Pedagogy of the Oppressed

How significant is Paulo Freire? He was the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. That has to at least count for something. Coming from a somewhat middle class background Freire, born in Recife, Brazil on 19 September 1921. Freire had, especially since he lived through it, a first-hand experience of what the Great Depression was like. Poverty and hunger were part of everyday life for Freire.

In 1943, Freire enrolled in law school at the University of Recife. In addition to reading law, Freire had a keen interest in phenomenology. According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, phenomenology “is commonly understood in either of two ways: as a disciplinary field in philosophy, or as a movement in the history of philosophy.”

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1970, became the basis for a theory pertaining to democratic schooling. In this theory, the primary purpose of education is defined as liberatory. Whilst Freire graduated from law school and passed the all-important bar exam, he did not actually go onto practice law. He went into academia at a secondary school level. He taught Portuguese. Education was important to Freire.
For Freire, there was a fundamental emancipatory purpose to education. There is historical context to why it is Freire viewed education the way he did. This view stems from literacy being a prerequisite for voting in presidential elections. Anyone that did not meet the minimum literacy requirements was automatically disenfranchised. Education was therefore essential to expressing a political voice. Freire argues the following six points:

1.      There is a dialectical dynamic to Knowledge

a.       Knowledge is contextual as well as historical in nature

2.      Human beings and nature have an inseparable connection

a.       The former cannot exist without the latter

3.      Neutrality does not exist in either the theoretical or the practical application of education

a.       There is a connection, via an ideological foundation, to both cultural politics and socio-economic-status

4.      Not only is critical discourse essential, ongoing critique is vital

5.      A theory of resistance must be present

a.       Associated with this theory, there must also be a counter-hegemony associated with any liberatory educational process

6.      Educational practices, democratic in nature, must reflect a dialogical praxis

a.       Students, as historical subjects, have an innate power to transform their environment and subsequently the world

There is a clear line of thought to what it is Freire wrote. Do you know what that might be? Do you know what it was that influenced Freire? It does not exactly take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Think it through. We are talking about an individual born and raised in South American country during the early to mid-twentieth century. Freire was influenced by Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx. This in itself, at least for conservatively minded Americans, is justification for not reading anything penned by this particular Brazilian. But then… Who really cares about what conservatives think? Marxist ideologies are not exactly the flavour of the month with those people. Marxism, to conservatives, is merely Communism by another name. These people have a tendency to take narrowmindedness to incredibly high levels.

Reference

Freire, P.  (1970/2000).  Pedagogy of the oppressed:  30th Anniversary Edition.  New York:  Continuum.

Smith, & Woodruff, D. (2003, November 16). Phenomenology. Retrieved 30 September 2015, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/