Hi friends! It's been a while since you've heard from me... sorry about that! Luckily for you (and me) you now get to read several of my blog posts in a row. Haha.
In this blog post I actually want to talk about Freire. I know, I know, we covered him a while ago in class. But I honestly think that his book is my favorite thing we've read in class this semester. Also, I love his work so much that I decided to use Freire as my external source for our final paper that's coming up. It turns out that he's written several books in addition to Pedagogy of the Oppressed, including one called A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. As a side note, his other works that I found have similar titles: Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage and Pedagogy of the Heart. I actually really admire that about Freire-- his dedication to fully exploring pedagogy as a practice of freedom for the oppressed is inspiring to me. I think it would have been easy for him to write a book listing his ideas, then call it good and move on to a new topic. I love how he is willing to keep returning to the same topic to mine for new insights-- it really shows me how much this topic matters to him.
All right, on to the work. In A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education, Freire included a chapter called "Do first-world students need liberating?" I was intrigued by this chapter heading, and I thought that it was really relevant to my interests, especially my investment in helping students to expand their horizons and learn to think critically in ways that they hadn't before. Freire begins by talking about what he calls the "culture of silence," which he says is similar to yet also different from the silence we're familiar with from Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Essentially, there are two dimensions to the culture of silence in first-world countries: passiveness and aggression. Passiveness ties in really closely to what we've discussed throughout our class, especially the banking model of education. Essentially, students have learned to sit and wait to receive knowledge. As they wait, they can be dutiful, disengaged, or even angry. Aggression is more interesting. Freire describes, "in school, many students rebel against their structured descent into cheap labor, the low-wage, high-tech future waiting for them after the depressant effects of public education...many alienated students choose an aggressive response (Freire and Shor, 1987, pg. 125). Essentially, what these two instances of the culture of silence reveal that the answer to the chapter's question is yes. First-world students are still faced with symbolic violence in education, and thus they too have a need to be liberated.
This chapter is interesting because Freire points out the limits of trying to use formal education as a "lever" to transform society (Freire et. al., 1987, pg. 129). Believing that formal education is the only way to transform society, as a matter of fact, can lead to despair and cynicism. Therefore, it's important to be involved in social causes outside of education in addition to the work done within the classroom. Freire specifically cautions, however, that this does not mean that we should judge those who choose to be involved merely in the classroom.
All right, so what did I learn from this chapter to help in my own classroom? I actually think it's really reassuring to acknowledge that education is not the only way to transform society. I think being able to acknowledge that education is part of a larger societal whole can help combat burnout and disillusionment with higher education. I sometimes get overwhelmed thinking about all of the injustices in the world and trying to figure out what I can do to make a positive difference. I love the reminder that education is important and vital in the process of creating change, but that it is only one part of that larger whole. As I prepare to teach the unit on language, culture, and power next week, this is a point that I want to make sure my students understand as well. I think keeping the bigger picture in mind can help me and my students to view our efforts as what they are: part of a larger effort by many people to improve social conditions in the world around us.
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