Reading Freire (the rest) and feel free to comment on Dewey too

Reading post on Freire second part

After reading this book, it very closely reminded me of the sociology classes I have taken. Freire’s book reminded me of Marx and his ideas on “the colonizer” and “the colonized”-i.e. “the oppressor” and the “oppressed”. This made me further think about the dynamics of separation and like in our previous class I was a bit skeptical on the idea that people can fit perfectly into this category. Talking about who fits in what category and what teaching methods work and do not work. I was curious to continue the book and see what else Friere had pushed the boundaries on.

He goes more into this idea of “limit situation” and the ideas of “human praxis”. This part in his book made me question life in its entirety and found myself a bit more confused but remembered to try and relate this back to education. When trying to apply his work into education I found a bit more connection than expected. Friere argues that to help the oppressed people, we must enter into solidarity with them and therefore join the oppressed. Like in our other class we talked deeply about false generosity. So is the only way to help the oppressed is to be the oppressed and where does this consciousness come into play. What I mean to say do those who are the oppressors have that same consciousness that those that are oppressed have? Is it possible to “educate” oppressed people living in poverty to give them an awareness of their situation? I think they may not necessarily have to be taught of their situation. This part is where I didn’t really coincide with Freire- in the sense that they may need to be educated about their situation. But I think we already know and maybe instead of educating on the situation but giving the tools in order to overcome their oppressors. But then this whole idea of the teachers giving the students tolls to overcome their oppressors may sound like false generosity or where the teachers themselves may manipulate the students into still being the oppressed. I am still struggling with these ideas.

In the last chapter Freire talks about what to use in order to free those who are oppressed or colonized through cooperation, unity, and organization in his section on “divide and rule”.  This made me think about him giving suggestions or tools on how to overcome the oppressors which is like a teacher of the classroom.  There are many dichotomies that he talks about in the book but the one that I focused more on was the student-teacher and the oppressed-oppressor dichotomy.  Over all, this book made me really think about what as future teacher some of us may have to deeply think about our classroom environments. When Feire rejects the idea of “traditional education” as it is there to oppress it made me think about what is now considered traditional and non-traditional. What does this separation do to the classroom?

Side note:

How could Freire's pedagogy for the oppressed be applied in to public school classroom, which are typically institutions of oppression? Or how could this be taught in schools?

"On the other hand, it would be a false premise to believe that activism (which is not true action) is the road to revolution" (125). This quote, from the beginning of Chapter 4, reminds me a lot of the conversation we had during the last class- the idea of giving to charity because it looks good/benefits yourself and how you feel, as opposed to actually wanting to help others. While I don't think this is exactly what Friere was getting at through this quote, it made me think about how the same action can be very different from person to person depending on their intentions. There is a huge difference between doing something for the purpose of serving yourself, as opposed to doing something to help others.

I have now been thinking a lot about that concept in regards to teaching. How many people get into education because they consider it a fall back or just a temporary job before moving on to something else? As a college student who is planning on working for a teaching residency, I have seen many programs marketed to students looking to, for lack of a better phrase, "kill time" before moving onto another career. While in no way do I think teaching needs to be the final career path for anyone who ever teaches, it is important to keep in mind that as a teacher, you are directly influencing the lives of others. Good teachers are those who are acting with their students' best interest in mind, rather than their own.

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.

After reading the entirety of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, there were two different distinctions that Freire raises in separate parts of the text that I wished he had been more explicit about. The first is the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness in the process of oppressing and being oppressed.  Throughout the text, Freire employs active language when referring to oppressors. The work that oppressors engage is in calculating and intentional for the purpose of creating, maintaining, and perpetuating the status quo. To me, then, it would seem that Freire is arguing that the act of oppression is conscious. Freire’s description of the oppressed (prior to dialogue, revolution, and liberation), on the other hand, is that of an unconscious pawn who has barred from seeing the truth of their situation and subsequently unable to liberate themselves/their oppressors. While the oppressed do gain a level of consciousness when this truth is illuminated, it is not without a sense of danger: that they will become the oppressor, that they will come to fear liberation. Freire does allow that oppressors can occupy an unconscious-oppressive role when they inherit their status of oppression, however, this caveat does not seem fully developed. My main question is how Freire would account for an intersection between consciousness and unconsciousness, for the idea of consciousness and unconsciousness cannot be untangled. This question could partly come from the fact that Freire speaks in dichotomous terms, as we acknowledged last class, and therefore the interplay between consciousness/unconsciousness may not be central to the text.

The second distinction that I wish Freire dedicated more space to addressing directly is the distinction between focalized and localized. This is less because I had questions about Freire’s separation between of these two concepts, and more because I think this distinction is often tricky to balance in teaching. Ultimately, what I get from this distinction is that it is necessary to see both the trees and the forest; that both the big picture and the little details are important, but that it is the connection between the two that is necessary above all else. While it is important to tailor education to the community that you are working with, education should not be confined to teaching students to understand/function within that community alone.  

          Freire talked extensively about leaders and the dangers that come with their roles. Even though I think his ideas can be applied to most cultures and in any field, one specific example that came to mind when I was reading the last half was the issue of curriculum, particularly if it is a rigid one. Freire writes, “Many political and educational plans have failed because their authors designed them according to their own personal views of reality, never once taking into account (except as mere objects of their actions) the men-in-a-situation to whom their program was ostensibly directed” (94). Since each school’s curriculum is different, I wonder then, what does a balanced and effective curriculum look like? Also, what should leaders/”authors” do in order to accommodate different views of reality in addition to the politics that are involved?

            Freire also says, “People are fulfilled only to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor” (145). If many educators and schools promote a student-centered approach to teaching, then it seems logical to consider the students’ sense of fulfillment. How do we know if/when students gain a sense of fulfillment? Or maybe it is better to ask, in what ways can educators guide students so that they can find “labor” that is fulfilling? By labor I mean anything from homework & projects to their potential careers. To tie it back to my earlier paragraph, how does the curriculum create space for fulfillment and “transforming labor?”

At the beginning of chapter four, Freire notes that “leaders cannot treat the oppressed as mere activists to be denied the opportunity of reflection and allowed merely the illusion of acting, whereas in fact they would continue to be manipulated –“ (107).  

In this case, I can’t help but relate Freire’s “leaders” to teachers and “oppressed” to students. By this extension, I wonder how this applies to classes today. Freire goes on to say that “The leaders do bear the responsibility for coordination and, at times, direction. . .” I question how this can be realistically achieved in classes today. It would seem to me that today, teachers respond passionately to this call for student “opportunity of reflection” almost too passionately at times. For instance, in classrooms where students are required to participate x amount of times in class discussion or classes in which you have a response paper due on readings or even a weekly blog post, is this true student reflection or is this another form of manipulation if the teacher or the leader is manipulating the student in a sense to write or participate?

How can teachers “coordinate” and provide “direction” without creating an “illusion of acting” through forced reflection? One solution to this, as Freire seems to suggest throughout this final chapter, would be unity and cooperation rather than conquest. Do teachers, as leaders, really cooperate or collaborate with students in the classroom? If teachers also take part in reflection, even if it is assigned reflection, this might decrease the level of manipulation. In relating this to my own life, during practice, regardless of the sport, I was more inspired and willing to run sprints at the end when the coach ran with us. Whenever you are assigned a task, don’t you ever find yourself thinking could my teacher/coach/leader etc. really do this too? Why are they assigning something they are not willing to do themselves?  I am always inspired when I feel like the leader can collaborate with me on any given activity. Can all leaders do this?  Do teachers practically have the time for this level of collaboration in all of their classes and with all of their students? 

Reading the last chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed made me think about the questions that we asked last week relating to disseminating information, but also good intentions going wrong. Last week, I spoke with my group about how the oppressed can liberate themselves without access to the information that leads to wanting this. I wondered if it was appropriate for an outside person to come to “impart knowledge’ on other people without having real knowledge of their experience. Friere seems to answer this by telling us that the work must be achieved together, through questioning and curiosity.  By noting the importance of activism and verbalism/thinking, he argues that one that cannot successfully lead to a revolution without the other. In a way it seem similar to the binary of oppressed/oppressor, although I agree with my classmates in saying that the lines are perhaps not so clearly defined. In this instance for example, someone with privilege from one sphere can bring this knowledge to someone with privilege in another sphere, bringing reflection and action together to inform praxis.

The chapter also reminded of the many times in which good intentions can go wrong, which I think Friere warns us about in his book, specifically with “leaders.” As leaders of a revolution, he notes, they must be careful not to replicate the same oppressive power structures that lead to the revolution in the first place, mistaking organization for oppression. I think this point is very interesting especially as we think about our roles after leaving Bryn Mawr, how can we ensure that this new knowledge does not get in the way of praxis, which I assume is our ultimate goal? How is it that we can stop thinking about teaching or volunteering, or public service not as giving back to “underserved communities” but rather to the world and ourselves? Thinking about answering this question with Friere’s point in mind that the oppressors are also constrained by the current system of oppression? 

Given how the last chapter of Friere seems to jump back to previous themes, I will try to do the same in my response. Sorry if that makes it a little jumpy.

Initially I was rather confused by the specific pedagogy he introduces in chapter three, but once I understood it (from the example about the people's understanding of the codification with the drunk person), I tried to think how it could work in educational and social movement settings I have experienced. I also became annoyed somewhere around page 110 with the continued abstracted of the text; maybe Friere was trying to make us appreciate the need for concreteness by depriving us of it, but probably that's giving him too much credit.

That said, I think that there are some great underlying messages for educators--even if we don't use the pictoral codifications. Here are some messages that were helpful (for me):

-balance reflection and action/ don't just act for activism's sake

-don't be alienating/ be aware of people's situation in the world and let them share it with you (very Dewey-esque)

-act out of love, not out of fear. (I think Earth Quaker Action Team does this very well in our anti-mountaintop removal coal-mining protests. I think the Occupy movement by contrast struggled with this.)

-the investigator/teacher can't establish "iteineraries" for the exploration of the universe (also Dewey-esque) But how do you most effectively analyze different schools of thought without either inevitably guiding students to your own viewpoints?

-get buy-in from your participants (This is clear when recruiting participants for a social cause but what about in a classroom where you have to teach students whether they buy into it or not? Last year in a field-placement I was upset with a teacher who seemed to let disinterested students languish in his class. Was that teacher actually being Frierian? Also, what if you are teaching board-members of your college why divestment is a good idea? Do you give up if you can't get buy-in? I guess in the classroom scenario Friere would probably say to change your approach in the class to correspond with the student's interest until you get buy-in.)

-in research (similar to our fieldwork, I think), capture syntax of thought; not necessarily incorrect grammar or pronunciation. (this will be helpful for me)

-ground readings or speakers in context (as in "this person is a professor from "x". What can we expect from this person?)

-ground studies with themes, one of which should be culture.

As a social-activist, I really liked Dewey overall. The importance of horizontal leadership (he calls it diagonal leadership but I understood as basically the same), the importance of the "oppressed" group being the leaders of their own movements, people in power "fearing" the other people, the problem of how people in power try to fracture the disempowered, reliance on myths and slogans, were all things I have experienced. I agree with my classmates that his oppressor/oppressed dichotomy needs to be challenged, but like the also-problematic 99%/1% slogan it can be a useful way to think of divisions of power in our society.