Embracing Change
I have taught brilliant students of color, many of them seniors, who have skillfully managed never to speak in classroom settings. Some express the feeling that they are less likely to suffer any kind of assault if they simply do not assert their subjectivity. They have told me that many professors never showed any interest in hearing their voices. Accepting the decentering of the West globally, embracing multiculturalism, compels educators to focus attention on the issue of voice. Who speaks? Who listens? And why? Caring about whether all students fulfill their responsibility to contribute to learning in the classroom is not a common approach in what Freire has called the “banking system of education” where students are regarded merely as passive consumers. Since so many professors teach from that standpoint, it is difficult to create the kind of learning community that can fully embrace multiculturalism. Students are much more willing to surrender their dependency on the banking system of education than are their teachers. They are also much more willing to face the challenge of multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism compels educators to recognize the narrow boundaries that have shaped the way knowledge is shared in the classroom. It forces us all to recognize our complicity in accepting and perpetuating biases of any kind. Students are eager to break through barriers to knowing. They are willing to surrender to the wonder of relearning and learning ways of knowing that go against the grain. When we, as educators, allow our pedagogy to be radically changed by our recognition of a multicultural world, we can give students the education they desire and deserve. We can teach in ways that transform consciousness, creating a climate of free expression that is the essence of education.
Adapted from hooks, b. Teaching to Transgress: A Education as a Practice of Freedom. London/New York: Routledge, 1994.
In the text you read above (see QUESTÃO 41), the author cites Paulo Freire’s “banking system of education”. Authors usually bring different voices to their text in order to reinforce an argument with expert’s perspectives.
This is can also be done by resorting to:
rhetorical questions, which always require an answer by the expert.
reported speech, which allows the author to express other people’s point of view.
cohesive devices, which helps connect the author’s ideas to other peoples’.
the text-context relation, which dictates how readers will understand the author’s point of view.
direct citations, which means paraphrasing what other people said in the author’s own words.