Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor. No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.
Implicit in the banking concept [of education] is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others…In this view, the person is not a conscious being (corpo consciente); he or she is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty “mind” passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside.
https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf
I have a somewhat tortured relationship with Freire as a teacher.
I think it’s important theory, and really helpful for thinking about what education might look like under socialism. However, it’s also big in “progressive” education circles (I first encountered it in my Masters program), and they are totally unwilling to grapple with the contradictions of what it means to practice a “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” while teaching under capitalism. Friere was writing about education in a revolutionary context and that’s not easily separable from the theory. Very annoying to watch a bunch of libs fail to understand this in real time and be like “Wow, maybe we can have some more student-led discussions!”
That seems like entirely a problem with the reception of the work and not the work itself. Have you tried explaining to these teachers that he very explicitly means something more radical than the practices of some hippy liberal arts college?
Have you ever tried explaining something to a liberal?
But yeah this is not a criticism of the work itself
Have you ever tried explaining something to a liberal?
I have, and I often fail but I still succeed like 20% of the time if they can be moved to take an interest in the subject, and I succeed closer to half the time if I carefully rein in the scope of my claims.
