Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was never assigned to read Freire in my College of Education, but my interest in critical pedagogy and culture in education led me to his work time and time again regardless. Freire says, “The pedagogy of the oppressed… is a task for radicals.” Though I don’t see myself as a radical, I have been building a tool that takes a radical approach to reading and content literacy by inviting students to disrupt the flow of words and resist traditional assessment models. LiberateLiteracy.org
This is the first time I have ever read Pedagogy of the Oppressed in one sitting from cover to cover. These passages will stick with me and help keep me on this path:
“Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence.”
“It is essential not to confuse modernization with development.”
“Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.”
“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors.”
“Teachers and students, co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.”
“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. It is a learning situation in which the cognizable act (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors—teacher on the one hand and students on the other.”
