刊物属性
  • 刊物名称:校园英语
  • 国内刊号:CN 13-1298/G4
  • 国际刊号:ISSN 1009-6426
  • 邮发代号: 18-116
  • 数据库收录:中国知网
  • 投稿邮箱:
      bianji@xiaoyuanyingyu.com
  • 作者:校园英语杂志社 字数:3110 点击:

      Introduction
      The aim of this paper is to demonstrate whether challenging authority benefits critical pedagogy. In this article, my main understanding of critical pedagogy is based on the critical educational theorist Henry Girous. The paper will first introduce the necessity of authority in promoting a democratic society. Then, the article will analyse why students have a right to suspect the teacher and why it is necessary to refuse to obey the all rules set by them.
      The right and necessity of challenging authority
      Integrated these two articles, the first argument is encouraging students to challenge authority is an effective way to enable students to believe in authority and then defer to authority. According to Bizzell, the beginning of the exercise of authority lies in persuasion: A must persuade B that if B grants A authority over B,, B’s best interests ultimately will be serve (1991: 57). Challenging authority is the first step to make the students to grant authority as self-persuasion will be generated when students challenge authority. It is justifiably say that the power of authority is based on self-persuasion. During challenge, students will find out whether the authority can serve their best interest. The process of challenging is essential for students as it is the process that students to find out the reason why the authority exists and how they can benefit from the authority.
      In preventing students from suspecting authority, there might be more infraction of discipline, for example, the moral covert resistance caused by discrimination hushing. Students choose covert resistance since their self-persuasion haven’t been completed yet. They still believe their behaviours are more rational than the rules. Even though the teacher use his or her power to hush the class, some students might resist it as they are still in the complying level. Once they are empowered to discuss their dilemma caused by discrimination hushing, they would know that their behaviour also might be against moral norms- talking in the class might disturb other students, even you are helping others. Thus, they might know the importance of the rule, providing a quiet surrounding for all the students. In brief, encouraging students to challenge authority actually means that motivating them to start self-persuasion is a means to establish the power of authority in their mind.
      Encouraging students to challenge teachers can promote the development of critical pedagogy. The aim of critical pedagogy is to generate citizen with critical ability and develop a democratic society. This society requires students to be critically attentive to the issues of public responsibility, personal freedom, and democratic tolerance, as well as to the necessity of rejecting norms and practices that embody and extend the interests of domination, human suffering, and exploitation (1991: 59). During the process of critique development, the essence is to attack the oppression.