Darryl Leroux.   3360                                                                                         Harry Reddin                

Reflection # 5 

Snakes and Ladders-A Performed Ethnography           

            Snakes and Ladders is a “performed ethnography” based on data from an empirical study on anti-homophobia education that tells the story of what happens when high school teachers and students in a fictional Canadian high school attempt to put on a Pride Day at their school.  Critical pedagogy defined is the relationships between teaching and learning and is a continuous process of unlearning, learning, relearning, reflection, evaluation, and the impact that these actions have on the students, in particular students whom have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call "traditional schooling."  Tara Goldstein’s work fits this bill exactly and is an ideal example of critical pedagogy at work.  

Reflection 4

D. Leroux                                                                                                      Harry Reddin  A00311697

Reflection #4

Michel Foucault on Education

When you hear Michel Foucault’s name you tend to automatically catalogue him under the category of knowledge and power relations. Roger Deacon attempts break away and focus on three educational aspects with regard to Foucault’s works and separates his theatrical overview from others by focusing  on the past, present and future of schooling.   Roger Deacon is successful in developing the implications of Foucault’s work but admittedly just scrapes at the first layers of this great theorists multi-faceted perspective. Deacon is effective when he further breaks these timeframes from a negative orientated techno-political rise of education, to a positive phase of entrenchment and expansion phase. Although this theoretical overview focuses on education, in true Foucault style Deacon is drawn back into the moral framework and underlying power relations involved in these relationships making his attempt to separate education and the power relationship less forceful.

Reflection 3

D. Leroux                                                                               Harry Reddin    A00311697

Banking vs. Problem Posing Education

           

The banking method or the deposit of money into bank account is commonly used to describe the relationship between teacher and student. Another common metaphor used is, a students mind is an empty receptacle where the teacher deposits information.  Problem-posing education is a Freire concept which breaks with the aforementioned vertical pattern characteristic of the banking education method posing the new teacher-student with students-teacher relationship. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.

Reflection 2

Darryl Leroux.   3360                              Reflection # 2                                       Harry Reddin

 

“Mayday. Mayday”.

Afro-Centric Schools in Ontario

Afro-Centric schools are a step in the right direction but at the same time are correctly described as a knee jerk reaction to the real underlying issue of the systematic breakdown of curriculum in the Canadian public school system.  Although the Afro-centric school undoubtedly causes a divisional rift among ethnic groups, the media and pop-culture incorrectly sensationalize this school system using powerful words such as ‘segregation’ , dangerously  digging up bones from the past that carry negative connotations with them.   The quick fix of these Afro-Centric schools is not enough; it is merely a band aid solution that doesn’t hold the school boards accountable for the last 30 years of neglect.  It is commendable that the Afro-Centric ethnicity has taken matters into their own hands but the Afro-Centric school falls short of getting to the structural damage caused by curriculum failures and stand out as individuals and misfits that go against the grain of Canada’s multicultural identity.

Reflection 1

Darryl Leroux.   3360                              Reflection # 1                                       Harry Reddin

                                                      Gender-Based Cultural Capital 

          I believe gender-based cultural capital has impacted my education, specifically due to


society’s beliefs and expectations bestowed upon me from a very young age.    This

phenomenon is also referred to as social reproduction and this process began for me the

moment I exited the womb. Bourdieu focuses on cultural reproduction, particularly the

concept of habitus, where gender is embedded into education, as he refers to as a pillar of

cultural capital.  This deeply rooted thinking process and hegemonic attitudes have affected

my education form my early childhood to my entering the workforce.