Pedagogy of the oppressed

1. Pedagogy of the oppressed

2. Paulo Freire • Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997), the Brazilian educationalist, has left a significant mark on thinking about progressive practice. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed is currently one of the most quoted educational texts (especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia). Freire was able to draw upon, and weave together, a number of strands of thinking about educational practice and liberation.

3. Freire’s perception of the world • Dehumanizing and humanizing forces • Violence • Struggle of the oppressed • Historical Vocation of the oppressed to be part of humanized condition • Liberation, affirmation denouncing alienation

4. Struggle for liberation is collective not individualistic • Need of liberation for the Oppressed and oppressor, • where to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor • Liberation of both is the ontological vocation

5. pedagogy • Perception is not enough • Dialectical process of action and reflection is required • Developing a new consciousness for both oppressor and oppressed having a solidarity • Concrete situation should be objectively verifiable needing solution, as opposed to subjectivism • Critical and realistic thinking

6. Humanist and liberating pedagogy has two stages • First the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis commit themselves to transformation • In the second stage, this stage ceases to belong to the oppressed but taken up by all men and women for permanent liberation

7. Three levels of consciousness • Naïve consciousness • Critical consciousness • Transformational consciousness

8. Human condition • Oppressed and oppressor • Dehumanized condition • Culture of silence

9. Banking system of education • the teacher teaches and the students are taught; • the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; • the teacher thinks and the students are thought about; • the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly; • the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined; • the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply; • the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher; • the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it; • 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; • the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

10. Two types of education Banking education Problem posing education • Myths • Resistance for dialogue • Treating students as objects of teaching • Domestication of the students • Immobilizing and fixating • Non-myth • Promoting dialogue • Students are critical thinkers • Ontological vocation to become human • Historical and liberating

11. dialogue • Dialogue of words • Dialogue of works (action) • Dialogue of disposition : profound love for the world, humility, intense faith in humanity, mutual trust, sense of hope, discerning and critical thinking • Equal balance to dialectic of reflection – action- reflection • Dialogue is an existential necessity: creative beings • Banking system of education denies dialogue

12. Dialogue of what • Each epoch is characterized by a complex of ideas, concepts, hopes, doubts, values, and challenges in dialectical interaction with their opposites, striving towards fulfillment. • These themes are never isolated, independent, disconnected or static. They are always interacting dialectically with their opposites

13. Cultural action for transformation • Revolution: action of revolution will come about with a good theory. • leadership

14. Cultural action for transformation • Conquest • Divide & rule • Manipulation • Cultural invasion • Cooperation • Unity for liberation • Cultural synthesis

15. Contribution : dialogue • Five aspects of Paulo Freire's work have a particular significance for our purposes here. First, his emphasis on dialogue has struck a very strong chord with those concerned with popular and informal education. Given that informal education is a dialogical (or conversational) rather than a curricula form this is hardly surprising. However, Paulo Freire was able to take the discussion on several steps with his insistence that dialogue involves respect. It should not involve one person acting on another, but rather people working with each other. Too much education, Paulo Freire argues, involves 'banking' - the educator making 'deposits' in the educatee.

16. Praxis • Second, Paulo Freire was concerned with praxis- action that is informed (and linked to certain values). Dialogue wasn't just about deepening understanding - but was part of making a difference in the world. Dialogue in itself is a co-operative activity involving respect. The process is important and can be seen as enhancing Community and building social capital and to leading us to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing. Informal and popular educators have had a long-standing orientation to action - so the emphasis on change in the world was welcome. But there was a sting in the tail. Paulo Freire argued for informed action and as such provided a useful counter-balance to those who want to diminish theory.

17. Conscientization • Third, Freire's attention to naming the world has been of great significance to those educators who have traditionally worked with those who do not have a voice, and who are oppressed. The idea of building a 'pedagogy of the oppressed' or a 'pedagogy of hope' and how this may be carried forward has formed a significant impetus to work. An important element of this was his concern with conscientization - developing consciousness, but consciousness that is understood to have the power to transform reality'

18. experience • Fourth, Paulo Freire's insistence on situating educational activity in the lived  of participants has opened up a series of possibilities for the way informal educators can approach practice. His concern to look for words that have the possibility of generating new ways of naming and acting in the world when working with people around literacies is a good example of this.

19. Transcendence • the divide between teachers and learners can be transcended. In part this is to occur as learners develop their consciousness, but mainly it comes through the 'class suicide' or ‘transcendence experience' of the teacher. • The educator for liberation has to die as the unilateral educator of the educatees, in order to be born again as the educator-educatee of the educatees-educators. An educator is a person who has to live in the deep significance sacrifice.

20. Inherent problem • Question of consciousness • Question of objectively defining the problem • Question of violence • Resolution of oppressed-oppressor contradiction • Rise of dominating ‘bureaucracy’ killing the effort • Question of Political action

21. Question of dialogue • Question of leadership • Question of death affirming climate of oppression to life affirming humanization • Question of revolutionary leadership