I read "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" in college because my adviser, Ms. Thelma Sto. Domingo, assigned me to report it in class. Of course, at that time, I wasn’t teaching yet so I am very sure I wasn’t able to give justice to Paulo Freire’s ideas. Now, that I am already teaching, I am also trying to catch up on my reading list. Thank you, Gene, for this review. I hope I can find a copy soon.
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So far, I’ve only read the first and second letters in Paulo Freire’s
‘Teacher as a Cultural Worker: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach’ (2005,
expanded edition) and I am already amazed by the wealth of insights
that can be derived from the book.
I read Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of
the Oppressed’ (1984 translation) back home, and what compelled me to
read this classic text was the constant mentioning of his work in my
interactions with colleagues and friends in NetWorks and Ugnayan ng
Pahinungod, especially those deeply involved in literacy work in the
country’s rural areas and indigenous communities. My desire to
understand the value of the work was also partly influenced by one of
my references in rhetoric which outlines the concepts, definitions and
major theorists in the field from antiquity to the latter part of the
20th century. Freire’s name was one of the entries. Apparently, his
discussions on the relationship of language, thought, and reality as
well as his thesis on the dialectics of reading the word and reading
the world (which appears as one of the chapters in the book that I’m
currently reading) have earned him a significant place in rhetorical
studies in the last century (So much for appropriation and ‘pillaging’
of theorists from allied disciplines – a tendency that rhetorical
studies have been unapologetically pursuing.).
So my interest
was not so much on how the book (‘Pedagogy’) would influence my
philosophy and method of teaching in the university but how I could
meander through the discourses of my colleagues who kept on citing
‘praxis’, ‘action-reflection-action’, ‘conscienticization’, ‘banking
method’ versus the liberatory ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’, etc. during
our interactions. I was also interested in using his ideas and ‘tools’
for the content of the course SPCM 105 (Philippine Public Address).
While I had been fortunate enough to have read his work before I began
to teach the course, I regret to say that I failed to incorporate his
work in my syllabus. I was just too overwhelmed to revisit my notes on
analytical frameworks and critical approaches that have mostly emanated
from Greco-Roman and European-American traditions.
My interest
in reading Freire now is not so much anchored on the need to work my
way through the language game of my friends and colleagues or to cover
up my insecurity in teaching rhetoric and public address. While I
grapple with several ideas, concepts, theories that I need to apprehend
well for my comprehensive exams in the middle of this year, I wouldn’t
deny that I have been blessed with a little luxury of time to read what
I like to read. After all, I am currently not tied to teaching, marking
papers, reading both well- and haphazardly written student essays, not
to mention regular staff meetings and phenomenal departmental
‘intramurals’ – activities which had taken most of my time for eight
years before coming to Singapore to study.
On Friday afternoon,
the last day of classes in the university, I headed towards Vivo City,
the largest mall in town which houses a favorite bookstore called ‘Page
One’. There I was drawn to checking out titles in the humanities and
possible additions to my mini-library. I purchased two books, one of
which is Freire’s lesser known work. The other book is Michel
Foucault’s ‘Archaeology of Knowledge and Discourses of Language’
(thesis related but something I have to grapple with much later. This
is only my second Foucault book, the first one being ‘Madness and
Civilization’, the author’s dissertation. Quite embarrassingly, I’ve
only read a few pages of that ‘critically acclaimed’ work. It is
probably now accumulating dust in my bookshelf in Bay, Laguna. I
sincerely hope to save it from my superficial display of erudition (a
thing I am most guilty of) when I get back home this year.)
Now
back to Freire’s ‘Teachers’. What is it about Freire’s ‘Teachers’ that
is so compelling? In his first two letters (preceded by a foreword by
Donaldo Macedo and Ana Maria Araujo Freire, a preface titled ‘Pedagogy
for Life’ by Peter McLaren, an introduction by Joe Kincheloe, and
Freire’s ‘First Words’), he talks about reading the word/reading the
world (the dialectical relationship of theory and practice, of
experiencing and critical analysis of experience, of texts and
contexts) and grappling with ‘the fear of what is difficult.’
Several
points are inspiring from where I stand. One is the need to discipline
oneself to reflect on his readings quite regularly. Freire suggests
that one who professes to teach reading/writing the word/world should
be able to write quite regularly and to critically examine what he has
written, that is, to scribble down his reflections ‘at least thrice a
week’ and to examine them after some time.
Another interesting
point has to do with performing one’s capacity for radical love. Here
are lines from the book whose significance is underscored in the
preface by Peter MacLaren (in Freire 2005:xxx-xxxi):
‘We must
dare in the full sense of the word, to speak of love without the fear
of being called ridiculous, mawkish, or unscientific, if not
antiscientific. We must dare in order to say scientifically, and not as
mere blah-blah-blah, that we study, we learn, we teach, we know with
our entire body. We do all of these things with feeling, with emotion,
with wishes, with fear, with doubts, with passion, and also with
critical reasoning. However, we never study, learn, teach, or know with
the last only. We must dare so as never to dichotomize cognition and
emotion. We must dare so that we can continue to teach for a long time
under conditions that we know well: low salaries, lack of respect, and
the ever-present risk of becoming prey to cynicism. We must dare to
learn how to dare in order to say no to the bureaucratization of the
mind to which we are exposed everyday. We must dare so that we can
continue to do so even when it is so much more materially advantageous
to stop daring’ (Freire 2005:5-6, emphasis added).
The
‘radical love’ thesis is further explained in the fourth letter (which
I have not read as of this writing) but which MacLaren liberally quotes
in the preface (xxx-xxxi)
‘[To] to the humility which teachers
perform and relate to their students another quality needs to be added:
lovingness, without which their work would lose its meaning. And here I
mean lovingness not only toward the students but also toward the very
process of teaching. I must confess, not meaning to cavil, that I do
not believe educators can survive the negativities of their trade
without some sort of ‘armed love,’ as the poet Tiaglo de Melo would
say. Without it they could not survive all the injustice or the
government contempt, which is expressed in the shameful wages and the
arbitrary treatment of teachers, not coddling mothers, who take a
stand, who participate in protest activities through their union, who
are punished, and who yet remain devoted to their work with students.
It is indeed necessary, however, that this love be ‘armed love,’ the
fighting love of those convinced of the right and the duty to fight, to
denounce, and to announce. It is this form of love that is
indispensable to the progressive educator and that we must all learn’
(Freire 2005:74-75).
Having read only a few pages of Freire’s
work, I can already glean that there is so much passion, so much soul
in his writing about teaching. There is, however, a caveat to merely
adopting this ‘armed love’ thesis without much reflection. I think this
is the point most often abused by people who profess to ‘fight for what
is right’ when in fact they only fight for their personal interests. I
have been witness to this abuse and arrogant display of dissent in the
name of ‘academic freedom’ and ‘collegiality.’ I choose not to spell
out the details. Because of this tendency, there is so much reason to
heed Freire’s call for social praxis in teaching – to engage in the
dialectics of action and reflection so as to avoid both intellectual
elitism and uniformed/uncritical ‘reading of the world.’ That
engagement, at the very least, requires the humility to accept that our
assumptions about ourselves and about the world are tentative, to
listen to what others (usually from the opposite end of where we stand)
have to say, and to constantly engage in the negotiation of meanings.
)
