Week 2 Blog Post

As Freire (1974) describes, there are three levels of consciousness. The first is magical consciousness, where we accept our lives as we see them in our immediate vicinity and are unaware of the wider socio-economic complications or contradictions. I can relate this to my own narrative. I grew up in a happy and content household: Mum, Dad, and three children living rurally on a farm. My backyard was my playground, a place of happiness and exploration. We had everything we needed: love, shelter, educational opportunities, and protection. This was my daily experience, and I believed everyone also shared this luxury. Through my magical consciousness, I constructed a view of not only my world but the wider world as being the same as what I had encountered.

This stage of magical consciousness persisted for a long time, even through university, until I took my first teaching job in a small rural school in Northern Hawke’s Bay. My eyes were abruptly and unapologetically opened. I remember my first week teaching in my Year 5 and 6 classroom, struggling to understand why ten-year-olds did not have accurate and rapid recall of their five times tables. I had learned and mastered mine at a relatively younger age. How could this even be an issue? The school served two distinct groups: well-established generational farming families whose children attended the local primary school until Year 8 and then went on to boarding schools in Napier or Hastings, and transient families, predominantly from Wairoa, who had moved in search of cheaper accommodation and/or jobs, and whose lives were a struggle. This shift to viewing life through a naive consciousness allowed me to see the diverse segments of society – those similar to my own life and those that were polar opposites. I can honestly say that at this stage, I was naive about the disparity between my circumstances and those of others. I was absorbed in learning the foundational aspects of being a beginning teacher, such as behavior management strategies, adhering to school policy, and wanting my students to like and respect me. I began to recognize the diversity in education and within my classroom, but I did not yet recognize the systemic societal issues that contributed to these differences.

“Conscientisation requires understanding the part we each play in supporting a system that continues to perpetuate harm on disproportionate numbers of Māori learners” (University of Waikato, n.d., para. 4). In 2013, I began a Tumuaki (principal) role, again in a small school in Northern Hawke’s Bay. It was a Decile 1a school, with only 65 students, 95% Māori, and deprivation statistics that overwhelmed me. My idealistic vision of transforming this school was at its peak. I was proud to have been appointed and wanted to dedicate myself to doing my best for my students and the community. Reflecting now, I realize that my ability to be a transformational leader and an agent of change as a beginning principal was severely lacking.

Engaging in critical consciousness allowed me to develop an understanding that the dominant narrative or dominant culture had become ingrained in schools and the wider education system. Freire (1970) describes two stages of confronting oppressive practices. In the first stage, the oppressed identify those structures and practices and commit to transforming the oppression. In the second stage, the transformation means that there is a shared pedagogy for all, to liberate everyone. In my journey toward becoming more critically conscious, I began to see that marginalized areas of society were not at fault or to blame. There were significant barriers not only to education but also a complete imbalance of power structures within society.

I found it incredibly easy to relate to Paulo Freire’s three levels of consciousness (Freire, 1973). I could readily identify my journey through them and was surprised at how accurately they described my level of critical reflection about the world around me.

References:

Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New York, NY: Continuum.

University of Waikato. (n.d.). Activating Critical Theories. Poutama Pounamu