Pedagogy of the Oppressed Meeting #1

Pedagogy of the Oppressed Meeting #1 

While it is very clear who Paulo Freire is referring to as the oppressors and the oppressed, it becomes murkier for us as present day educators. Many group members noted that the system in which we are forced to operate under often forces us to become oppressors, which creates an uneasy feeling (this point was often tied to administering mandatory standardized testing). We then discussed different ways that educators can attempt to embrace Freire's theory of everyone taking on the role of both the student and the teacher, despite education reform which has made that difficult. Some ideas referenced Dewey's child-centered learning theories, and included examples of reaching valuable conclusions on the students' terms rather than trying to force them to learn. Additionally, we discussed to what end we are educating students, and how difficult it is in reality to get people to essentially abandon the world as they know it in order to adopt Freire's radical principles.

(Ben Dobkin)