Freire

Freire

Bibliography: Early period : Education and Brazilian Actuality (1959), The Primary School for Brazil (1961), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Education for Critical Consciousness (1974). Late period: works published after his return to Brazil: The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (1985), Pedagogy of the City (1991) Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1992), Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach (1993) Politics and Education (1993) Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work (1994) Pedagogy of the Heart (1995) Pedagogy of Freedom (1997). Talking Books: A Pedagogy for Liberation (1987) We make the Road by Walking (1990)
Education & Pedagogy
1. Banking Education
  1. dehumanisating
  2. "deposit content into the supposedly empty heads of submissive learners" (ltC, p.154)
2. Liberating/Emancipatory/ Problem Posing Education/ Problematisation
  1. Critical consciouness/ conscientisation evolves
    1. Helps us see that the system of dominant social relations creates a 'culture of silence' that instills a negative, silenced and suppressed self-image into the oppressed
    2. It is social: "the breakthrough of a new form of awareness in understanding the world is not the privilege of one person. The experience that makes possible the 'breakthrough' is a collective experience." (Freire, PoF,p.77)
    3. "Conscientização represents the development of the awakening of critical awareness" (ECC, 2013, p.15)
    4. rethink our past
    5. "Conscientisation, I submit, is the reflective component of praxis" (Roberts, 1996, p188)
    6. 'Naming the world'
      1. "Is the process of change itself: the human quest to understand and transform the world, through communication with others" (Roberts, 1998)
      2. "a continuous process of creating and re-creating : the world" (Roberts, 1998)
      3. where the oppressed "use their own experiences and language to explain and sumont their oppression"
    7. "revolutionary consciouness" (LtC, p.118)
  2. Examine societies structures and institutions
  3. Generative words & themes "which represent the highest- profile issues in the speech and life of the community" (Shor, 1993, p.31)
  4. Underpinned by democracy
    1. Intimacy with democracy a requirement
    2. Democratic culture of voice, participation, solidarity and action.
    3. Educators must have a democratic intent
    4. "To create a practice of a democratic nature - a practice in which we learn how to deal with the tension between authority and freedom, a tension that cannot be avoided unless through the sacrifice of democracy ...the more authentically I live the tension, the less I fear freedom and the less I reject the necessary authority. (PoCity, 1993, p.130)
    5. "A good democracy warns, clarifies, teaches, and educates." (LtC, p.156)
  5. Dialectical nature of these teacher-student relationship: "Problematization is so much a dialectical process that it would be impossible for anyone to begin it without becoming involved in it. No one can present something to someone else as a problem and at the same time remain a mere spectator of the process" (Edu for CC, 1983, p.153)
    1. "Student voices... are never innocent... They contain manifestations of the Oppressor consciousness that ought to be challenged" (Mayo, 2007, critical approaches to education…,p.52)
  6. Through critical dialogue that students enter the process of problematization
  7. "Uncertainty provides the basis for investigation: for seeking to know more. (Roberts, 2005)
3. Educational values/virtues/dispositions: flexibility, openness, humility, coherence, tolerance, respect, decisiveness, security, patience and impatience, commitment, listening, questioning, critisising, reflecting, caring (TaCW & PoF &LtC)
  1. Coherence
    1. "Coherence between what we say and do sets limits to tolerance and keeps it from derailing into connivance" (PoH, p.51)
    2. "The power of a democratic educator lies in exemplary coherence; that is what sustains his or her authority. An educator who says one thing and does another is irresponsible, and not only ineffective but also harmful." (PoH, p.90)
    3. "diminution of the distance between discourse and practice constitutes an indispensable virtue, namely that of coherence" (PoF, p.63)
  2. Testimony/witness
    1. narrative strategy
    2. "leaders' pursuit of unity is necessarily also an attempt to organize people, requiring witness to the fact that the struggle for liberation is a common task." (PoO, 143).
    3. "Academics can bear witness to the ideal of freedom through their teaching" (Roberts, 1999, p.107)
  3. Authenticity
    1. “Authentic education is not carried on by "A" for "B" or by "A" about "B," but rather by "A" with "B," mediated by the world—a world which impresses and challenges both parties, giving rise to views or opinions about it.” (Freire, 1996, p.74).
    2. "the ideal of mutual respect as the only road to authenticity" (PoF, p.84)
  4. Openness
    1. opposite to closure , excessive certainty
  5. Tolerance
    1. "The learning of tolerance takes place through testimony." (PoH, p.50)
    2. "Discrimination, regardless of what this is based upon, directly damages democracy, which has tolerance as its foundation." (LtC, p.148)
      1. "Teaching tolerance and democracy requires the coherence testimony of parents and teachers." (LtC, p.148)
    3. "Coherence between what we say and do sets limits to tolerance and keeps it from derailing into connivance" (PoH, p.51)
4. Unfinished process of striving/struggle
5. Education is politics
  1. "We are political animals" (PoH, p.41)
  2. A call for neutrality is a cowardly act in a world divided - insisting on neutrality implies not questioning social structures
  3. Because education is one place where individuals and society are constructed
  4. For Freire, politics, power and education cannot be considered separately
  5. "I cannot separate, except for didactic purposes, the technical knowledge one needs to be a good plumber and the political knowledge one needs to be a part of the polis" (ltC, p.115)
6. Aim of education is radical transformation, emancipation and social justice
7. Importance of human virtues: joy, hope, love, trust, faith
  1. search is an expression of hope (PoF, p.69)
8. Postmodernism
  1. For Freire means overcoming certainities
  2. multiples subjectivities - we can be oppressed in different ways
  3. fight against all the authoritarian attitudes
  4. "Reactionary postmodernity...preach that there is no need to continue to speak about dreams, utopia, or social justice" (Freire, LtC, p.84)
  5. In 'Letters to Cristina' Freire criticises postmodernism for its rejection of class referring to it as the "astute ideology" (Freire, LtC, p.84)
  6. "Pragmatists decree the death of utopia, ideologies, social classes and conflicts, and the death of history" (LtC, p. 130) Is pragmatists a euphemism of postmodernists?
9. Democracy
  1. "Citizenship is a social invention that demands a certain political knowledge, a knowledge born of the struggle for and the refelction on citizenbship itself" (LtC, p.113)
  2. "While I am a radical and substantive democrat, I am a socialist" (LtC, p.114)
    1. Neoliberals (pragmatics, former liberals) have a "mechanistic understanding of democracy" and "conceive of democracy as a gang of tactics" (LtC, p.114)
  3. Culture is important for democratic struggle
  4. "The right way to go is the democratic struggle for the possible dream of a fair society, one more humane, more decent, and more beautiful for those reasons" (LtC, p.120)
Oppression/ domination V. Liberation and Humanisation
1. False charity v true generosity
  1. False charity gives a little something to the extended hands of the have-nots, but preserves the haves' power.
  2. False generosity softens the appearance of domination of the powerful
  3. Assistencialism (term used to describe policies of financial or social assistance which deal with symptoms not causes) encourages passivity, offering no opportunity to make decisions, no responsibility (ECC, 2013, p.13)
  4. "The real issue is to understand one's privileged position in the process of helping so as not to, on the one hand, turn help into a type of missionary paternalism and, on the other hand limit the possibilities for the creation of structures that lead to real empowerment" (Macedo, PoF, p.xxix)
2. While no one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. (PoO, p.53) It is a collective process
3. "I don't believe in self-liberation. Liberation is a social act. Liberating education is a social process of illumination." (PfL, p.109)
4. "if you are not able to help others to be free by transforming the totality of society, then you are exercising only an individualist attitude towards empowerment or freedom" (PfL, p.109)
5. "To prevent someone from engaging in praxis" (Roberts, 1998, p.107) is dehumanizing.
6. Humanization is a dialogical process (Roberts, 1998, p.107)
Notion of unfinishedness
1. striving for humanisation
2. Always in the process of becoming
3. Diminishes fatalism and inspires hope in possibilities for collective change (Darder,2013, p.40)
4. We are unfinished beings
5. "dynamic and ever-changing quality of human life, history, and human consciousness" (Darder, 2013, p.116)
6. "Conscientization is natural to "unfinished" humanity that is aware of its own unfinishedness" (PoF, p.55)
7. No smug certainity
8. "we are "programmed" to learn, destined by our very incompleteness to seek completeness" (PoF, p. 79)
9. opportunity for agency and responsibilty for our own becoming
10. Praxis only possible because of unfinished knowledge
11. Unfinished and openness to others/world (p.119 PoF)
Community
1. democratic community supports dialogue
2. humanised by our interactions with others
3. “(t)he more rooted I am in my location the more I extend myself to other places so as to become a citizen of the world” (PoH,1997, p.39).
4. Shared sense of community necessary to engage with the conflicts and contradictions of difference, developing critical social consciousness and the possibility for transformation (Darder, 2013, p.56)
  1. He insisted on respecful tolereance of differnce but also on his right to make judgements on the worth and accuracy of different contributions (Roberts, 2003)
5. "Brazil never experienced that sense of community, a participation in the solution of common problems, which is instilled in the popular consciousness and transformed into a knowledge of democracy" (ECC, 2013, p.22)
6. Opportunity for democratic experience
Theory of Knowledge
1. Importance of Context
  1. Reading the word and world
    1. Critical literacy
      1. A mode of intervention, a way of learning and reading the world
    2. the ability to analyse social and politiicalsituations that influence people's lives
  2. How we construct knowledge is directly connected to our values, our beliefs and how we make sense of the world. (Darder, 2013)
2. Dialogue
  1. How we communicate and how we know - through critical, dialogical reflection and action (praxis) for social transformation
  2. democratic tool: "Liberatory dialogue is a democratic communication" (PfL, p.99)
  3. Qualities of dialogue: existing with uncertainty, welcoming surprise
  4. Dialogue helps build a sense of community as people participate in problematization - a democracy
  5. Method of deconstruction of discourses and structures. Making visible the relationship between knowledge, authority and power.
  6. "the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world .. .it is an existential necessity" (PoO, 61)
3. gnosiological cycle
  1. separating out the production of knowledge from the knowing the knowledge is dangerous
    1. Educational virtues (action, critical reflection, curisoity, inquiry, uneasiness, uncertainty) are lost (PfL, p.8)
    2. schools become spaces for selling knowledge (PfL, p.8)
    3. Teaching and research are seen as seperate - teaching is a form of research (PfL, p.8)
  2. "It is while epistemologically curious that we get to know, in the sense that we produce knowledge and don't just store it mechanically in our memories" (LtC, p.115)
4. knowledge has historisity (a historical moment)
  1. "A posterior view of the world' can be done in a more critical, less naïve, and more rigorous way" (PoH, p.38)
    1. "Freire posited that historical accounts of the dominant culture are deeply mired in the political and economic interests of the ruling class" (Darder, 2015, p15)
    2. a sense of history is central to the struggle for humanization
5. knowledge is always in the process of being
6. "Knowing, to Freire, means being an active subject who questions and transforms" (Shor, 1993, p.26)
7. The students experience is the starting point to critically analyze and engage with knowledge in order to understand more completely. (Giroux, 2015)
8. Epistemology virtues (Roberts, 2008):
Criticisms of Freire: universalist language Ellsworth), utopian, subject ventred reason, anthropocentrisim
Freire's Ontology
1. The key to humaniastion is praxis (Roberts, 2013)
2. A reinterpretation of humanisation in PoF = universal human ethic (Roberts, 2000, p.117)
3. "The pursuit of humanization is a quest to become more profoundly what we already are as human: that is, beings of praxis (Freire, 1970, showing a man how to name the world, p.16)"Roberts, 1998
4. Dialogue is the crucial element in the revolutionary praxis (Roberts, 1998)
5. Ontological vocation - to become more human, humanisation
Neoliberalism
1. For Freire the workings of the market have no regards for the "ethical code that is common to us all" (PoF, p.116) From Roberts, 2000
2. Roberts, 1999, Ch. 7 = we are social beings not perpetually choosing individual, freedom as liberation from oppression not minimal constraint, everyone agrees on transparency, can't divide out bodies of knowledge so no division of qualifications, the playing field is not level, education as a complex interaction between people not a product and banking education, education as political not depoliticized pseudo-neutrality, good decisions require prior experience and dialogical negotiation which is the problem of customer/students choice, everyone agrees that no University is beyond the social and political system bus certain freedoms are necessary for the University to function.
3. "The viability of human groups depends more and more on technical and scientific knowledge. The neoliberal answer to this challenge is to reduce technoscientific education to training, in which the trainee is not allowed to be concerned about our reason for being or facts that demand any explanation beyond strictly practical techniques." (LtC, p131)
4. Neoliberals V. Freire. Self-interested, self-contained, perpetually choosing, individual v. social beings. Freedom as minimal constraint V Freedom as liberation from oppression. Division of qualification V. can't divide out bodies of knowledge. Believes free market is level playing field V. playing field never level. Education/knowledge as a product V. as a complex interaction between people. Peudo- neutrality and depolitisation V. Education is political. Skills V. ignores ethical dimension. Customer (student) shoice V. Good decisions need prior experience, should be subject to dialogical negociation. University as place of freedom but no university beyond the social and political system. (Peters, 1999)
Struggle for Freedom
1. "It is not possible to act in favor of equality, respecting others, the rights to a voice, participation, and reinventing the world in a regime that denies the freedom to work, speak, criticize, read, disagree,, and go; in short, the freedom to be." (LtC,L14, p.46)
2. "Do not take the risk of facing fear if you do not have a minimal space of freedom; thus, without freedom, there is no Academy. For instance, if you do not have the freedom to carry out your research and to asserts that it is scientific, if you feel that there are ideological platoons restraining you, then, what can you risk?" (Escobar et al, 1994, p.143)
3. through demorcracy

Next up

Description

Resource summary

Similar

	Created by Bernadette Farrell over 8 years ago