The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.
Paulo FreireRead
Education as the practice of freedom--as opposed to education as the practice of domination--denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.
Interpretation
Education should empower individuals and promote freedom rather than control and domination.
Paulo Freire emphasizes that true education is about fostering freedom and connection rather than enforcing domination. He argues that individuals are deeply connected to the world around them, highlighting that consciousness and reality are intertwined and shaped through relationships. Any educational approach that separates human experience from the world fails to acknowledge the complexity of human existence and its interconnectedness with society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about educational reform to emphasize the importance of liberating learning.
The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality.
This is the sense in which I am obliged to be a listener. To listen to the student's doubts, fears, and incompetencies that are part of the learning process. It is in listening to the student that I learn to speak with him or her.
This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade
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.
Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.
Of course there is no denying the possible pleasure of holing up with a fat, slow-moving, mediocre novel; still, we all know that we can indulge ourselves in that fashion only so much. In the end, we read not for reading's sake, but to learn.
You can't teach people anything. You can only draw out.
Kids are born curious about the world. What adults primarily do in the presence of kids is unwittingly thwart the curiosity of children.
It [further education] is most essential,otherwise I would not have educated my sons. I learnt the hard way.Maybe if I had some education my success and growth would have been quicker.
In order to dream so far, is it enough to read? Isn't it necessary to write? Write as in our schoolboy past, in those days when, as Bonnoure says, the letters wrote themselves one by one, either in their gibbosity or else in their pretentious elegance? In those days, spelling was a drama, our drama of culture at work in the interior of a word.
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