A Dialogue of Classes: Interpreting the Real World

Last updated on: September 12, 2014 at 8:58 am by Guest Contributor

A Dialogue of Classes: Interpreting the Real World 2014-09-12T08:58:00-05:00 Guest Contributor

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by Marguerite Spiotta

Special to R3

As a college student at a liberal arts institution, the ways in which my courses interconnect and comingle never cease to amaze me. This semester especially, the subject matter of my four classes interconnect with such ferocity that I wonder if perhaps in the convergence exists absolutely no coincidence at all. In other words, I see God guiding and focusing my course work to reflect something greater and more indicative of the real world than my neatly labeled binders and sharpened pencils might suggest. My classes very much call on and interact with the real world, the one outside the stone covered walls of the Rhodes College community. Two of my classes in particular beg for this type of real life application – Public Speaking and Liberation Theology.

I write this post in reaction to and dialogue with Dr. Johnson’s post of September 4th, “Ferguson Fiasco: Doing Theology After Ferguson-Part 1.” In Dr. Johnson’s post, he highlights the ways in which the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri “reminded [him] (again) that [his] call as both pastor and professor is to do ministry in the real world. ” Johnson goes on to express the ways in which “the issues and problems in Ferguson are reminiscent of the issues and problems in the late 1960’s when, according to Canon and Pinn, ‘ministers and academics took a public stand against injustice and demanded a re-visioning of life in the United States that took seriously the humanity of African Americans’” (1). This forced me to question my own role in this theological discussion as a student, a female and white student at that. What should my theological response sound like? And perhaps more importantly, how can my theological response push me outside the walls of institutionalized academic study and into the real world?

I see a partial answer to my question emerging from something I learned in my Liberation Theology course. We first studied Paulo Freire, and Johnson’s discussion of the academic setting reminded me immediately of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In Freire’s book, he puts forth his model of partnership dialogue between teacher and student as well as the model of problem-posing discussion. Freire’s methodology, I believe, becomes relevant as I begin to grapple with the events transpired and still transpiring in Ferguson, Missouri. Freire’s model proves useful because it encourages dialogue rather than monologue. He promotes emergence and constant unveiling as opposed to submergences and silencing.

At this moment, I cannot yet identify my own resolute opinion in this ongoing discussion pertaining to Michael Brown, but I know that my voice begins through the type of dialogue that Freire supported. My courses dialogue with one another, and more importantly they dialogue with events happening in our society today. I see the academic setting as providing a launching pad of dialogue that interacts with the world in which we live. I look upon this academic school year with great hope that my voice will emerge strongly, relevantly and with a theology that ministers and caters to the sorrows and joys of this very real world.

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