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Mar. 14th, 2010 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire
I have heard plenty of people talk about this book in glowing terms - and I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. This doesn't click with me. This probably makes me an oppressor. It's also connected to the politics and social context that Freire operates in.
Freire worked in Brazil and was instrumental in teaching literacy to the peasant classes in connection with a social liberation/revolutionary political stance. When 1964, a military coup politely invited him to leave the country. His major points are that the education of the oppressed cannot be imposed from above by the oppressors, because that's paternalism and not actually liberation; that educators must work alongside the oppressed to create a curriculum that is relevant to them; and that education is about re-humanising the oppressed, while oppression is a dehumanising project both for the oppressors and the oppressed.
So far, so good. A couple of problems. Firstly, as Freire himself points out, the project he is proposing just wouldn't make sense to a European peasant, because of the differing political context. So I don't know quite how to take things out of the South-American context, where the notion of oppression that Freire is working with is firmly bound up with indentured workers who rarely, if ever, leave the borders of the estates they work on. Secondly, while I see the value of pointing out cultural myths in an American or a British educational context (e.g. 'everyone can go to university' or 'the police are scrupulously just', that sort of thing), when it comes to thinking about how to structure a university course on classics that has, as its learning outcomes, the aim of communicating knowledge about the ancient world in which I am the expert? The model of learning that Freire creates doesn't accomodate that, and honestly, I don't see there being space for my subject in his revolutionary educational project. The third problem is that he is very short on practical details, which makes it hard for me to see how to turn theory into praxis.
I can get behind his idea of dialogue as an important teaching tool, although possibly not as the only method of communication as he'd have it. I can also get behind his idea of teacher-learners and learner-teachers, rather than the teacher/learner divide as usually articulated. The problem is that I felt a lot of this was discussed in a way that resonated better for me in The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer.
I think where I am going is that I can completely see how this approach would work for the social context Freire was situated in, and can also see how it would work if I were considering other kinds of teaching situations - it would work very well as a theoretical base for a church education group, for example, particularly the emphasis on creating a program based on the needs and interests of those who are to be taught. But for a university Classics course, or worse, for Latin 101? I'm sorry, but I just don't see where this takes me, or really what is useful in it. I may come back to it if I find myself in a context where I think it will work, but right now, I'm simply not there.
I have heard plenty of people talk about this book in glowing terms - and I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. This doesn't click with me. This probably makes me an oppressor. It's also connected to the politics and social context that Freire operates in.
Freire worked in Brazil and was instrumental in teaching literacy to the peasant classes in connection with a social liberation/revolutionary political stance. When 1964, a military coup politely invited him to leave the country. His major points are that the education of the oppressed cannot be imposed from above by the oppressors, because that's paternalism and not actually liberation; that educators must work alongside the oppressed to create a curriculum that is relevant to them; and that education is about re-humanising the oppressed, while oppression is a dehumanising project both for the oppressors and the oppressed.
So far, so good. A couple of problems. Firstly, as Freire himself points out, the project he is proposing just wouldn't make sense to a European peasant, because of the differing political context. So I don't know quite how to take things out of the South-American context, where the notion of oppression that Freire is working with is firmly bound up with indentured workers who rarely, if ever, leave the borders of the estates they work on. Secondly, while I see the value of pointing out cultural myths in an American or a British educational context (e.g. 'everyone can go to university' or 'the police are scrupulously just', that sort of thing), when it comes to thinking about how to structure a university course on classics that has, as its learning outcomes, the aim of communicating knowledge about the ancient world in which I am the expert? The model of learning that Freire creates doesn't accomodate that, and honestly, I don't see there being space for my subject in his revolutionary educational project. The third problem is that he is very short on practical details, which makes it hard for me to see how to turn theory into praxis.
I can get behind his idea of dialogue as an important teaching tool, although possibly not as the only method of communication as he'd have it. I can also get behind his idea of teacher-learners and learner-teachers, rather than the teacher/learner divide as usually articulated. The problem is that I felt a lot of this was discussed in a way that resonated better for me in The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer.
I think where I am going is that I can completely see how this approach would work for the social context Freire was situated in, and can also see how it would work if I were considering other kinds of teaching situations - it would work very well as a theoretical base for a church education group, for example, particularly the emphasis on creating a program based on the needs and interests of those who are to be taught. But for a university Classics course, or worse, for Latin 101? I'm sorry, but I just don't see where this takes me, or really what is useful in it. I may come back to it if I find myself in a context where I think it will work, but right now, I'm simply not there.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-14 07:39 pm (UTC)And with history, thinking about history from the PoV of where we stand rather than the white-male-patriarchal model would be the way forward in Freire's terms, affirming that we do in fact have a history worth studying.
In Psychology - oh boy. It would open up a mammoth can of worms, because it would be looking at the world we see around us, and seeing psychology as a social construct, rather than a defined discipline/science.
Engineering - folk engineering, rules of thumb. Looking at stuff like the Minsters and how there are ways of constructing stuff that lasts without needing expensive computer software. Teaching the first principles, but from a different PoV.
I suppose in some sense, in classics, it's teaching it from a feminist PoV for an all-women group (Classical Barbie is a brilliant example), or encouraging scholarship based on koine or whatever. It's difficult in the USA where there isn't a classical (Roman-Greek) civilisation to draw on. Maybe it's about redefining Classics as being the study of all civilisations extant at that time and seeing how different cultures coped with the same problems.
I'm thinking out loud here.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-15 01:13 am (UTC)I have to say that I feel very strongly about the idea of Classics being - submerged into a discipline that looks at everything. Perhaps it's more about trying to bring the ancient histories of other civilisations to the same level of respect, and then starting the interdisciplinary dialogue between them. As I say, it's an idea to know about, but I don't think I'm in a place to use it.