schoolyard subversion

2000-12-27 [< * >]

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a deep, dense book by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Freire, a revolutionary, teaches that just as the oppressors have an organized system of education which teaches them to be docile workers, so must the oppressed develop their own theory. Freire warns that the revolution cannot merely overthrow the oppressors and put the oppressed in their place. Instead, it must liberate both and teach them both to see their plight.

Freire disgusts the "banking" system of education, where teachers "deposit" facts in their students to the point where they are afraid to think for themselves. Instead, he encourages a system where the line between teacher and student blurs. Then, the teacher-student and the students-teachers both work together on discovering the truth and the world.

While Freire was speaking about the peasants in Brazil, many have drawn the parallels to the educational system in America. On the subject, William Loughborough comments:

To me school was similar to being in jail, just something one was forced through to no particular end. Certification is not sufficient reason for mental imprisonment but it's what we've got...

And of course it's true, though we don't often like to admit it. Instead of being taught how to work hard in Brazil, the American educational system is more of a factory line. We start as babies, filled with the mass market images fed to us on TV, on packages, on signs, on walls. Slowly, as we grow older, we continue the habit. We wait for everything to come to us and accept it as our own. In our educational system, our teachers, trained the same way also, feed us facts and numbers just as our parents once gave us our bottle. Thus, we are perfectly trained for the outcome that the country expects of us: we get to be a middle manager stamping paperwork and passing it through day after day.

What more could you ask for from a child who never thought for himself?

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