Raising Awareness

My article for this week focused on using media curriculum as a critical consciousness raiser. By raising awareness, students learn to read the word and the world. The text presented an interesting study that took place in California that illuminated the students understanding of Chicano/as protrayol in entertainment media. While the study was thought provoking, my MVP from this week comes from the introduction of Frier’s model of critical pedagogy. Freire’s model maintains that students move from “magical to naïve to critical consciousness.” Students in the magical stage may blame luck, fate or God for inequality; from there students move to the naïve stage, the students blame themselves, their culture, or their community. The third stage of consciousness is the critical stage. A student who has reached the critical stage of consciousness will “look beyond fatalistic or cultural reasons for inequality to focus on structural, systematic explanations. A student with a critical level of consciousness looks toward changing the system as a response to experiencing inequality.” This level of “literacy” as Frier puts it, is not guaranteed. As educators we need to cultivate an environment where material and activities help students grow towards the critical consciousness stage. Particularly for the language classroom, I’m encouraged to find resources to start this convseration.