There are two tensions in critical pedagogy. One is between the universalistic and the particularistic critical pedagogy models. The other tension exists between the community and the schools. Critical pedagogy as universalistic is good, but we need to know how critical pedagogy can be used more specifically on American soil by African Americans. Secondly, we also need to reclaim education as a community project. Understanding SNCC's social dramas through the lens of Theatre of the Oppressed as reflected in Critical Pedagogical practice helps educators understand how they can best engage the community in reclaiming the task of educating its youth.
This dissertation is a social history of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its relationship to Augusto Boal's, Theatre of the Oppressed. Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1979) was developed out a community based educational program that uses theatre as a tool for social and cultural transformation. I focused on SNCC's several freedom acts of the early 1960's: The Sit-Ins, Freedom Summer, Freedom Schools, and the Free Southern Theatre. SNCC, a student lead social movement, was established February 1, 1960 with the first sit-in and is considered by many historians as the catalyst for social change during the civil rights movement that increased voting registration, civic engagement, collective and individual transformation. This dissertation thus represents a recovery of memory, and an attempt to make use of this historical memory to re-think critical pedagogy as dramaturgical and community-based. In re-covering and re-working the memory of SNCC's militant pedagogy from the early 1960s, I am informed by Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, which in turn is related to Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the Oppressed, and through Freire to the work of Henry Giroux and others in critical pedagogy.
An historical analysis was conducted on these freedom acts by examining archival data, interviews and secondary sources to understand the specific ways in which SNCC's freedom acts reflects Augusto Boal's (1985) Theatre of the Oppressed Forum Theatre's main techniques: Protagonist/Antagonist, Spectator/Actor, and the Joker. I also explored the particular features of SNCC's social dramas that don't necessarily fit neatly into Boal's model. In general, SNCC's freedom acts exhibited critical pedagogical practices (Freire, 1996) by helping the oppressed and the oppressor reach conscientization, valuing dialogue, and providing opportunities for the oppressor and the oppressed to gain a greater understanding of oppression through carefully questioning every aspect of society.
In the final analysis, I provide a conceptual framework (Giroux, 1992) from the techniques learned from studying SNCC's community engagement work and its radical pedagogy and practices. SNCC's Freedom Acts were, individually and collectively transformative, reflective of Forum Theatre, and can be used today as a radical pedagogical framework for black communities to reclaim education promote critical pedagogy in the community and in local schools.