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Reading the rest of Friere, I kept on thinking about our discussion from last week about how we can bring Friere's very abstract ideas into the practical classroom. I think a huge part of developing a curriculum and pedagody that would help to "liberate the oppressed" would be to acknowledge who the students are and how they specifically relate to the curriculum, because this does not always happen. In a New York Times article about Philadelphia schoolchildren, the author argues that the lack of Latino and other children of color in the books they read for school is an obstacle in their engagement with and improvement in reading. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/education/young-latino-students-dont-see-themselves-in-books.html?ref=education&_r=0

Friere writes that "People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world... and create it with their transformative labor." I think in many ways its hard for children to "create their world" in school if what they see and learn about does not relate to their own lives. It would seem that their "transformative labor" would be more readily motivated by a sense of their contribution to a world of stories and people that look like them, do the things they do, and come from the types of places and from families like their own. This idea extends from reading to many other subjects: history, music, art, even math and science. While subjects need to be taught in different ways, it should always be clear to students (whether they deeply recognize it at the time or not) that this information will help them in the world.

Furthermore, any lack of informing students of their role in the world be excluding them from curriculum might be what Friere calls cultural invasion. He writes, "Cultural invasion is on the one hand an instrument of domination and on the other, the result of domination." In this case, I believe a narrow curriculum characterized an intrument of domination and a form of repression, even when it's unintentional or subtle.