Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paulo Freire)
Introduction (Freirie's major goal, emancipatory pedagogical process, relations b/w oppressor and oppressed, awakening of oppressed, performative antiracism, economic collapse of Brazil in 1930s, conscientization, banking model of ed, specialization, critical consciousness)
"...Freire's major goal in Pedagogy of the Oppressed was not to propose an innovative methodology (which would be antithetical to his critique of formulaic models of education) but to launch the development of an emancipatory pedagogical process that invites and challenges students, through critical literacies, to learn how to negotiate the world in which they find themselves, in a thoughtful and critically reflective manner, so as to expose and engage the tensions and contradictions inherent in the ongoing relations between the oppressor and oppressed." "...the central goal of Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is to awaken in the oppressed the knowledge, creativity, and constant critical reflective capacities necessary to unveil, demystify, and understand the power relations responsible for their oppressed marginalization and, through this recognition, begin a project of liberation through praxis which, invariably, requires consistent, never-ending critical reflection and action." -some folks (i.e. hypocritical progressives) claim to adhere to Freire's principles, but are really loyal to neoliberal markets and more "performative" acts of antiracism, as opposed to actually analyzing systems of oppression and "decoupling" from them; they denounce racism but reap the benefits of it and are antiracists in name only -Freire lost middle class status himself when his family fell victim to Brazil's economic collapse in the 1930s, an experience that proved highly influential in his life and launched his focus on (and critique of) a class-based society -Freire wanted to lead people to conscientization: "...all of us are involved in a permanent process of conscientization, as thinking beings in a dialectical relation with an objective reality upon which we act. What varies in time and space are the contents, methods, and objectives of conscientization.... [when human beings became aware] and made themselves capable of revealing their active reality, knowing it, and understanding what they know." -Freire criticized the banking model of education, which considered education as the "pouring of water into a vessel," "teaching to the test," etc. which exchewed a more critical approach to examining the dynamics b/w the oppressor and oppressed in the world, and how one is situated within that dynamic; this model also promoted increasing specialization whereby professors, academics, etc. focused on increasingly narrower fields which ignores the broader systems and structures of which they are a part -Freirie believed we must commit race and class suicide in order to increase our critical consciousness; we must think critically about our position in the world, how it differs from others, and why different people are in different positions; part of this is questioning the type of education we get and why (who is making the decisions about what and how we learn?) -Freire rejected sectarians on both sides, interestingly....the right for wanting to preserve the existing order, and the left for thinking the existing order is immutable and there is no chance to change it; those views are both reactionary, whereas we need radicals (not sectarians) to examine the systems of oppression that govern us
Ch. 3 (dialogue, Conscientizacao, great quotations)
"As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we must seek its constitutive elements. Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed - even in part - the other immediately suffers. There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world." "Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world....Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression." "Because dialogue is an encounter among women and men who name the world, it must not be a situation where some name on behalf of others. It is an act of creation; it must not serve as a crafty instrument for the domination of one person by another." "Finally, true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking - thinking which discerns an indivisible solidarity between the world and the people and admits of no dichotomy between them - thinking which perceives reality as process, as transformation, rather than as a static entity - thinking which does not separate itself from action, but constantly immerses itself in temporality without fear of the risks involved." "The revolutionary's role is to liberate, and be liberated, with the people - not to win them over." "Some may think it inadvisable to include the people as investigators in the search for their own meaningful thematics: that their intrusive influence (n.b., the "intrusion" of those who are most interested - or ought to be - in their own education) will "adulterate" the findings and thereby sacrifice the objectivity of the investigation. This view mistakenly presupposes that themes exist, in their original objective purity, outside people - as if themes were things. Actually, themes exist in people in their relations with the world, with reference to concrete facts. The same objective fact could evoke different complexes of generative themes in different epochal sub-units. There is, therefore, a relation between the given objective fact, the perception women and men have of this fact, and the generative themes." "We must realize that the aspirations, the motives, and the objectives implicit in the meaningful thematics are human aspirations, motives, and objectives. They do not exist "out there" somewhere, as static entities; they are occurring." "Reflection upon situationality is reflection about the very condition of existence: critical thinking by means of which people discover each other to be "in a situation." -"Conscientizacao is the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence."
Ch. 2 (banking model, problem-posing education, liberation, great quotations)
-banking model of education: where teachers treat students like "empty vessels" to be filled with "deposits" of knowledge that they alone possess -problem-posing education: dialogue b/w student and teacher, co-creating knowledge using a shared dialogus and conversation -liberation begins with reconciliation; everybody is a student and teacher; there is no critical consciousness w/ the banking model (it is passive...); the oppressed must be integrated into the educational process using their subjective knowledge and experience so a body of knowledge is not "imposed" onto them; we must transform the structure (oppressor / oppressed...) with the people living IN it -authentic liberation = humanization -banking model: 1) the teacher teachers and the students are taught 2) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing 3) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about 4) the teacher talks and the students listen - meekly 5) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined 6) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply 7) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher 8) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt it 9) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students 10) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects -problem-posing model: 1) sets itself the task of demythologizing 2) regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality 3) makes students critical thinkers 4) bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation 5) take the people's historicity as their starting point 6) affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming - as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality 7) "revolutionary futurity" 8) cannot serve the interest of the oppressor "The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartamentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration - contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity." "The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power." "Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it." "Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation. To that end, it enables teachers and studetns to become Subjects of the educational process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism; it also enables people to overcome their false perception of reality. The world - no longer something to be described with deceptive words - becomes the object of that transforming action by men and women which results in their humanization."
Ch. 1 (dehumanization, pedagogy, science and tech, fatalism and docility, co-intentional education, great quotes)
-dehumanization prevents all humans from being "fully human"; the oppressor benefits from his position while the oppressed suffer, sometimes unconscious of the underlying structure that perpetuates the oppressor/oppressed cycle; the oppressed must liberate both the oppressed and oppressor from this prescribed cycle and structure whereby people adhere to certain roles -pedagogy to regain humanity must be forged in partnership with and in solidarity with the oppressed; can't be determined for them; the resolution must be objectively verifiable though it needs to be understood that subjectivity (of experience) plays a role; the solution cannot include replacing former oppressors with new ones, or creating new oppressors out of the formerly oppressed; sometimes former oppressors will view change as a threat to their individual rights (but not recognizing that that's exactly what they did in their oppressor role...) -oppressors use science and technology to manipulate the masses and propagate a worldview that justifies the existence of the oppressor; they also use science and tech to maintain order and ensure that many cannot achieve full humanity -fatalism and docility of the oppressed can be a real problem that must be overcome; they can start to believe their lot / station in life is divine will ("the will of God") and then engage in "horizontal violence" (violence against each other) over everyday stressors when they don't perceive the overall "order" of things (misplaced rage) -we must trust in the oppressed and their ability to reason; the oppressed must cease to be "things" and fight as men and women; co-intentional education between oppressor and oppressed with the aim of unveiling reality, know it critically, and re-create that knowledge; liberation is a mutual process "The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized. The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alientation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking out or being silent; castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world. This is the tragic dilmma of the oprresed which their education must take into account." "The pedagogy of the opressed, as a humanist and libertarian pedagogy, has two distinct stages. In the first, the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to its transformation. In the second stage, in which the reality of oppression has already been transformed, this pedgagoy ceases to belong to the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation. In both stages, it is always through action in depth that the culture of domination is culturally confronted." "Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated." "The struggle begins with men's recognition that they have been destroyed. Propaganda, management, manipulation - all arms of domination - cannot be the instruments of their rehumanization. The only effective instrument is a humanizing pedagogy in which the revolutionary leadership establishes a permanent relationship of dialogue with the oppressed. In a humanizing pedagogy the method ceases to be an instrument by which the teachers (in this instance, the revolutionary leadership) can manipulate the students (in this instance, the oppressed), because it expresses the consciousness of the students themselves."
Ch. 4 (humankind and beings of praxis, dialogue, antidialogical action, dialogical action, great quotations)
-humankind = beings of praxis (action + reflection leading to the transformation of the world); animals are beings of action only; when we treat the oppressed like animals, and do not incorporate them into the reflection required to transform the world (rather, treating them as passive agents) we prevent them from being fully human; the praxis cannot be dominated by elites -dialogue is the essence of revolution; courageous dialogue is the answer, not a coup (which can simply replace on set of oppressors with another...) -antidialogical action: 1) conquest (involves creating myths to oppress...like the myth of capitalism, individual rights, private property, a free society, etc.); 2) divide and rule ("soften up" certain members of the oppressed, like union leaders for example, by providing them with "leadership training"); 3) manipulation (conform masses to the objectives of the oppressor); 4) cultural invasion (impose the oppressor's worldview onto the oppressed, curbing their ability to express themselves...establishing a sense of superiority / inferiority) -dialogical action: 1) cooperation, 2) unity for liberation (cultural action), 3) organization, 4) cultural synthesis "If true commitment ot the people, involving the transformation of the reality by which they are oppressed, requires a theory of transforming action, this theory cannot fail to assign the people a fundamental role in the transformation process. The leaders cannot treat the oppressed as mere activists to be denied the opportunity of reflection and allowed merely the illusion of acting, whereas in fact they would continue to be manipulated - and in this case by the presumed foes of manipulation." "Revolutionary leaders cannot think without the people, not for the people, but only with the people." "The peasants now see themselves as transformers of reality (previously a mysterious entity) through their creative labor. They discover that - as people - they can no longer continue to be "things" possessed by others; and they can move from consciousness of themselves as oppressed individuals to the consciousness of an oppressed class." "Authentic authority is not affirmed as such by a mere transfer of power, but through delegation or in sympathetic adherence. If authority is merely transferred from one group to another, or is imposed upon the majority, it degenerates into authoritarianism. Authority can avoid conflict with freedom only if it is "freedom-become-authority." "Revolutionary leaders commit many errors and miscalculations by not taking into account something so real as the people's view of the world: a view which explicitly and implicitly contains their concerns, their doubts, their hopes, their way of seeing the leaders, their perceptions of themselves and of the oppressors, their religious beliefs (almost always syncretic) their fatalism, their rebellious reactions."
