Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and a Revolutionary Praxis for Education, Part II

FREIRE2!

Age of Revolutions

Check out Part I of “Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and a Revolutionary Praxis for Education”

By Kevin Gannon

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was a powerful, indeed revolutionary, reformulation of the very idea and purpose of schooling. It boldly and insistently criticized the functionalist, instrumental approach to education that characterized the dominant pedagogies of the era.

It was (and remains) common practice to talk about education as a set of practices which expands a student’s range of opportunities and degree of freedom. Yet, Freire and other critical reformers of the late 1960s saw this ideal honored solely in the breach when it came to state-sponsored schooling. Rather than merely the transfer of “knowledge,” which aimed to make students functional more than thoughtful, education ought to be a practice of liberation, Freire argued. Yet, for Freire, much of the pedagogical status quo was anathema to this (or any)…

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Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and a Revolutionary Praxis for Education, Part I

FREIRE!!

Age of Revolutions

By Kevin Gannon

Educational theory and practice has always been a contested terrain, even if many of the practitioners in these fields deny that controversies bubble beneath their work’s placid surface. In the mid-twentieth-century United States, much of the pedagogical approach and institutional structure of secondary and higher education was shaped by Cold War culture, by the imperatives of consensus ideology, and its emphasis on a pragmatic and utilitarian approach to educational outcomes. Much of the curriculum in which students and teachers operate today is a legacy of this era, perhaps best exemplified by the standard Western Civilization survey that is the bedrock of many a college history department’s course offerings. The demands of US political culture profoundly shaped (and indeed continue to shape) education and educational policy. White resistance to integration and the maintenance of white supremacy, an overweening emphasis on STEM education in the escalating arms and space…

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