“Troublemaking,” “Making Trouble,” and “Making It” Through Institutionalized Schooling: Critical Pedagogy as a Transformational Exodus

Authors

  • Cesar A. Rossatto The University of Texas at El Paso
  • Cecilia E. Rivas Fabens ISD, Fabens, TX
  • Daniel B. Heiman University of Texas at Austin
  • Juanita Esparza Ysleta (TX) Independent School District

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v6i5.184884

Keywords:

Critical Pedagogy, Standardized Testing, Hegemony, Violence, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, Oppression, Assessment

Abstract

How does institutionalized schooling compromise the social fabric?  Many children are learning helplessness and are labeled “troublemakers” as a form of violence which is playing itself out in classrooms across the US. They are becoming “victims” as they are oppressed by the stranglehold of  high-stakes testing movements and other rigid, top-down hegemonic structures that fervently strive to dominate, subjugate, and alienate those that supposedly are not equipped to “make it” in the post-modern arena.  By the same token, often, those that are “successful” also succumb to acts of violence as they conform or react to oppressive educational practices; thus, this article and educational study reveal the unfolding consequences of this kind of oppression.

Author Biography

Cesar A. Rossatto, The University of Texas at El Paso

César Augusto Rossatto, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is author of numerous publications including: Engaging Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Possibility: From Blind to Transformative Optimism. He is founder of Paulo Freire SIG at AERA (American Education Research Association). He is founder and chair of the International Conference on Education, Labor and Emancipation http://academics.utep.edu/confele. He is a UCLA graduated. Course he teaches includes: critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism, education for social justice, and sociology of education. He is committed to dialectic and dialogical education and praxis for the liberation of disenfranchised groups. He is also well versed on Paulo Freire's work, critical temporal theory, social context of education, organizational politics, international and urban education with deep familiarity with U.S. and Latin American cross-cultural issues. His main research interests are: Ethics, religious influences and immigration, the U.S. and Mexican border within the context of Globalization and Neo Liberalism, social relations and Brazilian identity formation in United States and its implications to schooling, the phenomenon of fatalism and optimism in contrast with social classes’ differences, the effects of racism worldwide. He is an international spokesperson.

Downloads

Published

2015-03-12

Issue

Section

Articles