Professor Gleason
Adult Language and Literacy
May 11th, 2010
Paulo Freire's Theory of Adult Literacy Education
Paulo Freire has been perhaps, one the most revolutionary educational philosophers in the twentieth century. Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, has played a key role in reforming many educational practices and providing an alternative system, one that values critical thinking and liberation.
Born in Brazil on September 19th, 1920 to a middle class family, his family encountered many hardships after the Great Depression that turned their seemingly comfortable life into one of poverty and suffering. Freire spent much of his childhood playing football with poor children. His academic life was also on the wrong track as he was left four grades behind. Despite facing so many obstacles, Freire and his family were able to turn their adversities around. In fact, his own life experiences have helped shape his theories on progressive educational practices and personal liberation.
Freire’s book has contributed many ideas that have been ground-breaking and have made a considerable impact on the educational world. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he focuses on several central theories.
In his theory of learning, Freire critiques the educational system as one where the teacher is seen as the source of all knowledge and the students are considered empty vessels that receive information that is essential to their life. In the same form of a banking system, Freire’s Banking Model of Teaching functions as if the teacher works to deposit “truth” and data into the mind of a student, who then accepts these to be real without any question. The student receives, memorizes and repeats this information which is considered a gift given to those who technically “don’t know anything” from those who “know everything”. The curriculum is chosen by administrators. It is structured in a way so that the students are purposely are not aware of what is occurring in the world around them and have no say in what they learn. With such a system, students are not actively using the knowledge that they already have to further their thinking and learning. It inhibits their thinking and controls their mind and actions by making students believe that they are essentially in this world and not with the world.
Freire sees learning as a process that needs to be developed over time through the exposure to different concepts. Students need to be critical of what they read once they have achieved an understanding of it. Comprehension and analyzing are skills that are not acquired easily. They demand that the reader play close attention to what is being read and study it to the point that he can speak freely on it as if he were the co-author of the text. This is part of problem-posing education, when information is bestowed to a student for his or her consideration. Freire explains, “the role of the problem-posing educator is to create; together with the students…[it] involves a constant unveiling of reality” [81].
The role of the teacher and the role of the student must be interchangeable. Both need to be aware that learners can be teachers and teachers can be learners. This would cancel out any form of totalitarian reliance on the teacher that would lead to the Banking Model of Teaching. Students should know that they have the ability to fully understand a subject matter. Teachers need to know that content cannot be taught without the vital experiences that the student already brings with him upon entering school. Anyone who believes that content can be taught in such a manner that is completely separated from reference to a learners existing knowledge, would only be succumbing to an oppressor’s ideology.
Teachers need to inform themselves about the world from which the student comes from. It is important to know the goals that a student is working towards, his aspirations, his conflicts and even his struggles. Only then can a teacher appropriately teach the student before him, only then can a teacher demonstrate love and respect for who the student is.
In education, it is essential that we consider what kind information and skills are imperative for a student to have. As mentioned before, students need to be critical of facts that they encounter and search for meaning within them. They must be taught to think in a democratic manner and their must be no restrictions or limits on what can be discussed and questioned. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, dialogue is referred to as “the encounter in which the untied reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized”. [88] Thus, limiting what can and cannot be discussed would only be contributing to the control of one group over the other.
Freiran theory states that schools are used as part of the overall political propaganda that attempts to instill ideas that belong to the government, businesses and other oppressors. Unintentionally, it contributes to the oppression of people. A true democratic setting is ideal but not often realistic. To say that one is a democrat is not sufficient enough if these words are not supported by one’s actions. What a person does is a better representation of who he or she is than what he or she says. Tolerance is also referred to in a positive light. To be tolerant does not signify that one must conform to ideas that one does not agree to. It means to be respectful of what is different from what we know and believe.
Freire’s theory of consensus indirectly relates conflict as a part of life. Disagreements are the root from where reflection and thought arises. Intending to censor the thoughts and opinions of others is part of the oppressors attempt to control the freedom of the oppressed.
Freire’s pedagogy is that education can play the designating role in bringing about social change for the oppressed. He believes that literacy will be the main factor in allowing the oppressed to take a stand against the oppressors who have been denying their right to grow as human beings for as much as a lifetime. He worked to put focus on the relationship between these two and claimed that the oppressed who became literate would enter into a new reality about society that he had not been aware of before. It would be then that the oppressed would work to transform this reality and rise above it. This modern, critical consciousness would allow the oppressed to understand that the only way to transform this world would be to identify the aspects to this oppression having occurred overtime by the very oppressors themselves, and not as an unchangeable part of nature. Those who have been restricted must seek to free not only themselves, but also the oppressors.
Critical consciousness is a term created by Freire that refers to having acquired a full understanding of how the world works in terms of social and political spectrums. It also refers to taking charge and revolutionizing our world, once having been enlightened, the rudiments that are keeping the oppressed down. Praxis as Freire defines it in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the "reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it" [51]. It is only when the oppressed has authentically desired to alter his reality that he will be able to act upon the notion for change.
In the aforementioned banking concept of education, Freire correlates the relationship of between teacher and student with that of the oppressor and the oppressed. He states that the teachers (many of whom aren’t aware of their contributions to the dehumanizing of the student) deliver communiqués to the students who passively accept and adapt to what the professor is saying. This contradicts the very principles behind liberating oneself from the oppressor. Students do not realize that they are frequently educating the teacher and view themselves like objects, such as book. As stated earlier, in the world and not with the world. They don’t see themselves as merely adapting to a world created by the oppressors, who have no interest in seeing it being transformed.
Only later in life, might these students discover the real path to becoming fully human. These students will search for genuine liberation through praxis. Although some revolutionaries and leaders will claim to offer emancipation through slogans and propaganda, only those who have completely declined communiqués and the banking method will have received freedom. Only through dialogue and communication can the contradictory teacher-student relationship cease to exist. Notably, the teacher will come to learn in conjunction to the student and it will serve as an opportunity for all those involved, to grow as human beings. The teacher remains cognitive and is constantly shaping her reflections in accordance those of the students. The teacher is often presenting new information in a way that the students feel the need to challenge and view critically. Thus, they will arrive to new understandings. Freire explains, “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information” [79].
When teaching Brazilian peasants how to read, Freire encountered that they did not have much confidence in themselves. Their belief was one that they had heard many times from others and had adapted to. In their view, they were not capable of learning anything; they were unproductive and even comparable to animals. They were unconscious of the knowledge they possessed from life experiences and associations with other people. At one point, one peasant went as far as to say to Freire, “Excuse us, we ought to keep quiet and let you talk. You are the one who knows, we don’t know anything” [63]. This peasant demonstrated his full immersion in the banking method. He failed to welcome dialogue as the engine that would launch a new recognition of reality. With his theory of opportunity, Freire took it upon himself to be the voice of the oppressed. He centered his work in the educational field with the basis that he would provide better prospects for the poor.
The most important thing about problem-posing education is that it allows the student to expand his thinking into a never ending future. The threat of an end is non-existent to him because it is seen as limiting his ability to move forward. The only time that the past is even considered, is when it is looked at as a learning experience and an opportunity to rectify the future.
Paulo Freire’s theories of adult education place a large emphasis on dialogue and praxis as part of the overall effort to transform the world. The idea of communication and giving voice and hope to those who are oppressed by oppressors is part of his philosophy to make the world a more just and human place for all. Finally, his revolutionary ideas of using experience as part of a new approach to progressive education is largely all part of his pedagogy; to become what we are naturally supposed to become, more human.
Works Cited
Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary Edition). New York:
Continuum, 2000. Print.
Smith, M. K. (1997, 2002) “Paulo Freire and informal education”, The Encyclopedia of
Informal Education, 4 November 2009. Web. 7 May 2010.
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