countdown paper: pedagogy of the oppressed

5 Big Picture Sentences
These first two chapters offer a framework for Freire’s thoughts about education. He defines oppression and human’s vocation. Freire also speaks towards the problem of what the oppressed often do with their liberation. In the last chapter, Freire takes a look at the banking model of education, which he says cannot be used in the pursuit of education. He juxtaposes this model with what he calls problem-posing education, which he sees as the best form of pedagogy for the oppressed.

4 Key Passages“A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education. Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of recreating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. In this way, the presence of the oppressed in the struggle for their liberation will be what it should be: not pseudo-participation, but committed involvement.” (pg. 69)

“Education is suffering from narration sickness.” (pg. 71)

“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” (pg. 72)

“Authentic liberation – the process of humanization – is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.” (pg. 79)

3 Key Terms
praxis – (page 51) “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it”

prescription – (page 46-47) a basic element of the oppressor-oppressed relationship; “represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another”

necrophilic behavior – (page 65) – “the destruction of life – their own or that of their oppressed fellows”

2 Connections
On page 59, Freire says, “They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.” This reminds me of what Tim Wise was saying in the Loss section of White Like Me – we (white people) have lost our own identity in the process of trying to suppress that of others. He was talking about how black and white people in a workshop made lists about what they liked about their race and African Americans were able to say they liked how they valued family, their music, and other very identifiable aspects of their culture, but the Caucasians’ list was simply things that they didn’t have to put up with, like being followed in a store, because of their whiteness.

In the first chapter, when Freire is talking about insincere liberation, he writes that the oppressor is truly empathizing with the oppressed “only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly death with, deprived of their voice, cheated, in the sale of their labor – when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love.” This makes me think of 1 John 3:18, which was part of the message this morning. John writes, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth;” both men are saying: it’s not enough to say you love or say you “feel for” someone – put it into action.

1 Question
Do you think that there can be a balance between the dialogical model and the banking model? Do you see advantages and disadvantages of both or do you think there is never a use for the banking model?