course materials

1. Critical Emancipatory Education Peer Response
Critical Emancipatory Education Peer Response ON Critical Emancipatory Education Peer
ResponsePeer Review postings provide feedback on one of your peer’s posting for that
week in two paragraphs. Consider what your peer wrote and whether you agree with
his/her perspective or not and why. What were the strengths in the posting? How did your
peer’s work contribute to your personal or our collective understanding of the issue(s)?
Identify areas that were written and analyzed well? Were there any areas missed,
underdeveloped or not well evidenced? Identify areas for improvement.You only need to
write a response for the file titled “classmates essay”. I attached “My essay” as an example of
the essay I submitted. The other 3 files are the readings that we had to do.Critical
Emancipatory Education Peer
Responseattachment_1attachment_2attachment_3attachment_4attachment_5Unformatted
Attachment PreviewEducation is important for the progress of humans in all aspects of life.
This post examines the ways in which non-western and/or alternative education can
transform urban education; issues relating to urban education and their solutions; and the
purpose of education with a special focus on its purpose on human transformation and
liberation. The urban education approach requires professors to provide information to the
students; the students are however, required to memorize and remember the details taught.
This approach is not productive since students are not able interact with their teachers. As
Paulo Freire argues, the teacher-student relationship entails the teacher as a narrating
Subject and the students as the listening objects or patients. One of the issues with this
relationship is that it fails to relate the content taught in class with reality. For instance,
math is taught as an abstract subject without any connection to the events happening in
everyday life. My high school friends and I made a running bet on whoever gets to apply the
Pythagorean theorem in real life, and till this day no one won. The Western education
introduces the “banking” concept in which the teacher acts as a depositor of information
while they students acting as the depositories. However, the non-western education
approach allow for the implementation of strategies that allow teachers and students to
actively participate. According to Paulo Freire, the students should be given an opportunity
by the professors to actively participate in the classroom. Thich Nhat s this argument by
acknowledging that the teacher a healer should be able to impact both the student’s
learning process and their spiritual welfare. Indeed, the teacher should use empathy to
understand each and every student’s strengths and weaknesses not only academically but
also emotionally, physically and spiritually. I used to have a teacher who didn’t use

2. examples from the books but instead used examples from the student’s personal
experiences, and that for us helped immensely in understanding and memorizing the
material. Critical Emancipatory Education Peer ResponseEducation plays a key role in the
process of human transformation and practice. In light of this, Hanh argues that education
help transform mind, body and spiritual nature of the student. It is through education that
the student should attain wholeness. However, the current urban education is almost
exclusively focused on academic performance and the students’ achievement is largely
focused on their academic performance. Alternative education can serve the purpose of
liberating students when teachers desist from merely sharing information with students but
share it in the intellectual and spiritual growth of the students. To achieve, professors
should embrace the challenge of self-actualization and establish pedagogical practices
aimed at engaging students as well as providing them with the necessary knowledge that
would enhance their capacity of living deeply and fully. When the relationship between the
teacher and student is open, the student can make well-informed decision. Insert surname 1
Professor’s name Student’s name Course title Date What is the purpose of education? The
purpose of education is to liberate the mind and the body of a man thus improving his/her
capacity has a human being. Education also helps to improve the human interaction and
even with the environment. Thus people who are liberated and educated will use their
knowledge and ideas at different levels to improve their condition and that of the others.
Through the learning conscientization, education helps both the teacher and the student to
improve their views through dialogical interaction thus utilizing individual and combined
experience. Both the teacher and the student are active learners and teachers as the
Conscientization acts as liberating pedagogy. Education is perceived to be like a banking
system of education in which they come has empty vessels which are to be filled by the
teachers. Thus, education provides an individual with the capacity to understand that their
world is not a static but reality in motion, thus they develop bigger and better thinking
capacity (Reagan, 2004). Insert surname 2 The more people continue to face the reality with
tough situations, the more they develop better ways of solving these problems. Thus,
education acts as an empowering tool for them to identify ways in which they can solve
problems in the real world. It is thus necessary for the different institution to teach
education and at the same time teach liberation. This is because liberation helps in creating
the foundation of human life as it s the growth of education. Education thus plays an
important role in the society, this is because it acts a guiding force for all the people in the
society (Reagan, 2004). How can education serve the purposes of liberation and humans
transformation? Freire states that education is based on the need to reproduce the available
political and economic order. Thus, the learner is set in a specific organized structure which
works on oppressive reactions of subordination. Education thus acts as a banking system
which helps to develop the knowledge of the learner in a systematic manner. Education also
becomes the act of depositing in which the teachers are the depositor while the students are
the depositories. The teacher uses a different process to deposit while the student receives
the memory and the process starts all over again. With this knowledge, the learner is
liberated from the lack of information. This is because education aims at reconciling both
the teacher and the student. Once the liberation is over, the teacher can become the student

3. and vice versa (Reagan, 2004). The origin of the process begins with the fact that “the
teacher knows everything while the students know nothing, the teacher thinks and the
students are thought about, the teacher teaches, while the students are taught” (Reagan,
2004).Thus, the whole process of teaching aims Insert surname 3 at improving and
liberating the students so that they can become rich with knowledge. Liberation comes with
education and education brings out the creative power in the students. Critical
Emancipatory Education Peer ResponseThis helps them to stimulate their gullibility thus
serving the interest of the oppressors. Education thus helps the pathology of the healthy
society to adjust the “incompetent and lazy” individuals to operate in its own pattern due to
the capacity to change their mentality (Reagan, 2004). Education thus plays a significant
part in liberating and transforming the human beings, especially with their thinking
capacity. This, in turn, strengthens the capacity of the individuals to thinks and make
decision effectively due to the power of creativity. Insert surname 4 Work cited Reagan,
Timothy G. Non-Western educational traditions: Alternative approaches to educational
thought and practice. Routledge, 2004. NON-WESTERN EDUCATIONAL TRADITIONS
TIMOTHY REAGAN 1 An Introduction to the Study of Non-Western and Indigenous
Educational Traditions: A Philosophical Starting Point We find it pedagogically tragic that
various indigenous knowledges of how action affects reality in particular locales have been
dismissed from academic curricula. Such ways of knowing and acting could contribute so
much to the educational experiences of all students; but because of the rules of evidence
and the dominant epistemologies of Western knowledge production, such understandings
are deemed irrelevant by the academic gatekeepers.. . . Our intention is to challenge the
academy and its “normal science” with the questions indigenous knowledges raise about
the nature of our existence, our consciousness, our knowledge production, and the
“globalized” future. —Semali and Kincheloe (1999, p. 15) I fully concur with the sentiments
expressed so clearly by Ladislaus Semali and Joe Kincheloe, and this book is a result of
roughly the same impetus that drove them to produce their book, What Is Indigenous
Knowledge? Voices from the Academy. Most books and courses that deal with the history
and philosophy of education include few, if any, references to indigenous educational ideas
and practices in Africa and the Americas, and relatively few references to those of Asia.
Although for some time now there have been calls for the inclusion of the perspectives of
women and people of color in studies of the history and philosophy of education, such
efforts, where they have taken place, have often entailed little more than the addition of
vignettes indicating the contributions of members of such groups to the Western tradition.
In other words, the idea that there might be valuable insights to be gained from a serious
examination of non-Western educational traditions themselves—indeed, that these
traditions might be fully comparable to the Western tradition in their unique richness and
diversity—is one that rarely has been voiced. Furthermore, where non-Western educational
ideas and practices have been discussed, they are often subjected to a treatment roughly
comparable to the 1 1 Chapter 1 2 Ik PMImphloil Starting Point i “Orientalism” discussed by
the late Edward Said with regard to the Western (and specifically, Anglo-French-American)
response to Islam and the Islamic world. According to Said: i uni ci us “are Muslims
dangerous or not?”—than by a serious effort to st.tnd Islam and the place of toleration and

4. moral decency in its conception ui ,i proper human life.” Orientalism can be discussed and
analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making
statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling
over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having
authority over the Orient… . European culture gained in strength and identity by setting
itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self. Hilt It
‘iiinplislic misunderstandings and misrepresentations remain all too ttllllliinn -is we seek to
understand the Other, and it is as a challenge to such flllilliideistandings, in part, that this
book has been written. Critical Emancipatory Education Peer ResponseTin- same, of course,
can be argued with respect to Western treatment of (|UllH ‘” educational ideas and practices
i n Asia, the Americas, and else1nr. In short, when we speak of the history of educational
thought and ” M i I lit*, what we have actually meant in the past has been the history f WesrI
nliUiitiniuil thought and practice, and the effect of our meaning has been, I fini’iiu , to
dismiss, or at the very least to delegitimatize, the many alternaHVM In I he Western
tradition that have developed, evolved, and thrived elsein (I – world. In other words, it is
discourse itself—the way that one |lk«. thinks about, and conceptualizes educational
thought and practice— M l U ill issue. As Stephen Ball noted in a discussion of the work of
the French philosopher Michel Foucault, “Discourse is a central concept i n Foucault’s
iHnlylii al framework. Discourses are about what can be said and thought, but itliout who
can speak, when, and with what authority. Discourses emuly miMiiing and social
relationships, they constitute both subjectivity and Wfi relations.” 2 , ,,lls 0 In other words,
when scholars do try to examine non-Western educational thought and practice, all too
often they tend to do so through a lens that not only colors what they see, but also one that
reifies the object of study—making it, in essence, part of “the Other” and hence alien.
Reification results not only in the distortion of what one is trying to understand, but also in
its subjugation to one’s own preexisting values and norms. This problem is not, of course,
unique to the study of educational thought and practice; it is a common criticism of Western
scholarship about the non-Western world in general. For example, in his discussion of the
study of indigenous African religions by Western scholars, the Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek
wrote of the’ “systematic and intensive use of dirty gossip” i n place of solid and sensitive
scholarship. In a similar vein, the anthropologist Adam Kuper wrote of The Invention of
Primitive Society by 19th- and 20th-century anthropologists and social theorists in the
West. In terms of traditional African educational practices, A . Babs Fafunwa commented
that “because indigenous education failed to conform to the ways of the Westernised
system, some less well-informed writers have considered it primitive, even savage and
barbaric. But such contentions should be seen as the product of ignorance and due to a total
misunderstanding of the inherent value of informal education.” A t the present time, there is
perhaps no better place to see this tendency at work than in the examination and treatment
of the M u s l i m world and Islamic tradition in the West. As Joshua Cohen and Ian Lague
noted i n their “Preface” to Kaled Abou El Fadl’s recent book, The Place of Tolerance in
Islam: 3 4 5 Since September 11, Western discussions of Islam have typically been
conducted through a contest of caricatures. Some analysts present Islamic extremism as a
product of a “clash of civilizations” that pits Eastern despotism against Western

5. individualism. Others see such extremism as a grim “blowback” of America’s cold-war
foreign policy. Engagement with the Muslim faith commonly takes the form of simplistic
pronouncements about [the] “essence” of Islam: Osama bin Laden either represents the true
message of the Prophet or corrupts a “religion of peace” . . . . These discussions are driven
more by West- 1 7 The underlying purpose of this book, then, is to begin the process by
Whhli I lie existing discourse in the history of educational thought and pracf | l f inn he
expanded in such a way as to provide a starting point for the de’Vflnpnu’iil of a more open
and diverse view of the development of various [iprtitiches to educational thought and
practice. Needless to say, this work lllleiuled to be only a beginning. If the study of the
various educational fUlllllons discussed here is to be taken seriously, then these traditions
(and “(liy others as well) will require, and are certainly entitled to, the same sort COIK that
has long been accorded the Western tradition. Furthermore, IJVfll their differences from the
Western tradition, it is essential that we all IfHill to invite and listen to the “multiple voices”
and perspectives that can fnll||lilfii understanding of these traditions, just as we must learn
to ftVMtylii/.c that different groups may, as a consequence of their sociocultural UltUexIs
and backgrounds, possess ways of knowing that, although different our own, may be every
bit as valuable and worthwhile as those to Which we are accustomed. Critical Emancipatory
Education Peer ResponseAs Carol Gilligan suggested with respect to “Woiniin’s place i n
man’s life cycle” i n In a Different Voice: Psychological f / l W y and Women’s Development:
o u r 8 Al « lime when efforts are being made to eradicate discrimination between the lexett
in the search for social equality and justice, the differences between the Chapter t 4 sexes
are being rediscovered in the social sciences. This discovery occurs when theories formerly
considered to be sexually neutral in their scientific objectivity are found instead to reflect a
consistent observational and evaluative bias. Then the presumed neutrality of science, like
that of language itself, gives way to the recognition that the categories of knowledge are
human constructions. The fascination with point of view that has informed the fiction of the
twentieth century and the corresponding recognition of the relativity of judgment infuse
our scientific understanding as well when we begin to notice how accustomed we have
become to seeing life through men’s eyes. 9 A very similar kind of argument can be made
with respect to the differences in perspective and worldview in various non-Western
cultural and historic traditions. To be sure, at the present time, this argument remains
largely speculative i n nature with respect to many of the traditions to be discussed in this
book, although in the case of women there is now a growing body of fairly compelling
empirical evidence. M y hope would be that others, from a wide array of different
backgrounds, would challenge, modify, and add to the base that is offered here, and
someday the study of the Aztec calmecac and telpochcalli, of the imperial Chinese
examination system and its content, and the role of various African initiation schools,
among others, might be as commonly taught in courses in the history of educational thought
as the study of Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey is today. Having said this, I also want to stress
that I am not arguing that Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey (among others) should be eliminated;
they, and many others, are important figures i n the development of our own historical
tradition, and certainly merit serious study. M y focus here is not on replacing the Western
tradition, but rather on trying to expand our understanding of education, broadly conceived,

6. through the examination and study of other approaches to educational thought and practice
with which many of us tend to be less familiar. Ultimately, of course, as we better
understand the educational traditions of other societies and cultures, we will also be forced
to reexamine and to reflect on our own tradition in somewhat different ways—and this will
be immensely beneficial to our understanding of our own traditions. A Phllotophiotl
Starting Point 5 ever, in contemporary scholarly discourse, one seldom comes across such
blatant ethnocentrism. Rather, what is far more common is simply the practice of using
one’s own society and sociocultural practices as the n o r m by which other societies are
viewed, measured, and evaluated. Ethnocentrism of this kind takes two somewhat distinct
forms: cultural ethnocentrism and epistemological ethnocentrism. Cultural ethnocentrism
refers to manifestations of ethnocentrism i n individual scholars and their work, as well as
to the sociocultural context that has helped to form and such individual and idiosyncratic
biases. In other words, we see examples of cultural ethnocentrism when writers and
scholars allow common biases, prejudices, and assumptions to color their work i n various
ways. Critical Emancipatory Education Peer ResponseRacism, sexism, linguicism, ageism,
and so on, all contribute to cultural ethnocentrism, most often i n ways that are
unconscious. Thus, the topics that a scholar chooses to explore, the questions that are asked
about the topic, the framework within which hypotheses are constructed, how conflicting
evidence is weighed, and even what counts as evidence, can all be affected by personal
biases. 10 This brings us to the second sort of ethnocentrism, epistemological
ethnocentrism, which deals not so much with individual assumptions and biases, but rather
with those common to an entire field of study. W i t h epistemological ethnocentrism, we are
concerned with what the philosopher of science Thomas K u h n called the dominant
“paradigm” in our own field of study. A paradigm, on Kuhn’s account, is far more than
merely a model or a theory. As Patton explained: 11 A paradigm is a world view, a general
perspective, a way of breaking down the complexity of the real world. As such, paradigms
are deeply embedded in the socialization of adherents and practitioners: paradigms tell
them what is important, legitimate, and reasonable. Paradigms are also normative, telling
the practitioner what to do without the necessity of long existential or epistemological
consideration. But it is this aspect of paradigms that constitutes both their strength and
their weakness—their strength in that it makes action possible, their weakness in that the
very reason for action is hidden in the unquestion …Critical Emancipatory Education Peer
Response