ABSTRACT
The critical pedagogy employed by the school aimed not only to improve the students’ political awareness regarding their social positioning, but also to empower them. Critical pedagogy wishes to empower underprivileged students on both the personal and the political level. On the personal level, the process of empowerment strives to improve the students’ attitude toward learning. Underprivileged students tend to internalise low self-esteem, while ascribing the process of learning, as well as better learning abilities, only to the privileged students. Stigmatised background variables of underprivileged groups, especially ethnicity, race, and class, were found to be connected to poor academic achievements due to their bad influence on students’ expectations and aspirations. On the political level it has been claimed that improving the attitude toward the learning process will strongly affect the underprivileged group’s social positions and opportunities.
