Pedagogy of the Oppressed
In order to have the continued opportunity to express their "generosity," the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this "generosity," which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. -45
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. -45
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--although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. -57
[attitudes of the banking concept of education]
(a) the teacher techers and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher talks and the students listen--meekly;
(e) the disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.
-73
Animals are not challenged by the configuration which confronts them; they are merely stimulated. Their life is not one of risk-taking, for they are not aware of taking risks. Risks are not challenges perceived upon reflection, but merely "noted" by the signs which indicate them; they accordingly do not require decision-making responses. -98
As each person, in his decoding essay, relates how he perceived or felt a certain occurrence or situation, his exposition challenges all the other decoders by re-presenting to them the same reality upon which they have themselves been intent. -112
The first requirement is that these codifications must necessarily represent situations familiar to the individuals whose thematics are being examined, so that they can easily recognize the situations (and this their own relation to them). -114
The theme of development, for example, is especially appropriate to the field of economics, but not exclusively so. This theme would also be focalized by sociology, anthropology, and social psychology (fields concerned with cultural change and with the modification of attitudes and values--questions which are equally relevant to a philosophy of development). It would be focalized by political science (a field concerned with the decisions which involve development), by education, and so forth. In this way, the themes which characterize a totality will never be approached rigidly. -120
It is accomplished by the oppressors' depositing myths indispensible 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 XXII);
-140
In the theory of antidialogical action, conquest (as its primary characteristic) invovles a Subject who conquers another person and transforms her or him into a "thing." In the dialogical theory of action. Subjects meet in cooperation in order to transform the world. -167
In cultural invasion, the actors draw the thematic content of their action from their own values and ideology: their starting point is their own world, from which they enter the world of those they invade. In cultural synthesis, the actors who come from "another world" to the world of the people do so not as invaders. They do not come to teach or to transmit or to give anythign, but rather to learn with the people, about the people's world. -180
This is relevant to my interests in a number of ways.
ReplyDelete1. He stresses that the thematic content of courses must be developed in communion, cooperatively with the students.
2. He stresses that education must be tied with some kind of action or some kind of change.
3. He advocates a cross disciplinary examination of a theme.
4. He argues for dialogical education rather than the banking model of education.