What happens, then, in Critical Practice is that the learners put themselves and their world-view at considerable risk, and inevitably, they change. They cross what the 19th Century Marxist designer William Morris called “The River of Fire”, or what Paulo Freire called committing “Class Suicide”. That is, they come to recognise their own previous (and previously unrecognised) implicit involvement in the cultural dominance and subordination of minority or disenfranchised cultures. This is what we mean by “cultural shock”, and once recognised, there is no going back.

This shock to the “mainstream” or dominant culture students is paralleled by a similar shock for the subordinated. As members of the client group come to recognise the extent and depth of their assimilation into European culture and values and their alienation from their own historical culture of origin, a rage begins to emerge against everything that is associated with their subordination – including the students and the “teachers”. This shock on the one side and this rage on the other, cannot be left unattended, but must be addressed as an essential component of reconciliation and forgiveness. Mutual means have to be found by both parties to construct dialogue and rebuild trust across the cultural divide resulting from historical oppression. The most significant example we can cite is the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that took place throughout South Africa after the fall of Apartheid. In a much smaller way, this same process is an inevitable part of the cross-cultural engagement in Critical Practice. This may seem strange in the context of a design project where the task at hand may be the design of a Whare Hauora or Community Hospital or the Programme Development of a Cultural Tourism programme but Critical Theory has the ability to penetrate below the surface of superficial appearances and to reveal the underlying cultural power dynamics that otherwise remain invisible in our everyday view of the world. Examples of Critical (Educational) Practice, connected to a theoretical base can also inform and clarify the ways in which pedagogy and curriculum operate within the same nexus of cultural power dynamics, and can reveal to the student and to the “teacher” the manifest ways in which we avoid speaking truth to power.

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