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Rhetorical Analysis
Education is vital to man because it's how we learn about the world and everything
around us. When one goes to school they expect to learn something that they can later build on
and have opinions about, as well as, share with others and their educators what they know. I will
be writing a rhetorical analysis evaluating Paulo Freire's, Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the
Oppressed on how he states his purpose for writing the text, whether or not he makes it clear who
he is writing to, and how he is portraying it all in the text to transmit his argument to the
audience. A rhetorical analysis is an evaluation of someone elses work to find both strengths and
weaknesses. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argues that education is being oppressed
because teachers and professors just stand in the front of the class and teach students, they expect
the students to just repeat and memorize what they have been taught. Oppression means having
total control of something or someone or the injustices of suppression. Freire uses reasoning or
premises and worldviews to effectively get his argument across to his targeted audience.
Freire opens the section by successfully stating his purpose for writing the text that helps
strengthen his cogent reasoning. Nancy Cavender and Howard Kahane wrote in Logic and
Contemporary Rhetoric that cogent reasoning is a good argument that solves a problem. Freire
observes how the relationship between teacher and student is, in a way, a one-way street, where
information is only being given and non can be taken back. Freire argues that the relationship,
involves narrating Subject (the teacher) and the patient, listening objects (the student). The
contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of realist, tend in the process of being narrated
to become lifeless and petrified, education is suffering from narration sickness(Freire 57). In
making this comment, Freire is saying that teachers are only speaking to the students expecting
them to fully understand what they are being told and to neither question what they are being

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taught nor to further expand on anything they have learned. Freire is right that education is
suffering from narration because the teacher and the students are not interacting with one another.
Freire makes the argument that education has become like a banking system where the
teachers are the depositor and the students are the depositories. He explains to his targeted
audience, educators and those who care about the type of education they are receiving, that in the
banking style of teaching there is no communication between the student and the teacher. Freire
states, instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqus 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 extents only as far as receiving, filing, and
storing the deposit(Freire 58). Basically, Freire is saying that students are not allowed to
question any of the information they are being taught or even further expand their knowledge on
the material they are being expected to only memorize and repeat. Indeed it is highly likely that
students are not really learning, instead they are just memorizing what is being spoken to them.
Freire states, the capacity of banking education to minimize or annul the students creative
power and to stimulate their credulity to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed(Freire
60). Freires point is that students are not allowed to expand on or build on what they have been
taught. I agree with Freire that this form of teaching does not acknowledge the true meaning of
education, which is that students and teachers should be able to share the information they each
know with one another. When they share their information with one another they are expanding
and building on their education.
Freire does imply, in the text, that there is a solution to the oppression of education. He
explains that in order to stop alienating the student from the world and allow them to, not only
interact with the teacher and students, but to also question and build on what they have both
learned. He calls to the humanist, one who puts an emphasis on the value of man, both as an
individual and as a whole, to help break the oppression of education. Freire states, its objective
is to call the attention of true humanists to the fact that they cannot use banking educational

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methods in the pursuit of liberation, for they would only negate that very pursuit(Freire 65).
Here Freire uses, his and others, worldviews to get into the readers head about what is really
going on in education. In Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, Cavender and Howard claim that
worldviews are the way we all see the world and, although we might have a different view on the
world, what we think can still have an effect in or arguments made. Freire wants the humanist to
start a revolution and break the oppression. Freire wants us to challenge educational
practice.According to Freire, liberation is a praxis, the action and reflection of men upon their
world in order to transform it(Freire 66). Basically, Freire is saying that the liberation from
oppression will be a reflection of man and of how they care about their world. Freire is right in
saying that if nobody cares about their education then nobody would care to liberate themselves
from the alienating ways of education.
According to Freire, Dialogic relationships between the teacher and students are the best
methods of teaching. With Dialogical relationships the teacher is still teaching the student but
instead of being the only one who talks or shares their knowledge, the student is also able to make
comments, as well as question what they have been taught and, also share their own knowledge
with their teacher. Dialogical relationships are a form of education where both the teacher and the
student or students are taking in information that the other already knows or has previously
learned. According to Freire, in this process, argument based on authority are no longer valid;
in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it(Freire 67). In
making this comment, Freire argues that there should be no more separation or difference
between whom is the teacher and who is the student because they are both giving and taking back
equal amounts of information between one another. Freire is right in saying so because, as stated
previously, in order to overcome the oppression, we must first acknowledge that there is a
problem and we have to be willing to do make that change.
In chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freires persona shows and tells us that he
does care, not just his education but about the education of others as well. He knows that we

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receive most of our information through education and it is important to not only taking in what
we are being taught but to share our knowledge with those who teach us and to broaden that
information by questioning or even doing further research ourselves. Freire shows that he wants
to stop the oppression of education because we are being robbed of a real education. As
explained in Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, those who go through life without carefully
examining and questioning their moral principles run the risk of mistake as do those who fail to
acquire accurate factual beliefs about how things complicated world of ours(Cavender and
Kahane 202). Basically Cavender and Kahane are saying that without a proper education we will
never really know how the world is working. Freire found the solution to this problem and he
wants his audience to help him get education to have more an interactive relationship between
teacher and student. He wants this relationship to be equal on both sides.
Overall, in chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire argues that education is
oppressed by educators because they are only talking at the students instead of also hearing what
their students have to say and letting them question what is being taught to them. Freire describes
how the banking method, which asks students to just allow themselves to be talked to then be
expected to only receive, memorize, and repeat that information, is preventing students from
getting a proper education to help them better understand the world. Freires argument is then
strengthened through cogent reasoning and worldviews. He is targeting those who care to make
change in the world by stopping the oppression of education, the humanist. Throughout the text,
Freire shows us, through his persona, that he cares to stop the oppression of education by giving
different examples of teaching that involve more interaction between the teacher and the student
that will then end the division of powers. His preferred methods of teaching give the teacher and
the student are at equal levels of power because they both give and take information from one
another and can both further expand on the information. He tells the reader that in order to break
this chain of oppression we must challenge our education, question what is being taught to us,
and to further build on it as well. Freires overall rhetorical effectiveness causes the reader to be

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more aware of the different teaching styles, both those that dont let you explore more and those
that help you expand your education and views. He does a good job of adding his experiences
with these styles of teaching. He also make connections with styles of teaching that most people
would be more familiar with. Freire wants his audience to spread the word about the oppression
of education so that together we can all end the oppression of education. We must be both the
teacher and the student in order to do so.

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WorksCited
Cavender, Nancy, and Howard Kahane. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of
Reason in Everyday Life. 12th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning,
2014. Print.
Freire, Paulo. "2." Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2000. 57-74. Print