Comments on "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" Chapter II

I have to say that Paul Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was the most exciting piece of educational literature I have ever read. According to my brief research, Freire was influenced by Karl Marx and Marxism in general, but he could have equally been inspired by William James’s essays Pragmatism, which I read this past year (for my own entertainment, believe it or not, though like Freier’s essay I wrote “wtf?” in the margins more often than I probably should have). In fact, I think this comparison may be helpful for those who may be resistant the Freier’s work because of its supposed relation to Marx—which, undoubtedly, would scare off many conservative educators still afraid of the Red Menace. This is especially true considering Pragmatism is known, chiefly, as an American philosophy (although I haven’t read Dewey, who was also a pragmatist, so maybe that comparison is more--though I believe he was also a socialist of some kind which may scare some people off as well).

Both James and Freire share a compassion for lived experience as opposed to abstract objectivity. Experience is fluid, it moves through different people at different speeds and different levels. To force one experience over the other is a kind of mental hegemony that robs them of their own unique experience. This is especially true in the field of English Language Arts, which begs—which requires—the confluence of discourse from a variety of sources. Experience, as James tells us, doesn’t come “ticketed and labeled” from the mind of the teacher. Freire, similarly, warns us of the dangers when “education thus becomes an act of depositing” these ticketed and labeled truths to students. Depositing information requires very little critical thinking. It robs the students of their experience. The way to combat this is communication and discourse between the teacher and student.

However, as revolutionary as all this philosophy sounds, I am not sure how to apply it to the actual experience of teaching or to classroom curriculum. This is especially true in the public school system, which requires a certain adherence to norms. As far as trying to relate Freire’s philosophy to the classroom, these are the only ideas I can come up with, none of which seem entirely revolutionary:

1.     Replace quizzes with one-on-one or small group discussion

2.     Provide students a time to reflect and ask them to share those reflections with the class/and or on a paper assignment

3.     Class journals

4.     Replace static problems with story problems

5.     Share my own intellectual limitations with the classroom

6.     Share my teaching process with the students

Also, I found this PDF online, entitled Transforming My Curriculum, Transforming My Classroom: Paulo Freire, James Banks, and Social Justice in a Middle School Classroom . I have not read this yet (just a quick skim), but it looks helpful.