Education, Part 1
People’s
Education for People’s Power
Our method is to take a text, and discuss it. This method is modelled on
the theory and practice of the late Paulo Freire. It is appropriate, then, to
begin our course on Education itself, with Freire.
In the first place, Freire can assist us greatly in defining what we are
pursuing in this course on Education. We are looking for a pedagogical theory:
a theory of teaching and learning. What is it for? What is education for? What
is educational theory for? Paulo Freire, a Brazilian, is an example of one who
explored such questions, and he did so within a liberation-struggle context, akin
to our own.
In the first sentence of Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of
The Oppressed” (attached, pleased find Chapter 1, or use the link
below) Freire “problematises” what he calls “humanisation”. That sentence says:
“While the problem of humanization has always, from an
axiological point of view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on
the character of an inescapable concern.”
Axiology is the philosophical study of value. Freire declares his
principle value. It is humanisation. It corresponds directly to the
South African concept of “ubuntu”.
“But while both humanization
and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people's
vocation,” says Freire, asserting this political and moral principle as a starting
point.
In doing so, Freire stands side-by-side with Karl Marx, who, in his
masterpiece “Capital”, and all his life, wanted to restore humanity to
itself.
This is what education is for.
Let us look at some more of Marx’s, and Freire’s words.
In his 1844 Introduction
to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, at the gestation, if not
quite the birth of “Marxism”, Marx, referring to religion, wrote:
“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the
chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy
or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living
flower.”
Above all, Marx wanted humans to be human. Criticism was not to crush,
but to set humans free.
Similarly, Freire’s educational method is called “critical pedagogy”. It
rests on the fundamental question of philosophy: the relation of mind to matter
(Subject to Object). It asks to be judged according to that principle. So on
page 3 of Chapter One of the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Freire writes:
“… one cannot conceive of objectivity without
subjectivity. Neither can exist without the other, nor can they be
dichotomized. The separation of objectivity from subjectivity, the denial of
the latter when analyzing reality or acting upon it, is objectivism. On the
other hand, the denial of objectivity in analysis or action, resulting in a
subjectivism which leads to solipsistic positions, denies action itself by
denying objective reality. Neither objectivism nor subjectivism, nor yet
psychologism is propounded here, but rather subjectivity and objectivity in
constant dialectical relationship.”
Explicitly embracing his connection with Marx, Freire continues:
“To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process
of transforming the world and history is naive and simplistic. It is to admit
the impossible: a world without people. This objectivistic position is as
ingenuous as that of subjectivism, which postulates people without a world. World
and human beings do not exist apart from each other, they exist in constant
interaction. Man does not espouse such a dichotomy; nor does any other
critical, realistic thinker. What Marx criticized and scientifically destroyed
was not subjectivity, but subjectivism and psychologism.”
The significance of the human Subject in Freire’s theoretical scheme is
clear. Education as the refreshment and renewal of humanity is declared by
these words from the last paragraph of his Chapter 1:
“Teachers and students (leadership and people),
co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that
reality and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of
re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through
common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent
re-creators.”
The Communists, in their own minds and in their intentions, seek to
educate, organise and mobilise, not so as to command the working class and the
general masses, but help to set them free.
The problem of how to do so is exactly the problem that Freire addresses
in “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” It requires the formulation quoted above:
“World and human beings do not exist apart from each other, they exist in
constant interaction.”
Freire writes about leadership and people both being human Subjects, “co-intent
on reality”. This is what gives meaning both to education, and to politics. Leadership
(teacher) and masses (learners) are “co-intent on reality”, coping together
with the open reality of human life within an objective material universe.
We are talking here of revolutionary pedagogy. We are talking here of
teaching with a purpose and a reason that anyone can understand, i.e. we are teaching
with “intentionality” that students can understand and potentially share as
equals.
We are talking of liberation. In South Africa this concept is called “people’s education for people’s power”.
In the next chapter we will dwell upon the dreadful mistakes that can be
made if we fall into the errors of what Freire calls “the banking theory of
education”.
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The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Pedagogy of The Oppressed,
Chapter 1, 1970, Freire.
·
A PDF file of the reading text is attached
·
To download any of the CU courses in PDF files please click here.
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