Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter 0415087929, 9780415087926

Table of contents :
Foreword by Paulo Freire
Preface by Cornel West
Editors' Introduction Absent Discourses: Paulo Freire and the Dangerous Memories of Liberation
1. Paulo Freire's Radical Democratic Humanism by Stanley Aronowitz
2. Education is Politics: Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy by Ira Shor
3. Knowledge Under Siege: The Brazilian Debate by Tomaz Tadeu da Silva and Peter McLaren
4. Decentering Pedagogy: Critical Literacy, Resistance and the Politics of Memory by Peter McLaren and Tomaz Tadeu da Silva
5. Functional Literacy From a Freirean Point of View by Colin Lankshear
6. From the Pedagogy of the Oppressed to a Luta Continua: The Political Pedagogy of Paulo Freire by Carlos Alberto Torres
7. Bell Hooks Speaking About Paulo Freire - The Man, His Work by bell hooks
8. Critical Pedagogy and State Welfare: Intellectual Encounters with Freire and Gramsci, 1974-86 by Peter Leonard
9. A Dialogue with Paulo Freire by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo
10. Paulo Freire and the Politics of Postcolonialism by Henry A. Giroux

Citation preview

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PAULO FREIRE

Paulo Freire is one of the century's great thinkers on education and the politics of liberation. Known mostly for his literacy campaigns in Latin America and Africa, and for his seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, his thinking continues to be rediscovered by generations of teachers , scholars, community activists and cultural workers in Europe and North America. While his name is synonymous with the practice of _'Critical Literacy' and 'A Pedagogy of Liberation', his work has been appropriated .. . . in many diverse fields of discipline and site-based projects of social reform . This volume represents a pathfinding analysis of Freire's work and in many cases it offers an extension of his thinking in order to make it . more applicable to First World contexts . Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard have brought together a divergent group of scholars widely recognized for their contributions to critical theory and critical pedagogy. Themes, addressed include Freire's relation to feminist critique, his . P..hilo.sqph,i�'!l.!.Q2.!� .���. �n �aluatio11. of his ideas . from. pos��odernist and · · postcolonialist perspectives. The collection will be essential reading for anyone interested in the r�qi��l soci�logy qf e4u�ati�n. and the politi�s .{ liberation. ·

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Peter McLaren is Renowned Scholar in Residence at Miami University, Ohio, and Peter Leonard is Professor of Social Work at McG�ll University,

Montreal.

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A critical encounter

London and New York 1qq�

The editors wish to give special thanks to Chris Rojek for his encouragement and advice throughout this project. .

First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published ·in the USA and Canada by Routledge _

29 West 35th Street, N w York, NY 10001 Repri ed 1993 I

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© 1993 Peter McLaren and Peter I:.eonard, selection and editorial matter; each author, the individual chapters. Typeset in Times by J&L Composition Ltd, Filey, North Yorkshire . Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent '

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any fonn or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any infonnation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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CONTENTS

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Notes on the contributors

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Foreword Paulo Freire

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Preface Corne/ West Editors' introduction Absent discourses: Paulo Freire and the dangerous memories of liberation

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1 PAULO FREIRE'S RADICAL DEMOCRATIC HUMANISM Stanley Aronowitz

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2 EDUCATION IS POLITICS: PAULO FREIRE'S CRITICAL PEDAGOGY Ira Shor

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3 KNOWLEDGE UNDER SIEGE: THE BRAZILIAN DEBATE Tomaz Tadeu da Silva and Peter McLaren

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4· DECENTERING PEDAGOGY: CRITICAL LITERACY, RESISTANCE AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY Peter McLaren and Tomaz Tadeu da Silva

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5 FUNCTIONAL LITERACY FROM A FREIREAN POINT OF VIEW · Colin Lankshear

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6 FROM THE PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED TO A LUTA CONTINUA: THE POLITICAL PEDAGOGY OF PAULO FREIRE Carlos Alberto Torres v

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PAULO FREIRE: A CRITICAL ENCOUNTER

SPEAKING ABOUT PAULO FREIRE HOOKS BELL 7 v - THE MAN, HIS WORK bell hooks

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8 CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND STATE WELFARE: INTELLECTUAL ENCOUNTERS WITII FREIRE AND GRAMSCI, 1974-86 Peter Leonard .

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9 A DIALOGUE WITH PAULO FREIRE Paulo Freire and Dona/do Macedo

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10 PAULO FREIRE AND THE POLITICS OF POSTCOLONIALISM Henry A. Giroux

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Name index Subject index

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NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Stanley Aronowitz is a former trade union activist and steelworker.· He is

a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cultural Studies Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His most recent book is The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture and Social Movements. Henry A. Giroux holds the Waterbury Chair Professorship at Pennsylvania

State University. His most recent book is Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education.

bell hooks is the author of Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking

Black, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics and, with Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. She is Professor of English and Women's Studies at Oberlin College. Colin Lankshear is an educational consultant and writer based in

Palmerston North, New Zealand. He has had a continuing involvement in research and small-scale developing projects in Nicaragua since 1984. Formerly with the Education Department at Auckland University, his books include Literacy, Schooling and Revolution and Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis and the Postmodern (with Peter McLaren) . •

Peter Leonard is Professor of Social Work at McGill University, Montreal;

formerly Professor of Applied Social Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. He is author of Personality and Ideology and other books and papers, and General Editor of Critical Texts in Social Work and the Welfare State. He is currently President of the Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work. Donaldo Macedo is Professor of English and Director of the Bilingual

Education and ESL Programs at the University of Massachusetts. He has co-authored, with Paulo Freire, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Peter McLaren is Renowned Scholar in Residence and Director of the

Center for Education and Cultural Studies at Miami University, Ohio. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership . VII • •

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PAULO FREIRE: A CRITICAL ENCOUNTER

He is the author of Schooling as a Ritual Performance, Li/e in Schools and is the co-editor with Henry A. Giroux of Critical Pedagogy, the State, and Cultural Struggle. Professor McLaren is on the international advisory board of the Paulo Freire Institute, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ira Shor is Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City

University of New York. With Paulo Freire, he co-authored A Pedagogy for Liberation. His other books are Critical Teaching and Everyday Life, Empowering Education and Culture Wars: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration, 1969-1991. Tomaz Tadeu da Silva is Professor of Theory of Curriculum in the

Department of Teac�ing and Curriculum at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He also teaches Sociology of Education in the Graduate Program of Education at the same university. His writings on curriculum and the sociology of education have been published in several Brazilian journals of education. He is the editor of Teoria & Educa�iio, and has recently finished writing What Produces and What Reproduces in Education, which is being published in Brazil . Carlos Alberto Torres is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of

Education at the University of California at Los Angeles. Widely published in Spanish, Portuguese and English, he is the author of The Politics of Nonformal Education in Latin America (also published in Portuguese); with Daniel Morales-Gomez, The State, Corporatist Politics, and Educational Policy·making in Mexico; and, most recently, The Church, Society and Hegemony, A Critical Sociology of Religion in Latin America (translated by Richard A. Young). Cornet West is the author of Prophetic Fragments, The American Evasion

of Philosophy and, with bell hooks, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. He is Professor of Religion and Director of the Afro­ American Studies Program at Princeton University . •

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Paulo Freire Translated by Donaldo Macedo

In this impressive volume, Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard have attempted to bring together a group of international scholars and educators in order to reflect upon my work as it has been taken up in various educational and political contexts in England, Africa, New Zealand, Latin America, and the United States. More than a testament to my work alone, however, this volume attempts to grapple with a number of pivotal issues currently engaged by critical scholars who have s�t outj? refin__eaRd deyeJql? a .c�t�c�l .�ec!!lgog):__attentive_to �h_e changiog fac� o_f social , cultural, ender, and global relations. These issues include, but are no means limite o, e manner in which subjectivity is constituted in language; the relationship among discourse, social action, and historical memory; the connection between interpretation and historical practice; and how for1ns of authority may be addressed and justified in the context of feminist pedagogy and practice. In short, this volume represents a foundational inquiry into the relationship between power and pedagogy . I do not wish to direct attention to each of the chapters in turn, but rather to affirm some of the central principles of my work which are reflected therein, and in so doing attempt to clarify some issues which have been raised about my position on the politics of liberation . Over the years, educators such as Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Ira Shor, Carlos Alberto Torres, Donaldo Macedo, and bell hooks,\ among others, have tried to reinvent my writings and research on literacy and pedagogy so that they may be applied to North American struggles for liberation in schools, the w.or�place, the home, and universities and colleges. In my view, this has been exceedingly productive work. A number of these authors have attempted to bring my work into conversa­ tion with European thinkers who represent what has come to be called 'modernist' and 'postmodernist' strains of thought. Although my own work does not specifically address many of the issues contained in the work of those thinkers who are currently assessing the merits of postmodern critical thought, I nevertheless appreciate :1ow much has been accomplished by what Giroux describes as 'critical __

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PAULO FREIRE: A CRITICAL ENCOUNTER

postmodernist thought. ' For example, Giroux's chapter in this volume, and those by McLaren, da Silva, and hooks, have; in their own respective ways , tried to illustrate the ways in which my understanding of subjectivity, experience, and power bear some resemblance to certain strains of poststructuralist thought. In addition, they attempt to reveal how some aspects ()f my work can be appropriated into a�d extended by critical postmodern educational practice, without sacrificing some of modernity's most laudable goals. I agree with Giroux and McLaren when they caution educators that excursions into the discourse of postmodern social theory are often purchased at the price of sacrificing narratives of freedom underwritten by an ethical imagination. I share their concern that current epistemological and