This post will be a sketch of what I conceptualized upon a paper in University. It was an educational pedagogy, even before I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. It is entitled “Intellectual rebellion for the Good”. This anachronistic oddity is indeed interesting to look back upon and examine if and how my actions within formal educational boundaries have aligned with this unaffected intellectual exploration from the yesteryears. It firstly involves a macro environment which firstly entails the necessary existence of a healthy socio-emotional foundational basis for the student. Students must also be exercising the practice and of the values of “the Good”. This process involves constant alignment and realignment and concrete fruitful action thereafter in order to actualize the moral learning points and benefit the community. Every intellectual and scholastic endeavour is to be done with the end goal of “the Good” and not peripheral advantages like wealth and status.
Then we proceed with the process of creating an intellectual rebel who acts in the direction of and for the Good. The first stage basically involves the mastering of basics whereby the student must grasp a competent knowledge of the world around him. The educator plays the role of sharing of knowledge.
The second stage involves testing the students’ understanding through reflective processes and later bridge into higher order thinking processes. This stage is important because misunderstandings can lead to greater understandings when reflected and improved upon. The educator plays the role of assessor and guide.
The third stage for the student is to challenge his knowledge. This is executed via open-ended questioning techniques and reflective processes now take on a collaborative dimension in which the student starts to learn how to negotiate and assemble an intellectual product from various perspectives (which would at times be conflicting). The educator plays the role of facilitator in this stage.
The last stage is when the student now becomes an Intellectual rebel for the Good. There are clear lines of intellectual engagement in which the student truly believes in and upholds. Constructive rebellion is the goal, not anarchism. The intellectual rebel explores, challenges, deconstructs, consolidates and finally reconstructs in the direction of and for the Good.
