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Learning Environments – Week 10 – Reading Notes

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“Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Paulo Freire 1972

  • Dehumanization of the opressed
    • False generosity – false charity -> true would be to teach them to work and transform the world
      • “And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressor’s’ violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity.” p. 29
    • “The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.” p. 34
    • For opressor, to be is to have
    • Self-depreciation – internalization of opinion oppressors hold of them.
  • Opressed as opressors
    • Rebel not by becoming the oppressor of the oppressors but rather restorers of humanity of both
      • “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” p. 28
    • Their ideal is to be oppressors themselves because that is the world view they are fed – identification with the opposite pole – the context does not change – only roles are changed
      • “Their ideal is to be a man; but for them, to be man is to be oppressor.” p. 30
      • “It is a rare peasant who, once ‘promoted’ to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant toward his former comrades than the owner himself.” p. 46
  • Opressed’s change
    • “In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which the can transform” p. 34
    • Only oppressed can make the change – only them can understand what it means to be oppressed
    • Fear of freedom and how it will affect the whole group – everyone has to be on board.
      • “They prefer gregariousness to authentic comrade­ ship; they prefer the security of conformity with their state of unfreedom to the creative communion produced by freedom and even the very pursuit of freedom.” p. 48
    • Fear of authentic existence – responsibilities, decisions, consequences, accountability
      • “They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic exis­ tence, they fear it.” p. 48
    • Oppressed must confront reality critically or it will not lead to transformation of objective reality
      • “To achieve this goal, the oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality.” p. 52
    • If goal is for the oppressed to become fully human, can’t simply reverse poles
    • Oppressed have to internalize both their image and the oppressor’s in order to be able create true change.
    • Oppressed aspires to the oppressor’s way of life.
  • Pedagogy must be forged with, not for, the oppressed
    • “This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.” p .48
    • “Functionally, oppression is domestication” p. 51
    • Educational Projects vs. Systematic Education – With oppressed vs. For the oppressed
  • How this happens
    • Stages of transition:
      1. Oppressed unveil the world of oppression and commits to transformation.
        • Change how oppressed see the world
      2. Pedagogy becomes for for all men
        • Expulsion of myths
    • Oppressor class must disappear
    • Critical reflection must become action
    • Propaganda is packaged and sold – conviction must be reached by a totality of reflection and action.
    • Co-intentional education – oppressors in committed involvement instead of pseudo-participation
  • Banking concept of education
    • Deposits from the ‘oppressors’, who know it all, into the alienated receptacles
    • Negates them of the process of inquiry
    • Welfare recipients
    • Good students fit into the this skewed version of the world – they adapt.
    • Necrophilic – transforms the students into receiving objects inhibiting their creative power.
  •  Conscientização
    • Interest of oppressors lies in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation with opresses them (critical thinking would do that)
    • Person is merely in the world, not with the world – not a corpo consciente
    • “Liberating education consist in acts of cognition, not transferals of information”
  • Content relevance to real life – socal learning
    • “Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.” (Legitimate Peripheral Participation)
    • Teacher-students and student-teachers. “The teacher is no longer merely one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.“
    • Joint responsibility of learning and growing together.
    • “Education as a practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the practice of domination.”
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Intro to Teaching – Week 10 – Reading Notes

Cohen, D. K. (1990). A revolution in one classroom: The case of Mrs. Oublier. Educational Evaluation and Policy. 12(3). 311-329.

Rereading – Mrs. Oublie was also assigned as a reading in Qualitative Research 🙂 Interesting to read it with a different lens.

  • Something old, something new: missinterpretations of policy lead to partial teaching practice change.
    • “Is Mrs. O’s mathematical revolution a story of progress, or of confusion? Does it signal an advance for the new math framework, or a setback?” p. 323
  • Teachers may not be willing to change way of teaching
    • “She thought that her revolution was over. Her teaching had changed definitively. She had arrived at the other shore.” p. 325
  • How to teach teachers not to teach by telling, by telling them how to teach?
    • “If students need a new instruction to learn to understand mathematics, would not teachers need a new instruction to learn to teach a new mathematics?”. p. 327
    • “Hence teachers are the most important agents of instructional policy (Cohen, 1988; Lipsky, 1980), but the state’s new policy also asserts that teachers are the problem. It is, after all, their knowledge and skills that are deficient.” p. 326
    • “Teachers also would have to learn a new practice of mathematics teaching, while learning the new mathematics and unlearning the old.” p. 327

Zimmerman, J. (2014). Why is American Teaching so Bad?

  • Women as teachers – lower salaries, maternal instinct
    • “That helped save money for taxpayers, because school districts could pay women less than their male counterparts. It also capitalized on women’s natural instincts and abilities…” 
  • Quality of teachers in decline – create Teach for America – but still need Teacher Professional Development
    • “By 1980, Texas Monthly published an award-winning article showing that public school teachers in Houston and Dallas scored lower on reading and math tests than the average sixteen-year-old in nearby suburbs did.”
    • “Everyone understands that you can’t be a nurse without attending a nursing school with carefully developed standards that must be met if candidates are to be systematically inducted into the profession. Most of our schools of education lack such high standards.”
  • Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) – Lee Shulman, Stanford
    • “I am a full professor at a major research university, but I could not, without much preparation, teach high school chemistry.”
  • Japanese teachers have weekly routine for PD
    • “Japanese teachers even have a separate word for this process, jugyokenkyu, which is built into their weekly routines. All teachers have designated periods to observe each other’s classes, study curriculum, and otherwise hone their craft.”
  • American education is technocentric
    • “But the countries that are outpacing us at school, like Japan and Finland, are noticeably low-tech in their classrooms; they recognize that it’s the teacher that counts, not the technology. In America, by contrast, we’re always looking for the next gadget to improve—and, one suspects, to supplant—our beleaguered teaching profession.”