Pedagogies of Liberation: Race, Gender, and Class(rooms)

ROM-LANG 205 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

"Pedagogies of Liberation" is preparation and accompaniment for new teachers who teach (anything!). We read selected works by exemplary pedagogues: Friedrich Schiller, María Montessori, John Dewey, W.B. Du Bois, R. Tagore, Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, José Vasconcelos, Gabriela Mistral, Albert Cullum among others. These pedagogical pioneers display a remarkable coherence in theory and in practices that somehow remain “alternative” to less effective but normalized approaches. They share a mission to democratize societies through cultivating particularly human skills and the resulting self-esteem in societies marked by legacies of extraction and exclusion. Today, perhaps more urgently than ever -- given the crisis in mental health, the decline in reading practices, and the availability of AI to shortcut learning processes -- teachers can facilitate student flourishing through Pedagogies of Liberation.

The course alternates between reading theory and practicing the recommendations we read. Our objective is to achieve a rigorous theoretical framework that combines technical mastery with creative critical skills for teaching and learning. A final project will design a potential series of lessons inspired by one or more of the featured theorists.