Educational Theory of Teaching Writing

When I first encountered Paulo Freire’s work, I was struck with the hypocrisy of my own teaching. I had deluded myself into thinking, to a certain extent, that I was creating a democratic and equal space that was free from the influence of. It was a stark reminder last year when I encountered Richard Shaull’s introduction to Peter Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He writes, “There is no such things as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom,’ the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (Freire 16). Then, over the summer, as I delved into Lisa Delpit and Sonia Nieto’s work, I came face to face with the socio-economic reality of our education system, and how in some ways, I was not nearly as enlightened as I thought myself to be. According to Delpit, “Many liberal educators hold that the primary goal for education is for children to become autonomous, to develop fully who they are in the classroom setting without having arbitrary, outside standards forced upon them. This is a very reasonable goal for people whose children are already participants in the culture of power and who have already internalized its codes” (Delpit 28). I think that I fall into the category that Delpit discusses here. So many of my original assumptions about what I attempt to do in the classroom have been blown out of the proverbial water, and I am left with the question of what exactly am I doing in the classroom? I am specifically concerne...

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... way in which I view grading my students’ essays. Despite the fact that I have found no clarity, perhaps it is the fact that I am still grappling with these issues, facing them on a daily level that keeps me an actively engaged teacher in the realm of teaching writing.

Works Cited

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge, 1994.

Delpit, Lisa. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. The New Press, 1995.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum Press, 1970.

Bartholomae, David. “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow.” Cross-Talk in CompTheory. National Council of Teachers of English, 1997.

Elbow, Peter. “Being a Writer vs. Being and Academic: A Conflict in Goals.” Cross-Talk In CompTheory. National Council of Teachers of English, 1997.