Sebastián Sclofsky
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    • State Violence, Police Violence, and Racism
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Teaching

I see education as assisting students to develop a critical approach and encouraging them to assess their own beliefs, and not only as transmitting knowledge. If students are able to do both, they will be led to create new ideas, and therefore to become agents of the change they wish to see in the world. In order to achieve this, I find it important to foster a collaborative learning environment. This means generating a strong and intellectually diverse curriculum and an environment that conjures opportunities for mutual learning. It is in this dialogue between students and teachers, mediated by different theoretical traditions and approaches that I believe students develop their ability to think beyond the walls of the classroom.
​As Paulo Freire argued, teaching is to be in a constant dialogue with the students, the authors you are studying and yourself. If openness and spontaneity are preserved along these structural and dialogic lines, it is perpetually possible – for both the teacher and the student – to find new sources of inspiration. 
Teaching Philosophy
Influenced by my experience as a student and teacher in non-formal education, as well as inspired by Paulo Freire’s teachings, I see education as assisting students to develop a critical approach and encouraging them to assess their own beliefs, and not only as transmitting knowledge. Education is a transformative process, which takes place through a critical dialogue between teacher and student. 
A critical pedagogy posits the world and society not as an objective given but as constructed reality which can be transformed. In order to do so, I attempt to move away from what Freire called the banking-style education, in which the professor deposits information into the students’ heads, objectifying the student and reproducing the subordination of the student to the professor. This banking-style education needs to be replaced by a problem-posing education, which encourages students to critically analyze the world and investigate the political, social, economic structures that affect our society and institutions. 

A problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of the world we live in, in order to question our reality and transform it.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx


CSU Stan Courses
Univ. of Florida Courses
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  • Home
  • About
  • Holocaust Program
  • Research
    • State Violence, Police Violence, and Racism
    • Police and Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone
    • Punitive Policies and Policing Strategies in Uruguay
    • Other Research
  • Publications
    • Academic Publications
    • Opinion Articles
    • Recent Presentations
  • Teaching
    • Courses taught at CSU Stan
    • Courses taught at Univ. of Florida
  • Awards & Grants
  • Get in Touch