An Analysis of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
A Book Review
Presented toMr. Ron Daracan
FacultyMetro Manila College
U-Site Kaligayan, Novaliches, Quezon City
In Partial fulfillment For the requirements in
Social Science 117(World History and Civilization II)
By:
Roy Java VillasorBSEd 2
23 October 2012I. Introduction
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A. Historical Background
Pedagogy of the Oppressed written by educator Paulo Freire
proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and
society. It was first published in Portuguese in 1968, and was translated and
published in English in 1970. The book is considered one of the foundational
texts of critical pedagogy.
B. Author Biography
Freire was born September 19, 1921 to a middle class family in Recife,
Brazil. He became familiar with poverty and hunger. In 1931, his family
moved to the less expensive city of Jaboatão dos Guararapes, and in 1933
his father died. In school, he ended up four grades behind, and his social life
revolved around playing pick up football with other poor children, from whom
he learned a great deal. These experiences would shape his concerns for the
poor and would help to construct his particular educational viewpoint.
Freire enrolled at Law School at the University of Recife in 1943. He
also studied philosophy, more specifically phenomenology, and the
psychology of language. Although admitted to the legal bar, he never
actually practiced law but instead worked as a teacher in secondary schools
teaching Portuguese. In 1944, he married Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, a
fellow teacher. The two worked together and had five children.
In 1946, Freire was appointed Director of the Department of Education
and Culture of the Social Service in the state of Pernambuco. Working
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primarily among the illiterate poor, Freire began to embrace a non-orthodox
form of what could be considered liberation theology. In Brazil at that time,
literacy was a requirement for voting in presidential elections.
In 1961, he was appointed director of the Department of Cultural
Extension of Recife University, and in 1962 he had the first opportunity for
significant application of his theories, when 300 sugarcane workers were
taught to read and write in just 45 days. In response to this experiment, the
Brazilian government approved the creation of thousands of cultural circles
across the country.
In 1964, a military coup put an end to that effort. Freire was
imprisoned as a traitor for 70 days. After a brief exile in Bolivia, Freire
worked in Chile for five years for the Christian Democratic Agrarian Reform
Movement and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
In 1967, Freire published his first book, Education as the Practice of
Freedom. He followed this with his most famous book, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, first published in Portuguese in 1968.
On the strength of reception of his work, Freire was offered a visiting
professorship at Harvard University in 1969. The next year, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed was published in both Spanish and English, vastly expanding its
reach. Because of political feuds between Freire, a Christian socialist, and
successive authoritarian military dictatorships, the book wasn't published in
Brazil until 1974, when General Ernesto Geisel became the then dictator
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president beginning the process of a slow and controlled political
liberalization.
After a year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, Freire moved to
Geneva, Switzerland to work as a special education advisor to the World
Council of Churches. During this time Freire acted as an advisor on education
reform in former Portuguese colonies in Africa, particularly Guinea-Bissau
and Mozambique.
In 1979, he was able to return to Brazil, and moved back in 1980.
Freire joined the Workers' Party (PT) in the city of São Paulo, and acted as a
supervisor for its adult literacy project from 1980 to 1986. When the PT
prevailed in the municipal elections in 1988, Freire was appointed Secretary
of Education for São Paulo.
In 1986, his wife Elza died. Freire married Maria Araújo Freire, who continues
with her own educational work. He died of heart failure on May 2, 1997 in
São Paulo, Brazil.
C. Central Theme
The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a book about ideas, and the ideas presented are those of the
author, Paulo Freire. It is of essay/narrative form for it is a literary composition
devoted to the presentation of the writer's own ideas on a topic and
generally addressing a particular aspect of the subject.
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II. Summary/Plot
The original book was written in Portuguese entitled Pedagogia do
Oprimido. The book contains four chapters. It has several language
translation and reprinting in commemoration for its 30th year of publication in
English language in the year 2000.The first chapter also known as “The
revolutionary context” explores how oppression has been justified and how it
is overcome through a mutual process between the "oppressor" and the
"oppressed" (oppressors-oppressed distinction). Examining the balance of
power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, the
author told that the powerless in society can be frightened of freedom. He
writes, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued
constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man;
nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition
for the quest for human completion". According to him, freedom will be the
result of praxis — established custom or habitual practice or informed action
— when there is a balance between theory and practice is achieved.
Freire's analysis of the social situation is based on the ideas of
dialectical materialism; an oppressor class oppresses and an oppressed class
is oppressed. His particular concern is with the state of consciousness of the
oppressed class. The oppressed class is submerged, having accepted the
thing status into which they are oppressed. The historical vocation of the
oppressed class is to struggle against the oppressor and realize their
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humanity which the oppressor denies them. Only the oppressed class can
realize humanity, but they do it for all. That is the oppressed class has the
role of liberating the oppressors, as well as itself, from their role as
oppressors, thus resolving a contradiction in which they neither are fully
human.
The second chapter (Banking Education v. Problem-posing education)
examines the "banking" approach to education — a metaphor used by the
author that suggests students are considered empty bank accounts that
should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. He rejects the
"banking" approach, claiming it results in the dehumanization of both the
students and the teachers. In addition, he argues the banking approach
stimulates oppressive attitudes and practices in society. Instead, he
advocates for a more world-mediated, mutual approach to education that
considers people incomplete. According to Freire, this "authentic" approach
to education must allow people to be aware of their incompleteness and
strive to be more fully human.
The third chapter (Dialog is central to a pedagogy of the oppressed)
developed the use of the term limit-situation with regards to dimensions of
human praxis. In this chapter Freire outlines his educational programs with
the rural poor in Latin America. These programs use political content
gleaned from the observed everyday life of the peasants to teach critical
awareness. The chapter describes the programs in some ldetail. Initially
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material will be gathered partly by Freire's assistants and partly by leaders
from amongst the peasants using audio-visual equipment. The preliminary
investigation will discover certain themes in the political and social life of the
people. Freire refers to these as 'generative' themes; according to Freire
each epoch and each locality has its own 'generative' themes; these are the
key political themes of the community (a subset of the society and in turn of
the epoch). Of course; the themes are understood as having a dialectical
binary opposite. There is a dialectical struggle striving for plenitude. These
dialectical struggles will necessarily focus on limit-situations; points at which
the human potential of the people is being frustrated but which they could
go beyond if they could overcome their fatalism. The material is investigated
and a selection is made from which codifications are made. This material is
then discussed in groups with the peasants (‘thematic investigation circles')
and decoded. Their discussions are observed and recorded by a psychologist
and a sociologist. Then, using this material gleaned from the meetings, and
insights provided by the psychologist and sociologist the team study their
findings and identify the themes which have emerged. The recordings made
of these discussions together with the notes from the psychologist and
sociologists are also presented by the team to appropriate University
academics. The professors add some content of their own. These may be in
the form of recorded interviews. The team may also add additional material
which was not turned up in the investigations with the people including key
themes of a more academic nature such as the idea of 'culture'. This
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material is now codified and the coded material, together with the
contributions from the professors, is now taken back to groups of the rural
poor and forms the content for "culture group" discussions. In these the
peasants decode the encoded representations of their own 'generative
themes', the key social and political dilemmas they face. They may also
listen to and discuss the recordings made by 'specialists'. The decoding is
the key process which leads to insight. So the encodings must be done
sensitively.
The last chapter proposes dialogic as an instrument to free the
colonized, through the use of cooperation, unity, organization and cultural
synthesis (overcoming problems in society to liberate human beings). This is
in contrast to antidialogics which use conquest, manipulation, cultural
invasion, and the concept of divide and rule. Freire suggests that populist
dialogue is a necessity to revolution; that impeding dialogue dehumanizes
and supports the status quo. This is but one example of the dichotomies
Freire identifies in the book. Others include the student-teacher dichotomy
and the colonizer-colonized dichotomy.
III. Critical Assessment
A. Characterization
The book is discussion type wherein the author discussed the
problems that lay in education and proposed solutions to the problems. The
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author blames the capitalist of education and set a revolution in education.
The author introduced concepts and theories surrounding education during
the 20th century. He proposed the idea that education should be a
"dialogical process" in which students and teachers are learning from their
experiences. Therefore, there is no prevalent character on the written book
but there are terms used to refer as to be characters/ subjects of the story
like oppressed and oppressors.
B. Authors central argument or thesis
Throughout the book, Freire argued for a system of education that
emphasizes learning as an act of culture and freedom. The "oppressor" and
the "oppressed" and the actions that occur between them. Freire argued that
the underclass could be empowered through literacy. He also pointed out
that education could be used to create a passive and submissive citizen, but
that it also has the potential to empower students by instilling in them a
"critical consciousness." Freire wanted the individual to form himself rather
than be formed.
C. Author’s point of view, purpose and perspective
Freire’s view conceives of humans as objects, and they are mouldable
and adaptable. The other view sees humans as subjects, independent
beings, able to transcend and recreate the world. Other concepts of Freire's
pedagogy of the oppressed is the "culture of silence.The oppressors
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overwhelm the oppressed with their values and norms, which effectively
silences people. He uses the concept of "myth". By pressure from those in
power, the oppressed have internalised those myths, which we can speak of
here as "lies" because they have been purposefully and knowingly imposed
upon the people without taking into consideration their reality.
D. Implication of the book to:
1. Politics: Concepts of Freire on writing this book open up the idea of
liberalism, democracy and open societies. It is relates the readers to how the
leaders should act and deal their relations to the subordinates.
2. Economy: Reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed gave a language to
critically understand the tensions, contradictions, fears, doubts, hopes, and
“deferred” dreams that are part and parcel of living a borrowed and
colonized cultural existence.
3. Society: Oppressed people all over the world would identified Paulo
Freire’s denunciation of the oppressive conditions that were choking millions
of poor people, including a large number of middle-class families that had
bitterly begun to experience the inhumanity of hunger in a potentially very
rich and fertile country like we had-Philippines.
4. Culture: This book denotes the realization of class borders that led,
invariably, to Freire’s radical rejection of a class-based society.
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5. Religion: As for me societal perspective of a persons reflects the
percentage of how much he/ she believes and how he was affected by those
mythological beliefs and animistic he was.
6. Education: Freire's concepts on writing this book are very closely
related to attributes as a teacher. His concepts and ideas are closely
connected today's education. Teachers are using student pre-selected
knowledge and their experiences to drive our instruction. Freire's concepts
and ideas are implemented into most students, classroom, and teaching
styles.
IV. Conclusion:
Although I found it too difficult to read and comprehend a large portion
of Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I thought that Freire was ahead of his
time with ideas that are widely discussed and executed in classrooms today.
Majority of his concepts and ideas were correct and lead to what education is
today. For example, Freire's banking concept is exactly what we do not want
teachers to do today. We want to produce students who can think together
and independently. We also want students to be able to construct ideas
thoroughly and with ease. I think the reason his work was banned and
rejected by educators at the time of first publishing the book, throughout the
world and continued to resurface is because people were not happy with the
truth being told out loud. They did not want to face the reality of their
situations and directly deal with them.
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Even though Freire’s book is hard to comprehend for the first reading it
is worth enough to spent your spare time to become more productive and
intellectually full. I would recommend students to read this book. For further
reprinting of this book I would recommend to add more glossary of terms
used by Freire for easy understanding.
Index:
Terms commonly used by Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Oppressed-Those who are under the power of others in virtually any
way.
Oppressors-Those who dominate others in virtually any way.
Oppression-the oppressed adopt the oppressor's consciousness and
even admire and envy the oppressed.
Dehumanization-process wherein the oppressed develop critical
awareness that they are oppressed.
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Praxis-interrelationship between theory ( or insight) and action.
Action that does not follow from theory is weak and untrustworthy.
Theory which doesn't lead to action is mere game playing.
Dialectical-a notion of a way to be in the world (call it A) develops in
history that embodies a view of the world. However, the view has in
it directions which ensure its own end.
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