In the late 1980s Paolo Freire was a frequent visitor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. On one of those visits my dear friend Sonia Nieto provided me with a unique opportunity that I will always cherish. Sonia invited me to a reception at her home where the guest just happened to be none other than the great educator, Paolo Freire. After being introduced to the work of Paolo Freire while doing graduate studies at Boston University, I was delighted to have this opportunity of meeting the great educator. Freires philosophy on education as a mean for liberation was so intriguing for me, especially since my first four grades in school was during the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. The other day I was reflecting on the state of public schools in the United States, especially the schools that are made up of a majority of students who come from working class families, mostly children of color and the poor. This opened my mind to a reality, that being that the only way all children can receive justice in our public schools is through the integral role played by those who are negatively affected, and who must rise up and demand justice. Here is what Freire has to say about how this transformation can take place: Freire champions that education should allow the oppressed to regain their sense of humanity, in turn overcoming their condition. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that for this to occur, the oppressed individual must play a role in their liberation. As he states: No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).[6] Likewise, the oppressors must be willing to rethink their way of life and to examine their own role in the oppression if true liberation is to occur: those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly (Freire, 1970, p. 60). Freire believed education to be a political act that could not be divorced from pedagogy. Freire defined this as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the politics that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions they bring into the classroom (Kincheloe, 2008).[7] Freire believed that education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing—of knowing that they know and knowing that they dont (Freire, 2004, p. 15).[8] Banking model of education In terms of pedagogy, Freire is best known for his attack on what he called the banking concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. He notes that it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power (Freire, 1970, p. 77). The basic critique was not new — Rousseaus conception of the child as an active learner was already a step away from tabula rasa (which is basically the same as the banking concept).[citation needed] In addition, thinkers like John Dewey were strongly critical of the transmission of mere facts as the goal of education. Dewey often described education as a mechanism for social change, explaining that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction (1897, p. 16).[9] Freires work, however, updated the concept and placed it in context with current theories and practices of education, laying the foundation for what is now called critical pedagogy. Culture of silence According to Freire, the system of dominant social relations creates a culture of silence that instills a negative, silenced and suppressed self-image into the oppressed. The learner must develop a critical consciousness in order to recognize that this culture of silence is created to oppress.[10] A culture of silence can also cause the dominated individuals [to] lose the means by which to critically respond to the culture that is forced on them by a dominant culture.[11] Social domination of race and class are interlaced into the conventional education system, through which the culture of silence eliminates the paths of thought that lead to a language of critique.[12] So therefore, my friends in the struggle to reclaim our schools, what is it going to take for our movement to adapt the strategies advocated by this master educator? The strategy that calls for the oppressed to own up to their liberation from the oppressor that in todays so-called education reforms is forced upon by the corporate tzars who are destroying our public school institutions to satisfy their own greed. I say, we must build A movement that is inclusive of the families and the students. We must build on the strengths in our community that will defeat the culture of silence that is prevalent among our most vulnerable, while the oppressed must become their own example in the struggle for their redemption.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 00:26:13 +0000
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