Why a critical pedagogy of place is an oxymoron

Abstract

Given the growing environmental awareness, educators – especially in science and environmental education – need to avoid embracing a ‘critical pedagogy of place’. Why conflating critical pedagogy with place‐based education is an oxymoron, and why it perpetuates the thinking and silences that undermine both the diversity of the world’s cultures and ecosystems are the main foci of this essay. The main theorists of a critical pedagogy of place – Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and David Gruenewald – draw on a tradition of thinking that emphasizes decolonization and reinhabitation. While these words create the illusion of a culturally and ecologically sound approach to place‐based education, these theorists are unable to recognize the nature and ecological importance of the cultural commons that exist in every community – and that represent alternatives to a consumer‐dependent existence. In effect, their commitment to universalizing the process of decolonization without a deep knowledge of the diverse cultural practices that have a smaller ecological impact meets the definition of an oxymoron where two contradictory positions are assumed to be compatible. A culturally informed knowledge of place takes account of different approaches to dwelling on the land, as well as the ability to listen to the keepers of community memory of past environmentally destructive practices and of sustainable traditions of community self‐sufficiency. It is not driven by a Western ideology that takes for granted the progressive nature of change, or assumes that Western theorists possess the answers that the other cultures should live by.