Before reading "Critical Pedagogy in ELT: images of Brazilian Teachers of English," I thought that the teachers of Brazil, especially in the bigger city contexts, would really embrace critical pedagogy. This is because the proposing theorist of this theory, Paulo Freire, is a Brazilian educator. Having his roots in the Brazilian education system made me think that Brazil would be large supporters of utilizing his theory.
However, the researchers discovered that even though critical pedagogy is supposed to be the basis of Brazil's new National Curriculum Parameter, most teachers had never even heard of it. This made me wonder about the spread of the education reform. The reform happened in 1997 and the study took place in 1999. I then wondered if the spread of information was slower, and maybe the results would be completely different if the study was redone today. So I took this information with a grain of salt.
The results of the 1999 study were as follows: 35 out of 40 teachers had never heard of it. Of the 5 who had heard of it, "...only two seemed to interpret it..." (441). Some teachers thought that critical pedagogy is only a reflective process of the teacher reflecting on the past lessons. Several teachers missed so much!
I was most surprised with one of the teacher's responses. One student asked why they had to learn English when they didn't plan on visiting the United States. The teacher's response was, "look, you do not need to learn English only to travel to the United States. Don't you play video games? The manuals are all in English, don't you need to read to find out how to play" (445). I was honestly pretty offended by this answer. I felt that as an English teacher, regardless of the theories and pedagogies you implement in the classroom, teachers should be supportive and encouraging. This teacher could have given 100 different reasons spanning from future travel to job opportunities to how learning a language can be enriching. I just could not believe it.
Hopefully today, the teachers in Brazil know a little more about critical pedagogy and are able to implement it a little more in their classrooms.
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