Going Beyond: Collegiate Choirs, Critical Pedagogy, and Community

Abstract

Much has been written on the topic of critical pedagogy since the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire brought his critical approach and theory of knowledge to the world stage in Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1968. As a self-reflexive pedagogy, it is in a near constant state of shaping and re-shaping. Through all of this, critical pedagogy remains guided by a foundational principle of challenging assumed norms and transforming oppressive systems. Critical pedagogy has been used to reexamine the entire spectrum of subjects within formal education. As it pertains to music education, there has been a considerable amount of study directed toward K-12 music education since the early 90s. However, the question of critical pedagogy within the specific context of the collegiate choral ensemble remains largely unexplored. It is my hope that this document is of use in critically considering an admittedly niche but vitally important area of formal music education. This document is written in such a way to provide the reader with a foundational understanding of critical pedagogy, rather than a comprehensive understanding of the subject. It is for this reason that I chose to establish the presentation of the broad field critical pedagogy in the writings of Paulo Freire. These foundations are established in Section I of this document: first by briefly reviewing Freire’s context in mid-twentieth century Brazil before turning to his guiding principle that all education is politics. Section II then considers four major concepts of Freire’s critical pedagogy: conscientization, dialogue, praxis, and solidarity. The critical exploration culminates in the third and final section of the document which functions as an imagined round-table discussion of collegiate choral conductors. The discussion is derived from survey data administered to collegiate choral conductors to gauge their attitudes and values towards using elements of critical pedagogy with their collegiate choral ensembles.