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"Twenty-five years after the first
publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire's message of
liberation and social transformation remains relevant today. Translated
into numerous languages, and having sold more than five hundred
thousand copies world-wide, Pedagogy of the Oppressed continues
to be read, debated and discussed all over the world by progressive
educators and others who seek to embrace Freire's radical pedagogy. The
universal appeal of Freire's works is not limited to
the arena of education, but also maintains considerable influence in
other disciplines such as political science, anthropology,
post-colonial theory, liberation theology, international development
studies, urban planning, feminism, and sociology. Freire's central
thematic concerns espoused in Pedagogy of the Oppressed
maintain on-going relevance to these fields of learning and teaching.
Freire's conception of a highly politicized education, the unification
of action and analysis, the centrality of dialogue in the process of
learning, and the significance of critical awareness in social
transformation continue to guide and challenge progressive educators
throughout the world.
Additionally, Freire's personal and life-long commitment to unite
theory with practice remains a lasting challenge to the field of
critical adult
education. Freire encourages us to continually evaluate the consistency
of our words and actions as educators: "Those who authentically commit
themselves
to the people must re-examine themselves constantly" (42). By
exemplifying
a search for knowledge, consistency and transparency in his own life,
Freire then invites other progressive educators to do the same. Freire
reminds
us that critical education is part of a process in which we become more
fully human; that praxis is incomplete unless it is placed in history;
and that education has subversive potential for social transformation
when it is
not politically neutral. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a
powerful
book with a message of critical radicalism relevant to the post-modern
world
of the 1990s and beyond. Indeed, Paulo Freire's belief in the potential
for social transformation through the process of critical awareness and
action is a message that we who perceive globalization to be an
unalterable
system would do well to remember.
In response to these forces
that inhibit the transformation of an oppressive reality, Freire makes
a very strong distinction between liberatory dialogue which seeks to
transform the
oppressed into their own agents for liberation and monologue, slogans
and
communiques which seek "to liberate the oppressed with the instruments
of
domestication" (p52). The oppressed cannot enter the struggle as
things, people destroyed by propaganda, management and manipulation,
but must engage in a co-intentional pedagogy with their teachers to
critically acquire knowledge of reality. Looking closely at dialogue,
Freire defines its essence as the word whose constituent elements are
reflection and action, yet a word spoken without action (or intent of
action) is verbalism, and a word spoken without reflection is activism:
"There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to
speak a true word is to transform the world." (p75)
Thus, to briefly restate
Freire's pedagogy for the oppressed, he posits that a thematic
investigation leads to awareness of reality, then self-awareness, then
praxis and concientizacao ; in sum, a starting point for the
educational process grounded in cultural action of a liberating
character. Freire sees this progression as equally beneficial when
applied in a micro or macro social realm. That is, just as
an oppressed person can learn to be a Subject in his or her
transformation of reality, so can Third World nations learn to overcome
the oppressive bonds of economic dependency. Yet this belief may be too
simplistic in an age when
the boundaries of a nation state are being erased by the globalization
of
economic activity. As the state weakens, how does this affect the list
of
entitlements, rights and responsibilities that are a society's agreed
upon
elements for defining citizenship? Certainly the varied conceptions of
citizenship
all have the shared quality of informing the meaning of humanity. For a
non-citizen, a persona non grata, there is little doubt, except
in
the case of the very wealthy, that this status will have an invidious
impact
on that person's humanity: where to live, how to earn a living, who to
associate
with, etc. On this question of humanity, Freire is not specific about
what
he envisions, other than to say that our ontological vocation is to
become
more human. But herein is one large question that Freire does not seem
to
answer clearly, but in so doing may leave us a way to redefine
citizenship
in the best interests of humanity. And for that matter, I would say
that
a Pedagogy of the Oppressed is in the best interests of
humanity." (from the Internet)
More Information: http://web.gseis.ucla.edu/~pfi/PF-Freirean_Pedagogy.html