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CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY: BORDERS FOR A TRANSFORMATIVE AGENDA. Barry Kanpol Department of Educational Foundations Penn State-Harrisburg
Praxis is a specific kind of obedience that organizes itself around a social theory of reality in order to implement in the society the freedom, inherent in faith. If faith is the belief in God created all for freedom, then praxis is the social theory used to analyze what must be done for the historical realization of freedom. To sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough. Freedom must be actualized in history by oppressed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyze the world for the purpose of changing it.’
INTRODUCTION
In my mind, the time has come for the educational Left, particularly those involved with what is commonly thought of as the critical pedagogy movement, to come to terms with the profound theological possibilities and implications of its work. With the advent of Jonathan Kozolls devastating description and critique of inner-city schools in the United States, critical pedagogues in the educational arena have offered a deconstructive analysis of structural school issues around race, class, and gender, much of which has led to feelings of hopelessness and despair.2Yet, ultimately, the question to what end must be seriously dealt with. While this article could be judged to be more of the same deconstruction, one of my central points will be to elaborate on alternative ways to deliberate about what a social transformation for schools might yield. I want to explore the thoughts and ideas expressed in James Cone’s opening quotation. His view of freedom is bound up within the dialectic of faith and struggle, the attempt both to challenge and to undo one’s oppression. Cone’s message echoes Sharon Welch’s view of how dangerous memories ”become dangerous when they are used as the foundation for a critique of existing institutions and ideologies that blur the recognition and denunciation of i n j ~ s t i c e . ” ~ Using Martin Luther King as an example, Welch argues that social transformation must start with the existing critique of dominant and oppressive social and cultural structures. For this critique to have any transformative possibilities, these memories and subsequent critiques “must propel people to courageous acts of resistance’’ while simultaneously never losing a “deep and abiding joy in the wonder of life./I4For both Welch and Cone, the spiritual reality of such joy and hope for transformation challenges oppression, alienation, and subordination.
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1. See James Cone, Speaking the Truth:Ecumenism, Liberation and Black Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Erdmans, 1986)for the connections between faith, freedom, and liberation. 2. See Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities [New York: Crown, 1991) for his descriptions of inner-city school realities. 3 . Sharon Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 1990), 155.
4. Ibid.
EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Winter 1996 / Volume 46 / Number 1 0 1996 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois