Critical pedagogues, however well-intentioned, have found yet another way, in a long history of ways, to make writing not the emphasis of the writing course. According to Barry Kanpol in his recently published Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, "Critical pedagogy is a cultural-political tool that takes seriously the notion of human differences, particularly as these relate to race, class, and gender. In its most radical sense, critical pedagogy seeks to unoppress the oppressed and unite people in a shared language of critique, struggle, and hope to end various forms of human suffering" (27). Who would argue with such a noble enterprise or its goal of "critical literacy"? Kanpol points out how critical literacy differs from functional literacy; critical literacy:

In his projections for the role of critical literacy in English Studies, James Berlin views writing as cultural critique and cultural production:

Many English studies critical pedagogues have realized Berlin's projections; students in their classrooms critique and create culture in a variety of ways. These instructors and others who practice critical pedagogy in the composition classroom admit that by the time they get through some productive critique of the targeted issue of oppression or power relations, little time is left for targeting writing, or that students don't in the course of a semester translate their newly forming knowledge of the issue into successful writing. Ira Shor noticed this lack of writing development when he began to use a critical pedagogical approach almost two decades ago. He states that:

Berlin makes a similar more recent observation about the effect of the critical pedagogical approach on students' ideological positions in a first-year composition course, where students read and wrote about the cultural codes which daily conditioned their lives. He writes that:

But what about their writing abilities? Given the prevalence of silencing "banking" educational practices in our classrooms, practices which critical pedagogy rightly seeks to change, these "more active critical agents" must be able to demonstrate their critical analysis abilities in written not verbal form. What critical pedagogues fail to acknowledge in their pursuit of emancipatory cultural literacy is that in composition classrooms, writing--the foremost oppressor of many students in that world--gets the short shrift. The work on writing as an issue of oppression or even, to use the Freirian term, the "cognizable object," the thing to be known, goes little beyond the first phase of naming it. In most of these cases, the naming is not even a true naming, for a true naming eventually involves transforming the oppressive situation, at least in terms of the learner's response to it. As Freire points out, "To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming" (76). If writing is named in critical pedagogical and cultural studies classrooms, action upon it usually consists of using it in some nontraditional academic way to address the socio-political, racial, or gender issue at hand, or to demonstrate some knowledge about some aspect of culture or politics. In these cases, writing serves the socio-political, racial, or gender issue instead of the other way around--a subversion of Freirian pedagogy, where unveiling aspects of culture and validation of knowledge about dehumanizing socio-political conditions serve the literacy process. Freire's culture circle participants acquired literacy so rapidly because they recognized it as the key to changing their oppressive reality.

Freire himself cautions us that "One of our greatest mistakes as educators and politicians is not perceiving that our 'here' is the student's and the people's 'there'"( Escobar 55). Writing is the students' "there"; it is and could continue to be an oppressive reality for them. If writing is not taken beyond naming in the composition classroom, particularly the first-year composition classroom, students are left unprepared to lift the oppressive veil of writing when they encounter it again as they matriculate through the academy.

So, am I proposing that critical pedagogy and cultural studies not be used in writing classes? Perhaps. As a Southern-bred, African American woman from a working class background, and a first generation baby-boomer, I have experienced and continue to experience many of the socio-political, racial, and gender inequities and injustices that critical pedagogy seeks to change. I too constantly seek to change them and especially to help my students become change agents. But this cannot happen if their needs to become effective users of the language of power are not met in the composition classroom, so I think that critical pedagogy can better serve students of writing when its approach to critiquing and unveiling oppressive realities is applied to the reality of writing in the world. And if it cannot accomplish this instructional objective within its theoretical scope, then it should not align itself with composition and the teaching of writing.

For me, meeting student language and writing needs in ways that help them to become change agents simultaneously addresses my goal to change the world of inequities and injustices. And this is what I attempt to do by means of the Freirian process of conscientization, which is "the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence" (Freire 101) from oppression. Focusing Freirian pedagogy on writing in this way should not be interpreted as ignoring the cultural-historical reality of oppression from which it evolved; rather it should be viewed as demonstrating that bringing about change, transforming an oppressive reality involves a methodological approach to heightening consciousness of that reality.

In his concern about "concepts of [his] previous works that lent themselves to objectively reactionary uses of [his] ideas" (Escobar 46), Freire states that he used the word "conscientization" for the last time in 1987, but he asserts that he "never abandoned the comprehension of the process which [he] had called conscientization, [he just] gave up the word" (Escobar 46). I use the word here for lack of a more readily identifiable one with Freire and his theories of critical consciousness in the phenomenological view of knowledge as consciousness of. As I comprehend the process which Freire explains in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it involves learners becoming intensely aware not only of the realities that shape their lives, but also of their own capabilities to transform those realities, an awareness of consciousness of something that achieves the power of two, a duality of consciousness. To reach this dual consciousness, learners must advance through four other levels of consciousness: semi-intransitive, naive transitive, transitive, and critical. What follows is my application of the process of conscientization to knowledge-making about writing.

The metaphor which I use for the movement from semi-intransitive consciousness to conscientization is an upwardly forming spiral, a series of contiguous cyclical movements. I selected a spiral instead of the usual hierarchical steps because at each level, consciousness moves laterally outward into the reality, which it then names, thus precipitating an upward curving back upon itself for an action upon that naming. If the action results in renaming, consciousness then moves outward into the renamed reality, again coiling back upon itself for a response to the renaming. With the right catalyst, like smoke expanding outward, curling upwards from its origin of fire to make its presence, its meaning known, the spiral of consciousness continues its movement, and each coil of the spiral represents a higher and more heightened level of knowing.

The first level, semi-intransitive consciousness starts the formation of the spiral and is the mode of consciousness about writing for most of the silenced students entering our first-year composition classrooms. In fact, they have been so conditioned to silence about writing that they find it difficult to talk about it beyond identifying it as something they dislike terribly, frequently contorting their faces as if swallowing something foul. They only want to get the immediate writing task done--to write whatever individual teachers instruct them to do for papers, in other words, writing how and what the teacher wants. Freire applies the term "semi-intransitive" to this level of consciousness, characterized by an inability to objectify the facts of problematic situations, an inability to see the reality as a challenge. In the case of writing, learners fail to see that writing is problematic for most people and to recognize that what they view as "facts" which make it problematic for them may have nothing to do with what writing involves, with how published writers and others who write actually engage in and successfully accomplish it. This is the level at which critical pedagogical approaches and cultural studies abandon most students when it comes to writing. Students have been allowed "to say the word" writing, but not to fully "read the world" of writing in order to situate themselves in that world and to discover ways to respond to it, thus changing, transforming it.

Dialogue is the catalyst that can move the learner from the level of semi-intransitive consciousness upward and around to the next level of the spiral of consciousness, naive transitive consciousness, which is characterized by an ability to objectify the facts of a problematical situation, for instance seeing as writing as a challenge. At this stage, a learner however still retains vestiges of the semi-intransitive consciousness mode, particularly the introjected myths about writing, expressing them in statements such as, "I can't put my views and opinions in school papers"; "I can't use 'I' in an essay"; "I have to write a thesis statement and outline before I begin to write"; "I need to get my ideas right in my head before I put anything on paper"; "I can't write like I talk"; "I do write like I talk"; or I have nothing to write about." We have all heard these comments, which usually end on a high interrogatory note, indicating that students can objectify writing as a problematical situation, but they still harbor many myths and uncertainties about what it means to write. Dialogue focused on debunking those myths and putting those uncertainties in perspective adds another dimension to their consciousness of writing. These learners are conscious of the reality of writing in a naive way that is just ripening to action--a different action from previous ones; that's why Freire calls this second level naive transitive consciousness. Since more organic, natural, and expansive approaches to language use, and to generating and revising writing have been available to teachers of writin g for more than two decades, it would seem that more of our students would not harbor such myths about writing when they enter the first-year composition classroom. But the reality is that many approaches to teaching writing consist of little more than tacking on some element of revision to the pervasive and constraining current-traditional five-paragraph theme heuristic. Consequently, few strides have been made in moving students beyond a naive consciousness of writing, even in most "noncritical" pedagogical approaches.

To initiate the part of the dialogue designed to move students from naive transitive consciousness upward and around the spiral to the third level of full transitive consciousness, I ask students to write in detail about several of their past experiences with writing, about what they liked/disliked about those experiences, about their process of writing and how they think it differs from how others write, and about what they expect to get from the course in terms of their own writing. The dialogue which develops during the sharing of these pieces of writing with me and their classmates helps students to begin to objectify writing and to see it as the issue of the course. No matter what topic they choose to write about for the first extended writing assignment, and many do choose to write about socio-political, racial, and gender issues which concern them, we dialogue and write about both their views on and concerns about their chosen topics as well as about the development and progress of the writing to express and communicate effectively those views and concerns. As a result, students begin to develop a dual consciousness of their writing process, objectifying both their ideas and their writing processes for developing those ideas. After engaging in the myth-debunking dialogues and reading theoretical texts which substantiate my revelations, students reach the point of "annunciating" another, a new reality of writing and thereby enter the level of full transitive consciousness of writing.

Because learners need to become aware of what it means for them to write in order to establish a new relationship with writing, I have them engage in many of the types of "risk-free" writing tasks and techniques presented in Elbow's and Belanoff's A Community of Writers: A Workshop Course in Writing. Daily focused and unfocused freewriting, sustained exploratory writing to discover what they know and think about topics and issues, loop writing to discover the depth of their thinking on topics/issues/events not apparent at the outset of the writing are all tasks and techniques which help students establish a new reality of writing. In addition, we continuously discuss the politics and the power of language use in and out of the academy. As we dialogue about language and write about the writing tasks and techniques, process thinking and writing, they begin to see that writing is not just the product of thinking; it is thinking.

One of the most effective of these techniques is the sustained ten-page exploratory writing on a topic of their choice, which takes place about the third week of class. Using "Sondra Perl's Composing Guidelines" (Elbow and Belanoff 100-104), I get them started in class, where most students write about three to four pages on their chosen topics off the top of their heads. They finish the writing outside of class and hand it in the next class period, which is within two days. Topics that students chose for that assignment in a recent course for inexperienced writers, with an ethnic and gender breakdown of six African American women, two white women, four African American men, and one South Asian American man (all under the age of twenty), included familial desertion, opinions of society, racism (the topic chosen by one of the young white women), an abortion dilemma, military experiences, relationships, and religion.

Later students transformed that exploratory writing into both a more reflective piece about the process of writing it and into a more formal essay. What surprises students is that they actually capture the progress of their thinking about their topics, that they know more than they thought they knew about the topic, and that they could write for ten or more pages without research and notes. Many decide that from that point on, they will have no difficulty with the remaining writing assignments for the course. Not surprisingly, most still do have problems, but they have a new reality, a new relationship to writing, viewing writing as thinking. They are now ready to act upon the new reality and move to the next level of consciousness, critical consciousness.

"Problem posing" is the Freirian concept that facilitates movement to critical consciousness and subsequently conscientization. Problem-posing involves re-presenting, modeling and questioning problems people encounter in their relations to the reality to be unveiled. Antithetical to "banking education," "'Problem-posing' education, responding to the essence of consciousness--intentionality--. . . epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian 'split'--consciousness as consciousness of consciousness" (Freire 66-67).

As a result of individualized problem posing and the on-going dialogue about the development of their ideas and their writing processes, my students begin to perceive how the process of writing becomes a problem as a result of how people teach, approach, relate, and respond to it, particularly how they individually respond to it.

More generalized problem-posing for the course involves re-presenting writing to them in the form of specific genres--description, narration, persuasion, and analysis of argument. I focus the dialogue that follows these activities on helping students perceive that the view of writing as thinking forms the basis for development of ideas in each genre, but that the specific characteristics which distinguish one genre from another may require that they approach the thinking process and the final presentation of that thinking differently for each genre. This perception takes students to the fourth level of consciousness and a kind of launching curve in my metaphorical spiral--a critical consciousness of writing, which makes it possible for them to spring into a fully conscientized mode about the reality of writing. This conscientized mode is the starting point for transformation of the reality of writing. Such a transformation is not likely to happen in critical pedagogical approaches to teaching writing that do not take students to a critical consciousness of writing itself. Excerpts from some of the ungraded mid-term reflections about the course from the same class of inexperienced writers mentioned above illustrate my point about this change in consciousness:

From this level of critical consciousness of writing, the last young woman writer above can continue upward to the level of conscientization, with the intervention, help and feedback from teachers and peers to keep her aware that she knows writing in a different way, a way that makes it possible for her to respond to it differently, to make it work for her in terms of the meanings she needs to make, the images she wants to create, the ideas that she wants to communicate.

Reaching this point of critical consciousness of writing prepares her to continue to grow as a writer. Of course, this does not mean that all her problems with writing are solved. If writing ceases to be a reality for her, as it does for most students in the years between first-year writing courses and junior or senior papers and reports, the metaphorical spiral can recoil down the hierarchical levels of consciousness and even, like smoke when a fire is extinguished eventually disappear.

Until an instructional approach transforms learners' thinking about writing in the way described above, then no knowledge-making about writing takes place. All the discussions of cultural, socio-political, racial and gender issues as in the case of critical pedagogy; reading, analyzing, and modeling of published writing; grammar-instruction in discrete units of language; crafting techniques at the word and sentence level; and superficial routine revision of essays, as in the case of other approaches, will make little lasting difference in students' abilities to write. They enter and leave the writing classroom in a semi-intransitive state of consciousness of writing, continuing to harbor and perpetuate inhibiting myths about what it means to write.

Most of these myths cyclically resurface when some of these students become English studies teachers and program administrators, public officials and plicy makers, and plain old demanding John or Johnetta Q. Public. We see them translated into ineffectual teaching and learning environments in terms of large class size, weak instructional approaches, inadequate physical spaces, and insufficient time devoted to the development of successful student writers--the one-shot, one semester writing course; inappropriate and even irrevelant assessment "instruments", requiring short, timed essays, which are only evaluated in terms of clarity and "correctness;" and most importantly, the devaluing and dehumanization of writing teachers, who are expected to create successful student writers under such nearly impossible conditions. This cycle needs to be broken and can be broken by problem-posing, re-presenting, critiquing, and dialoguing with students about all of the above factors which contribute to the culture of the composition classroom. Breaking this cycle of ignorance, inequities and injustices both inside and outside of the profession places high among the changes I seek as a result of my use of Freirian pedagogy in teaching writing. Transforming the world of socio-political, racial, and gender inequities and injustices ranks even higher. And I want my students to join me in the continuous struggle to effect this transformation, not from the metaphorical margins where an inability to use effectively the written language of power relegates them, but from their literal existence within the power structures which perpetuate ignorance, poverty, racism, sexism, and cronyism.

Critical pedagogy is about teachers only. Many critical peadagogues seem to use the approach as a form of cultural capital for their own professional elevation to a kind of elite intellegentsia within the field of composition studies, excluding any one whose views aren't circumscribrd by a Marxist or neo-marxist view of reality, and exploiting those too naive to see where full endoresement of the approach positions them when it comes to using it in the writing classroom. Kanpol explains how critical pedagogy involves "deskilling" teachers to see that traditional ways of teaching some top-down mandated curriculum doesn't work for the large numbers of inner-city minority students. Once "deskilled", teachers are then "reskilled to "challenge sterotyping, find ways to subvert tracking through alternative methodologies, build curriculum with open and critical spirits, become involved in the policy-oreinted decisions of the state and local school district site, and form group solidarity over issues of value-laden importance. To do this would propel teachers to become not only critical pedagogues but also what Aronwitz and Giroux term 'transformative intellectuals'"(39-40), implying an elevation in status or class within the profession in my view. Talk about power relations. How does this differ from the inherent teacher-student contradiction in teaching and learning situations, or from the historical faculty hierarchy within English departments?

Freirian pedagogy was designed to make acquiring literacy interesting and meaningful for learners, and cultural critique made that possible. Cultural critique was not the ending point as it appears to be in current critical pedagogical approaches, but the starting point of literacy. If critical pedagogy and cultural studies, used in a writing classroom do not create critical consciousness of writing, then it has not dealt with the immediate, oppressive reality, the omnipresent one for students and teachers alike in the writing classroom. In aligning itself with Freire and Frierian pedagogy and coopting the composition classroom for its theoretical purposes, critical pedagogy should at least achieve the objective that Freire successfully achieved many times in many different parts of the world: helping students become eager and easy acquirers of literacy.

Aronowitz, Stanley and Henry Giroux. Education under Siege: The Conservative, Liberal and Radical Debate over Schooling. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1985.

Berlin, James. "Literacy, Pedagogy and English Studies." Cultural Studies in the English Classroom. Ed. James Berlin and Michael J. Vivion. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinenman, 1992. 247-269.

Elbow, Peter and Pat Belanoff. A Community of Writers: A Workshop Course in Writing. 2nd. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.

Escobar, Miguel, Alfredo L. Fernadez, and GIlberto Guevara-Niebla with Paulo Freire. Paulo Freire on Higher Education: A Dialogue at the National University of Mexico. New York: SUNY Press, 1994.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970.

Giroux, Henry. "Literacy and the Politics of Difference." Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern. Ed. Colin Lankshear and Peter L. Mclaren. New York: SUNY Press, 1993. 367-377.

Kanpol, Barry. Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction. Wesport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1994.

Shor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Boston: South End Press, 1980.

Additional thoughts for presentation and to be worked into the manuscript above:

*In terms of a "method" for critical pedagogy, Kanpol writes:

Readers of this text should note that there is no one correct way to "do" critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is about teachers (in this particular case [of method]) struggling for some semblance of control in their lifes--control that has to do with finding a democratic path that begins to alleviate forms of oppression, alienation, and subordination"(137).