paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

began february 22, finished march 1

183 pages

my friend noah, who i regard highly as a human being, recommended this book to me last summer.  finally remembered to get to it in february. i borrowed it from the columbus metropolitan library. i read it over one week at various and for various amounts of time(s).

- general sypnosis -

as obvious this sounds, this book deals with “the oppressed,” or to avoid such an abstract term, those whose ideologies are not chosen by themselves, not conscious of the way in which they are with the world, in which they are being manipulated and used by “the oppressors.”  freire goes on to examine how people, borrowing sartre’s terms, become beings-for-themselves or beings-for-others, the latter which is not desirable.  freire’s main argument, which is an argument for a less oppressive world i suppose, is that a successful overhaul of oppressive society cannot occur unless people become conscious in the ways in which they are oppressed, in the ways in which they are not aware of this oppression.  freire’s theories of dialogical and anti-dialogical action and how it functions in the education ( = implanting of ways of seeing and being with the world or not) of people also gets quite an amount of room in this book.  stresses the importance of theory and action as symbiotic, not dichotomous.  praxis as dialogue, dialogue as praxis.

- subjective thoughts -

i enjoyed it. it made me want to be able to have critical yet open dialogues with people.  it reduced some apathy that still hides in me.  i think freire’s theories are only sometimes a little too incomplete and idealistic, which he admits openly, but still, i think there is very useful information in this book.  i particuarly like when freire debunks and deconstructs myths and ideologies used by the oppressed to keep people from “becoming more fully human.”  some of his writing ‘depends’ on presuppositions, which he covers most of the time, but still seems presupposed as he goes on with it.  overall, i found myself feeling better about living and interacting with people after reading this book. it is a moving analysis of the ways in which what i call ‘invisible’ oppression, acts of control which are not violent, but rather ideological, which functions far more in the modern day educational and social systems than we are led to believe. i feel more connected to interpretations of marxist theory and critical pedagogy after having read this.

- new words -

pernicious - gradually or subtlely harmful

concomitant - naturally accompanying

palliate - make less painful without removing the cause

sunder - split apart

parochial - having a limited or narrow outlook

- passage(s) -

“The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves.  They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own ‘effort,’ with their ‘courage to take risks.’” (59)

“To exist, humanely, is to name the world, to change it.  Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming.  Human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.  But while to say the true word—which is work, which is praxis—is to transform the world, saying the word is not the privilege of of some few persons, but the right of everyone.  Consequently, no one can say a true word alone—nor can she say it for another, in a prescriptive act which robs others of their words.” (88)