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Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and deemed by some to be the most important educator of the second half of the twentieth century(Carnoy 2004). Freire was the leading voice in the critical pedagogy theory and thus wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, believed to be the founding text of the critical pedagogy movement. Freire was born to a relatively wealthy middle-class family in…
Critical pedagogy is a teaching method that aims to help in challenging and actively struggling against any form of social oppression and the related customs and beliefs. It is a form of theory and practice which serves to let pupils gain a critical awareness Critical pedagogy is a type of pedagogy in which criticism of the established order and social criticism are essential. Critical pedagogy wants to question society in its understanding of the role that education has. From this point of view, social critique is necessary if one does not want an upbringing and education that contributes to the reproduction of inequality
An important key concept in this is emancipation. It is emancipation, liberation from oppressive social relations, which critical pedagogy is committed to. Social critique leads to social change. With this mode of critique we want students to see clearly that phenomena like inequality are not necessary, but arose in a certain historical context that has been established and produced by man-made social processes. Upon becoming aware of this reality, a person no longer needs to feel like a manipulable object anymore.
According to the critical pedagogy, education is inherently political, and any kind of pedagogy should be aware of this fact. A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the basis for any kind of education. The liberation from oppression and human suffering should be an important dimension in education.
Education should promote both emancipatory change as well as the cultivation of the intellect. It should be kept in mind that the current education system is a reflection of the interests of the existing system of exploitation. This dynamic must be exposed by critical pedagogy, understood, after which action should be taken against it as part of a praxis towards social change; a cycle of theory, practice, evaluation and reflection.
Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
Paulo Freire is the grandfather and one of the major contributors to critical pedagogy. Freire, who became a professor of history and philosophy of education at the University of Recife in Brazil, experienced and learned from the plight of poverty and hunger during the Great Depression of 1929. This experience imbued in him a deep concern for the poor, which influenced his views on education.
He is best known for his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" in which he described how people have have been untaught or have never learned to think critically about their situation. Most people accept their situation as inevitable and as belonging to life itself. Only when they become aware of their situation and are able to assign meaning to it (collectively called a process of "conscientization"), the step a step can be made toward changing the situation.
Four levels of consciousness
Freire speaks in this context of four levels of consciousness:
1) Magical consciousness; at this level of consciousness people experience themselves as completely impotent to do something about their personal and socio-economic position. They are, as it were, controlled by outside forces like the gods in mythology who could intervene in the life of man without being able to defend oneself against them.
2) Naive consciousness; at this level one is able to make a distinction between oneself and the outside world. Life is not seen as something that just happens to you, but it gets contours in the sense that there are things that are within your reach, and other things that you think you need others for. They know that they can do something about their situation, but is also convinced of not being capable of a lot of other things as well. The difference between the first and second level of consciousness is that magical consciousness has been transcended by a more thorough understanding of the existing situation.
3) Critical consciousness; at this level, one discovers not only the distinction between self and others, but one is also, due to the distinction, able to change things. At this level there is a growing understanding of one's own capabilities and because of that also a way of relativizing the power of others. One will recognize how oppression occurs, which role one has in that situation and how one can fight it by intervening.
4) Political consciousness; on this highest level people discover from their perception of reality that others share their perception of reality, and they also share some of the same problems. This leads to that people combine their strengths and try to influence politics and negate the situation of oppression. According to Freire "Nobody liberates nobody, nobody liberates themselves alone: human beings liberate themselves in communion."
People create their own consciousness of struggle by changing reality and freeing themselves from the oppression that is embedded by traditional pedagogy. Similarly, when one learns a new way of thinking, the understanding of one's own social status has a transformative effect. Freire's method has thus two successive moments: the first relates to the awareness of reality that one is oppressed and is submitted to the decisions imposed by the oppressor, the second refers to the initiative of the oppressed to fight and emancipate themselves from the oppressors.
Critique of educational banking
Freire criticized the traditional education method of simply depositing knowledge, or what he called the "banking concept of education"; which only strengthens the established order. Instead of communicating with the students, the teacher gives deposits which the students have to patiently receive. They are not considered as able to do more than to organize and accumulate the deposits.
This "banking" concept is the reflection of the dichotomous oppressive society we live in: the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing, the teacher thinks and the students are being thought, the teacher talks and the students listen obediently.
The success of this method depends on the willingness to swallow. Those who are not willing to cram themselves with deposits remain supposedly 'undeveloped'.
Freire looked for a method that is conscientizing and thus comes to the basic principle of his educational theory: Education can never be neutral, it is either an instrument of liberation or an instrument of domestication. Or as Richard Shaull formulated it in the preface of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
"There is no neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom', the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
Freire adds that this does not depend on the content of the education provided, nor the good will of the educator, decisive here is the educational process itself.
If the individual does not fight for its interests, and its cultural and social emancipation, it seems that one has lost the love for life. Thus the necrophilia, that prevails in the world today, is reproduced by the type of education given at school. The pedagogy that Freire proposes is the opposite of that described above. It suggests that the individual has a love for life, teaches a cultivation of being - by being in the world, not of or under the world - a condition brought about by liberation. This necessitates a kind of education that isn't alienating and mechanistic.
Education that liberates the individual must be a conscious act in which the content is understood and analyzed, with the dichotomy that exists between teacher and student is transcended; it should negate the unidirectional (coming from one side) relationship to replace it with bidirectionality (coming from both sides) to contribute to the education of both parties, because both have the elements to offer each other insights. The teacher is hereby turned into the pupil of his own pupils. "Nobody educates anybody else, nobody educates himself, people educate each other through their interactions of the world."
The role of the teacher is to problematize the world, thereby creating the right conditions so that learning process transcends the 'doxa' (undoubted axioms) to get to the level of "logos" (actual understanding). This type of learning helps people to create new with the expectations and reach a reflective state where they discover their own reality. It creates new challenges that instigates pupils to self-construction of the world, in which they have a real and direct participation in the activities in which they are involved. All this demands that we problematize the individual as such, without mediation by artificial experiences in the learning process.
Dialogics and conscientization
Man is not allowed to understand reality and change it in an education that is just one method to adapt to reality. To bring the awareness process in motion there must be dialogue, because man does not create oneself in silence, but by words, actions and reflection. The use of such a dialogue is the main element in the learning process.
To understand the reasoning of Freire one should start from his image of man. Through their actions people work on the world, they change the world. Because of their ability to reflect, people take distance from themselves, from their actions, from the world; this reflection again leads to action. The aforementioned cycle forms the praxis, that is to say the way in which the human being is manifested in the world. "To become human" happens in praxis. No seperation can therefore be made between action and reflection.
Dialogue can only happen by the speaking of "own words" with which the individual reflects its reality, it is the only way to get the understanding of this reality and change it. In opposition to the depository education system that maintains the system, Freire proposes the problematizing education with consciëntisering (coming to consciousness) as a goal. Learning is not 'eating' of false words, it is not programming, learning problematizing by raising questions. The subject matter is the life situation of the pupil.
Dialogics and antidialogics
Freire recognizes that the practice of conscientization that he recommends can run up against "limiting situations", and that these situations are a product of the resistance by the oppressing classes to any change of the status quo, which is so important to them. This can lead to defeat and apathy among the oppressed classes. According to Freire it is "not the apathy of the masses which leads to the power of the elite, but it is the power of the elite, which makes the masses apathetic."
For this Freire worked out opposing frameworks for cultural action, antidialogics and dialogics, the former being the oppressive one, and works through submission, division, manipulation, and cultural invasion and the latter the liberating one, which works through cooperation, association, organization, and cultural synthesis.
The oppressor uses antidialogics in different ways in order to maintain the status quo. He subdues the oppressed with an unwavering unilateral dialogue , in which the communication is transformed into a necrophiliac act . The ideological instrument is often used here for complete submission.
The oppressor also attempts to dissuade people to unite through dialogue. One of their main activities is to weaken the oppressed through alienation , with the idea that this will provide internal divisions, and that in this way things will remain stable. In their implicit discourse they warn that it is dangerous for "social harmony" to talk about concepts like association and organization. Compared with those who fight against them, the oppressors seem the the only ones who can maintain the needed harmony in life. But this is only an attempt to ensure divisions. If an individual decides to fight for liberation the person is stigmatized, all in an attempt to avoid the historically inevitable realization of freedom.
The oppressor also uses antidialogics by abusing ideology to manipulate people and to agree with the goals proposed by the oppressor, but entirely at the expense of the oppressed.
Freire discussed as the last feature of antidialogics that of cultural invasion, where the oppressed are the turned into objects, while the oppressors are the actors and authors of the process. This is a subliminal tactic that is used to control and leads to the inauthenticity of individuals. The greater the level of imitation by the oppressed, the greater the calm for the oppressors. What happens to the masses is a loss of values, a transformation in their way of speaking and willingly supporting the oppressor.
In contrast with antidialogics, dialogics is a form of community empowerment. This process is not due to the presence of some prophetic leader, but by the covenant that occurs when there is communication and interaction between the leader and the masses in order to to achieve liberation and discover the world, instead of adjust to it. This happens when there is mutual trust, so that a revolutionary praxis can be developed, where humility and constant dialogue is needed by all participants.
To complement this collaboration it is necessary to form associations with the joint effort towards liberation. This implies a form of cultural action that teaches to join a revolutionary aspiration without falling into ideological hyperbole. Instead, the goal should be described as something it really is, namely a human act, not some exaggerated event. Dialogical action also requires the organization to avoid ideological coercion from above.
Organization is a necessary element of revolutionary struggle, it implies coherence between action and practice, courage, radicalization without sectarianism and the courage to love. All these aspects should be present without naivety . Of course, for revolutionary action, there must also be discipline, order, precise objectives, clear tasks to be fulfilled and accountability, but dialogics is mainly about the awakening that is required from the encountered oppression.
The final characteristic of dialogical action is the cultural synthesis that aims to overcome the contradiction created by the oppressor. This addresses the strength of one's own culture as a creative act and avenges the oppressed by giving another perception on the world than the one imposed without consultation or assessment.
The role of revolution
Revolution is for Paulo Freire removal of the structures and mechanisms that cause different forms of oppression in the society. It is about overturning political and economic powers that the are the cause of the oppression of the majority. The conscientization is assigned an essential role here. The oppressed must be made not only aware of their own value, they must also be freed from their image of man that they derive from the oppressors with whom they have an ambivalent relationship.
For Freire dialogue belongs to the essence of being human: human life is not live 'alone', they live 'together' in the world. In that sense, the oppressor maimed his own humanity, because he is not 'the others'. Revolution implies, in addition to the empowerment and recognition of the human dignity of the oppressed, at the same time humanizing the oppressors.
On Utopia
Freire want individuals to forms themselves rather than being formed (from above). With this goal in mind, he suggests that subjects must be taught that come from the everyday experience of the individual and that we have to avoid the pitfalls of current education to gravitate towards artificial oppressive experiences.
Paulo Freire teaches us that only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, can bring forthh critical thinking. He proposes to problematize one's life to realize that one needs both another situation without oppression as well one can really achieve such a situation. Is this utopian? Maybe. But utopia serves as the receding horizon, where the journey never ends, and the effort of the journey can makes the chance of a more humane society, where peace reigns, larger every day.
