Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Encyclopedia
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the most widely known of educator Paulo Freire
's works. It 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.
Dedicated to what is called "the oppressed" and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis
in his exploration of the relationship between what he calls "the colonizer" and "the colonized." The book remains popular among educators all over the world and is one of the foundations of critical pedagogy
.
In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggybank. However, he argues for pedagogy to treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge.
According to Donaldo Macedo, a former colleague of Freire and University of Massachusetts
professor, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a revolutionary text, and people in totalitarian states risk punishment reading it; Arizona's secretary of education, Tom Horne, objects to its use in classrooms. The book has sold over 750 000 copies worldwide.
The first chapter 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 how the balance of power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, Freire admits 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." (47) According to Freire, freedom will be the result of praxis--informed action—when a balance between theory and practice is achieved.
The second chapter examines the "banking" approach to education—a metaphor used by Freire that suggests students are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. Freire 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, Freire 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. This attempt to use education as a means of consciously shaping the person and the society is called conscientization, a term first coined by Freire in this book.
The third chapter developed the use of the term limit-situation with regards to dimensions of human praxis. This is in line with the Alvaro Viera Pinto's use of the word/idea in his "Consciencia Realidad Nacional" which Freire contends is "using the concept without the pessimistic character originally found in Jaspers" (Note 15, Chapter 3) in reference to Karl Jaspers
's notion of 'Grenzsituationen'.
The last chapter proposes dialogic
s 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.
More detailed chapter by chapter summaries are available through The Communication Initiative.
and Karl Marx
.
One of Freire's dictums is that: “there neither is, nor has ever been, an educational practice in zero space-time—neutral in the sense of being committed only to preponderantly abstract, intangible ideas.” According to later critics, heirs to Freire's ideas have taken it to mean that since all education is political, "leftist math teachers who care about the oppressed have a right, indeed a duty, to use a pedagogy that, in Freire’s words, 'does not conceal—in fact, which proclaims—its own political character.'"
The first four Chapters of Freire's major work used to be available online. They were removed by the request of Freire's estate. However, pirate copies still proliferate on the Internet. During the South African Anti-Apartheid Struggle
, for example, the copyrights of Pedagogy of the Oppressed were violated and illegal copies were distributed underground as part of the "ideological weaponry" of various revolutionary groups like the Black Consciousness Movement
. In the 1970's and 1980's the book was banned and kept clandestine.
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...
's works. It proposes a pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
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.
Dedicated to what is called "the oppressed" and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis
Class analysis
Class analysis is research in sociology, politics and economics from the point of view of the stratification of the society into dynamic classes...
in his exploration of the relationship between what he calls "the colonizer" and "the colonized." The book remains popular among educators all over the world and is one of the foundations of critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...
.
In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggybank. However, he argues for pedagogy to treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge.
According to Donaldo Macedo, a former colleague of Freire and University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...
professor, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a revolutionary text, and people in totalitarian states risk punishment reading it; Arizona's secretary of education, Tom Horne, objects to its use in classrooms. The book has sold over 750 000 copies worldwide.
Summary
Translated into several languages, most editions of Pedagogy of the Oppressed contain at least one introduction/foreword, a preface, and four chapters.The first chapter explores how oppression
Oppression
Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...
has been justified and how it is overcome through a mutual process between the "oppressor" and the "oppressed" (oppressors-oppressed distinction
Oppressors-oppressed distinction
Oppressors-oppressed distinction or dominant-dominated opposition, is an influential political argument. One of its first uses was by Hegel in his 1802 The German Constitution, in which he said that "The Catholics had been in the position of oppressors, and the Protestants of the oppressed." Its...
). Examining how the balance of power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, Freire admits 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." (47) According to Freire, freedom will be the result of praxis--informed action—when a balance between theory and practice is achieved.
The second chapter examines the "banking" approach to education—a metaphor used by Freire that suggests students are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. Freire rejects the "banking" approach, claiming it results in the dehumanization
Dehumanization
Dehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others. Dehumanization may be directed by an organization or may be the composite of individual...
of both the students and the teachers. In addition, he argues the banking approach stimulates oppressive attitudes and practices in society. Instead, Freire 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. This attempt to use education as a means of consciously shaping the person and the society is called conscientization, a term first coined by Freire in this book.
The third chapter developed the use of the term limit-situation with regards to dimensions of human praxis. This is in line with the Alvaro Viera Pinto's use of the word/idea in his "Consciencia Realidad Nacional" which Freire contends is "using the concept without the pessimistic character originally found in Jaspers" (Note 15, Chapter 3) in reference to Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
's notion of 'Grenzsituationen'.
The last chapter proposes dialogic
Dialogic
The English terms dialogic and dialogism often refer to the concept used by the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his work of literary theory, The Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin contrasts the dialogic and the "monologic" work of literature. The dialogic work carries on a continual dialogue...
s 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.
More detailed chapter by chapter summaries are available through The Communication Initiative.
Spread
Since the publication of the English edition in 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has achieved "near-iconic status" in America’s teacher-training programs, according to Sol Stern. A 2003 study looking at the curricula of 16 schools of education, 14 of them among the top in the country, found that Pedagogy of the Oppressed was one of the most frequently assigned texts in their philosophy of education courses. Such course assignments are a large part of the reason the book has sold almost 1 million copies, which is a remarkable number for a book in the education field.Influences
The work was strongly influenced by Frantz FanonFrantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
and Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
.
One of Freire's dictums is that: “there neither is, nor has ever been, an educational practice in zero space-time—neutral in the sense of being committed only to preponderantly abstract, intangible ideas.” According to later critics, heirs to Freire's ideas have taken it to mean that since all education is political, "leftist math teachers who care about the oppressed have a right, indeed a duty, to use a pedagogy that, in Freire’s words, 'does not conceal—in fact, which proclaims—its own political character.'"
The first four Chapters of Freire's major work used to be available online. They were removed by the request of Freire's estate. However, pirate copies still proliferate on the Internet. During the South African Anti-Apartheid Struggle
Internal resistance to South African apartheid
Internal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa came from several sectors of society and saw the creation of organisations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection. It came from both black activists like Steve Biko and Desmond Tutu as well as...
, for example, the copyrights of Pedagogy of the Oppressed were violated and illegal copies were distributed underground as part of the "ideological weaponry" of various revolutionary groups like the Black Consciousness Movement
Black Consciousness Movement
The Black Consciousness Movement was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in...
. In the 1970's and 1980's the book was banned and kept clandestine.
Criticism
Sol Stern, of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, states that Freire’s magnum opus isn’t actually about schooling, because it mentions none of the issues that education reformers throughout the twentieth century have preoccupied themselves with, such as testing, standards, curriculum, the role of parents, how to organize schools, what subjects should be taught in various grades, how best to train teachers, the most effective way of teaching disadvantaged students, etc. Instead, Stern argues, Pedagogy is "a utopian political tract calling for the overthrow of capitalist hegemony and the creation of classless societies." Stern argues that teachers who adopt its "pernicious" ideas risk harming their students.Issues in Freirean pedagogy
- Conscientization
- Critical consciousnessCritical consciousnessCritical consciousness, conscientization, or conscientização , is a popular education and social concept developed by Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist Paulo Freire, grounded in Marxist critical theory...
- Critical pedagogyCritical pedagogyCritical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...
- Popular educationPopular educationPopular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular...
- Teaching for social justiceTeaching for social justiceTeaching for social justice is an educational philosophy designed to promote socioeconomic equality in the learning environment and instill these values in students. Educators may employ social justice instruction to promote unity on campus, as well as mitigate boundaries to the general curriculum...
- Adult literacy
- Adult educationAdult educationAdult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...
- PraxisPraxisPraxis is the putting of theory into practice. The term may refer to:* Christian theological praxis* Praxis , the practice of faith, especially worship* The Praxis School, a school of Marxist philosophy...