Let's get one thing clear: college professors have authority and power, and there is nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. In some very limited circles, it is fashionable to parade one's radical politics by declaring that "I try to subvert my own authority in the classroom," as if that -- in and of itself -- was a daring political intervention. Bunk.
Now I am not taking aim at all those who genuinely try to construct community in the classroom, or who have drawn inspiration from Friere or feminism, or who reject the authoritarian model of all-powerful lecturer and worthless student. For goodness' sake, observers in my classes have been known to have to ask at the end of the hour, "which one was the teacher?" If anything, this page is a reaction to my own excesses. I was brought up short by a student who wrote the following comment on an anonymous evaluation:
"Don't be hesitant to teach me. All the pedagogical innovations of decentering classroom authority and the like cannot change the glaringly obvious fact that you (the instructor) are a trained philosopher who knows much more about the texts and contexts than I do."
And here is a striking comment by David Lisman, from an e-mail discussion list:
"The problem with this form of pedagogy is that it is merely pretend educational and pretend social transformation. It doesn't ask people to do anything but change what is going through their heads so to speak. This pedagogical approach provides a nice 'rationalization' for a tenured professor who with nice salary and benefits can rail against the system that is feeding him/her very well. And as for the students, maybe this form of critical analysis is better than not being critical. But it mainly foments further dissatisfaction, offering little by way of social steps to take [to] try to change the system that is being perpetuated through hegemonic education."
"So I see 'critical pedagogy' as verging dangerously close to being yet another faux radicalism, pretend critique, mind games, professors and students working themselves up into a rage about the conditions of inequity that provide them their very secure university haven of classroom 'radical' discussion. At some point, one has to begin to imagine ways to do something in the world, instead of trying to look to traditional head trip education as the means to social change. Don't we?"
This really brought me up short and made me think. There is no getting away from authority and differentials in knowledge and in power. Surely the question is how to use that power to foster learning and growth.
Finally, here is none other than Michel Foucault:
". . . with regard to the pedagogical relation -- I mean the relation of teaching, that passage from the one who knows the most to the one who knows the least -- it is not certain that self-management is what produces the best results; nothing proves, on the contrary, that that approach isn't a hindrance. . . . there are consensual disciplines."
