Pedagogy of the
Oppressed
Paulo Freire

Understand the teacher/student relationship
Freire proposes

Understand the ‘banking’ and ‘problem-posing’
conception of education

Define the concepts: Dialogical Action & Praxis

Better understand Freire’s pedagogic system
Objectives
Biography
•A long-time adult educator and native of Brazil, Freire worked to help
the disposessed peoples of urban and rural Brazil to find a voice.
•In 1964, following a military coup, his work was considered a threat to
social order. Freire was arrested and exiled.
•It was during his time in prison that he began his first book, Educacao
como a Pratica da Liberdade, (Education as the Practice of Freedom ).
Biography
He continued working with the poor while living in Chile, and later as a
professor at Harvard's Center for Studies in Education and Development.
In 1970, he published his first work in English, which outlined the
foundation of his principals, Pedagogy of the Oppressed : Man's ontological
vocation is to be a Subject who acts upon and transforms his world, and in
so doing moves toward ever new possibilities of fuller and richer life
individually and collectively.
Every human being, no matter how "ignorant" or submerged in the culture
of silence he or she may be, is capable of looking critically at the world in a
dialogical encounter with others. Provided with proper tools for this
encounter, the individual can gradually perceive personal and social reality
as well as the contradictions in it, become conscious of his or her own
perception of that reality, and deal critically with it.
Biography
In 1979, Freire was invited to return to Brazil, where he joined
the faculty at the University of Sao Paulo. In 1988, he became
the Minister of Education for Sao Paulo, enabling him to
institute reform though out most of Brazil.
Freire's work has inspired others worldwide to join in the fight
for social reform, cautioning them not to see his philosophy as
methodology, but rather to reinvent the philosophy to fit their
reality. Freire died in May, 1997.
**Adult Literacy
Oppressor/Oppressed: The Struggle for Humanization
The struggle for humanization, breaking the cycles of injustice, exploitation
and oppression lies in the perpetuation of oppressor versus oppressed. In
these roles, those who commit the injustice, the oppressors, do not only
deny freedom to those they oppress, they also risk their own humanity,
because oppressor consciousness "tends to transform everything
surrounding it into an object of its domination".
These roles are so ingrained in society that in the "initial struggle for
liberation," the oppressed frequently strive to imitate the oppressor. They
see that role as the "ideal model of humanity". To break the cycle, a
revolution of ideas must take place, freedom can only occur when the
oppressed "eject this image and replace it with autonomy and
responsibility” But how do the oppressed reach this realization, how do
they "resolve the oppressor-oppressed contradiction"?
Example: “The Second Sex”
Educational Banking
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level,
inside or outside the school, revels 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...
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.
Educational Banking
Freire's answer was through "the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy
forged with not for the oppressed... By confronting "reality critically,
simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality", the oppressed can
begin transformation from objects to Subjects. But this is only the first
stage.
The oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through the praxis
commit themselves to its transformation. The pedagogy ceases to belong to
the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all people in the process of
permanent liberation.
Those who adopt Freire's pedagogy need to be aware that it is not made up
of techniques to save the world. Instead, he felt that "...the progressive
educator must always be moving out on his or her own, continually
reinventing me and reinventing what it means to be democratic in his or her
own specific cultural and historical context" .
Educational Banking
Freire describes a situation all too common in today's classes. It is from this
kind of didactic teaching that Freire draws his metaphor of banking as a
concept of education. In it, teachers make deposits of information which
students are to receive, memorize, and repeat. A transmission of knowledge
from the knowledgeable to the know nothings...Subject to object. "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“.
Libertarian, progressive education needs to "begin with the solution of the
teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction
so that both are simultaneously teachers and students“.
Concept of banking education
• the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
•the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
•the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
•the teacher talks and the students listen - meekly;
•the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
•the 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;
•the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not
•consulted) adapt to it;
•the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional
•authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
•the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere
•objects.
(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed [New York: Continuum], p. 59.)
Educational Banking
Banking education seeks to maintain the contradiction. It does not
engage students in critical thinking, instead, it requires the students to be
passive and to adapt thereby serving the purposes of oppression. It
inhibits creativity, it resists dialogue, it is fatalistic in nature.
Progressive educators help students to reach conscientizacao
(conscientization).
Conscientization meaning breaking through prevailing mythologiesto
reach new levels of awareness--in particular, awareness of oppression, of
being an object in a world where only Subjects have power. The process
of conscientization involves identifying contradictions in experience
through dialogue and becoming a Subject with other oppressed subjects-that is, becoming part of the process of changing the world.
Problem Posing Education
Instead of banking methods, progressive educators employ problemposing methods. "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." Teacher-students
and student teachers are continually reflecting on themselves and the
world, establishing "an authentic form of thought and action.”
It is in this way that education can be constantly remade, instead of being
static. It helps people to look ahead, to hope and plan for the future.
"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?"
Dialogical Action
Banking education, which emphasizes the teacher's role as the active one
in the teacher-learner relationship is an anti-dialogical approach. It serves
the oppressor by denying the learner an active role in the learning.
Paulo Freire felt that for the learner to move from object to Subject, he or
she needed to be involved in dialogical action with the teacher. Dialogic
action has two basic dimensions, reflection and action.
Action + Reflection = word = work = praxis
Action without Reflection = activism
(acting without thinking)
Reflection with Action = verbalism = "blah"
Transformation
Verbalism is an empty word, word without action, and transformation
cannot happen with action. Transformation is also impossible with
activism, because without reflection, there can be no commitment to
transformation, it is empty action. With action and reflection you get
praxis, which enables transformation to take place.
Dialogue cannot exist without humility. You cannot dialogue if you place
yourself above another, seeing yourself as the owner of truth. Dialogue
requires faith in humanity. "Faith is an a priori requirement for dialogue.
Founding itself upon love, humility and faith, dialogue becomes a
horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is
the logical consequence"(p.71).
Dialogue requires hope in order to exist. "Hopelessness is a form of
silence, of denying the world and fleeing from it“ (p.72).
Dialogical Action
Second, Paulo Freire was concerned with praxis -action that is informed
(and linked to certain values). Dialogue wasn't just about deepening
understanding - but was part of making a difference in the world.
Dialogue in itself is a co-operative activity involving respect. The process is
important and can be seen as enhancing community and building social
capital and to leading us to act in ways that make for justice and human
flourishing. Informal and popular educators have had a longstanding
orientation to action - so the emphasis on change in the world was
welcome.
Paulo Freire argued for informed action and as such provided a useful
counterbalance to those who want to diminish theory.
Dialogical Action
For the dialogical, problem-posing teacher student, the program content
of education is neither a gift nor an imposition--bits of information to be
deposited in the students-- but rather the organized, systematized, and
developed 'representation‘ to the individuals of the things about which
they want to know more"(p.74).
Dialogue is a give and take of ideas, a sharing. You cannot dialogue and
attempt to impose your own ideas on another. You can dialogue about
their ideas and yours.
Through cooperation, dialogic Subjects are able to "focus their attention
on the reality which mediates them and which—posed as a problem-challenges them. The response to that challenge is the action of dialogical
Subjects upon reality in order to transform it".
Consciousness.
“Vocabulary words were of a generative nature, and
came from the experience of and reflected the needs of
those being taught to read.
 How and why questions took precedence over
questions of who and what.
 Instead of domestication, education became an act of
liberation,… “conscientization” or education for critical
consciousness.

Education as Cultural Action for
Freedom




The poor live in a
“culture of silence”
dominated by the
ideas and values of
others.
Freire saw learning as
a process of
liberation;
for him, education is
an act of cultural
action for freedom
an act of knowing and
not memorization.
--Paulo Freire
Critique
•First, many are put off by Paulo Freire's language and his appeal to
mystical concerns. The former was a concern of Freire himself in later
life - and his work after Pedagogy of the Oppressed was usually written within
a more conversational or accessible framework.
•Second, Paulo Freire tends to argue in an either/or way. We are either
with the oppressed or against them. This may be an interesting starting
point for teaching, but taken too literally it can make for rather simplistic
(political) analysis.
•Third, there is an tendency in Freire to overturn everyday situations so
that they become pedagogical. Freire's approach was largely constructed
around structured educational situations. While his initial point of
reference might be non-formal, the educational encounters he explores
remain formal.
Objectives

Understand the teacher/student relationship
Freire proposes

Understand the ‘banking’ and ‘problem-posing’
conception of education

Define the concepts: Dialogical Action & Praxis

Better understand Freire’s pedagogic system