Crafting a Pedagogy of Truth-Seeking in China

• In Event: 25.067 - Challenging Trump's Xenophobic Fascism in the Era of Fake News: Presenting a Collective Front

Abstract

In the midst of Trump’s antagonism towards China (tariffs, military exercises, intellectual property) and his war cry, “America First!,” people around the world as well as in our country are aghast and confused at the meaning and implications of Trump’s words and actions as he attacks democracy as we know it. His indefinite travel ban on seven Muslim countries, inhumane immigration policies, assault on women, collusion with Russians, racist characterization of the Other, and unabashed declaration of himself as world President of white people is accompanied by a racist Hitlerean posture that assaults anyone who disagrees with him and relegates all disagreeable news as “fake news.” China’s leadership in global warming initiatives finds itself ensnarled and accused of manufacturing a false narrative of the earth’s pending expiration. How does China defend itself in a global storytelling standoff without sharpening its own critical skills? China aspires to be a leader in innovation and technology (President Xi, technology conference June 2018) and to accomplish those goals, must help its own people to think in diverse ways in order to gain moral clarity of what is good for this planet.
Given this context, we have to ask what are our roles as educators, researchers and activists? As we navigate through the briar patch of lies, how can we frame our rwork in compelling ways and apply its transformative power toward a more humane and equitable world? A promising answer to this question arises in the work of critical pedagogy and its accompanying aptitude for developing critical consciousness, which finds its way into China through the works of Paulo Freire and Peter McLaren.
A systematic analysis of discussions in and artifacts from a masters and doctoral level 10 session course, showed students having (1) great interest in topics of racism, feminism, American individualism, capitalism 2) an eagerness to break out of their roles as “test taking machines” (student) to engage deeply in critical thought, and 3) a desire to learn about the world in new provocative ways (poetry, drawing, performance. In the review of students’ final course papers, students provide their assessment of the cultural and social barriers to the future of critical pedagogy in China. Questions posed: How does critical pedagogy express itself with the context of Chinese values of harmony, stability and authority? Is critical pedagogy compatible within a communist country? How does critical pedagogy acculturate to “Chinese ways”? How does one walk the fine line between conformity and transgression, between change agent and cultural preservationist, between docility and action? (Wang, 2017).
Highlighted in this presentation is students’ attempts to envision a different future for themselves as human beings, for their communities, for China and for the broader world. This dreaming, so profoundly beautiful and necessary a practice for liberation (Freire, 2007) was new for many students but allowed us to consider paths that might be taken to reach these presumed illusive futures, develop hope, and come to understand that dreaming could be a collective endeavor, a humanizing pedagogy.

Author

• Suzanne SooHoo, Chapman University