Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World (3rd Edition)

As a student teacher, to other student teachers, I suggest that one of the best things you can for yourself is to read Joan Wink's book "Critical Pedagogy". In this book she was able to explain that there are many different meaning to the words Critical Pedagogy. You as a teacher will have to find your own meaning and through Dr. Wink's book she was able to help me give meaning to how I can use these words. I now know that it is not only teaching students but alos learning through the teaching of your students.
This book was a good read and I breezed through its content easily as it explained many words I was not familiar with before. This book also gave me a greater knowledge and insight to many of the people who have dedicated their ideas to her writing. Ideas that came from greats such as Dewey, Vygolsky, Freire, Krashen, and many more which would take up a whole page by itself.
To read a book that gives the reader what they will need for a class is great. But, to have everything in one small book was extreamly effective for me because I will now have a reference to use throughout my teaching experience. I especially liked how she incorporated the use of her own children in the text, not to belittle them but to give us insight to the problems that each of us may have in the teaching world. Thank you again Professor Joan Wink for all you will teach us.

The teaching profession can swallow up a teacher new to the profession if that teacher does not have the proper tools to be ready. While Critical Pedagogy by Joan Wink is not the single most important tool that is going to prepare the new teacher, having it as a possession certainly is wise to the incoming teacher. In Critical Pedagogy, Wink covers a number of concepts that will be valuable to the teacher who wants to be impact the classroom. What is admirable in this book are the real world examples that are cited in the book and used to describe the rights and errors that teachers can make in their profession. Furthermore, the book understands it is not only about the teachers here. It supplies methods for getting the most out of students. After reading about the experience of Wink and others that she cites, the children are the benefactors of these methods to teaching.

There are few things I am 'critical' of in this book. My major vice is the writing style. It is probably due to what I have learned and comfortable with, but the writing style can take some getting use to at first. As a reader, I feel that the book does jump around a little time to time with its stories. However, rather than lash out at this, I have come to instead unlearn and relearn this new style of writing, just one of the concepts the book touches upon. Aside from that vice, I highly recommend this book for teachers who want the best of their students. I do want to end my review with this: Critical Pedagogy will encourage and strike a chord anyone who cares about making a difference to the children they come to know.

After getting over the feeling like I had just opened up and read my professor's personal diary, I took a deep breath and began to realize that the stories and real-life experiences told were where the real learning takes place. Anybody can list history, theories, names and dates, but if the true goal is to understand the concepts, what better way to hit a home run than to make it personal and memorable. Joan Wink's book is honest, practical, and not in the usual textbook boring style. I'm sure I'll come up with my own definition of critical whatever someday, for now I'll keep trying to pronounce conscientization! I enjoyed reading this book, thank you for making it real.

Our lives are a collection of small puzzles pieced together from our many learning experiences. Throughout life we are faced with learning opportunities that require drawing from different resources, some internal and some external. As we face an experience in life we rely on both types of resources and by the end, a small puzzle is completed in our mind of who we are and what we know. Each subsequent experience adds new puzzle sections, shaping it into a larger puzzle. Unlike store bought puzzles our life puzzle is a work in progress. There isn't a final puzzle picture because new segments can always be added to enhance the puzzle, making it grow larger.

Joan Wink takes us through her puzzle of life in her book Critical Pedagogy and helps us put things into perspective as we piece our own puzzles together. The picture is ever changing and is dependent on our stepping back and taking a second look at our own work or knowledge to make sure that is what it really is. Her descriptions of her experiences are a refreshing change for a textbook and makes for enjoyable reading. She is able to tie her understanding of her own knowledge to the steps of teaching and the real world. If I can incorporate her steps of critical pedagogy in my teaching career I might be able to avoid pitfalls. Where were you Joan when my kids were learning to read? I came upon the very same problem with my own son with reading but not in his ability but his desire for reading. It was the very same Captain Underpants that came to the rescue and launched my son into a world of discovery. My son must have read the same volume at least 5 times because his mother refused to pay money for stories of boys in their underpants. I finally broke down and bought him another book that led to others and now I can't keep enough books around for him to consume. Critical pedagogy is just what we all need in our lives to keep putting pieces of the puzzle together and enhancing the picture.

N. Lo
EDMS 4100

In the book Critical Pedagogy, the personal yet powerful experiences that are exposed in the book has not only captivated the heart of a teacher of how powerful the teaching experience can be but how much of the education world is all but a catastrophe reality between the blame of society's faults. In education's history, new ideas begin to spur as further thoughts explode into the heart of the classroom and for once, teaching is no longer seen as a personal dictatorship behind closed doors but an open conversation in front of peers and eventually a personal relationship between mentor and apprentice. Critical Pedagogy criticizes the thought of what education used to be and how it has evolved slowly overtime. Wink describes her personal views of her own education and mentions her peers' views as well of how corrupted the education system has become because teachers aren't aware of how much society has influenced them to bring it in the classroom to do mainly three things: name, label, and contradict. Teachers have personally allowed society to influence their thought and it's not that teachers do this intentionally for every child to fail but because it's a part of the American culture and a part of whom the teacher do not know they've become. Over and over again teachers and schools are being blamed for the corruption of the education system when government runs it and society separate themselves from their local schools. As Wink explains it, "We in education are a mirror of society that is more and more polarized" (165).

Though Wink does go into great detail of how much the education system is in dilemma, the book does reveal the suggested answers that should be considered to opening a door to what teachers can be lacking from their classrooms. Concentrating on the ideas of Vygotsky and North American education reformers, Wink face up with the hard questions of education and hit them head on with personal experiences. Though Wink never gives us a definite answer to what is critical pedagogy, it is her personal intent that the readers to not memorize what its definition it holds but for the reader to come up with what it means to them personally. She has taught a great deal of making learning personal not because us humans has to do it but because we love to do it. This book overall is brilliant resource to have for first year teachers and is highly recommended for all education based careers.