Peter McLaren's "Critical Pedagogy A Look at the Major Concepts"

By: Anna Papst
In this article I was struct with the concept of open ended questioning. We are taught as educators to teach our students knowledge that will carry them to the next grade and beyond into their adult and career filled lives. But what are we exactly teaching them? Are we giving them ways to pass each assignment and test? Or are we teaching them life skills that will be useful to them throughout their lives? I think that this reading was trying to get us to go down deeper in our thinking about education and how we go about teaching out students. We need to be teaching our students not just how to ask questions like who and what, but which kind, where, why and the other questions that penetrate the soul and get people to think about the deeper, more intricate situations and events in life. If students had the conviction to learn, there would be no stopping them from taking over the classroom, running discussion groups on their own and learning so much that they couldn't wait to come everyday to school. This is the kind of conviction that can pull the oppressed out of their oppressed state and get them to move milestones in their lives. With just one simple question or idea, there could be some great changes happening. Challenging our students makes the difference between a body in class and an active participant. We want our students to be hungry to learn, but we have to do our job to get them on the right track. We have to be asking the difficult, brain busting questions that are going to get their minds flowing in a positively educational realm. 
Students do not know the potential that they have. We as teachers are the ones that need to be the driving forces in our classrooms. We need to stretch the students's imaginations and capabilities to the max potential. They are going to benefit from whatever we risk with their futures in mind. Let's stop underestimating what they can and cannot do. Their home lives and ways that they have been victimized often determine to them how they are going to end up, but with hard work and determination and with a single change and shift, the oppression is gone. A new way of thinking overtakes one's body and soul. They start to think in a polar opposite way and this leads to a changed life.