Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed

When I was engaged in Ph.D study a few years back one of the authors I read was Paulo Freire. Freire and his works where immensely popular in higher education and still are. Here are two examples of what you will find on various websites about him.

“Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997), the Brazilian educationalist, has left a significant mark on thinking about progressive practice. His Pedagogy of the Oppressed is currently one of the most quoted educational texts (especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia). Freire was able to draw upon, and weave together, a number of strands of thinking about educational practice and liberation.”

“Perhaps the most influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century, Paulo Freire has been particularly popular with informal educators with his emphasis on dialogue and his concern for the oppressed.”

Freire did contribute to the educational conversation in some positive ways. But, like most honest and sincere researchers, the concepts he stumbled upon can be traced right back to the truth of the scriptures. Case and point:

In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire suggests that every person can look critically at his world through a process of dialogue and can gradually come to understand the world through his or her individual actions. We, inside Christian circles, call this a worldview and understand its importance.

Freire suggests that education is an either/or; either it is the conditioning of the younger generation to accept things as they are, or it is the practice of freedom which prepares the younger generation to deal critically and creatively with their worlds and realities. I say it is both. You must first prepare a foundation upon which to think; then, and only then, will you be able to thing critically and creatively about your world and truly understand your reality.

These ideas, among others, form the foundation of Freire’s promotion of literacy as an agent of social change, and I believe it can be. Many of Freire’s ideas are revolutionary and political and fly against many of the customary American beliefs. Some of these American beliefs include ideas such as “banking education,” where the teacher teaches and students are taught (as opposed to Freire’s idea that both teacher and student bring something different and equally worthwhile to the class, understanding that knowledge should be shared and both sides and ideas should be given equal respect). Other American educational ideas like the teacher knows everything and that the students know nothing, the idea that only what the teacher teaches is correct, and that the teacher chooses what to teach and the students adapt…all where considered destructive and harmful to the educational process by Freire. While I do acknowledge that both teacher and student bring something to the classroom, I must also acknowledge that the teacher brings more than the student because of age, degree, and maturity, and, therefore, is qualified to be the authority in the room and choose what is taught. Students are made to be inside order and structure and are not meant to have equal status with adults early in the learning process.

Freire was also very interested in the process of naming and believed that the action of naming directs social action.

“Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words… To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Men are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.”

Freire would not understand the cultural mandate found in Genesis 1, even though, by his research, he pretty much supported it in the statements above.

My point is this: those who are passionately interested in elements of the world, who pursue, through hard honest labor, the means to make those elements better, often stumble onto the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” May all who read here discover that Truth! Blessings!