Download now
Research from Dissertation:
Pedagogy – Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass
Critical Pedagogy in Literary works
There are two phenomena – discrete actually in their close relation – called structural violence and cultural assault that I have recently learned to call by their socio-political monikers. A discussion about strength and ethnical violence is pertinent to the theme of the newspaper since both equally exemplify the building blocks upon which ethnic prejudice and justification intended for social course rests. To truly understand how astonishing the awareness of Frederick Douglass were, particularly offered his early age, and to prefer the place of bravery and craze from which Langston Hughes wrote, it is essential to find out deeply regarding structural violence and social violence. To that end, this paper will try to weave ideas about structural violence, cultural violence, and critical pedagogy throughout the debate about how two important literary figures understood literacy and education to become a means to defying cultural and societal best practice rules.
Frederick Douglass’ intellectual capacity and tenaciousness were thus solidly illustrated in his method to teaching himself to be well written that it is surprising. What makes Douglass’ situation therefore striking is not only his outstanding level of inspiration at these kinds of a young age group, but his awareness that learning and knowledge were the tips to electricity relationships. Moreover, Douglass’ ability to see the conditions of his life as being a mutable element of a larger sociable structure had been remarkable, specifically since in tandem with this kind of growing awareness, he concocted and orchestrated a plan to modify those circumstances.
In the tale One Friday Morning, Barnes relates how the protagonist, Nancy Lee, identifies the potential that her creative talents possess and desires for the changes in her lifestyle that can take place should your woman receive the identification and honours her operate merits. Barnes wrote, “Dreams began to move in her head, programs and aspirations, beauties she would create intended for herself, her parents, plus the Negro people… ” (Hughes, 1952).
Douglass was both equally methodical and innovative in his approaches to increasing knowledge – he had to get ready to adjust his approaches at any time ought to he become discovered during his initiatives to become well written. The abundant bread in the home where he existed served while his repayment for coaching and tuition, so to speak. Just how fortunate intended for him that he was not hungry, as so many of the poor kids were in the town, and was not bodily maltreated. Being well-fed and not being scared of being defeated were two strong elements in support of his plan to turn into literate. Douglass experienced the complete force of structural assault and social violence but , thankfully, he did not knowledge direct assault.
Structural physical violence and cultural violence are generally not at all the same as direct physical violence. It is regretful and understandable that the word violence is integral towards the constructs of structural physical violence and social violence because it can confound understanding. Direct violence refers to events or perhaps the actions of individuals that destroy or injury people – generally instantly. Cultural assault is used to tell apart the legitimizing process that occurs when any type of assault is seen as normative by the offending members of any society. Structural violence and cultural violence are phenomena made express through sociable inequalities (Christie, 1997; Galtung, 1969). Johan Galtung offered the construct of assault as a trend realized by social barriers that maintain people by certain cultural strata from meeting their needs (Galtung, 1990). Gilman argued that structural violence is a type of “physical and mental harm which will result from exploitive and unjust social, political, and financial systems” (1983, p. 8). The organizational structures of each and every type of system – political, economic, social, educational, medical, and so on – with which marginalized people need to deal cause and sustain transactions and relationships which might be based on hierarchical arrangements which usually enable social sectors to be dramatically diverse. These arrangements, which have been and they are dramatically within the social and monetary structure of America, make people on the apex getting the lion’s talk about of electricity, wealth, and privilege, when those factors diminish substantively as people move over the hierarchical pyramid. The result is a category of people who will be exploited, dominated, and oppressed (Christie, 1997). Just as direct violence causes harm to and gets rid of people, so too does structural violence, which can be characterized by even more subtlety, more pervasiveness, and slower effects. As a result of these types of deliberate strength inequities, “some people are miserable of foodstuff, shelter, health care, and other resources” (Christie, 1997). Because it is and so deeply stuck in the very foundations of a society, strength violence and cultural physical violence become set up as a way penalized over the long lasting. Gilman (1997) notes that poverty and hunger may not and could not exist with no permission from the dominant categories of people in different society. Gilman argues, the human tendency to look the other method is an obstacle to peace, and this it is confirmed by the capacity to “acquiesce in injustice… and disclaim “response ability” (Gilman, 1997).
Strength violence is usually insidious in the impact on whole classes or groups of persons. It was the facial skin of strength and social violence that Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes found every day with their lives, and it was this force that so cruelly broadsided the character of Nancy Lee in a single Friday Morning. And it was the force that developed in Frederick Douglass a cunning that he necessary to bring his plan to fruition. Unlike the situations of several African-Americans at that time, Douglass’s foe was not so much the white people who governed his life, as it was the structural physical violence that cloaked the profound prejudices and rationalizations that promoted and enabled the hierarchical social class.
Strength violence becomes so deeply integrated in the fabric of your society that, through ethnic violence, it can be established and becomes the rule with the land, if tacitly or perhaps overtly. Over time, people is going to tolerate and rationalize structural violence, just like Mr. Auld did in Frederick Douglass’ narrative Learning to Read. Inside the retelling with the story, Mrs. Auld were required to endure becoming chastised by Mr. Auld for offering instruction in literacy skills to the fresh Douglass. Mr. Auld declared, “Learning would spoil the very best nigger in the worldit can do him no good, but a great deal of damage. It would make him discontented and unhappy” (Douglass, 2004).
The sense of historic and psychological rightness, and concomitant philosophy in the immutable nature of differential treatment of people, could make structural assault difficult to pin down. Insight about these fast-held notions and biased perspectives often comes about just through exposure to societies exterior to that skilled by the oppressed – and more rarely – by the oppressor. Hughes alluded to the origins of a altered perspective in this description: “Nancy Lee Meeks was a colored girl, a couple of years out of the Southern region. But rarely did her high-school classmates think of her as coloredNancy Lee occasionally forgot your woman was shaded herself. “
Nancy Lee’s changed point of view about very little and her life kept the seeds for crucial consciousness, an idea theorized sometime later it was implemented by Paulo Freire. A beliefs of education, critical pedagogy was described by Henry Giroux since “an educational movement, well guided by passion and theory, to help pupils develop awareness of flexibility, recognize severe tendencies, and connect understanding to electrical power and the capacity to take helpful action” (Giroux, 2010).
In the book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire proposed that education could cause purposeful change in which “men and women develop their power to perceive seriously the way they exist in the world which and in that they can find themselves; they come to see the globe not as a static actuality but as a reality in the process of transformation” (Freire, 1968). Youthful Frederick Douglass was speedy to understand that his truth could be altered by education, and that perception carried him forward. In his words, “I now realized what have been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to humor, the white-colored man’s power to enslave the black person. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it greatly. From that moment, I actually understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. inches
From Freire and Giroux, and an assembly of other advocates of important pedagogy, the world has come to understand the importance of a crucial consciousness. The notion of perspective goes back very much further – one is informed of the metaphor of Plato’s cave – and the substance of critical consciousness was recognized by the ancient Greeks. Philosophers trained their disciples to progress an “impulse and motivation to stand back coming from humanity and nature… [and] to make them objects of thought and criticism, and also to search for their particular meaning and significance” (Thornton, 2006).
Compared to Douglass’ narrative, the nation was further along in its social and political development at the time that One Thursday Morning was written. But since Nancy Lee was to discover, the power of education to substantively restrict or liberate the thinking and perceptions of the people was
