Discussion for Existentialism:

1.  In Existentialism, we have a rejection of all higher authority and Nietzsche tells us, "God is dead".  In effect, the Existentialists are saying we are here alone, and therefore we must be responsible for our actions.  We have only ourselves to rely on.  Religion is dead but it is the birth of individualism. 

Freire takes this to heart in his form of pedagogy where he discredits the "banking method" of education and insists the teacher cannot be the authority standing in front of the students, as a figure of power, while the students are seen as Locke's "empty vessels" filling their minds with facts.   Rather, Freire sees "teacher-students" learning together with "student-teachers", embarking on a shared journey and teaching each other.  In reality, however, we must ask what happens when the teacher is not established as the leader of the class.  Should we take Freire literally when he says the teacher cannot be an authority?

2.  Ranciere is another thinker who believes there should be no expert in the classroom who, in a step-by-step manner, delivers the curriculum and tells the students what to think about it.   Ranciere asks, how have parents come to believe they are not capable of teaching their children?  Because they don't have the proper materials or training?  His main message is that there is not one journey nor any one way of teaching and learning things.  Each student should be free to find her own way.  Competent adults can teach using any tool they choose.  They simply need to use it in a way that helps the student begin to learn from where they are at that moment in their lives.  Thus, "a poor and ignorant father could, if he was emancipated, conduct the education of his children, without the aid of any master explicator....The first priniciple of universal teaching is: one must learn something and relate everything to it".  Ultimately, Ranciere is referring to a method of learning where a stultifying education is avoided and the emancipated teacher is always searching for ways to relate new things to things students already know.  The master teacher keeps the student on his own route.

Do you think this is a viable pedagogy?  What is the value of following curriculum?  What is the point of of forcing a student to study the mandated curriculum?  In the larger scheme of life, should she be free to follow the direction of her potential?

3.  Other thinkers reject this view and defend the role of teacher as a "higher authority".  As a developmental psychologist, Vygotsky pioneered the idea that the intellectual growth of children is a result of human communities rather than of growing as an independent individual.  The "Zone of Proximal Development" is the gap between what the student can learn unaided and what the teacher can help her learn.  The only way the student can make the leap over the gap towards a more complex understanding is with the help of a competent adult.  Can you find a way to synthesize the views on this page and find a better pedagogy?