"citizen" And "liberation"

As one theory focuses on the politics of education, critical pedagogy, makes the knowledge transferred in daily schools problematic, critically analyzes the process of knowledge transferred, and furthermore shows that the schooling is one of the main tools to produce and reproduce the oppressed-oppressor relationships. In addition, Critical pedagogy reveals the schooling's oppressive nature: to oppress the students—the future citizen. Based on the above analysis about the schooling, the tenets of critical pedagogy is to render a kind of emancipatory pedagogy, which is to transform the traditional, oppressive education into an emancipatory practice. It advocates realizing the social transformation through educational transformation, training students into critical and democratic citizens, and reach social liberation through self-liberating development of people.Critical pedagogy plays an important role in educational research since introduced into China. There are some ambiguous understandings, which should be clarified. From the aspects of time and space, I analyzed hundreds of papers about critical pedagogy, established models of "citizen" and "liberation". Based on the said models, this article focuses on the concepts of "citizen" and "liberation".This article launches the discussion about concept of "citizen" from the issue of "citizen education". From the perspective of critical pedagogy, the traditional education serves as one of the "oppressive practice", which aims to foster students into a kind of person without critical awareness and critical spirit. On the other side, from the perspective of politics, critical pedagogy declares that education should be a kind of political practice to liberate oppressed-oppressor relationships, thus educate students into critical, democratic and effective citizen. For example, this article argues that American's multicultural education is one of the emancipatory movements to foster effective citizen with critical consciousness, critical self-reflection, critical-inquiry and ability to render critical practice. Teacher should be intellectuals and the teacher, one kind of intellectuals, is a special part of the citizens. Only teacher (teacher as intellectuals) can help students achieve critical consciousness.About the key concept-liberation, this article firstly analyzes the meaning of oppress and liberation. Critical pedagogy pursues liberation, and requires transforming oppressive social conditions through schooling, and advocates reach emancipation through empowerment. Secondly, this article analyzes the critical pedagogy's core value—empowerment, the way to realize liberation. Emancipation can be reached by the mean of empowering teacher, which make it possible to empower students by training their critical consciousness on the transformed curriculum. In critical pedagogy's opinion, applying transformative teaching and learning will lead to liberate oppressed-oppressor relationships, so reach emancipation eventually.