Essay Educational Studies “The pedagogy of the Oppressed”

Natalia Plaza

Freire defends a pedagogy where the student learns to nourish himself through common
life situations, and with same situations this could contribute to useful experiences that will
lean to a significant learning.

Is not about a pedagogy TO the oppressed, is WITH the oppressed. the person needs to built
his own reality through circumstances that provoke different results. All the reality that you
build must be to reflect about it, to analysis. Not to adapt to these situations but to
transform it.

The learning method that Paulo Freire suggest is not about to repeat the same words that
already exists, its about create new ones to generate awareness about reality, to fight for
freedom, …. because we know some other people have a naive (hypocrite?) awareness,
where they realize about their oppressed situation however they do nothing to change it,
they act with this conformist behavior and they think that is normal to do nothing about it.

The person who thinks and reflects

has the ability to create a conscience that leads into a fight to transform the reality, just to
liberate himself from the systematical pedagogy that the traditional society has imposed on
us. Freire says to, that the individual who learn through systematic apprenticeship needs to
learn to fight for his own improvement and search for constructive and critical thinking.

2- Freire proposed two different movements in a progressive way; the first one talks about
self awareness of the reality around us, how to realize we are oppressed by different
conducts of the oppressors. The second one its the initiative of the oppressed ones to fight
and liberate themselves from the oppressors. its not enough to realize its important to do
something about it.

3- We can describe the oppressor as the generators of violence, unnecessary violence,

utopic and nonsense dreams. They are selfish, possessive, have money and profit on their
mind as a first goal, they usually get what they want throughout power.

in other way the oppressed ones usually are irresponsible, emotionally dependents, they
are objects through the eyes of an oppressor. They adapt to any reality without questioning
and they shut up and listen… this is why they need to take awareness of themselves first in
order to change afterwards.

CHAPTER 2

1- A common thing in education nowadays its the excessive memorization and narration
inside the classroom, without even analyzing or questioning. To this situation Freire says
that students are like empty recipients where the teachers usually fill them with a lot of
content, this is the “banking education” … a lot of content inside their little heads, without
a deeper meaning.
Why we have this? we have this so that the students form their minds in order to adapt to
every situation, and to be oppressed really easy. They become into passive persons, with
almost no creativity.

2. when the individual doesn’t fight for his own interests and his cultural and social
emancipation its like loosing the love for life its own. The pedagogy that Freire
propose its the opposite, he suggest that everyone needs to acquire Biophilia by
cultivating our own identity. being with the world and not in it. this can be reach by
liberation. for this its necessary that education needs to stop being so mechanical.
3. This new type of education, needs to by a cognitive act, where we can analyze and
understand all the content, destroying the division between teachers and students,
so there can be an integral learning from both sides. Constructive learning

CHAPTER 3

1- To reach this change in education, its necessary to use a proper dialogue between
student-teacher, we evolve from words not silence, this is why we use dialogue as an
element in the learning process

(LOVE) Freire says that the use of dialogue such as like a normal conversation, or something
to discuss… helps to increase the love between each other. it is a brave act to use words to
express yourself, change your reality. Love… its what it makes us to communicate with each
other

Some leaders go to the people and make a huge speech… but its all worthless because in
this manifests they only talk about their own purposes. basically they adapt to the same
conditions without making any change (POLITICIANS IN CHILE). Critical thinking does the
opposite, it built spaces where we can have new opportunities to overcome and take proper
actions with different outcomes

in order to make a true connection with the masses its really important to learn about their
own reality, use their language, understand their actions and thoughts. Understand the
oppressed and from there start making a change.

2- when I talk about investigating the subject, its about to do the research about the
individuals that we pretend to liberate, investigate their thoughts and their own reality, its
about to come out with some learning opportunities in their own environment.

the research has two steps as well, first go to the place and get to know the way of thinking
of the oppressed, and the second one is to apply the thinking of systematic learning through
interaction groups between the same people, in this way the person starts to make self
awareness of the environment and starts searching for their own freedom

CHAPTER 4

1-the oppressor uses the opposite, anti dialogical speech in order to maintain their status
quo, and maintain their conquest. they try to avoid this union among oppressed, they try
to divide them so they can’t get this self awareness

2- some of the characteristics of the anti dialogical mentality is to manipulate through an

ideology in order to change the objectives of the oppressed.
another characteristic is the cultural invasion that the oppressed are part of, they are
objects and the oppressors are authors and actors of this process. with different strategies
the oppressor manages to dominate the oppressed by taking their true values.

Commentary

I really liked this book because it was familiar to me, we work a lot with Freire in my
university in Chile. I found that his methods and way of thinking it’s necessary even now
days. It seems that we have improve a lot in the critical thinking, but still there is so much
to do for the oppressed. I want to develop this inside my own classroom one day, it’s vital
nowadays to be aware of what’s going on outside, to know our rights.

The only thing that I didn’t like about this book was that it was really connected to politics
as well, which it makes it a lot more difficult to understand, I was only interested in the
educational topic, but this kept fading away when he begun to talk about politics. It’s ok to
do it, but for me it was really confusing at some points.

The only true connection that I can make with this book in my own practice, it’s to built a
safe environment in the classroom, to built this trust with the children in order to teach
them how to be self aware of their surroundings.

Another book that really caught my attention, is “Teaching to Transgress: Education as the
Practice of Freedom” written by Bell Hooks. Who I personally thinks brings down a little bit
the topic of Freire, because he talks about the same way of thinking but with specific topics,
like teaching against racial, sexual and a class with boundaries all of this to reach the same
freedom that Paulo Freire is referering too