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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