Created at: 2024-09-12
Paulo Freire is a Brazilian pedagogue who was born and raised in a impoverished area in Brazil's north east in the 1920's.
His father was a policeman, and his mother a home-stay mom. After his father's death, when Paulo was only 9 years old, he became even more impoverished but somehow managed to study and get a degree on Law, which he never used as his passion was on teaching - not law, but the alphabet.
Whether you like Paulo Freire or not, his story is one of fantastic achievements built on suffering, estate persecution, and misunderstanding.
In Brazil, Paulo is either acclaimed or criticised. He's seen as either a pedagogy revolutionary and intellectual, or a Marxist with corrupted intentions.
Most of the people who criticise him, though, haven't read his books. I have made this mistake in the past.
This is not an apology for Paulo either, as I don't fully agree with his ideas either, and think that many of his takes are only idealistic. However, I came to appreciate his work now that I have read it. Paulo definitely knows how to put the revolutionary spirit into words and agree you or not with his ideas, the work he's done is remarkable.
Here are some of my highlights:
Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.
Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society?
But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to be-come oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.” The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of “adhesion” to the oppressor.
One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. 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 pre-scriber’s consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the op-pressor.
the situation of oppression is a dehumanized and dehumanizing totality affecting both the oppressors and those whom they oppress, it is the latter who must, from their stifled humanity, wage for both the struggle for a fuller humanity; the oppressor, who is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others, is unable to lead this struggle.
Resolution of the oppressor-oppressed contradiction indeed implies the disappearance of the oppressors as a dominant class. However, the restraints imposed by the former oppressed on their oppressors, so that the latter cannot reassume their former position, do not constitute oppression.
But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated laborers, the former op-pressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights
On the other hand, at a certain point in their existential experience the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction towards the oppressors and their way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration. In their alienation, the oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors, to imitate them, to follow them. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in the middle-class op-pressed, who yearn to be equal to the “eminent” men and women of the upper class.
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamen-tally narrative character. This relationship involves a nar-rating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.
Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charismatic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective. The rebellion they express as they emerge in the historical process is motivated by that desire to act effectively. The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order, and social peace (that is, the peace of the elites). Thus they can condemn—logically, from their point of view—“the violence of a strike by workers and [can] call upon the state in the same breath to use violence in putting down the strike.”7
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They be-come jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
We must never merely discourse on the present situation, must never provide the people with programs which have little or nothing to do with their own preoccupations, doubts, hopes, and fears—programs which at times in fact increase the fears of the oppressed consciousness. It is not our role to speak to the people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to impose that view on them, but rather to dialogue with the people about their view and ours
Dialogue with the people is radically necessary to every authentic revolution. This is what makes it a revolution, as distinguished from a military coup. One does not expect dialogue from a coup—only deceit (in order to achieve “legitimacy”) or force (in order to repress).
On the other hand, it would be a false premise to believe that activism (which is not true action) is the road to revolution. People will be truly critical if they live the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naïve knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality.
A Mr. Giddy, later President of the Royal Society, raised objections which could be matched in every country: “However specious in theory the project might be of giving education to the laboring classes of the poor, it would be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life instead of making them good servants in agricultural and other laborious employments; instead of teaching them subordination it would render them fractious and refractory as was evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors and in a few years the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong arm of power against them.8 What Mr. Giddy really wanted (and what the elites of today want, although they do not denounce popular education so cynically and openly) was for the people not to think. Since the Mr. Giddys of all epochs, as an oppressor class, cannot think with the people, neither can they let the people think for themselves.
The first characteristic of antidialogical action is the necessity for conquest. The antidialogical individual, in his relations with others, aims at conquering them—increasingly and by every means, from the toughest to the most refined, from the most repressive to the most solicitous (paternalism).
It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive. This approximation, however, does not involve being with the people, or require true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors’ depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a “free society”; the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don’t like their boss they can leave him and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur—worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of the equality of all individuals, when the question: “Do you know who you’re talking to?” is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of “Western Christian civilization” against “materialist barbarism”; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is to foster selective “good deeds” (subsequently elaborated into the myth of “disinterested aid,” which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXIII);14 the myth that the dominant elites, “recognizing their duties,” promote the advancement of the people, so that t he people, in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words of the elites and be conformed to them; the myth that rebellion is a sin against God; the myth of private property as fundamental to personal human development (so long as oppressors are the only true human beings); the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the oppressed, as well as the myth of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former.
As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power. The minority cannot permit itself the luxury of tolerating the unification of the people, which would undoubtedly signify a serious threat to their own hegemony. Accordingly, the oppressors halt by any method (including violence) any action which in even incipient fashion could awaken the op-pressed to the need for unity. Concepts such as unity, organization, and struggle are immediately labeled as dangerous. In fact, of course, these concepts are dangerous—to the oppressors—for their realization is necessary to actions of liberation.
The same divisive effect occurs in connection with the so-called “leadership training courses,” which are (although carried out without any such intention by many of their organizers) in the last analysis alienating. These courses are based on the naïve assumption that one can promote the community by training its leaders—as if it were the parts that promote the whole and not the whole which, in being promoted, promotes the parts.
For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority. Since everything has its opposite, if those who are invaded consider themselves inferior, they must necessarily recognize the superiority of the invaders. The values of the latter thereby become the pattern for the former. The more invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders: to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them.
The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression.30 As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.
A group in a New York ghetto was presented a coded situation showing a big pile of garbage on a street corner—the very same street where the group was meeting. One of the participants said at once, “I see a street in Africa or Latin America.” “And why not in New York?” asked the teacher. “Because we are the United States and that can’t happen here.” Beyond a doubt this man and some of his comrades who agreed with him were retreating from a reality so offensive to them that even to acknowledge that reality was threatening. For an alienated person, conditioned by a culture of achievement and personal success, to recognize his situation as objectively unfavorable seems to hinder his own possibilities of success.
It is essential not to confuse modernization with development. The former, although it may affect certain groups in the “satellite society,” is almost always induced; and it is the metropolitan society which derives the true benefits therefrom. A society which is merely modernized without developing will continue—even if it takes over some minimal delegated powers of decision—to depend on the outside country. This is the fate of any dependent society, as long as it remains dependent.