Critical pedagogy: Loving and caring within and beyond the classroom

Abstract

Critical pedagogy scholars have described teaching as an act of love. This love is not a trivial emotion but a conscious action that demonstrates care, respect, honesty, listening, and solidarity. However, translating love and other principles of critical pedagogy into the classroom can be complex and painful. This article discusses our pedagogical experiences of love and care inside and outside classrooms. Our reflections on working in a juvenile detention center and a food justice mutual aid project show how understanding love, care, and solidarity as actions have been essential for working with our communities. At the same time, our experiences pose questions about the complexities and possibilities of loving and caring in precarious and totalitarian circumstances. We contribute to thinking about the application of critical pedagogy beyond school classrooms.

Keywords:

• Critical pedagogy
• pedagogy of love
• solidarity
• detention centers
• mutual aid

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See Flores (2016) for a lengthy discussion of the experience of being a cisgender heterosexual man working with incarcerated girls.

2 I want to thank Ellie and Yann for encouraging me to begin cooking with them. Ellie is a beloved organizer/activist, and much of what I learned about organizing in Canada has been in exchanges with her and the other cofounders. I want to thank Paul and Michelle for joining forces with me when I decided to begin cooking and delivering meals. With Paul, we drove around town and carried way too many sacks of onions, potatoes, rice, and lentils up a four-story building. I also want to thank Yann and Jade for sticking with me in leading TPP. Your solidarity, compassion, and care allowed me to stay. Finally, I want to thank everyone who has been part of TPP since April 2020 and all the volunteers who have been part of TPP. Without you, TPP would not have touched so many hearts. Gracias infinitas.

3 Although I am one of the founders and spent numerous hours working in TPP, this reflection is about my experience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jerry Flores

Jerry Flores is an assistant professor in the Sociology department at the University of Toronto. His areas of interest include: studies of gender and crime, prison studies, alternative schools, ethnographic research methods, Latina/o sociology and studies of race and ethnicity. He is the authors of Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance and Wraparound Incarceration (University of California Press).

Andrea Román Alfaro

Andrea Román Alfaro is a Peruvian Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her areas of interest are violence and society, critical criminology, feminist criminology, gender and women studies, qualitative methods, and critical pedagogy. She is currently working on her dissertation on the dynamics of violence in Callao, Peru.