Pedagogy of the Other or, the Critical Pedagogy and the Impossible Exchange

Abstract

In our rather short study, we have introduced three indispensable basic concepts that are needed if we want to understand what critical pedagogy is. The concepts are: I) the concept of alterity or otherness; 2) the concept of critical literacy; 3) the concept of simulacra. Our thesis is that Paulo Freire, Jean Baudrillard and Emmanuel Levinas have provided some very strong theoretical and practical tools which can be used to radically change the institution which has been called the school. In our view the pedagogy should be an ethical enterprise, and the problem-posing pedagogy which we argue for is that ethical enterprise.