De Anza College Education System Action Project

Instruction

ActionProject By the end of the quarter you will be ready to take some action on behalf of

your placement, a specific reading, video/film, or something else that sparked your interest in

the course. The Action Project calls for structural intervention.

This is an opportunity to imagine a utopia where inequality and injustice no longer exist

Your action project could be developing a new curriculum for students,

policy intervention for college admission redistributive school funding policy ==

or something you think could make a difference in education.

( From here is my own idea of this project)

My idea for this project is based on our class discussion and reading material,

My main argument for this action project is that we cannot make education completely equality,

Most of the time we talk about how to make education more equal,

but what I want to say is that education is a political and economic tool,

it is an important expression of social reproduction; we cannot solve a problem without recognized it

In this ten-week course, I have learned what hegemony is and what oppression is, and on the basis of this knowledge many students want

Our society can be completely fair and just, and complete fairness and justice is a form of utopia.

I believe that the ideal education should be the quality education of educators, first of all, educators should have a sense of morality and mission of this profession.

First of all, educators should have a sense of ethics and a sense of mission, as educators need to be clear about what “bias, discrimination, prejudice” is and to be aware of their own “attribution error” at all times.

The “attribution error”, “attribution error” and “confirmation bias” often occur simultaneously. My ideal education system is one in which

educators have regular training in ethics and AWARENESS, and only by being as fair as possible at the source do our students have the opportunity to

to receive relatively ethical values. Second, I believe that in the process of teacher training, there should be more multi cultures education

Teachers should promote greater integration, not separation, of students from different educational backgrounds.

CHAPTER
2
A
careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any
level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the
students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of
reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and
petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.
The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static,
compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on 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 and could give them significance.
Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.
The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then,
is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. “Four times
four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem.” The student records,
memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four
times four really means, or realizing the true significance of “capital”
in the affirmation “the capital of Para is Belem,” that is, what Belem
means for Pard and what Para means for Brazil.
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to
72’PAULO FREIRE
memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns
them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the
teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a
teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves
to be filled, the better students they are.
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead
of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.
This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of
action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing,
and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity
to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in
the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away
through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this
(at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the
praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. 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.
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed
by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom
they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance
onto others, a characteristic of the ideology)of oppression, negates
education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he- justifies his own existence. The
students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept
their ignorance as justifying the teachers existence—but, unlike the
slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.
The raison d’etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies
in its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin with the
solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the
poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers
and students.
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED ‘ 7 3
This solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking concept.
On the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates
the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices,
which mirrOr oppressive society as a whole:
(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher talks and the students listen—meekly;
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students
comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting
through the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students
(who were not consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or
her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the
pupils are mere objects.
It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards
men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at
storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the
critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in
the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they
accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply
to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality
deposited in them.
The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the
students creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the
interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their “humanitarianism” to preserve a profitable situation. Thus they react almost
instinctively against any experiment in education which stimulates
74-PAULO FREIRE
the critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality
but always seeks out the ties which link one point to another and
one problem to another.
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses
them”;1 for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that
situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this
end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which
the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.”
They are treated as individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just”
society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy
society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy”
folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These marginals
need to be “integrated,” “incorporated” into the healthy society that
they have “forsaken.”
The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not “marginals,” are
not people living “outside” society. They have always been
“inside”—inside the structure which made them “beings for others.”
The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become “beings
for themselves.” Such transformation, of course, would undermine
the oppressors purposes; hence their utilization of the banking concept of education to avoid the threat of student cpnscientizagdo.
The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never
propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal
instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass
to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the
contrary, floger gave green grass to the rabbit. The “humanism” of
the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into
automatons—the very negation of their ontological vocation to be
more fully human.
1. Simone de Beauvoir, La Pensee de Droite, Aujord’hui (Paris); ST, El Pensamiento politico de la Derecha (Buenos Aires, 1963), p. 34.
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED ‘ 7 5
Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly
(for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who
do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to
perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about
reality. But, sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly
passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt
to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their
relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing
constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their
ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their
liberation.
But the humanist, revolutionary educator cannot wait for this possibility to materialize. From the outset, her efforts must coincide
with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the
quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a
profqund trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this,
they must be partners of the students in their relations with them.
The banking concept does not admit to such partnership—and
necessarily so. To resolve the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescriber, domesticator, for the role
of student among students would be to undermine the power of
oppression and serve the cause of liberation.
Implicit in the banking concept is Uie assumption of a dichotomy
between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the
world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator,
not re-creator. 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. For example, my desk, my books,
my coffee cup, all the objects before me—as bits of the world which
surround me—would be “inside” me, exactly as I am inside my
76-PAULO
FREIRE
study right now. This view makes no distinction between being accessible to consciousness and entering consciousness. The distinction, however, is essential: the objects which surround me are simply
accessible to my consciousness, not located within it. I am aware of
them, but they are not inside me.
It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that
the educator s role is to regulate the way the world “enters into” the
students. The teachers task is to organise a process which already
occurs spontaneously, to “fill” the students by making deposits of
information which he or she considers to constitute true knowledge.2
And since people “receive” the world as passive entities, education
should make them more passive still, and adapt them to the world.
The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he
is better “fit” for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is
well suited to the purposes of the oppressors, whose tranquility rests
on how well people fit the world the oppressors have created, and
how little they question it.
The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which
the dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them
of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can
continue to prescribe. The theory and practice of banking education
serve this end quite efficiently. Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, 3 the methods for evaluating “knowledge,” the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria, for promotion:
everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate
thinking.
The bank-clerk educator does not realize that there is no true
security in his hypertrophied role, that one must seek to live with
others in solidarity. One cannot impose oneself, nor even merely
2. This concept corresponds to what Sartre calls the “digestive” or “nutritive”
concept of education, in which knowledge is “fed” by the teacher to the students
to “fill them out.” See Jean-Paul Sartre, “Une idee fundamentale de la phenomenologie de Husserl: L’intentionalite,” Situations I (Paris, 1947).
3. For example, some professors specify in their reading lists that a book should
be read from pages 10 to 15—and do this to “help” their students!
PEDAGOGY OF THE O P P R E S S ED • 77
co-exist with one’s students. Solidarity requires true communication, and the concept by which such an educator is guided fears and
proscribes< communication. Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teachers thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students thinking. The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible. Because banking education begins with a false understanding of men and women as objects, it cannot promote the development of what Fromm calls "biophily," but instead produces its opposite: "necrophily." While life is characterized by growth in a structured, functional manner, the necrophilous person loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things. . . . Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what counts. The necrophilous person can relate to an object—a flower or a person—only if he possesses it; hence a threat to his possession is a threat to himself; if he loses possession he loses contact with the world. . . . He loves control, and in the act of controlling he kills life.4 Oppression—overwhelming control—is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power. 4. Fromm, op. cit.y p. 41. 78-PAULO FREIRE When their efforts to act responsibly are frustrated, when they find themselves unable to use their faculties, people suffer. "This suffering due to impotence is rooted in the very fact that the human equilibrium has been disturbed/'5 But the inability to act which causes people's anguish also causes them to reject their impotence, by attempting . . . to restore [their] capacity to act. But can [they], and how? One way is to submit to and identify with a person or group having power. By this symbolic participation in another persons life, [men have] the illusion of acting, when in reality [they] only submit to and become a part of those who act.6 Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charismatic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective. The rebellion they express as they emerge in the historical process is motivated by that desire to act effectively. The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order, and social peace (that is, the peace of the elites). Thus they can condemn-—logically, from their point of view—"the violence of a strike by workers and [can] call upon the state in the same breath to use violence in putting down the strike."7 Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression. This accusation is not made in the naive hope that the dominant elites will thereby simply abandon the practice. Its objective is to call the attention of true humanists to the fact that they cannot use banking educational methods in the pursuit of liberation, for they would only negate that very pursuit. Nor may a revolutionary society inherit these methods from an oppressor society. The revolutionary society which practices banking education is either misguided or 5. Ibid., p. 31. 6. Ibid. 1. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York, 1960), p. 130. PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSE D - 7 9 mistrusting of people. In either event, it is threatened by the specter of reaction. Unfortunately, those who espouse the cause of liberation are themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which generates the banking concept, and often do not perceive its true significance or its dehumanizing power. Paradoxically, then, they utilize this same instrument of alienation in what they consider an effort to liberate. Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries" those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation—the process of humanization—is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it. Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled, nor the use of banking methods of domination (propaganda, slogans—deposits) in the name of liberation. Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world. "Problem-posing" education, responding to the essence of consciousness—intentionality—rejects communiques and embodies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian "split"—consciousness as consciousness of consciousness. Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. It is a learning situation in which the cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors—teacher on the one hand and students on the other. Accordingly, the practice of problem-posing education entails at the outset that the teacher-student contradiction to be resolved. Dialogical relations—indispensable to the capacity of cognitive 80-PAULO FREIRE actors to cooperate in perceiving the same cognizable object—are otherwise impossible. Indeed, problem-posing education, which breaks with the vertical patterns characteristic of banking education, can fulfill its function as the practice of freedom only if it can overcome the above contradiction. Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacherstudent with students-teachers. The te&her is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on "authority" are no longer valid; in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are "owned" by the teacher. The banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize everything) distinguishes two stages in the action of the educator. During the first, he cognizes a cognizable object while he prepares his lessons in his study or his laboratory; during the second, he expounds to his students about that object. The students are not called upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated by the teacher. Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than a medium evoking the critical reflection of both teacher and students. Hence in the name of the "preservation of culture and knowledge" we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture. The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student: she is not "cognitive" at one point and "narrative" at another. She is always "cognitive," whether preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with the students. He does not regard cognizable objects as his private property, but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In this way, the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the PEDAGOGY OF THE O P P R E S S E D - 8 1 students. The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create; together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos, Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality. Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed. Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it. La conscience et le monde sont donnes d'un meme coup: exterieur par essence a la conscience, le monde est, par essence relatif a elle.8 8. Sartre; op. cit., p. 32. 82 • P A U L O FREIRE In one of our culture circles in Chile, the group was discussing (based on a codification9) the anthropological concept of culture. In the midst of the discussion, a peasant who by banking standards was completely ignorant said: "Now I see that without man there is no world." When the educator responded: "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars . . , wouldn't all this be a world?" "Oh no," the peasant replied emphatically. "There would be no one to say: This is a world'." The peasant wished to express the idea that there would be lacking the consciousness of the world which necessarily implies the world of consciousness. 7 cannot exist without a non-I. In turn, the not-I depends on that existence. The world which brings consciousness into existence becomes the world of that consciousness. Hence, the previously cited affirmation of Sartre: "La conscience et le monde sont donnes dun meme coup." As women and men, simultaneously reflecting on themselves and on the world, increase the scope of their perception, they begin to direct their observations towards previously inconspicuous phenomena: In perception properly so-called, as an explicit awareness [Gewahren], I am turned towards the object, to &e paper, for instance. I apprehend it as being this here and now; The apprehension is a singling out, every object having a background in experience. Around and about the paper lie books, pencils, inkwell, and so forth, and these in a certain sense are also "perceived", perceptually there, in the "field of intuition"; but whilst I was turned towards the paper there was no turning in their direction, nor any apprehending of them, not even in a secondary sense. They appeared and yet were not singled out, were not posited on their own account. Every perception of a thing has such a zone of background intuitions or background awareness, if "intuiting" already includes the state of being turned towards, and this also is a "conscious experience", or more briefly 9. See chapter 3.—Translator's note. PEDAGOGY OF THE O P P R E S S ED • 83 a "consciousness of* all indeed that in point of fact lies in the co-perceived objective background.10 That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper implications (if indeed it was perceived at all) begins to "stand out," assuming the character of a problem and therefore of challenge. Thus, men and women begin to single out elements from their "background awareness" and to reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of their consideration, and, as such, objects of their action and cognition. In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. Although the dialectical relations of women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the form of action they adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, the teacher-student and the studentsteachers reflect simultaneously on themselves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish an authentic form of thought and action. Once again, the two educational concepts and practices under analysis come into conflict. Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from 10. Edmund Husserl, Ideas—General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (London, 1969), pp. 105-106. 84-PAULO FREIRE the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the peoples historicity as their starting point. Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in contrast to other animals who are unfinished, but not historical, people know themselves to be unfinished; they are aware of their incompletion. In this incompletion and this awareness lie the very roots of education as an exclusively human manifestation. The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity. Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it must become. Its "duration" (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of the opposites permanence and change. The banking method emphasizes permanence and becomes reactionary; problem-posing education—which accepts neither a "well-behaved" present nor a predetermined future—roots itself in the dynamic present and becomes revolutionary. Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity. Hence it is prophetic (and, as such, hopeful). Hence, it corresponds to the historical nature of humankind. Hence, it affirms women and men as beings who transcend themselves, who move forward and look ahead, for whom immobility represents a fatal threat, for whom looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future. Hence, it identifies with the movement which engages people as beings aware of their incompletion—an historical movement which has its point of departure, its Subjects and its objective. PEDAGOGY OF THE O P P R E S S ED - 8 5 The point of departure of the movement lies in the people themselves. But since people do not exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement must begin with the human-world relationship. Accordingly, the point of departure must always be with men and women in the "here and now," which constitutes the situation within which they are submerged, from which they emerge, and in which they intervene. Only by starting from this situation— which determines their perception of it—can they begin to move. To do this authentically they must perceive their state not as fated and unalterable, but merely as limiting—and therefore challenging. Whereas the banking method directly or indirectly reinforces men's fatalistic perception of their situation, the problem-posing method presents this very situation to them as a problem. As the situation becomes the object of their cognition, the naive or magical perception which produced their fatalism gives way to perception which is able to perceive itself even as it perceives reality, and can thus be critically objective about that reality. A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives way to the drive for transformation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves to be in control. If people, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not control that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity. Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects. This movement of inquiry must be directed towards humanization—the people's historical vocation. The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed. No one can be authentically human while he prevents othersfrombeing so. Attempting to be more human, individualistically, leads to having 8 6 ' P A U L O FREIRE more, egotistically, a form of dehumanization. Not that it is not fundamental to have in order to be Human. Precisely because it is necessary, some men's having must not be allowed to constitute an obstacle to others having, must not consolidate the power of the former to crush the latter. Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation. To that end, it enables teachers and students to become Subjects of the educational process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism; it also enables people to overcome their false perception of reality. The world—no longer something to be described with deceptive words—becomes the object of that transforming action by men and women which results in their humanization. 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? While only a revolutionary society can carry out this education in systematic terms, the revolutionary leaders need not take full power before they can employ the method. In the revolutionary process, the leaders cannot utilize the banking method as an interim measure, justified on grounds of expediency, with the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must be revolutionary—that is to say, dialogical—from the outset. 8 ANSWERING THEQ E Education and Social Transforma ion The previous ~hapter u ~d ~ personal example to rai e the i ue of ri k and possibility.But 1t has me~ru_ng m term of the gue tion that ha guided the chapc r in this book only when 1t 1s connected to a larger emancipatory impul e. While myfocus in this book has been on education and its connections to proccs e of socialtransformation along multiple dynamics of power, the arguments and examplesI have advanced have been grounded in a more general moral and political commitment-what has been called radicaldemocraticegalitarianism. This rets on a conviction that "robust egalitarianism" is necessary for a flourishing and fulfilling personal and social lite. Because of this, it is guided by a critical impulse, one thatseeks to chaflenge the s;cial, economic, and cultural policies and practices thatgenerate inequalities in the material and social conditions of identifiable lives that limit the possibility of such flourishing. It seeks both to remove people's thebarriersthat limit "individual freedom and collectively empowered democracy" andto illuminate the possible paths to building more responsive policies and (Wright 2010, p. 33; see also Williams 1989).1 practices h Thesebarriers and these paths and alternatives are complex. I have argued t atthey. 1 d . . . d .. ad meu e structures and ideologies of both redistnbut10n an recogrution n thatth · · 1 l .l dyna. _eyare formed and struggled over m ways that mvo ve mu tip tio,,:;;i;l□ding class, "race," gender and sexuality, "ability," nationality and tJsksis to ( right 2010, p. 33). I have therefore also claimed that amona ur alternative look~orways in which the struggles over these barriers and for th canb s can Int . d .. ebuilt ersect, and can inform each other, so that decent r umtI lnpOJ. .· l\iay d0 llting to the . . . . .. . ~~st I Wisht0 . miportance of both red1stnbut10n and recoQ111t10n, m no lU.Ini · · · had an d co111· t 11uet0 h 111.Izethe place that analyses of redistnbut:J.on hav ave Within the radical traditions of critical education. md eed, . d SocialTransformation 152 Education an . lf continue to e be strongly influenced by and have co . ntributed Im~ ¼h ver the years. . . t anaJye o I t d in Chapter 1, m part usmg an exarnp] c. r a no e e 1rotn Howeve '. "d. b'lity " I find particular power in the work f IllyC> •
0
· e with isa 1 ‘
Na
I/in
expenenc
L h John Baker, and Maureen Lyons. Fo F ncytrait
f Kathleen ync ‘
.
r ras
r
omy and in all spheres of this society dep d er thick
and
cracy m t1e
. .
en son
1 econ
demo . . 1 .
ultiple relations of expl01tat1on and dominatio F tran~fi nations mvo vmg m
·a1 1
”
n. orL
on
,rrective
equalityis a cruc1 e ement, a structuring Ynch,
.
b
c
structur,,
Baker and Lyons, a.ll’
.’
.t tive of a society that 1s to e trans10rmed in fund
e,
di .b .
.
am.entail
that J truly con tJ u
.
. . direction . In es ence then, re stn ut10n re uiresre . y
criticallydemocratic
.
.
cogruti
0
..
uires redistribution. Let me say somethmg more ab
n
and recogrut10nre
. . .
.
.
out t ts
.
t’ ns of political economy and rac1ahzmg dynanucs.
,
u mg t e mter ec 10
.
.
While “recognition refers to social practices ~hrough which eo le c tn.
t al respect and vali ate t eir standmg as moral equals with·
mumcate mu u
_
in a
·7Z”ecy”(Wright 2010, p. 16), it is ~por_tant to note that the analy_ticdist~n
·between redi tribution and recogrut10n is exactly that-an analytic one. These
dynamic are deeply interconnected. The denial of respect a_ndthe sti atization
of “other ” reinforce material disa vanta es. ndeed, this can lead to their
pro uc ion. urt ermore, inequalities in class can themselves “impose harmsof
°
.
di re pect” a well (Wright 2010, p. 16).
The interconnections are readily visible in the fact that among the rootsof
capitalaccumulationduring the growth of capitalism as a global economic system
wa the en lavement and trade in black persons. The denial of personhood
enabledenslavementand commodification of other human beings, which in turn
wa dialecticallyconnected to a further process of murderous misrecognition.
As Eric Williamsreminds us, slavery was one of the foundations of capitalism
(William 1994), giving more evidence to the anti-reductioni t arguments
cautioningus to be very careful of using classa the only element that shouldbe
privilegedin criticalana]yis. Indeed, this i one of the fundament of Du Bois
and Woodson’ centering of black experiences as crucial social lessons not only
for blackpeople , but for allpeople in th United tate . imilar arguments have
been made in exceptionallypowerful way about the con titutive dynamics and
structuressurroundinggender.
~hile capitalismi implicatedin so many of the crucial inequalities we faceand
certainlymakesthem even more difficult to overcome, it is not the root of all of
what we face. In the words of one of the more thoughtful critics of capitalist
~oli~icaland economic relations and modes of production and organization,
Cntics of capitali mare ometimestempted to treat all of the erious problems of
·
the contemporarv
·
·
.
, world- uch as racism,
seX1sm,
war, religiou
fundamentalism,
homophobia
and
so
.
.
. temptation should
. ,, ,
on-as consequencesof cap1talim. This
be resisted (Wright20l0, p. 38 ).
Thismakesour taskharder.We definitelyneed to be appropriatelybiting about
the destructiveness
. and commod1fication
.
of the neoliberal restructunng
of all that
we hold dear-and
not ”
Educationand SocialTransformation 153
only” in
· Ne
·
·
I
against an economic systen, and .
w r eans. We definitely need to act back
1
ts
acco
· cultural and ideoJo aJ
b]age th a t creates the cond’ .
mpanymg
.
1tions that n,
.
gic assemrhe same t1me, we also need t
ake this seem sensible and doable Yet at
O recogn·
er
h
·
autonomous euects of these h
ize t e destructive but st 11 1 . I
.
ot er relatio
.
1 re at1ve y
and outside of education Th’
ns of domination and subord·
• .d
.
·
1s means tha
.
mat1on ms1 e
t wh1le we need to see “s . ,.
Constituted by economic relat·
ions, these
·oc1ety as
it and that need to e trans orrned If h are not the on] relations that con tirute
·
;i,, ·
·
t e answe t h
change soe1ety. is dependent o
d
r o t e uestion “Can education
n un erstanding
.
relat10ns or as tot y epen ent o
society as only it economic
.al h
n an a tnere re
.
any su stant1 c ange can O
ect1on of the e relations. then
ong o y one dynamic.
.
Di 1t c ange t 1e economy and clas
.
s re1at1ons?
These relat10ns need to be const
.
..
.
ant 1Y mterru pted B
.
osit10n
rooted
m
base/superstruct
h
.
· ut not only 1s the above
P
. .
ure t eones that h
b
.. .
decades within the multiplicity of criti· al di .
ave een cnt1c1zed for
c tra t10ns (see
A I
Au and Gandin 2009; Apple Ball a d G d’
‘e.g., PP e 2012; Apple,
‘
‘
‘ n
an m 2010) but i
h
d’ ‘
t can ave a
fundamentally demobilizingeffect. It can make th
.
e extra or mary labor of Du Boi
and Woodson, and the teachers, librarians edito
•
.
‘
rs, curncu 1um workers and
• h
wnters who worked so hard on educational tran forrnat1·0
.
.
ns seem ep1p enomenal.
This would be a truly disastrous consequence · Actions ,·n soc1a
·1
h
movements t at
are “close to home” change people. Such actions o·
o-ivepeople act’1v1st
· 1’d entitles
··
and teach strategies that echo throughout society, ones that can be and are taken
up in other struggles. If everything that we do as critical educators-whether it
iscritical research or building counter-hegemonic curricula and critical pedagogic
practices or working with youth and women in oppressed immigrant communities on expanding forms of critical literacy or building alliances with disability
rights activists, environmental
movements, and gay communities or working
creatively on employing the media for counter-hegemonic purpo es-is only
valued for its effects on the economy, it drastically limits what it means to fight
backagainst what is happening to so many people. This is something Freire clearly
recognized a well. This makes it much less likely that activist identitie will have
a chance to build into social movements.
We need to be careful about essentialism in yet another way. Thinking about
the issue of intersections also mean that, for example, dynamics and structures
involving”race” are cross cut by other dynamics including gender and class.While
being,say, black or brown affects everyone who takes on that identity or has th at
identityaffixed to them there are also profound class and gender divisions, as we_ll
‘
· · E h 0 f these 1s
as issues of “color ” within black and brown commuruties.
ac
co st
‘
.
.
· h’111 mmunities of color, of
nte ed and is the subject of intense d1scuss10ns wit
co
. .
cour
h
D 0 not homogeruze issue
se. But there is an important message ere.
surrou d.
f fi . uch as
n mg race (Leonardo 2010).
Thi5
·
· 111
· Chapter 3 o igure
~. . presents a clear caution to my d1scusswn
t th ir
Vv E B
. . ducators w110 pu
· · ·DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, and the act1v1st e
154
Educationand SocialTransformation
arguments into practice in schools and communities. My discussion15
.
”
h
”
Afr’
A
·
to be a statement about t e
1can mencan position on wh th notrnean1
.
h G
S C
e er educati
0
can change soCiety, any more t an eorge . ounts can represent ” h ,, n
·
·
d d hi
Id
nl
t e Whit
position on this question. In ee , t s wou not o y be wrong, it wouldb e
impossibility. As I argued, there were and are multiple positions of and d e an
. hi h d.
.d I . I
ebates
h
about the..role of scl100 ling w1t n t e 1verse 1 eo ogica assemblageof all0 f tese
communities.
Instead, my aim was to make public one part of this complexity · In the process
I wanted to demonstrate that awarding iconic status only to George Counts-a;
is often the case when many critical educators in the United States look backon
their historical roots-is too limited. Before, during, and after the periodin which
he wrote, voices speaking from the experiences of oppressed groups of colorwere
asking and answering Counts’ question in exceptionally compelling ways.This
was the case as well for nearly every oppressed group. Organic intellectuals-and
“everyday people”-spoke eloquently about women’s educational struggles,about
the lives of indigenous peoples, and about so many other markers of “otherness”
in this society.
People spoke back. They constantly challenged dominance, sometimesovertly
and sometimes in unseen ways. They did this in those institutions that hadaneffect
on their daily lives, and on their futures and the futures of their children. Attimes,
then, schools were-and are-central arenas of these individual and collective
actions and mobilizations, a point made by Jean Anyon (2005)and PaulineLipman
(2011) in their own analysesof the place that educational mobilizations haveplayed
in building movements.
Building Movements
I am not a romantic. Building and defending interruptive movements that cooperate
nd 1
with each other and that form decentered unities has never been easy a
seeno
th
reason to assume that it will be easy today. One of the reason is of course e fact
·
1 · 0 ccerona
th t
a we are actmg on an uneven playing field, somewhat like p aymg
fi ld h · il d ·
y t another
ie t at is t te m such a way that it strongly favors the other team. e
.
.
.
.
have
reason is that m part pursmng the specific agendas of one group rnaY • a
c t d·
cr.
·
metiun:i
on ra ictory euects on the agenda of other social movements. Thi is so ‘b uon
th at Nancy Fra er warned against when she argued for a politics of rediSrn7u
and recognition that comp Jemente d , not 111terrupted,
.
each ot h er (Fraser 199)·aht
For examPle, t1e
I w I 0 IIY deserved gains in women’s economic· ]’JVes brollo
ja].
1
cruc·ie
about by decades 0 f mo bi!.1zat10ns
·
and sacrifice by women were absoJurely
y
.
1 c on
et, at times, these gains were limited by th ose 111
. power 111
. such a way t h1aforb· ‘
O
of th em came at the
e
f
h
.
.
xpense o t e gams also being simultaneous lY foua t uric~
nd
peopWle
of color. White men gave up le s of their slice of the economic a p_o•acir
pie. .li omen’s
moveme n t , large
. 1Y withm
. . white commuruties,
. . and ann-‘·c 1111d
.
mo bI zat10nsaround racm
. structures,
.
. . and practices
. in
. the econori11
policies,
Education and Social Transformation 155
political
h
sp ere
created in Whi ~ Were not intentionally at odds; but a situation was too often
th
This Wasancd. ey Were in competition over the same slice of the pie.
·
lS 1a
act 1ons, dorni.na
rn.entable.But as I demonstrated in my chapter on Wal-Mart’s
h
fi
nt struc
t ose or whon,_ th
tu res and groups are not passive in the face of attacks from
reso urces and
e organization
· o f these structures creates and maintains unequal
.lli
Power w· h
Wl
ngness to think_ · . it out a recognition of this history and without a
dietary effects it . creatively about how progressive projects can have contra.
‘
is :much
•
.
.
mterrupt dominanc .
:more difficult to build the necessary alliances that
Building and deefiind~ur personal, political, and economic lives.
en ing
.
reasons as well. As I oin
cooperative movements may be difficult for other
are formed through p ~ed out above, new and quite po-v erful activist identities
ongoing
. . . .
Teachers, students
participation m social movements and mobilizations.
, parents comm. .
b
. .
identities that are c
.
‘
uruty mem er , and others take on activist
ontinuously b il hr h
ften formed ar
d . . . u t t oug concrete action. These identities are
O
oun existing
h
.
.nk b
h
issues t at give meaning to one’s life. Asking people
to th 1
a out t e pos ible
.
d
h
urunten ed consequences of their actions can
d . all l
para ~xic Y s ow t e formation of firmly grounded activist identities. This is a
real dilemma. And it must be faced honestly.
Let me give an example of wh Y c.
·
· h
· so crucial,
· an examp 1e
tacmg
1t
one t1y 1s
that places the role of education and the labor process of teachers directly at the
center and bears directly as well on the issue of the intersection of multiple and
justifiable progressive goals. When the right-wing governor and legislative leaders
of Wisconsin launched a frontal assault on public employees, on their right to
collectively bargain and to form unions, and on their health care, pensions, and
salaries, there were demonstrations for weeks and then months, including occupations of the State Capitol Building. This preceded the Occupy Wall Street’s
imaginative protests by many months.
Teachers, nurses and other health workers, social workers, firefighters, police
officers, clerical and administrative staff, and so many others were joined by
employed and unemployed
workers in both the public and the private ector, by
women’s groups, by students, by disability rights activists, by care workers, by
activists within communities of color, by member of pro-immigrant movements;
the list of participants could continue on for quite a while. The solidarity _wa
impressive. The Ca itol Building
and the entire downtown area of Madi on
con5tantly resonated /with the voices of thousands and th0 usand s. of prote ~er ‘
111
· · ·
together for the fir t t1m ·
any of whom represented groups who were Jommg
f
Whatbound them
t6gether was a collective sense that each ~nd ev~l~ one 0
th
al . .f the rightist pohc1e , nt
ese groups would suffer the loss of essenti gams 1
unchallenged.
F h
. . -· .
.
d
of my co-work r tud n ,
or t e pa1t1c1pants, includmg myself an so many
.
la
nd r
andfrie d .
d .
. . alliance that cut aero
ad
n s, 1t was a compelling an mspmng
. .
tiv ffi rt that
11
: race lines and showed the very possibility of engaging m co_ li
of man
n
oulctchallenge the well-funded attack on the dignity a cl . r
an
156
Education and SocialTransformation
politics and values in Wisc .
People and on the .tradition of progressive
.
.
.
onsin. W0
like “dianity”
are important here, smce 1t speaks to the issue surrou d.
rds
t,·
n inga,rr, .
· ·
:vect1ve
equalityas well as econorruc· JUSt1ce.
All of this was and is positive. While teachers’ unions and public wo k
.
.
. .
r erstook
the lead the d1vers1ty was a powerful statement. But-and It 1s a significa b
‘
nt Utthe week after the largest demonstration,
a pro-immigrant
rally and march was
held. In tead of the 150,000 demonstrators and occupiers who had participated
before, this time “only” 3,000 to 4,000 people marched on the Capito] to protest
the governor and legislature’s economic and social policies, the cuts in healthcare
and ocia1 ervices, the punitive penal policies, the massive cuts in educational
funding that denied educational opportunities to poor and immigrant children,
and the righti t support of marketization and privatization in every sphereof
government responsibility including education.
Generating support for the Dream
Act to enhance the possibility that children of undocumented
workers couldgo
to higher education and get public support was very high on the pro-imrn.igrant
agenda as well.
The pro-imm.igrant movement had joined with public employees, with the
teachers’ unions, with the disability rights and health activists, and the other groups
in the earlier demonstrations. Indeed, some of the most creative and eloguent
examples of how to organize and generate public attention came from the proimmigrant and Dream Act protesters. But where were these same gi·oups of public
worker and others who drew support from the largely Latino/a, Chicana/a.
Hmong, African heritage, and other minoritized
communities when these
minoritized communities marched in the same bitter cold weather for recogn.irion
of their own needs?
As we had done at the other demon trations and marche , my grandson Alex
accompanied me to the pro-immigrant march. He wondered out loud why cbere
. .fiicant 1Y mailer numbers. I wondered what to say to him. UJtimar
· ely’ I
were sigrn
used it as a political lesson by tell.ing him about why it was so important for group
to upport each other. A number of his cla mates were Latino and he alreadyhad
f” · t1Ce.
· We had a very thoughtful discu sion of what it· meanrto
a keen e
nse O 111JuS
.
be een as th “O h ” ·
·
.
b · g pur111
.
. .e
t er in th1 oc1ety and how the policie that were em . e
place m Wisconsin h t
. d.
pornonar
ur poor people and persons of color m 1spro
ways. 2
The key point h
h
.
.
vich 111)”
ere, owever, 1s not the di cussion of these 1 sue ‘
r
grandson, though th t
.
. 1· a ]arge
. ic
.
a wa an important opportunity. Rather, my pomt
one. The Right works
·d
· a under
l d h.
assi uously and often quite creatively to bnno
. J]\°
ea ers ip groups ofpeo I
h
.
. . ·deoJogiC