Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love Summarized

Description
Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, best known for his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, challenged education plans that contributed to the marginalization of minorities and the poor. Freire believed that education should be used for liberation by helping learners reflect on their experiences historically, giving immediate reality to issues of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of workers. Known as one of the most influential theoretical innovators of the twentieth century, his views have left a significant mark on progressive thinkers about education and liberation. Reinventing Paulo Freire is an homage to him by protégé Antonia Darder. Here, she explores the legacy of Freire, interviews eight teachers who studied his work, and reflects on the act of teaching as demonstrated by Freire himself. The interviews take the form of first person narratives; the epilogue consists simply of a letter and a poem. Reinventing Paulo Friere was selected as a Featured Publication by Kellog Fellows Leadership Alliance in 2003
(http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/westview/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0813339685)


Chapter 1 “The Passion of Paulo Freire: Reflections and Remembrances”

A Commitment to Our Humanity
A humanizing education is one where people become aware of their presence in the world. “The way they act and think when they develop all of their capacities. Taking into consideration their needs, but also the needs and aspirations of others”(35). For Freire “Economic inequality and social injustice dehumanizes us, distorting our capacity to love each other, the world and ourselves”(35). He says even well meaning teachers through lack of “critical moral leadership” can “disconnect these students from the personal and social motivation required to transform the world and themselves.”(35)

Fear and Revolutionary Dreams
Freire writes of a “Fear of freedom that afflicts us, a fear predicated on prescriptive relationships between those who rule and those who are expected to follow”(36). That is why as educator we need to question our ideological beliefs and pedagogical intentions and to take note of our own adherence to the status quo” (36). “If we were to embrace a pedagogy of liberation, we had to prepare ourselves to replace this conditioned fear of freedom with sufficient autonomy and responsibility to struggle for an educational praxis and a way of life that could support democratic forms of economic and cultural existence”(37). For Freire, “facing our fears and contending with our suffering are inevitable and necessary dimensions of our quest to make and remake history”(37). He refused to accept fatalism. Instead he urged teachers to, “problematize the conditions of schooling with their colleagues and students and with parents and through critical praxis of reflection, dialogue and action become capable of announcing justice.” He argues that total denouncement of fatalism is enough to “unleash our power to push against the limits, create new spaces, and begin redefining our vision of education and society”(38).

Capitalism as the Root of Domination
Freire’s work was grounded in Marxist socialist thought (39). “For Freire the struggle against economic domination could not be waged effectively without a humanizing praxis that could both engage the complex phenomenon of class struggle and effectively foster the conditions for critical social agency among the masses”(39). Freire “firmly believed that the phenomena of cultural invasion world wide was fundamentally driven by the profit motives of the capitalists” (40). Paulo acknowledged the existence of racism but was worried about losing sight of the notion of class struggle. He felt the class struggle was often at the root of racism and sexism. “At several different conferences, where educators of color called for the separate dialogues with him, he told us that he could not understand why we insisted on diving ourselves” (39) He felt that lack of unity among the recognizable “different” helps the hegemony of the antagonistic different”(40). Freire points out the problem of the increasing divide in curriculum for the concrete job training in programs and the programs that do the most critical reflection. “Such job separation reduces the capacity of workers to challenge the system”(40). Freire says we must see “Capitalism is the generator of scarcity” (40). “Capitalism requires that free-of-charge happiness be replaced with what can be and bought and sold” (40). “Even more disconcerting is the deleterious impact of globalized capitalism upon the social and environmental interests of humanity—interests that seem to receive little concern next to profit motives of transnational corporations.

Challenging Our Limitations
Freire felt in order, “to achieve a liberatory practice, we had to challenge the conditions that limit our social agency and our capacity to intervene and transform the world”(41). He deeply believed that the rebuilding of solidarity among educators was a vital and necessary radical objective” (40) He often linked, “our ability to create solidarity with our capacity for tolerance”(42). Antonia describes a tolerance she was lacking as “revolutionary virtue- the wisdom of being able to live with what is different, so as to be able to fight the common enemy” (42). Freire struggled openly with his own contradictions. “I exist in the present where I prepare myself for the possible”(43) He was criticized for many reasons like the sexism of his language, a lack of the systematic analysis of class, capitalism and schooling, and an unwillingness to engage deeply in the nature of racism. Later in his career his books reflected an inclusiveness of women and he also addressed issues of diversity and racism. “‘We cannot reduce all prejudice to a classist explanation but we may not overlook it in understanding the different kinds of discrimination.””(44)

The Capacity to Always Begin Anew
“For Freire there was no question that he, others, and the world were always in a state of becoming, of transforming and reinventing ourselves as part of our human historical process”(44). “He believed that we both make and are made by this world, and thus all human being are the makers of history” (45). Freire’s view of knowledge was inextricably linked to history. “Nothing that we engender, live, think, and make explicit takes place outside of time and history” (45). So he says that the historical process needs to take place in schools. We need to build “communities of solidarity… to help us in problematizing the debilitating conditions of globalized economic inequality”(45). “Through praxis—the authentic union of action and reflection” we can, “enter into the remaking of cultural capital , both as sites for the integration of dissociated workers and for the development of critical consciousness, ultimately of local and national politics and hence altering the nature of the global economy”(45) Freire urged us to strive for an “intimacy with democracy… it represented a construction that was always in the state of becoming and required that we fight to obtain it”(46). “Freire constantly identified this respect for commitment to marginalized people as an integral ingredient to the cultivation of dialogue in the classroom” (46). He said that dialogue meant, a critical posture as well, as a preoccupation with the meanings students use to reflect their worlds”(46). Through this knowledge, “teachers could support students in reflecting on their lives and making individual and collective decisions for transforming their world” (46).

Indispensible Qualities of a Progressive Teacher
“Freire often stressed that teaching was a task that required a love for the very act of teaching” (47). To teach with only with critical reasoning is not enough. “Freire fervently argued that we must do all these things with feeling, dreams, wishes, fear, doubts and passion” (47). These qualities help teachers become conscious of their language, their use of authority in the classroom and their teaching strategies. However even with all these qualities the teacher will learn that they “cannot liberate anyone” instead they find that they, “are in a strategic position to invite their students to liberate themselves, as they learned to read their world and transform their present realities” (47). Freire begins with humility, “humility is the quality that allows us to listen beyond our differences”(48). Another quality he requires is the “ability to live an insecure security, which means a human existence that did not require absolute answers or solution to a problem but rather that, even in the uncertainty of the moment could remain open to new ways, new ideas, and new dreams” (48). Next is courage, “a virtue that is born and nourished by our consistent willingness to challenge and overcome our fears in the interest of democratic action. “Tolerance is another indispensible quality…tolerance is founded on the basic human principal of respect, discipline, dignity and ethical responsibly”(49). He also added decisiveness, security and tension between patient and impatient. Tension between patience and impatience “allows teachers to feel the urgency of the difficult conditions they are facing within schools and at the same time respond with thoughtful reflective tactics and strategies”(49). “Teaching with a joy of living personifies most the ultimate purpose of Freire’s work and life”(50).

Chapter 2 “Restoring Our Humanity: The Dialectics of Revolutionary Practice”

Restoring our Humanity
“Our capacity to live free required a fundamental shift in how teacher and students define themselves and the conditions in which we exist”(54). “In waging the struggle to restore our humanity, it was absolutely imperative to Freire that we recognize that oppression does not exist within a close world from which there is no exit. Instead , he argued that precisely because oppression is an impermanent and changing historical reality constructed by human beings, that we as free subjects of history possessed the possibility of transforming it’s configuration”(54). It is our job as teachers to turn teaching and learning into, “revolutionary praxis—a pedagogy of reflection and action upon the world to transform it”(54). “ He argued, it is imperative that teachers and students strive to unveil and challenge the contradiction of educational policies and practices that objectify and dehumanize us, preventing political expression as full subjects of history”(55).

Education as a Political Act
“Education never is, has been, or will be a neutral enterprise”(56). Freire said, “My role a teacher is to assent the student’s right to compare, to choose, to rupture, to decide” (57). He argues that, “schools are political sites involved in the construction and control of discourse, meaning, and subjectivity” (57). Teachers need to “unveil the hidden ideological values and beliefs that inform the development and establishment of standardized curricula, materials, textbooks, testing and assessment, promotion criteria, and institutional relationships”(57). Our task at hand is “not to reproduce the traditional social arrangements that support and perpetuate inequality and injustice”(57). He speaks of the isolating nature of the work, “The anitdialogical arrangements of their labor prevents teachers from establishing deeper trust and knowledge about one another’s practice, in terms of both strengths and limitations” (59). “ Freire also linked the destructive impact of the traditional punishment and rewards system to the politics of teacher evaluation” saying “We evaluate to punish not to educate”(60). “Teachers must establish relationships with peers that are founded in critical dialogue. Through such ongoing relationships, teachers can openly interrogate the practices in schools and consider effective intervention for disrupting the policies and practices of domestication and inanimate their life and work, as well as the intellectual development of their students” (61). He saw schooling as “a permanent terrain of struggle, resistance and transformation” (61). “The political empowerment of teachers functions to nourish and cultivate the seeds of political resistance” (61).

History and the Production of Knowledge
“Teachers have traditionally been educated to think of history in a frozen and fixed manner” (62). It is this type of thinking that, “strips most of those living of being active participants in making history” (62). History must be understood as a plural phenomenon. “Seldom unveiled in the teaching of history are the power relations at work that determine which particular intersection of history will be privileged and remain as the official record of all time” (62). “Historical themes are never isolated, independent, disconnected or static; they are always interacting dialectically with their opposites” (63). Teaching history in the fashion empowers the students. “ In naming the world and constructing meaning, students beginning to experience what it means to be subjects of their own lives; and through acting upon their world and changing its configuration in some meaningful manner, they become familiar with the experience of social agency”(63). “Students discover that there is never one absolute truth about any event” (63). “It is tremendously valuable for students to consider the current events that are transpiring in their lives and the public arena in light of past historical moments”(64) This is how students will see that, “events in the present are intimately connected to the decisions and events that came before”(64). “The world exists as it does because of the myriad of relationships and structures constructed by human beings to which we all contribute”(65). “As teachers we must comprehend that our subjectivity and objectivity are dialectical and in constant flux. Dichotomizing these dimensions of our humanity only serves to produce fragmented knowledge that is divorced of the very tension that gives vitality to our teaching practice.”(66) Freire states the importance of understanding hegemony. “Hegemony encompasses the arrangement of social and political ideological forces that not only preserve status quo but tenaciously resist transformation” (70). “Teachers must be willing to engage forces within schools that perpetuate a system of grossly unequal wealth distribution” (72).

Schooling and the Political Economy
Freire says that one cannot deny the impact of the politics economy on the school system. It can be seen in “intellectual expectations, the types of resources, and the educational opportunities for academic success available to students from economically oppressed communities are in extreme contrast to those found in private schools that educate the wealthy.”(70) “Unfortunately for the majority of people, this distinction has little significance beyond the widely accepted belief that if you can pay for an excellent education for your children then you deserve the privilege” (73). He also warns us to be aware of the “exceptional’ success story as a way to camouflage blatant structural inequalities. “Money is the measure of all things and profit is the primary goal” (75). “As a result of this objects are stripped of their meaning and the relationship that informs their construction” (75). “Hidden in the rhetoric of standardized knowledge is a direct link to the economy and the profit of corporations” (78) “In whose interest and to what purpose is technology functioning”, in this information age? (78). “Privilege of access is camouflaged by terms like “World Wide Web” and “global communication”. “In fact, participation in the age of the computer is only possible for less than 20% of the world’s population, and even when access to the computer technology is available to schools, distribution is not necessarily equitable” (78). “Capitalism has rapidly become the transcendent culture – a phenomenon that is successfully being achieved through the market’s grip on popular culture and its representation in the media” (79). “The rapidity with which new fads move in and out is also linked to the way the marketplace instills very early in children the notion that the power to consume to their hearts’ content is the epitome of justice and freedom for all” (79).


Revolutionary Praxis: The Alliance of Theory and Practice
The foundation of Freire’s practice could only be explained, “in the actual process, not as a fait-accompli, but as a dynamic movement in both theory an practice which both make and remake themselves” (82). “Theory, then, as a product of a historical process of knowledge construction is ongoing and regenerative” (82) “In the process of teaching, dialogue is considered the self-generating praxis that emerges from the relational interaction between reflection, naming of the world, action, and the return to reflection once more” (82). In order to embrace revolutionary practice, we need to understand all human beings as intellectual. “Our society arbitrarily privileges particular forms of thinking in social, education and economic terms” (82). For Paulo Freire we should think of theory and practice as an alliance, “without practice theory runs the risk of wasting time, of diminishing its own validity as well as the possibility of remaking itself” (83).


Freire’s Utopia of Hope
Freire’s utopia of hope is anchored in his lifelong held revolutionary commitment to struggle against all forms of poverty, to contest the arbitrary power of society’s ruling class, to overcome the dehumanizing forces of violence within school and society and to confront the destructive consequences of capitalist dominion over the Earth” (87). “Paulo Freire deeply believed that one of the principle tasks of liberation was ‘to affirm our humanity in solidarity’” (87). This, however, does not mean a frictionless world. “‘No one receives democracy as a gift. One fights for democracy’” (88). “A pedagogy of love must encompass a deep political commitment to social justice and economic democracy-a revolutionary commitment to release our humanity from the powerful death grip of capitalist dominion.

References:Darder, Antionio (2002). The Passion of Paulo Freire & Restoring our humanity. In Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love (pp. 33-51 & 53-89). Boulder: Westview.