is “the seal” of the transformed relations (“Education: Domestication or Liberation,” p. 21). It is also the vehicle through which the transformations take place. The best way to describe this particular form of dialogue is to say both what it is and what it is not. I will begin with the latter. It is not at all the same as a discussion, no matter how harmonious or amicable the discussion may be. Discussions require a leader or someone who is in charge of the process, and in educational contexts this is normally the teacher. In dialogue the process should be collectively led or controlled. In other words, the aim of dialogue is for the responsibilities of the leader to be shared by all members of the group, so that at all times they are mutually responsible both for their own and for everyone else’s learning. However, this does not happen automatically; it becomes a reality only as a part of the struggle for transformation. This is one of the main reasons why Freire distinguishes between teacher-learners and learner-teachers or, to use his exact and even more cumbersome terms, “educators-educatees” and “educatees-educators.” Both are required to reunite within themselves the internally related processes of teaching and learning—an internal relation forcibly ripped apart in conventional educational contexts. Nevertheless, the teacher-learner has always, at the point of initiation and any other point when necessary, the responsibility for making sure that the dialogue does not lapse into a distortion of the principles and aims the group is striving to achieve.
Discussions, although often harmonious, actually involve a sharing of monologues that often bear no relation to one another except that they address the same topic or question. Ideally, each person is supposed to be given the opportunity to state his or her ideas, answers, opinions or knowledge and questions as they pertain to the topic being discussed. When discussions are used as a teaching method, teachers try to ascertain the students’ current level of understanding or accumulated knowledge and also use this format to offer their knowledge and understanding to the students. They are responsible for the ordered and managed communication of monologues.
In dialogue, the members of the group share their thinking about the theme or issue that they are investigating or, alternatively, some “knowledge object” that has been selected in order to help the group members think critically about the theme or issue they are investigating. The “knowledge object” might come from a source external to the group, or it might be the result of a sub-group project or simply the knowledge that an individual is sharing with the group. However, this input is only the beginning of the learning, as is any “knowledge object” or “object focus” (these are interchangeable terms) that the group might consider. The dialogical exchange that takes place between at least two and usually many more members of the group is about investigating or exploring this knowledge—not simply a one-way, monological offering of someone’s knowledge to the group, as would be the case in discussion. In other words, it is not a matter of each person or several people simply stating what they think, but it involves taking the thinking of group members and also the thinking that is expressed in the “knowledge object,” as an object of collective focus, or reflection and concern and exploring why each person thinks as he or she does and where this thinking has come from (e.g., the historical and cultural context) and analyzing whether it can enable the group to understand the world more critically. As a consequence, thinking or knowledge is offered to the group so that it can be considered and critically scrutinized or problematized by the other members of the group. It is examined in terms of whether it deepens everyone’s understanding of what they are seeking to know—that is, some aspect related to the development of their critical understanding of reality. Knowledge, therefore, is offered for consideration so that the person who offers it can reconsider it with the help of others. To reiterate: already existing knowledge is always the beginning of the process of knowing—the development of deeper and more critical knowledge and sometimes even the creation of new knowledge. At times the original understanding may also be the end point of the process, but only after it has been subjected to the processes of problematization and co-investigation.
In this dialogical form of communication, the objective is to use the knowledge or thinking of each member of the group, together with the knowledge of people who are external to the group—that is, those who can offer expertise of a theoretical or practical nature—in order to investigate critically the theme or issue that is the real focus of the group’s attention. […] [B]ecause it has been acted upon and explicitly related to each person’s previous understandings as well as the theme being considered, it tends to be acquired at a deeper level and is thus more readily accessible for future use.
This form of dialogue is not the type of dialogue used in political negotiations. Therefore, it is not about reaching some form of highly compromised and often reluctant consensus. When decisions have to be made concerning, for example, the direction the group should take next, then dialogue is used to enable the group to reach a consensus that everyone is committed to and thus supports in all its dimensions. This often takes time, but it is time well spent because the process of reaching consensus is itself highly educational.
Dialogue, as I am describing it, is not easy to achieve. It is a process that must be struggled for on each occasion the group meets because the transformed relations that the group is trying to achieve will exist only in the learning group. Until society itself is transformed, dialogic communication and learning will remain counterhegemonic. […] As a consequence, the transformed relations of dialogue—the relations integral to this approach to critical education—must be recreated each time the group meets, and this involves the commitment and effort of each member of the group. In light of these difficulties, it is important to follow each learning dialogue with an evaluation dialogue or a period of reflection during which the “knowledge object” or “object focus” is the struggle to learn dialogically—that is, through the dialogue that has just taken place. Of course, this, too, is time consuming, but equally a valuable experience. […]
Dialogue, therefore, is a process of “knowing” and “being” differently. As a form of critical/revolutionary praxis, it is meant to offer a “glimpse” of some important aspects of revolutionary social transformation—an “abbreviated experience” of self and social transformation, the dialectic of self and social transformation within the specific context of the social relations of education.
by Paula Allman
—Adherence to grading policies, rather than negotiations contextualized to classroom practices as linked to true educational processes of human development rather than the empty accumulation of so-called skill sets and the arbitrary systems of evaluation which accompany them in schools. This is only becoming increasingly more difficult with the encroaching implementation of common core standards and other education deform efforts of those who Henry Giroux calls, in his recent book Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, the “plutocrat reformers.” As Giroux makes clear, “They have disinvested in critical education while reproducing notions of ‘common sense’ that incessantly replicate the basic values, ideas, and relations necessary to sustain the institutions of economic Darwinism [….] Pedagogies that unsettle common sense, make power accountable, and connect classroom knowledge to larger civic issues have become dangerous at all levels of schooling” (20).
—The critique-based education at the art and design school is supposedly amenable to grading across all the disciplines, and critique can serve as a vital component to feedback and human growth, but within the authoritarian framework of status-quo education, I feel it’s perhaps more often in service of the culture of grading or what Alfie Kohn has called the “tail of assessment” that “comes to wag the educational dog.” Critique that is not encouraged as part of a practice of radical love merely dehumanizes; however, critique as theorized and demonstrated to be part of a practice linking love to equality is rightly a discourse practice, a tool in this linkage. Critique that is not offered through acknowledgment of social struggle and for the wider intent of improving everyone’s conditions involved but only to pull out stylistic concerns and matters of form and taste is not critique at all.
—A fear of the values students actually place on reading and writing outside their narrowly defined fields holds sway at the private four-year institution, where 84 percent of students are either majors in the nursing program or one of a couple smaller health-related technical fields. Any pedagogy designed for teachers to question literacy practices with students was itself questioned, not only because of an administration that grew increasingly anxious over shrinking humanities majors but also because students themselves were highly resistant to classroom methods which strayed from lecture and quizzes of rote-learned body parts, essential building blocks in nursing, yes, but utterly devoid of social value if not also examined critically.
—The urban research university developed what I call a “Freirean-lite” pedagogy in which the framework of “aesthetic caring” appears to operate. I say “appears” because final concerns over form and academic rigor tended to prevail during assessment, but were challenged at each step along the way, from curriculum design committees to norming exercises for portfolio review to assessment meetings themselves, by seemingly caring instructors with little actual institutional authority who nonetheless contributed to a highly reflective culture.
****
Kinds of pedagogical practices as informing and / or leading from a stance of radical love (certainly only the beginnings of a better, more inclusive list):
—Kathryn Valentine’s efforts on teaching plagiarism as “identity work” in which she focuses on acknowledging what comes to be called academic dishonesty in all its forms as simply other, differently valued, discourse practices which are then used to further distinguish and demonstrate the different social uses and values of all literate practices, rather than merely disposing of the offending body.
Valentine, Kathryn. “Plagiarism as Literacy Practice: Recognizing and Rethinking Ethicla
Binaries.” CCC 58 (2006): 89-109.
—Patrick Camangian’s work with autoethnographies as a “strategic pedagogical tool for students to examine the ways they experience and explain their identities—who they are, what they stand for, and why—and to recognize their racial, cultural, and gendered social relations” (183). Autoethnographies are distinct from the literacy narratives common in basic writing classes, which ask students to tell the story of their facility with reading and writing practices which, much like any autobiography then, does not “compel authors to foreground their experiences in relation to a larger social group” (Camangian 183) nor detail their relations with these powerful social forces (reading and writing).
Camangian, Patrick. “Starting with Self: Teaching Authoethnography to Forster Critically Caring
Literacies.” Research in the Teaching of English 45 (2010): 179-204.
****
Freire wrote that “Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 77-78). Approached honestly and consistently, dialogue creates within all classrooms the beginning of the new ontology, the way of teachers and students begin together in the educational process. I have used the handout “On Dialogue as Educational Practice,” taken from Paula Allman’s book Critical Education Against Global Capitalism, in all of my classes for several years to help begin the slow transformation of these social relations. On Dialogue as Educational Practice:
Freire says that dialogue is “the seal” of the transformed relations (“Education: Domestication or Liberation,” p. 21). It is also the vehicle through which the transformations take place. The best way to describe this particular form of dialogue is to say both what it is and what it is not. I will begin with the latter. It is not at all the same as a discussion, no matter how harmonious or amicable the discussion may be. Discussions require a leader or someone who is in charge of the process, and in educational contexts this is normally the teacher. In dialogue the process should be collectively led or controlled. In other words, the aim of dialogue is for the responsibilities of the leader to be shared by all members of the group, so that at all times they are mutually responsible both for their own and for everyone else’s learning. However, this does not happen automatically; it becomes a reality only as a part of the struggle for transformation. This is one of the main reasons why Freire distinguishes between teacher-learners and learner-teachers or, to use his exact and even more cumbersome terms, “educators-educatees” and “educatees-educators.” Both are required to reunite within themselves the internally related processes of teaching and learning—an internal relation forcibly ripped apart in conventional educational contexts. Nevertheless, the teacher-learner has always, at the point of initiation and any other point when necessary, the responsibility for making sure that the dialogue does not lapse into a distortion of the principles and aims the group is striving to achieve.
Discussions, although often harmonious, actually involve a sharing of monologues that often bear no relation to one another except that they address the same topic or question. Ideally, each person is supposed to be given the opportunity to state his or her ideas, answers, opinions or knowledge and questions as they pertain to the topic being discussed. When discussions are used as a teaching method, teachers try to ascertain the students’ current level of understanding or accumulated knowledge and also use this format to offer their knowledge and understanding to the students. They are responsible for the ordered and managed communication of monologues.
In dialogue, the members of the group share their thinking about the theme or issue that they are investigating or, alternatively, some “knowledge object” that has been selected in order to help the group members think critically about the theme or issue they are investigating. The “knowledge object” might come from a source external to the group, or it might be the result of a sub-group project or simply the knowledge that an individual is sharing with the group. However, this input is only the beginning of the learning, as is any “knowledge object” or “object focus” (these are interchangeable terms) that the group might consider. The dialogical exchange that takes place between at least two and usually many more members of the group is about investigating or exploring this knowledge—not simply a one-way, monological offering of someone’s knowledge to the group, as would be the case in discussion. In other words, it is not a matter of each person or several people simply stating what they think, but it involves taking the thinking of group members and also the thinking that is expressed in the “knowledge object,” as an object of collective focus, or reflection and concern and exploring why each person thinks as he or she does and where this thinking has come from (e.g., the historical and cultural context) and analyzing whether it can enable the group to understand the world more critically. As a consequence, thinking or knowledge is offered to the group so that it can be considered and critically scrutinized or problematized by the other members of the group. It is examined in terms of whether it deepens everyone’s understanding of what they are seeking to know—that is, some aspect related to the development of their critical understanding of reality. Knowledge, therefore, is offered for consideration so that the person who offers it can reconsider it with the help of others. To reiterate: already existing knowledge is always the beginning of the process of knowing—the development of deeper and more critical knowledge and sometimes even the creation of new knowledge. At times the original understanding may also be the end point of the process, but only after it has been subjected to the processes of problematization and co-investigation.
In this dialogical form of communication, the objective is to use the knowledge or thinking of each member of the group, together with the knowledge of people who are external to the group—that is, those who can offer expertise of a theoretical or practical nature—in order to investigate critically the theme or issue that is the real focus of the group’s attention. […] [B]ecause it has been acted upon and explicitly related to each person’s previous understandings as well as the theme being considered, it tends to be acquired at a deeper level and is thus more readily accessible for future use.
This form of dialogue is not the type of dialogue used in political negotiations. Therefore, it is not about reaching some form of highly compromised and often reluctant consensus. When decisions have to be made concerning, for example, the direction the group should take next, then dialogue is used to enable the group to reach a consensus that everyone is committed to and thus supports in all its dimensions. This often takes time, but it is time well spent because the process of reaching consensus is itself highly educational.
Dialogue, as I am describing it, is not easy to achieve. It is a process that must be struggled for on each occasion the group meets because the transformed relations that the group is trying to achieve will exist only in the learning group. Until society itself is transformed, dialogic communication and learning will remain counterhegemonic. […] As a consequence, the transformed relations of dialogue—the relations integral to this approach to critical education—must be recreated each time the group meets, and this involves the commitment and effort of each member of the group. In light of these difficulties, it is important to follow each learning dialogue with an evaluation dialogue or a period of reflection during which the “knowledge object” or “object focus” is the struggle to learn dialogically—that is, through the dialogue that has just taken place. Of course, this, too, is time consuming, but equally a valuable experience. […]
Dialogue, therefore, is a process of “knowing” and “being” differently. As a form of critical/revolutionary praxis, it is meant to offer a “glimpse” of some important aspects of revolutionary social transformation—an “abbreviated experience” of self and social transformation, the dialectic of self and social transformation within the specific context of the social relations of education.
by Paula Allman