Rosemarry Torres
EGST 230: Critical Pedagogy
Professor N.M. Hidalgo, Ed. D.
Critical Pedagogy Essay #1
Isn’t it funny how you graduate from high school and your real education starts in
college? I’m sure by now you have realized you’re a professional when it comes to memorizing
material. Who can forget sitting on the bus repeatedly going over those flash cards because you
had to pass a test. Let’s be honest, how many can remember anything from high school classes?
You would have better luck remembering your teacher’s names than recollecting any material
they imposed on you.
It’s not until college where you find that not all classes have the same structure as back in
high school. You notice a difference where having a voice is encouraged in a classroom, you are
challenged to think, able to question things, and to finally branch out from hearing the white
dominant version of history. This is where Critical Pedagogy comes to play, it’s about grasping
the existence of inequality and in respect for students’ cultures. People like Audre Lorde, bell
hook, and Gloria Anzaldúa who present inequalities within society, race, gender, sexuality, and
social statuses.
Lorde addresses inequality in a multitude of ways within society, race, gender, and
sexuality. In the article, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” she
critics how the inequality within our society counter plays on these issues but specifically on
racism and sexuality. For example, this article points out how whites have more power than any
other ethnicity. As well as men having more power over women and heterosexuals having more
power than homosexuals and bisexuals. The inequality of homophobia is a huge concern to her
being that she is a black lesbian feminist. She goes into depth about the “absence of any
consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of Third World women…” (Lorde
Pg.1) In the paper that she views disregards any “systems of shared support, no interdependence
as exist between lesbians and women-identified women.” (Lorde Pg.1) Taken upon notice of how
a development of separation within race and same gendered beings has been created. For
instance, between what experiences are considered to be the “norms” and the unusual
“abnormal.” I’m sure that it came to no surprise that white women’s experience was consider to
be the norm whereas black women’s experience was labeled as the opposite “unusual” including
the critics of sexuality at the same time. Influenced by a patriarchy structure where in “their”
world “maternity is the only social power open to women” (Lorde Pg.1) she advocates for the
