A Pedagogy of Shared Experience

The idea behind the article is whether or not (more so, how much) our education is shared across the board of individuals of different races and cultures. The piece is a discussion between a professor and her student who is from a first-generation Mexican family living in the United States, and who lived the majority of his life in the border town. But what we come to find out about is how much of a different education he had as a person of color in an area that was mostly color, yet were seen more as statistics when it came to the political aspect of his education (being from an area of high poverty, high dropout rates, high teen pregnancy). I think the most important idea around the article is Richard Rodriguez’s thought that while bilingualism is important, Eurocentric teaching is more so, going as far as to think that a white, English speaking culture is important to education because it forces oneself to see themselves as an individual and also as part of a crowd of people learning from the same palate. I would have to agree with this sentiment. As someone who speaks Spanish and English, works with mainly only Spanish speakers yet goes to school with mainly English speakers, I think in certain settings, it is important to only do certain things in one inclusive way, be it English or Spanish. While in classes, we read pieces written by women: I have never been a woman. How can I identify with her? Easily, because we speak the same language and she can communicate her story to me in a way that I can individually interpret.

The article fits with what we’ve been learning in the idea that we take what we know from so many different institutions and ages and that we use it not just in a beginning to end, top-down way, but that there is something that can be taken from the middle that may help us understand concepts even more so, especially in the terms of Rhizomatic learning.

http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/critical-pedagogy/culture-education-difference-negotiating-pedagogy-shared-experience/