Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a pedagogical current, a philosophy of education and a social movement that developed and applied concepts from the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and related traditions, to the field of education and the study of culture.

The Critical Pedagogy, contrary to the "Bank Education", rejects the idea that knowledge is politically neutral and argues that teaching is an inherently political act, whether the teacher recognizes it or not. Social justice and democracy are therefore not different from teaching and learning. The objective of critical pedagogy is the emancipation of oppression through the awakening of critical consciousness, based on the Portuguese term conscientização. When achieved, critical consciousness encourages individuals to make change in their world through social criticism and political action.

Critical pedagogy was founded by the Brazilian philosopher and pedagogue Paulo Freire, who promoted it through his 1968 book, Pedagogy of the oppressed. It then spread internationally, incorporating elements of other fields such as postmodern theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory and queer theory. According to Saviani, the critical pedagogies are understood from the criterion of criticism: that is, critical theories will be those that can perceive the objective conditioners that go through education. From there, the author works with the Reproductivist Critical Theories (such as that of symbolic violence de Bourdieu y Passeron como la de Aparato Ideológico del Estado de Althusser).

Progressive pedagogy, also known as progressive education and with other very diverse denominations (including new school, active school, new education, new education), is a movement or group of progressive pedagogical movements, critical of traditional education, to which they accuse of formalism, authoritarianism, of fostering competitiveness, and of forming a mere transmission of knowledge through memorization, passive for the student.

These movements emerged in the late nineteenth century, continued their development in the next century, and became predominant in the so-called educational reforms raised in the intellectual context of the 1968 revolution. Expressions such as reformist pedagogy or reformist education are also used, denominations that are not only linked to educational reform laws, but to social reform projects (the very use of the word). reform implies a progressive connotation, to such an extent that conservative educational modifications are often called "contra-reforms" by supporters of progressive pedagogy.

Progressive education poses the simultaneous challenge of being general (which, in the form of compulsory education, became one of the pillars of the welfare state, and entails different types of integration) and individualized (related with responding to the specific needs of each student). The emergency of the scolonial movement represents one of the first alternatives to establish a position that challenges and faces the hegemony of the traditional school.

Pedagogy in anarchism refers to a series of proposed approaches on pedagogy made by certain sectors of anarchism. It usually represents the educational part of it (partidaria of an evolutionary political and social change, which would lead to a revolutionary change). The common points of these proposals are related to achieving a learning method in which the person can develop his or her skills freely, without authority imposed. For a pedagogue like Sébastien Faure, "children do not belong to God, or to the State, or to their families, only to themselves."

Famous pedagogues and writers such as Francisco Ferrer Guardia, Ricardo Mella and León Tolstói wrote on this subject, putting into practice various school experiences such as the Modern School of Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century, La Ruche promoted by Sébastien Faure, the rationalist school of José Sánchez Rosa in Andalusia, or the schools for workers of the anarcho-syndicalist people in Spain of the first third century libertarians). In the United States, a movement of modern schools inspired by Ferrer's work emerged between 1910 and 1960.

Thinkers of the humanist current (Emmanuel Mounier, Bertrand Russell), of the field of psychology (Erich Fromm) and of pedagogy (Célestin Freinet, Ivan Illich or Rudolf Steiner) have brought back the ideas of an anarchist pedagogy. More recently, thinkers of various forms of anarchism have proposed educational reforms around concepts as different as the decolarization of Iván Illich, the Waldorf pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner, the Active Pedagogy No Directive or home education promoted by associations of parents.

At present, there are experiences that, although different in part from one another, inspire anarchist ideas about pedagogy. For example, the Summerhill School, created by Alexander Sutherland Neill in the UK and famous for the total freedom it grants to its students. This has been working for more than twenty years. Another significant example is the Paideia school, whose pedagogue Josefa Martin Luengo founded in 1978, in Mérida (Badajoz, Spain), and which today remains a benchmark for libertarian education throughout the Spanish state, being the direct heritage of the Modern School.

Cyber pedagogy consists of controlling the cognitive processes of students during their instruction process. This is based on the theory of cybernetics, and on some ideas and concepts arising from mathematics, known as Algorithm and Heuristics, and which contributes to the solution of problems and creativity.

Algorithm, from the point of view of the Cybernetics, are the stable states of the self-organization process of the brain, and the Heuristics would be a new state achieved by positive feedback. It is a type of metacognition, with which one analyzes one's own thought to achieve a new and better state of understanding, and for problem solving.

In the Cyber Pedagogy, control is not rigid and unidirectional of the teacher to the student, as the latter has an active role from his own experiences and choices. There is a kind of self-taught that there must be a space for mental creation. This is because this pedagogy is based on the theory of cybernetics: the study of the flow of information and that regulates a system in a certain direction, which in our case is between the student and the teacher (but also in the reverse direction, studying the responses of the pupil, and learning from him), for the control of learning.

It tries to be an efficient method of transmitting knowledge, regulating learning through algorithms, and looking for the same student to end up controlling this process. The teacher only tries to organize the external conditions so that the student learns actively by participating in the learning process. The ultimate goal is to be the student himself who finally controls his own learning: to learn to think, and to learn for himself. The faster this goal is achieved, the better it is.

But the objective is not only to transmit knowledge, but also “actitudes, responsibility, goodness”... “stricken habits for the specific development of all kinds of activities (reading, writing, arithmetic calculations, the solution of various types of practical and intellectual problems). ”

This pedagogy does not replace traditional Pedagogy, but makes it possible, since it is to have the knowledge of something, does not imply its correct application, as it happens with any area of knowledge (mism in Pedagogy). It has already shown its effectiveness in various educational areas such as geometry, grammar, spelling of its language in Russia, and the results they obtained were very encouraging, according to their own words:

The results were optimal. Schools who had studied geometry for two and a half years without having learned to solve problems, after a brief learning of special algorithms, suddenly revealed skills for mathematics. From that moment on, most of the problems that previously constituted a stumbling block were solved without difficulty. As for those who already solved it well, they even applied the new rules, they further improved their understanding.

Algorithm has also been developed for troubleshooting in Physics and Mathematics.

The pedagogy of liberation is an educational movement. The liberating education is a process of renewal of the individual's social condition, considering the subject as a thoughtful and critical, reflective being of the reality that lives. In this process, the liberation against the pedagogy, which limits the possibility of creating your own knowledge, fostering the reproduction without analysis or understanding of the topics being taught.

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) is the creator of a grassroots education movement that aims to give a political character to the educational problem. According to his ideas, it is necessary to give an awareness of the oppressed through education. It gave significant importance to literacy, but not in isolation and memoristic form, but with a critical approach to reality. More importance should be given to dialogical or conversational education than to the curriculum; it should also give importance to praxis in educational activity