Sign in with Facebook
Mike Rancourt's Reviews > Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by
by
I feel like its a cliche just rating it here at all, as if doing so stakes a claim to being progressive. I haven't read this text in some time, and although It did affect me when I did, I just worry that 5,000 people on the left have rated this book, and many of them will go into classrooms with the best of intentions only to recreate or reinvent oppression when they just can't understand why their students "don't get it" or "resist the liberation we're trying to give them."
I once applied for a job in a program for poor and even homeless people at a very progressive and well known college. I seemed to wow the search committee on the phone interview when I answered the question of "how do you bring social justice into the classroom" by saying that I wouldn't presume it was up to me to introduce social justice to this particular population (I was invited for a campus interview but turned it down for personal reasons, so I do think I must have supported my position well enough). Liberation pedagogy can too easily be translated into missionary education when teachers forget that their experiences and their values are not more important than those of their students or anyone else in the community. Freire is careful to note that the teacher and student must be partners in dialogue, but this is easily forgotten when the teacher, even the most well-intentioned liberation pedagog, enters the relationship with a goal in mind. Whether that goal is the ultimate liberation as conceived by the teacher (who thinks s/he knows what's best for the student) or the meeting of learning objectives, or merely slogging through the semester to let the student earn credits while the teacher bides her or his time until they can get to the research that really matters to them. I think this book covers most of the bases, but I have always had trouble reconciling the tendency to work toward an end goal of liberation as defined here when, in fact, a student may have other goals and other notions of liberation at heart. Perhaps the process is a longer one than our semester system can accommodate, and so each teacher can only do a small part in helping to undermine the system that stifles humanity. I do not think this text was written for people in public schools or universities or community colleges, and the principles can only be adopted if we relinquish hope of seeing results and instead take Freire's cue to learn from and with students in partnership, humbling ourselves and questioning our own supposed authority. Most importantly, I think it is important for all of us to think about the "profit" that comes from institutional education in the US. Freire wrote, "The oppressors use their 'humanitarianism' to preserve a profitable situation." The profit of the system is that of the ruling class, profiting by maintaining power relations in their favor, but if you think about it, even underpaid and overworked teachers profit by earning 1.) the prestige of being called a teacher in a society that claims to see the profession as noble and sacrificing, and 2.) of course the financial profit of the middle class life which in America means having the power to build a comfortable life of consumption. But at the university level there is also the profit of the institution which maintains its legitimacy by claiming to offer class mobility and the liberation of knowledge, but in fact, it is still a profitable institution financially because it provides jobs for teachers, administrators, and staff, and of course the largest profit comes from producing citizens conjured as subjects of institutional power, those who strive for the middle class values which benefit the dominant ideology.
I think this book is important and ought to be read, but it is more important to read it as a prompt to be perpetually critical and to extend that view to the entire concept of pedagogy, the institutions of education itself, and to ourselves as profiting from the system.
I once applied for a job in a program for poor and even homeless people at a very progressive and well known college. I seemed to wow the search committee on the phone interview when I answered the question of "how do you bring social justice into the classroom" by saying that I wouldn't presume it was up to me to introduce social justice to this particular population (I was invited for a campus interview but turned it down for personal reasons, so I do think I must have supported my position well enough). Liberation pedagogy can too easily be translated into missionary education when teachers forget that their experiences and their values are not more important than those of their students or anyone else in the community. Freire is careful to note that the teacher and student must be partners in dialogue, but this is easily forgotten when the teacher, even the most well-intentioned liberation pedagog, enters the relationship with a goal in mind. Whether that goal is the ultimate liberation as conceived by the teacher (who thinks s/he knows what's best for the student) or the meeting of learning objectives, or merely slogging through the semester to let the student earn credits while the teacher bides her or his time until they can get to the research that really matters to them. I think this book covers most of the bases, but I have always had trouble reconciling the tendency to work toward an end goal of liberation as defined here when, in fact, a student may have other goals and other notions of liberation at heart. Perhaps the process is a longer one than our semester system can accommodate, and so each teacher can only do a small part in helping to undermine the system that stifles humanity. I do not think this text was written for people in public schools or universities or community colleges, and the principles can only be adopted if we relinquish hope of seeing results and instead take Freire's cue to learn from and with students in partnership, humbling ourselves and questioning our own supposed authority. Most importantly, I think it is important for all of us to think about the "profit" that comes from institutional education in the US. Freire wrote, "The oppressors use their 'humanitarianism' to preserve a profitable situation." The profit of the system is that of the ruling class, profiting by maintaining power relations in their favor, but if you think about it, even underpaid and overworked teachers profit by earning 1.) the prestige of being called a teacher in a society that claims to see the profession as noble and sacrificing, and 2.) of course the financial profit of the middle class life which in America means having the power to build a comfortable life of consumption. But at the university level there is also the profit of the institution which maintains its legitimacy by claiming to offer class mobility and the liberation of knowledge, but in fact, it is still a profitable institution financially because it provides jobs for teachers, administrators, and staff, and of course the largest profit comes from producing citizens conjured as subjects of institutional power, those who strive for the middle class values which benefit the dominant ideology.
I think this book is important and ought to be read, but it is more important to read it as a prompt to be perpetually critical and to extend that view to the entire concept of pedagogy, the institutions of education itself, and to ourselves as profiting from the system.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
July 27, 2012
– Shelved
July 29, 2012
–
Started Reading
August 11, 2012
–
Finished Reading
October 12, 2012
– Shelved as:
rhet-and-media
Comments Showing 1-5 of 5 (5 new)
date
newest »
newest »
Aligroof wrote: "I really loved your review, I felt you're one of the very few poeple who understood what the book really means :)Do you have a twitter account so I can follow you?"
Thanks. I don't really Tweet. I really only use it when my students invite me to. No sense in following me. Thanks, though.
Man, great review, great opinion. I would say nowadays this tendency to "free" students is just another way of, let's say, evangelization. Not as different of those spreading "the word of God" for the "benefit" of those remote communities. And it's as dangerous as it sounds.Thank you for your analysis.
Nailed it. Precisely my thinking, but you phrased it better than I would have. The challenge of nuance in understanding is what I gathered most from your comment. People are people, and treating others with respect and dignity takes "listening" as much as it does being active with intention. I am reminded of all the "White Savior" movies featuring a liberal woman who goes into a "scary" inner-city to save a disenfranchised (black, native, insert stereotype of race group) from the haunted specter of racial animus and white protestant homogeny. And in the movie, its mostly about her journey, not anyone else's, as she learns how to have compassion for these poor foolish deprived indecent folk who live in the "hood". lol. And she inevitably saves one of them from his "ghetto" and there's a "slow clap" at the end for her. The black or other race insert is about as necessary to her story as set dressing. I'm an American, so I'll take it in the American perspective, but people and situations applicable in one part of the world, most often are applicable to others. We are all people and there's tendencies in human nature common to us all. So from the American Perspective I see a huge problem in exactly the way your elucidating it. Lets take the urban inner city black neighborhoods in our Nation as example, South Side of Chicago, etc. Historically oppressed people, still segregated into inner city environments and poverty, still racially segregated, now destroyed by terrible cultural problems like drug and gang violence, failed schools, who are inured in poverty as a living reality and as a way of life. Learning how to go with mom to the department of economic security to get food, is no way to thrive in the world. (That is when mom is even around) (and dad is in another State maybe, or nowhere, or jail). It sets a youth up for very real trouble and consequence and a lifestyle he learns to live within. Also in these communities you will find the narratives of fear and failure prevalent. Anti-education. Anti-work. Anti- attempt at success because the larger society is against us. This kind of thinking. Isolated from larger society around them. Very real damage done to their mentalities from historical injustice, but also negative assumptions and fear in these areas that is exploited by local politicians or grifter elites who make money running programs to supposedly aid these communities. All of it breeds a feeling of helplessness and immortal subservience, as if hope is not to be wished for. (A feeling of Helplessness is always the best breeding ground for Tyranny or further victimization btw.) Even to another situation, a drug addict girl, that's what the deviant pimps prey upon. Its like when you are already hurting and weak, that's when the worst victimizers sometimes show up. Now, I've witnessed it myself, and its very big in American Culture for the progressives who are becoming more and more evangelical with their dogmas and rigid narratives of their bringing forth eternal justice thru equity and CRT, (without the monotheism part or the Christian God), but still, rigid adherence to assumption of narrative, dogma, and their own Savior Complex. This lends itself to the increasing Tokenizing and further deterioration of inner city segregated black communities, (good intentions gone wrong), by stripping these people of their volition, responsibility, choices, and capacity, (which is literally what caused their destitution and helplessness in the first place in these ghettos) by making a special project of them that further teaches them they are different, less than, and entitled to grievance, and that failure for them is acceptable and justified. Stealing people's volition from them on basis of race, for the benefit of the well intentioned but often condescending vision of the administrative Savior Left Progressive. To be honest this era of neoracism is far more damaging then any other. Because it comes at a time of drug culture, gang violence, and growing inequality between strata in American Society. The middle class is shrinking. The poor are getting poorer and the streets more dangerous. Its getting worse and worse. And taking from the poor their own volition, is literally tying their hands behind their back, so the Progressive Authority Figure feels empowered that only they can do something, completely ignoring the very real human being with his own individual circumstance he is casting as his poor little peasant at the church door.
“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." Please don't miss this. It's the author's essential lesson for teachers. Y'all have a lot of "they" and "them" in your reviews. Those of us who fancy ourselves real teachers work hard to give our students opportunities to view revolution and social metamorphoses through their own lenses. Only humans engaged with other humans in "hopeful inquiry" -- I never really believed in saviors and I never thought I was one. I wonder if we don't take ourselves too seriously.
Do you have a twitter account so I can follow you?