Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ft. Andrew

Andrew leads a discussion on Paulo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, it could happen here. Which is the podcast that
this is? I'm Robert Evans with me? Are other people? Hello?
Other people? Hi? Hello? Uh so this podcast things falling
about part putting back Together? YadA, YadA YadA. Today our guest,

(00:28):
well not our guest. Our host is uh, the inimitable
Andrew Andrew. Hey, Hey, how's it going? What are we
talking about today? What are we learning? I'm good? I'm good?
Um today open to tackle another book kind of um.
This one's not fictional like the past two. UM. So
I do hope to like explore some of those in

(00:49):
the future because I think some good conversations come on
to those. This week, we're gonna be talking about Paulo
Frere and the pedagogy of the oppressed. Oh yes, for
those who don't know, Paulo Freire is Brazilian educator and
one of the leading advocates of well was a Brazilian

(01:10):
educator and leading advocates of critical pedagogy. Pedagogy is basically
like the study of education philosophy of education. Um. He
was born in nine and his experiences kind of led
him to that path because during his childhood and adolescents
he was falling behind in school because he was poor.

(01:34):
His poverty and his hunger affected his ability to learn.
And so as he got older and he got opportunities
and he was able to study and so on, and
he basically realized he needs to do more to uplift
the lives of the poor, improved lives of the poor,
um in order to facilitate better educational outcomes. As he

(01:57):
says and went court, I didn't understand anything because of
my hunger. I wasn't dumb, it wasn't a lack of interest.
My social condition just didn't allow me to have an education.
Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class
and knowledge. So as he progressed in his studies and

(02:17):
his writing and stuff, he eventually contributed to a philosophy
of education which blended classical approaches coming from Plato and
modern Marxist and post Marxist and anti clonial thinkers. When
I was reading the book, it really sort of struck me.
I've got a lot of um and a lot of

(02:38):
France found on vibes from his work. He died in
um r I p um, but his greatest contribution um
to me at least and to most people. It is
his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the book,
he sort of explores a detailed Marxist class analysis UM

(03:02):
in the relationship between like the colonize and colonize, the
oppressed and the oppressed. And he talks about the banking
model of education that traditional pedagogy has spouses because it
treats the students as like this bank, this empty vessel
to be filled with knowledge. Instead, he argues for a

(03:24):
form of education of pedagogy that treats the lunar as
a co creator in knowledge. As far as I'm aware, UM,
and I guess it's kind of is illustrated in the
book itself. But as far as I know, Fair wasn't
an anarchist or libertarian socialist of any variety. But he

(03:44):
still ended up coming to some anarchic conclusions with regard
to the education system and learning and stuff. I mean
and I guess have been writing about, you know, like
youth liberation and the school system and even experimenting with
new more roles of schooling for a long time. UM.
The Freer movement, for example, experimented with implementing modern schools

(04:09):
in UM in the US and in Spain. And a
Goldman was very much involved in that process. And UM,
I don't think that the experiments were necessarily free of error,
but I think they did a good job of trying
something new, trying something with more liberatory in the sphere
of education, because I mean, for the past several hundred

(04:30):
years now, UM, we've kind of been going with this
sort of um Prussian model of education is very strict,
very regimented, very divided model of education. The rules um
to sort of ferment nationalism and division, class divisions and

(04:51):
stuff within the populace. So I think that any experimentation
in the more limitary and direction is a positive. In
the preface, um Fair sort of goes into why this
book came about. He's talking about his experience as a
teacher in Brazil the time, the observations he made well

(05:11):
in political exile, and so what he realized as a
teacher when he was teaching his students is that they
had a sort of a fair of freedom. It's not
like a real fair of freedom, it's more a fair
of the risks associated with freedom because of the experiences
and stuff that they've had. Um. What he considers the

(05:32):
most vital, however, to the education system. It's sort of
just establishing conscientious out or critical consciousness within students, a
consciousness that commits to social change and human liberation. According
to Fair, the educational model can only really be successful

(05:55):
if people are radicalized through it, if people are able
to see the issues in their current society, think about them,
stew upon them, criticize them, compare them, and look at
ways to solve them. And if they don't come up
with that sort of critical consciousness then as well for not. Basically,

(06:16):
education system is kind of spinning on top of mud.
I find it especially interesting that I ended up reading
this when I did, because, as we've seen in the US,
a lot of conversations are now attacking anything even approaching
critical consciousness with this. You know who'll debate going on
about critical race theory and this sort of even though

(06:41):
critical race theories are being taught in primary or secondary education.
This attack, this full front of attack and anything that
resembles critical thinking and critical study of history and of
the present m hm. So in chapter one for It

(07:09):
makes the case for why the patagogy Deppress is necessary.
He says, a human kind central problem is how we
affirmor identity as human beings. Everyone is trying to reach
that sort of affirmation, that sort of human identity, that
sort of human nous um. But oppression and systems of

(07:30):
oppression interrupt that process. They prevent people from expressing and
establishing their full humanity. Where they're talking about racism keeping
people from reaching the full potential, or sexism preventing people,
or you know, a patriarchy with the whole limitations and
such puts upon people's sexuality and gender expression and gender identification.

(07:56):
One of these systems of oppression are put in place
to restrict, to confine and bound us below you know,
our full potential. And so a lot of that and
a lot of the you know, cultivation and forging of
one's awareness of you know, the systems around them and

(08:19):
how to operate within them takes place in the education system.
And so the education system is should be one of
the critical junctures in which we which our fight for
oppressed people. There's a sort of dehumanization that it could

(08:39):
as a result of oppression, whether it be in the
form of comparing people to animals, as racists often do,
whether it be in the form of decreating people too

(08:59):
it's of childlike status which itself is a is a
form of oppression because the fact that you know, childlikeness
and youth is considered to be something less than It's
just another way they where people are oppressed, and another
way in which people are prevented from asserting their autonomy

(09:22):
and their humanity. Oppressors. They tend to treat people as
objects to be possessed, to see freedom as threatening, and
in turn, oppressed people end are becoming ill neated from
each other through oppressure and begin to see their oppressors
as something to strive towards for. It talks about how

(09:42):
they oppressed. The whole vision and the whole understanding of
what being human is is being like oppressors. And so
a lot of people and you see that even today,
you know, um, when they strive for freedom, they strive
to become entrepreneurs. You know, they strive to become business owners.

(10:04):
They strive to become billionaires and CEOs and all these
sort of images of what, you know, what being human
looks like. Because people are striving to be free, and
if the only way you can get a measure of
freedom is by becoming an oppress yourself, and it makes
sense a lot of oppressive looking to try to do that.

(10:26):
Of course, as Fair himself says, and he oppress says
themselves are not fully free either, because by denying the
oppressed people their humanity, they robbed themselves of humanity. The
fight for liberation, as Fair argues, must consist of two stages,

(10:47):
reflection on the nature of oppression and the concrete action
needed to change it. And that's sort of reading that
that that line are paraphrasing, but it reminds me of
the process of prefigurative politics, where not only are you

(11:07):
bringing about the consciousness of people to recognize these systems
of oppression and understand how they operate, but the concrete
action to change it is one that is intended to
reflect the society that we wish to establish in the future.
Fare does one um that, you know, leaders and stuff

(11:31):
must engage in dialogue with oppressed people rather than becoming
like oppressors. But as the book goes on, I think
he relies a bit too much on this concept of
leaders as well. He wants against them existing above the people,
but he's still sort of uphold that distinction between the

(11:53):
leaders and the people. As the book progresses, um he
begins to compare the concept of the banking model to
the concept of the problem posing model of education. As
he calls it. In the banking model um quote, he
the teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized,

(12:16):
and predictable. Where Else he expands upon a topic completely
alien to the existential experience of the students. His task
is to fill the students with the contents of his narration,
contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality
that engendered them. I could give them significance. Words are
emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and

(12:40):
alienating verbocity any being that sentence is quite proposed. But
on the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the
contradiction to the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive
society as a whole. The teacher teachers, and the students

(13:03):
are taught. The teacher knows everything, and the student knows nothing.
Teacher thinks and the students are thought about. Teacher talks
and the students listen meekly. The teacher disciplines, and the
students are disciplined. Teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and
the students comply. The teacher acts, and the students have
the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher.

(13:25):
Teacher chooses the program content and the students, who were
not consulted, adapt to it. The teacher confuses the authority
of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which
they set in opposition to the freedom of the students.
The teachers the subjective learning process while the pupils and
their objects. I think um Flaire needed to incorporate some

(13:47):
more gender neutral language and that so I had to
kind of correct him there. Um. But that quote, that
that quote in full, it really reminds me, um of
my schooling experience. UM. As some people they knew I
was actually home schooled for the majority of my learning experience.

(14:08):
I actually didn't know that. Oh oh now you know, Yeah,
so I was. I was home schooled, um for I woulday,
the majority of my education experience. And then after I
went into college and stuff. But before then, I didn't,
um make it through the school system. And even though
it was a really long time ago, my memories are
still crystal clear of that process. You know, UM, I

(14:32):
remember seeing students being disciplined, Um I myself was kind
of a teacher's pet. But that doesn't surprise me, and
the best possible way I'm not sure I to take it,

(14:52):
I'll take it in a good way because me not
me also doesn't surprise teachers or cops. Yeah, this is
my pre anarchists. I wasn't you know, I didn't. I
wasn't jumping out the booth canal with a black flag,
you know. Unfortunately a cab includes the person who tried

(15:16):
to get me to read Catcher in the Rye was
a good book. It was a good, perfectly fine book.
I'm just being an asshole. But but like Andrew, what
are you alluding here? Is that like stoicism is something
that is weaponized in the education system. Stoicism, stoicism being

(15:39):
like no emotion delivering like right right, right, because I
was thinking the philosophy, but because you're like a vessel
for quote unquote facts and knowledge to be like injected
into you for you to like hold as as Yeah,
it's we're seeing a resurgence in this type of saying

(16:00):
all the albeit probably a little bit less eloquently stated
in some of like the anti schooling anarchist literature. That's
been coming out in the past few years, or at
least has been gaining more traction the past few years.
M Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this and that's kind
of that's kind of the funny thing about it, because

(16:22):
most people in their school and experience can recall it
being in some ways negative, even if they look at
it in a positive light. We can at least, even
if they don't go in that fully radical direction, most
people can look at some of the elements to their schooling,
of the education and see that that wasn't right. You know,
it's something messed up about that, even something as simple

(16:42):
as having to like ask, you know, the teacher to
go on and use the toilet. It's just this is
those sorts of little ways of control, like as I
was seeing in my school and experience back when I
was in primary school. I was very adorable. I'm sure
I could guess, but I remember seeing these students being disciplined.

(17:06):
They had the bell had rung for um, you know,
the end of break, and he supposed to, you know,
fire back into class. But I think there was a
school next door that was having some kind of events
and they were playing like music, and so a bunch
of students in my class. Not me, but a bunch
of students in my class were you know, um, dancing

(17:28):
at the side of the school, enjoying the music, having
a good time or whatever. Um. They heard the bell
and they didn't go because they were, you know, they
were having a good time. They were like six seven eight, um.
But then afterwards the teacher, after you know, I sit
down and stuff, leacher goes and finds them and brings
them in. And this is prior to at least of

(17:52):
my knowledge, prior to the corporal punishment being phased out
of school. So I just remember seeing them having to
you know, like lay out their hand and receive punishment
for daring to have joy after hours, you know, daring
to enjoy themselves. Um, what it was supposed to be

(18:13):
class time and they're supposed to be in class. I'm
sure people have similar experiences, at least of a kind
of punishment and controul. I mean, this is not the
same kind of punishment, but I think to your point
of being controlled, like even just like not even being

(18:33):
aware of it, just like being forced to stand up
and say the pudge of allegiance. In America, for example,
it becomes this like repetitive culty thing every morning that
you're expected to do and if you don't do it,
um personal experience. If you refuse to do that, you
have to go to the principal's office and explain why
it happens over and over again. And I think it's
like you're you're questioned and you're punished even for like thinking,

(18:59):
not like differently, or questioning not even thinking, just questioning reality. Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And in Syria when I was I went
to school in Syria when I was really small and
me my sister ate really slow and we would get
hit with a ruler on our hands because we did
we didn't finish lunch fast enough. Um. So yeah, mine

(19:24):
isn't that intense. But the school I went to when
I was a little kid in Oklahoma, number one, they
paddled us. That was legal as a public school. But
my first grade teacher was obsessed with the fact that
like it was bad to be left handed, and you know,
she couldn't, she couldn't do the ship that they used
to do right. They used to like funck kids up
for using their left hands. But she would every single

(19:46):
day like chide me and tell me that I should
use my right hand to write and stuff that it
wasn't like proper that it was like bad that I
could if you if you if you're not aware, if
you're not left handed, when you're like do stuff with
a pencil and you're left handed, you get a bunch
of like, yeah, pencil stuff on your on the side
of your hand. Right. It's just like because of the
way that unless you're using like those weird left handed

(20:07):
notebooks and ship which no one ever has. UM, and
she would like she gave me so much ship for
being dirty because like I would get stuff on my hand.
It was just like when I tell people that, it's
like really, this was like the nineties. Yeah, there's there's
a few of those folks left. I think she was
extremely Catholic, UM, and I know none seems to go

(20:27):
on that stuff. I didn't know that Catholic people cared
about the left handed thing. Catholic Catholic schools. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I wouldn't say that, like it's I don't think there's
anything and like the Catechism about not being left handed
right right. I mean like in some very strict Muslim culture,
a lot of it is like phased out but for example,

(20:49):
your left hand isn't meant to be used as the
primary hand because it's like a dirty hand, like the
one you wipe yourself with. Ye. Yeah, there's a lot,
but like I know you were handed though. Yikes. Oh yes,
ye yikes, thank you, thank you. You should be concerned.
I have to makes a number of things frustrating, like

(21:12):
shearing sheep anyway, whatever. Mm well, everything is designed for
right handed people for sure, Like it has everything it is.
You try to speak, but we are the master, right Okay? Sorry?
Speaking of hands, just out of curiosity, did you all
have the hand up hand out experience? Hand out? What's
hand out? Basically? Um, it's just sort of a tool,

(21:36):
you suggest, sort of a sort of repetitive kind of
follow instructions kind of thing. So like if the class
getting too rowdies, like hands up, hands out, hands up,
hands out, and the teacher does not stop saying it
until everyone is quiet down, and it's just like like
a robot, just reason. And I don't think i've experienced that,

(21:57):
I mean, are you? Um? I wasn't an assistant teacher
at one point, and for very very young children, I'm
talking like four to five year olds and I understand
their frustration of like you're just trying to get something
done and everyone's gonna while now they just had snacks
or whatever, and everyone's kind of wild out. But I

(22:19):
think that says more about like the methods we're using
than about the shouldering themselves. You know. It's all about,
like you have to you should adjust more to like
their cycles and their needs, their stage, rather than trying
to force and shove them into this sort of militarbotic Yeah, yeah, totally.

(22:39):
It's yeah, they're not allowed to actually develop naturally or
like be themselves in a setting like that. Yeah, exactly.
I think what happens like kind of throws me. It's

(22:59):
like or people have these experiences traumatic and not as
dramatic in the education system, a lot of people, but
some people they come out radicalized by it, and other
people end up being the like most stringent and most
passionate advocates of it. Like even like this Catholic school

(23:24):
teacher you're talking about, Robert, Like at some point she
was also in the education system, and it really makes
me wonder like what she went through to have to
come up with that kind of mindset. Yeah, I mean,
I think she'd grown up in Oklahoma too, so it
must have been a nightmare, like everything in that state. Yeah,

(23:47):
like why does it have a panhandle anyway? Um, I
mean the there is a reason for that, and it's
not fun, but okay, I'm assuming it's slavery. Any fucked
up geographic thing going on in the South, the reason
is generally slavery. Yeah, right, right, right right. And so

(24:10):
she spends a lot of time talking about this banking model,
and we could go on and on about it. I
spent a lot of time just talking about the education
system all my problems with it, and at some point
I would like to do an episode about differ rare
schools and part of how those sort of transpired. But
what Fair proposes um as an alternative is the problem

(24:34):
posing model, which is, basically, through dialogue, the teacher and
the students ceased to exist. The teacher of the students
and the students of the teachers ceased to exist. So
instead of there being these two separate categories they are

(24:55):
teacher students and student teachers. There's no operation anymore between
the one who teaches and the one who has taught. Rather,
there's a dialogue between the two as they become part
of this process where all of them can grow. You know,
you let go of this sort of authoritarian arrangements and

(25:21):
allow people to teach and be taught two, learn and
be learned. Two really draw out what it is that
we have to gain from each other. Rather than being
sort of docile listeners, the students and the teachers, the

(25:44):
student teachers teacher students, they become co investigators in dialogue,
they become critics. They become radicals who are able to
open up and depathologize the way that reality works with

(26:06):
human beings exist in the world. Banking education tends to
inhibit creativity and try to domesticate our consciousness. Throw back
to when I was talking about human investication the other day. Um.
But in contrast, in the problem posing model tries to

(26:29):
it really bases itself on creativity and stimulates rather than domestication,
a sort of a full flourishing of what someone could
be unbound and unshackled. So, in summary, banking theory is immobilizing.
It's it's fixating. It doesn't acknowledge people as people but

(26:52):
rather objects, whereas the problem posing model it takes people's historicity,
it takes people's humanity the starting point upon which they
can grow and learn from each other. I think that's
what frustrated me the most about the education system in
the time that I was in it, and even when
I got back in it in college, even though it's

(27:15):
not as bad in some ways, because you know, in
college they tend to emphasize dialogue a bit more on
certain classes. But I find the issue is that there's
this assumption in you know, the earlier sections of schooling,
in the secondary school and primary school and even preschool

(27:37):
that the children, the youth, you know, they're not there
to have anything to add. They're just there to recogitate,
to to study, and to repeat what they've studied for approval,
not just something I definitely did back in the day.
If what's lacking is dialogue, a dialogue that buyers you know,

(28:00):
hoop and trust and critical thinking, then liberation you would
also be lacking. There can't be dialogue without love for
the world and for people, and for knowledge and for
bring that knowledge out to people. So as for our says,

(28:24):
you know, love is at the same time the foundation
of dialogue and dialogue itself. On the other hand, dialogue
kind of exists without humility, the naming of the world
through which people constantly recreate that world cannot be an
act of arrogance. I remember encountering a lot of arrogance
teachers and lecturers and stuff in my time to the

(28:47):
education system. Um are being condescended to multiple occasions, and
that's the thing. Nobody likes being condescended to. But condescension
is kind of the default way in which we engage
with young people, just sort of there's this projected ignorance

(29:13):
upon them, is that they have nothing of value to
add or to share. Another contrary, you know, we all
have something to contribute. If we all closed off, and
if we are closed off to the contributions of others,
we can't engage in dialogue with them. If we are fearful,
if we are um considering people to be like inferior

(29:37):
in some ways, if we cannot embrace people as equals,
and how can we engage in dialogue with that? I
think there's a beauty in the way that he reflects
on dialogue. He goes on and on about it for
quite a while. At one point, he says that dialogue
requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power

(29:59):
to make and rea to create and recreate faith in
their vocation to be more fully human, which is not
the privilege of an elite, but the birthright of all.
And So, finally, when he's talking about action and how
um this sort of change is brought about, he divides
cultural action into two kinds, dialogical action and anti dieological action.

(30:25):
While oppressors use antideological action to protect their power and
to separate people, radicals can use dialogical action to bring
people together in the struggle for freedom as a different
methods of antideological action. Through conquest, through divide and rule,
through manipulation, through cultural invasion, oppressors were able to put

(30:51):
the oppressed in the predicament of there in. You know,
the oppressed wouldn't be the oppressed if not for the
oppressors oppressing them. That's kind of self explanatory. Um. But
in contrast, radicals from among the oppressed, using biological action,
using cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis are able to

(31:15):
rise above and push back against this oppression and to
allow education to flourish among all. And So I think
that's the beauty of the text um, the hope that
it abuse in people to really bring about these changes,

(31:37):
and I think it was a good reading five outs
of five excellent. And it's not very long, right, it's
like under two from what I yes, yes, it's like
four short chapters reatively. Sure. I know back when you
were talking about how um people are sectors of the

(31:58):
right specifically are so set on a acting like anything
related to like critical theory or critical race theory. Um.
I the the book was was banned like like a
decade and like over decade ago from the Arizona Schools
for teaching students that they are oppressed. Well, uh yeah,
that's that's how you know, that's to be expected. It's

(32:21):
a good book. Yeah, yeah, so that's anyway, just a
just a fun fun fact there. Yeah, we can't we
can't have kids knowing that, uh, they have shared interests
as a group, um, and that adults are mistreating them comprehensively.
That's good. Yeah. God just reminded me of so many

(32:45):
just moments that mean teachers like really got into it,
or like the teachers that were condescending that I hated.
I have to really go through the role dex and
try to get this out now after we finished recording. Well, listen,
if you're a child. Why are you listening to this
rise up in rebellion? Uh destroy the adults. Their joints

(33:08):
are terrible. Hit him in the knees. They won't recover.
My joints are terrible. Exactly, some fucking nine year old
wax you in the knee with like are down. You're
out of the game. No, I know. My kids would
break embrace the ancient traditions, make les, and go for
the fucking joints. Yeah, children of the world, you have

(33:32):
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(33:53):
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