Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Paulo Freire

Careerism vs. Pursuing a career.

And she wrote a book on fascism lol.

This condemnation of human suffering must happen so that we can protect the intellectual coherence needed in order to help others comprehend the critical difference between studying hunger as anthropological tourists and experiencing it, between deploring violence and surviving it, and between the false benevolence of “giving voice” and being institutionally forced into voicelessness. Thus, the pseudo-critical educators who proclaim the need to “give” people of color or women a voice, fail to realize that voice is not a gift. It is a democratic right. It is a human right.

denial of communion in the revolutionary process, avoidance of dialogue with people under the pretext of organizing them, of strengthening revolutionary power, or ensuring a united front, is really a fear of freedom. It is fear of lack of faith in the people . . .

Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality.

And as an individual perceives the extent of dehumanization, he or she may ask if humanization is a viable possibility.

Like wondering whether our collective shortcomings are simply a result of human nature. Thats always seemed lazy and unimaginative.

Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human.

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. This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the op-pressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.

This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the op-pressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.

Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

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. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.

False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands—whether of individuals or entire peoples—need be extended less and less in supplica-tion, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.

Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation? They will not gain this liberation by chance but through the praxis of their quest for it, through their recognition of the necessity to fight for it.

The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.

Id imagine that opportunists miscontrue the context of this.

White rage and guilt comes from this.

Social media incentivizes this.

People echo these types of sentiments when discussing Bezos, Musk, etc.

Similar to the Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin discusion.

In contrast with the antidialogical and non-communicative “de-posits” of the banking method of education, the program content of the problem-posing method—dialogical par excellence—is constituted and organized by the students’ view of the world, where their own generative themes are found. The content thus constantly ex-pands and renews itself. The task of the dialogical teacher in an interdisciplinary team working on the thematic universe revealed by their investigation is to “re-present” that universe to the people from whom she or he first received it—and “re-present” it not as a lecture, but as a problem.

Let us say, for example, that a group has the responsibility of coordinating a plan for adult education in a peasant area with a high percentage of illiteracy. The plan includes a literacy campaign and a post-literacy phase. During the former stage, problem-posing education seeks out and investigates the “generative word”; in the postliteracy stage, it seeks out and investigates the “generative theme.”

In this first contact, the investigators need to get a significant number of persons to agree to an informal meeting during which they can talk about the objectives of their presence in the area.

While it is normal for investigators to come to the area with values which influence their perceptions, this does not mean that they may tra nsform the thematic investigation into a means of imposing these values.

They register everything in their notebooks, including apparently unimportant items: the way the people talk, their style of life, their behavior at church and at work.

It is essential that the investigators observe the area under varying circumstances: labor in the fields, meetings of a local association (noting the behavior of the participants, the language used, and the relations between the officers and the members), the role played by women and by young people, leisure hours, games and sports, conversations with people in their homes (noting examples of husband-wife and parent-child relationships). No activity must escape the attention of the investigators during the initial survey of the area.

After each observation visit, the investigator should draw up a brief report to be discussed by the entire team, in order to eval-uate the preliminary findings of both the professional investigators and the local assistants.

Representatives of the inhabitants participate in all activities as members of the investigating team.

By locating these nuclei of contradictions, the investigators might even at this stage be able to organize the program content of their educational action.

The basic thing, starting from the initial perception of these nuclei of contradictions (which include the principal contradiction of society as a larger epochal unit) is to study the inhabitants’ level of awareness of these contradictions.

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 thus their own relation to them).

The latter runs the risk of appearing to be a puzzle or a guessing game. Since they represent existential situations, the codifications should be simple in their complexity and offer various decoding possibilities in order to avoid the brainwashing tendencies of propaganda.

In order to offer various possibilities of analysis in the decoding process, the codifications should be organized as a “thematic fan.” As the decoders reflect on the codifications, the codifications should open up in the direction of other themes.

the codifications reflecting an existential situation must objectively constitute a totality. Its elements must interact in the makeup of the whole.

In the process of decoding, the participants externalize their the-matics and thereby make explicit their “real consciousness” of the world. As they do this, they begin to see how they themselves acted while actually experiencing the situation they are now analyzing, and thus reach a “perception of their previous perception.”

By stimulating “perception of the previous perception” and “knowledge of the previous knowledge,” decoding stimulates the appearance of a new perception and the development of new knowledge.

During his use of this method in the post-literacy stage, Bode observed that the peasants became interested in the discussion only when the codification related directly to their felt needs.

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs. In this way, they can go beyond the level of real consciousness to that of potential consciousness much more rapidly.

During the decoding process, the co-ordinator must not only listen to the individuals but must challenge them, posing as problems both the codified existential situation and their own answers.

There are two important aspects to these declarations. On the one hand, they verbalize the connection between earning low wages, feeling exploited, and getting drunk—getting drunk as a flight from reality, as an attempt to overcome the frustration of inaction, as an ultimately self-destructive solution. On the other hand, they manifest the need to rate the drunkard highly. He is the “only one useful to his country, because he works, while the others only gab.” After praising the drunkard, the participants then identify themselves with him, as workers who also drink—“decent workers.”

imagine the failure of a moralistic educator,35 sermoniz-ing against alcoholism and presenting as an example of virtue something which for these men is not a manifestation of virtue. In this and in other cases, the only sound procedure is the conscientização of the situation, which should be attempted from the start of the thematic investigation.

the dialogical nature of education begins with thematic investigation.

Once the decoding in the circles has been completed, the last stage of the investigation begins,

Classification does not mean that when the program is elaborated the themes will be seen as belonging to isolated categories, but only that a theme is viewed in a specific manner by each of the social sciences to which it is related.

It would indeed be a pity if the themes, after being investigated in the richness of their interpenetration with other aspects of reality, were subsequently to be handled in such a way as to sacrifice their richness (and hence their force) to the strictures of specialties.

Once the thematic demarcation is completed, each specialist presents to the interdisciplinary team a project for the “breakdown” of his theme. In breaking down the theme, the specialist looks for the fundamental nuclei which, comprising learning units and establishing a sequence, give a general view of the theme.

During this effort to break down the meaningful thematics, the team will recognize the need to include some fundamental themes which were not directly suggested by the people during the preceding investigation. The introduction of these themes has proved to be necessary, and also corresponds to the dialogical character of education.

The anthropological concept of culture is one of these hinged themes. It clarifies the role of people in the world and with the world as transforming rather than adaptive beings.36

Once the breakdown of the thematics is completed,37 there follows the stage of its “codification”: choosing the best channel of communication for each theme and its representation. A codification may be simple or compound. The former utilizes either the visual (pictorial or graphic), the tactile, or the auditive channel; the latter utilizes various channels.38 The selection of the pictorial or graphic channel depends not only on the material to be codified, but also on whether or not the individuals with whom one wishes to communicate are literate.

CODIFICATION. Must be attuned to the senses and sensibilities of the community.

After the thematics has been codified, the didactic material (photographs, slides, film strips, posters, reading texts, and so forth) is prepared.

When the taped interview is presented to the culture circle, an introductory statement indicates who each speaker is, what she or he has written, done, and doing now; meanwhile, the speaker’s pho-tograph is projected on a screen. If, for instance, the speaker is a university professor, the introduction could include a discussion regarding what the participants think of universities and what they expect of them.