LP+Annotation+2


 * Full citation? **

Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.


 * Where are the author/s located, what are their backgrounds and what kinds of expertise do they have? **

Paulo Freire is a Brazilian philosopher and educator who is said to have launched the critical pedagogy movement. With a background in philosophy - primarily phenomenology and the psychology of language - he entered/carved his field with a focus on liberation theology. It is important to note that he strongly believed in the power of literacy in education.


 * List of at least three details or examples from the text that point to something important about culture, education and/or the challenge of environmental sustainability in the United States. **

Oppressors often fall to "false generosity" in response to the oppressed:

"False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands—whether of individuals or entire peoples—need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world." (45)

"Education is suffering from narration sickness." (71)

"Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention..."(72) and praxis is necessary for effective education.

"This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the op- pressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to "soften" the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity," the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this "generosity," which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty." (44)
 * What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? **

"Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher- student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They be- come jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on "authority" are no longer valid; in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are "owned" by the teacher." (80)

"I must re-emphasize that the generative theme cannot be found in people, divorced from reality; nor yet in reality, divorced from people; much less in "no man's land." It can only be apprehended in the human-world relationship. To investigate the generative theme is to investigate peoples thinking about reality and peoples action upon reality, which is their praxis. For precisely this reason, the methodology proposed requires that the investigators and the people (who would normally be considered objects of that investigation) should act as co-investigators." (106)


 * What is the main argument of the text? **

Freire sets forth that the oppressed must be the prime movers in overcoming the domination that suppresses, and educational pedagogies should be structured in such a way to allow for the oppressed to develop an awareness of their own consciousness. In doing so, they develop the capacity to liberate both themselves and their oppressors, both of which have become dehumanized through the process of oppression.


 * Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Freire claims that the oppressed must liberate both themselves and their oppressors in their quest for their own humanization. This is because the oppressor, himself, is dehumanized in dehumanizing the oppressed. The oppressor is unable to offer the oppressed anything other than false generosity because any legitimate change to the current lifestyle feels like oppression to the oppressor. In the liberation process, however, the oppressed often strive to be like the oppressor. Freire sets forth that it is essential, through their struggle, to not aim towards becoming the oppressor but instead to strive to liberate both from oppression.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A pedagogy of the oppressed must begin with the oppressed approaching the oppressive reality that absorbs human consciousness. Doing so requires that the teacher-student contradiction be overcome so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. Freire pushes against the "banking model" of education that sees students as entities in which to deposit knowledge. Instead he calls for educational strategies that employ dialogue - or problem-posing education - to promote students to articulate their own positions within society, developing their consciousness. Dialogue should focus on the position of the students in the here and now, which "constitutes the situation within which they are submerged, from which they emerge, and in which they intervene" to avoid a sense of paralysis or immobility. Thus, it is critical for students to also engage with reflection, where they can generate new modes of thought.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Anti-dialogical processes - manipulation, coercion, control - that guide revolutions can never liberate the oppressed. Leaders often need the adherence from the people in order to facilitate the revolution, which pushes them to employ such practices.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">What parts of the argument did you find most and least persuasive, and why? **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I found Freire's critique of the "banking model of education" to be immensely persuasive and particularly poignant for considering in the current historical moment. It is undeniable that "filling" students with education does not provide the space for critical thinking or the cultivation of agency in a manner that allows students to imagine a different societal system. According to the historical documentary that we viewed a few weeks ago, the current shifts towards national standardization of education, monitored through testing, in many cases bind teachers into employing such a model. This brings in new consideration - what are the structural components that facilitate the capacity to institute a "problem-posing" model of education, and what structural constraints hinder that capacity?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Much aligned with the critiques outlined in the Re-thinking Freire: Globalization and the environmental crisis, I believe that, while this process is directed towards individuals that have experienced oppression, it is still a Western-centric approach to education that fails to incorporate alternative methods of learning. Critically, the emphasis on literacy (over, for instance, oral history) can serve to disempower those whose cultures rely on alternative means of communication. Many ICT4Edu adopt Freire for their approaches to international development, and these issues play out poignantly in such scenarios.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">What kinds of corrective action are suggested by the text (either overt or implied)? **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Freire sets forth a reconceptualization in the design of pedagogy that facilitates the type of learning that can recognize and overcome domination. Additionally, Freire sets forth a strategy for collecting themes that dialogue can encounter through a process of anthropological research and codification. His whole book can be seen as an outline for corrective action.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Explain how the argument and evidence in the text relates to our effort to conceptualize, design and deliver EcoEd? **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Freire's text should push us to think critically about the design of curriculums - particularly how to facilitate the sorts of educational models that promote dialogue and reflection over information dissemination and develop a student's own sense of capacity to intervene in a system that is working against him/her. I would like to explore how to build this into the cascading model - how to encourage the students who will teach other students to also consider how they can learn from those students and facilitate the emergence of their critical awareness.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">What additional information has this text compelled you to seek out? (Describe what you learned in a couple of sentences, providing at least two supporting references). **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This text encouraged me to revisit Sugata Mitra's conception of the "hole in the wall" project, which criticized the "banking model of education" and sought to overcome it by placing students in peer groups that would work together to "figure things out" on their own. In doing so the teacher is removed from the equation, and students are left to support each other's learning capacities:

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">"The most valuable lessons we learn generally come from things we do ourselves through a process of trial and error, but by “teaching” our kids that the most socially accepted form of education happens because of someone else’s intelligence, we are doing them an immense disservice. The Hole in the Wall model seeks to allow children to study both individually or in large groups, and learn of their own accord despite their location or socioeconomic status." - http://bcis.pacificu.edu/interface/?p=2104

[|Frontline story: The Hole in the Wall]