The Wiley Handbook Of Paulo Freire 1119236711, 9781119236719

Citation preview

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire

Wiley Handbooks in Education The Wiley Handbooks in Education offer a capacious and comprehensive overview of higher education in a global context. These state‐of‐the‐art volumes offer a magisterial overview of every sector, subfield and facet of the discipline‐from reform and foundations to K‐12 learning and literacy. The Handbooks also engage with topics and themes dominating today’s educational agenda‐mentoring, technology, adult and continuing education, college access, race and educational attainment. Showcasing the very best scholarship that the discipline has to offer, The Wiley Handbooks in Education will set the intellectual agenda for scholars, students, and researchers for years to come. The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire By Carlos Alberto Torres (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Problem‐Based Learning By Mahnaz Moallem (Editor), Woei Hung (Editor), and Nada Dabbagh (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Early Childhood Care and Education By Christopher Brown (Editor), Mary Benson McMullen (Editor), and Nancy File (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Teaching and Learning By Gene E. Hall (Editor), Donna M. Gollnick (Editor), and Linda F. Quinn (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Violence in Education: Forms, Factors, and Preventions By Harvey Shapiro (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform By Kenneth J. Saltman (Editor) and Alexander Means (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Ethnography of Education By Dennis Beach (Editor), Carl Bagley (Editor), and Sofia Marques da Silva (Editor) The Wiley International Handbook of History Teaching and Learning By Scott Alan Metzger (Editor) and Lauren McArthur Harris (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Christianity and Education By William Jeynes (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Diversity in Special Education By Marie Tejero Hughes (Editor) and Elizabeth Talbott (Editor) The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Leadership By Duncan Waite (Editor) and Ira Bogotch (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Social Studies Research By Meghan McGlinn Manfra (Editor) and Cheryl Mason Bolick (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of School Choice By Robert A. Fox (Editor) and Nina K. Buchanan (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Home Education By Milton Gaither (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Cognition and Assessment: Frameworks, Methodologies, and Applications By Andre A. Rupp (Editor) and Jacqueline P. Leighton (Editor) The Wiley Handbook of Learning Technology By Nick Rushby (Editor) and Dan Surry (Editor)

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres

This edition first published 2019 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Carlos Alberto Torres to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Editorial Office 101 Station Landing, Medford, MA 02155, USA For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Name: Torres, Carlos Alberto, editor. Title: The Wiley handbook of Paulo Freire / edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. Other titles: Handbook of Paulo Freire Description: Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley-Blackwell, 2019. | Series: Wiley handbooks in education |   Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019003175 (print) | LCCN 2019006625 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119236740   (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119236764 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119236719 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Freire, Paulo, 1921–1997. | Education–Philosophy. |  Education–Brazil–Philosophy. Classification: LCC LB880.F732 (ebook) | LCC LB880.F732 W55 2019 (print) |   DDC 370.11/5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003175 Cover Design: Wiley Set in 10/12pt Warnock by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

v

Contents Notes on Contributors  ix Foreword by Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO for The Wiley Handbook on Paulo Freire  xvii Part I 

History and Context of a Global Public Intellectual  1

Introduction: Paulo Freire and the Dialectics of the Local and the Global  3 Carlos Alberto Torres Part II 

From Recife to the World: Paulo Freire, Pilgrim of Utopia  31

1 Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey  33 Moacir Gadotti 2 Paulo Freire: Education, Culture, and the University: A Historical Memory from More Than Fifty Years Ago  51 Carlos Rodrigues Brandão 3 Paulo Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy  67 Bruno B. Costa 4 Wake Up and Dream!: A Polyphonic Contextualization of Paulo Freire  83 Peter Lownds 5 Finding Paulo Freire in Chile  99 Marcela Gajardo 6 Paulo Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future  121 Adriana Puiggrós

vi

Contents

7 Paulo Freire Working in and from Europe  133 Luiza Cortesão 8 Freire and Africa: A Focus and Impact on Education  149 N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid 9 Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia: The Cases of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea  167 Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma 10 Freire in China  191 Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma 11 Reading Freire in the Middle East: Vision 2030 and the Reimagining of Education in Saudi Arabia  199 Jevdet Rexhepi 12 Paulo Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education  221 Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau Part III  Freire and the Epistemology of the Global South: Intersections and Relationships  239 13 Rereading Freire and Habermas: Philosophical Anthropology and Reframing Critical Pedagogy and Educational Research in the Neoliberal Anthropocene  241 Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres 14 Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire  275 Ratna Ghosh 15 Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News: Insights from John Dewey and Paulo Freire  291 John Rogers 16 Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire  305 Peter Mayo 17 Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Re-Examined  321 Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah 18 Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”  335 Afonso Celso Scocuglia

Contents

Part IV  Class, Gender, Race, Religion, the State, and a “Missing Chapter” in Freire’s Oeuvre  357 19 Paulo Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education  359 Michael W. Apple 20 The Connections Between Education and Power in the Liberatory Feminist Classroom: Appreciating and Critiquing Freire  379 Sondra Hale 21 Engaging Gender and Freire: From Discoursal Vigilance to Concrete Possibilities for Inclusion  389 Lauren Ila Misiaszek 22 A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory  417 Daniel G. Solorzano 23 Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion: Toward an Understanding of Freirean Religiosity  431 Cristobal Madero S. J. 24 Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”: Power, the State, and Education in the Global Age  445 Raymond Allen Morrow 25 Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed  463 Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

Part V  Paulo Freire and the Construction of Democratic Education: What Is Freire’s Currency for Educational Reform?  489 26 Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy: Finding a Way Back to Hope  491 Sonia Nieto 27 Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education  505 José Eustáquio Romão 28 Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach  521 Peter Roberts

vii

viii

Contents

29 Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning  535 Peter Mayo 30 Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue  551 John D. Holst 31 Fertilizing the Unusual (The Praxis of a Connective Organization)  565 Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto Index  585

ix

Notes on Contributors Ângela Biz Antunes, PhD in education, Faculty of Education University of São Paulo. She is a collaborator in the following books: Paulo Freire: uma biobibliografia (1996), Educação de Jovens e Adultos: a experiência do MOVA‐SP (1996) and Autonomia da escola: princípios e propostas (1997); and author of Aceita um conselho: como organizar os colegiados escolares (2002) and Educação cidadã, educação integral: fundamentos e práticas (2010), with Paulo Roberto Padilha. Currently she is the pedagogical director of the Paulo Freire Institute, São Paulo. Michael W. Apple is John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin and Professorial Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has written extensively on the relations between knowledge and power and on the politics of educational reform. Among his recent books are Knowledge, Power, and Education; Can Education Change Society?; and The Struggle for Democracy in Education: Lessons From Social Realities. Shigeru Asanuma earned a PhD at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison in 1986 and is currently professor at Rissho University in Japan. He was previously associate professor at St. Luke’s of College of Nursing, University of Nagoya, and professor at Tokyo Gakugei University. His work focuses on forming curriculum theories through phenomenology and critical thought. N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba is professor of African/Diaspora and Comparative/International Education, social institutions, and gender study in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University. She is president of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, coeditor (with Emefa Takyi Amoako) of Re‐visioning Education in Africa: Ubuntu‐Inspired Education for Humanity (New York: Palgrave, 2018) and founding editor of Global Comparative Education: Journal of the WCCES. Carlos Rodrigues Brandão was born in Rio de Janeiro. When he began to participate in the Movimento de Educação de Base (MEB) (Movement of Base Education) in January 1964, he got connected with culture and popular education. Since then, he has participated as adviser and author of books and writings on popular culture and popular education. Among them are the following books: O que é Método Paulo Freire (1981), O que é Educação

x

Notes on Contributors

popular (1982), Educação Popular na Escola Cidadã (2000), and A educação como cultura (2003). With undergraduate education in psychology and a master’s and PhD in anthropology, he has been professor in the Graduate Program of Anthropology of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas. At that university, he has collaborated with GEPEJA, Grupo de Pesquisa de Educação de Jovens e Adultos (Group of Research on Education of Youth and Adults). Martin Carnoy is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education and Economics at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and codirector of the Lemann Center for Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazil. Chen‐Wei Chang is an associate research fellow in the Research Center for Education Systems and Policy at National Academy for Educational Research in Taiwan (R.O.C.). Her research interests include international education, global citizenship education, and sociology of education. Nandini Chatterjee Singh is senior national officer at UNESCO MGIEP. She is a cognitive neuroscientist who uses behavior and functional neuroimaging to study learning and the brain. She leads the Rethinking Learning program at MGIEP and is passionate about translating neuroscientific evidence on learning and education from laboratory to classroom. She is currently leading a program to integrate socioemotional learning paradigms in classrooms using interactive digital technologies. Luiza Cortesão is an emeritus professor at the University of Porto‐ Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Chairperson of Paulo Freire Institute of Portugal, member of the Center for Research and Intervention in Education of FPCE UP, having worked as a consultant for UNESCO and other European agencies in Portuguese‐speaking countries. She is involved in national and international projects in the field of education/intercultural relations. José Cossa is a faculty member at Vanderbilt University and at Walden University. He holds a PhD from Loyola University, Chicago in cultural and educational policy studies with a focus on comparative and international education. He is the author of Power, Politics, and Higher Education: International Regimes, Local Governments, and Educational Autonomy. He conducts research on higher education, power dynamic, modernity, decolonializing, debordering, deperipherizing, and decentering the world, and global and social justice. Bruno B. Costa is adjunct professor at the University of the State of Mato Grosso (Unemat), Brazil. His research centers on philosophy of education, with emphasis on Freirean pedagogy, critical pedagogy, popular culture and education, social pedagogy, Brazilian and Latin American philosophy, liberation philosophy, and teaching philosophy and decolonial studies. Recently published works include the transition/transitionality (society) entry in the Paulo Freire Encyclopedia. Sonia Couto has a PhD in education and her undergraduate education was in letters and pedagogy. She is the author of Método Paulo Freire, a reinvenção de um legado (2011), Princípios curriculares orientadores para a EJA (2009) and books on didactics. She is a member of the Comissão Nacional de Alfabetização e Educação de Jovens e Adultos and coordinator of the Centro de Referência Paulo Freire.

Notes on Contributors

Anantha K. Duraiappah took the position as inaugural director of the UNESCO MGIEP in 2014. A science‐policy pacesetter, with over 33 years’ experience, he now plays a key role in positioning UNESCO MGIEP as a leading research institute on education for peace, sustainable development, and global citizenship. He is presently focusing on strengthening the science‐policy guide in education by exploring how the neurosciences of learning can contribute to developing emotional and intellectual intelligence through innovative digital pedagogies Moacir Gadotti has a PhD in science of education from the Université de Genève and Doctor Honoris causa from the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. He is professor emeritus, Universidade de São Paulo, and honorary president, Instituto Paulo Freire. Professor, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Universidade Católica de São Paulo, and Campinas. Among his books are História das ideias pedagógicas (1993), Pedagogia da Práxis (1995) Paulo Freire: uma biobibliografia (1996), Pedagogia da Terra (2001) and Boniteza de um sonho (2011).—www.gadotti.org.br:8080/jspui Marcela Gajardo is senior scholar and researcher at FLACSO‐Chile. She holds an MA in sociology (University of Essex., England) and a graduate degree in educational sciences (Catholic University, Chile). She is cofounder and former director of PREAL and Visiting scholar at Harvard University (2015–2016), has also worked as senior advisor for multilateral and bilateral cooperation agencies, and published extensively on education and development. In the late 1960s she was one of Paulo Freire’s assistants at ICIRA in Chile. Ratna Ghosh is Distinguished James McGill Professor and MacDonald Professor of Education at McGill University and was formerly dean of education. Her publications on multiculturalism and social justice issues in education (e.g., Education and the Politics of Difference, 2013; Redefining Multicultural Education, 2014) have earned her honors in the Orders of Canada (C.M.), Quebec(O.Q.), and Montreal (OOM). She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (F.R.S.C.) and is a fellow of The World Academy (TWAS), Trieste, Italy. Anamika Gupta is a national programme officer at UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. She brings more than 7 years of transdisciplinary experience from the fields of communication, peace building and conflict transformation, gender and human rights education into her current work of leveraging innovative digital pedagogies for transformative learning. Currently she is involved in creating digital content on global issues to build socioemotional competencies in learners. Sondra Hale is a research professor in anthropology and gender studies, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research is in the Middle East and Africa, especially Sudan, with emphases on women’s activism, conflict, and grassroots movements. She has written Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism and the State, three coedited volumes, and numerous articles and chapters. She has headed three women’s studies departments and is an award‐winning teacher.

xi

xii

Notes on Contributors

John D. Holst is an associate professor of lifelong learning and adult education at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA. He is author of Social Movements, Civil Society, and Radical Adult Education (2002), coauthor along with Stephen Brookfield of the award‐winning book Radicalizing Learning: Adult Education for a Just World (2010), and coeditor along with Nico Pizzolato of Antonio Gramsci: A Pedagogy to Change the World (2017). Zhicheng Huang is professor of the Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai, China and vice chairman of China Association of Comparative Education. At ECNU he directs the Center for Research on Inclusive Education and the Center for Research on Intercultural Education and Communication. He was formerly director of ECNU’s Institute of International and Comparative Education and Curriculum and Instruction Department, and vice dean of the Faculty of Education. Peter Lownds is an educator, poet, translator, and actor who has been a devotee of Afro‐Brazilian culture since serving in the Peace Corps in Recife and Olinda from 1966 to 1968. He is one of the founders of the Paulo Freire Institute at UCLA. His doctoral dissertation, In The Shadow of Freire: Popular Educators and Literacy in Northeast Brazil is available in its entirety at www.unifreire.org Qing Ma is a PhD candidate in Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. Cristobal Madero S. J. is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Education Policy and School Improvement at Alberto Hurtado University, the Jesuit University in Santiago de Chile. He received a PhD in education policy from the University of California at Berkeley, a ThM from Boston College, and a BA in sociology. His research interests include the history of education; the organization of Catholic high school; and the role of motivation, incentives, and a sense of calling in high school teacher formation. His work has been published in the International Studies in Catholic Education, the International Journal of Christianity & Education, Educational Administration Quarterly, the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, and the Harvard Review of Latin America. Cristobal Madero is a Chilean Jesuit. Peter Mayo is professor at the University of Malta and is the author of numerous books including Liberating Praxis. Paulo Freire’s Legacy for Radical Education and Politics (Praeger, 2004), Hegemony and Education under Neoliberalism. Insights from Gramsci (Routledge, 2015), and Saggi di Pedagogia Critica. Oltre il Neoliberalismo (with Paolo Vittoria, Società Editrice Fiorentina, Florence, 2017). He is coeditor of Postcolonial Directions in Education and book series editor or coeditor for Bill‐Sense’s “International Issues in Adult Education,” Palgrave‐Macmillan’s “Postcolonial Studies in Education” and Bloomsbury Academic’s “Critical Education.” Greg William Misiaszek, PhD, is an assistant professor at Beijing Normal University, Theories of Education Institute, and the assistant director of the Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA. His current work focuses on critical analysis of environmental pedagogies, with specific emphasis on ecopedagogy, through theories of globalizations, citizenships, race, gender, migration, Indigenous

Notes on Contributors

issues, and media, among others. His recent book on this analysis is Educating the Global Environmental Citizen: Understanding Ecopedagogy in Local and Global Contexts. Lauren Ila Misiaszek, PhD, is associate professor, Institute of International and Comparative Education, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University; secretary general, World Council of Comparative Education Societies; assistant director, Paulo Freire Institute, UCLA; and founding member, International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis. Lauren, a 10th generation Appalachian, has a long history of work around the themes of the chapter across the Americas and, more recently, in China. Raymond Allen Morrow is emeritus professor, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada. His research areas include (a) post‐Marxist conception of critical social theory grounded in a critical theory of methodology;(b) with Carlos Alberto Torres (UCLA) applying such social theory to educational reproduction and transformation from a comparative perspective; and (c) democratic theory, democratic transition and modernization, especially in relation to Latin American postcolonial debates about Indigenous knowledge and subaltern groups, especially in Mexico. https://sites.ualberta.ca/~rmorrow/research.html Sonia Nieto is professor emerita of language, literacy and culture at the School of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst. With experience teaching students at all levels and from many socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, Nieto is one of the leading authors and teachers in the field of multiculturalism. She has won several awards in her field, most notably the 1997 Multicultural Educator of the Year award from the National Association for Multicultural Education, the 2005 Educator of the Year Award from the National Council of Teachers of English, and honorary doctorates from Lesley University (1999), Bridgewater State College (2004), and DePaul University (2007) Paulo Roberto Padilha holds a PhD in education from the Universidade de São Paulo. His undergraduate education was in accounting and music. He is pedagogical director of the Instituto Paulo Freire and general coordinator of the EaD Freiriana. He is the author of Planejamento dialógico (2001), Currículo intertranscultural (2004), and Educar em todos os Cantos (2007). A composer, he has recorded the CDs Educar em todos os cantos (2007), Velho amigo (2014), and Coisas do amor (2016). Francisca Pini has a PhD in social politics and social movements, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. She is pedagogical director of the Paulo Freire Institute and visiting professor of UNIFESP/Campus Baixada Santista. She worked on the Plano Estadual de Educação em Direitos Humanos (State Plan for Human Rights Education) of the State of São Paulo (2017). She is a member of the Comitê Nacional de Educação em Direitos Humanos, author of Educação, participação política e direitos humanos (2011), and co‐organizer of the Serviço Social no Sistema Socioeducativo do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo 2017). Adriana Puiggrós is consultant professor at Buenos Aires University. Her awards and honors include Trajectory Award Escuela de Altos Estudios (UNAM), an

xiii

xiv

Notes on Contributors

honorary doctorate from La Plata University, first prize for an essay from the Convenio Andrés Bello, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Scholarship. She acted as secretary of the Buenos Aires Province Government and National Congress member. Her numerous publications include “Imperialism, Neoliberalism and Education,” From Simón Rodríguez to Paulo Freire, and “Adiós Sarmiento. Public Education, Church and Market.” Jevdet Rexhepi is assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Rexhepi has examined the nexus of global trends and higher education in a developing postcommunist nation (Globalization and Higher Education in Albania, 2013), and he continues to explore the multiple overlapping effects and implications of globalization and conflict on the human domain across the post‐Ottoman space. Peter Roberts is professor of education and director of the Educational Theory, Policy and Practice Research Hub at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. His primary areas of scholarship are philosophy of education and educational policy studies. His most recent books include Education and the Limits of Reason: Reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nabokov (with Herner Saeverot, 2018), Happiness, Hope, and Despair: Rethinking the Role of Education (2016), Education, Ethics and Existence: Camus and the Human Condition (with Andrew Gibbons and Richard Heraud, 2015), Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia (with John Freeman‐Moir, 2013), The Virtues of Openness: Education, Science, and Scholarship in the Digital Age (with Michael Peters, 2011), Paulo Freire in the 21st Century: Education, Dialogue, and Transformation (2010), and Neoliberalism, Higher Education and Research (with Michael Peters, 2008). John Rogers is a professor of education at UCLA where he directs the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access and serves as the faculty director of Center X, which houses UCLA’s Teacher Education and Principal Leadership Programs. Rogers is a Dewey scholar who studies the relationship among democracy, education, and different forms of inequality. He has written widely on democratic participation and community organizing as strategies for advancing educational equity and civic renewal. José Eustáquio Romão is director founder of the Paulo Freire Institute, general secretary of the World Council of Paulo Freire Institutes, and professor and director of the Post‐Graduate Program on Education of Universidade Nove de Julho (PPGE‐Uninove). Afonso Celso Scocuglia is professor at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba (UFPB) and visiting professor at the Universidade Estadual de Paraiba. He has a PhD in history, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, and postdoctoral studies Université de Lyon, France, and postdoctoral studies in philosophy of education, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP. He was formerly Secretary of State of Education in Paraiba, Brazil (2011–2012). He is a member of the national Commission on Literacy and Education of Youth and Adults and author of many books on Freire and related themes. Daniel G. Solorzano is a professor of social science and comparative education at the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching and research interests

Notes on Contributors

include critical race theory in education; racial microaggressions; critical race spatial analysis; and critical race pedagogy. Dr. Solorzano has authored over 100 research articles, book chapters, and research reports on issues related to educational access and equity for underrepresented student populations and communities in the United States. Rebecca Tarlau is an assistant professor of education and labor and employment relations at The Pennsylvania State University, affiliated with the Lifelong Learning and Adult Education program and the Center for Global Workers’ Rights. Carlos Alberto Torres is Distinguished Professor, UCLA, UNESCO Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education. His research has focused on culture and power; the interrelationships of economic, political, and cultural spheres; and education as site of conflict and struggle. His publications include First Freire, Early Writings on Social Justice Education (2014); Global Citizenship Education and the Crisis of Multiculturalism: Comparative Perspectives (with Massimiliano Tarozzi, 2016); and Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education (2017). Yusef Waghid is distinguished professor of philosophy of education at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He is coauthor of the latest books: Teaching and Learning as a Pedagogic Pilgrimage: Cultivating Faith, Hope and Wonder (London: Routledge, 2018, with Nuraan Davids); and Rupturing African Philosophy of Teaching and Learning (New York & London: Palgrave‐ MacMillan, 2018, with Faiq Waghid & Zayd Waghid). He is also editor‐in‐chief of South African Journal of Higher Education and principal editor of Citizenship Teaching and Learning. Sung Sang Yoo is an associate professor in the education department and director of Global Education Program at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. Having been interested in education development in global and local level, he has published books and papers in both Korean and English including Popular Education in Asia: Paulo Freire’s Influences, Conditions of Learning, Literacy and Development in Korea, and Development as Education (forthcoming).

xv

xvii

Foreword by Audrey Azoulay, Director‐General of UNESCO for The Wiley Handbook on Paulo Freire 2018 Brazilian educator, philosopher, and historian, Paulo Freire, is renowned for his visionary ideas as well as his activism for human dignity and justice. A pioneer of “critical pedagogy”, he contended that education is the foundation of all freedoms and that education alone can give individuals the power to shape their own destinies. His important intellectual contribution addresses a question at the heart of UNESCO’s work: What is education and what is it for? Defining the purpose and relevance of education is as important now as in 1968 when his seminal text Pedagogy of the Oppressed was first published. This publication brings together eminent researchers to examine the impact of Freire’s work across the world, to reinterpret his work for our contemporary period, and to explore directions for future educational reform. In recent years, the philosophical foundations of Freire’s work have gained traction at an international level, particularly through the recognition of the importance of Global Citizenship Education, as part of the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. Global Citizenship Education equips learners with the skills, competencies, and values they need to solve the social, political, economic, and environmental challenges of our time. UNESCO remains committed to a vision of education for building peace, eradicating poverty, and driving sustainable development and is expanding the transformative power of education through our Global Citizenship Education program. During his lifetime, Freire collaborated frequently with UNESCO to promote the organization’s educational activities, including as a jury member for UNESCO’s International Literacy Prizes. He himself also received the 1986 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for his tireless work and unflagging devotion to providing literacy training and education for those most in need. This collection of essays is a great tribute to his lasting legacy in shaping education as a means to improve the human condition. I would like to thank all of the

xviii

Foreword by Audrey Azoulay, Director‐General of UNESCO for The Wiley Handbook on Paulo Freire

distinguished scholars who have contributed to this publication and particularly Dr. Carlos Alberto Torres, a UNESCO Chair, for coordinating this ambitious project. I hope that these thought‐provoking and inspiring essays will continue to arouse the same hope and critical questioning that Paulo Freire has come to be known for, in pursuit of liberation, dignity, and justice, without which humankind cannot fully realize its potential. Audrey Azoulay

1

Part I History and Context of a Global Public Intellectual

3

Introduction Paulo Freire and the Dialectics of the Local and the Global Carlos Alberto Torres

This introduction situates the life and work of Paulo Freire in the context of the multiple analyses, appraisals, and insights that are presented in 31 chapters plus the introduction of this handbook. Likewise, the introduction offers clues of the narrative thread running through the different chapters. The work has been done over 3 years, with a large number of experts on Freire collaborating with the original idea: to bring a new perspective on reinventing Freire 50 years after the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Furthermore, the authors explore the currency of Freire’s contribution for social theory, educational reform, and democratic education. The authors of this handbook represent different life stories, genders, ethnicities, languages, nationalities, continents, nations, regions, religions, academic experiences, specialties, theories, and methodologies. All together they created a crucial interdisciplinary work in terms of fields of studies as well as analytical and normative premises. Accordingly, all of them found resonance in the voice, theories, methods, and praxis of Paulo Freire. They decided to write, with complete autonomy, a chapter for the book on a generic topic that I initially suggested, given, from their own individual or collective perspective, the orientation, nuances, and articulation of the topic in its final form as a chapter. A message emerges from the Wiley Handbook on Freire: In pedagogy, today, we can be with Freire or against Freire but not without Freire.

History and Context of a Global Public Intellectual The violence of the oppressed is not violence, but a legitimate response; it is the affirmation of a being who no longer fears freedom and who knows that it is not a gift, but a conquest.1 Public intellectuals are willing and able, through their research and teaching, their public work in mass media, and their analytical and symbolic work, to

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

4

Carlos Alberto Torres

construct narratives that defend and justify specific models of social order, social governance, and even interpretations of history. In the case of Freire, it is imperative to situate his contributions from his inception into the domains of education in Northeast Brazil, to Latin America in the 1960s, and his reception in the rest of the world. The 1960s impelled fabulous and explosive projects in which the vision that everything was possible, from individual transformation to revolution, reached paroxysmal proportions. This phenomenon seized Latin America and many other parts of the world. In that period as well a very important Latin American literary phenomenon had an impact on the wider world. Known as the Latin American Boom, young writers such as Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Marquez among others created original literary works that for many branded forever Latin America as the land of magic realism. Yet the boom was much more than that (Kerr & Herrero‐Olaizola, 2015). Latin America was a laboratory for a new society. Public intellectuals like Freire creatively developed different theoretical perspectives that melded and converged into a single purpose of radical social transformation. These notions of radical change were founded on a group of theories and politico‐philosophical, sociological, and theological orientations, which defined the era’s spiritual path as daring, libertarian, and creative. It was Herbert Marcuse who suggested that Hegel’s use of the German neologism Volksgeist (spirit of nation)2 included a nation’s spirit as well as its history, its religion, and its level of political participation. The Volksgeist of Latin America in the 1960s had direct links to revolution and the transgression of established norms. Its immediate by‐products were critical thinking, original scientific innovation and utopian politics. This Volksgeist was born and raised in a wealth of ancient traditions and millennial cultures that inhabit this diverse continent whose Indigenous, African, Levantine, and European roots protruded through the landscape and shaped the social contradictions in this bronco continent. Latin America was also the fertile ground of distinctive academic and political contributions in the form of theories that sought to explain development (or the lack thereof ) and, at the same time, pushed for the transformation of its reality. Among these was dependency theory, created in the 1950s–1960s in Chilean academic circles, which burst into bloom with the publication of a now classic book, Dependency and Development in Latin America by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto (1979) that spread throughout the continent, articulating one of the most systematic critiques of the traditional capitalist model of economic underdevelopment and, by extension, to theories of democracy.3 Although Dependency and Development was a groundbreaking book, many other authors and their works are also worth mentioning: André Gunder Frank (1969) and Theotonio dos Santos (1978); the critical works of the United Nations Economic Commission of Latin America (ECLA or CEPAL in Spanish)4; Pablo Gonzalez Casanova (1969); and Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1981) to name just a few scholars who made fundamental contributions by examining and explaining Latin American underdevelopment in terms of the exploitation given the context of capitalism center‐periphery and internal colonialism of the region.

Introduction

We cannot forget in this brief racconto the extraordinary contribution of Raúl Prebisch (Love, 1980 , pp. 45–72) with his theory of unequal exchange that influenced the work of many other noted scholars (with their own appraisal of course) including Arghiri Emmanuel, André Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein, Johan Galtung, and Samir Amin as well as many developmental programs of Latin American governments in the 1950s and 1960s (Love, 1980). Prebisch was the executive director of ECLA and in 1950 released a seminal document titled The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (Archivo Cepal).5 Nor can we forget Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the human embodiment of that period’s revolutionary spirit both in his life and his death, whose speech in Punta del Este, Uruguay at the plenary session of the Inter‐American Economic and Social Council on August 16, 1961, represented the most ferocious and articulate rejection of the North American development model, exemplified by the neocolonial stance of the Alliance for Progress. After his death in 1967, Guevara became a model and icon of social transformation in the region and elsewhere. His face was emblematic of the struggles of the New Left, against the traditional communist and socialist parties (the Old Left) that were seen by a new generation as the product of the Cold War accommodating to the establishment. The year 1968 was the culmination of the New Left strand ready to start a new path of social struggles in Paris as well as in Prague, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and many other places (Gould, 2009). Along with the criticism of these development models, a new perspective called Liberation Philosophy was expounded in academic circles by Latin American philosophers, many of them graduates of European universities. Prominent among these was the Argentinian and Mexican theologian, philosopher, and historian, Enrique Dussel (1973).6 Freire was without doubt one of the precursors not only of the theology of liberation but also of the philosophy of liberation, though originally filtered through the developmentalist lenses of the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileros (ISEB)—see Gadotti, Chapter 1 in this volume. The philosophical model of the philosophy of liberation had analytical hinges forged by Christian personalism, existentialism, and phenomenology but incorporated a Marxist perspective as well, questioning the notion of “alterity” in Western reasoning and attempting to incorporate the mores of traditional Latin American cultures as options for the articulation of a more rational and generous civilizational model than the patronizing, racist, male chauvinist, solipsistic, ethnocentric, and self‐congratulatory European versions. Liberation philosophy was an ideational precursor of current theories of postcolonialism, in the work also of Leopoldo Zea (1969, 1974), Rodolfo Kush (1977), Arturo Andrés Roig (1981) and Augusto Salazar Bondi (1969, 1975) to name just a few scholars. At the same time, it is clear that intimately attached to this critique of European philosophy, social theory, and theology, this rethinking of the history of ideas from a Latin American cultural ethos and politico‐economic perspective also recognized and brought up to date critical modernist European models that did not stem from racist, ethnocentric, or anthropocentric bases, by deconstructing and unpacking them in diverse ways. This epistemological, theoretical and

5

6

Carlos Alberto Torres

political Aufheben7 was able to recognize and celebrate the presence of diverse emancipatory experiences in the social struggles of Europe and in the Western world, emerging as what we called critical modernism (Morrow & Torres, 1995). Without the perspective of liberation philosophy, education for liberation would be unimaginable. This is also true of the problem of multiculturalism in Latin America, one of the great themes that emerged at the time, which was tied to the postcolonial perspective that permeates the work of Frantz Fanon (1961, 2004) and Albert Memmi (1965), born in Martinique and Tunisia respectively but educated in Europe, two intellectuals who exerted a powerful influence on Paulo Freire’s thinking when he was writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Apart from the influence of the debates and intellectuals of that era on Freire, he imbibed mainly European sources, as has been noted and sometimes criticized by various scholars (Torres, 2001). One has only to peruse his conversation with Myles Horton, a great North American civil rights activist, to discover one of Freire’s customary acknowledgements of influential writers: I remember, for example, how much I was helped by reading Frantz Fanon … I was writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the book was almost finished when I read Fanon [The Wretched of the Earth]. I had to rewrite the book in order to begin to quote Fanon so that I could cite him … I was influenced by Fanon without knowing it. I had different cases like this … Fanon was one. Albert Memmi who wrote a fantastic book, The Colonizer and the Colonized, was the second. The third one who “influenced” me without knowing it was the famous Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who wrote a beautiful, fantastic book, Thought and Language. When I read him for the first time, I became frightened and happy because of the things I was reading. The other influence is Gramsci … When I meet some books—I say “meet” because some books are like persons … I remake my practice theoretically. I become better able to understand the theory inside of my action. (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 36) The themes of authenticity and truth, along with the search for the ethos of the Latin American people, articulated the principles of the philosophy of liberation. It is a time‐honored practice of the philosophical traditions to honor the discipline while searching for a break with tradition, beginning by including the social actors’ emotions and feelings, the traditions of struggle, the social practices and cultures of the peoples of the region in the analysis. Moreover, much of what constituted the lives of Paulo Freire and so many other Latin American intellectuals at that time is related to the nascent theology of liberation, in Catholic as well as Protestant circles, within the region.8 This theological perspective aligned its liturgical, canonical, and moral resources with the idea of the “preferential option for the poor” as the origin and zenith of the churches’ religious endeavors, whether they were places where people worshipped or so‐called “base communities” where they led marginal but strong spiritual lives in the heart of the city, in the favelas, in the countryside (Berryman, 1987; Gutierrez, 1973). This was a theological option in clear contradistinction to the “organized religion as civilization” doctrine of the

Introduction

Spanish and Portuguese conquest, a model of religion where the churches are part of the power structure, intimately allied with the armed forces and ruling elite sectors (Mignone, 1988; Torres, 1992). In other words, when followers of liberation theology put the people at the archetypal center of religious practice and made them the missionary focus of the Latin American churches, they clearly opposed the theology of oppression practiced and supported since time immemorial by the Latin American elite (Berryman, 1987; Gutierrez, 1973; Hinkelammert, 1977). A historical example of this mortal quid pro quo are the intimate relations of the Argentine military dictatorship and the Argentine Catholic Church under the command of Archbishop Antonio Caggiano in the brutal years of the last Argentine military dictatorship (1976–1983). Their church and state alliance condoned the assassination of priests, nuns, and progressive laity. They ignored the assassination of Bishop Enrique Angelelli of La Rioja disguised as a car accident. Bishop Angelelli was committed to Liberation Theology as was father Carlos Mugica, my professor of theology at the Jesuit Universidad del Salvador, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, murdered as he left his neighborhood parish after celebrating mass.9 A tragic epoch of renewed regional authoritarianism ensued in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in Argentina, where military police and chaplains rubbed shoulders in clandestine redoubts, with armed forces chaplains supporting the torturers but perhaps even consoling the victims who were “disappeared” (Dussel, 1979; Hinkelammert, 1977; Mignone, 1988; Torres, 1992). Freire made his critique of the official church explicit when he says: “As the Word is made flesh, it is only possible to approach it by way of man. That is why theology’s point of departure has to be anthropology. In this way, a utopian theology must be associated with cultural action for liberation by means of which men need to substitute their ingenuous belief in God as an alienating myth with a new concept: God as a historical presence who does not in any way impede man from creating his own story of liberation” (Torres, 2005, p. 137). It is no surprise that Freire, born to a Catholic mother and a Spiritist father, conceded the prophetic functions of annunciation and denunciation to the revolutionary church and to the seminaries where the seed of this new church gestated and bloomed. This is a theme that remained alive in Freire’s thinking from the beginning to the end of his life. According to Cristobal Madero, S. J., Chapter 23 in this volume, Freire’s Catholic formation influenced his s­ cholarships in ways that have not been sufficiently studied in the social sciences; his chapter provides considerable insight around the topics of Freire’s Catholicism and its impact on the pedagogy of the liberation. In a letter to a student of theology Freire wrote that “seminaries, in order to become voices in favor of modifying the social structure, must quickly become utopian centers by denouncing dehumanizing structures and announcing that they cannot be committed to anything but structures in which men can be more loving, smiling, singing, creative, and relaxed. Only in this way can seminaries become prophetic and speak authentically of faith” (Torres, 2005, p. 137). It is remarkable that, despite the liberating impetus of Freire’s emancipatory rationality, his language succumbs to the age‐old structural categories of Castilian

7

8

Carlos Alberto Torres

Spanish and Portuguese where “man” is the pronominal referent rather than “human being.” Feminism and feminist critique, which Freire took into consideration and generally accepted, especially in his work in the United States, lent enormous support to his intellectual growth (see Sondra Hale and Lauren Misiaszek, Chapters 20 and 21 in this volume). Even today, it constitutes one of the most important analytical turning points for rethinking popular education, education for the practice of freedom and (Latin American) emancipatory movements in a revolutionary way (Jones & Torres, 2010). In fact, bell hooks, one of the most influential African‐American feminists, created a critical but not unappreciative synthesis of Freire and feminism (hooks, 1994). Paulo Freire himself is a representative of popular education, an educational paradigm born in Spain to socialist and anarchist ideologies emerged as the archetype of public education with open access for unlettered members of the nineteenth‐century working class (Puiggrós, 1984; Gadotti & Torres, 1993). This model migrated to Latin America, embodied in the wave of European immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century as “popular education” with a radical orientation and explicit political goals. In Argentina, the term educación popular was originally appropriated by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (who was president of Argentina in 1868–1874) (Sarmiento, 1961), to nominate free public education (Jones & Torres, 2010; Morrow & Torres, 2002; Torres, 2017). The presence of Freire in Latin America is presented by Adriana Puiggrós in Chapter 6 in this volume. But the explosive conditions of Latin America civil society were not an exception. During the 1960s revolutions of expectations occurred all over the world, marvelous inventions were created, and sexual ethics morphed into a drug‐enhanced quest for free love and emotional nirvana. The era’s soundtrack featured utopian and romantic songs by the Beatles, especially John Lennon’s anarchist anthem, “Imagine.” As the last bastion of conservative culture, public education had to cope with syndical grievances and widespread social restlessness. Meanwhile, the Cold War turned hot in Southeast Asia, engendering harder political schisms and revolutionary resistance throughout the world. Paulo Freire and his fellow “pilgrim of the obvious,” Ivan Illich, forged a progressive path that left an epochal mark on Latin American education. Each educational iconoclast had his own field of competency, his laboratory of regional insertion and ideological localization (Freire in Brazil and then Chile, Illich in Mexico) and distinct but tangential specializations: Freire predicated the expansion of consciousness and recognition of human cultural contribution whereas Illich recommended outright abandonment of authoritarian schools. Their claims ultimately crossed borders to become urgent, cogent letters to the world (Aparicio, 2004). From the 1960s until his death in 1997, Freire was recognized as a brilliant and articulate proponent of emancipatory education for people living at the social margins, an education that would motivate egalitarian democracy in a world where traditions and the environment would be preserved along with progress in a permanent revolution of expectations and structures; a world where new generations would be cared for and the older ones invited to exercise utopian

Introduction

sensitivity while looking back on their achievements and failures. In this way, Freire fervently believed, together we could create a world where it would be easier to love (1972).10 One may consider Freire an organic intellectual a là Gramsci. Organic intellectuals create the possibility not to construct organic knowledge per se, that is knowledge that is directly at the service of a certain social category such as subaltern knowledge, because there are several categories of subaltern in contradictory alliances, but knowledge that ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

connects emotionally to certain sets of values that were under attack by dominant hegemony, hence constructing a counterhegemonic approach; requires a rigorous understanding of the principles of operation of the society in which knowledge takes place but do not subsume that understanding to the hegemonic leadership of the society, or the official knowledge, hence opening up a range of critical thinking; avoids assuming that although the power that articulates hegemony is in fact powerful, it doesn’t necessarily rule without constraints (e.g., of conflicts and contradictions inside the power ruling block) or without resistance (e.g., actions, symbolic and practical from political parties, social movements, communities, and individuals) in which the overall confrontation in society takes place; takes Gramsci’s aphorism, “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” to a new level, the level of linking critique to possibility; assumes that ideology takes place at all levels, in all domains, in all circumstances in which social and human interest places a role; considers the politics of culture a domain in which the constitution of consciousness and the ability to transform reality given the constant struggle for meaning‐making, for control of goods and services, and for grand designs of the society as well as for the definition of the “good life” are part and parcel of education and culture as sites of confrontations and conflict, or what has been defined as a contested terrain (Arnove, Torres, & Franz, 2013); joins a specific tradition linked as well to the field (a là Bourdieu) of Critical Theory that refuses to completely dissociate the analytical with the normative; and draws from the contributions of Paulo Freire, a tradition that creates a set of constrictors to the academic work that poses extraordinary intellectual and political challenges.

These could be synthesized as follows: ●●

●●

The politics and epistemology of suspicion. Following Ricoeur, Freire, and a host of phenomenological scholars, the politics of suspicion assumes at the outset that each and every social and cultural relationship involves at least a “moment” if not a clear thread of domination, oppression, and/or exploitation. The implications of the epistemology of suspicion for education and science are very large; It questions the ability to differentiate completely the subjective from the objective, chastising the positivist notion of dissociating human interest from

9

10

Carlos Alberto Torres

●●

human values in the construction of common sense and knowledge meaning‐ making. That is, it questions in essence the Weberian twin assumptions that the scientist and the politician are clearly working in two different epistemological and praxis‐oriented fields and that there is value neutrality in the production of science, with a strict separation between the object (or subject) of knowledge and the knowledgeable subject or scientist; Because it is not possible to have a science free of values, Freire would argue in strict counterposition to Max Weber, the corollary of Freire’s assumption is that scientists have to take a position and they cannot and should not remain neutral. Neutrality for Freire is itself a position that becomes one of the possible alternatives rather than a true neutral position. That is the reason that Freire has suggested an Epistemology of Suspicion or education and critical hermeneutics as a basic premise for social transformation, education and science (Torres, 2014a , pp. 104–106).

From Recife to the World: Freire, Pilgrim of Utopia While in my last year at Stanford as a teaching fellow (1983), we organized with Martin Carnoy and Arturo Pacheco a seminar around the ideas of Paulo Freire and invited Paulo and Elza Freire to be with us for 2 weeks. Freire at Stanford became a magnet to progressive scholars and militants in the Bay area who wanted to interact with this ‘myth in his own life time.”11 The contribution of Martin Carnoy in this volume discusses the Stanford Seminar and his own involvement in progressive work, as well as Rebecca Tarlau coming from a tradition of trade union activism in her family, finding Freire’s work during her research in Brazil, as a point of light in the struggle for a better world. Their chapter, in addition to counter story‐telling and providing testimonies, what the Brazilian Portuguese calls depoimentos, ultimately explores the relevance of Paulo Freire for education. Perhaps it is interesting to relate a dinner that I had with Paulo and Elza Freire in San Francisco during the seminar. Elza was a lovely woman who for more than 40 years was the material and spiritual backbone of Freire and her family, raised five children, managed the house, family finances, everything, while working full time as a primary education teacher until their exile. She was also an expert on teaching literacy to children and an advocate who worked with and for the poor and marginalized populations.12 Although she was quiet, I found her silence imposing and her personality a quiet, charming presence in the interactions. Spending time with Elza and Paulo, the intense love between them was evident, palpable. They seemed to have been in a love affair for more than 40 years! During a delicious dinner, talking about their exile from Brazil, Elza reminded Paulo that if the military had not expelled him from Brazil, he would not have reached the stature we were celebrating in the Stanford seminar. Paulo agreed. I also remember that at some point in the conversation, they broached the topic of their death. Paulo insisted that he wanted to go first, but Elza, who had already a pacemaker installed, told him with a smile that requires no description “No, no Paulo, I will go first.”13

Introduction

For a long time after that conversation I thought that one of the most insightful voices from Latin America, given his exile, so well highlighted by Elza, and a topic that percolated in much of Freire’s writing and that I addressed extensively elsewhere (Torres, 2014a, pp. 21–24) was given as a gift to the world thanks to the new authoritarianism implanted in the Southern Cone (Collier, 1979; O’Donnell, 1982). Pierre Furter, professor at the University of Geneva, offers a very insightful observation of his Profile of Educators: Paulo Freire, in the UNESCO journal Prospects. In a section titled “The Growing Awareness of a Provincial,” Pierre Furter, who had substantial experience working in Latin America and was very influential in having Freire appointed at the University of Geneva, tells us that: With a view to identifying the originality of his practical achievements and thought, we propose to consider Freire basically in relation to his context: regional to begin with and then national and inter‐national. We believe that Freire’s individuality consists in having been moved by his practical experience in Recife from 1950 to 1964 to ask questions of such a radical nature that they led him beyond that contingent reality into the realm that now constitutes his universality. (Furter, 1985, p. 303) Pierre Furter provided us with an insightful standpoint on Freire’s epistemology, a topic to be taken up later in this introduction. The work of Freire in Brazil first in the Northeast and then nationally unearthed seeds of fire in Brazil— paraphrasing the title of Frank Adams (1975), about the Highlander Folk School cofounded by Myles Horton. After the military coup d’ état, Freire was imprisoned and sent into exile. The historical experiences and social context of Freire’s work require extensive research because his impact has been so prominent worldwide. What has been the impact of Paulo Freire in diverse educational systems? In the different educational levels? In teacher training? In adult education and lifelong learning, its original field of practice? Or in research theory and practice? This volume offers multiple perspectives from different narrative viewpoints and social‐ historical contexts of Freire’s pilgrimage in the construction of a utopia of liberation and social transformation, where good quality of education, with ample access and equity, becomes a necessary though not sufficient condition. The social context of Brazil is presented in four different chapters in the first section. Moacir Gadotti offers a systematic analysis of Freire’s intellectual and political journey. This chapter helps us contextualize and follows the path of Freire in different social‐historical contexts. Drawing a succinct biobibliography, Gadotti focuses on the experience of Angiços; the literacy training of peasants in less than 40 hr that brought Freire international recognition. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a necessary focus in this analysis, with Gadotti offering a description of the authors that inspired Freire in this period of his life. The next topic is concientization, a neologism that Freire didn’t invent but helped to disseminate. As well, Freire’s work in Africa is discussed in detail. For Freire, the reencountering with his mother tongue in the postcolonial Lusophone countries in the 1970s was an epiphany of sorts. Finally, returning to Brazil in 1980, Gadotti tells us

11

12

Carlos Alberto Torres

about different moments of Freire back in his homeland, trying to participate politically in the construction of citizenship building and democratic education. Freire’s return to Brazil, with his new location in São Paulo, opened a period of intense political work; a period in which he reluctantly accepted the responsibility of being the Secretary of Education of the Municipality of São Paulo.14 In his conclusion Gadotti offers us a picture of Freire as a global thinker. Three other chapters on Brazil tell us a more detailed story of the first Freire connected to social movements, popular culture, and the politics of social transformation (Torres, 2014a). Carlos Rodrigues Brandão narrates 50 years later his political militancy and intellectual experience in the turbulent period of the 1950s and 1960s in Brazil. Brandão situates the contribution of Paulo Freire in the context of struggles for popular culture, culminating with his analysis describing the Freirean system, planned in the 1960s to recreate the educational system of Brazil with the potentiality to be expanded to other social contexts. Bruno Costa focuses on Paulo Freire and his relationships with the movements of popular culture in Brazil that impacted the discussion on Brazil culture and identity. His thesis is that all these movements formulated conceptualizations of popular culture. Costa shows Freire working with a radical movement on behalf of the proletariat, for example, Movement of Popular Culture where Freire was an actor with moderated views, to the breaking radicalized moment in writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Peter Lownds argues that Paulo Freire’s biography serves as a compass to his pedagogical praxis. Lownds explores three critical junctures: (a) Freire family’s move from Recife to Jaboatão dos Guararapes and the death of his father when Paulo was 13 followed by difficult years at SESI (Serviço Social da Indústria) when he was challenged to learn the workers’ language so as to be conversant with their world; (b) his use of conscientization and praxis to form the chrysalis of the Paulo Freire Method; and (c) his fortuitous encounter with Danilson Pinto on his final trip to Recife and Olinda in 1996. After a brief rendezvous in Bolivia, Freire moved with his family to Chile, at the  time the “Mecca” of the social sciences in Latin America, arriving in late November 1964. Chile with a long civic democratic tradition was then a true democratic laboratory for exiled and national intellectuals, scholars, and militants of diverse types from institutionalized Socialist, Communist, and Cristian Democratic political parties, where social movements and a strong working‐class culture created a unique milieu from which Pedagogy of the Oppressed emerged. The political debates resembled to some extent the civility of political exchanges that were found in the European postwar environments in the reconstruction of democratic institutions and civil society and the powerful presence of Eurocomunism. Marcela Gajardo, who was a young sociologist, a friend, and jointly with Ernani María Fiori, a principal research collaborator of Freire at the time in Chile, offers us Finding Paulo Freire in Chile. Gajardo seeks to answer four questions. What did Paulo Freire do in Chile as a political exile? In which institutional contexts did he develop his pedagogical methods and ideas? How was his literacy training method and participatory research approach disseminated throughout Latin America and the rest of the world? What was his contribution to Chile’s

Introduction

educational development and in what extent did his theory and practice influence policy improvement in literacy training and adult education? Leaving Latin America at the end of the 1960s, Freire accepted a job at the World Council of Churches in Geneva and did his professional and political work in Europe for more than a decade, including his collaborations with many postcolonial countries in Africa.15 Luiza Cortesão in this volume discusses Paulo Freire working in and from Europe, identifying at least three aspects of relevance about his permanence in the European context: (a) his permanent and militant interest in the less favored and in the oppressed, which he termed as the “ragged of the world” constituting the “Third World of the First”; (b) the research and work conducted in the contexts of colonization and decolonization; and (c) work conducted, and contacts held, in the academy and over his research and intervention works. Cortesão concludes that Freire, the politician, the scientist, the writer, the poet. and the militant was, in 1970s Europe, the right man in the right place. N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusuf Waghid discuss how Paulo Freire’s pedagogical influence plays out in countries still engaged in the decolonization struggle as well as in those in search of postcolonial transformative educational systems. The thoughts and actions of African education theorists and political actors such as Amilcar Cabral (1974) of Guinea Bissau or Mwalimu Julius Nyerere (1967) of Tanzania converged with Paulo Freire’s analytical perspectives and praxis. The impact of Freire’s theories in Asia is discussed in the chapter by Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma, titled Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia: The Cases of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. This chapter introduces the applications and influences of Paulo Freire’s ideas and practices in these three countries. In the case of each country, Freire’s ideas are interpreted in unique ways and applied to different fields. Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma tell us that Chinese scholars have introduced Paulo Freire’s educational thoughts and practices to China since the 1990s. Freire “came” to China, opening up a new perspective on foreign education for China, demonstrating a distinctive educational concept with developing countries’ characteristics. Chinese teachers know and learn Freire’s educational ideas by reading books and papers published by Chinese scholars; Freire’s thoughts of school reform spread through classroom teaching in Normal Universities and inservice training for teachers and principals of primary and secondary schools. Jevdet Rexhepi explores the possible role of Freire in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the Vision 2030 social‐economic reform. Considering KSA’s Islamic context, Rexhepi proposes an explanatory, practical, and normative Islamic Critical Theory, using it to interrogate theoretical and practical aspects of Freire’s pedagogical thinking, held up in a comparative perspective to some of the educational ideas of Al‐Ghazali, in order to help weigh its applicability in KSA. Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau offer a concise definition of their work when they argue that Freire was a man of Latin America, but he came often to the United States beginning in the late 1960s, and he had many friends and millions

13

14

Carlos Alberto Torres

of followers here. The chapter tells us the story of Freire in the United States, and particularly the Stanford Seminar of 1983. This chapter combines personal recollections from both authors of Freire and his impact on their work, with analytical commentary on the contributions to Freire to educational reform, with a focus on the current context, hence revisiting Freire in a moment of educational efficiency and Trumpism.

Freire and the Epistemology of the Global South: Intersections and Relationships I have the impression that the Third World, because of its utopian and prophetic nature as an emergent world, could become the inspiring source of its rise. (Freire, in Torres, 1981b, p. 13716) This section focuses on intellectual affinities, intersections, complementarities, and impacts of Freire vis‐a‐vis other scholars and intellectuals. Before the concept of the “Global South” became a marker of differentiation among the epistemological stances, Freire was already providing the ontological basis for this differentiation. Even a documented and well‐argued book from a linguistic perspective by Paul V. Taylor, in his The Texts of Paulo Freire, made two assumptions that many of the authors of this book would challenge. Despite his ambivalence, Taylor argues in toto that Freire is basically the author of a method that has been successful in teaching literacy training (Taylor, 1993, p. 2). This has been disavowed by Freire who has always claimed that his is not a method but a theory‐driven approach (Torres, 2005). The second assumption is also problematic. Taylor argues that Freire is eclectic—being so well versed with the philosophy of the West—with the conclusion that this eclecticism requires that to understand Freire we need to understand the genealogy of his ideas (Taylor, 1993, p. 3). Any hermeneutic analysis of Freire should be welcome. However, it is imperative to see how Freire breaks free from the strictures of the epistemology of the Global North, and how unpacking the critical modernist concepts allowed him, very early on, to develop an epistemology of the Global South based on multiple contributions from Teilhard de Chardin to Erich Fromm, passing through the post‐Kantian European philosophy and Marx plus the Frankfurt School to the emergent philosophy and theology of liberation in Latin America and dependency theory. Put in other terms, José Eustaquio Romão told us in a private communication,17 that Freire developed an epistemology of the oppressed, which should be defined as such because “the oppressed present a gnoseological and epistemological advantage in relations to the oppressors because is inside the eye of the storm of social contradictions.” Nonetheless, the Global South is not a geographical concept but a powerful metaphor shining light on the human suffering caused by colonialism, patriarchy, racism, and capitalism on a global level and affecting marginalized populations condemned to a culture of silence and cultural invasion. Logically, there is a

Introduction

Global South in the Global North. Freire has said in one of his most powerful sentences in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that: Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressor’s power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. (Freire, 1975, p. 53) It is from this epistemological standpoint that Freire’s contribution resonates as the basic foundation for social justice education, not only for human beings but also, because of the Anthropocene, for the planet. He was an earlier representative of the epistemology of the Global South, and arguably Freire should also be considered one of the earlier representatives of the Southern Theory proposed by Raewyn Connell (2007).18 Morrow and Torres, in Chapter  13 of this volume, extend the arguments made in our 2002 book Reading Freire and Habermas (Morrow & Torres 2002). The basic thesis of this book and this new chapter “addresses the convergence and complementarity between the two theorists as a reference point for situating Freire’s project within the larger context of the collapse of the Soviet Union and post‐Marxist critical social theory. Convergence referred primarily to the core categories of Freire’s pedagogy, as well as the political strategy that emerged with his radical democratic approach to the transformation upon his return to Brazil from exile. In the case of Habermas, the possibility of convergence dates back earlier to his break with the pessimistic neo‐Marxism of his Frankfurt School critical theory mentors in the late 1960s, especially as developed in his theories of communicative action and deliberative democracy. The question of complementarity, on the other hand, opened up questions of mutual interrogation, respective blindspots, and productive points of conflict.” Morrow and Torres discuss Freire’s political anthropology, outlining three theses of the author: First Thesis: Freire’s emphasis on processes of dehumanization‐humanization invites the awareness of such humanizing possibilities giving rise to moral obligations that education constitutes a distinctive human “vocation”; Second Thesis: That humanization is constructed in part through struggles of oppression‐liberation, whose intersubjective logic can be understood metaphorically in terms of Hegel’s allegory of recognition in the master–slave dialectic and the principle that no one can be free until all are free; Third Thesis: That the necessary condition of the possibility of humanization and struggles for mutual recognition is a dialogical (and developmental) subject whose self‐understanding is constituted through mutual recognition

15

16

Carlos Alberto Torres

and a dialectic of being and becoming that can flourish only under conditions of relative nonoppression that release the potentials of biophilia and reduce its pathological distortion as necrophilia in relation to both society and nature. What are the implications of Freire’s political anthropology? Like Habermas, for Freire there is an ethical dimension that can be articulated and debated communicatively given the human capacity for moral reasoning and reflection. The convergence between Habermas and Freire invites also study of other intersections and relationships, which may facilitate extending some of the core Freire’s themes into other areas of intellectual affinity and complementarities while offering insights of how Freire may relate to other progressive intellectuals of different perspectives. In some cases, these complementarities result from Freire adopting some core themes of other intellectuals; in other cases, it is simply a reasonable intellectual exercise to see these complementarities and differences. In this volume Ratna Ghosh juxtaposes the educational ideas of Gandhi and Freire whom she considers two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. She undertakes her comparison though a definition and contrast of Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) and conscientização (critical awareness of one’s reality through reflection and action). Both are concepts that, born in the Global South, acquired universal validity according to Ghosh, concluding that “Gandhi and Freire were more complex than is immediately apparent. Nonetheless, they were undoubtedly paradigm shifters.” John Rogers addresses the comparison between Freire and Dewey, using their work as scaffolding to analyze and criticize “fake news” in the post‐truth era. In this chapter Rogers examines how John Dewey and Paulo Freire responded to the problem of “fake news.” He considers how each made sense of fake news—its causes, its effects, and its potential transformation. Rogers concludes that Dewey and Freire help push us beyond the narrow goal of helping students to distinguish fake from real, highlighting the need for young people to forge an active and empowered relationship to news and information. Peter Mayo undertakes a systematic comparison of Gramsci and Freire. On more than one occasion Freire has said that when he read Gramsci for the first time in Chile, he was surprised by the similarities and convergences with his own analysis. Mayo chooses to compare and contrast their analysis by focusing on critical concepts, including ideology, hope, education in the widest sense, praxis and the connections to philosophy and pedagogy, and authority and freedom. These generative themes of both authors allow Mayo to propose the similarities and differences between them, but not surprisingly there is a solid convergence in many analytical and political fronts of both authors. Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee, and Anantha Duraiappah discuss education for humanity through a comparison of Paulo Freire and Amartya K. Sen’s perspectives. In their chapter, they argue that education systems should be designed to ensure that individuals are nourished so that societies may flourish. Specifically, they review Sen’s model of human flourishing and Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed in the context of recent neurobiological findings of brain organization and learning. They attempt to demonstrate how Freire systems that advocate a bottom‐up approach are compatible with Sen’s capability approach

Introduction

and a combination of the two provides a natural process to nourish the human brain that is neurobiologically wired to accommodate both. They argue that pedagogies and education systems that are designed to harness natural neurobiological development might provide optimal paths to peaceful and sustainable societies. Closing this section is a chapter by Afonso Scocuglia with a systematic analysis of the intellectual connections of Freire and reaffirmation of Freire’s Marxist credentials but also the convergences with other thinkers. Scocuglia offers us a unique picture using Brazilian sources. Scocuglia focused on the original and critical thought that marked the pedagogy of the second half of the twentieth century and by implication the thought and work of Paulo Freire. These comparisons naturally lead to understanding debates around Freire’s theories and basic sociological tenets that underscore the understanding of social contexts of education. The next section focuses on key variables including class, gender, race, and religion, and also discusses a “missing” chapter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Class, Gender, Race, Religion, the State, and a Missing Chapter in Freire’s Oeuvre Freire’s work on emancipation played major roles in understanding the role of class, gender and race in education, three key sociological variables investigated ad nauseam in the political sociology of education for their importance on measuring social problems like inequality, poverty and the like. One of the propositions of Sondra Hale’s chapter is that: “revealingly, the shared pedagogic qualities of feminist and ethnic studies have not been operationalized to create meaningful links among these fields, nor to move ahead with a truly emancipatory agenda. Perhaps we have just assumed the overlap of our pedagogies instead of analyzing it. If our raisons d’etre (to examine the “intersections” of oppressions) and our pedagogies overlap, why has feminist studies remained more focused on gender and sexuality, and ethnic studies on race and ethnicity? To complicate things further, class, as a variable, has increasingly fallen between the cracks” (Hale, Chapter 20 in this volume). Michael W. Apple discusses Paulo Freire, Class Relations, and the Task of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education through asking and answering questions. Apple employs the example of Paulo Freire to do three things: (a) raise issues about the ways in which upwardly mobile class fractions within the academy may unfortunately depoliticize his efforts and also may employ his work as a class conversion strategy; (b) connect his work to the emerging literature on postcolonialism, globalization, and critical pedagogy that provides answers to these questions and (c) connect his work to a detailing of a number of crucial tasks in which critical educators need to engage to counter these depoliticizing tendencies and to take account of new critical perspectives. Sondra Hale discusses the connections between education and power in the feminist classroom, both appreciating and critiquing Freire. Hale poses the

17

18

Carlos Alberto Torres

f­ollowing questions: What these pedagogists have borrowed from Freire and what have people of color, queers and queers of color, and people of the Global South contributed? This includes deconstructing some sacred methods and concepts such as consciousness‐raising, multiculturalism, and decentering the West, in a quest for the connections between education and power. Lauren I. Misiaszek’s chapter explores the continuing relevance of “reading” Freire and gender in conversation with each other. She conducted a grounded coding of the most recent large collection of writings on Freire, arguing that engagement in this sort of meta‐analysis challenges this “plateau” of scholarship on Freire and gender as it allows for the gaze to shift away from both Freire’s own analyses to new forward‐looking possibilities. Daniel Solorzano tells us about his Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to critical race theory (CRT). He encountered Freire’s writings and began to document a Chicana/o Studies course he taught at East Los Angeles College in 1979 and 1980 using Freirean pedagogy. This chapter represents the reflections of his journey of teaching and researching in race, ethnic and women’s studies, to Freirean pedagogy, and on to CRT. Cristobal Madero, S. J. discusses the relationship between Freire and his Catholic upbringing. His argument posits that although academia has acknowledged Freire’s ties to Christianity and Catholicism in general, it has failed to connect those religious ties to his scholarship. He develops four concepts that capture the substance of Freire’s approach to religion, namely callings, myth, liberation, and communion. Madero concludes by questioning what ways and to what extent understanding Freire’s relationship with religion would benefit the current debates on improving educational systems embedded in secular realms. Raymond Morrow discusses the implications of the historicism of Freire’s ­pedagogical methodology by analyzing it in terms of its “logic of reinvention.” This logic is reconstructed by differentiating his relatively unchanging “core” or paradigmatic categories from the changing “peripheral,” social theoretical diagnostic concepts necessary for historical contextualization and practical reinvention. This model provides a framework for characterizing the three epochal diagnoses that defined Freire’s career (liberal democratic, revolutionary, radical democratic), as well as recognizing the limitations of the oppressor‐oppressed model of power based on Hegel’s master–slave metaphor. Greg Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres introduce the topic of Ecopedagogy: The “Missing” Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This chapter offers our interpretation of an additional chapter to Pedagogy of the Oppressed as Paulo Freire might have written it on “ecopedagogy,” which is inherently grounded in Freirean pedagogy for transformational actions to emerge toward ending socioenviornmental injustices. This section offers insightful ways of understanding the work of Paulo Freire and some of its connections with other authors. They also reveal the intensity in the interest of trying to understand the knowledge construction of Pedagogy of the Oppressed has led to a number of interviews with Freire but there is still a dearth of studies about this legendary book. Two of those interviews that I conducted over the years with Paulo Freire sought to understand how Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I asked Freire in 1990 about Pedagogy of the

Introduction

Oppressed, including why he decided to write this educational book. In addition, what is the history behind Pedagogy of the Oppressed seen in perspective 20 years later, including in the context of his new position as Secretary of Education of the Municipality of São Paulo.19 In a book published after his death, a more detailed conversation focuses on how Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, although he had a chance to approve the proofs of his chapter (Torres, 1998).20 The second Paulo Freire International Forum held at the University of Bologna in 2000 focused on the Paulo Freire Method with a systematic analysis per global regions of implementation (Telleri, 2002, pp. xi‐xxx; 21–130).21 What is fascinating about the history of Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the story that Freire himself created narrating details and the source of all sort of minor confusions. For instance, the many dates he indicated of when the book was actually finished, and how it moved from the Manuscript (2013) to the actual printed book.22 These theoretical discussions and testimonies are a necessary prelude to any conversations on the contributions of Paulo Freire to the construction and/or reconstruction of democratic education.

Paulo Freire and the Construction of Democratic Education. What Is Freire’s Relevance for Educational Reform? As I have said in a previous work (Torres & Teodoro, 2005 , pp. 155–156), Freire addressed a serious dilemma of democracy, the constitution of a democratic citizenship. Second, he advanced in the 1960s, quite early compared with the postmodernist preoccupations of the 1980s, the question of diversity and border crossing in education, central tenets of transformative social justice learning. Freire taught us that domination, aggression, and violence are intrinsic parts of human and social life. Freire argued that few human encounters are without one type of oppression or another; by virtue of race, ethnicity, class, and gender among others, people tend to be victims or perpetrators of oppression. Thus, for Freire, sexism, racism, and class exploitation are the most salient forms of domination. Yet domination and exploitation exist on other grounds, including religious beliefs, political affiliation, national origin, age, size, and physical and intellectual abilities to name just a few. Starting from a psychology of oppression influenced by psychotherapists like Freud, Jung, Adler, Fanon, and Fromm, Freire developed a pedagogy of the oppressed. With the spirit of the Enlightenment, he believed in education as a means to improve the human condition, confronting the effects of a psychology and a sociology of oppression, contributing ultimately to what he considered the ontological vocation of the human race: humanization. In the introduction to his highly acclaimed Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states, “From these pages I hope it is clear my trust in the people, my faith in men and women, and my faith in the creation of a world in which it will be easier to love” (Freire, 1973, p. 19).

19

20

Carlos Alberto Torres

Freire was known as a philosopher and a theoretician of education in the critical perspective, an intellectual who never separated theory from practice. In Politics and Education, he forcefully states that “Authoritarianism is like necrophilia, while a coherent democratic project is biophilia” (Freire, 1998, p. 56). It is from this epistemological standpoint that Freire’s contribution resonates as the basic foundation for transformative social justice learning. The notion of democracy entails the notion of a democratic citizenship in which agents are active participants in the democratic process, able to choose their representatives as well as to monitor their performance. These are not only political but also pedagogical practices because the construction of the democratic citizen implies the construction of a pedagogic subject. Individuals are not, by nature, ready to participate in politics. They have to be educated in democratic politics in a number of ways, including normative grounding, ethical behavior, knowledge of the democratic process, and technical performance. The construction of the pedagogic subject is a central conceptual problem, a dilemma of democracy. To put it simply: democracy implies a process of participation where all are considered equal. However, education involves a process whereby the “immature” are brought to identify with the principles and life forms of the “mature” members of society. Thus, the process of construction of the democratic pedagogic subject is a process of cultural nurturing, involving cultivating principles of pedagogic and democratic socialization in subjects who are neither tabula rasa in cognitive or ethical terms, nor fully equipped for the exercise of their democratic rights and obligations (Torres, 1981a). Yet in the construction of modern polities, the constitution of a pedagogical democratic subject is predicated on grounds that are, paradoxically, a precondition but also the result of previous experiences and policies of national solidarity (including citizenship, competence building, and collaboration). A second major contribution of Freire is his thesis advanced in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and reiterated in countless writings, that the pedagogical subjects of the educational process are not homogeneous citizens but culturally diverse individuals. From his notion of cultural diversity, he identified the notion of crossing borders in education suggesting that there is an ethical imperative to cross borders if we attempt to educate for empowerment and not for oppression. Crossing the lines of differences is, indeed, a central dilemma of education (Freire, 1996; Torres, 2014a). How can we define liberatory education? As a social, political, and pedagogical practice, liberatory education will take place when people reach a deeper, richer, more textured and nuanced understanding of themselves and their world. Not in vain, Freire always advocated the simultaneous reading of the world and of the word. Based on a key assumption of critical theory that all social relationships involve a relationship of domination, and that language constitutes identities, social justice education, from a meaning making or symbolic perspective, is an attempt to recreate the various theoretical contexts for the examination of ­rituals, myths, icons, totems, symbols, and taboos in education and society, an examination of the uneasy dialectic between agency and structure, setting ­forward a process of transformation (Horton & Freire, 1990).

Introduction

Though they represent the core of human interests, expressing the dynamics of wealth, power, prestige, and privilege in society, these structures constrain but also enable human agency. Therefore, a model of social justice education should be based on unveiling the conditions of alienation and exploitation in society. That is, creating the basis for the understanding and comprehension of the roots of social behavior and its implications in culture and nature.23 What has been the impact of Freire in the construction of democratic education is the basic question addressed in several chapters. Sonia Nieto asks the right questions regarding teacher education vis‐à‐vis Freire’s contribution: What would Paulo Freire make of the state of teacher preparation today as defined in the United States? What would he think of punitive teacher testing and the erosion of teacher autonomy? How would he react to the contempt with which educators are being treated, including surveillance and the curtailing of academic freedom? What would he think about the deprofessionalization of teachers and teacher educators? What would he say about the increasing calls for privatization of public education through vouchers and charter schools and the general mean‐ spirited blaming of teachers, parents, and students, especially in poor rural and urban schools? José Eustáquio Romão tackles one of the educational areas that Freire seemed to spend the least amount of time studying, writing, or talking about: namely institutions of higher education. Romão’s central thesis is that it is not possible to ignore Paulo Freire’s reflections on the university and on the role of intellectual. He draws a number of analysis of the debates in Mexico at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), in the first half of 1984, in a dialogue between professors of UNAM, invited scholars, and Paulo Freire. Peter Roberts addresses an aspect of Freire’s educational theory that has, to date, attracted little attention: his views on the process of advising thesis candidates. Drawing in particular on the late work, Letters to Cristina (1996), it is argued that Freire offers a distinctive approach to thesis supervision as a transformative teaching and learning process—an orientation that places him at odds with prevailing trends in higher education. Peter Mayo argues that there cannot be many more pervasive terms in current educational discourse than that of lifelong learning (LL), situating some of its power in the adoption of the term by the European Union (EU) and UNESCO. Mayo asks: should Paulo Freire’s name and concepts be dragged into the current discourse on LL in Europe as promoted by the EU? His contention is “No” if it consists of the largely economicist discourse, “Yes” if it is associated with an alternative discourse on LL. John D. Holst, in a philosophical inquiry, explores the importance of dialectics and dialogue in the work of Paulo Freire. Holst identifies and explains what he considers to be the major premises of Freire’s ideas on dialectics and dialogue, concluding that dialectics is key to a social movement‐based Freirean pedagogy. The chapter by Ângela B. Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto, directors of the Paulo Freire Institute, argues that radical connectivity is the pedagogical principle of the organization linking people of diverse walks of life, ideologies, personalities, and work. They discuss ecopedagogy and planetary citizenship, the concept of public popular school, and their

21

22

Carlos Alberto Torres

connections with the movement of MOVA Brazil (movement of literacy, Brazil), which is a spinoff of MOVA São Paulo that was created during the administration of Paulo Freire. This chapter also details the collaboration of the Paulo Freire Institute (São Paulo) with social movements, particularly the World Educational Forum and the World Social Forum. Many of the chapters in this book document in detail Freire’s critique of neoliberalism as an obstacle in the construction of a democratic education. The globalization question has been galvanized in the 1980s and 1990s, given the growing international discourse and contradictory national debates about globalization from economic, political, and social perspectives. In the new century, the globalization of the politics and culture and the political economy of advanced industrialized, emerging, and less developed economies was affecting the nature and operations of perhaps one of the most “national” (and historically conceived avenues) for social mobility and equity of all social services of any country: the educational systems (Burbules & Torres, 2000). The globalization question is on the table and the stakes are indeed high. The implications of multiple processes of globalization affecting the worlds of culture, education, politics, and economics have generated in the last few years a cottage industry of books, and for very good reasons. Globalization processes are affecting the way we live, think, act, dress, eat, and entertain ourselves. Yet, in the most complex realm of our symbolic world, it is affecting the way we find and challenge identities, values, and principles. Thus, the question of a particular form of globalization, neoliberal globalization, needs to be addressed with a critical eye analyzing the alternatives. We have witnessed the growing presence of neoliberalism as the dominant ideology in public policy and governance. Neoliberalism has produced a radical shift of paradigms, which coupled with the presence of neoliberal globalization has created a “new common sense” that has percolated into all public and private institutions and, by implication, despite their own autonomy, into institutions of higher education (Torres, 2009a, 2009b, 2013a). The emergence of neoliberalism in the late 1970s and early 1980s has dramatically altered the notion of common sense in education. Neoliberal governments promote open markets, free trade, reduction of the public sector, decreased state intervention in the economy, and deregulation of markets. The premises of the economic restructuring of advanced capitalism that have been under criticism particularly after the crash of 2008 implied the reduction of public spending, reduction of programs considered wasteful, the sale of state enterprises, and mechanisms of deregulation to prevent state intervention in the business world. Together with the aforementioned, it is proposed that the state should participate less in the provision of social services (including education, health care, pensions and retirement, public transportation, and affordable housing) and that these services should be privatized. The notion of “private” (and privatizations) is glorified as part of a free market. It implies total confidence in the efficiency of competition because the activities of the public or state sectors are seen as inefficient, unproductive, and socially wasteful. In contrast, the private sector is considered efficient, effective, productive, and responsive to changes in demand and supply. In contrast to the

Introduction

model of the welfare state in which the state exercises the mandate to uphold the social contract between labor and capital, the neoliberal state is decidedly pro‐ business, supporting the demands of the corporate world.24 Nelly Stromquist offers a mixed evaluation of the implications of neoliberalism globalization in higher education: “The explosive combination of globalization and neoliberalism has changed universities forever. Some changes are positive inasmuch as there is now greater student access to all forms of tertiary education, ICTs [information and communications technologies] are ubiquitous and significantly ease the development of new understandings, and universities have become essential sites for research and development. Other changes have been negative; among them is the downplaying of teaching as a core function, the constant search for revenues to meet operational needs, the growing differentiation and hierarchies among and within tertiary education institutions, and the enormous increase of casualized (or contingent) faculty” (Stromquist, 2018, p. 13). Freire, in his passionate narrative, reaffirmed his critical position against the neoliberal regime in our last conversation: “Carlos, we have to criticize neoliberalism. It’s the new demon of the world today” (Torres, 2014a, p. 25).

Conclusions This handbook has been in the making for 3 years, and there has been crucial ephemerides in those years, particularly the year of 2018 celebrating 50 years of the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed the 150th anniversary of the publication of Das Kapital, and the bicentenary of Marx’s birth. This book hones a critical reading and seeks a reinvention of Paulo Freire’s contribution to education theory, research and practice, social theory, and political philosophy. Rethinking Freire is to live between critique and utopia. Rethinking Freire is to criticize a reality and practice of educational and social models that are unjust, without equity and equality, without justice there will not be peace. But only to criticize in the best of the experience of the Hegelian aufheben of criticizing, conserving but also improving in a dialectical gaze, the trust of the message. Yet to criticize is not enough. It is imperative to celebrate the achievements of liberatory education and the social struggles and to propose new alternatives, new utopias, new horizons, new modes, every time more humane, just, peaceful, and loving about the interrelations of people, families, communities, and nations in the international system. We cannot accept any other commitment than a utopia of struggle.

Notes 1 Paulo Freire, “Third World and Theology, letter to a young theologian” in Torres

(2005), p. 137.

2 The translation of Hegel’s “Volksgeist” in a serious translation of “Grundlinien

der Philosophie des Rechts” is from Wood (1995). The use of Volksgeist to

23

24

Carlos Alberto Torres

apply to Latin America as a “national” whole could be seen as problematic, especially given the marginalization of the black and indigenous populations. Bolívar’s vision expresses this more as a hope than a reality, a topic explored in depth in Mignolo (2005). Yet, there was the philosophy of liberation and the work of some intellectuals like Rodolfo Kush that prepared the path for a systematic analysis of Indigenism, as presented in the Indigenous communities themselves through history, but like many voices, victimized by a culture of silence. 3 This is not the place to articulate the many differences in the theories coined under the concept of dependency. 4 See https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230595682_3. 5 https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/29973/002_en.pdf. 6 http://enriquedussel.com/txt/Textos_Libros/28.Intoduccion_filosofia_ liberacion.pdf. There no space here to address the multiple conflicts among theorists of dependency in terms of theoretical interpretations but more important political action. 7 “Aufheben or Aufhebung is a German word with several seemingly contradictory meanings, including “to lift up,” “to abolish,” “cancel” or “suspend,” or “to sublate.” The term has also been defined as “abolish,” “preserve,” and “transcend.” Marxists Internet Archive Encyclopedia: Glossary of Terms. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/u.htm. 8 It is worth noting that Paulo Freire’s first editor was Julio Barreiro, the editor of Tierra Nueva. Barreiro was closely associated with the World Council of Churches where Freire worked as a traveling “ambassador of literacy” until 1980 when he was finally able to return to Brazil. I used the plural “lives” to account for the historicity of the thought of Freire and many of the different scholars and intellectuals who pursued a similar journey. 9 Pope Francis is currently considering both these priests as martyrs with the possibility of beatification and canonization as saints. A similar situation in El Salvador was the assassination by right wing groups of Bishop Oscar Romero. He was declared martyr by Pope Francis on 3 February 2015 and declared blessed on 23 May 2015. 10 See also Torres (1998b). 11 This is the opening statement in Pierre Furter’s carefully organized article that may have paved the way for Freire to receive the UNESCO Peace Prize in 1986–1987: “When a man becomes a myth in his own lifetime, as Paulo Freire has become thanks to his development of the concept of “conscientization,” the more he publishes and the more comment his work provokes the more difficult it is to distinguish the one from the other” (1985, p. 301). 12 The importance of Elza Maia Costa Oliveira in the social construction of knowledge of Freire as well as his “good life” has been emphasized by Freire on many occasions, most remarkably at the beginning of the Manuscrito (Freire, 2013) of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968, p. viii) where Freire writes that she is his first reader and the manuscript is also hers, which is quite right considering that Elza was an expert on literacy as a teacher. Elza Freire is also the subject of at least one doctoral dissertation in Brazil. See Spigolon (2014). See also Arriada, Nogueira, & Zasso (2017), pp. 28, 39; Dias (2017), pp. 193–195.

Introduction

13 Paulo Freire married Elza Maria Costa de Oliveira, whom he met as his student

when he was helping her to prepare for her examination for a teaching job, in 1944. Elza was born in June 1916—she was 5 years older than Paulo—and she passed away October 24, 1986. 14 Gadotti was Freire’s chief of staff in his administration. 15 See Torres (1982); an expanded revised version published in Leonard and McLaren (1993), pp. 119–143; See also Torres (1995); Torres (1998c), Spanish translation, CREC, Valencia, 2006, Valencian translation, 2006. 16 This book and two others, published in the seventies, were reprinted in a single volume on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the experience of Angicos: Torres (2014b). 17 Private communication to the author, May 2018. 18 Southern Theory is a term Raewyn Connell (2007) uses for social thought from societies other than metropolitan societies, usually considered societies from the global South. See her book Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science, and our Review Symposium (Soudien & Torres, 2008). My review is positive but lamenting that she didn’t include Paulo Freire as one of the key Southern Theorists. Also, the long and distinguished list of sociologists, economists, and philosophers who were part of the social reconstruction of knowledge and thought in Latin America should be considered part of that Southern Theory. 19 http://aurora.icaap.org/index.php/aurora/article/view/45/58 20 There is a video that I filmed with Paulo Freire while he was secretary of education in São Paulo, and our dialogues were collected in several places, see for instance Torres and Freire (1994), Freire and Torres (1993). 21 In the Telleri (2002) book Morrow and Torres discussed the forms and context of emancipatory learning and Revolutionary Pedagogy in the reception of the method in the United States as well as the question of Revolution in Freire, pp. 57–70, and Moacir Gadotti sought to go beyond the Method in his insightful chapter “Attraversando frontiere metodologie ed esperienze freireana,” pp. 27–45). 22 He tells us that he wrote the first three chapters in 15 days, though he actually worked on the subject over 3 years with a special method (Torres 1998a). For instance, on one occasion he dated the manuscript in Santiago de Chile, Winter 1967; the first edition of the book in Portuguese by Paz e Terra reads as finished in Santiago de Chile, Fall 1968. Then in the actual manuscript draft dedicated to his good friends Jacques and Maria Edu, who received the original manuscript as a gift before Freire left Chile, he writes Santiago, Spring 1968. In the first edition in Spanish in Tierra Nueva, whose editor was Julio Barreiro, at the end of the first words, Freire indicates Fall 1969. He also tells us that following a suggestion by his friend Josue de Castro he put the manuscript in a drawer and let it be. Freire looked at the manuscript 2 months later, concluding that there was one more chapter to write, whereas in some other settings he told us that he wrote that chapter as a reaction to criticism of his friends (Arriada et al., 2017). Yet, there is a constant emphasis that his theoretical production is the way to think and write about different moments of his political and pedagogical practice (p. 26).

25

26

Carlos Alberto Torres

23 This section benefits from my work in First Freire (2014). Reproduced with

authorization from Teachers College Press.

24 This section benefits from my two articles on education and neoliberalism.

See Torres (2013b)—a modified Spanish version has been published as “El neoliberalismo como nuevo bloque histórico.” Perfiles educativos, 2014, 36(144), 190–206. ISSN 0185–2698, and Torres (2011). Reproduced with authorization of Routledge.

References Adams, F. (1975). Unearthing seeds of fire: the idea of Highlander (with Myles Horton). Winston‐Salem, NC: J. F. Blair. Aparacio, P. (Ed.) (2004). Diáleg Paulo Freire Ivan Illich. Xativa, Spain: Ediciones del CReC. Arnove, R., Torres, C. A., & Franz, S. (2013). Comparative education. The dialectic of the global and the local. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Arriada, E., Nogueira, G. M., & Zasso, S. M. B. (2017). Pedagogia do oprimido: Do manuscrito ao texto escrito. Revista Brasileira de Alfabetização, 1, 17–39. Berryman, P. (1987). Liberation theology: Essential facts about the revolutionary movement in Latin America and beyond. New York: Pantheon Books. Boron, A. A. (2000). Introduction to the Havana Declarations. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Burbules, N. C., & Torres, C. A. (Eds.) (2000). Globalization and education: Critical analysis. New York: Routledge. Cabral, A. (1974). Guiné‐Bissau: Nação africana forjada na luta. Lisbon: Novo Aurora. Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Collier, D. (Ed.) (1979). The new authoritarianism in Latin America. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: Social science and the global dynamics of knowledge in social sciences. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Dias, F. C. (2017). Elza Freire: Uma vida que faz educação. E‐Mosaicos, 6(13), 193–195. Dussel, E. (1973). America Latina: dependencia y liberación. Buenos Aires: Fernando García Cambeiro. Dussel, E. (1979). De Medellín a Puebla. Una década de sangre y esperanza. Mexico City: Edicol. Fanon, F. (1961). The wretched of the earth (Constance Farrington, Trans.). New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Fanon, F. (2004). The wretched of the earth/ Richard Philcox, (Trans. with commentary by Jean‐Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha). New York: Grove Press; Distributed by Publishers Group West. Frank, A. G. (1969). Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical studies of Chile and Brazil. New York: Monthly Review Press. Freire, P. (1996). Letters to Cristina:Reflections on my life and work. New York: Routledge.

Introduction

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogía del oprimido (3rd ed.). Montevideo, Uruguay: Editorial Tierra Nueva. Freire, P. (1973). Pedagogía del oprimido. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores. Freire, P. (1975). Pedagogía del oprimido (14th ed.). Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI‐Tierra Nueva. Freire, P. (1998). Politics and education. Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California. Freire, P. (2013). Pedagogia do oprimido (o manuscrito). São Paulo: Editora e Livraria Instituto, Uninove, and Ministério de Educação do Brasil. Freire, P., & Torres, C. A. (1993). Lessons from a fascinating challenge. In P. Freire (Ed.), Pedagogy of the City. New York: Continuum. Furter, P. (1985). Profiles of educators: Paulo Freire. Prospects, 15(2), Paris: UNESCO. Gadotti, M., & Torres, C. A. (Eds.) (1993). Educación popular: Crisis y perspectivas. Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila. Gonzalez Casanova, P. (1969). Sociología de la explotación. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Gould, J. L. (2009). Solidarity under siege: The Latin American left, 1968. American Historical Review, 114(2), 348–375. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.2.348 Gutierrez, G. (1973). A theology of liberation. New York: Orbis Books. Hinkelammert, F. (1977). Las armas ideológicas de la muerte: Capitalismo y cristianismo. San José, Costa Rica: EDUCA—colección DEI. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). In B. Bell, J. Gaventa, & J. Peters (Eds.), We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Jones, L. I., & Torres, C. A. (2010). Struggles for memory and social justice education in Latin America. Development and Practice, 20(4–5), 567–578. Kerr, L., & Herrero‐Olaizola, A. (Eds.) (2015). Teaching the Latin American boom. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. Kush, R. (Ed.) (1977). El pensamiento indígena y popular en América. Buenos Aires: Hachette. Leonard, P., & McLaren, P. (Eds.) (1993). Paulo Freire: A critical encounter. New York: Routledge. Love, J. L. (1980). Raul Prebisch and the origins of the doctrine of unequal exchange. Latin American Research Review, 15(3), 45–72. Memmi, A. (1965). The colonizer and the colonized. Boston: Beacon Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2005). The idea of Latin America. Malden & Oxford: Wiley‐ Blackwell. Mignone, E. (1988). Witness to the truth: The complicity of the church and dictatorship in Argentina, 1976–1983. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Morrow, R., & Torres, C. A. (1995). Social theory and education: A critique of theories of social and cultural reproduction. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical pedagogy and transformative social change. New York: Teachers College Press.

27

28

Carlos Alberto Torres

Nyerere, J. K. (1967). Education for self‐reliance. Dar es Salaam: Information Services Division, Ministry of Information and Tourism. O’Donnell, G. A. (1982). 1966–1973. El estado burocrático autoritario. Triunfos, derrotas y crisis (English translation, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, Berkeley, 1988). Buenos Aires: Editorial Belgrano. Puiggrós, A. (1984). La educación popular en América Latina: orígenes, polémicas y perspectivas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Nueva Imagen. Roig, A. A. (1981). Teoría y crítica del pensamiento Latinoamericano. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Salazar Bondy, A. (1969). ¿Existe una filosof ía de nuestra América. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Salazar Bondy, A. (1975). La educación del hombre nuevo. La reforma educativa peruana. Buenos Aires: Ed. Paidós. dos Santos, T. (1978). Socialismo o fascismo: El nuevo carácter de la dependencia y el dilema latinoamericano (3rd ed.). Mexico: EDICOL. Sarmiento, D. F. [c.(1961). Edición especial de 6 tomos de la obra de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas. Soudien, C., & Torres, C. A. (2008). Review symposium. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(6), 719–725. Spigolon, N. I. (2014). As noites da ditadura e os dias de utopia… Of exilio, a educação e os percursos de Elza Freire nos anos de 1964 a 1979. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinhas, Facultad de Educação. Stavenhagen, R. (1981). Sept thèses erronées sur l’Amérique latine: Ou, comment décoloniser les sciences humaines (2nd ed.). Paris: Éditions Anthropos. Stromquist, Nelly P. (2018). Professoriate identity in the dispossessed university: Persistence and resistance. Plenary addresss at Identities and Education. Comparative Perspectives in an Age of Crises, 28th Conference of the Comparative Education Society in Europe, May 28–June 1, University of Cyprus, Nicosia. Taylor, P. V. (1993). The texts of Paulo Freire. Buckingham & Philadelphia: Open University Press. Telleri, F. (Ed.) (2002). Il metodo Paulo Freire. Nuove tecnologie e sviluppo sostenible (2 vols.). Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice Bologna (CLUEB). Torres, C. A. (1981a). La sociología de la cultura y la crítica pedagógica de Paulo Freire. In G. G. Rivera, & C. A. Torres (Eds.), Sociología de la educación: Corrientes contemporáneas (pp. 271–298). Centro de Estudios Educativos: Mexico City, Mexico. Torres, C. A. (1981b). Leitura crítica de Paulo Freire [A critical reading of Paulo Freire]. São Paulo: Loyola Ediçoes. Torres, C. (1982, Spring). From the Pedagogy of the Oppressed to A Luta Continua: The political pedagogy of Paulo Freire. Education with Production Review, (2), 76–97. Torres, C. A. (1992). The church, society, and hegemony. A critical sociology of religion in Latin America (Richard A. Young, Trans.). Westport, CT & London: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (1995). Contradições nas decisões de politica educativa: Experiencias Latino‐americanas e Africanas. [The contradictions of educational policy in Latin America and Africa]. Educação, Sociedade e Culturas, (4), 71–90. Torres, C. A. (1998a). Education, power and personal biography: Dialogues with critical educators. New York: Routledge.

Introduction

Torres, C. A. (1998b). The political pedagogy of Paulo Freire. In P. Freire (Ed.), Politics and education (pp. 1–15). Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California. Torres, C. A. (1998c). Pedagogia da luta. De la pedagogia do oprimido a la educação publica popular (Pedagogy of Struggle: From the Pedagogy of the Oppressed to the Public Popular Schooling). São Paulo: Cortes Editores & Institute Paulo Freire. Torres, C. A. (2001). Paulo Freire e a agenda da educação Latino‐Americana No Século XXI. Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO). Torres, C. A. (2005). La praxis educativa y la educación cultural liberadora de Paulo Freire. Xátiva, Valencia, Spain: Institute Paulo Freire D’Espanya. Torres, C. A. (2009a). Globalizations and education. Collected essays on class, race, gender, and the state. New York & London: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2009b). Education and neoliberal globalization. New York & London: Routledge. Torres, C. A. (2011). Public universities and the neoliberal common sense: Seven iconoclastic theses. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 21(3), 177–197. Torres, C. A. (2013a). Afterword on comparative education: The dialectics of globalization and its discontents. In R. Arnove, C. A. Torres, & S. Franz (Eds.), Comparative education: The dialectics of the global and the local (4th ed.) (pp. 459–483). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Torres, C. A. (2013b). Neoliberalism as a new historical bloc: A Gramscian analysis of neoliberalism’s common sense in education. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 23(2), 80–106. Torres, C. A. (2014a). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2014b). Diálogo e práxis educativa: Uma leitura crítica de Paulo Freire (Monica Mattar Oliva, Trans.). Ediçoes Loyola: São Paulo. Torres, C. A. (2017). The state of the art in comparative education and WCCES at a crossroads in the 21st century. Global Comparative Education, 1(1), 20–97 Retrieved from https://www.theworldcouncil.net/gce‐vol‐1‐no‐1.html Torres, C. A., & Freire, P. (1994). Twenty years After Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire in conversation with Carlos Alberto Torres. In P. McLaren, & C. Lankshear (Eds.), The politics of liberation: Paths from Freire (pp. 100–107). London: Routledge. Torres, C. A., & Teodoro, A. (Eds.) (2005). Critique and utopia. New developments in the sociology of education. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Wood, A. (1995). Hegel: Elements of the philosophy of right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zea, L. (1969). La filosof ía americana como filosof ía sin más. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Zea, L. (1974). Dependencia y liberación en la filosof ía latinoamericana. Diánoia, 20(20), 172–188 Retrieved from http://dianoia.filosoficas.unam.mx/index.php/ dianoia/article/download/999/980

29

31

Part II From Recife to the World Paulo Freire, Pilgrim of Utopia

33

1 Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey Moacir Gadotti

In the 1980s, I wrote a book about Paulo Freire’s political‐pedagogical trajectory titled Convite à leitura de Paulo Freire (Invitation to the reading of Paulo Freire) and, in the 1990s, I was the coordinator of an extensive work titled Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia (Gadotti, 1996a), following a tradition started by Carlos Alberto Torres (1975, 1977, 1978), precursor of critical readings of Freire (Torres, 2014). I wrote these works while Freire was still alive and we were working together. Today, 2 decades after his death, I attempt to trace the intellectual and  political trajectory of my erstwhile companion in light of the present, the perspectives that his theory and praxis offer, and their continuing validity for the future of education and society. Born in 1921 in the Brazilian northeast, one of our country’s poorest regions, Freire was almost everything that an educator should be, both as a professor and as a creator of ideas and methods. His educational philosophy was first expressed in 1958, in a thesis competition at Recife University and, later, as professor of educational history and philosophy at that same institution, as well as in his first experiments in adult education. As a result of this work, President João Goulart invited him to implement a National Literacy Program in 1963. The courage to launch an authentic work of education that identified literacy as the process and product of expanded consciousness, teaching oppressed ­people reading and writing as emancipatory instruments, made him one of the first Brazilians to be exiled when a military junta took charge of Brazil in 1964. He spent 5 years in Chile. In 1969, he was invited to teach at Harvard and the ­following year he accepted an offer from the World Council of Churches in Geneva to serve as an educational specialist. In 1980, he returned to Brazil and resumed his former career as a university professor. From 1989 to 1991, he accepted São Paulo mayor Luíza Erundina’s invitation to serve as the Municipal Secretary of Education. He died in 1997. Paulo Freire is author of a vast amount of work, translated into more than 20 languages. He was known as a philosopher and theorist of education, one who never separated theory and practice. In the development of his theory of education, he managed to demystify the dreams of the pedagogy of the 1960s that, at least in Latin America, sustained the thesis that schools could do everything and to The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

34

Moacir Gadotti

overcome the pessimism of the 1970s that saw schools as merely reproducing an unjust status quo. In this way, he managed to remain faithful to the utopia, dreaming possible dreams (Gadotti, 1994). Where did he find inspiration? What are the primary sources of his thinking? What authors influenced him or resonated in him? These are some of the many questions that people asked me after I had written some books about him, particularly after the publication of Paulo Freire: A biobibliography. I believe that the two most influential sources of his thinking were humanism and Marxism. Although we cannot speak with much propriety about the phases of Freire’s thinking, we can say that the influence of Marxism followed that of Christian humanism. They are distinct, but not contradictory, moments. As German philosopher Wolfdietrich Schmied‐Kowarzik states in his book Dialectic Pedagogy (1983), Paulo Freire combines Christian and Marxist themes in his dialectical‐ dialogical pedagogy. Schmied‐Kowarzik calls him a dialectician and thinker about culture. Education is, by nature, an anthropological practice. It is also ethical and political. Thus, it can become a practice of freedom. However, Freire’s Marxism is original rather than orthodox in that he sees an individual’s subjectivity as a prerequisite of revolution and social transformation. This implies ­education’s role in conscientization, expanding learners’ conscious awareness. Paulo Freire’s contribution to the world of thinking about education is not limited to what he directly wrote or contributed; it also comprises how we interpret his legacy. This includes current and ongoing work at the Paulo Freire Institutes (www.paulofreire.org) and by Paulo Freire Chairs at universities, among other groups and institutions concerned with the continuity and reinvention of his work. So it is extremely relevant today that we analyze Freire’s intellectual and political trajectory.

Angicos, to Learn so as to Transform Certainly, the trajectory of this engaged intellectual began in 1963 with the ­experience of “alphabetizing” adults (teaching them to read and write) in Angicos, a rural outpost in northeast Brazil. In 1993, Carlos Alberto Torres and I accompanied Paulo Freire to Angicos in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, 30 years after he conducted the experiment that made his presence known to the world. He told us that it was a sentimental journey, reencountering dreams, persons, and places he first knew as part of a great project that stirred him emotionally. When he received the title “citizen of Angicos” he declared: “I have never been any place in the world that affected me more than here and now.” The Angicos experiment began on January 18, 1963 with Paulo Freire’s introductory address, which was attended by Rio Grande do Norte’s Governor Aluísio Alves among others. On January 24 the project’s first regular lesson on the “anthropological concept of culture” initiated the first of the “Forty hours of Angicos” (Lyra, 1996), through which 380 residents of Angicos began to learn the Portuguese alphabet. The classes were immediately followed by ongoing training sessions where culture circle coordinators were able to reflect on their practice.

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

The first 300 people who completed the course were acknowledged on April 2, 1963 with certificates of completion in a ceremony attended by Brazil’s President João Goulart and the governors of several northeastern states. Speakers included Aluísio Alves, Paulo Freire, and Antonio Ferreira, one of the students. Freire emphasized the scientific and philosophical principles of his method, proposing an education that “would expand the consciousness of the Brazilian people” (Freire, 1963, p 1) and replace their predominantly “magical” understanding with a more “critical cultural vision” (Freire, 1963, p. 2). He explained to those present the methodological steps that propelled those on a quest for literacy to become “subjects of their own history” (Freire, 1963, p. 4). The Angicos experiment had national and international repercussions. Representatives from various newspapers had been dispatched to Angicos, including Time magazine, the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, United and Associated Presses, and Le Monde. The Times devoted a lengthy article to the Angicos experiment. A short while later, Luiz Lobo released a film, As quarenta horas de Angicos (Forty Hours in Angicos), produced by the Cooperative Education Service of Rio Grande do Norte, portraying the Angicos experiment as the “first phase” of a literacy campaign with a “clear, simple and efficient method” that was “feeding the hunger of the head” while transforming Angicos into “a strong, conscious and enterprising community” so that its people “can contribute to their nation’s great decisions.” Many years later, the North American educator Andrew Kirkendall (2010) would write that, in the Cold War era, the elimination of illiteracy in the so‐called “Third World” was a major political concern. Paulo Freire played an important role in this context by politicizing the alphabetization process, transforming learners into voters and citizens capable of selecting those who would govern them. This fact was not lost on Brazil’s military “guardians” who wrested control of the nation from President Goulart in a 1964 coup d’état. Paulo Freire was certain that transforming unlettered people into voters was not enough to construct a democracy. He thought education would need to prepare them to make critical choices about alternatives proposed by the elite so that, eventually, they could forge their own path. In synthesis, Andrew Kirkendall’s book sees Paulo Freire as just another victim of the Cold War. The political‐pedagogical foundations of the Paulo Freire System were brought to light by their creators in Estudos Universitários, the Journal of Culture of Recife University (number 4, April–June, 1963). In his article, Jarbas Maciel affirms that alphabetization “ought to be—and is—a link in a long chain of stages, not simply of a literacy method but of a fundamental, integrated educational system. Actually, we witnessed the side by side appearance of the Paulo Freire Method of Adult Alphabetization and the Paulo Freire System of Education, whose successive stages—with the exception of the current stage of adult ­literacy—are just now being formulated and, in some cases, experimentally applied, merging calmly into an authentic and coherent Popular University” (Maciel, 1963, p. 26). This issue of the journal Estudos Universitários is especially emblematic because it contains the first systematized ideas of what was called the “Paulo Freire Method.” According to Carlos Rodrigues Brandão (2003, pp. 83–84)

35

36

Moacir Gadotti

“in the heads of its first ideologues, the adult alphabetization method was the minor part of a system of education, the work of literacy was just the initial moment of an adventurous plan to educate” at all levels, popular, secondary, and university. Dialogue was the fundamental principle of both Paulo Freire’s eponymous Method and System and became part of the educational process. As  Aurenice Cardoso confirms (1963 , p. 73) “we are convinced that when we dialogue with our students about their problems, they become more critical. That is why dialogue is the fundamental technique of the Paulo Freire System which transforms unlettered people into participants.” President João Goulart saw that the Angicos experiment had the potential to remove millions of Brazilians from miserable existences and make them part of the citizenry. In June 1963, Paulo de Tarso Santos became Goulart’s minister of education. His predecessor, Darcy Ribeiro, recommended that he summon Paulo Freire to Brasília to start a national literacy program based on the Angicos experiment (Manfredi, 1981). All these plans would collapse with the military coup of 1964. Years later, Paulo Freire agreed to an interview with Claudius Ceccon and Miguel Darcy de Oliveira about the National Literacy Plan that was published in a special edition of Rio de Janeiro’s countercultural newspaper, O Pasquim, dated May 5, 1978 in the course of which he said that “the [roll‐out strategy] was so extraordinary that it couldn’t continue …. It weighed too heavily on the scales of power. It was a very risky move for the dominant class” (Oliveira & Oliveira, 1982, pp. 13–14). As Carlos Alberto Torres reminds us (2012), Angicos was much more than a literacy ­experiment involving 300 rural workers or the application of a new and effective “psychosocial” method of alphabetization; it symbolized a much vaster and more profound process of pedagogical change. In the social turbulence of the times in  which adult literacy appeared as a precondition for social, political, and ­economic development, it represented the voices of millions of impoverished nordestinos clamoring for social justice, for solidarity, for democracy. Angicos was a popular culture project that made a national education plan for a socially just, democratic society a reality—however brief.

To the Ragged of the World Exiled in Chile, Paulo Freire found a political atmosphere conducive to the development of his ideas and their application. It was there that he wrote his best‐ known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1974). He acknowledged the importance of his new life to the making of this book: “It was experiencing the intensity of Chilean society first‐hand that made me constantly relive my Brazilian experience whose vivid memory I brought with me in exile, that I wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed between 1967 and 1968” (Freire, 1992, p. 53). The principal emphasis of this work was aptly stated in Ernani Maria Fiori’s preface: the main goal of education for freedom is to encourage men and women to “speak their own words” rather than repeating the words of others. The word is an instrument by means of which a person becomes the subject of her story. If it is through the word that a human being reveals his or her humanity, it is in dialogue that he or she meets “the other.” Only in authentic communication, in

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

conditional equality and reciprocity established by dialogue, can an individual become both creator and subject. This is why education is not a neutral process. It can mold subjected subjects as well as liberated ones. As Ângela Antunes states (2008, p. 19): “in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire finds a name for something fundamental in the educational process. He calls the act of educating a political act. He brings the political nature of education into existence. And, in dedicating the book ‘to the ragged of the world and to those who suffer with them and fight next to them,’ he states his position, teaching us that educators must make choices that involve commitment and struggle.” The pedagogy of the oppressed clearly unveils the oppressor’s reality, making people conscious of their exploitation, a first step in freeing them from ­oppression. It is a pedagogy that leads to struggle for the transformation of the oppression that is the daily life of the oppressed. The pedagogy of the oppressed is, simultaneously, a pedagogy of hope and a pedagogy of struggle. There is no hope without struggle. It is a pedagogy “of ” and not “for” the oppressed because it is a formulation from the point of‐view of the ragged ones to whom the book is dedicated. The implication of this option is radical, constituting, at its limit, a truly paradigmatic revolution, insofar as it attributes scientific and epistemological superiority to the dominated …. This superiority is elucidated in the ­following passage by Paulo Freire: “So it is only the oppressed [who], freeing themselves, can free the oppressors. As an oppressive class, they cannot free anyone, least of all themselves. Extending this principle to other fields of ­ human  activity, it can be concluded that only the oppressed are capable of developing their humanity and taking part in the process of civilization” ­ (Romão, 2008, pp. 11–12). In this book, Paulo Freire cites many authors, phenomenologists, existentialists, and Marxists. Among those cited are Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Jean‐Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Buber, Lucien Goldman, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Marx, Lenin, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Georg Lukács, Karel Kosik, and Herbert Marcuse. There are also Brazilian authors like Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Guimarães Rosa, and Cândido Mendes. Thus, we can say that one of the trademarks of Pedagogy of the Oppressed is its polyphony. As Danilo Streck points out (2008, p. 16), “there are many very different voices in the book, ­sometimes even dissonant ones. Farmers and tradesmen rub shoulders with intellectuals, artists and militants; we find schools of thought that Paulo Freire merely mentions without coherent explanation, a contemporaneous ‘reality sandwich’ served as a goad to our interpretation and alteration. This polyphony makes so many readers feel they see themselves in the book.” Paulo Freire wrote his Pedagogy of the Oppressed in the context of the powerful emancipatory movements of the 1960s—movements staged by women, students, campesinos, people of color; social and popular movements;, countercultural youth (the hippies); the persistence of the Cold War and the bellicose expansion of U.S. and Russian interference in Vietnam (1966); along with the political ­assassinations of Che Guevara (1967) and Martin Luther King (1968) and the “Prague Spring” (1968), were just some of the events that resonated at the time. This is another reason for Paulo Freire’s widespread acceptance. His discourse appealed to very different audiences. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed “we find the pedagogical dimension of the freedom movements (of students, of women, of

37

38

Moacir Gadotti

ex‐colonials and of workers, among others) that were occurring when he wrote  it. The book had such a huge and almost instantaneous repercussion because it said what many people had on the tips of their tongues and saw expressed in Freire’s words. It crossed the divisions between academics and political activists, between theologians and social scientists, between educators from the north and the south” (Streck, 2008, p. 16). Paulo Freire writes for educators and noneducators, for physicians, social scientists, physicists, students, mothers and fathers, factory workers and agricultural workers. Very different people meet in this book having identified with its point of view. The book resounded in the most diverse surroundings, academic and societal. Trade unions, churches, and social and popular movements were responsible for its wide diffusion and the debate about its ideas, serving as a guide for transformative action. Literacy workers, progressive intellectuals, indigenous people, those living on the margins of society, political activists, university students, poor people and wealthy ones committed to their impoverished kin, politicians, social workers, and others utilized its theses to defend their own perspectives.

Consciousness and History In fact, Paulo Freire did not invent the word conscientização, which was created by a team from the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros, or ISEB, as this organization was known. Founded in 1955 in Rio de Janeiro when it was still the Federal District, ISEB was attached to the Ministry of Education and Culture as an independent research group and banished by the military leaders of the 1964 coup. Many of its members, known as isebianos, were exiled from Brazil. Among them were Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, Antonio Cândido, and Álvaro Vieira Pinto, whom Paulo Freire especially admired. He also perceived the depth and ­significance of the concept of conscientizing, increasing an individual’s self‐ awareness, and incorporated it as part of his praxis. It soon became a cornerstone of his thinking and he gave it such a special politico‐pedagogical importance that we can safely say he rebaptized it, becoming its “godfather.” For Paulo Freire, conscientization is the critical development of awareness that surpasses the spontaneous phase of apprehension of the real to attain a critical phase in which reality becomes a knowable object. What Jean Piaget often referred to as a prise de conscience, conscious awareness, is a stage of ­conscientization, but not conscientization itself. Conscientization is the act of conscious awareness as it deepens; it is the critical development of an expanding consciousness. Conscientization implies action whereas a prise de conscience does not (Freire, 2016). Consciousness determines the manner in which a human being relates to the world. On the other hand, consciousness is socially determined by the structures that surround us and can be transformed. There is a dialectical relationship between consciousness and history. Change consciousness and the social, ­political, and economic structures act as interdependent processes, intervening like transformative agents.

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

In his reelaboration of the isebian concept of conscientization Paulo Freire introduces the notion of “stages of consciousness,” not mechanical but dialectical, distinguishing ingenuous consciousness from critical consciousness. For him, ingenuous consciousness is human consciousness at the most elementary level of its development, when it is still immersed in nature and perceives phenomena but does not know how to distance itself from them so it can judge them. This is consciousness in its most “natural” or “magical” state. It can be called “natural” because the passage from ingenuous consciousness to critical consciousness entails a process of denaturalization synonymous with what Freire refers to as “humanization.” On the other hand, with critical consciousness comes understanding or ­perception that succeeds in demystifying certain rationales that explain the way men and women are in the world. It unmasks reality and leads human beings to their historic and “ontological vocation” of becoming more human. It is founded on creativity and stimulates human beings’ genuine actions and reflections about reality, enabling them to transform and accept themselves as creators. The idea of conscientization, in Paulo Freire, is associated with the concepts of liberty and of liberation, two main categories of his anthropological ­theorizing, dating back to his first works. His concept of education is founded on anthropological musing. The ultimate goal of education is to free oneself from unjust and oppressive realities. Education envisions liberation, the radical transformation of students and teachers, so they can learn “to be more.” It is also concerned with the betterment and humanization of reality so that women  and men are recognized as the subjects of their own stories, rather than mere objects. Education for liberation is located on the horizon of a utopian vision of society. Formative education must allow for a critical reading of the world and of peoples’ ways of being in it. The world that surrounds us is an unfinished world and this implies the denunciation of its unjust and oppressive reality and, therefore, of a transformative critique and announcement of another reality. The announcement is necessary as the momentous call for creation of a new reality. Tomorrow’s reality is a utopia for educators today. For Paulo Freire, utopia is part of a realist educator’s arsenal. Unless she sees beyond the horizon, a teacher cannot ­function in the quotidian. Conscientization is the pedagogical process that seeks to offer human beings an opportunity for self‐discovery through reflection about their existence. It consists of critically inserting human beings in the transformative action of reality; unmasking its oppressive aspects while taking concrete actions to modify them. Education is more than science. It is art and praxis, action‐reflection, the conscientization process and a project. As a project, education needs to permanently reinstall the hope of a better world despite people’s incompleteness and the unfinished state of society. We can confidently claim that Paulo Freire’s thinking is both existential and historical. He forged it in the struggle, according to his definition of “praxis”— action + reflection. Freire used to say that his definition of praxis has nothing to do with “practice,” its most frequent, pragmatic connotation. For him, praxis is transformative action (Gadotti, 1996b).

39

40

Moacir Gadotti

Brazilian and Latin American society in the 1960s can be seen as a big laboratory in which what became known as the Paulo Freire Method was forged, a method of conscientization, of the formation of critical consciousness (Brandão, 2003). The intense political mobilization of this period played a fundamental part in the consolidation of his thinking. But, in putting together his pedagogical method, Paulo Freire also depended on the sciences of education, principally psychology and sociology. His theory of the coding and decoding of generative words and themes accompanied the step‐by‐step development of what has come to be known as “participant research.” However, he should not be thought of as a mere method‐maker. He was right in rebelling against a tendency to mythologize his method. He shied away from reductionist interpretations that he thought weakened complex reality. He was singularly unimpressed with dogmatic methodologies. It is true that he was better known, at first, for his methods of instruction and research anchored in anthropology and learning theory—methods that remain indispensable today when it comes to training teachers. But he did not rest on those laurels. His intellectual labor went far beyond methodology. He was one of the great ideologues of the paradigm of popular education. His theses contributing to its theoretical and practical advancement are well known: theorizing about practice in order to transform it, recognizing the legitimacy of popular wisdom, harmonizing formal and informal approaches. His inspiring contributions to popular education are still very current as they are constantly reinvented by new social and educational practices. Myriad popular and adult education experiments are inspired and continue to be inspired by his ideas about teaching.

Reuniting with His Own Story In the 1970s, Paulo Freire advised various countries in Africa, recently liberated from European colonization, while collaborating with their creation of postcolonial education systems. His first sight of Africa was at the end of 1971 when he went to Zambia and Tanzania as a member of the Education Department of the World Council of Churches. There he made contact with various groups engaged in liberation movements and cooperated with the founders of the Tanzanian Literacy Campaign including President Julius Nyerere (1922–1999), known as “Professor.” Nyerere was the first Tanzanian to study at a British university. In 1954, he founded a political party, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and led his country to independence from Great Britain in 1962. These and other countries in the process of decolonization and national ­reconstruction had the principle of self‐determination at their base, a political philosophy based on the redemption of self‐reliance and on reappraisal of their culture and their history. In 1977, Paulo Freire wrote one of his most important books, Letters to Guinea‐Bissau, about such an experience. Always open to new learning, he attempted to understand African culture by making direct contact

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

with the people and their intellectuals. Later, he recognized and related his African apprenticeship in Por uma pedagogia de pergunta (Teaching by asking questions) a book he coauthored with Antonio Faundez, a Chilean educator also exiled in Switzerland (Freire & Faundez, 1985). Paulo Freire’s experience in the rural zones and the urban peripheries of these countries served as a source of inspiration for a novel development sequence in his emancipatory theory of education: political act, productive act, act of knowledge. Based on his experience in African alphabetization campaigns, he stressed the importance of the association between the literacy ­process and the productive process (Freire, 1995, p. 72) as well as the role of “postliteracy” as a way to give continuity to the alphabetization process. He maintained that postliteracy pedagogy was important for the consolidation of the knowledge acquired in the previous phase in the domains of writing, reading, and mathematical calculation and for the development of the ability to critically analyze reality (Freire, 1980, p. 177). Paulo Freire’s work in Africa was decisive for his trajectory, not only reuniting him with his own story so he could undertake new challenges in the field of adult literacy but also because it introduced him to the theory and practice of Amilcar Cabral (1924–1973), an extraordinary thinker and revolutionary for whom Paulo Freire had enormous respect, even though Cabral was assassinated prior to the independence, therefore they could not meet. In his work, he makes frequent references to Amilcar Cabral’s revolutionary strategies and admitted, on more than one occasion, that he wanted to be Cabral’s biographer. Africa, humanity’s cradle, was a great school for Paulo Freire. Some authors go even further on the impact his African liberation experience had on Freire’s life and work. According to Afonso Celso Scocuglia, Freire’s work in Africa influenced his writing to the point of “causing a significant ­rupture in his politico‐pedagogical thinking” (Scocuglia, 2008, p. 29). According to Scocuglia, beginning with his experiences in Africa, Freire’s thinking “­incorporated analytic categories of Marxist socio‐economics,” assuming that “the reinventions of society and of education need to pass through the transformation of the productive process and all the connections involved in that ­process” (Scocuglia, 2008, p. 29). The incorporation of these categories, like the role of the economic infrastructure in the formation of consciousness, did not diminish the role of the subject in the history of his thinking. In Paulo Freire’s first experiments in Brazil and in Chile he focused his attention on literacy as the process of politicization, seeking a consciousness‐expanding education (Beisiegel, 2008, p. 125). Following his African experience and his return to Brazil in 1980, he put more emphasis on the importance of the associative and productive processes in adult alphabetization. Now literacy strategies were associated with new ways and new techniques of production, such as ­agricultural cooperatives, which linked intellectual labor with manual labor. According to Freire, experiences he had had in Mozambique in 1976 led him to stress the importance of the connection between the productive and the pedagogical: “We discussed this again, later, with comrades in São Tomé. They had had more or less this same experience and thought that it was important to

41

42

Moacir Gadotti

reflect about the meaning of production, about the productive cycle as a totality and not to understand production merely as the act of producing” (Freire & Faundez, 1985, p. 143). The African context, resulting from the struggles for independence, was different from what he had experienced in Brazil and in Chile. Carlos Alberto Torres writes that “the experience in Tanzania offered Freire the opportunity to work inside a socialist experiment, with a centralized plan and a revolutionary socialist party that had a substantive interest in adult education as a real methodological alternative to the formal instructional system” (Torres, 1996, pp. 134–135). Antonio Faundez (1994) points out that Paulo Freire’s democratic vision met with resistance from some Tanzanian directors who revealed the contradictions of Tanzanian socialism when it came to the politics of literacy. Literacy campaigns in Africa had a strong political motivation. They were considered basic tools in the creation of national identity. The main problem posed was not the actual construction of the adult literacy campaigns per se but how to propagandize them as being at the service of “national reconstruction” (Freire, 1977, p. 33). This was education committed to social transformation. The liberation movements were giving birth to a new educational reality, one that called into question the colonizer’s education system and led to the “formation of a small elite … with an individualist mentality and extremely poorly prepared, from a technical and professional standpoint, to confront the country’s real problems and needs” (Oliveira & Oliveira, 1982, p. 87). The new system wanted “the act of study” to be tied to productive work, to political participation, and to the democratic administration of “revolutionary education.” Paulo Freire’s experiences in Africa remodeled his pedagogy. Finding himself in processes of national reconstruction, he came to believe in the symbiosis of education and the forces of production, incorporating physical labor as an educational principle. This evolution in his thinking is due to his encounter with Africa and it was very important in all his writing thereafter. From the beginning, he had an enormous empathy for African culture. It was really a reencounter with his own history, with himself, as if he had returned to his past. He used to say that, on first stepping on African soil he felt at home, “like someone returning rather than someone arriving for the first time” (Freire, 1977, p. 14). As an educator, Paulo Freire was always open to learning something new. This was part of his practice and of his theory of learning as well. He used to speak about the need to learn through practice and the need for theory and practice to be coherent. In his book, Medo e ousadia: O cotidiano do professor (Fear and daring: the everyday life of a teacher) he refers to lessons he learned in exile: “Exile allowed me to rethink Brazilian reality. Meanwhile, my confrontation with the politics and the history of other places, in Chile, Latin America, the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, Geneva, exposed me to many things that led me to have to relearn what I thought I knew. It is impossible that someone would be exposed to so many different cultures and countries during a life in exile without learning new things and relearning old ones. Distance from my Brazilian past and my present in different contexts stimulated my reflection” (Freire & Shor, 2003, p. 43). Africa obliged him to rediscover his own country and this was vital to reestablishing his identity as well as to consolidating his intellectual output.

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

Citizen Education, Popular Education Returning to Brazil after 16 years of exile, Paulo Freire became involved with the democratic construction of “public popular education.” His last great practical experiment was between 1989 and 1991 in the City of São Paulo where, as secretary of education, he promoted critical teacher training, adult education, curriculum restructuring, and interdisciplinary studies (O’Cadiz, Torres, & Wong, 1998). At a time of formal and imposing bureaucratic ­education, he was opposed to it, instead focusing on the needs and problems one of the country’s largest municipalities in terms of its ethnic, cultural, social, and gender complexities in a multiplicity of contexts. He tried to empower marginalized people to make autonomous decisions (Freire, 1997). His method aimed to increase their conscious participation in actions and practices that would benefit them. In Brazil, during this period, we were experiencing the beginning of a citizenship education movement known as “citizen school” (Gadotti, 2013). It seems to have been Paulo Freire who best defined citizenship education in a television interview conducted by Rio’s TV Educativa at the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo on March 19, 1997 when he said: A Citizen School is a school that becomes a center of rights and of duties. What characterizes it is citizenship training. The Citizen School makes citizenship possible for those who are part of it and those who come to it. It cannot be a Citizen School in and by itself. It only earns its name to the extent that it is useful for the construction of citizenship in the lives of those who use it for that purpose. Citizen School is made coherent by its ability to shape freedom and free discourse. Like all schools fighting to be itself, it struggles for its teachers and its students to find themselves as well. And, since no one can exist in isolation, the Citizen School is a ­community school, a school of companionship, a school for the common production of knowledge and liberty that manifests the intense experience of democracy. (Paulo Freire archives, São Paulo) Since the beginning of the 1990s, the citizen school movement has been ­ eveloped in the context of educational renovation and of concrete educational d practices promoting citizenship, each strongly rooted in the popular education tradition. Today, some think Paulo Freire produced a prototype of the citizen school in São Paulo when he was secretary of education in mayor Luiza Erundina’s 1989–1992 municipal administration, although “Popular Public School” or “Public, Popular and Democratic School” was the nomenclature of the period (Freire, 1991). The “Citizenship School” actually originated in the early 1950s during the inception of the Civil Rights movement in the southeastern United States when popular educator Myles Horton and his colleagues at the Highlander Center in Tennessee responded to a request from Esau Jenkins, a community leader in John’s Island, South Carolina, to teach local blacks to read and write English so they could vote and exercise political power. In so doing, they developed

43

44

Moacir Gadotti

­ rinciples of literacy education, used community leaders as teachers, and p taught reading based on the students’ needs and desires to gain freedom (Freire & Horton, 2003). We cannot speak of the citizen school without mentioning a curricular ­reorientation associated with it. Citizen school curricula make space for sociocultural relations (Padilha, 2007). This is instilled in the training of citizen school teachers as knowledge‐mediators and problem‐posers, rather than facilitators, a term Paulo Freire disliked. Instead, he came up with the neologism dodiscência (Freire, 1997, p. 31) to highlight the dialogical relationship between teaching and learning. In recent decades, the citizen school concept has embraced curricular innovations regarding planetary sustainability that we call ecopedagogy ­ (Gadotti, 2002). Education for citizenship is also education for a sustainable society, for another possible world (Gadotti, 2012). This is not about “alternative” schools or “alternative” pedagogies that must be constructed separately from current schools and teaching methods. Rather, it concerns other possibilities that can be developed, dialectically, within existing schools and pedagogies without annihilating everything that has been done so far. The future has more to do with surpassing than with destroying the past. Neoliberal capitalist globalization divests people of the time to live well and of the space to live within, it steals our ability to lead our lives with dignity. More and more, we are reduced to the status of machines, producing and reproducing capital. Neoliberalism vetoes dreaming along with utopias; it sees education as a commodity, reduces human beings to mere consumers, and cynically downplays the importance of public spaces and humanistic education. In opposition to such haughty nihilism, citizen schools enter the fray as champions of education’s de‐ commodification, affirming the universal right to emancipatory schooling, learning how to recognize and defend social justice as standard human practice and, in so doing, reestablish citizenship, rather than market‐value, as the true measure of humanity. The citizen school as a viable alternative to neoliberalism has been the subject of numerous studies and treatises. I regard as exemplary the doctoral thesis of José Eustáquio Romão (2000), which compares the citizen school project to the neoliberal concept of pedagogy and that of José Clovis de Azevedo (2007) who, based on his experience as a teacher in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, compares the two poles of our current educational worldview: the Mercoescola, which turns education into merchandising, and the Escola Cidadã (Citizen School) movement representing actively antihegemonic pedagogy. In his opinion, citizen schools represent cultural reconversion by their promotion of a political and pedagogical project based on the emancipatory principles of political, social, economic, and cultural democracy. Citizen school, like popular education, needs to be seen in the context of a political project to return power to the people. It is a branch of popular education that, according to Paulo Freire (in Torres, 1987, p. 86–87) “is delineated as an effort to organize and mobilize the working and underclasses with the ­creation of people’s power as an end‐in‐sight … I would go so far as to say that what marks, what defines popular education is not the age of those in the act of

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

education but their political option, the political practices they understand and undertake in the educative practice.” As São Paulo’s municipal secretary of education, Paulo Freire demonstrated that popular education is built both in and outside of the state (Freire, 1991). Thus, popular education can and must inspire public policies regarding education. As a general concept, popular education is not restricted to the nonformal educational field. As a concept, it may be considered as one of Latin America’s most beautiful contributions to universal pedagogical thinking, “a concept that should be extended to each and every education system” (Brandão, 2006, p. 54). Citizen education, like popular education, is centered on popular participation, on citizenship and citizens’ autonomy; it embodies respect for and the defense of human rights, critical pedagogy, social movements, popular communication and culture, adult education, formal and nonformal education on all levels, environmental education, and, finally, integral and inclusive education (Antunes & Padilha, 2010). It takes into account the different expressions of human lives, regardless of whether they are artistic or cultural, attached to local development or to economic solidarity, to socioenvironmental sustainability, to the affirmation of the identities of different subjects and of their collectives, to the digital inclusion of and combat against any kind of prejudice. The participation of citizens is a pedagogical principle as well as a human right. Education for citizenship is an education in human rights and vice versa. It seeks to strengthen people’s participation and social control, empowering them as subjects with rights, among them the right to resist.

Freire, Global Thinker Paulo Freire’s theories crossed the boundaries of the sciences and other disciplines, well beyond Latin America. At the same time that his reflections were deepening the theme of his lifelong pursuit—education as the practice of freedom—his approaches fecundated other fields of knowledge, putting down roots in the most diverse soils—from the shanty towns of Recife to the burakumin communities of Japan—fortifying educational theories and practices as well as supporting the reflections not only of educators but of other professionals. We cannot view Freire only as an educator of adults or as an academic, or reduce his work to a technique or methodology. It should be read within “the context of the deeply radical nature of his anti‐colonial theory and practice and of his post‐colonial discourse,” according to Henry Giroux (1993, p. 177). This perspective shows us that Freire took the risk of crossing boundaries to read the world better and expedite new positions without sacrificing his commitments and principles. Freire’s pedagogy acquired universal meaning, beginning with his examination of the relationship between those who are oppressed and their oppressors because oppression is ubiquitous. As demonstrated, his theories have been enriched by a multitude of varied experiences in many countries. Apart from those in which Paulo Freire was present, plenty of people have brought his ideas to a wide range of practices with encouraging results.

45

46

Moacir Gadotti

It has been nearly half a century since his principal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was written and popular education, indelibly marked by this work, continues to serve millions, particularly in Latin America. It is a theoretical high water mark that continues to inspire numerous experiments in Latin America and around the globe. This is true in “Third World” countries but also in places with high technological development and very different realities. Paulo Freire continues to be a tributary of this movement to which he has made an enormous contribution. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is still quite up to date, not just because oppressed people still exist but because it is important reading, particularly for those involved with education who seek “to create a world in which it is less difficult to love,” as he writes at the end. Carlos Alberto Torres claims to be convinced that “there are two twentieth century books that mark important developments in the philosophy of education: one is John Dewey’s Education and Democracy and the other is Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (Torres, 2008, p. 10). For those who cannot comply with the narrow neoliberal mindset that renounces dreams and utopias, for those who believe that “another world is possible,” the word “oppressed” is still valid, still has meaning and currency: “Paulo Freire’s importance was to have shown that the oppressed are never just the oppressed. They are also creators of culture and historical subjects who, when they have been made aware and organized, can transform the society” (Boff, 2008, p. 16). As Henry A. Giroux states, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed continues to play a vigorous part in a wide variety of debates about the nature, meaning and importance of education as a kind of cultural politics …, it rewrites the narrative of education as a political project that simultaneously breaks through the multiple forms of domination and expands the principles and practices of human dignity, liberty, and social justice …, it redraws the work of instruction as the domain of all cultural workers engaged in the construction and organization of knowledge, desires, values, and social practices …, it rewrites the language of politics inside and not outside of the radical responsibility of ethics …, it embodies the lifetime commitment of a man who associates theory and action, commitment and humility, courage and faith” (Giroux, 1996, pp. 569–570). The Brazilian writer and psychoanalyst Rubem Alves affirms that Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a map like those used in the age of great navigations, that indicated obscure lands and were more oneiric than epistemic—prophetic maps that lead to unexplored paths and invite the voyager to leave the secure, familiar routes and to venture through realms others have never visited. Paulo Freire did this: suggested new paths for thought. He demonstrated the circularity of education’s well‐worn byways, along which one could wander forever without straying. Mistakes? Many. What prophet never errs? But, as Nietzsche said, great men’s mistakes are more fruitful than miniscule certainties. Freire’s work is like a fruitful seed that keeps dying and being transformed because life itself demands it. (Alves, 2008, p. 35)

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

He influenced various generations of educators, anthropologists, social and political scientists, and professionals from the exact, natural, and biological sciences and helped to construct a pedagogy founded in liberty. What he wrote is part of the life of an entire generation that learned to dream about a world of equality and justice, that fought and is still fighting for another possible world. Some would no doubt like to leave Paulo Freire’s work on the shelves, in the past, consign it to the pedagogical archives. Others would like to forget him because of his political preferences. Certainly, his ideas did not please everybody. In certain places, he continues to be banned. But for those who want to know and experience a pro‐justice pedagogy of humanist inspiration his work is indispensable. The strength of his thinking is not only that it comprises a theory of knowledge but that it indicates a direction and demonstrates that it is possible, urgent, and necessary to change the order of things. Paulo Freire convinced many people in many parts of the world with his theories and practices but also because he awoke in them, personally or through his writing, the capacity to dream about a more human, less ugly, and more just reality. He left us a utopian legacy. English translation by Peter Lownds, October 2017.

References Alves, R. (2008). Estar sempre pronto para partir. In: 40 olhares sobre os 40 anos da Pedagogia do oprimido (ed. M. Gadotti), 35. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Antunes, Â. and Padilha, P.R. (2010). Educação cidadã, educação integral: fundamentos e práticas. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Antunes, Â. (2008). Pedagogia do oprimido: escolha, compromisso e luta. In: 40 olhares sobre os 40 anos da Pedagogia do oprimido (ed. M. Gadotti), 19–20. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Azevedo, J.C. (2007). Reconversão cultural da escola: Mercoescola e escola cidadã. Porto Alegre: Sulina. Beisiegel, C.d.R. (2008). Política e educação popular: A teoria e a prática de Paulo Freire no Brasil. Brasília: Liber. Boff, L. (2008). Pedagogia do oprimido e Teologia da Libertação. In: 40 olhares sobre os 40 anos da Pedagogia do oprimido (ed. M. Gadotti), 16–17. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Brandão, C.R. (2003). O que é Método Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Brandão, C.R. (2006). O que é educação popular. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Cardoso, A. (1963, April‐June). Conscientização e alfabetização: Uma visão prática do Sistema Paulo Freire. Estudos Universitários, Revista de Cultura da Universidade do Recife (4): 71–80. Faundez, A. (1994). A expansão da escrita na África e na América Latina: Análise de processos de alfabetização. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. and Faundez, A. (1985). Por uma pedagogia da pergunta. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. and Shor, I. (2003). Medo e ousadia: o cotidiano do professor. São Paulo: Paz e Terra.

47

48

Moacir Gadotti

Freire, P. and Horton, M. (2003). O caminho se faz caminhando: conversas sobre educação e mudança. Petrópolis: Vozes. Freire, P. (1963, April–June). Conscientização e alfabetização: uma nova visão do processo. Estudos Universitários, Revista de Cultura da Universidade do Recife (4): 5–23. Freire, P. (1974). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra (Manuscripts from 1968). Freire, P. (1977). Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau: Registros de uma experiência em processo. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1980). Quatro cartas aos animadores de círculos de cultura de São Tomé e Príncipe. In: A questão política da educação popular (ed. C.R. Brandão and A. Bezerra), 136–195. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Freire, P. (1991). Educação na cidade. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogia da esperança: um reencontro com a Pedagogia do oprimido. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1995). A importância do ato de ler em três artigos que se completam, 30the. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (1997). Pedagogia da autonomia: Saberes necessários à prática educativa. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (2016). Conscientização. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P., Darcy de Oliveira, R., de Oliveira, D., M., and Ceccon, C. (1982). Vivendo e aprendendo: experiências do IDAC em educação popular. São Paulo: Brasilense. Gadotti, M. (1994). Reading Paulo Freire: His life and work. Albany: SUNY Press. Gadotti, M. (ed.) (1996a). Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia. São Paulo: Cortez. Gadotti, M. (1996b). Pedagogy of praxis: A dialectical philosophy of education. Albany: SUNY Press. Gadotti, M. (2002). Pedagogía de la tierra. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Gadotti, M. (2012). Educar para outro mundo posible. Caracas: Centro Internacional Miranda. Gadotti, M. (2013). Escuela ciudadana. Barcelona: Octaedro. Giroux, H.A. (1993). Paulo Freire and the politics of postcolonialism. In: Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (ed. P. McLaren and P. Leonard), 177–188. London & New York: Routledge. Giroux, H.A. (1996). Um livro para os que cruzam fronteiras. In: Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia (ed. M. Gadotti), 569–570. São Paulo: Cortez. Kirkendall, A.J. (2010). Paulo Freire and the cold war politics of literacy. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Lyra, C. (1996). As quarenta horas de Angicos: Uma experiência pioneira de educação. São Paulo: Cortez. Maciel, J. (1963, April‐June). A fundamentação teórica do Sistema Paulo Freire de educação. Revista Estudos Universitários, Revista de Cultura da Universidade do Recife (4): 25–59. Manfredi, S.M. (1981). Política e educação popular: Experiências de alfabetização no Brasil com o Método Paulo Freire – 1960/1964. São Paulo: Cortez. O’Cadiz, M.d.P., Torres, C.A., and Wong, P.L. (1998). Education and democracy: Paulo Freire, social movements and educational reform in São Paulo. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Freire’s Intellectual and Political Journey

Oliveira, R.D.d. and de Oliveira, M.D. (1982). Aprender para viver melhor: A prática educativa do movimento de libertação no poder na Guiné‐Bissau. In: Vivendo e aprendendo: Experiências do IDAC em educação popular (ed. P. Freire, R.D. de Oliveira, M.D. de Oliveira and C. Ceccon), 69–105. São Paulo: Brasilense. Padilha, P.R. (2007). Educar em todos os cantos: Reflexões e indicações por uma educação intertranscultural. São Paulo: Cortez/Instituto Paulo Freire. Romão, J.E. (2008). Opção radical pelo oprimido. In: 40 olhares sobre os 40 anos da Pedagogia do oprimido (ed. M. Gadotti), 11–12. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Romão, J.E. (2000). Dialética da diferença: O projeto da escola cidadã frente ao projeto pedagógico neoliberal. São Paulo: Cortez. Schmied‐Kowarzik, W. (1983). Pedagogia dialética: De Aristóteles a Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Scocuglia, A.C. (2008). África/africanidade: Angola, Guiné‐Bissau, Moçambique. In: Dicionário Paulo Freire (ed. D. Streck, R. Euclides and J.J. Zitkoski), 29–31. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica. Streck, D.R. (2008). Uma maneira de construir pedagogia. In: 40 olhares sobre os 40 anos da Pedagogia do oprimido (ed. M. Gadotti), 15–16. Instituto Paulo Freire: São Paulo. Torres, C.A. (1975). Lectura crítica de Paulo Freire: de ensayos Latinoamericanos sobre la pedagogia de Paulo Freire. Buenos Aires: Tierra Antologia. Torres, C.A. (1977). Consciência y historia: La práxis educativa de Paulo Freire. Mexico: Gernika. Torres, C.A. (1978). Entrevistas con Paulo Freire. Mexico: Editorial Gernika. Torres, C.A. (1996). Pedagogia do oprimido: Revolução pedagógica da segunda metade do século. In: Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia (ed. M. Gadotti), 567–568. São Paulo: Cortez. Torres, C.A. (2008). Reinventando Paulo Freire 40 anos depois. In: 40 olhares sobre os 40 anos da Pedagogia do oprimido (ed. M. Gadotti), 10–11. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Torres, C.A. (2012). 50 anos de Angicos: Proposta da Secretaria de Educação de RGN em parceria com os Institutos Paulo Freire de Los Angeles e de São Paulo. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Torres, C. A. (2014). Diálogo e práxis educativa: Uma leitura crítica de Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Loyola. (Reprint of three of the author’s books, published in the second half of the 1970s by the same publisher, with the title A práxis educativa de Paulo Freire, Diálogo com Paulo Freire, e Leitura crítica de Paulo Freire). Torres, R.M. (ed.) (1987). Educação popular: Um encontro com Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Loyola.

49

51

2 Paulo Freire: Education, Culture, and the University A Historical Memory from More Than Fifty Years Ago1 Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

Popular Culture—Foundations of the Paulo Freire System Education plays an extremely important part in the shift of values that we are experiencing. Moreover, its usefulness will be proportional to the degree that we are able to become part of the shift ourselves. This will depend on our ability to clearly distinguish the difference between what is represented as part of the shift but really isn’t and what about it is truly intrinsic. Faced with these aspects as well as others implicit in the various ­contradictions that characterize the cultural shift in Brazil, the education we require liberates people by increasing their consciousness whereas the  one we cling to totally contradicts our new cultural climate as it tends  to accommodate and domesticate. We don’t need education that communicates by command. (Freire, 2005)2 In 1960, the beginning of “the decade without end,” drafts of new ideas and proposals for social action, including bringing culture and education to the popular classes, emerged in Brazil and spread throughout Latin America. In these first documents, the idea of a new popular culture erupted as an alternative, pedagogical resource of political action inspired and manifested by the culture. As a consequence of this new proposal, closely linked to projects that later came to be known as popular education, the first popular culture movements were created in some regions of Brazil. Examining several polemical documents from that era, brought together in a book organized by Osmar Fávero, should shed light on the idea that, although divergent in some essential points, the initiatives brought together in and as popular culture movements in the first 5 years of the 1960s can be reread as a political critique of Brazilian society and culture. The popular culture movements rethink, in a radical and politically motivated manner, what should characterize the interactions between those who write The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

52

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

t­heories and establish proposals for cultural action, many of them applicable to  the field of education, and the people themselves as subjects and creators of culture. Located at the crossroads of the art world and the universities, particularly among the “student movements,” different popular culture movement projects, often stemming from popular culture centers, were intended to be more than mere examples of cultural democratization or of a cultural illustration of the popular classes by way of traditional programs of adult education. Let us peruse some of their founders’ ideas, using words and expressions from those years. The work of transforming and signifying the world is the same as that which transforms and signifies an individual. As a collective and socially significant practice, it is carried out through actions believed to be motivated by and necessary to the culture. Thus, the very society within which a person becomes a human being is part of the culture(s), in the broadest sense that can be attributed to that word. Moreover, human consciousness is not just something that enables a person to know things as animals do but to know the self through knowing, which permits him to symbolically transcend the natural world of which he is part and on which he acts; it is also a social construction that constitutes and continues the history of human work as a world‐changing activity while acting on man himself in meaningful ways. Because the ubiquitous, unequal, and exclusive influence of capitalist society represents a cultural invasion on the part of the erudite/dominant sector on popular culture, a project of social rupture and inequality, injustice and marginalization of the people and their communities, it possesses a cultural dimension as well. This is the moment in which the popular culture movements of the 1960s proposed a radical inversion in what was then thought to be “the cultural process.” This was the innovative rupture of rethinking of both that process and the practice of education from inside the belly of the people’s liberation project, as a revolutionary contribution by militant intellectuals who were “committed to the people.” The construction of a history of the search for human reconciliation and ­liberty also includes subversive sociopolitical action in terms of cultural power. Thus, along with initiatives concerning the organization and participation of the people in a more directly political plan, there needed to be broad‐based popular action in the domain of culture as well. Just as the taking of power by groups of oppressors who subject the social processes of cultural construction to their own interests can represent a historical moment, another such moment can be the conquest of a new power that recovers the human, humanized, and humanizing dimensions of work and of culture, not just for the common people but for everyone. In the very particular language of early 1960s documents, cultural action through education incentivizes and equips the people by raising their consciousness so that they can reorganize themselves around elements original to their own culture. This is an education, in terms dear to Paulo Freire, that taught people both to read and write words and to read their world with a critical eye. Developing people in the act of educating themselves into critical and creative “subjects,” rather than passive objects, by means of a practice of expanding

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

c­ onsciousness and reflection, the task of the “erudite” and “committed” educator is to assess and assist men and women from the popular classes to become, from inside out and bottom to top, capable of building a new popular culture starting with new collective practices. This means the step‐by‐step creation of a versatile popular culture, stripped of the imposition of dominant values reflecting the logic of a hegemonic social standpoint vis‐à‐vis life and the world, free at last of its perceptions, meanings, and values and of its mistakes. A new culture, born of popular acts of liberation, reflects in its critical approach to the practice of freedom the reality of social life in all its transparency. In this way, another new popular culture is defined as the gradual result of an increasingly committed relationship between popular culture movements and popular movements that share the same culture. This can be seen as a project of collective execution, something that must be built through the educational work of popular culture. This comprises both the process and the product of such an undertaking. Here are some fundamentals of popular culture movements that play an important part in the ideological work of recreation as a way for people to define their own culture. This is in direct contrast to the systematic and manipulative uses of culture in capitalist society. Synthesizing for my argument’s sake, peoples’ cultures must be transformed into authentic popular cultures by the dialogical experiences of Popular Culture. And this political action by means of cultural actions must begin with the ­symbols and meanings at the very root of the people’s culture; their art, their knowledge, different popular traditions in all their dimensions, their customs, and so on. These must be reconsidered, beginning with the association between the people’s life experiences and their autonomous interaction with/among the agents and resources of the popular culture movement. Ideally, as cultural action matures and diffuses, the people and popular groups undertake the essential pedagogical work of consciousness‐raising. Ultimately, a reflexive, rather than a reflective, popular culture would complete its historic mission by establishing itself as a free, autonomous, and open national culture. When class inequality is no longer an issue, unified culture begins with the development in the imaginary of all inhabitants the fullest and most fecund desire for universality. When the structures of one social class’s dominion over the others are destroyed, everything would be united in an open system of ­symbols, of manifold wisdoms, sensibilities, and meanings governed by the possibility of recreating values and understandings founded on the reconciliation of people, social classes, culture, and consciousness. Popular art … popular education … popular culture … words and concepts proposed as symbolic forces antithetical to “art for the workers” or in a direction contrary to widespread use of the term “folklore.” In Brazil, until the 1960s, such terms were used to “raise the people’s level of culture” or “cultural appreciation,” rejecting the notion that active and critical values might emerge from the actual work of the “working class.” Thus, in traditional programs of “cultural information” and adult education, theater, music, and cinema were used as pedagogical resources to transfer erudite perceptions of the dominant logic to popular ­sectors.

53

54

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

Whereas, in the countercultural movements emerging in the early 1960s, cinema, theater, and music were seen as popular art forms that might lead to bi‐univocal communication and enlargement of consciousness. This communication sought to (a) take the artistic and cultural values of popular groups and communities and use them as instigative elements to collective reflection about the people’s living conditions and the meaning of their symbols; (b) take erudite art to the poorest sectors of the population, which was generally denied them, accompanied by situations for collective reflection that would return a human and critical sense to the people’s thinking that, the popular culture movements recognized, had been imperiled by the rapidity of the transition to “mass culture”; and (c) create, with the collaboration of the projects’ participants, an art that would reflect a new way to understand the world and to know how to live in it and transform it, from the alignment of the people’s values with the support and encouragement of working agents, intellectuals, and instructors. Perhaps, in their adult literacy campaigns, popular culture movements were able to walk their talk, although their existence proved ephemeral. Starting with the experiments of Paulo Freire and his pioneering team in Northeast Brazil, all of the work of “alphabetizing” (teaching people to read and write) begins with group research into the peoples’ cultural universe. After this, the classes ­themselves are transformed into culture circles where the work of teaching and learning purports to gain an unexpected and innovative dialogical dimension. There, where the instruction in reading the Portuguese language begins and ­continues through a collective reflection on the theoretical problem of culture and of elements from the local culture of each group of educandos.3 It is not just about learning to read and write your language, as in traditional programs of adult literacy, but also to read your world through your culture and, as a ­conscious subject, to communicate your expansive vision with others. A person participating in decisions regarding his or her destiny is committed to the historical process of the construction of an egalitarian society. This means that the principle of dialogical education, whose pedagogy intends to dissolve “the vertical structure of teaching” and return “the power of the word” to students as part of their learning process, translates what is purely educational to what is cultural by making both interact with revolutionary intention. This method examines the flip side of the popular culture movements’ multiple proposals. Despite all the criticism of popular culture as “alienated,” the most important part of cultural action was the work of release, not the negation of popular traditions. Participants were encouraged by their teacher/agents to begin by examining the mass culture on whose margins they existed. The aim was to make it clear to them what was rightfully theirs in terms of popular ­wisdom and tradition and what was residual, imposed by other cultures. In terms of concrete projects, which always had enormous difficulty in moving from the jargon of cultural action theory to durable and consistent experience, the general objective was to examine their cultural values “together with the people,” by exemplifying the experience of cultures that gradually progressed from secondhand traditions to innovative ones. So that, without sacrificing their “folkloric” characteristics, they would serve to express to people, groups, communities, and popular movements the importance of understanding themselves as subjects engaged in a historic battle for their human rights.

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

What Paulo Freire’s ideas and the brief but fecund practices of popular culture movements attempted to establish in the early 1960s and the legacy they left us can be summarized as follows: 1) They begin with the search for an equitable interaction between the different fields of thought, creation, and social action by way of the sciences, education, and the arts. The knowledge gained from science, cinema, theater, literature, music, fine arts, and education as a vital combination of art and practice is understood as different human domains in which new ideas for political transformation are brought forward for analysis and discussion. A new culture could be created step by step, sharing each of these callings, melding them with the internal structure of popular projects with the intention to “create something new and transformative through innovation.” 2) They seek a convergence of/between cultures. In concrete terms, they want to establish new alliances between people and groups with academic or artistic lives and callings (scholars, academics, and so on) and with popular writers/ actors, individually or collectively. This complex process of the creation and administration of art and education as “a two‐way street” is very different from anything that came before it. For one thing, it is not conceived and run as just another cultural or educational sop for underprivileged people. Nor is it about offering the standards, mores, and fashionable ideologies of the “oppressor” to the “oppressed.” Instead, it begins with the most egalitarian dialogue possible and ends by creating a means for people, social groups, and popular movements to transform themselves into the builders and administrators of their autonomy, so they can lead the process of rupturing and uprooting bourgeois hegemony. 3) They place culture and politics at the center of an ongoing act of education. Paulo Freire and his companions considered education as a cultural field whose dimension of realization had to do with the administration of forms of symbolic power that are just as likely to reiterate and reproduce a social conjuncture of inequality and oppression as they are to configure a symbolic dimension of political content that will lead to the construction of a new social order. Here is a path by which methods and techniques originally employed as “client‐centric” therapeutic alternatives and group dynamics focused on the individuality of each participant are strategically reworked as dialogues focused on the participants, not as people seeking a “personal cure” but on the transformation of the social world of their collective and quotidian lives, always considered as something that occurs in the flow of history. So it was not a matter of creating contexts for personal solutions of social conflicts as much as a search for the solidarity of social solutions for personal ­problems. All this was proposed as a momentous inversion of an education for the people en route to an education in which the people create by working their way from being economic subjects to being political subjects and by their appropriation of a moribund model of education that they would make the education of their historical project. We must not forget that the term “political subject” connotes for Paulo Freire, a conscious and critical agent, someone who is a creative, active, and collaborative participant in the ­management and transformation of her polis, his place of life and destiny.

55

56

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

4) What else is evident in the proposals of Paulo Freire and of his pioneering team is their desire to establish and diffuse an educational experience that, years later, will bear the adjective “popular.” According to the first written texts of the pioneer team, it will not be restricted to a functional methodology, like the one already created for the alphabetization of adults, but flourish as a “system of education” that has adult literacy at the ground floor and, at the penthouse level, proposes to create a popular university. This was decades before inventive proposals for alternative, no‐ or low‐cost peoples’ universities began to surface globally. This innovative “system of education” is the subject of the rest of my chapter.

From Adult Literacy to the People’s University One day the young Paulo Freire comes home and announces to Elza Freire, his wife, that he has abandoned his law practice, begun only months before. Perhaps on this very day, in Recife, a new educator was born. This was shortly before the beginning of the 1960s, “the unending decade,” as it came to be called in Brazil and much of the rest of the world. These were years of great irregularity that  oscillated wildly in Brazil and throughout Latin America until military adventures spread a bitter epoch of judgment and silence around the continent, postponing for many years a multitude of ideas, proposals, and practices for the liberation of the common people that we dreamed would transform our lives, our societies, our fate. A professorial vocation had appeared early in the life of Paulo Freire. He  became a dedicated autodidact in the years between adolescence and young  manhood, studying linguistic philology and philosophy. Years before completing his studies at Recife’s venerable law school, he taught Portuguese grammar classes for high school students. Freire claims that “at some moment, between the ages of 15 and 23, I discovered my passion for teaching” (Freire & Betto, 1985, p. 8). On another occasion, he put it this way: Before proceeding, I should say that being a teacher became real to me only after I began to teach. I had the feeling that it was my calling as soon as I began giving classes when I was still young and had to earn money to survive; but, when I started teaching, I knew it was my vocation. … I was teaching Portuguese grammar and I fell in love with the beauty of the language. Since then, I have never strayed from a pedagogical path. ­ (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 27) After a disturbing brush with the lawyer’s life and another 8 years working as an instructor and coordinator at Serviço Social da Indústria (SESI, Industrial Social Service) in Pernambuco, a place where he experimented with group dynamics and tried to make adult education more dialogical, Paulo Freire authors his first study on the subject of Brazilian education. In 1959, he submits  Educação  e Atualidade Brasileira (Education and Present Day Brazil)

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

“as a competitive thesis for the chair of the Department of History and Philosophy of Education in the Escola de Belas‐Artes de Pernambuco, which he does not win.”4 Instead, he is one of the creators of Recife University’s Cultural Extension Service and its first director. In January 1961, he becomes a professor of educational philosophy and history at Recife University and is also appointed to the State Educational Council. It is while he is working with the Cultural Extension Service of Recife University that Paulo Freire and his team create the system of education that will provide the basis for a popular university. The fact that this proposal from the 1960s has been all but forgotten justifies its mention here. We have already seen that those were times of intense innovative activity in the field of what, today, we would call cultural action. From church to school, from family to community, we were living then pretty much as we live today—different forms of cultural colonization in all the spheres of our daily lives. Long‐standing, toxic hegemonic domination requires more than mere countercultural ­resistance. Widespread, integrated, interactive cultural activities led by education must be created and established as its antidote, with multifarious politico‐­ cultural consequences. Paulo Freire and his first team lived through the establishment of popular culture movements in Northeast Brazil during a time of intense activity. What we frequently forget is that the original ideas and proposals gestated in the labs and lecture halls of Northeast Brazilian universities. Proposals (some of which never left the page) and experiences (as fertile as ephemeral), some of which protested the adjective “revolutionary,” arose from different fields and dominions of the social practice of culture and of education. They attempted to extend education to the limits of its sociocultural and political vocation where it was seen as egalitarian, dialogical, and responsible, in its momentous suppositions, for the piecemeal construction of educandos as subjects of their own stories. The traditional idea of “essential education,” devalued by constant use and inevitably focused on individual limitations, gains another, almost opposite dynamic. The more someone learns to think for herself using the knowledge that she constructs with others and that makes her freer and more autonomous, the more his liberty pushes him toward others and, together, they come to understand that they are all responsible for the creation of their own world: their society. Between the classroom and the classes the world teaches, those were years in which subjects such as the new school, the open school, the active school, the living school, student‐centered instruction, dialogical education, group dynamics, psychodrama, permanent education, education for liberation, and popular ­ ­education were either being confronted or discussed. In different manners, with diverse theoretical foundations and allied in various degrees with different ­projects, they created spaces for pedagogical practices that ran the gamut from the transformation of the person through education to the transformation of the world by educated people. These last two would give rise to never‐before‐seen educational vocations in the future: peace education, education and human rights, education and human values, education for development, popular ­education, citizenship education, environmental education, social pedagogy. It was not by chance that the titles Paulo Freire put on the covers and frontispieces of his best‐known books throughout his career expressed some of the

57

58

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

daring new horizons beckoning progressive educators. In them, the words “­pedagogy” and “education” were followed by other images until then unknown in educators’ circles. These are nouns and adjectives that evoke their principal addressee, as in Pedagogy of the Oppressed,5 or remind us of the value of our sharing or committing to the present and to the future of whatever or whoever educates the person, instead of simply instructing the individual—they must not be ignored: Education and Present Day Brazil; Education as the Practice of Freedom; Pedagogy of Hope; Pedagogy of Indignation; Pedagogy of Autonomy. The experiences inaugurated by the passage of Paulo Freire and his primary team through the Recife University Extension Service appear for the first time in writing in the fourth issue of the Revista de Cultura (Review of Culture) of the  University of Recife, dated April–June 1963. Paulo Freire and some of the ­members of this team of pioneers publish a series of articles in this issue. It is worthwhile to recall their titles: “Conscientization and Alphabetization: A New Vision of the Process” by Paulo Freire (pp. 5–22); “Theoretical Foundation of the Paulo Freire System of Education” by Jarbas Maciel (pp. 25–58); “Adult Education and Cultural Unification” by Jomard Muniz de Brito (pp. 61–69); “Conscientization and Alphabetization: Practical Insight into the Workings of the Paulo Freire System” by Aurenice Cardoso (pp. 71–79).6 In Paulo Freire’s article, the word “culture” first appears on the second page. The word “education”—without any qualifying adjective—appears quite a bit later and only twice in the “1st Part” of the text, precisely the two paragraphs I chose for the epigraph of the present article. One of these is on page 103 of the book Osmar Fávero organized (see endnote 5). The other on page 110, in the paragraph that ends the “1st Part.” Before summarily describing his method of alphabetization in the “2nd Part,” something that Aurenice Cardoso does in a more detailed way in her article, Paulo Freire subordinates an educational proposal to a process of “cultural democratization.” And “culture” will be the key concept in all of his writing. Here is such a moment in one of the first texts he published after the experience in Angicos.7 Yet, it is observable from man’s relationship to reality that he uses it to ­create and recreate, deciding what to do with it as he goes about vitalizing his world. He dominates external reality. He adds something of his own making to it. He temporalizes geographic spaces. He makes culture. And it is in the dialectic playfulness of his relation to it that he makes his mark on the world, remaking it as he is marked by it. This is what prevents ­societies and cultures from becoming static. (Freire, 1983, p. 102)8 In a document in which the central idea is that of the inevitability of “­transition” in 1960s Brazilian society, and in which man appears not through some attribute of his abstract essence, but as a being‐in‐the‐world who creates his own history, culture emerges as a field of transformative social action. Hence we would never admit that the democratization of culture would entail its vulgarization or, on the other hand, the people’s adoption of something we formulated ourselves in our libraries and were donating to

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

them. My experiences over the past two years in Recife’s Popular Culture Movement led to positions and convictions I have held and developed since I first made contact with the proletariat and sub‐proletariat as a young teacher. In the PCM, I coordinated the Adult Education project, by means of which we launched two basic institutions of popular education and popular culture—the culture circle and the culture center. (Freire, 2005, pp. 37–38) In a work in which the central objective is to recover some venerable passages from the pioneer texts of Paulo Freire and his initial team, I call attention to the moment in which, perhaps for the first time, the words Adult Education (with capital letters) appear near the words education and popular culture. In the same sentence, Paulo mentions the two initiatives that afforded him and his companions a living laboratory for their proposal. Whereas culture circles and culture centers represent the founding strategy of their alphabetization project, the ­literacy method that made his reputation is only one instrument of a new pedagogy based on dialogue in an integrated system of education. Jarbas Maciel is the author of the next in the series of four texts. With the ­inclusion of factual data, he describes the university extension team’s experience. He begins his article by recognizing that it was not long before the team’s initiative became known as “the Paulo Freire Method.” I want to transcribe it here because Maciel’s text recalls a concrete moment of social action by a 1960s ­popular culture movement directly linked to a university. Cultural extension, for those of us who compose the working team of Professor Paulo Freire and who are immersed in an intense activity of cultural democratization in the bosom of the people, means something more than what is generally attributed to it in the major universities of Europe and the U.S.A. Our university extension service represents a ­pre‐revolutionary dimension of Brazil, since it “situates and dates man,” as Gabriel Marcel so aptly put it. In fact, it is unintelligible in the current Brazilian context that a university would be so solipsistic and focused on the past that it would remain indifferent to crucial problems afflicting the very people it should be serving. … In Northeast Brazil, at the present moment, if a university remains aloof to the process of development it is considered marginal and inauthentic. To remove it from its liminal isolation, open it up and insert it firmly within the Brazilian transition, the cultural extension service was created to deal with the most urgent problems of our today and our tomorrow. In this sense, it runs contrary to the archetypal Brazilian University but, really, it reflects one detail of a greater contradiction responsible for the actual historical process we are living through. (Maciel, 1983, p. 125) This comprehension of what ought to be the foundation of a university’s c­ ultural extension service was certainly an affirmation of the radical nature of community action projects at a time when Brazilian university extensions were trying to take their first, unsteady steps. Both in these sequential texts and in

59

60

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

other documents, Paulo Freire’s pioneer team made a pointed critique of other initiatives that, precisely in “those years,” began to be established in Brazil and the rest of Latin America. Some came from the United States, like the “Alliance for Progress,” others were developed by the United Nations and, in our case, by UNESCO, as experiments in community organization and development and proposals for adult education inserted into the idea of a permanent education that, years later, UNESCO transformed into a universal project of lifelong education, as outlined in the “Delors Report,” published in Brazil with the suggestive name Education: A Treasure to Be Discovered (Delors et al., 1998). What it proposes is not just a slightly more active and participative service extended to needy people within a workable distance of the chancellor’s office that we see advertised today by some public research universities, but a radical inversion of what was then the status quo. The “extension service” ceases to serve the interests of the university and leaps over its institutional walls in the direction of the people. As the people are the ultimate recipients of its attention, the ­extension team is there to work with them. The dialogue they establish must be sufficiently open so that the life conditions of the community and the transformational projects experienced and conceived by popular agents are the foundation of the program, beginning with alphabetization. The Paulo Freire Method initiated its community research phase by convoking a study group of “unlettered” people so that his team could make an inventory of the generative words, themes, and problems of their daily lives in the community they inhabited. Jarbas Maciel announces the extension of the Paulo Freire Method to an entire Paulo Freire System of Education; a system born and bred at the university and that would work toward the creation of a new popular university. This was, however, as it continues to be, the point of departure for the Cultural Extension Service (Serviço de Extensão Cultural [SEC]), along with its effort to bring the University to act together with the people by means of its secondary‐, middle‐ and superior‐level extension courses, its lectures and publications, and, finally, through daily broadcasts via the University Radio station. Nevertheless, the SEC should not make of Professor Paulo Freire’s Method of Alphabetization for Adults its unique and exclusive area of interest and of work. Literacy should be—and is— one link in an extensive chain of stages, not just one more method of teaching people to read and write, but of an integral and fundamental system of education. Thus, we have seen the Paulo Freire System of Education arise alongside the Paulo Freire Method of Adult Alphabetization. Its successive stages, with the exception of the current stage of adult literacy, are just beginning to be formulated and, some of them, to be experimentally applied, leading to its tranquil emergence as an authentic and coherent Popular University. (Maciel, 1983, p. 128) This forgotten dimension of a proposal from the beginning of the 1960s, which never became a reality apart from short‐lived experiments with the Paulo Freire

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

Method, was to be the ground floor of the Paulo Freire System of Education, which would be rolled out in sequenced stages: First stage—children’s alphabetization Second stage—adult alphabetization (an SEC activity, abetted by texts written by the pioneer team). Third stage—accelerated primary school cycle (with activities initiated by the SEC and tested in the neighboring state of Paraíba, conducted by Campanha de Educação Popular da Paraíba [CEPLAR]). The fourth stage of the system, together with the previous one, can be considered the beginning of what is now called “the people’s university” in Brazil. It will be the cultural extension on popular, secondary, preuniversity, and university levels. This is the phase the SEC is currently working on, which will reach clients in the metropolitan areas of Recife, starting with secondary‐level classes. The fifth stage of the system is sketched out clearly enough to permit the present extrapolation and will emerge tranquilly and coherently in the Institute for Human Sciences of Recife University, with which the SEC will work in close collaboration (Maciel, 1983, p. 131). Sixth step—the creation of a Center for International Studies (CEI) at Recife University. When completed, we foresee the CEI as conducting an “intense transaction with underdeveloped countries in an effort of integration of the so‐called Third World.” These represent the stages of one Northeast Brazilian university’s cultural ­ utreach program in the early 1960s, aimed at the creation of programmatic o alternatives to working not just “for the people” but “with the people,” as this idea is reiterated in Paulo Freire’s text. This “turnaround,” which was also envisioned as a cultural recreation “on the part of the people,” is built on a well‐known theoretical foundation that will reappear throughout Paulo Freire’s practical and written work, starting with this first document on the subject. Because my objective here is only to carry out an “exercise of memory,” by citing moments in which, from a university base, Paulo Freire and his teammates attempted to invert the meaning of “service” and of any type of pedagogical work “together with the people,” I want to bring this cluster of testimonials to a close. As a reader‐author and in his early practice, Paulo Freire was a harbinger of much of what has come to be called “transdisciplinarity.” In succeeding years, he associated texts by Marx and Lenin with others by Martin Buber and Emmanuel Mounier. So, when Jarbas Maciel reminds us of a category rarely mentioned in the majority of texts from the 1960s, one with a Christian slant, to found a proposal that both he and his professor announce as “revolutionary” and that includes the word love, we may be surprised. Yet, just before the presentation of the theoretical suppositions of the Paulo Freire System, it appears in writing in the following passage. Given that communication permits degrees of which love is the maximum and because it represents the life of the culture that, transmitted from ­generation to generation, becomes education, it is valid to wonder what

61

62

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

meaning love has for education. The meaning that love has for education can be seen as the tendency to operate through more and more elevated forms of communication toward the democratization of Brazilian culture. (Maciel, 1983, p. 131) The “fundamental postulates” of the Paulo Freire System of Education are as follows: 1) Ontological equality of all people 2) Unlimited accessibility to knowledge and to culture 3) Unlimited communicability of knowledge and of culture Having initiated this narrative by returning in time to comprehend what was proposed about popular culture in the 1960s, especially in the territory of the ideas and practices closest to Paulo Freire, I want to close it with a definition of popular culture close to the point at which our author ends his testimony about the Paulo Freire System. Popular Culture is the whole process of cultural democratization that aims to neutralize the distancing, the “abnormal” and anti‐natural unevenness between two cultures by opening all channels of communication to all men, independent of race, creed, color, profession, origin, etc. … To democratize the culture is to make it “popular.” This is, more than ­anything, an act of love. … The relation of education to popular culture becomes clear as well, in light of this analysis. … When he “makes” culture, man communicates and transmits knowledge from generation to generation. That is where the fundamental character of the whole ­ ­process of education takes root. (Maciel, 1983, p. 135)

Fifty‐One Years Later Boaventura de Sousa Santos grants an opportune interview to Julia Benzaquen. It is totally centered on the creation of a new, alternative university. It is ­published in Educação e Sociedade with the title “The Popular University of Social Movements—Interview with Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos” (Benzaquen, 2012). Speaking to “another world,” in which both the profile of popular movements and the alternatives of interaction and intercommunication among them have changed greatly since 1961, the essential proposals of a popular university and of social units meant to establish exchanges of ideas and of experiences are not that different from those suggested by Paulo Freire’s first team. In her words of introduction to the interview, Julia Benzaquen borrows some of Boaventura’s ideas to formulate an understanding of Popular University of Social Movements (Universidade Popular dos Movimentos Sociais [UPMS])9. The Popular University of Social Movements—Global Knowledge Network is a space for intercultural and inter‐political formation that ­promotes the process of inter‐awareness and self‐education, with the

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

dual objective of widening reciprocal awareness among movements and organizations and making alignments and joint collective actions between them possible. It constitutes an open space for the deepening of reflection, for the democratic debate of ideas, for the formulation of proposals, for free exchange of experiences and connections, for efficacious actions, of local, national and global entities and social movements that oppose neoliberalism and the domination of the world by capitalism and any sort of imperialism. (Benzaquen, 2012, p. 917) With her first question, Julia Benzaquen evokes Paulo Freire. I transcribe her question, Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ reply, and their subsequent reflections, most of all because, in her question, the interviewer invites the ­interviewee to think about “differences.” JB: What does the UPMS have in common with other popular education experiences and what is specific to the UPMS? In what ways does its practice of intercultural translation differ from that proposed by Paulo Freire? BSS: Obviously, there is a very rich tradition of popular education, above all in Latin America and in Africa as well. Those who participate in the UPMS are leaders or activists involved in social movements who already have social and political knowledge and experience that connects them with and that they articulate through the UPMS. So the UPMS is all about exchanging knowledge, it’s basically an ecology of knowledge. Paulo Freire definitely did not organize his whole model of popular education out of a great concern about social class divisions or about class inequalities. He put little emphasis on cultural diversity. His principal focus was on the oppressed. There are good reasons for Paulo Freire’s hesitancy to deal with the question of class. However, more recent social movements have succeeded in bringing to our attention the fact that there are not just class divisions, there are cultural divisions and unequal treatment of cultures as well. Divisions, inequalities and forms of discrimination against indians, blacks, quilombolas,10 women, rural people, the GLBT population, etc. What we have learned from the social movements is that power relations are very complex. Paulo Freire dealt with a scale that had as its primary focus local, regional and national concerns, without underestimating the influence of his studies and practices in an international context. The UPMS has a more international vocation that was not fully realized until now, but got its start at the Thematic Social Forum in Porto Alegre in January this year (2012). Ours is an international and an intercultural vocation that gathers together a diversity of actors and ­cultures. The Popular University of Social Movements is guided by an intercultural tradition. (Benzaquen, 2012, pp. 920–921) I agree with a good part of professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ thinking. I have three small addenda. First: more than 50 years have passed. Second: the Sixth Stage of the Paulo Freire System of Education foresaw, in 1963, the creation of a Center of International Studies (CEI) whose objectives

63

64

Carlos Rodrigues Brandão

do not seem very different to me than the essence of what the UPMS is currently proposing, except that it has at its disposal technological resources that were beyond our wildest dreams in the 1960s. These resources are associated with the current demographics and the social movements’ new intercommunication alternatives, especially with the advent of the current “worldwide forums.” Third: Paulo Freire’s final writings point to his growing, critical understanding of the transformative social role of new groups and new cultural movements of the most diverse nature, origin, and description. English translation by Peter Lownds, December 2017.

Notes 1 Before being published in this periodical, this same article was incorporated in

chapters of reviews in Brazil and Argentina. For some years, my concern as an educator and as a militant for popular education has been to divulge, in the most agile and fertile way possible, some ideas, proposals, and the practice of pedagogical action, written by me and by other authors. So I have taken the extracurricular liberty of submitting this writing to different sources of publication, always conscious that, in most cases, each of them usually involves a restricted and geographically limited number of readers. 2 Myra Bergman Ramos authored the first English translation of this book with a different title, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, 1973). The translation of Dr. Brandão’s article, including all citations, is mine. (translator’s note). 3 Educandos/as refers to those in the process of self‐education. (translator’s note). 4 Freire’s doctoral thesis was published years later (São Paulo: Cortez Editora/ I.P.F., 2001), the citation is from “Paulo Freire and the Populist Pact,” an introductory contextualization by J. E. Romão, p. xiii (translator’s note). 5 The English title does not acknowledge the singularity of the “addressee.” A literal translation would be Pedagogy of the Oppressed Man. (translator’s note). 6 These four original articles by Paulo Freire’s team were republished in the same sequence in the book, Cultura popular, educação popular: memória dos anos 60, organized by Osmar Fávero (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Graal, 1983). They appear in the part titled Paulo Freire System, and it is precisely to the word “system” that I want to direct the attention of my present readers. 7 Angicos was a small town in the arid outback of Northern Rio Grande state where Freire and his team conducted one of their best‐attended and most successful literacy experiments. (translator’s note). 8 Freire, Paulo. Conscientização e alfabetização: Uma nova visão do processo. Cultura Popular, Educação Popular: memória dos anos 60 (Fávero, 1983). 9 Key documents about the Popular University of Social Movements can be found at http://www.universidadepopular.org. I also recognize the importance of a book that Boaventura de Souza Santos recalls in his interview: A gramática dos tempos, published in 2006 by Editora Cortez of São Paulo. 10 Afro‐Brazilian descendants of runaway slaves who continue to live in quilombos, which were once fortified villages in the remote countryside. (translator’s note). Peter Lownds, traslator.

Freire: Education, Culture, and the University

References Benzaquen, J. F. (2012, July‐September). A universidade popular dos movimentos sociais; entrevista com o Prof. Boaventura de Souza Santos. Educação e sociedade (Campinas), 33(120), Retrieved from http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_ arttext&pid=S0101‐73302012000300014 de Brito, J. M. (1983). Educação de adultos e unificação da cultura. In O. Fávero (Ed.), Cultura popular, educação popular: Memória dos anos 60. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Graal. Cardoso, A. (1983). Conscientização e alfabetização: Uma visão prática do Sistema Paulo Freire (Practical insight into the workings of the Paulo Freire System). In O. Fávero (Ed.), Cultura popular, educação popular: Memória dos anos 60. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Graal. Delors, J., et al. (1998). Educação: Um tesouro a descobrir (Education: A treasure to be discovered). São Paulo: Cortez/MEC/UNESCO. Fávero, O. (Ed.) (1983). Cultura popular, educação popular: Memória dos anos 60. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Graal. Freire, P. (1983). Conscientização e alfabetização: Uma nova visao do processo. In O. Fávero (Ed.), Cultura popular, educação popular: Memória dos anos 60. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Graal. Freire, P. (2005). Educação como prática da liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., & Betto, F. (1985). Essa escola chamada vida. São Paulo: Editora Ática. Maciel, J. (1983). Fundamentação teórica do Sistema Paulo Freire de Educação. (Theoretical foundation of the Paulo Freire System of Education). In O. Fávero (Ed.), Cultura popular, educação popular: memória dos anos 60. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Graal. de Santos, B. S. (2006). A gramática dos tempos. São Paulo: Cortez. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). Pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

65

67

3 Paulo Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy Bruno B. Costa

Introduction Paulo Freire (1921–1997) is perhaps the best‐known Brazilian intellectual to have practiced and written about education throughout his lifetime and is c­ ertainly one of the most renowned educators of the twentieth century. In this chapter, I attempt to present a side of his legacy still very much unexplored: Freire’s relationship with  an educational, political, intellectual, and artistic phenomenon called the movements of popular culture. More specifically, my incursion into this relationship is aimed at tracing some elements of the debate on popular culture that gave birth to an idea commonly regarded as Freirean, but to which he is not alone in providing an interpretation: the concept of conscientization. Hence, I quickly introduce some historic aspects of the discussion on Brazilian culture that backed the movement’s issues to situate the context in which their first pedagogical proposals came to be and, particularly, how Freire learned from these discussions and, indeed, taught his own understanding of conscientization. Furthermore, I mention further advancements of the conception in works such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed in order to relate these formulations to the debate on popular culture and thus comment on some of the elements retained, as well as the changes in political and pedagogical priorities. In conclusion, this essay portrays a reading of philosophical nature of conscientization for Freire, its influences enhanced from the movements of popular culture, and its aspects drawn from the very intimate association he makes between philosophizing, learning to think critically, and becoming ever more ethically conscious of the responsibilities educators have to resist and disrupt educational and epistemic hierarchies.

The Debate on Brazilian Culture and Identity In order to enter the debate about the culture in and of Brazil that took place ­during the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, we ought to explore the connections between what was considered in general as legitimate Brazilian The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

68

Bruno B. Costa

culture and who were to be the genuine heirs of the Brazilian people. Whether or not the interpretations involved echoed in any way the people’s voice is certainly debatable. But if one considers the moment in history—in Brazil the First Republic struggling to solidify the new political regime while in Europe the belle  époque flourished just before the debacle of World War I—such events revealed a growing interest in discussing culture as an interpretative or hermeneutic stance about the people. In the case of the Brazilian people, this meant there was a need for uncovering to the eyes of the educated world who were these people and, therefore, why they should be entitled to a nation, one surely unknown and perhaps even nonexistent (Schneider, 2005). Just as in many other moments of history intellectuals returned to traditions and cultural habits to form a meaning for nationality—as in Fichte’s Discourse to  the German Nation—the quest for the authenticity of Brazilian culture became symbiotically mixed with the intent to create an imaginary image of the country with enough verisimilitude to satisfy the intellectually cultivated and civilized world. This kind of discourse merging allowed thoughts on culture to articulate in a very close and intimate way a reflection on consciousness that gave birth to the  culturalist perspective, to which the notion of building consciousness ­presupposes the existence of certain conditions on which it ought to build. In  other words, the culturalists affirmed the existence of a cultural context behind the language, norms, and habits where the values at stake were nurtured. In return, the formation of civility should not ignore the environment in which humans evolve; more important, their social atmosphere is where the making of civilization occurs. Consequently, the social construction of values, symbols, and references need a treatment of the cultural questions that philosophy should endure and a ­number of efforts were made in that direction. The purpose of a philosophical consideration of what was then understood as culture in Brazil was, in part, to appoint the main problems in the historical making of Brazilian society, a quest in which philosophers and thinkers differed as to the tone of their critiques as well as regarding the endorsement of responsibilities on those in power. Nevertheless, culturalism became the main proponent of cultural discourses that, despite the accuracy of its considerations, showed social concerns beyond the interest of the elites. The culturalist movement’s critique received, consciously, or not, undeniable influences from the main currents and questions in vogue in Europe. Marilena Chaui (1993) presents an important study of the philosophical movements that draws on the debate on culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, identifying two major tendencies: proenlightenment and proromanticism. Opposing one another, each represents a side in the contradiction within ­bourgeois ideal society. In this sense, enlightenment represents the self‐made mensch born out of science and rationality, whereas romanticism claims to be the heir of tradition, folk customs, and original ways of life, by which people would be allowed entrance into a restored form of the past, venerating history as the essence of culture. The author demonstrated how, by remaining entrenched on sides of this false dualism and renewing commitments to bourgeois ideology,

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

both tendencies cannot evolve into a philosophical perspective on cultural issues identified with questions and problems faced by the people in general and the Brazilian people in particular. Citing Martin‐Barbero (1985), Chaui (1993) points out how pro-enlightenment enthusiasts frequently endorse positions against tyranny and for the ­public good, while they turn against popular will in the name of reason. This contradictory stance, to which, as she says, contributed names such as Voltaire and Kant, formed a useful image of the people for capitalist domination ­validated by a so‐called liberal political agenda that could not end up but turning its back on the people, supposedly in their best interest. On the other hand, the pro-romantic viewpoint, though in some aspects counterpointing prejudices of the proenlightenment’s stance, drew a sentimental response that proved itself to be a rebellion against the disenchantment of the world, which made room for all kinds of conservative nationalism. It discursively foments the idea that remains unexplored—that an authentic culture dwells only within the folk, which belongs to them and through them ought to revive what is still left of genuine spontaneous livelihood. In Brazil, both tendencies had a strong influence on cultural discourse and the debate on Brazilian identity brought to light a number of attempts to unify the currents under an analysis of cultural and social life that had two simultaneous impulses: to educate the populace using the latest pedagogical offspring of modern and developed societies and to folklorize—not without ideological ­ intentions—the image of the nation to be nurtured and patriotically venerated in institutions such as schools, clubs, and civic societies. In that sense, illustration and romanticism intertwined as models for literary exploration and readings of the cultural scene. This did not occur without tension, given that literate people personally impelled to or institutionally in charge of forming a narrative on the question of Brazilian culture during this period had the difficult task of differentiating their approach from the indianist literary stream, identified with colonial and imperial times.1 The difference enforced has important political implications. With the overthrow of the monarchy by the nascent republic, Brazilian identity was paired if not joined by modernization. The gerund form of referring to modernity—and to many other goals—became a brand of the continuous aspiration of Brazil as a country to blossom its own potential. After such political events, nationalism strengthened and took the wheel on the road to “civilizing” the country. Nationalism and Brazilian culture would become frequently interchangeable, which is not to mean inside this vessel there were not deposited and stirred opposite political and ideological orientations. Disputes of many kinds would certainly make themselves known. Attempts to turn Brazil into a developed country resembling countries in Europe and North America began to appear at a significant level in public ­opinion in the decades of the twentieth century, but the massive investment in state programs actually started in the 1930s, with the end of the First Republic and the dictatorial eruption of the New State (Estado Novo) regime, conducted by Getúlio Vargas. During the 1940s and 1950s, education became one the major political concerns, fueled by international incentives for combating illiteracy and

69

70

Bruno B. Costa

spreading public education in accordance with standard testing, a move seen with both enthusiasm and concern. Initiatives led by nationally known and prestigious educators such as Lourenço Filho and Anísio Teixeira experimented with formulations that merged the use of new internationally acclaimed technical expertise and the vision of Brazilian reality (Beisiegel, 1974). Their concerns in  many ways echoed the “natal” cultural leitmotif fostered and forwarded by middle class and elite circles. But despite official efforts to not lose momentum, increase literacy especially among adults, and make education an attractive platform for the new set of ­voters introduced after universal suffrage became mandatory under Varga’s administration, “popular education,” which is how the state referred to adult education (explicitly linking education for the people to education for those who did not graduate “on time”), faced a decrease in attendance in the long run (Beisiegel, 1974). Besides, social disparities came along with the programs. Not many professionals were willing to teach in localities sometimes far from larger centers and work in conditions very different from those encountered in private schools. Whether it be the economic conditions of students or superficial support from authorities and the recently created Ministry of Education in 1932, the 3 decades in which the so‐called “campaigns” for adult education were in progress saw ­progressive weakening. Of course, this did not lead to the end of “popular ­education” altogether, but to a radical reconfiguration of what that term meant, because of, small similarities excluded, a very different approach toward ­education and a very different identification of /with the students.

Popular Culture and Education Inside the MCPs The shortening in numbers and distance between institutions and the lower class certainly helped promote in the late 1950s and early 1960s a phenomenon in some areas of Brazil that would be crucial to the work of Brazilian educator and  philosopher of education Paulo Freire. This phenomenon was called the ­movements of popular culture (in Portuguese: Movimentos de Cultura Popular— MCPs). Generically formed by students, young intellectuals, and artists, most of whom were fervent militants of leftist Catholic youth organizations eager to “share the gospel” through radical modes of social work and community ­organizing, the MCPs were diversified in ways that addressed a great number of social issues. Some had explicit ties to public administration at municipal and state levels. Others were directly linked to the Catholic Church, as part of the emergent lay movements. The term MCPs is currently used by scholars such as Afonso Scocuglia (2001) and Osmar Fávero (1983) and was not necessarily used in one form by the movements in their day. As a historical fact of major importance, the existence of such movements and the extent their work could flourish was in most cases blatantly interrupted by the dictatorship initiated by the military and civil coup d’état the country underwent in 1964. All of these movements formulated conceptualizations of popular culture. This was understood in many ways, from political platforms to artistic interventions, and in general one approach did not exclude others. However, all of them

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

draw significant attention to education in a broad sense, that is, beyond schooling boundaries—in fact, even beyond its intentions. Pedagogically, they strongly favored and militantly strived for reorganizing educational content and ­structure. Domination and control ought to be contested and literacy was to become an experience of communication and dialogue, instead of imposing charter memorization and student surveillance by teachers and inspectors. Certainly, this was a challenging task, given that, on one hand, all education the movements’ idealizers had previously undergone fell into question and, on the other, the knowledge brought by their students, most of whom were workers and housewives, carried the marks of domination as well, because the understanding behind skills and competencies reinforced social patterns of power. This was particularly prevalent in discussions about labor relations (sometimes exploring the Marxist labor/capital antagonism), housing and sanitary conditions, and the communities’ relation with authorities. The Movimento de Cultura Popular of Recife, in Brazil’s Northeast region, one of the stronger movements, had Paulo Freire as one of its founders. Along with Germano and Norma Coelho, Abelardo da Hora, Paulo Rosas, and many others, Freire idealized the MCP and directed its first encounters in Poço da Panela, one of Recife’s many peripheral neighborhoods (Coelho, 2002). One of the innovations Freire implemented was the culture circles (círculos de cultura), substituting traditional classroom settings. Meetings were organized in order to discuss a number of subjects chosen by teachers and students within a rank of issues that interested the community. By scaling a number of themes and inquiring the participants about these themes in ways that explored the implications of their answers, politically and epistemologically, the culture circles formed a provoking dynamic of knowledge building with immediate pedagogical consequences. The culture circles became the cradles of a pedagogical outlook with concrete expectations and possibilities of initiating a true popular mobilization for changing local realities and, in fact, promoting public policies that targeted community needs. Two reasons may explain this: (a) the group dynamic and didactic approach involved the participants directly in the process of teaching and learning, and (b) most important, the actual substance of the movement’s education was to be drawn by the group as a whole. This obviously did not mean guidelines were not observed. In fact, the experiences’ political orientation was no secret, just to mention one of the delimitations. What gave these experiences a distinct outlook toward education—one arguably more critical and, for that sake, philosophical—was the way the relationship between knowledge and power was ­queried. The common intertwining of both, to a point that frequently makes both indistinguishable, became in many ways subject to critique. By questioning the status quo and identifying the power dynamics behind teaching and learning in traditional school settings, and actually extrapolating such critique to point out political reasons for the abbreviated public education in that day, the movements of popular culture in general and the MCP in particular restored the Brazilian cultural debate in new terms. Many of their theses were advancements to some extent of the national‐developmentist perspective created in the Higher Institute for Brazilian Studies (Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros—ISEB), as the issue of development is repeatedly addressed in many

71

72

Bruno B. Costa

documents and explored not only in economic terms but in social, cultural, and educational terms as well. Still in this context, the question of consciousness and conscientization—which would become a common term within the movement, though conceptualized in various ways—arises and is treated in forms that ­reference and endorse the national‐developmentist approach on transitioning from naïve to critical consciousness. That being said, the conception of this very process that the MCP had was also in many ways different from previous notions of the culture‐consciousness pairing. They saw it as a conundrum, one with direct implications for the identity, self‐vision, and esteem of marginalized social groups. The main importance of social mobilizing for MCP was to improve living ­conditions of members by occupying and operating public facilities or self‐­ organizing collective initiatives. These initiatives, which were called popular ­cultural work, started many very creative forms of engagement, from art and performance to literacy teaching, all of which met pedagogical purposes. If development meant exposing the people to cultural assets, that should be done by addressing the social injustice embedded in their condition as poorly paid laborers and as citizens geopolitically positioned in what area was left for as a living space, usually the mangrove swamps of Recife. After all, the cultural debate had already established the narrative by which Brazil, as a society, had historically failed to install standards comparable to European and North American countries. Popular cultural debate came to demonstrate the injustice behind this everyday picture, showing that, if this was the case, it was because elitist practices and rooted privileges kept the people from actually turning this scene the other way around. Now that development was a problem and the populist governments called for reform, these reforms should be done with direct participation of factory workers, church members, neighborhood residents, parents, and school employees, and so forth. This approach leans very much on what Freire in 1958 exhorted communities and individuals to do in favor of democratic mobilization in his dissertation thesis, later published as Educação e atualidade ­brasileira (2001). Learning through community engagement meant the knowledge students brought with them, their skills, abilities, perceptions, ideas, were crucial to finding ways of bringing their world into the scene and introducing unknown subjects by trying to integrate both. Of course, difficulties did occur. But opening a space for public debate and attracting people to tell their stories and points of view, while nevertheless questioning the reasons for their understanding, made the idea of a transition in consciousness, as proposed by the developmentist intellectuals, much more tangible and concrete. At first, the meetings run by the MCP were designed more like conferences and members announced the activities that were being held, literacy classes ­having drawn the largest amount of attention from the public (Beisiegel, 1982). One of the movement’s first initiatives was to produce a charter for teaching adults to read and write. Interestingly, Freire was at first invited to elaborate it and declined not because he was against it—though he would be later—but because he had no experience in literacy teaching (Coelho, 2002). As Beisiegel mentions, during the first years in action, the charter Livro de Leitura para Adultos represented a solid learning tool that required careful identification of

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

prominent words used by the students and the most important issues in their contexts. It allowed educators and students to problematize social conditions, explore situations and circumstances, and propose solutions for problems the people dealt with on a common basis. Other popular culture movements also used charters and resistance toward them within MCP appeared only later, when Freire’s closest colleagues—the members of the University of Recife’s Service for Cultural Extension—and he himself proposed another “method,” one that thought its content by the process of designing it collectively. This approach, called the Paulo Freire System of Education, practiced alphabetizing (teaching adults to read and write) by creating in each group of students the proper tools for their work. This meant each culture circle would make its own lessons in the process of learning, accompanied by different forms of language practices in which the participants were already proficient and drawing upon real‐life situations. By doing this, the educators tried to accommodate what they called the students’ readings of the world into the process of alphabetizing and, thus, turn an often daunting and tiresome process of memorizing into a rich form of communication and cultural exchange. This meant more than making the acquaintance of reading and writing skills more interesting. It offered a way to bring into the pedagogical scene the voices and life lessons these people had and often helped aged adults to acquire a skill that meant so much for their own access to public life. In a world of contracts and written laws, to learn to read and write was seen as a form of breaking a number of codes and barriers and to be able to do so in a way that ensured their achievements were registered not solely in notebooks, but in diaries, books, and panels, marked the way the participants interacted with the world they were deciphering. It gave testimony of their change in consciousness. For the most part, the MCP understood the change in people’s ability to read the world brought by literacy as a form of “democratization” of culture. Jarbas Maciel (1983), a member of Freire’s team of experts responsible for coordinating the lessons, mentioned this using Karl Mannheim’s view of how culture and democracy can and should relate. This is a view also used by Freire during his activities as part of MCP and also in further works. It essentially articulates what the MCP called the anthropological notion of culture. This concept defined culture as a set of symbolic practices and products done and recognized by a certain group of people. Therefore, as democracy was paramount for MCP and social injustice impeded major sectors of society from engaging in questions whose impacts directly affected them and even simply enjoying the rights and freedom it allowed social elites to possess, cultural inequality was seen to come hand in hand with social disparity. Therefore, democratizing access to culture was c­ rucial to strengthening democracy as a whole, that is, fulfilling the pursuit of continuous democratization of all cultural heritage. For Maciel, many of the limitations encountered by adult students from ­popular segments of society face when trying to learn this heritage are caused by difficulties in communication. He asserts if culture is to be considered unique to human experience, the unequal access to culture and, more important, validation of different cultural upbringings enhance a contradictory space in which the conundrum within knowledge building in class dominant societies comes into play. Therefore, popular culture actually responds to a need for common or

73

74

Bruno B. Costa

“universal” cultural ethic recognition, and segregating cultural environments produces actual moral fault. Education, thus, politically assumes the position of  repairing this fault, instead of pulling people away from it by introducing ­culture they did not have. It then intends to function as a means of minimizing the power gap by empowering the culture that was historically marginalized: popular culture. Of course, to present the problem of cultural oppression as simply a problem of communication can be misleading. And despite the fact that many issues involved in this problem were not properly seen or dealt with by the Movement of Popular Culture, in their defense the indication of the problem in communication involved more critical elements than simply trying to put both cultures on the same track. Approximating cultures separated by class inequalities (with room for addressing other issues as well) actually turned the “track” into something much different than the common territory dominant culture operates in. This move, in particular, grasps in a very special way the uniqueness of the popular culture movement’s critique and how disruptive its pedagogy became, as it did not simply reclaim the structures of power people were made apart from, but claimed the initiatives made and run by common people as equally public and legitimate and in need of support and sponsorship as the state‐run facilities functioning in the “fancy ­quarters of town.” This applied to schools, culture centers, theaters, film clubs, libraries, and, ideally, any cultural institution that provided public attendance. If democratization was to be taken seriously, this meant the cooperatively made facilities deserved equal attention from the state and authorities in general. As the movement shifted the dominant narrative on public spaces, contesting the previously conceived “inappropriateness” of the people’s presence on the streets and squares of city, it also transitioned the place by which people sought themselves. What they “knew” now affirmed who they were, instead of being identified solely and stereotypically with what they did not know, with a supposed absence of knowledge. Unwilling to remain trapped in a space of negation and constant silencing of their own visions, hopes, expectations, and curiosities— a negation that was never taken as absolute yet still undermined their relations toward the culture they were denied—they now stood exploring their own issues but equipped with answers found in new dimensions of their reflections. They had enough symbolic expertise to pose political questions such as who benefits from their work, what ought to be taught, and how does it feel to read and write for themselves. In many ways, the notion of doing popular culture—which is by no means done individually—informed a certain call for action addressed to all society and, in the end, to the whole nation of Brazil. This, however, had clear interest in announcing the people as the ones capable of acting upon the country’s major problems, insofar as they were, in a practical sense, the ones who understood what technicians and bureaucrats, on their own, could not understand. As Beisiegel states: “the appeals to unite all Brazilians of every social class and ­religious creed in favor of a prosperous and more just society were formulated in the best interest and need of the people, and more important, in the realms of a political movement committed to popular emancipation” (Beisiegel, 1982, p. 130). As an effort to withdraw from demarking traditional barriers and, at the same time, bring to light new forms of cultural expressions, “to express the need for

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

cultural production both made for the masses and intended to elevate the social consciousness of the forces forming of that may latter join the popular movement” (Movimento de Cultura Popular, 1963, p. 4), as states the “Plan for Action of 1963,” one of the movement’s most important documents, the MCP exercised the formulation of critical consciousness in forms they would eventually call ­conscientization. An enthusiast of the idea ever since, Paulo Freire would offer one of its theorizations, surely the one best known in academic literature and to the public in general.

Conscientization in Freire’s Educational Philosophy: Epistemological, Political, and Pedagogical Elements Over the years, what began as an emancipatory concept of conscientization received a number of ideological and conservative appropriations in the context of the years following the military coup of 1964 and as the importance of Freire’s work assumed an international level. As I showed in previous work (Costa, 2017), the first disturbance occurred when the military government implemented a program for alphabetization using techniques elaborated by the Paulo Freire System of Education, but stripping the approach from its original political intentions. The identification of syllables within words was retained, without the ­discussions and practices of dialogue, besides abandoning the collective choice of popular vocabulary. This left the technique blind to its original pedagogical perspective and, in its place, remained a tool aimed at teaching literacy embedded in conservative content and fashion. The second disturbance involved appropriations made by intellectuals in Europe and North America that, for various reasons, also lost track of the political nature of conscientization. Such works portrayed Freire’s pedagogy as a liberal tool for simply facilitating self‐learning and individual development, leaving aside its communal compromises that in many ways are fundamental to the process. In such circumstances, conscientization was viewed as equal to acquainting new information, understanding ­commands, and performing procedures without a preoccupation with autonomy that extrapolates the rules in vogue. Despite embracing its humanistic elements, their humanism stops at the frontier of individual rights and freedoms. Responding to this question in A África ensinando a gente, a book Freire wrote  with Sérgio Guimarães about their experiences in African processes of liberation, he says: For this reason, in the last 5 or 6 years I have not used, neither in speech or text, the word “conscientization.” I stopped using it. Not that I renounce the process which it names, but I renounce the word because it was in such a way re‐signified that I had to stop using it. (Freire & Guimarães, 2003, p. 36) The resignification Freire refers to, in a theoretical sense, led to vulgarizing the concept and he would reintroduce it into his reflections only many years later, in Pedagogia da Esperança. However, because Freire’s thought and practice were tied in so many ways to this idea’s original meaning, even though—and in fact,

75

76

Bruno B. Costa

because—this too experienced its own variations, to continue exploring its potential is, at least now, crucial to renewing the commitment of his philosophy and pedagogy to popular emancipation. Why? Because in times of explicit and implicit political underpinning of educational enterprises and debate, the notion of conscientization and the cultural debate it draws upon strengthens a juxtaposing language for intellectuals to validate (recognize the value of and toward) experiences of community mobilization for educational orientation and ­formation in schools, clubs, churches, associations, and so on. So in order to not repeat the ideas’ past simplifications—not to mention deliberate manipulations—and after having seen the intellectual context by which the Movement of Popular Culture of Recife started working out a popular emancipatory pedagogy using conscientization as a leitmotif, I believe that to revisit some of the considerations Freire made about the process himself may be of benefit. This consideration can be addressed by highlighting two dimensions of his ­philosophy and pedagogy that were united: the epistemological and the political aspects of his work. Both dimensions trace their roots to the national‐developmentist perspective, previously mentioned, in which Freire explicitly acknowledged as the origin of  the term conscientização, later translated into English as conscientization. The term struck him as particularly significant and pedagogical, because he was convinced that “education, as a practice of freedom, is an act of coming to know, a critical approach to reality” (Freire, 1979, p. 25). In his first books, the conception behind the term is still largely influenced by Vieira Pinto’s (1960) and Guerreiro Ramos’s (1958) form of conscientization, associating the transition in consciousness to the betterment of national awareness toward the social problems and possible solutions. Of course, as shown before, even then this approach was pursued in a sense distinct from what the national‐developmentists could accept, because the MCP operated this framework identifying questions on and of its own. Still, the extension of conscientization at this point was undermined, politically, by the limits of electoral representation (in order to bargain, among other things, for better public funding) and, epistemologically, by viewing ­schooling problems as predominantly a question of access to resources and adjustment of conducts or mentalities. At stake was the issue of class consciousness. This was indeed a topic not much explored by Freire until his postexile writings and not dealt with in depth until he wrote the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Scocuglia says at that time Freire understood the conscientization process as inherently synonymous with the development of a national identity and, thus, “above all particular interests, including interests of class” (Scocuglia, 2006, p. 47). In fact, it is fair to say Freire had a moderate approach to the problem inside the movements of popular culture in general. Movements such as Centro Popular de Cultura had a clear Marxist ­orientation on behalf of the conscientization process (Costa, 2017). Even inside the MCP of Recife, cradle of his work as an popular educator and intellectual, he represented politically a less radical appeal (Beisiegel, 1982; de Kadt, 2003). Freire’s most important contribution to conscientization lies in his philosophical approach, by which he could use theory to explore dimensions made possible by the original discussion about the concept and hence point to new directions.

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

In this sense, his writing during the popular culture movement’s apotheosis was perhaps less profound than that of subsequent years. Francisco Weffort’s ­introduction to the first publication of Educação como prática de liberdade (Freire, 1975), though debatably considering Freire’s work with the movements immature, is not entirely incorrect when he says the theoretical development of his pedagogy can be seen only in works written after his forced exile. Here, too, Pedagogy of the Oppressed presents many important conclusions, including advancements in regard to the process of conscientization. Notably, one of the richest associations Freire draws is that between praxis and consciousness. On the first end of this pairing, he takes praxis to be a form of binding action and reflection, backed up by the fact that no form of intentional intervention by human hand can dissociate its manual dimension from its intellectual dimension. In other words, one cannot act without thinking. Apparently a truism, this postulate gives room for inquiring how both dimensions relate, thus opening the debate on human nature and, to use words Freire preferred, human vocation (Freire, 1983, p. 45). Through praxis, all forms of human signification (relations between humans and nature and humans among themselves), that is, cultural expression, are made possible. Which is not to say they must come to exist and those that exist do so legitimately. Only those forms that allow human experience to flourish freely are truly liberating; hence, they are the only ones that suffice human vocation. Freire also considers liberating experiences of human exchange and interaction the only ones capable of responding to historic questions, thus answering historic needs. Indeed, the bond between praxis and the human condition is paramount to erecting a pedagogy aimed at combating oppressions of all sorts. At the heart of oppression lies the conviction that action and reflection must dissociate, insofar as the first is essentially a role of the inferior, the second, a role of the superior individual. Although thinking means acting and to act thoughts must occur, oppressive relations subsume which acts and thought are considered worthy to the orders of the oppressor. Because none of this is innate to human existence, it must be taught and must be learned to operate. Conscientization goes in the opposite direction, as it teaches its participants—educators and students—to cooperatively design educational praxis. The new and somewhat more elaborate formulation Freire gives to human development, one undoubtedly more political, meets the requisites of his previous conscientizing conception of education. At the same time, it replaces the former nationalistic approach with a more Marxist‐oriented (though debatably not Marxist full core) appreciation of social marginalization (Costa, 2017; Scocuglia, 2006), by which he contributed to the theoretical formulations of the 1960s in Latin America closely associated with democratic, anticolonialist, and prosocialist movements engaged in popular mobilization. In pedagogical terms, this meant the dynamic would maintain important elements of its structure, in the sense that political discussions played a major role and the subjects taught, whether alphabetizing or lecturing on various topics, were organized using local vocabularies in order to relate to local norms, habits, and customs. The generating themes continued to fuel the conversations and embed the directions of the group’s work as a whole, despite the differences in

77

78

Bruno B. Costa

the educators’ and the students’ cultural backgrounds and expertise. A crucial element to the success of the experience was the identification of problematic situations inside the realities the groups dealt with, where by doing so they met with limit situations and drew upon possible ways of resolving or, at least, improving such conditions, what Freire called identifying the untested feasibility (Freire, 2011, p. 102). This collective action contributed significantly to the group’s understanding of their own process of conscientization. However, by introducing a more elaborate discussion on oppression, Freire changed his theory not just politically, but philosophically and pedagogically as well; after all, these dimensions are intrinsically bound to his theory and practice. It give lived experience a different meaning, one to which subjectivities could relate without a sense of absence that accompanied to some extent his initial formulation of consciousness and conscientization—for instance, the idea that transiting from naïve to critical consciousness would happen because people were being exposed to certain traits of modern and institutionalized culture. Putting the question of oppression into the scene meant cultural differences were not honestly explored if discrepancies in intellectual expertise continued to be tied to places of origin and circumstances of personal development. There were reasons for communities to lack resources and skill that stretched beyond management interests and capacities. Such reasons were now addressed as structurally tied to social and ideological domination, with particular emphasis on (but never limited) to class domination; which is to say authoritarian forms of treating others, particularly students, militants, or community members, were by Freire deemed unacceptable. Hence educators would need to reevaluate to what extent their practices should change. As I said in a previous study: Conscientization only occurs when a temporarily and never absolute ­unification of a concrete situation to be analyzed and people motived not just intellectually to analyze the situation, but mostly because of their subjective need which come from their livid experiences. (Costa, 2017, p. 169) Questioning intellectual aspirations is a fundamental part of understanding the different forms of valorizing the work in educational settings. It affects myths about intellectual superiority that may remain untouched in discussions centered at exploring certain critical theory or approach. By doing so, educators (by which I mean intellectual workers in general) and learners can dissociate their particular trajectories of learning from the power status traditionally associated to teaching, writing, and content making and, consequently, from the hierarchies it comes with. As Freire stated: “If it is normal for researchers to arrive at a field of research motived by certain conceptual values that will be present in their perception of who they observe, that does not mean they can transform their investigation in a form of imposing such values” (Freire, 1983, p. 122). Thematic exploration ought to be geared to the epistemic situations it generates, Freire affirms. This does not mean the educator’s interests cannot be present but does mean it has as much importance in the making of the educational process as other interests brought by the students. Aside from this notion, Freire articulates the idea of cultural synthesis as a form of stimulating the inventive

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

forms of building knowledge through horizontal relations and deconstructing what he called cultural invasions, forms of imposing certain values and practices while washing out others. The two combine in establishing a space for experimenting forms of communal governance that join cultural atmospheres in way to foment and promote what conscientization and critical thinking is truly about: the people’s thoughts and expressions liberated from the constraints imposed by dominant culture trends and traditional education. As Freire says: I cannot research the other’s thinking, in that they refer to the world, if I, myself, do not think. But, neither do I think authentically if others are not thinking as well. I simply cannot think for or to others, nor can I without others. Research on the people’s way of think cannot happen without the people, rather with them, as subject of their own thinking (Freire, 1983, p. 119) Thus, aiming to unleash critical thinking through cultural investigation and thus promote individual and collective awareness, Freire gave the conscientization process a philosophical meaning that is present in the reflexive tonus of his pedagogy. On this behalf, I agree with Torres when he says: Furthermore, it is understood that in Freire’s work philosophy the role of accompanying the pedagogical action reflexively and in a critical form, with the object of making explicit its philosophical foundations, its scope and its limits. The philosophy is not found, explained, and analyzed at great length in any of his books, but instead is present in the entire context of his thought. (Torres, 2014, p. 27)

Conclusion Freire’s radical humanistic vision of learning allowed for the subjective formation of individuals and collectivities to reach a level of freedom and creativity in facing historic dilemmas that fostered a mutual and at times contentious realization of autonomy between educators and students. It confronted the difficulties in attaining and sustaining an educational philosophy and practice of freedom, which is perhaps one of the major intellectual assets we might give each other and the generations to come. For that sake, he demonstrated how delusional intellectual reflection can become if not aware of the need for dialogue within the peers involved and how traditional pedagogy reproduces in many ways the banking notion of teaching, regarding minds as synonymous to deposits even when well intended and/or supplied with theoretically critical content. It is hoped that further study on Freire’s educational philosophy, its relationship to the popular‐cultural debate, and updated treatments of the issues teachers and students, as participants in education, face inside schools and other facilities can help make communities more aware of their own ideas, initiatives, and members. Certainly, the challenges they possess stretch far beyond the

79

80

Bruno B. Costa

amplitude of the solutions any theory or concept, in and of itself, may offer them. Yet their capacity to create alternatives to the status quo continues to prove critical consciousness necessary, alternatives that derive from the meaning ­ ­theory gains when liberated from elitist aspirations and when people’s minds and bodies are liberated through their own voices and with their own hands.

Note 1 For more on the Brazilian cultural debate during the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, see Barreto (1977), Romero (2001), and de Azevedo (2010).

References Barreto, T. (1977). Estudos de filosofia (2nd ed.). São Paulo:: Grijalbo Brasília: Instituto Nacional do Livro. Beisiegel, C. (1974). Estado e educação popular: Um estudo sobre a educação de adultos. São Paulo: Pioneira. Beisiegel, C. (1982). Política e educação popular (a teoria e a prática de Paulo Freire no Brasil). São Paulo: Ática. Chaui, M. (1993). Conformismo e resistência: Aspectos da cultura popular no Brasil (5th ed.). São Paulo: Brasiliense. Coelho, G. (2002). Paulo Freire e o movimento de cultura popular. In P. Rosas (Ed.), Paulo Freire: Educação e transformação social (pp. 31–95). Recife: Editora Universitária da UFPE. Costa, Bruno. (2017). Cultura popular e conscientização: Interlocuções entre Paulo Freire e os movimentos de cultura popular. PhD dissertation, Universidade Estadual de Campinas. de Azevedo, F. (2010). A cultura brasileira. São Paulo: Edusp. de Kadt, E. (2003). Católicos radicais no Brasil. João Pessoa: Editora Universitária/ UFPB. Fávero, O. (Ed.) (1983). Cultura popular, educação popular: Memória dos anos 60. Rio de Janeiro: Graal. Freire, P. (1975). Educação como prática de liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1979). Conscientização: teoria e prática. São Paulo: Cortez & Moraes. Freire, P. (1983). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (2001). Educação e atualidade brasileira. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (2011). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Myra Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Freire, P., & Guimarães, S. (2003). A África ensinando a gente: Angola, Guiné‐Bissau, São Tomé e Principe. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Guerreiro Ramos, A. (1958). A redução sociológica: (introdução ao estudo da razão sociológica). Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros. Maciel, J. (1983). Sistema Paulo Freire de Educação. In O. Fávero (Ed.), Cultura popular, educação popular: Memória dos anos 60 (pp. 127–145). Rio de Janeiro: Graal.

Freire and the Movements of Popular Culture’s Educational Philosophy

Martin‐Barbero, Jesús. (1985). Lo que intento pensar. Paper presented at the Popular Culture in Latin America Conference, Columbia University, New York. MCP (1963). Plano de Ação para 1963. Recife: Projeto de Editorial e Imprensa. Romero, S. (2001). Compêndio de história da literatura Brasileira (edição comemorativa). Rio de Janeiro: Imago Aracaju: Universidade Federal de Sergipe. Schneider, A. L. (2005). Silvio Romero: Hermeneuta do Brasil. São Paulo: Annablume. Scocuglia, A. (2001). Histórias inéditas da educação popular: Do sistema Paulo Freire aos IMP’s da ditadura (2nd ed.). São Paulo: Editora Universitária da UFPB: Cortez. Scocuglia, A. (2006). A história das ideias de Paulo Freire e a atual crise dos paradigmas. João Pessoa: Editora Universitária. Torres, C. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Vieira Pinto, Á. (1960). Consciência e realidade nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros.

81

83

4 Wake Up and Dream! A Polyphonic Contextualization of Paulo Freire Peter Lownds

Historical Context Paulo Freire is considered a thinker with Christian‐existentialist‐Marxist roots by many of his most astute commentators (see, among others, Brandão, 1980; Beisiegel, 1982; Gadotti et  al., 1996; Taylor, 1993; Torres, 1979). But there is another tradition at work here, the utopian/romantic. Freire begins Pedagogy of the Oppressed with a utopian conundrum: the “great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed” is “to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. [Those] who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both” (2000, p. 44). What is this weakness? Freire calls it “fear of freedom”: The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. … It is the indispensable condition for the quest of human completion. (2000, p. 47) Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a political refugee in Santiago, Chile in the mid‐1960s, following a military coup d’état that ­supplanted a fledgling Brazilian democracy with martial law for the next 2 ­decades. The book is a philosophical encapsulation of his research as the p edagogical ideologue of the Popular Culture Movement in Recife, his ­ ­birthplace. Freire was accused of treason, imprisoned, and fled Brazil for Bolivia, Chile, the United States, and Switzerland where he became a witness and advisor to the postcolonial development of a number of African and Latin American countries. His experiences provided material for dozens of books, lectures, and seminars that transformed a middle‐aged Brazilian university The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

84

Peter Lownds

professor from one of the poorest regions in the hemisphere into a world‐ renowned scholar/practitioner of enlightened humanism. As a 16‐year‐old, the late João Francisco de Souza1 was a volunteer in the Movimento da Cultura Popular (MCP), helping to organize free performances in five public plazas (Praças da Cultura) where people from all walks of life could view and discuss Brazilian films, theater, music, and regional culture with local artists and intellectuals. The postshow dialogue between event producers and audience was so engaging that it inspired Paulo Freire and his MCP colleagues to create culture circles (círculos da cultura). Initially, these had no literacy component. However, when Freire became the first director of the Department of Cultural Extension at Recife University in 1961, he and his graduate students collected what they called “generative words” and “generative themes” in a number of working class settlements in and around the city. These were the basis of a revolutionary way of presenting the rudiments of Brazil’s language and culture to the more than 70% of its adult population who could not read. As its notoriety expanded, the Paulo Freire Method became the archetype for a national literacy campaign instituted by the populist government of João Goulart. Freire traveled to Brasília, the nation’s new capital, to oversee the diffusion of his pedagogical precepts. But all progress ended abruptly with the military coup in April 1964 when MCP headquarters were raided by government troops and the Biblioteca Brasiliana, a people’s library containing books, documents, and artifacts amassed by Popular Culture Movement luminaries like Germano Coelho, Chico Weber, Anita Paes Barreto, Abelardo da Hora, Francisco Brennand, and Freire himself, was burned to the ground. The 1960s and 1970s were rife with revolutionary opportunities and Freire’s employment by the World Council of Churches allowed him to pursue projects that appealed to him with no ecumenical agenda attached. Ultimately, he was granted amnesty and returned to Brazil. Almino Affonso, who had also been exiled in Chile, welcomed him back in an article published in the August 8, 1979 edition of the Folha de São Paulo: There were 16 million non‐literate Brazilians above the age of fourteen in 1962. The Federal Constitution excluded them from suffrage. This was the political landscape in which Freire began to apply his psychosocial method. The rapidity of the results impressed everyone, as did the growing ­consciousness of the learners. The plan for 1964 was to make two million citizens literate. It was estimated that, by 1965, five and a half million adults would be able to read and write. The broadening of citizenship resulting from the nationalization of Freire’s adult literacy campaign would break the electoral predominance of the conservative sectors. In Pernambuco, the electorate would jump from eight hundred thousand to almost a million and a half voters overnight. Freire became a favorite target for Parliament and the Press. They could not imagine why a Catholic educator would want to give voice to the oppressed. It is evident that Freire’s method did not induce newly literate people to consider their political options but it is irrefutable that they became conscious of the free association of cause and effect that dialogue provided, were able to

Wake Up and Dream!

visualize their social identity and begin to criticize the society that exploited them. At the end of the day, aren’t illiteracy and misery two sides of the same coin? Today, after fifteen years in exile, Professor Freire returns to Brazil, his suitcases bulging with services rendered to the people of Latin America and Africa; with Pedagogy of the Oppressed published and devoured in twenty languages; with honorary doctorates from universities in Belgium, Great Britain, the United States and Switzerland, imbued with the greatness that comes from always having placed his thinking at  the service of human liberation. I know that in the history of ­humanity there is always some obscurantist knight or general shouting, “Down with intelligence and long live death!” If only for today, we can banish such nightmares from our memory. Our country awoke this morning more luminous: Paulo Freire is home again. (Gadotti et  al., 1996, pp. 192–193, my translation) In William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, E.P. Thompson portrays a late‐nineteenth century antecessor, the founder of the British Arts & Crafts movement turned Marxian: The first duty of revolutionists, Morris felt [after reading Marx’s Capital] was “to express their discontent and hope when and where they can.” “Discontent and hope”—the words were carefully chosen. Middle class in origin, comfortable in his own surroundings, [Morris’s] revolt against ­capitalism stemmed from moral revulsion rather than direct experience of poverty and oppression. He put the matter in its simplest terms in a letter to C.E. Maurice: “In looking into matters social and political I have but one rule, that in thinking of the condition of any body of men I shall ask myself, ‘How could you bear it yourself?’ What would you feel if you were poor and living in this system?” (Thompson, 1955, p. 357) Paulo Freire asked and answered the same question at the end of his life. Frantz Fanon, a physician from Martinique who worked in North African hospitals during the French‐Algerian war, wrote about the suffering of slaves’ descendants in European colonies. He died of leukemia at 36 in 1961, months after The Wretched of the Earth was published: Under the colonial system, a middle‐class that accumulates capital is an impossible phenomenon. Now, precisely, it would seem that the historical vocation of an authentic national middle class in an underdeveloped country is to repudiate its own nature in so far as it is bourgeois, that is to say in so far as it is the tool of capitalism, and to make itself the willing slave of that revolutionary capital which is the people … to betray the calling fate has marked out for it, and to put itself to school with the people: in other words, to put at the people’s disposal the intellectual and technical capital that it has snatched when going through the colonial universities. (Fanon, 1988, p. 150)

85

86

Peter Lownds

Freire “betrayed the calling fate had marked out for him,” when he renounced his incipient law practice for education. As an “authentic” representative of “the middle class of an underdeveloped country,” he “put himself to school with the people” and placed at their disposal “the intellectual and technical capital he snatched” from postcolonial universities. Whether or not he “repudiated” his “bourgeois nature” is a matter of opinion. Freire cites Fanon in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000, p. 62, fn. 16). He may not have read William Morris but they are, a hundred years and a hemisphere apart, comrades in the same tradition. Morris, according to Thompson, “could (and did) take certain Marxist propositions as his point of departure, but used these as a springboard from which his imagination made a utopian leap” (1955, p. 421). The same could be said of Freire. His “utopian leap” was the realization that people have an “ontological vocation” to become the subjects of their own histories. Conscientization is the growing awareness of one’s own subjectivity, acknowledging that we are beings inserted in history with a variety of existential choices. Freire never tired of examining these choices and the illusions and addictions we cultivate to anesthetize the wounds they engender. He believed that, if we cultivate and share our self‐awareness and life experience with each other, we have a chance to overcome the restraints and “limit situations” imposed on us by all kinds of oppression. This is the gist of his message, a sapient amalgam of love and reason that made his lifelong campaign for “dialogical” rather than “banking” pedagogy so appealing. Eighty‐five years ago, the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank wrote: To the romantic, his own experience appears to be an essential preliminary to productivity. … The romantic must justify his life and experience through his work and, further, must have the witness of his life to justify his production. (Rank, 1932, pp. 48, 51) Paulo Freire’s years as director (1947–1954) and superintendent (1954–1957) of Education and Culture at Serviço Social da Indústria (SESI; Industrial Social Service) are pivotal. As a teacher‐trainer, he was stunned by the workers’ reluctance to speak out in class: It’s already very clear that the Parent and Teacher Circles must be neither formal nor discursive. Really, what we have to do there is get the parents to take part in the debate. They should be able to find and supply answers “from within” to the thematic questions we ask, which can then be slowly repeated by the meeting supervisor. Having obtained such responses from the parents, in accordance with their commonsense knowledge, it is then up to the educator to supply scientific solutions to the problem, based on these responses. The central subject of this month’s meeting is Discipline. However, to speak about discipline, even in accessible language, in the form of a talk would not be sufficiently interesting to hold the majority of the listeners, people tired from their daily work. (Freire, 2006, p. 80)

Wake Up and Dream!

Finally, a Worker Spoke Up “We have just heard,” he began, “some nice words from Dr. Paulo Freire. Some of them were simple enough to understand easily. Others were more complicated. But I think I understood … Now I’d like to ask the  doctor a couple of things: Dr. Paulo, do you know where we live? Have you ever been in any of our houses, sir?” And he began to describe their pitiful houses. He described the lack of facilities, the extremely minimal space in which all their bodies were jammed. He spoke of the lack of resources for the most basic necessities. He spoke of physical exhaustion, and of the impossibility of dreams for a better tomorrow. I was slouching in my chair, trying to sink down into it, to find some hole to hide in. (Freire, 1994, p. 24) The man continues. With intuitive acuity, he catalogs Freire’s bourgeois ­ rivilege so precisely that “there was nothing to add or subtract. That was my p house. Another world, spacious and comfortable” (Freire, 1994, pp. 26–27). After the meeting, Freire complains “rather bitterly” to his wife, Elza: “They didn’t understand me.” To which she replies, “Could it have been you, Paulo, who didn’t understand them?” However, Freire’s nagging “sense of impotence” is not allayed by his wife’s insight. He admits to 7 years of intermittent depression between the ages of 22 and 29: “This lack of interest in the world, this pessimism occurred more often in the rainy season when I would travel to the Zona da Mata to speak in SESI schools to teachers’ and pupils’ families about educational problems” (1994, p. 28). He is strangely unfazed by heavy rain in São Paulo while attending a conference. “What was missing was the green of the canebrakes and massapê, the black clay of the northeast” (p. 29). Having connected “his depressions” to the muddy landscape, Freire returns to Jaboatão2 “in  quest of my ­childhood.” Although he attempts to put things in a positivist light (“I needed to discover how these elements had the power to spark my depression”), more ­disturbing memories surface: I stopped in front of the house in which I had lived—the house where my father died late in the afternoon of October 21, 1934. I saw again the long lawn that stretched before the house, the lawn we played soccer on. I saw again the mango trees and my feet, my muddy feet, trudging up the hill and me soaked to the skin. I had before me, as on a canvas, my father dying, my mother in stupefaction, my family lost in sorrow. Then I went to see certain areas where, more out of need than for sport, I hunted innocent little birds with a slingshot (bodoque) I had made myself and with which I became an excellent shot. That rainy afternoon, with the sky dark as lead over the bright green land, the ground soaked, I discovered the fabric of my depression, the deeper core hidden within me. I dug up the archeology of my pain. (1994, p. 30)

87

88

Peter Lownds

The Ninth Letter to Cristina makes it clear that his father’s death was a watershed moment for his 13‐year‐old son: When I returned to the room between 5:00 and 5:30 P.M., I saw my father struggling to sit up, screaming with pain. His face twisted as he fell back in agony. I had never seen anyone die, but I was sure then that my father was dying. I was overwhelmed by a sensation of panic mixed with anticipated nostalgia, an enormous emptiness and an inexpressible pain. (1996, p. 74) “Things got better a year or two later,” he writes, “with the help of my older brother, Armando, who got a job in the city hall of Recife; my sister, Stela, who began to work as a first grade teacher; and my other brother, Temistocles, who spent his entire day in Recife running errands for a business office” (1996, p. 75). Everyone went to work but Paulo whose mother convinced the headmaster of a prestigious private school in Recife to admit him as a scholarship student. The autobiographer is transfixed by his mirror image: “I was poor, skinny, awkward, bony and ugly” (1996, pp. 62–63). Perhaps killing the “innocent little birds” was a rite of passage for this ungainly boy on the verge of manhood? Or maybe he was acting out his rage and fear at his father’s abandonment of a family in extremis. It was a difficult situation for Freire to reconcile as a young adult: What I want to say is that the sequence of learning in which we all participate inculcates the love of life or the love of death in us, shapes the way that we relate from a young age to animals, plants, flowers, toys and people; the way we think about the world and the way we act. If we treat objects with meanness, destroying them or devaluing them, the testimony we give to our offspring is a lack of respect for the powerless and a disdain for life. (1996, p. 75) He is trapped in the romantic dialectic: the struggle between life and death, liberation and reproduction, oppressed and oppressor, which human beings incorporate at any given moment. Adolescent Paulo, rebelling against his father’s death by killing songbirds with a slingshot, is caught in the crux. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt posits Jean‐Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) as the “first articulate explorer” and “theorist of intimacy,” adding that he “arrived at his discovery through a rebellion not against the oppression of the state but against society’s unbearable perversion of the human heart: The modern individual and his endless conflicts, his inability to be at home in society or to live outside it altogether, his ever‐changing moods and the radical subjectivism of his emotional life, was born in this ­rebellion of the heart. (Arendt, 1998, p. 39) This led to what she calls “the rebellious reaction against society during which Rousseau and the Romanticists discovered intimacy was directed first of all against the leveling demands of the social, against what we would call today the conformism inherent in every society. It is important to remember that this

Wake Up and Dream!

rebellion took place before the principle of equality, upon which we have blamed conformism since de Tocqueville,3 had had the time to assert itself in either the social or the political realm” (Arendt, 1998, pp. 38–39).

The World and the Word Paulo Rosas, Freire’s colleague in the Popular Culture Movement (MCP), has this to say about his lifelong friend: From the beginning I saw that Paulo Freire was an educator rather than a teacher. … He was much more focused on the students as people than on the curriculum. … He saw the teacher as an intermediary in the learning process. He was aware of the complexity of the act of learning, its reduction to a personal and, fundamentally, nontransferable experience. (Rosas, 1991, pp. 9–10, my translation) Compare this with the memories of another friend of Freire’s, Adão Pinheiro, who was studying at Recife’s Escola de Belas Artes when Paulo and Maria Tavares Miranda competed for the Philosophy of Education Chair there in 1958. Adão describes Miranda as “the favorite philosopher of the traditional, right‐wing Catholics” and says that “she was chosen by a process that had less to do with ability, with quality than with politics and power. Power is the chair itself, not who’s sitting in it—that hardly matters.” This kind of power is akin to Bourdieu’s notion of “cultural capital” that, in a time of political crisis and upheaval, allows those who have it to “escape to France and go to graduate school” while the cane‐ cutters who flocked to the Ligas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues)4 were “tortured, killed or left to die of hunger” by the new regime. According to Pinheiro, Paulo Freire, the educator, was very much a product of this time: All the traditions, all the passions inspired by the Popular Culture Movement affected him like a process of internal alchemy—which his exile exacerbated. He was a viscerally Pernambucan person who suddenly found himself confronting big intellectual ideas, great collisions of ideas, and this transformed him. As a Pernambucan, a person who has access to the universe of the poor, a person from Jaboatão, you’re taught to think about the sugarmill and the street, not about your housemaid. Paulo was able to adjust his optic and see everyone. (excerpt from our July 9, 2004 interview, my translation). One of these “optical adjustments” occurred in the privacy of Freire’s home library in Recife. He describes it in the course of a 1970 interview in Switzerland where, under the aegis of the World Council of Churches, he became an itinerant ambassador of literacy. At the beginning of my experiments in Brazil, I thought about the possibility of developing a method that would permit “unlettered” people to

89

90

Peter Lownds

read and write with ease. I tried to place some symbols associated with words in people’s consciousness without their being aware of it. The next step is to critically challenge these concepts in order to rediscover the association between certain symbols and words so as to help people recollect them in the course of learning to read and write. I remember working with an unlettered woman from the countryside who was our cook. One Sunday I said to her, “Look, Maria, I have been thinking of a new way to help people who don’t know how to read. Can you help me?” “Yes,” she said. I took her to my library and there I projected a photo of a boy, under which was inscribed the word menino. “Maria, what is this?” She said, “It’s a menino.” I projected another photo of the same boy without the middle syllable—meno instead of menino. I asked her, “Maria, is something missing?” “Oh yes,” she said, “the middle part is missing.” I  smiled and showed her another photo of the same boy with the end of the word missing—meni. “Is ­something missing?” “Yes, the last part.” We discussed for more or less 15  minutes the different situations of menino: meno, mino, meni, etc. and each time she was able to catch the part that was missing. Then she said “Look, I’m tired. It’s very interesting, but I’m tired.” She cooks all day long but in ten or fifteen minutes of intellectual work she got tired. That’s normal. When she asked me, “Do you think I can help?” I told her: “You already helped me a lot because you made me change my way of thinking.” “Thank you,” she said and left the room. Five minutes later she was back with a demitasse of sweet black coffee. Our capacity for love is wonderful. (Torres, 1979, pp. 30–32, my translation) Karl Marx died in 1883. William Morris who joined the English Socialist Party that same year, was unknown to him. But not to Marx’s erstwhile ­collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) who, according to E.P. Thompson, “snubbed him as an ‘enthusiastic and wealthy artist but a sentimental socialist.’ ” Thompson says that Marx’s “early revolt was germane to the Romantic ­tradition” but, as “tendencies toward determinism and positivism grew” after Marx’s death, “the Romantic critique of capitalism … became suspect as ‘­moralism’ and ‘utopianism’” (Thompson, 1955, p. 249). What Morris did was to turn from classic utopianism, which was obsessed with constructing ­juridical and political models, toward a more heuristic discourse that, today, might fall under the rubric “visualization strategies”: learning to focus and refine one’s willpower, ambition, and desire. What Morris desired was not that different from what Hannah Arendt describes as Rousseau’s paramount ­interest: “the close relationship between the social and the intimate”: The first articulate explorer and theorist of intimacy was Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. He arrived at this discovery through a rebellion not against the oppression of the state but against society’s unbearable perversion of the human heart, its intrusion upon the innermost region in man which had needed no special protection until then. (Arendt, 1998, pp. 38–39)

Wake Up and Dream!

Rousseau was the philosophical grandsire of the Paris Commune’s 9‐week f­ lorescence (March 18–May 27, 1871). A century after the publication of Emile or On Education (Rousseau, 1979), William Morris was smitten with the idea of a Society of Equals and, in a 1894 essay titled “How Shall We Live Then?,” declared, “My Socialism began where that of [the Communards] ended, with an intense desire for complete equality of condition for all men. (Thompson, 1955, p. 255). E.P. Thompson, a mid‐twentieth century Marxist historian, treats Morris’s utopian passion with compassion: There is a sense in which Morris, as a Utopian and a moralist, can never be assimilated to Marxism … because one may not assimilate desire to knowledge, and because the desire to do so is to confuse two operative principles of culture. Marxism requires less a re‐ordering of its parts than a sense of humility before those parts of culture that it can never order. The motions of desire may be legible in the text of necessity, and may then become subject to rational explanation and criticism. But such criticism can scarcely touch these motions at their source … Marxism might sit on its own head for a while in the interest of Socialism’s heart. It might close down one corner in its universal pharmacy, and cease dispensing potions of analysis to cure the maladies of desire. This might do good politically as well, since it would allow a little space for the un‐prescribed initiatives of everyday men and women who, in some part of themselves, are also alienated and utopian by turns. (Thompson, 1955, p. 483) This shifting dialectic of desire and knowledge is familiar ground for Paulo Freire. Now that most of the “counters” have been closed in what Thompson called Marxism’s “universal pharmacy,” it is increasingly clear that people like William Morris and Paulo Freire are what Brazilians call “Marxisantes,” fellow travelers. Like Rousseau and Morris, Freire is a socialist of the heart, a romantic whose ­writing contains poignant descriptions of “the initiatives of everyday men and women”: Through my troubled childhood, and my experience of my parents’ moral pain—a pain almost always treated with disrespectful language—I learned to respect those who find themselves in a position of weakness or frailty. In particular, I learned that from my mother [who] would kindly and timidly apologize to the butcher for not having paid for an insignificant quantity of meat from last week and would ask for more credit to buy an additional half pound, she would also promise to pay both debts. In reality, she was not lying or trying to take advantage of the situation. She needed to promise, on the one hand, for a very concrete reason (her family’s hunger) and on the other, for an ethical reason (the ethics of a middle‐class, Catholic woman). And when the sexist butcher replied scornfully his aggressive words hurt, destroyed and silenced her. I can see her now, at his very moment, crushed, frail, teary‐eyed … I do not want to imply today, nor did I believe then, that the butcher should have financed our crisis out of his own pocket. What angered me was the disrespect of those in

91

92

Peter Lownds

positions of power toward those who have none. It was the humiliating, ­offensive and undignified way the butcher spoke to my mother. The censoring tone, the judgment in his tirade which went on and on so that all the people in the shop heard—the whole thing made me ill so that, even now, I have a hard time describing the experience. (Freire, 1996, pp. 41–42) The transmutation of childhood pain into adult purpose is an archetypal literary theme. Freire’s explanation of his past is melancholic. He is descended from Portuguese, African, and indigenous people who, from the 1500s on, witnessed the wholesale extraction of the natural wealth of one of the most fecund regions on earth by loyal servants of the Lusitanian monarchy who were rewarded, in many cases, with extensive land grants. Slavery and hunger are powerful teachers and their lessons linger. I asked Adão Pinheiro to compare Paulo Freire and Gilberto Freyre, the author of Casa‐grande & senzala or, as it is known in English, The Masters & the Slaves. He called Gilberto “monolithic”: There is something morbid about the intelligentsia of Pernambuco. When one person dies, another takes his place and takes on the same manias— Paulo and Gilberto both did this by distancing themselves. It is personally disorienting to sit in the chair of power—you may have a sudden temptation to put it on your head! But you can’t do that. If the generals hadn’t forced him out, Paulo would have been Gilberto’s successor. They had little vices in common, like using the ‘third person singular’ to refer to themselves. Because he left, Paulo was able to see Pernambuco with another kind of vision, not only Pernambuco but all the minorities of the world. … I don’t want Christ to sacrifice himself for me, damn it! I don’t want to see his blood transformed into rubies running down an ivory body on the wall of a baroque Brazilian church. That is repugnant to me. There is a dimension where you pass through something transcendent. I want to be the agent of my own transformation. Paulo Freire understood this. (Adão Pinheiro, interview, July 9, 2004) According to Charles W. Mills, an anticolonialist historian cited by Danilo Streck, Rousseau’s Social Contract soon became a Racial Contract with “Europeans as masters with the right to reduce all other people to slaves” (Streck, 2003, pp. 80–81). The only novel Emile’s tutor deems worth reading is Daniel Defoe’s 1719 classic, Robinson Crusoe. In the relationship between Crusoe and his manservant, Friday, generations of young masters learned how to tame and enslave indigenous savages “so as to prevent their being able at any time to do any hurt” (Streck, 2003, fn. 17, p. 82). Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest (Shakespeare, 1951, p. 1613) was also on Emile’s reading list. The action unfolds on a utopian island. Caliban, “a savage and deformed slave,” is the minion of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan. He illustrates the Freirean distinction between “official” and popular parlance when he reviles his master, “You taught me language and my profit on’t/Is I know how to curse/The red plague rid you/ For learning me your language!” (I, ii, lines 36–365). In a celebrated polemic, Cuban writer Roberto Fernández Retamar (1974) proposes that Latin American

Wake Up and Dream!

history be rethought from Caliban’s perspective, that of the exploited millions who pick coffee, cut sugarcane, and cure tobacco for prosperous Prosperos, receiving nothing in return. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire attempts to shift focus from the official, hegemonic knowledge transmitted in countless banking classrooms to validate the growth of subjective consciousness in the hybrid descendants of European settlers, African slaves, and Amerindians. Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation? They will not gain this liberation by chance but through the praxis of their quest for it. And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness that lies at the heart of the oppressor’s violence. (Freire, 2000, p. 45)

Danilson Pinto: A Life with the People I met Danilson Pinto in 2002 at the Centro da Educação de Jovens e Adultos (Center for Youth and Adult Education) in Peixinhos, a sprawling working‐class Recife neighborhood where he was teaching middle school kids to understand and preserve their rich but fragile local culture. He spoke to me of his childhood in Fortaleza, Ceará, his difficult years during the military dictatorship, his first job, his life as a postulant in the Salesian order, his decision to revoke his vows, and subsequent career as a popular educator. I have come to regard his eloquent testimony as indispensable to what has been, for me, more than a half century of Brazilian studies, mentored by existential veterans of what Nancy Scheper‐ Hughes calls “the violence of everyday life in Brazil.” By Gramsci’s definition, Danilson is an “embodied intellectual,” someone who has dedicated his life to his people and yet has the ability to step back, observe, analyze, and theorize about them. Paulo Freire must have sensed this when he asked Danilson to elucidate his praxis soon after they were introduced. Danilson is at home in his skin whether arguing a point in a philosophy seminar, supervising a teachers’ training session in the Zona da Mata or waving a banner in the Estádio Arruda when his favorite futebol team, Santa Cruz, plays Naútico. A thin, brown man with a beard, he has lived in Recife since 1977 when, at 16, he was chosen to study for the priesthood as part of the Pastoral Jovem do Povo, a Roman Catholic youth group representing the Brazilian Northeast. He was asked to take Paulo Freire to the Cabo Gato favela in Olinda during Freire’s final trip to Northeast Brazil. In his final book, Pedagogia da Autonomia, Freire recalls their meeting: I had recently in Olinda, in the Brazilian northeast, on a morning of the kind that only the tropics know, a mixture of rain and sun, a conversation that I would call exemplary with a young popular educator who, with every word and reflection, revealed the coherence with which he lives his

93

94

Peter Lownds

democratic and popular option. We walked, Danilson Pinto and I, with souls open to the world, curious, receptive, along the paths of a favela where one learns early that only at the cost of much pertinacity does one succeed in weaving a life in the midst of its seeming absence or negation— despite constant need, threats, despair, offense and pain. While we were walking through the streets of that mistreated and offended world, I was remembering the experiences of my youth in other favelas of torn souls. Tripping on human pain, we were questioning ourselves about numerous problems … What do we need to know, as so‐called educators, to have viable encounters with women, men and children whose humanity is being negated and betrayed, whose existence is being crushed? We stopped in the middle of a small, narrow bridge that makes it possible to cross from the favela to a less badly treated part of the working class neighborhood. We looked down at a branch of the polluted and lifeless river whose mud soaks the shanties almost submerged in it. “Beyond the shanties,” Danilson told me, “there is something worse—a big plot of ground which has been turned into a public dump. People from all around here pick through the garbage for something to eat, to wear, to keep them alive.” (Freire, 2002, pp. 82–83, my translation) Danilson graduated from the Catholic University in Recife with a degree in philosophy in 1992 and has been teaching ever since. He worked as João Francisco de Souza’s assistant when he was secretary of education in Olinda. De Souza knew Danilson’s real strength was in the classroom so they created Colônias de Férias (Vacation Schools) at Centro de Atenção Integral à Criança (CAIC), Olinda’s largest pedagogical institution during the 15‐day school recess when lots of impoverished families depend on the daily merenda, school breakfast and lunch, to survive. The target group was kids from 11 to 14. At CAIC, Danilson arranged a fortnight’s aprendizagem with local artisans who oversaw their fledgling attempts at woodcuts, posters, banners, and carnival costumes made from sucata (recycled material). One boy complained about the difficulty of designing and making a woodcut until his oficineiro (workshop leader) told him “it would be difficult for me not to do it.” Woodcuts are a specialty in Olinda and some students showcased their talent. Edna, a shy 13‐year‐old, took only 3 hr to produce a finished work on the first day she was handed tools. Her oficineiro acknowledged her artistic ability and encouraged her to pursue woodworking as a career. Danilson says relations between oficineiros and students are affectionate but focused on work. Their output includes papier maché monkeys and lions, dancing oxen and donkeys whose flexible wire and newspaper bodies hang from the shoulders of their creators. They wear colorful hats and capes and carry giant pencils like spears while descending the steep, cobblestone streets of the old colonial city, all the while drumming, singing, and dancing the frevo, samba’s frenetic northeastern cousin, at which their limber bodies excel. In Recife and Olinda, Carnival functions as a societal pressure valve for the internalized frustration and rage Fanon attributed to native‐born legatees of the colonial dilemma. Dominique Fernandez, a French art historian (1993, p. 155 my translation), found it “astonishing” when visiting Olinda that “the precarious conditions of existence whet the people’s instinct for beauty rather than extinguishing it.”

Wake Up and Dream!

Observing a capoeira group practicing their balletic martial art in a schoolyard, he marveled that “in such a poor, far away and forgotten city where people have been flayed and abandoned by fortune, they prepare themselves with such scrupulous passion to execute an extremely sophisticated art form purely for pleasure.” Twenty‐five years later, that pleasure has turned to pain. Declared a world historical site by the United Nations in the mid‐1980s, a series of corrupt municipal prefectures have pocketed the patrimony. The seventeenth century hilltop city, once a colonial simulacrum of the glories of Sintra now plagued by rampant crime and homelessness, is devolving into an irreparable ruin. Danilson has absorbed the philosophical and spiritual doctrines of the Catholic Church, the utopian romanticism of Paulo Freire and the fin de siècle, tribal anarchism of the Goths and the Punks. He is the racial and spiritual heir to a Northeastern Brazilian aesthetic that exults in its tangle of Amerindian, African, and European roots. His pedagogy is combative, well‐suited to the struggle for educational equity and justice in a place where people’s suffering is ubiquitous. More than two decades after his meeting with Paulo Freire on the Cabo Gato bridge, the current Brazilian situation is very dark. According to Danilson, the notion of solidarity is disappearing. Solidarity begins when people understand that they are, or should be, bound by their common humanity. To affirm our humanness we must fight for that of those who still struggle toward theirs. The greatest deterrent to this oneness of purpose is either to harbor or to ignore our internal instinct for domination. If I am poor and unemployed it is likely that I live in close proximity to others in the same situation. If I find fault with them it is a good indication that my internal critic is whispering in my ear. If I see an addicted and abandoned person living on the street and wish he or she would disappear, my internal oppressor is in charge. In order to feel allied and in sync with others, we must first free ourselves from our own oppressive voices. If not, we diminish ourselves and any sense of joy in life we may have cultivated perishes. Small wonder we so often bear arms to ­protect ourselves from each other or, when we can tolerate the pain no longer, opt for suicide. When we compare our insides to others’ outsides, our optic is as distorted as our principles. Self‐pity, pain, and remorse destroy any impulse to collaborate. Had George Stoney realized his goal to make a documentary about Freire’s odyssey, we might have had a visual sense of its duration and complexity. But both men’s mortality impinged. The fact that Stoney, who died at 96 in 2012, was so inspired by Paulo’s books, which he discovered as a 70‐something New York University professor, that he was willing to spend the rest of his life tracing Paulo’s steps in places as far flung as Chile, Northeast Brazil, the Cape Verde islands, Tanzania, and Guinea‐Bissau is impressive. In archival footage shot in Olinda, Freire’s complexion has become dark brown in the equatorial sun. He stands with Stoney before a baroque church and, when asked about his favorite foods, speaks instead about the strange eating habits of American friends who seem to prefer piews. When Stoney doesn’t understand the word, Freire mimics swallowing a handful of vitamins. Stoney laughs. Utopian romanticism, fascination with and desire to be close to “the other,” dissipates isolationist tendencies. What the Russian poet Yevtushenko called “the filthy microbe of superiority” is a toxin our planet can no longer absorb or absolve.

95

96

Peter Lownds

Rousseau’s intense pedagogical involvement with Emile, Morris’s taking up the cause of the working‐class artisan at the dawn of mass production, João Francisco de Souza’s and Danilson Pinto’s dedication to the youth and adults of Olinda, to their linguistic and artistic literacy, Freire’s learning how to use their language to reach the factory workers at SESI so as to understand their culture, their mores, their long‐suffering solidarity, the desire to wander, to cross borders, to learn languages so as to reach out to far‐flung brothers and sisters—all of these things are threatened by deep divisions in the societal projections of our troubled souls. We long for fellowship and mutual engagement in a cause that enables us to struggle for a better world, accepting our choices and commitments as a moral option. Radical utopia is by definition romantic. It is a romanticism that moves to action and reflection and again to action, that lives in the hearts and souls of all of those whose joy it is to serve in solidarity with others, engaging in the struggle to bring about lasting change.

Notes 1 Professor de Souza, director of the Education Center at the Federal University of

Pernambuco (UFPE) and head of NUPEP (Nucleus for Teaching, Research and Educational Extension for Youth and Adults in Popular Education), was murdered on March 28, 2008 on the outskirts of Salvador, Bahia when he attempted to defend himself in a robbery attempt at the house of a fellow professor with whom he was staying while attending a conference. He was 63 years old. In an interview posted on a Portuguese website 7 months after his death (http://www. direitodeaprender.com.pt/artigos/entrevista‐com‐joão‐francisco‐de‐souza) he says, “If I create a process in which people feel they are excluded, unloved, if their basic needs aren’t satisfied, they have every right to annoy me, at the very least to knock on my door and ask for some help or a handout. You end up losing what you thought of as your individual well‐being every time the ‘other’ invades your space” (my translation). 2 Jaboatão dos Guararapes, a rural outpost when Freire’s family moved during the first years of the prontidão (economic crisis) of the 1930s, is now Jaboatão—a bustling urban hub, part of greater Recife. 3 Charles Alexis Clérel de Tocqueville (1805–1859), author of De la démocratie en Amérique (1835) and l’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1850). (see Nouveau Petit Larousse en couleurs, 1968, p. 1603). 4 The rural people of the zona da mata always struggled to assure for t­ hemselves and their loved ones a decent burial and eventually this came to mean … “six feet under and a coffin of one’s own.” This slogan became the rallying cry of the Peasant Leagues, which adopted as one of their first projects a rural mobilization around the burial rights of the dead: land rights for the dead, rather than for the living. “Before the Leagues,” Zé de Souza explained, “when one of us died the coffin was lent by the município, and after the body had been ­carried to a common grave, the coffin went back to the municipal warehouse. Today the League pays for the funeral and the coffin is buried with the dead. That’s what the League did for us” (Scheper‐Hughes, 1992, p. 253).

Wake Up and Dream!

References Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago. Brandão, C. R. (Ed.) (1980). A questão da política da educacão popular. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Beisiegel, C. R. (1982). Politica e educação popular. A teoria e a prática de Paulo Freire no Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Ática. Fanon, F. (1988). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove/Atlantic. Fernandez, D. (1993). L’or des Tropiques. Promenades dans le Portugal et le Brésilbaroques. Paris: Bernard Grasset. Freire, A. M. A. (2006). Paulo Freire: Uma história da vida. São Paulo: Livraria Cultura. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope (Robert R. Barr, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1996). Letters to Cristina, (Donaldo Macedo, Trans.). New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Myra Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogia da autonomia (23rd ed.). São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Gadotti, M., Freire, Ana Maria, A., Antunes Ciseski, Â., Torres, C. A., Gutiérrez, F., Gerhardt, H.‐P., & Padilha, P. R. (Eds.) (1996). Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia. São Paulo: Cortez and Instituto Paulo Freire. Rank, O. (1932). Art and artist. Creative urge and personality development. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Retamar, R. F. (1974). Caliban: Apuntes sobre la cultura en nuestra América (2nd ed.). Mexico, D.F.: Diógenes. Rosas, P. (1991). Como vejo Paulo Freire. Recife: Secretaria de Educação, Cultura e Esporte. Rousseau, J.‐J. (1979). Emile or On Education. New York: Basic Books. Scheper‐Hughes, N. (1992). Death without weeping. The violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Shakespeare, W. (1951). The Tudor edition of The Complete Works. London & Glasgow: Collins. Stoney, George C. (n.d.). [Documentary video about Paulo Freire]. (begun in 1995, unreleased) Streck, D. R. (2003). Educação para um novo contrato social. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes. Taylor, P. V. (1993). The texts of Paulo Freire. Buckingham: Open University Press. Thompson, E. P. (1955). William Morris: Romantic to revolutionary. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Torres, C. A. (1979). Diálogo com Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Edições Loyola.

97

99

5 Finding Paulo Freire in Chile Marcela Gajardo

Introduction I borrowed the chapter title from George Stoney (1916–2012), a well‐known professor and documentarist from the Tisch School of Arts in New York, who came to Chile in the early 2000s to track the course of Paulo Freire’s professional activities while living in exile from late November 1964 until mid‐April 1969. Stoney had been following Freire’s steps in his homeland Recife, Brazilian State of Pernambuco, since the late 1950s trying to understand the nature and origin of his pedagogical philosophy and educational ideas, particularly those related to politics, literacy, and adult education. By the mid‐1960s, Paulo Freire (1921–1997) had been experimenting with a revolutionary literacy method that could teach illiterate people to read and write in a very short period, 40 chronological hours, with the purpose of enabling them to vote in democratic elections. In other terms, he was training them to exert their right to make informed decisions on who, and on what bases, should govern the country. By that time, in almost all Latin American countries, illiterate people could not exert their right to vote and literacy rates reached approximately 40%–50% of the population, particularly in rural areas and poor settings. For these adults, learning to read and write meant learning to act in their own context. In Paulo Freire’s words, for the poor of the poorest, socially and economically oppressed, literacy learning was not a matter of memorizing syllables, words, and phrases detached from real life but rather adopting an attitude of knowledge creation and learning how to influence their own environment and, ultimately, their social and political life (Freire, 1970a). A philosopher and lawyer, Freire introduced the concept of consciousness ­raising (in Portuguese conscientização) by means of developing a method to teach adults to read and write while understanding their own social and economic environment, to unlearn the fear and traumas left behind by their past interactions with the school system and embrace innovative ways of social and political empowerment through education. A third pillar of adult learning, popular education was conceptually used to  explain political and social demands for universal access to high‐quality The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

100

Marcela Gajardo

e­ ducation in public schools, build democratic relations in working‐class communities, and promote people’s participation in adult learning activities designed to meet working‐class needs particularly in or out of work life projects. Although such an approach existed in developed countries since the end of the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1960s that the concept emerged in Latin America mostly in response to social and economic inequalities and in resistance to authoritarian regimes. Paulo Freire was part of these movements in Brazil at a time when politics, policies, and popular education closely related to cultural and educational practices undertaken by political organizations, peasant and workers unions, civil society organizations, cultural and educational movements, local and church organizations, and, in overall terms, the so‐called poorest of the poor, or the oppressed, in capitalist societies. First used as a way to promote literacy and adult education policies and practices, popular education soon became a pedagogical strategy to link politics, education, cultural action, and social transformation. It aimed at empowering the working class and similar stakeholders with the necessary skills and knowledge to participate from social benefits and demand access to basic services such as education, health, and dwelling. If things were to change in economic, political, and cultural terms for these social groups, changes in the way people behaved in social and political affairs were a requirement. For Freire, radical change in the way people perceived social and economic relationships was required if societies were to be modernized and democratic governance established, particularly in his home country, Brazil. Loyal to his Christian origins and formation and, in opposition to what Marxism called class consciousness, Freire established a “magical” or oppressed‐consciousness category. Inspired in philosophical ideas developed at the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileros (ISEB), Freire built his method upon a framework that opposed a so‐called “naïve consciousness” in traditional societies to a “critical consciousness” in transforming societies. Learning for him meant a deep understanding of the way in which societies changed, organized, and influenced social and political relations, cultural trends, daily life, and working conditions. The method was first applied in Brazil (1954–1964) and later in Chile (1965– 1973). After that, Freire’s proposals and ideas were widely disseminated in Latin America and the United States and later in Europe and Africa once Freire became a global thinker and scholar. Two of his best‐known books, Education as a Practice for Freedom (1967c, 1969d) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970a, 1970c), were written in Chile. The first one tells the story of his literacy method as applied in Brazil; Pedagogy of the Oppressed builds upon his life and work with Chilean peasants and workers becoming literate in the framework of major social and political changes such as the already mentioned literacy campaign and the agrarian reform in Chile by the mid‐1960s.

Chile: The Weight of Exile Paulo Freire arrived in Chile by late November 1964. He was part of a wider group of politicians, scholars, and practitioners exiled after the military coup, which ended with the democratic government at the time and put an end to

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

some of the most interesting pedagogical and political innovations pushed forward during this period. Among them, Freire’s method. As Freire himself tells in his books, his experimental work had begun at the Servicio Social de la Industria (SESI) and continued at the University of Recife (today Universidade Federal do Pernambuco). After more than two decades of experimental work, his literacy method was adopted as a public policy under the government of João Goulart (1960–1964), sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development, a bilateral cooperation agency financially supporting President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. By January 1964 Paulo Freire became the coordinator of the Plano Nacional de Educação (National Education Plan), but this was interrupted in mid‐1964 when he was imprisoned and exiled (Freire & Guimaraes, 1985; Freire & Salazar Bondi, 1975). Paulo Freire’s literacy training method and its application in some Brazilian states have been thoroughly described and its theory and practice analyzed by researchers and scholars in Brazil and other countries in the northern and ­southern hemispheres (Beisiegel, 1979; Gerhardt, 1993; Holst, 2006; Paiva, 1980; Sanders, 1972). Few of these writings, though, deal with Freire’s work in Chile during his political exile. At least four of his early writings belong to this period. First, Education as a Practice for Freedom (Freire, 1967b, 1969d, 1971b) introduced his pedagogical theory on literacy and adult education. It also defined learning as a continuous process oriented toward the perception of economic, political, and social realities as a prerequisite of any political or cultural action for freedom (Freire, 1970 [1971, 1972], Sanders, 1972). Second, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970a, 1970c) builds upon papers, conferences, and notes ­prepared in the framework of the literacy campaign and the agrarian reform in Chile and later disseminated to other Latin American countries like Peru and Colombia. Third, Extension or Communication? (Freire, 1970d, 1973) is a reader gathering papers prepared for technicians and practitioners facing cultural changes promoted by institutional change and the emergence of peasant organizations in Chile. Last but not least, Cultural Action for Freedom (Freire, 1970b, 1970 [1971, 1972]) is a reader with a selection of papers and conferences offered by Freire as a senior advisor, expert, and scholar during his time at the Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agraria (ICIRA). In available and relevant efforts to analyze Freire’s intellectual and political practice (Beisiegel, 1979, 1982; Gadotti et  al., 1996; Paiva, 1980; Torres, 1978, 1981), there are several information gaps regarding the institutional and political contexts in which Freire was developing his pedagogical theories. A few studies on this period of Freire’s work, though, track three milestones in his contribution to educational development and, particularly, the way in which his political and pedagogical ideas evolved from a Christian humanist to a Marxist humanist approach (Austin, 2003; Beisiegel, 1979; Freire, 1992; Freire & Guimarães, 1985; Holst, 2006). The first milestone runs from the mid‐1950s to the mid‐1960s. It is coincident with the period in which Freire designed and experimentally applied his accelerated method in literacy training known in Brazil as the Paulo Freire Method or conscientização, renamed in Chile as a Psycho‐Social Method for Adult Literacy Training (De Oliveira Lima, 1968; Freire, 1966a; Ministry of Education (MINEDUC), Chile, 1966b; Sanders, 1972).

101

102

Marcela Gajardo

The second milestone runs from November 1964 to December 1968. It coincides with the arrival in the country of an important number of exiled politicians, scholars, and Brazilian practitioners joined by Freire in Chile after a short stay in Bolivia. As soon as he arrived, he became an external advisor to the Chilean government first based at the Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Agropecuario (INDAP, 1964–1966) and, later, at the Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación para la Reforma Agraria (1967–1969), a joint initiative of the Chilean Government, the United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and UNESCO that was inaugurated in 1964, closed by 1973. The third milestone begins by late 1968. By that time, and once again for political reasons, Freire interrupts his work in Chile and stops his intellectual efforts to develop a theory on cultural action for freedom. A concept that summarized an important part of his pedagogical vision and mission at that time was as a “banking approach” to education vis‐à‐vis a theoretically liberating and critical approach to cultural and pedagogical action with the poor and oppressed (Freire, 1970b, 1979, 1992). The main features of this approach, as well as Freire’s intellectual production and contributions while in Chile are identifiable in papers, reports, and presentations he used to prepare to work with Chilean teams. Some of them are unpublished, some polished as working papers and drafts. A few were published as separate leaflets in academic and political journals, some presented at international seminars and conferences, some at workshops with students in and out of Chile. These drafts were the starting point for at least two of his well‐known books and ICIRA, as Freire himself recognized in Pedagogy of Hope (1992), was a privileged place to work out a pedagogical theory based on his research and training activities with peasants involved in the agrarian reform (1969b, 1970 [1971, 1972], 1970a).

Adult Literacy Training: Theories Behind the Method Several analysts and researchers have written on the theories behind Freire’s literacy training method and his participatory research approach to highlight the relevance of adult and popular education policies and practices. Some have written about Freire and his contributions to a critical pedagogy or on his intellectual roots and contribution to the critical growth of knowledge. Some have focused on the extent to which he introduced pedagogical innovations in adult education and some on whether the concept and method of the conscientização is inspired by a Marxist humanist or Christian humanist approach. Freire, particularly in his early writings, explains that, within the context of the problems faced in the State of Pernambuco, he belonged to an intellectual community that reacted against the unequal distribution of social and educational opportunities. He was committed to the popular education movements in Northeast Brazil and rooted his ideas in humanist, personalist, and existentialist trends that outspread from Christian sources of social, economic, and political thinking (Freire, 1992). Among them were Christian intellectuals and philosophers such as Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) and Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950), founder of the

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

French personalist movement as well the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). When explaining his theoretical approach to education and learning Freire also mentioned Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), György Lukács (1885– 1971), Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913); Erich Fromm (1900–1980), whom he met personally years later; and Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), an expert in issues related to colonization in Argel. According to researchers and scholars Freire’s ideas and pedagogy evolved on the bases of reading some of the these authors, on one hand, and on the other, his work with grassroots movements and radical Catholics in Recife, capital of Pernambuco, where church organizations were developing popular education projects and literacy training programs for thousands of illiterate children and adults. ­ Highly influential in Freirean ideas were Brazilian scholars and social scientists devoted to promoting informed dialogues on social change and educational development. Freire frequently mentioned Anísio Teixeira, Darcy Ribeiro, and Florestan Fernandes who, among others, led sociological studies explaining the nature of Brazilian social problems, including access, equity, relevance, and school effectiveness. In political, philosophical, and epistemological terms, Freire was a follower of scholars and researchers at Instituto Superior de Estudios Brasileros (Freire, 1970 [1971, 1972]; Paiva, 1980). Altogether, they explained the dynamics of social change according to developmentalist theories by economists (Solari, Franco, & Jutkowitz, 1976), social scientists, philosophers, and politicians such as Alberto Guerreiro Ramos and Álvaro Vieira Pinto. With Álvaro Vieira Pinto not only did Freire share ideas and concepts but also some years of exile in Chile. Moreover, Freire used to say that he was highly indebted to ISEB for allowing him to adopt, and adapt, the concept of conscientização to educational practice. In fact, Freire always quoted Vieira Pinto when using the concepts of naïve and critical ­consciousness particularly in his early writings and essays explaining the philosophical bases of his method to Chilean practitioners. The political model of Goulart’s government provided a favorable context for the application of Freire’s pedagogy in Brazil and opened a space for him to scale his literacy training method first in some northeastern states in Brazil and, later, at the national ministry of education (Beisiegel, 1982). Drawings and slides were prepared to train adults to read and write in 40 chronological hours and, at the same time, strengthen a critical consciousness that would facilitate the transition from a traditional to a modern and inclusive societal organization (De Oliveira Lima, 1968; Freire, 1968b; MINEDUC, 1966a). From then onwards, although not explicitly, Freire harmonized the different approaches influencing his theory and literacy training method. These included an anthropological concept of culture; commitment to democratic ways of life and governance; a new focus and approach to teaching and learning; and the conviction that the poor had their own ways of living and believing different from and respectable as the habitus of elites and dominant groups in capitalist societies. The critique of the school ­system and the schools in Freire’s approach was a strong reaction against its socializing and reproductive functions, particularly when preparing young people and adults for productive life and responsible citizenship. In Education as a Practice for Freedom, Freire argues against the role of the school and the churches

103

104

Marcela Gajardo

in imposing forms of symbolic violence by “introjecting” or “invading” the cultural space and the consciousness of “colonized, oppressed, dominated” ­ groups. Based on this he adopted the consciousness‐raising method, as defined by ISEB, and analyzed his practice in Brazil having on one side, teachers and learners and on the other young professionals and technicians involved in social change, radical Catholic and grassroots organizations, and movements working with emergent social and political movements throughout Latin America. Brazilian analysts writing on Freire argue that because of his involvement in national politics he had no time left to invest in updating his intellectual roots nor incorporating new influences or frameworks to his methodological approaches (Beisiegel, 1982; Paiva, 1980; Wanderley, 1984). Once in Chile, both time and working conditions enabled Freire to write about his own practice and initiate a critical appraisal of what he had done and produced in the framework of social and political changes initiated by Goulart’s government, which abruptly ended in 1964 and was replaced by a military regime that lasted for more than two decades. These analysts provide enough evidence to argue that in its pedagogical and political origins Freire’s method for literacy training already contained the educational blueprints he defended for national policies and ­politics. Since the very beginning of his social and political practice, Freire was critical of the state of educational progress in Brazil. Writing on educational policies in postcolonial times Freire examined the outcomes of public schools under a radical perspective at the time (Freire, 1959, 1961, 1965). First, he made explicit concepts and ideas used to criticize education and society. Second, he highlighted high expectations for Brazil’s social and ­economic development. Fellow scholars like Anísio Teixeira (1900–1971)—a follower and translator of John Dewey in Brazil (Teixeira, 1934, 1978)—and sociologist Fernando de Azevedo (1894–1994) shaped Freire’s early writings. Later, Darcy Ribeiro (1922–1997), globally known for his work in education, sociology, and anthropology, and Catholic thinkers and philosophers such as Alceu Amoroso Lima and Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, philosopher and politician (Paiva, 1980). Moreover, Freire’s educational ideas and proposals at the time were strongly associated with an educational movement—the Escolanovismo—as well as with some strategic initiatives for educational development in Brazil. Among them were the foundation, in 1955, of the Instituto Nacional de Estudios Pedagógicos (INEP), the Centro Brasilero de Estudios Educacionales (CBPE), and Universidade de Brasília, in 1961. Evidence from this period of Brazilian history highlights that, since the 1950s, the country lived in a cultural and educational climate that highly valued popular culture and cultural development (Bomeny 1971). Researchers highlight the Movimiento de Educación de Base (MEB); the Centros Populares de Cultura (CPC), and the Movimientos de Cultura Popular (MCPs), most of them belonging to left‐wing Christian organizations, as good examples of popular education movements in Brazil. In particular the MEB, directly linked to the Catholic Church, initiated literacy‐training programs with workers and popular organizations by 1961 when Freire was already experimenting with his literacy method through a pedagogy that, at that time, he preferred to call a critical and problem raising or “problematizing” pedagogy (Freire, 1969c). ­

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

“I am convinced” he used to say, “that education as a practice for freedom is an act of knowledge, a critical appraisal of social, political and economic relationships, and a consciousness raising activity. I realized this the very moment I learnt about this concept from ISEB. Since then, the concept makes part of my vocabulary. However, it was Helder Câmara, bishop in Pernambuco, who ­disseminated and translated this notion to English and French” (INODEP, 1972, p. 35). Concept, method, and pedagogical ideas are part of Freire’s global legacy well known thanks to his books published in several languages and multiple ­editions (Freire, 1967b, 1970 [1971, 1972], 1970b, 1992). In reading Education as a Practice for Freedom, readers must have these precedents in mind. Freire is not easily understandable unless there is an understanding of the context in which his ideas were evolving. This, his first book published in Portuguese, contains a detailed analysis of the way in which the literacy training method evolved even before its adoption as a national literacy policy in Brazil. This was much earlier than adoption of Freire’s method and pedagogy by the Chilean government and its adaptation to the political and social context both by Freire and by national teams at the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC, 1966b). Working at a national level and harmonizing different sectors, Freire, together with interdisciplinary teams, was in charge of adapting training policy, first under the Christian Democrat Government of Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964–1970) and, later, under Salvador Allende’s Socialist Government from 1970 until his deposition by a military coup in 1973 (Austin, 1995; De Oliveira Lima, 1968; Freire, 1966a, 1968c, 1968d, 1968e, 1968f; Gadotti et  al., 1996; MINEDUC, 1966a; Sanders, 1972). It was during this period that Freire wrote the draft papers that later became his second book written in Chile and published abroad, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (editions published by Herder & Herder, 1970a; Siglo XXI 1977; Tierra Nueva, 1970c). The book, handwritten in Portuguese, resulted from Freire’s reflections on his work with Chilean peasants in the reformed sector, as stated in the foreword of the original draft edition published in Uruguay by Tierra Nueva (Freire, 1970c). The first and third chapters of the book were originally drafted as briefs and papers written to support literacy‐training programs for rural workers, social training programs for peasant unions, and courses to train leaders for social and political participation later incorporated as chapters in the English version of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970a) with minor editorial changes. Freire completed his work as advisor for the literacy and adult education campaigns sponsored by INDAP and the Ministry of Education by 1967, once two major laws had set the stage to reform the land tenure system in Chile. He then moved to ICIRA, sponsored by UNESCO as a governmental senior advisor and researcher (Freire, 1992; MINEDUC, 1966b). Both for INDAP and ICIRA, having Freire as an advisor for policy design and implementation in literacy training and adult education had a symbolic value. He had worked out his literacy methods with peasants and workers in poor areas in Brazil; the Chilean authorities in office at the time needed someone to innovate traditional pedagogy and, as soon as he arrived, he joined the institutions and teams in charge of managing policies and politics for literacy training and adult education. In such a stage, Freire found the conditions to promote his critical pedagogy and consciousness‐raising

105

106

Marcela Gajardo

l­ iteracy method in rural and urban areas. He offered conferences at Chilean universities and social organizations, published one‐pagers and briefs to disseminate his literacy and adult education approach to Chileans, and accepted a series of invitations to international seminars and conferences in and outside of Latin America. Most of his presentations at the time dealt with his projects in ICIRA and, most of all, his efforts to develop a pedagogical theory based on the potential of cultural actions to enhance individual and collective autonomy and social change. Dialectics and freedom of choice were two key issues in the approaches developed at ICIRA to strengthen peasant participation in agrarian reforms both in and outside Chile (Ferreyra & Fiori, 1971; Freire, 1971a). Several papers evidence Freire’s evolution from philosophy to pedagogy, from pedagogy to politics and, sometime later, from politics to policies. His first writings, particularly in Brazil, were philosophical and pedagogical in nature whereas in Chile, he gradually moved from pedagogy to politics. His political approach to education and particularly to literacy and adult education evolved under the influence of the Chilean context at the time and Latin American ­intellectual efforts to work out explanatory theories on economic, social, and political development in Latin America (Gajardo, 2016; Universidad de Chile, 2017). Austin 1995; De Oliveira Lima 1968; Freire 1966b, 1968i, 1970 [1971, 1972]; Gadotti et al. 1996; MINEDUC 1966a; Sanders, 1972; Holst, 2006). Several of Freire’s writings in Chile reflect this evolution and directly refer to policies and practices that influenced his theoretical thinking in epistemological, philosophical, and methodological issues. Research on Freire’s work, on the other hand, provide empirical evidence to argue that through social, political, and educational interventions in Chile, Freire and his teams introduced new ideas and approaches to the way educational policies and practices were planned, implemented, and evaluated. Freire was one of the first, if not the first in Latin America, to define training and literacy contents based on the living and working conditions of adults, their culture, values, and expectations. He also was one of the first to recognize that illiteracy was a social rather than an educational problem. Calling those who could not read and write ignorant and illiterate ignored the fact that they were the owners of skills, knowledge, and cultural ways of living and producing that could, and should, be considered as a starting point in the organization of teaching and learning. Moreover, once Freire became part of an intellectual community in Chile, he introduced pedagogical research (as either action or participatory research) as a previous step to the definition of syllabi. Further, by working jointly with professionals and technicians involved in social and political change he also taught they could be, at the same time, teachers and learners in the communities where they  worked, share knowledge, and produce new ideas on the best ways to improve productive and family lives. Finally yet importantly, Freire worked in the so‐called asentamientos campesinos, the newly reformed agrarian settings. Most of Freire’s pedagogical recommendations to agronomists and agricultural extension workers appear in his book ¿Extensión o Comunicación. In this book, he introduces his didactics for adult learners, built upon sociological and psychosocial foundations, to develop communication skills for the improvement of ­productive and organizational management in rural areas and facilitate closer,

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

and friendly, relationships among peasants and extensionists (De Oliveira Lima, 1968; Ferreyra & Fiori, 1971; Fiori, 1968a, 1968b; Freire, 1966b, 1968a, 1968g, 1968j, 1970 [1971, 1972], 1970b; 1970d, 1973, Freire et  al., 1980; ISAL, 1968; Pinto, 2004; Universidad de Chile, 2017). In fact, while he was in Chile Freire’s critique of teaching and learning in adult education was, from the very beginning, a critique of traditional pedagogical styles and existing relationships among teachers and learners. In addition, it was a critique of training content that did not attend to learners’ educational needs and expectations. He also reacted against the unequal distribution of educational opportunities, lack of flexibility, and homogenous plans for different audiences and pedagogical relationships that instead of promoting a critical consciousness rather led to “consciousness domestication,” a philosophical way to refer to the reproductive functions of the educational system and socialization in and out of schools. “By rejecting the purely mechanical literacy methods,” said Freire speaking to Chilean teachers in 1966 and explaining his practice in Brazil, “we intended to implement literacy plans that would contribute to cultural democratization…. An experience that could harmonize workers’ daily life with the learning materials to support his efforts. We thought of literacy skills as a creative action that could promote creativity as a whole. A literacy process in which men are neither passive nor objects, but rather subjects in promoting and inventing activities that can lead them to autonomous search and invention” (Freire 1966b, INODEP, 1972, pp. 57–67). The rules of the method in Chile were the same as the ones in Brazil and were adapted following these orientations. A team of Chilean educators identified the “universe” of words used in “culture circles” and selected keywords, “the generative words” to promote community debates among peasants. Slides and drawings representing daily life settings and problems promoted and motivated informed dialogues on community issues. Teachers had a facilitating role in promoting dialogue among participant learners. Messages were codified and content materials prepared for a new round of content analysis by the peasants but this time focusing on the acquisition of literacy skills. Reading was the priority. Writing came later. Working upon symbolic images, which Freire called codifying and decodifying pedagogical content, served to introduce a new type of relationship among teachers and learners: the teacher no longer taught but facilitated learning; the learner used dialogue and dialogical environments to learn from the rest of participants. Working in circles broke the classical binomial process of teaching and learning and avoided the classical pedagogical relationship where the teacher speaks and learners listen; the teacher explains and learners memorize; teachers know and learners do not know; teachers “deposit” contents in empty minds and learners accept them. These elements characterized what Freire called a “­banking” in opposition to a “critical” conception of learning. By linking pedagogy to social and political learning, Freire promoted a cultural synthesis rather than imposing a dominant culture over a dominated one. He preferred problematizing upon daily problems rather than memorizing facts, figures, or trends. Working on these principles, Freire established a starting point for the development of a general pedagogical theory for cultural agents, which he always called cultural action for freedom (Freire, 1967a, 1968j, 1970 [1971, 1972], Freire & Guimarães, 1985).

107

108

Marcela Gajardo

Paulo Freire could not complete this theory in Chile because he left for Harvard University first and Europe later (Freire & Guimarães, 1985). At Harvard, he continued to invest in the development of his pedagogical theory (Freire, 1970b, 1970 [1971, 1972]) and published some essays on this and other related concepts. Further, he disseminated his past and new pedagogical and political ideas through seminars, conferences, and workshops. Nonetheless, before leaving Chile he asked members of his team to publish his draft papers on education and development to serve as the bases for new initiatives in and outside of Chile. Two books resulted from this initiative. Sobre la Acción Cultural, published by ICIRA in 1969 and reedited in 1970 and 1971, gathers papers prepared and conferences given by Freire in the framework of the literacy training programs and the agrarian reform process and refers to both the “banking” and “liberating” education approaches (pp. 19–50). It also includes the main features of a participatory research approach, institutionally developed at ICIRA with a group of peasants who had benefited from the agrarian reform process (pp. 51–79). The research, designed and coordinated by Freire in its first stages, was worldwide known as “thematic research” and intended to identify key issues relevant to the new conditions in which peasants lived in a new organizational setting. On this, Freire wrote an article titled “A propósito del tema generador y el universo temático,” which was included both in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Cultural Action for Freedom (Freire, 1968d, 1968j, 1970a, 1970 [1971, 1972], 1970b). ¿Extensión o Comunicación?, the second book, first published in Chile and later in Mexico, focused on the role of technical assistance in rural areas and agrarian sector. Prepared in the framework of the activities carried out at INDAP and later ICIRA, the book addresses the issue of communication gaps between peasants and technicians as well as the role of technical assistance in changing political and economic contexts (Freire, 1970d, 1973, 1998). By April 1969, Paulo Freire learned that ICIRA would not renew his international contract with UNESCO for political reasons. Political and ideological tensions in the Chilean society led the government to think that Freire’s pedagogical and political methods and ideas were unsubstantiated and led to political and ideological radicalization. Freire explains the situation extensively in Pedagogy of Hope (Freire, 1992). Other scholars, referring to the political climate that finally influenced Freire’s decision to leave Chile, have written about the way in which the Chilean context in the late 1960s and early 1970s influenced radicalization in both political and pedagogical terms (Austin, 1995; Holst, 2006; Kirkendall, 2004). By then, Freire had already received an invitation from Harvard’s Center for Studies in Education and Development to continue his theoretical work on education as cultural action and coordinate a seminar on Education as Cultural Action for Freedom. Freire spent 10 months at Harvard and wrote two papers: Adult Education as Cultural Action (1969a) and Education as Cultural Action for Freedom (1970b). He also managed to discover what he called “the third world in the first world” (Shor, 1986), met practitioners and intellectuals, and participated in seminars and workshops. By the end of 1969, Freire became an expert at the World Council of Churches where he worked until the end of 1979. Once in Europe, concepts and theory inspired seminars and institutional projects at the

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

Institut Oecuménique pour le Développement des Peuples (INODEP, 1972) and the Instituto de Acción Cultural (Freire et al., 1980), both chaired by Paulo Freire. He returned to Chile twice. In 1972 he met Chilean researchers and participated in a debate on the direction of ongoing social and political changes and their relationship with adult and popular education. Later, in 1991 he met with Chilean theologists to learn about attitudes of the Christian world in front of educational and political transformations.

Education, Training, and Agrarian Reform Paulo Freire’s work was relevant to the agrarian reform policies and practices initiated in Chile by 1967 and ended by 1973, once the authoritarian regime that ruled the country for 17 years took office. Freire advised the adaptation of his literacy training method to the Chilean context at the time. He also acted as senior advisor and researcher at ICIRA from 1967 to 1969. ICIRA was in charge of training human resources for agricultural modernization and agrarian change and developing research projects from an interdisciplinary perspective engaging economists, sociologists, rural extensionists, and educators among other ­professionals (Freire, 1970 [1971, 1972]). Freire arrived at the organization together with Brazilian peers exiled in Chile, among them, the former minister of education; the former minister of labor; former leaders of the peasant movement; and distinguished scholars in e­ conomic, social, and political sciences including Fernando H. Cardoso working on his theory of economic dependence with Chilean peers; as well as two of the most outstanding philosophers at ISEB, Ernani Maria Fiori and Álvaro Vieira Pinto who were Freire’s close friends and collaborators. (Fiori, 1969; Vieira Pinto, 1960). Sponsored by UNESCO, and based at ICIRA, Freire’s responsibilities included pedagogical and technical assistance at the Corporación de la Reforma Agraria (CORA), INDAP, Ministerio de Educación, and Fondo de Extensión y Educación Sindical (FEES) (Freire, 1968h). He gave classes at Chilean universities and grassroots organizations. As a regular practice, he used to write most of his presentations and prepare his own reports, briefs, and papers among other materials used for professional training and policy implementation (Freire & Salazar Bondy, 1975; Freire, 1970 [1971, 1972], 1974, 1992). He was also the creator, and coordinator, of a thematic research group on peasant ideologies and cultural behavior. The purpose of this group was to identify relevant ideas, perceptions, or “themes” to inform the planning of peasant training courses and postliteracy training. Although unfinished as an applied research piece, several reports and articles were disseminated throughout Latin America by Catholic and ecumenical movements and political networks at the time (ISAL, 1968).They provided insights on the innovative nature of the project that explains the regional interest in its development. Methodological procedures included fieldwork to identify outstanding problems in the peasant community, codification and decodification in study circles, and interdisciplinary analysis of the way in which peasants understood their living and working conditions (Ferreyra & Fiori, 1971).

109

110

Marcela Gajardo

Relevant for training purposes was the identification of the ways in which peasants perceived ongoing changes in the agrarian structure and their impact on their family and productive lives, as well as tensions among individual and collective production and the role of the school, church, and other relevant institutions in their efforts to acquire skills, knowledge, and information that could help in a better adaptation to social, economic, and political changes, among others. Scholars and researchers studying the theory and practice with Freire’s method and pedagogy agree upon the fact that his educational ideas and pedagogical approach used the same sources that inspired the creation of the literacy training method and the writing of Education as a Practice for Freedom in 1965. Changes in his approach to education and pedagogical practices begin in Chile because of his exile and because of the political and ideological climate in which he was working at the time. As some scholars see it, ideological and political tensions began in Chile by 1967 once Freire had completed advising the adaptation of the literacy training method for the Ministry of Education and had initiated literacy training work with peasants and leaders involved in the implementation of the agrarian reform. For these particular purposes, and in order to avoid political involvement and ideological manipulation, Freire began writing a series of leaflets and briefs, published by ICIRA, on the rules in his method. These served as support to train research teams and professionals in the field. Some of these papers were included in Sobre la Acción Cultural and years later translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil (Freire, 1970 [1971, 1972]). A few were revised and published at Harvard. The unfinished agenda on cultural and ideological issues of Chilean peasants in the agrarian sector saw public life only through a draft report published by the early 1970s. The report describes the methodological approach and preliminary actions in the reformed area of El Recurso, a newly reformed a­ grarian settling. It also provides some insights on the way peasants lived and experienced changes in the agrarian structure at the time (Ferreyra & Fiori, 1971; Holst, 2006; INODEP, 1971, 1972; ISAL, 1968; Torres, 1978). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written during the period of 3 years Freire spent at ICIRA (1967–1969), included at least three of the leaflets used for training purposes. These leaflets referred to Freire’s political approach to literacy ­ ­training, to his research approach in the framework of the agrarian reform, and, last but not least, to his approach to social and political commitments in professional practice. In overall terms, these writings introduced new concepts and analytical approaches that brought Freire’s pedagogical method closer to social and political sciences. Efforts in this direction are clear when Freire incorporated some elements of the dependence theories developed by social scientists at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Chile and complemented these ideas with his own readings on authors such as Merlau‐ Ponty (1908–1961), Foucault (1926–1984), Levy‐Strauss (1908–2009), Gramsci (1891–1937), and Suchodolski (1907–1992). From a Latin American perspective, reading more on Cuba’s revolution, Fidel Castro (1926–2016), and Ernesto Guevara (1928–1967) reinforced his political approach to education but did

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

not  change his humanist perspectives on the ways in which education and ­pedagogy, teachers and teaching, could contribute to critical thinking as well as cultural and political change. Scholars propose two reasons for this. Whereas Education as a Practice for Freedom appeared to be influenced by a “liberal developmentalist outlook,” Pedagogy of the Oppressed seemed to be influenced by a “Marxist humanist” ideology. Such an ideology, at the time, predominated in the Chilean sociopolitical context and in other Latin American countries. In neither of these early writings, Freire touches on or refers to the reproductive functions of the school system but rather argues in favor of an understanding of how pedagogy functions socially and situates it within the class dynamics that exist in peripheral capitalist societies. In addition, the kind of facts, skills, and values that predominant cultures organize and select within stratified societies and the way in which ideological tensions exacerbate education policy and what happens in teaching and learning are constantly subject to these tensions. In this context, issues on education, schooling, class, gender, and race became intensely political. This is what Freire discovered, very early in Chile, and then shared with Latin and North American networks of researchers and practitioners, including Pierre Furter, Ivan Illich, and Erich Fromm, among others. Later, during the 1980s, these ideas spread among Ira Shor, Henry Giroux, Miles Horton, Noam Chomsky, some faculty members at Harvard, and scholars and practitioners at other North American universities. (Beisiegel, 1979; Freire, 1992; Furter, 1966; Freire & Faundez, 1985; Freire & Guimarães, 1985; Gajardo, 1991; Giroux, 1983; Holst, 2006; Kirkendall, 2004; Paiva, 1980; Pinto, 2004). Speaking of his time in ICIRA, Freire says he never wrote as much as he did at that time. Among his writings, a leaflet titled “La Alfabetización de Adultos. Crítica de su Visión Ingenua; comprensión de su visión crítica” (Freire, 1968a) critically examines illiteracy as an obstacle to social and political participation, economic growth, the search for equity, and the consolidation of a solid and stable democratic system. He also argues in favor of literacy as the first step toward social integration and the possibility of illiterate people to respond to demands that society places on those who participate in it. “In a naïve vision of literacy,” Freire argues, “Literacy training is reduced to the mechanical act of depositing simple words, syllables, and letters in the head of illiterates …. This vision does not recognize that illiterates are working class adults with existential experiences and a whole bunch of skills and knowledge given by work and experience …. No one recognizes this illiterate adult his working and life experience and empirical knowledge given by such an experience. Do texts and teaching techniques used to train these adults have any meaning for them? What can it mean, for a hard working class adult memorizing contents out of context as the ones used in traditional teaching methods? What can a peasant or an urban worker learn for his role in society or his need to overcome the obstacles to social and economic participation? How can he demand his right to education and basic civil rights?” True literacy, he adds, “requests an action‐reflection upon social reality. Critical thinking requires transforming words into problematic issues that require ­solutions. And this requires a critical analysis of daily life obstacles to social and

111

112

Marcela Gajardo

political reality as a pre‐text for a text” (Freire, 1968a, pp. 10–16). Teaching, in such a context, required a different organization and this is why he promoted the creation of study and research circles, in open spaces and out of school practices. Teachers had to promote learning on the basis of learners’ previous knowledge and experience. Teaching techniques had to recreate life situations and real ­contexts in which the motivated effort of learners provoked learning (De Oliveira Lima, 1968, p. 5). It was in this context where Freire wrote his Decalogue on teaching and learning including phrases that read, “If in the banking conception of education the teacher teaches and learner listens, in a humanist and critical conception, there is no longer a teacher and a student but learners who learn together mediated by  their world. A humanist vision of teaching avoids learner’s manipulation. The  absurd is not in problematizing realities that minimize and oppress the ­people but rather in framing this dehumanizing reality” (Freire, 1967a, p. 5, translation by author). To overcome these obstacles, education becomes ­communication and social dialogue. The research on the cultural universe of peasants in a reformed area in Chile is a good example of what Freire was aiming at understanding the way in which peasants, living under a traditional agrarian structure, interpreted and saw their own reality. Based on Freire’s literacy‐training method the project aimed to identify policies and practices in the rural areas later transformed into research objects by both peasants and technicians. Theoretically, they were “generative” words and themes, linked to the life and working experience of participating learners, used as content for postliteracy training and technical education ­programs (De Oliveira Lima, 1968; Freire, 1966a, 1970 [1971, 1972]; Sanders, 1972). Images, drawings, and graphics were a means to promote a motivated social ­dialogue on the basis of a renewed pedagogical relationship. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as well as in writings On Cultural Action, Freire built a matrix opposing the banking approach to education with education as a practice for freedom, a problematizing or critical approach to teaching and learning; he privileged subjects over objects in both research and educational practice; he defended a horizontal versus a vertical pedagogical relationship. Concerning research and development, he made an option for collective rather than individual work and the identification of social and political problems in everyday life over cultural and ideological manipulation of social and political issues. He considered ideological impositions as a “cultural invasion” and ­proposed to replace such a strategy by what he called a “cultural synthesis.” He  named the process as a whole as a way of acting “culturally over culture.” Finally yet importantly, he considered this standpoint as the starting point for his unfinished theory on cultural action for freedom (Freire, 1970 [1971, 1972]).

From Literacy and Training to Politics and Policies Paulo Freire’s method inspired two national literacy training campaigns in Chile and a national strategy to train adult peasants in the context of the agrarian reform, a political priority of the Christian Democrat government first and its  Socialist successor. Both of them were public policies, agreed upon in

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

g­overnmental programs. Both included structural transformations in land ­tenure systems, new approaches to improve production and productivity in the countryside, and political support to peasant’s unionization (MINEDUC, 1964; Universidad de Chile, 2017). Literacy training programs and adult education policies and practices followed these guidelines and Freire loyally worked within their frameworks. First, at the Jefatura de Planes Extraordinarios de Educación de Adultos (MINEDUC, 1966a, 1971) and its national policies to eradicate illiteracy within a 6 year period. At  ICIRA, and through international development policies for the Latin American region, his contribution to policy design and policymaking may be found in research and publications that use some of Freire’s approaches to their contexts at the time. Examples include Peru, through the well‐known and functional literacy campaign known as ALFIN under the government of Velasco Alvarado, and Colombia, through national and international policies for social and economic development in the rural areas (Gajardo, 1991). Political controversies that led to Freire’s dismissal as an international consultant at ICIRA derived from the application of the method. Major problems, as highlighted by a  Peruvian researcher, were conflicts arising from contradictions among ­consciousness raising in trainers and trainees and the political obstacles for stakeholders to be part of social and political transformations. There were no conditions for this to happen. Despite the transforming nature of agrarian and educational reforms, in Chile and other South American countries, it was impossible to offer land tenure access to the huge number of poor peasants living and working in isolated areas bearing the highest illiteracy rates. In Chile, despite continuities between agrarian reform and education policies during the Christian Democrat and the Socialist governments, the overall process led to a deep feeling of political frustration and growing ideological radicalization of both peasants and practitioners. Therefore, they began to oppose the governments that had facilitated the creation and development of these programs (Austin, 1995; Gajardo, 1991; Holst, 2006; Rivero, 1984). By that time, gradual deterioration of the political, social, and economic development model; decreasing rates of land expropriation; and growing political demands on behalf of unionized peasants and peasant movements had strongly contributed to political and ideological radicalization of those participating in agrarian reform politics including unions and grassroots organizations. Differences upon policy options, political obstacles to social transformation, and contradictions emerging from social practices also had an impact on professionals and technicians working with social and peasant organizations. Class conflicts were evident and reflected interests that went far beyond education and training. At that time, adult education and working class and popular education in Latin America began to develop within the class, race, and gender dynamics existing in developing and developed countries. Educational systems and educational practices appeared as an arena in which different groups with different options, conceptions, and power exacerbated ideological tensions. Questions on schooling, out‐of‐school, nonformal, popular, and adult education became intensely political and Paulo Freire could not escape participating in the shaping of the agenda. Caught up in the politics of inequalities in the larger society he could not avoid being involved in a climate of political and ideological tensions

113

114

Marcela Gajardo

and reinforced his belief in education as both cause and effect of ideological, political, and economic continuous transformations. From time to time, he used to say that Chile would repeat the history of Brazil in the mid‐1960s and neither he, nor his family, were available to live through such a process twice. This was a feeling shared, too, by his exiled peers who left the country once the military regime deposed Salvador Allende’s government. Fifty years on, the political conflicts generated by land tenure policies and peasant organization continue to divide the Chilean society. In educational terms, analysts, and researchers agree upon the fact that literacy training and adult education programs had a deep impact in universalizing access to the school system but little impact upon the quality of teaching and learning.

The Global Legacy Paulo Freire’s contributions to Chile as a scholar and practitioner well as his relationships with scholars and practitioners in North America, Europe, and later Africa are easily identifiable in four fields: (a) above all, his contribution to pedagogical innovation and social change in adult and popular education, particularly in Latin America; (b) his contribution to critical pedagogy and critical thinking, critical teaching, and everyday life, particularly due to his work and networking with scholarly and civil rights movements in North America; (c) his contribution to ecclesiastic and church renovation as well as theological and ecumenical theory and practice, through his work with the so‐called theology of liberation in Latin America and with ecumenical movements together with the World Council of Churches; and (d) his support to movements aiming at decolonizing African countries, strengthening national identities, and promoting political autonomy through technical assistance provided to some African liberation movements. In Latin America, governments dismissed the literacy training and consciousness‐raising method by the mid‐1970s. In the context of predominating authoritarian regimes, they argued that its application did not meet expected outcomes ­neither in terms of transforming cultural patterns in society nor in terms of improving the quality, equity, and relevance of adult learning and workers education. Political parties, unions, and grassroots organizations adopted both theory and method to build upon the concept of popular education through a combination of learning procedures with social and political interventions that aimed at empowering working‐class organizations to participate and gain power in stratified societies. In academic terms Freire’s ideas and proposals translated into a pedagogy to develop critical thinking and participants’ skills on several levels: inquiry, social perception, self‐knowledge, peer relations, constructive engagement, reflection, and remaking of knowledge and culture (Barreiro, 1974; Fiori, 1975). Dialogue continued to prevail as a problem‐posing discussion format in conversational idiom led by the teacher. Pedagogy was situated in the language, themes, and expressed consciousness and levels of cognitive developments of learners. Freire’s early writings and ideas melded with those developed in North America and Europe. In Latin America, Freire discovered that any adult could learn to read in a matter of

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

40  hours if the first word deciphered charged political meanings. However, these issues had costs and risks. For some, costs and risks meant quitting their jobs without changing any of the structures they meant to change. For others, like Freire himself, it meant political persecution and exile under a military coup and losing his international position in Chile falsely accused of interfering in national affairs. In North America and Western Europe, he learned that his ideas and pedagogical proposals could also help strengthen civil rights and citizen participation. Moreover, in less developed countries, particularly in Africa, they helped develop national identity and political autonomy. Seen in perspective Freire’s global legacy is sour and sweet. Some national authorities mistook the application of both literacy training methods and participatory research by creating false expectations among the peasant movement and the poor. Practitioners and researchers were not able to understand that, from the activist 1960s to the authoritarian 1980s, education policies and practices changed dramatically. Scholars and practitioners were not able to understand that social contexts and political struggles played a major role in the shifts from left to right. This occurred particularly in Latin America, where issues related to equality, authority, elitism, competition, and growth displaced social justice, peace, and development. Educational change and pedagogical improvement retreated to the margins. Traditional values were restored in both nonformal education and the school system and lost momentum in revealing the politics of teaching and learning that helped oppressed and vulnerable groups to understand the logic of interaction among daily life and legal, commercial, occupational, and social demands. Despite all, in educational terms Freire’s ideas and pedagogy today appear in almost all contemporary agendas on education and development. Concepts such as the right to high‐quality education for all, equity in social distribution of educational opportunities, and the relevance of education and learning for better jobs and better lives are part of contemporary global and regional developmental challenges. Meeting these goals in the twenty‐first century requires a series of political and cultural changes and imposes new challenges upon literacy and learning. Cultural literacy and computer literacy today are as important as basic and functional literacy in the 1960s. Consciousness raising during the 1960s was as important as popular education during the 1980s and education for all during the 1990s. More recently, high‐quality education for a sustainable future echoes Freire’s ideas in the past. In each of these paradigms there are shared values defending education and learning as a universal right. In Freire’s approach, culture was the field where education, teaching, and learning met. To his mind, the school system had a role to play if policies and practices changed and enabled a supportive environment to offer relevant learning for all. Nevertheless, illiterate people had no second‐chance opportunities and the priority in the 1960s was to achieve universal basic literacy before the beginning of a new century. Nowadays, learning and knowing, both for children and adults, mean not only learning to read and write but exercising the right to think and act critically, the right to imagine and participate, the right to analyze, interpret, and reinvent social reality, and to make informed decisions in work and daily life. Maybe revisiting Freire’s ideas and reinvent his methods may help untie persisting knots in pedagogical and educational development.

115

116

Marcela Gajardo

References Austin, R. (1995). Freire, Frei and literacy texts in Chile: 1964–1970. Melbourne Studies in Education, 36(1), 43–54. Austin, R. (2003). The state, literacy, and popular education in Chile, 1964–1990. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Barreiro, J. (1974). Educación popular y proceso de concientización. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Beisiegel, R. C. (1979). Paulo Freire: Elementos para a discussao do tema pedagogia e antipedagogia. CEDES Educacao e Sociedade. São Paulo: Cortez e Moraes. Beisiegel, R. C. (1982). Política e educacao popular: A teoria e a pratica do Paulo Freire no Brasil. Sao Paulo: Atica. Bomeny, H. (1971). In J. Zahar (Ed.), Os intelectuales da educação. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. De Oliveira Lima, L. (1968). El método Paulo Freire. Santiago, Chile: ICIRA. Ferreyra, M. E., & Fiori, J. L. (1971). Investigación de la temática cultural de los campesinos de “El Recurso.” Progress Report. Digital file. Biblioteca Nacional, Chile, Centro de Patrimonio Inmaterial. Santiago: ICIRA. Fiori, E. M. (1968a). Concientización y educación (Mimeo). Santiago: ICIRA. Fiori, E. M. (1968b). Aprender a decir su palabra: el método de alfabetización del profesor Paulo Freire (Mimeo) (Jorge Mellado, Trans.). Santiago: ICIRA. Fiori, E. M. (1969). Aprender a decir su palabra, en Cristianismo y Sociedad, suplemento. Montevideo: ISAL. Fiori, E. M. (1975). Educación liberadora. Dimensión política. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Búsqueda. Freire, P. (1961). Escola primaria para o Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagogicos, 35(82), 15–33. Freire, P. (1959, April–June). Educacao e atualidade brasileira. Recife: Escola de Belas Artes de Pernambuco. Freire, P. (1965). Alfabetización de adultos y Concientización. Revista Mensaje (Santiago de Chile), 14(142), 494–501. Freire, P. (1966a). Manual del método psico‐social para adultos (Mimeo). Santiago: Corporación de la Reforma Agraria. Freire, P. (1966b). Los círculos de cultura (Mimeo). Digital file. Biblioteca Nacional, Chile, Centro de Patrimonio Inmaterial. Santiago: Corporación de la Reforma Agraria. Freire, P. (1967a). La concepción “bancaria” de la educación y la deshumanización. La concepción “problematizadora” de la educación y la humanización (Mimeo). Digital file. Biblioteca Nacional, Chile, Centro de Patrimonio Inmaterial. Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1967b). Educação como prática de liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968a). La alfabetización de Adultos. Crítica de su Visión Ingenua; comprensión de su visión crítica. Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968b). La alfabetización funcional en Chile (Mimeo). Report. ICIRA, CORA, MINEDUC, INDAP. Santiago: ICIRA.

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

Freire, P. (1968c). Sugerencias para la aplicación del método en terreno (Mimeo). In collaboration with Raúl Veloso Farías. Digital file. Biblioteca Nacional, Chile, Centro de Patrimonio Inmaterial. Santiago: INDAP/ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968d). A propósito del tema generador y del universo temático (Mimeo). Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968e). Investigación y metodología de la investigación del “tema generador” (Mimeo). Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968f ). Algunas sugerencias en torno de una labor educativa que vea el asentamiento como una totalidad. Texto discutido en reuniones de asesoría en equipos de educación básica de CORA (Mimeo). Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968g). Los campesinos también pueden ser autores de sus propios textos de lectura (Mimeo). Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1968h). Acción cultural y reforma agraria. Report prepared for UNESCO/ Adult Education Unit in Paris relating the agrarian reform in Chile and the Cultural Action Project at ICIRA. Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. 1968i. El rol del trabajador social en el proceso de cambio. (88–101). Conference at the Catholic University, Escuela de Trabajo Social, Chile. Reproduced in Sobre la Acción Cultural. (1972), pp. 88–101. ICIRA. Santiago, Chile and ISAL, Cristianismo y Sociedad (1968). Montevideo, Uruguay. pp. 27–52. Freire, P. (1968j). Apropósito del tema generador y el universo temático (1968). Discussion paper for the research team at ICIRA on the concept and methodology of the research of cultural issues in rural settings. Reproduced in ISAL. (1968) Cristianismo y Sociedad, Suplemento. pp. 53–‐64, Montevideo, Uruguay and in Sobre la Acción Cultural (1972), pp. 66–77. Freire, P. (1969a). La educación de los adultos como acción cultural. Paper prepared for the Seminar on Adult Education as Cultural Action for Freedom at the Harvard University Center for Studies in Education and Development, Fall 1969. Hollis Number 0002998016/1969.l Freire, P. (1969b). Investigación y Metodología de la Investigación del Tema Generador. Paper prepared for ICIRA team in charge of researching the thematic university of peasants in reformed areas in Chile. Later incorporated as a chapter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire, P. (1969c). Diagnosis of Cultural Action for Freedom in Latin America (Mimeo) (Marcela Gajardo, Trans. Digital file, Biblioteca Nacional, Centro de Patrimonio Inmaterial). Catholic Inter‐American Cooperation Program, Latin American Bureau. Freire, P. (1969d). La educación como práctica de la libertad. Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1970 [1971, 1972]). In M. Gajardo (Ed.), Sobre la Acción Cultural. Santiago: ICIRA Gathers a collection of papers on the concept of cultural action for freedom. A Portuguese edition reviewed by Paulo Freire was published in Brazil as Acao Cultural para a Liberdade e Outros Escritos (1979). Rio de Janeiro: Editora Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1970a). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder & Herder: New York Translated and published in Spanish as Pedagogía del Oprimido (1970c). The original manuscript was published in 2015 in Brazil and in 2018 in Chile. Freire, P. (1970b). Adult Education as Cultural Action; Education as Cultural Action for Freedom. Harvard Educational Review, 40(2), 205–225 40 (3): 452–477.

117

118

Marcela Gajardo

Freire, P. (1970c). Pedagogía del Oprimido (Jorge Mellado, José Luis Fiori, & Marcela Gajardo, Trans.). Montevideo: Tierra Nueva (Originally published in English by Herder & Herder in 1970). Freire, P. (1970d). ¿Extensión o comunicación? La concientización en el medio rural. Santiago: ICIRA. Freire, P. (1998). Extensión y comunicación. La concientización en el medio rural. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Freire, P. (1971a). Cultural action for freedom. Harvard Educational Review Monograph Series No. 1. Cambridge: Harvard Educational Review and Center for the Study of Development and Social Change. Freire, P. (1971b). La educación como práctica de la libertad. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Freire, P. (1971c). Concientizar para libertar. Noções sobre a palavra conscientização. Conference presentation at the Centro Intercultural para el Decrecimiento y la Organización, Cuernavaca, Mexico. Reproduced in Torres, C.A. (1979). A praxis educativa de Paulo Freire, pp. 93–105. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 1979. Freire, P. (1974). Concientización. Teoría y práctica de la liberación. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Búsqueda. Freire, P., & Salazar Bondy, A. (1975). Que es y cómo funciona la concientización?. Lima: Ediciones Causachun. Freire, P. (1977). Pedagogía del oprimido. Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores. Freire, P. (1979). Acão cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos. Collection of papers reviewed and edited by Paulo Freire on the bases of those published in Chile in Sobre la Acción and additional papers prepared for the World Council of Churches and IDAC, Geneva, Switzerland. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogia de la Esperanza. Un reencuentro con la pedagogía del oprimido. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores. Freire, P., et al. (1980). Vivendo e aprendendo. Experiencias do IDAC em educação popular. São Paulo: Brasiliense Editora. Freire, P., & Faundez, R. (1985). Por una pedagogía da pregunta. São Paulo: Paz e Terra Editores. Freire, P., & Guimarães, S. (1985). Aprendendo com a propia historia. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra Editores. Furter, P. (1966). Educación y tiempo presente. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes. Gadotti, M., Araújo Freire, A. M., Antunes Ciseski, Â., Torres, C. A., Gutiérrez, F., Gerhardt, H.‐P., & Padilha, P. R. (Eds.) (1996). Paulo Freire: Una biobibliograf ía. São Paulo: Cortez Editora, UNESCO, Instituto Paulo Freire. Gajardo, M. (1991). La concientización en América Latina. Una revisión crítica. Pátzcuaro, Mexico: CREFAL. Gajardo, M. (2016). Paulo Freire sin barba. Crónica de sus años en Chile. Patzcuaro, Mexico: CREFAL. Gerhardt, H. P. (1993). Paulo Freire. In Perspectivas: Revista trimestral de educación comparada (Vol. 23(3–4)) (pp. 463–484). Paris: UNESCO, International Bureau of Education. Giroux, H. (1983). Pedagogía radical: Subsidios. São Paulo: Cortez Editora. Holst, J. (2006). Paulo Freire in Chile: 1964–1969: Pedagogy of the Oppressed in its socio‐political context. Harvard Educational Review, 76(2), 243–269. INODEP (1971). Concientización. Recherche de Paulo Freire. Document de travail. Paris: Editions de Alsace Colmar.

Finding Paulo Freire in Chile

INODEP (1972). El mensaje de Paulo Freire: Teoría y práctica de la liberación. Madrid: Editorial Marsiega. ISAL. (1968). Junta Latinoamericana de iglesia y sociedad. Collection of Paulo Freire writings in ICIRA used to promote an informed dialogue among ecumenic groups and Christian institutions. Kirkendall, A. J. (2004). Paulo Freire, Eduardo Frei, literacy training and the politics of consciousness raising in Chile, 1964 to 1970. Journal of Latin American Studies, 36(4), 687–717. MINEDUC, Chile (1964). Campana Nacional de Alfabetización. Manual para instructores. Santiago: Author. MINEDUC, Chile (1966a). La educación de adultos en Chile. Santiago: Author. MINEDUC, Chile (1966b). Manual del método psico‐social para la enseñanza de adultos. Santiago: Editora Santillana. MINEDUC, Chile (1971). Sugerencias para la alfabetización: Programa de educación de los trabajadores. Santiago: Author. Paiva, V. (1980). Paulo Freire e o nacionalismo desenvolvimentista. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasilera. Pinto, R. (2004). Paulo Freire: un educador humanista cristiano en Chile. Pensamiento Educativo (Chile), 34, 234–258. Rivero, J. (1984). La experiencia de educación no formal en el Perú. In La educación popular en América Latina. Buenos Aires: CEPAL/KAPELUZ. Sanders, T. G. (1972). The Paulo Freire Method: Literacy training and conscientazaçao. In T. La Belle (Ed.), Education and development: Latin America and the Caribbean (pp. 587–602). Los Angeles: Latin American Center. Shor, I. (1986). Culture wars: School and society in the conservative restoration 1969–1984. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Solari, A., Franco, R., & Jutkowitz, J. (1976). Teoría, acción social y desarrollo en América Latina. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores. Teixeira, A. (1934). Educação progressiva: Uma introdução à filosofia da educação (2nd ed.). São Paulo: Cia. Editora Nacional. Teixeira, A. (1978). A pedagogia de Dewey (Esboço da teoria de educação de John Dewey). In J. Dewey (Ed.), Vida e educação (10th ed.) (pp. 33–53). São Paulo: Melhoramentos. Torres, C. A. (1978). Entrevistas con Paulo Freire. Mexico: Ediciones Gernika Reproduces interviews of Paulo Freire by Revista Víspera, Uruguay, May 1969; RISK, vol. 6, 1970, pp. 7–19; Cuadernos de la Educación, Serie Orientaciones, Escuela de Educación de la Universidad Católica de Chile; IDACs Document No 1, April 1973 and Revista de Pedagogía, July 1975 (97–102). Torres, C. A. (1981). La sociología de la cultura y la crítica pedagógica de Paulo Freire. In G. G. Rivera, C. A. Torres, F. Cadena, et al. (Eds.), Sociología de la educación. Corrientes contemporáneas (pp. 315–353). Mexico: Centro de Estudios Educativos. Universidad de Chile. Varios Autores (2017). A 50 años de la Reforma Agraria. In Anales de la Universidad de Chile. Séptima Serie no. 12. Santiago: Universidade de Chile. Vieira Pinto, A. (1960). Consciencia e realidade nacional. A conciencia critica Vol. 2. Rio de Janeiro: ISEB. Wanderley, L. E. (1984). Educar para transformar. Educacao popular, igreja católica e política no movimiento de educacao de base. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.

119

121

6 Paulo Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future Adriana Puiggrós

Reasons to Link Freire to the History of Latin American Education It was 1974. Paulo Freire was in Buenos Aires, invited by the National Ministry of Education. At the time, Argentina had a Latin American type, nationalistic, ­popular government. Freire visited the University of Buenos Aires (at that time called “National and Popular University of Buenos Aires”) and approved of the reform that we were carrying out, especially regarding the training of pedagogues. The night before his departure, among the wine and empanadas that he particularly enjoyed, we spoke for hours about the situation in Latin America. The Unidad Popular government of Chile had recently been ousted by means of a coup and the figure of Salvador Allende was rising as a sign of heroism and warning. Freire had collaborated with Allende’s administration, introducing dialogic education into popular education programs. However, that night in Buenos Aires, Paulo caused great disappointment to the two educators in his company. He explained to us the reasons why our experience was unsustainable. We discussed his forecast, stating how original our proposal was, but Freire presented an argument that can be briefly translated thus: popular, nationalistic experiences aiming at democratic education did not fit in at that time in history. The popular politics of the Peronist government—who had come to power 1 year before—introducing a popular, Latin Americanist program, were already seriously damaged and the university was holding up as some kind of stronghold ever less tolerated by the country’s political and cultural right wing. A few months later, Argentine universities underwent the intervention of the national administration and, later, that of the military dictatorship. Freire’s statement that the link between education and politics is indissoluble was confirmed once again. Freire’s literacy experience in Brazil was sustained when both the country and Latin America were immersed in a particular historical climate. It fueled popular education movements in the history of the subcontinent, whose footprints can be traced back to Freirean discourse. Paulo Freire’s contribution sparked ideas that reached universal status. In order to understand them thoroughly, The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

122

Adriana Puiggrós

we must delve into the ways in which his ideas were inscribed in the history of popular education in Latin America. It is also worthwhile at this point to explain the more specific reasons why Freire is considered to have expressed that Latin America and offered his pedagogic incantations to other peoples in other regions. It was in Recife, his birthplace, a city in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, where Freire started work on his contributions. Recife is a spot where one can be imbued in the profound Latin America spirit, full of the beauty of the sea and the richness of cultures. A place where there is poverty. In 1968, Freire wrote: We believe that it is not even necessary to resort to statistics to demonstrate how many people in Brazil and in Latin America in general are “dead men walking,” people’s “shadows”; men, women, children desperate and subjected to an ongoing “invisible war” in which the little life they have left is being devoured by tuberculosis, child diarrhea, and a thousand diseases of the poor, many of which are called tropical maladies caused by alienation. (Freire, 1969, p. 157) He conceived Latin America both from a place of pain and from his emancipatory vocation. That is what he stated in Pedagogy of Hope (Freire, 2015) where he referred to his exile in Chile during the first years of the Brazilian dictatorship and the Chilean administration of the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. Chile was at that time a meeting point for Latin American intellectuals and politicians, who forged strong bonds. Freire traveled the country, establishing links with the peasants fighting for their right to land, to culture, and to education. He spotted the link between workers and intellectuals as the point where a liberating awareness could be generated, evoking the great influential figures and events of that time: Camilo Torres, “Che” Guevara, the Chinese cultural revolution, the student movement of May 1968. These were the feedstock of the fundamental signifier of the popular struggles of the twentieth century: social revolution. From a political viewpoint, Freire was a man of this century. His legacy calls for a reflection on the genealogy of Latin American popular culture and education and, in turn, tears apart the framework of the twenty‐first century.

Freire and Latin America Unity The phrase “Latin American unity” is usually used to refer to a political slogan. The term “unity” could be interpreted as the expression of the wishes of a region that was balkanized by successive great world powers. Throughout the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, that is, during the Spanish colonization of America, the continent was divided into geopolitical regions by the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs and into ecclesiastical provinces by the Catholic Church. The crown and royal emblems were driven into the ground like a stake, giving shape to a unity that was key to the conquest. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494, caused a wound in Latin American integration, particularly

Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future

because of the linguistic difference between Brazil and the rest of the countries in the region. However, it did not affect communication, in the Freirean sense of the term, that is, the common characteristic of the subjectivation process that the peoples went through. A very influential factor when it comes to the territorial and linguistic divisions brought about by independence wars throughout the nineteenth century is the trading interests of Great Britain. From the second half of the twentieth century, the United States has significantly intervened in the geopolitical design of Latin America. However, Paulo Freire opted for the history that binds the peoples of the region as siblings in the face of domination exercised over them by mine‐ and landowners, partners of the big international corporations, of educational institutions, and, as he was early to denounce, those in the media. It could be argued that the element binding Latin Americans, the inhabitants of both hemispheres, is that they coincide in the main characteristic of that antagonism. Let us say that that very antagonism took shape by means of distinct circumstantial and cultural elements and that it was the subject of parliamentary debate, armed conflict, and social unrest. This is about intricate conflicts that can be traced back to the ­origins of Latin American history. Languages and customs are numerous. Although the most widespread language is Spanish, Freire’s mother tongue was Portuguese; Brazil is the largest, most populated country in Latin America, since 1848, when Mexico yielded half of its territory to the United States. Even to this day, amid sweeping globalization, aboriginal languages are still the mother tongue of millions of Latin Americans. In the country where Freire used to live, the forging of the language encompassed African, Latin, and indigenous sounds. In spite of the varying cadences, cultures in the whole region were forged on a similar anvil, which featured a close bond to European liberalism and pragmatism and especially to the Catholic schools of thought, to which Paulo Freire belonged. Throughout Spanish‐American history, there has been a very diverse amalgam of nations, populations, localities, and political, economic, religious, cultural, scientific, technologic, and professional sectors. Spanish‐American identity has never been an essence but a subject with a specific temporary nature and sense. Ambiguous and unsettling, impossible to bring closure to, that subject is teeming with productivity. Long‐lasting, painful experience demonstrates that the persistence of what is Latin American is not a product of its freezing but of its innovation, and this is the sense that Freire conceived when he outlined education as a practice of freedom. He meant to imbue the renewal of Latin American bonds with a sense of democracy and progress by powerfully combining the best of our common tradition and our material and symbolic production with universal humanistic values. Since the dawn of independence from Spanish rule, there has been powerful communication between intellectuals and popular strugglers in the region’s ­countries, who have often converged at universities, especially in Europe, or in exile from dictatorial governments, such as in the case of Paulo Freire, exiled in Chile first and then in Europe. The Brazilian educator was loyal to that tradition. We briefly go through historical antecedents to Freire’s popular education.

123

124

Adriana Puiggrós

Origins and Antecedents to Popular Education in Latin America Mexican painter Diego Rivera depicted the meeting between Hernán Cortés and aboriginal peoples in scenes that pertain precisely to cultural subjugation. Mexican men, women, and children give in to the conquerors. Cortés reads a text to them called Requerimiento; whether it is in Latin or in Spanish is discussed by historians. It was in any case impossible to understand for those who spoke náhuatl or any other of the hundreds of aboriginal languages. The text announced that they had to subject themselves to evangelization and to the conquering power if they wanted their lives and belongings to be spared. It assigns to them the place of objects in a dual world, cutting them off from their history and their  culture. The conqueror took over as educator; the founding scene of Latin  American education was thereby set up. It was the scene of oppression that would have a significant impact on Paulo Freire 5 centuries later, because it constituted a spectral presence in the life of Latin American peoples. Throughout colonial times there were tests on different ways of educating, but they never transcended micro‐experience; they have remained as proof of the presence of certain critical consciousness among the sectors of religious orders. The most significant test took place during the first half of the sixteenth century at the Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco School, where Spanish and indigenous students shared the learning of science and the arts under the tutelage of Friar Bernardino de Sahagún. The assembly of different cultures that was meant to take place called for the acknowledgement of the other. The pedagogical relation caused interesting changes in the subjects’ positions. Even though the teacher’s attitude was not enough for true communication in the Freirean sense to take place, at least the purity of the Spanish cultural invasion was questioned and value was attached to the knowledge of the invaded culture. In the nineteenth century, once Latin American independence had taken place, most leaders and intellectuals looked up to the educational systems of European countries and that of the United States. However, there was intense political debate around the role of the teacher and that of the student, the identity of each of them and the power of the many institutions and social sectors to determine, control, and direct education. The school system that was built in our countries had among its main aims that of disciplining the mass of workers made up of indigenous people, former African slaves, big crowds of European immigrants who had not been absorbed by the industrial revolution, and mixed‐race population. Those “outcast from the world,” to whom Paulo Freire dedicated his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, were the object of a civilizing enterprise that introduced a kind of modernity into Latin America that was subordinate to the dominating cultures of the West. The impossibility of dialogue was one of the most striking characteristics of the civilizing enterprise—civilization as subordination of voices, bodies, memories, and hopes. A nonrelation became the norm, because the lack of dialogue does not give way to historization of “essential human intersubjectivity.” Freire used to say that “dialogue is relational and in it no part has absolute initiative” (Freire, 1969, p. 12). It is interesting to analyze his statement that “dialogue

Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future

­ articipants” look up to the same world, that they get away from or converge in p it, that they are for or against it. Tzvetan Todorov has explained the dissent between the colonizers and the colonized in America as to their worldview. Todorov recounts that Columbus was not interested in the original meaning of the words of the indigenous people as part of the culture where they originated, but he was searching for a possible equivalent of their use in Spanish, because that language was not a convention for him, but a part of the natural state of affairs (Todorov, 1987, p. 37). Miguel León Portilla compiled and studied the view of the defeated in depth, rescuing in particular the compilation made by Friar Bernardino de Sahagún of pre‐Spanish writings and paintings, as well as testimonies of the conquest (León‐Portilla, 1992, 2003). The need for a rescuing act is the best testimony to the suppression undergone by the voice and narrative of the conquered. They were permanently placed in the role of students, and a banking relation was established between teacher and student. It was about depositing, transferring, placing values and knowledge by substituting those of the student. Banking education is a dimension of the culture of silence and it does not give way to overcoming the teacher–student contradiction; what is more, it reinforces it. Banking education was inherited by independent republics via two sources: their own colonial genealogy and modern Western conceptions. In that regard, the Freirean use of the concept of alienation becomes indispensable when it comes to understanding the deteriorated link between teacher and student. According to Freire: In the banking view of education, knowing, knowledge, is a donation from those who believe themselves to be wise to those who judge themselves to be ignorant. A donation based on one of the instrumental manifestations of the ideology of oppression: projecting absolute ignorance onto others, which constitutes what we call alienation of ignorance, according to which ignorance can always be found in the other. (Freire, 1969, p. 52) Freire explains that the educator who “alienates ignorance is always in fixed, invariable positions” (Freire, 1969). A historical analysis of the pedagogical relation reflects that immobility throughout the centuries, although punishment by means of whip and cane has been ruled out. Corporal punishment has been subjected to a process of symbolization, further hiding the existence of ­ ­authoritarianism and the projection of absolute ignorance onto popular sectors. A relationship is established between pedagogical disciplining and ignorance of “inevitable antinomy.”

The Search for Democracy in Education Banking education, however, has not succeeded—luckily it cannot—in reaching the totality of education. According to Freire, human consciousness (in general) strives to measure itself in a transgressing movement. He mentions the p ­ ossibility conscience has to transgress its own limits. This is exactly what the Brazilian

125

126

Adriana Puiggrós

author himself achieved: overcoming the theoretical constraints of modern ­pedagogy. This occurred when he came up with the possibility of making radical changes to the teacher–student bond, and with the idea that previous views were unnecessary. We will come back to this point later. Before that, at this point in Freire’s conceptualization we must make a point of acknowledging Simón Rodríguez, one of the first popular Latin American educators, who opened his thinking/mind to that “constitutive movement of conscience” that “deliberately breaks the frontiers of finitude” and “searches for itself in a world that is ­common; since this world is common, the act of searching for oneself means communicating with the other” (Freire, 1969, p. 12). Simón Rodríguez was the teacher of Simón Bolívar who would go on to free Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. He was a liberal democrat, born at the end of the eighteenth century, and he was friends with this independence hero throughout their lives. Simón was against the authoritarian education driven by the ­conservative sectors who held power after the patriotic triumph. He used to say that the system they were building favored the rich and imposed the authority of landowners over the poor. He wanted to found school education on the basis of black people, the poor, the outcast, and their cultures. In a letter written in 1845, he wrote that Ecuador’s new constitution was a parody of English legislation and a “bad copy” of that of the United States. He cried: “We will not go back to the king, nor will we arrive at the republic… What shall we do? … Think, instead of imitating” (Rodríguez, 2001 , p. 185). Simón rejected the Lancastrian method, arguing that it did not allow the teacher’s bond with students, who were treated as a “rabble” of children, that is, a set of low‐social‐status children who, instead of being offered instruction, were given a beating. He struggled against the ­education set up during colonial times. A century afterwards, Paulo Freire was facing the remains of colonial education and imperial heritage, which had not been completely overcome by the successive governments of the Republic. We refer here to the marked difference in access to schooling institutions on the part of the poorer and the persistence of illiteracy. Political and pedagogical liberalism in the Brazilian Republic could not overcome the division of educational responsibilities between the nation’s provinces. Several attempts at reform made educational institutions official or private throughout the first half of the twentieth century, but none of them achieved consolidation. Education kept being linked to local phenomena and forces, although the percentage of illiteracy among the population of 15 years old and over decreased between 1920 and 1960 from 69.9 to 50.0 (Romanelli, 1978, p. 62). In the 1920s some Brazilian educators agreed on the ideas of the Active School Movement and became interested in European intellectuals, in particular in the American educator John Dewey. That was the most significant antecedent to Paulo Freire’s proposal from the pedagogical point of view, because the Active School Movement did not reject school as an institution but attempted to set the ­student free from the ties of the academicist, disciplinary, and rote learning tradition in order to open the doors to creativity, emotion, and imagination. Let us bear in mind that Freire clarified several times that he thought school was ­necessary; what he questioned was the notion of human beings and the world

Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future

with which school tradition was imbued. The Brazilian pedagogues (Anísio Texeira, Lorenzo Filho, Fernando Azevedo) also took from the “New School” the willingness to reconnect teaching to the students’ sociocultural medium. The policy of building a national education system was launched only by Getulio Vargas’s popular nationalist government as from 1930. However, Vargas’s reform did not manage to solve the problem of illiteracy and lack of access to primary education that affected millions of peasants. New School educators took part in Vargas’s government and published Manifesto dos Pioneros da Educacao Nova in 1932, which was a plea for the building of a public education system that would guarantee equal opportunities and national coverage. By considering the terms teacher and student in a broader sense, the state took on the role of teacher, which stressed the problem presented by Freire regarding the pedagogical relation. That is why, we insist, it is necessary to understand that Freire did not expect to do away with the job that the individual teacher or that of the large masses must do, which he ratified by accepting and holding office as secretary of education of São Paulo.

Libertarian or Liberating Education Freire exposed an antagonism whose resolution continues posing a problem. In his controversy with Iván Illich, it can already be spotted that the position of the latter is projected toward an absolutely liberal society that, in reality, cannot be distinguished from the one fostered by the founders of neoliberalism. Alternatively, Freire saw the difficulties in class struggles and advanced in his understanding of the multiplicity of antagonisms at the core of capitalist society. One of his main contributions was discovering a specific conflict in the educational bond, which is, in turn, part of the social fabric as a whole and takes part in its own way in social pain and evil. In his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom he wrote: “There is a plurality in man’s relations with the world, to the extent that it responds to the wide range of its challenges and to the extent that it is not exhausted by only one kind of pre‐established response” (Freire, 1970, p. 11). The ideological universe of Illich and that of Freire had Catholic humanism in common. Iván Illich was an Austrian thinker who moved to Latin America and founded the Center of Intercultural Documentation of Cuernavaca (CIDOC) in Mexico, an institution from which he led an anti‐institutional school of thought that was in line with the European libertarian pedagogical thinking of the 1960s. Freire followed another path. Reading the works of the French Catholic liberals Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain was key to his education. Mounier influenced Freire with regard to the importance he placed on communication with the other, be it a personal or institutional entity. Mounier thought a person is such in their bond to the world; an interpretation that has a strong social content of the Christian concept of transcendence. Such a concept left a profound mark in Freire’s pedagogical discourse, consolidating a humanitarian anti‐individualism that contrasts with the hyperindividualistic evolution of the libertarian proposals. Additionally, Erich Fromm converged in the making of Freirean ­discourse. The dehumanized human man is the opposite of the creating subject.

127

128

Adriana Puiggrós

But for modern people to reach that status requires that they go through a ­complex process. Freire quotes Fromm in this regard: He broke free from the external bonds that prevent him from working and thinking in terms of what he had thought was proper. Now he would be free to act as he saw fit, if only he knew what he wanted, thought and felt. But he does not. He aligns himself to what some anonymous authorities order and adopts an I that does not belong to him. The more he acts this way, the more forced he feels to conform his behavior to what the others expect of him. In spite of his guise of initiative and optimism, modern man is oppressed by a profound feeling of helplessness that keeps him paralyzed, facing looming catastrophes. (Freire, 1970, p. 31) Freire responds that the only way to set oneself free is by means of a critical attitude by means of which current issues can be unraveled. But he regrets that the outcast locks himself or herself in a subworld, in armor, in places from which he or she cannot be aware of the looming tragedy looming and so is manipulated by imposed prescriptions, unable to be the protagonist of the changes desired: “He can only grasp that times change, but cannot grasp the dramatic meaning of its passing, even when he suffers it. He is immersed in it” (Freire, 1970, p. 33). What changes does Freire refer to in the course of his works? A first reading leads us to the situation Brazil was in before the military coup, where popular nationalistic politics had returned, which Freire saw as a transition toward an equal society. He then writes during the dictatorship and finally from Brazil, when he returns and takes part in popular politico‐educational experiences ­carried out on the part of the state. However, the text suggests much more than that. Freire talks about a change of era in a wider historical sense. The tragic tone of some of his observations indicates that he suspects problems that might affect human society. There is some measure of despair in Freire’s plea for a critical conscience and a pressing need to build the pedagogical supports for popular protagonism.

Freire and the Relationship Between Education and Politics in the Twenty‐first Century This century began in Latin America with a worker, Luis Inasio Lula da Silva “Lula,” taking the office of Brazil’s first mandate. The new president was willing to reverse a history of oppression and false development promises. His assumption was immediately followed by popular governments in approximately ten countries of the region. All of them deployed—to a larger or lesser extent— educational programs with Freirean pedagogy at their heart. Out of all of them, it was probably Bolivian Evo Morales who deepened Freire’s proposal by linking the government’s politics and education with the amautas’ and the Pacha Mama’s paideia, which survives the destruction of the environment, drug trafficking, and the globalized economy, whose presence goes across our regions’ frontiers. Some decades ago, dialogic education had already transcended the field of literacy and

Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future

out‐of‐school education and was considered a politico‐pedagogical conception. Therefore it got ahead, having an impact on programs geared to the poorest, aiming at including them in schools so that they could access the schooling ­common to all the inhabitants. We will not deny that the aforementioned antagonism has persisted, but we are more interested in Paulo’s firm stance regarding the rejection of extreme‐leftist or reductionist stances of the traditional left. It could be claimed that they aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, that is, defending school and developing politics that include all the children is not opposed to insisting on the transformation of the pedagogical bond, to the inscription of popular cultures into schooling discourse, so that instead of being just mere annexes to the official curricula they become the essence of the syllabus. Or to designing ways to coordinate local and universal knowledge, allowing the peoples to reach high cultural levels with their own knowledge as starting point. All in all, school is not synonymous with the expropriation of people’s voices, even though the pedagogy that has been predominant for centuries has sustained that belief as an essential truth. However, the second decade of the twenty‐first century is on its way to knocking down the utopias and hopes of democratic transformation. There is a strengthening of the most authoritarian stances, of banking bonds, of the lack of acknowledgement of the other, who is addressed by the media, completely devaluing his voice. We are witnessing a state of affairs thought of only by such utopists as Robert Owen and that has no place at all within Freirean discourse. Nothing is further away from Freire’s thinking than an education guided by neopositivist neuroscience, the updating of neodarwinism or social segmentation of the students. It is worth noticing that, while democratic policies were being carried out in a considerable part of Latin America throughout the first decade of this century, international corporations and their local partners advanced over public education, starting with universities. At the same time, corporate media, many with direct interests in the educational market, set up an ongoing campaign discrediting teachers, aiming at the depreciation of their salaries and the relaxation of  terms favoring them in their work contracts. Waiting for “Superman” and O Panzazo belong to a series of videos and movies made to that aim. The policy of commercialization of school systems runs deep: it undermines the very foundations of the modern educational system by destructuring it. It also upsets people’s common sense in a way that makes it difficult to discern the horizon of the times we are going through, as well as preventing us from detaching ourselves from the pedagogic weight of the alleged truths stated by the powers that be. There are no more ideologies and there is no more progress; we have reached the ideal world, that of freedom of supply and demand, that which is capable of self‐regulating; it is the statement that can be traced back to nineteenth century Comptian positivism, which has managed to revive once and again, reinforced by intellectuals proclaiming the end of history. Everything is tradable. Even education, naturally, has market value. Or, better put, its value is such as the market determines, or is the value that favors the one who monopolizes the market. The citizen of independent republics—a subject

129

130

Adriana Puiggrós

who is characteristically a product of public school—is substituted by an individual who is against the collective; convinced of his own merit if he succeeds, and of his inferiority if he fails. It cannot be claimed, nonetheless, that Paulo Freire’s hopes were a chimera. Freire put emphasis on our possibilities to set ourselves free and, we insist, aimed against the closed world of alienated consciences preventing us from spotting the lights of new ways. Precisely, one of the aims of neoliberal pedagogy is to shut down the exits toward a different world. A good example is the figure of the meritocrat, very relevant in advertising and as far from Freire’s critical, creative student as there can be. Let us define the twenty‐first century meritocrat. Such status will hardly be attained by the aborigine from Morelos Hills or the peasant from Chuquisaca, who still maintain their communal organization. A meritocrat is the one who meets the objectives imposed by the corporate knowledge society, strengthened by the classist prejudice of those in power. In order to be a meritocrat, one must win over everybody else; however, there is only one meritocrat, the one who wins the race and buys a Chevrolet, as claimed by a TV commercial in heavy rotation in our countries. It is not a raffle, but a cruel race leaving thousands and thousands of children and young people behind, whose authentic merit is destroyed and who are pigeonholed as deserters in various rungs of the school system, which has been turned into a social classification machine. There is abundant European, North American, and Latin American literature on the correlation between the level of schooling and social class. It is not an automatic relationship, but in the neoliberal era an idea has gained momentum: the intention to use the differences in the educational process as an instrument affirming students’ placement in the class sector from which they come from, so as to reinforce inequality. There is a measure of pleasure, or even tenacity, in the illusion of becoming a meritocrat. It is necessary to possess the will and strive not to deviate from the scripted behaviors and contents. No imagination at all. It is of utmost importance to grant consensus to assessment. Assessment substitutes for teaching, because what is worth in meritocratic pedagogy is getting the right rating, not the right knowledge. Teaching is substituted by the valuation of knowledge. An individual who is free from all centralized power is, however, an illusion. There is not only a culture being imposed as an external factor but also a habitus within which subjects constitute themselves. It is wrong to suppose that we have entered an era of educational freedom, such as those forecast by Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Corporations possess cultural unity, although their confrontation is inevitable in the sphere of market freedom. Wild capitalism has managed to globalize one of capitalist culture’s worst ­concepts: the will to “be someone,” to “find oneself,” as a command equivalent to  being a winner, triumphing over the rest; an action that does not refer to inheritance but to the immaterial “self‐made man,” that of the “American dream.” The “self‐made man” conviction has had an impact on the hubris of the classical inheritance of Western education, which claimed to be the bearer of a history that aims to perpetuate itself. Near‐millenary universities have opened up to the market, which has imposed corporate protocols, meritocratic criteria, and an adaptation to globalized neoliberalism on them. We are living in the age of ­globalization of the meritocrat’s education.

Freire’s Place in Latin America’s History and Future

Freire’s “Viable Unprecedented” Accomplishment Will neoliberal education be able to train new generations in a new paideia? Are we witnessing a new metamorphosis of capitalism that is educating us within a brand new world that we barely grasp at understanding? Has the culture of the market already been imposed on us as an ideal and market practices as formative principles? Let us only be careful, because we can be blind to the constraints of power, to the cracks in the corporate fabric, to the knowledge that is to be found outside from the protocols that are known to us, to the alternatives that are being forged in the anvil of the peoples. In Chile, in Argentina, in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, students are born who raise their voice at events gathering hundreds or thousands of young people who want to belong, who want to be part of a group, a motto, a chant, to build an entity that will allow them to identify themselves as a “we,” and to reject the alluring call of the twenty‐first century to absolute individuality, to avoid an environment where there is no project but that of consumption, where there is no passion to be had. In the cases where passion itself has nowadays lost all relevance and prestige, let us educate the youth so that they regain the enthusiasm called for if they are to shape their own future themselves. In our role as educators, we must remember that popular wisdom has been able on many occasions to reinstate democratic teaching in Latin America. It will not be easy for wild capitalism to package all educational processes so as to sell them in the marketplace. Nor will it be easy for Latin American peoples to converge again in ideals that respect pedagogic and cultural identities, and to reconquer our educational sovereignty. Unless we see the triumph of a “pedagogy of hope.” Simón Rodríguez wrote a book called American Societies in 1828. What they are like and what they could be like in forthcoming centuries. In it, he repeated his favorite phrase: “We shall imagine or we shall err.” That summons from Simón Rodríguez for dependent, poor countries to imagine new futures is rooted in one of the most transcendent categories Paulo Freire ever used: that of the “viable unprecedented” accomplishment. The Brazilian author seems to be responding to the Venezuelan one: there is a “futurity to be built.” In a conversation he held with Frei Betto, the priest who was in prison during the Brazilian military dictatorship, Paulo said that when the world narrows as much as it does in prison, one must go across boundaries by means of the imagination (Frei Betto, 1987, p. 35; Puiggrós, 1999). In the solitude of jail there is an absent “other.” This can be further narrowed: there is also solitude in the lack of pedagogic communication, an abyss between teacher and student in banking education. There is a no‐place, in which Freire dares to intervene by dreaming of Latin American emancipation and that of all the peoples in the world. Simón Rodríguez, in turn, spoke of a possible future: “it is not a dream or delusion, but philosophy …; nor will the place where it will come true imaginary, as the one imagined by Chancellor Thomas Moore: his utopia will, in fact, be America” (Rodríguez, 1975, p. 131). It will be the “viable unprecedented” accomplishment. Popular nationalism is a complex political organization condensing different demands from large popular sectors. It safeguards national interests in the face of North American imperialistic penetration. To this regard, it is worth pointing

131

132

Adriana Puiggrós

out the huge difference there is between those Latin American experiences and the conservative populisms in Europe, which express the interests of a stifling concentration of financial capital and hold the view of traditional colonialism regarding the thousands of immigrants seeking a place in the planet where they can survive. On the contrary, Latin American popular nationalisms, with varying results, attempt to include the large social majorities and the ethnic, cultural, and educational minorities in national development policies.

References Betto, F. (1987). El día de Ángelo P. Un clamor de justicia. Buenos Aires: Dialéctica. Freire, P. (1969). Pedagogía del oprimido. Montevideo: Terra Nueva. Freire, P. (1970). La educación como práctica de la libertad. Montevideo: Tierra Nueva Retrieved from http://www.educacionsalta.com.ar/files/archivos/bibliotecas Freire, P. (2015). Pedagogía de la esperanza. Mexico: Siglo XXI. León‐Portilla, M. (1992). Visión de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la Conquista. Mexico: UNAM. León‐Portilla, M. (2003). Códices. Mexico: Siglo XXI. Puiggrós, A. (1999). Neoliberalism & education in the Americas. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Rodríguez, S. (1975). Luces y virtudes sociales. In Obras completas. Caracas: Universidad Simón Rodríguez. Rodríguez, S. (2001). Cartas. Caracas: Rectorado, UNESR. Romanelli, O. d. O. (1978). História da educação no Brasil. Petrópolis: Vozes. Todorov, T. (1987). La conquista de América. La cuestión del otro. Mexico: Siglo XXI.

133

7 Paulo Freire Working in and from Europe Luiza Cortesão

Introduction … a poem, a song, a sculpture, a canvas, a book, a music, a suit, a deed, a happening, never have, explaining them, a single reason. A happening, a suit, an act of love or hate, a poem, a book, always find themselves amidst thick plots, embraced by multiple reasons for being, of which some are more intimate of the occurrence or the thing created, of which some are more visible while reason for being. (Freire, 2000, p. 120) In fact, it is somewhat unheard of to evoke a laboratory practice in order to conceive a metaphor, daring, furthermore, to use it in the field of social and human sciences. Stemming from different epistemological fields, the exact procedures used in the laboratory do not live together easily, or usually, with metaphors. Their use—as we know—is hardly accepted in the exact sciences fields. But sometimes it happens that unlikely crossovers—even transgressive ones—offer us unexpected possibilities for illustration and argumentation that are also provocatively interesting. In the present text, making use of the metaphor of the “culture medium,” we intend to illustrate and underline the hypothesis for the existence of a significant relationship between the actors’ action and the contextual characteristics in which they are seeking to intervene. We intend to underline that if the actor is sometimes able, through his action, to develop context—and even enrich it and imprint innovative traits on it—, other times those contexts can make it difficult or even impossible. But they can also, from existent conditions, open up and offer possibilities that allow and/or favor the development of that very action. In this text the actor to which we refer is Paulo Freire, and the context in which he worked—and that we will try to describe—, is that of Europe of the 1970s. Under the spotlight is a relatively young Paulo Freire, but already with an extensive, insightful, and, courageous theoretical production—including Educação como Prática de Liberdade” (Education as Freedom Practice) from 1967 and Pedagogia do Oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) from 1970. He was also a The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

134

Luiza Cortesão

man with a diverse and courageous sociopolitical intervention through ­education. From the latter we have to necessarily underline the experience— conceived and organized by him—of literacy/conscientization of adult workers in 40 hours, conducted in Angicos in 1963, in the Brazilian Northeast (Gadotti, 2013; Lyra, 1996). This Freire was the one who was made a prisoner—after his revolutionary political and educational intervention in Angicos—when the military coup took place in Brazil in 1964, and it is this Freire—exiled from Brazil—who, in the ­metaphor, represents the actor. The context that will be described—as already mentioned—will be that of an effervescent Europe, one he chose and one that welcomed him. It was a Europe offering him not only conditions to proceed with his work, but a Europe that also welcomed—with an enthusiastic acceptance— his political research and intervention.

“Culture Medium” as Metaphor for a Context of Emergence and Maturation Ground of Ideas In biological terms a “culture medium” is a composite in which a set of nutrients are added to an agar medium, thus constituting an adequate environment for an  organism—cells and/or animal or plant tissues—to grow. The composition of  this environment should be adequate for the entity in development, and ­therefore all procedures toward the identification and dosage of the substances constituting it are always the object of careful attention, the question being that only in an adequate growing environment will growth be possible. As mentioned previously, because “culture medium” represents an environment favoring the development of certain entities, metaphorically it can also be used to make reference to a political and/or sociocultural context, with such characteristics as to allow—and even favor—the emergence of theories, discoveries, or even social movements. The metaphor can, therefore, be applied to environments—usually of unstable and complex constitution—where ideas, knowledge, action proposals, dreams, plans, and resiliencies can intersect and even confront. And because contexts with close characteristics can arise in ­diffuse forms, in several locations, this can explain the occurrence—the simultaneous emergence—of some theories and/or discoveries made in different ­locations. Movements, interpretations, and proposals have, therefore, the possibility of arising favored by the existence of determined contexts, contexts that— themselves—succeed one another, pervading and favoring, in their turn, the origin of new movements and new ideas. As Devereux (1980, p. 25) states, it is not by mere chance that “the three men which altered most radically our conception of man in the universe, Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, were born by this order,” and in this way succeeded themselves, historically, in the production of their work. In fact, despite the extremely transgressive nature of their ideas in relation to their living contexts, we can see that—regardless of everything else— the work of each of them emerged in political and sociocultural contexts in which their proposals had already confronted—in a way—existing concerns.

Freire Working in and from Europe

If we can easily understand that the existing “culture medium” allows the emergence of certain ideas, we can also understand the risks threatening those pioneers defending something very different, very “advanced” in relation to what was consensual and/or dominant in their working contexts. As an example— though there are many, we can remember the problems Copernicus had to face while daring, still in the Middle Ages, to defend the Heliocentric Theory. Not small was the risk Freire undertook when, in 1963, he was able to make evident the possibility to alphabetize (teach reading and writing) and, even more, raise “conscientization,” in 40 hours, in illiterate adults of the Brazilian Northeast. In  the context of preparation for a coup d’état that, by then, was arising, the empowering effects of his work, considered threatening in those settings, were, as we know, promptly and “brilliantly” condemned in the final session of his course by General Castelo Branco1, who described them, alarmed, as being something that would allow the fattening of “rattlesnakes in this wilderness” (Lyra, 1996, p. 117). The results showed how education can represent a process that—more than awareness of life and work—can contribute, in a context of oppression and  exploitation, to something that will be considered as “threatening.” The ­conscientization process of the now‐literate people (Freire, 1981) had as a consequence the closure of the alphabetization project. Also prison threats were made to the students and course materials were almost completely destroyed Freire was imprisoned and then exiled, first to Bolivia and then to Chile and Harvard, where he lectured for a time. In the end, that exile brought him to Europe.

The Political, Economic, and Cultural Contexts of Europe in the 1960s and 1970s Europe, where Freire landed in the 1970s—forced by his long exile—, was a continent in ebullition, trespassed and shaken by debates, conflicts, new ideas, and movements, indelibly scarring at least some of the countries composing it. It is far too risky trying to underline characteristics common to all of Europe at the time. Still, we can say that the Old Continent—in some aspects—was awakening from the hope that had existed—to some extent—in the 1950s; hope that had been nurtured by a postwar development. Europe had already struggled in the 1960s–1970s with unemployment issues. An oil crisis was present, in which signs of the end of traditional industries (such as the coal, naval construction, metallurgy, and textile industries, among others) could be identified. Europe was also a continent convulsing in the context of a multiplicity of political and cultural happenings, occurring here and there in several areas, and in several of the countries composing it. In a text like this one it would be very difficult—more, very risky—to even try to compose a portrait of the political and cultural contexts’ kaleidoscope from those years. We are well aware of the incompleteness and superficiality that that description effort would entail. In this text we do not intend anything more—via a reduced situations’ sample—than provide a very superficial description of

135

136

Luiza Cortesão

some aspects of the existing panorama at the time, which can be understood as a “culture medium” for the science production and for the social and political activism that was being demonstrated. In the 1960s–1970s there were, in fact, some surviving dictatorships in Europe, coexisting with countries where demands for better living conditions and/or a deeper sense of democracy and citizenship were being born. As an example, from Italy in 1967 to 1969 there were intense strikers’ movements. In  France, events exploded culminating in “May 1968” movement that, after Nanterre, in Paris—a real “earthquake,” as some called it—, first agitated the academic world, but then it extended to all of French society and beyond. Slogans like “Imagination to power,” “It is forbidden to forbid,” “Be realistic, demand the impossible,” previously unimaginable, were spreading, invading, contaminating—with all their irreverence—the political, cultural, and ­academic milieux of many countries (Tournier, 2007). The cultural environment was changing, revealing itself more critical every time. To give another example, the so‐called author cinema, represented by Truffaut, Godard, Varda, and many others, was eagerly welcomed, at the same time when other—more commercial and “hollywoodesque”—productions were seen with critical eyes. In the much‐diversified musical world, the Beatles, as well as other groups already well known at the time— for example, the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd—, were especially praised by youths increasingly contesting the social order. In this field many others2 were—and are still—outstanding, such as, for example, Brassens, Ferré, Greco (in France), Mustaki (France/Greece), and Brel  (Belgium) (Gos, 2014). Writers, poets, and philosophers participated in those cultural movements. In fact, that effervescent cultural ambiance took place side by side with intense political, philosophical, and sociological debates over problems confronting the world at the time and had the participation of people like—as an example and amid many others—Marcuse and Block. The ideas of Sartre and of the recently departed Camus were debated in get‐ togethers, in publications, in meetings, and even in coffee shops. The “Prague Spring” had taken place in 1968, being the cause of intense debates and even schisms in political and cultural mediums. Periodicals like Il Manifesto or Lotta Continua in Italy or the Libération in France were distributed, read, and discussed by many. Originating in the United States, the New Left movement reached the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. The influential New Left Review was organized in 1960, and it was still in that decade that the sociological analysis produced at the time strengthened the epistemic field known as “conflict theory” (Karabel & Halsey, 1979). Besides the Prague Spring of 1968, a succession of other political events emerged in the rest of Europe in the 1970s. As an outcome of the opposition to colonial wars that the Portuguese government insisted in maintaining, the “Carnation Revolution” took place in April 1974, restoring democracy to the country. After 48 years under a dictatorship, the uprising conducted by young captains of the Portuguese Army also paved the way to independence in the African countries that were former Portuguese colonies (the latter also known as Portuguese Overseas Provinces), where Freire so intensely worked. Also, by that time, the “Dictatorship of the Colonels” in Greece came to an end. In Spain, in

Freire Working in and from Europe

1975, General Franco died having prepared his succession with the return of the monarchy to that country. Unexpectedly, the monarchy conducted a referendum on the “Fundamental Law for Political Reforms,” which opened the door to the return of democracy to Spain and, finally, in 1978, free elections were held in that country.

A “Culture Medium” of Different Forms of Analyzing Education Meanings in Europe in the 1960s–1970s Following the discussion of the existence of a relationship between political and economic contexts and the scientific production, we should now mention briefly some of the sociological analysis produced in the European “culture medium” of the 1970s. Karabel and Halsey, in the previously mentioned work, maintain that: taking our view that sociology has been influenced more by its social context than by any “inner logic” of the development of the discipline, we would expect that, just as technological functionalism seems to fit the social conditions of the 1950s, conflict theory was likely to have come into greater prominence in the 1960s. For if social stability was the dominant mood of the 1950s, change upheaval expressed the spirit of the 1960s. (Karabel & Halsey, 1979, p. 28) In that same text, the authors explain that: During 1960s there was a sharpening of antagonism between classes, races, and nations that seems to have marked off a new generation with a dramatically different social and political outlook. We would have expected, in particular, that the rise of a New Left movement that was disproportionately active in those universities that are preeminent in social ­scientific research would give added impetus to the development of ­conflict theory. (p. 29) This being so, it is only natural that a combination of postfunctionalist t­ heories have emerged—having solidified during the 1960s and 1970s—, ­seeking a critical interpretation for the significance of existing relations between social characteristics and education. It was indeed during this epoch that the “wary” sociologists of the time (Berger, 1963; Ricoeur, 1978) started questioning nonexplicit functions of education and school, as it functioned then, and usually still does. From this questioning resulted the almost simultaneous explosion of works—nowadays classics—­ produced by different authors in Europe. Those works, although having distinct characteristics and addressing different aspects of the problem—as in a rediscovery of Marx’s original texts—converged in the regular denouncement of the reproductive role of social stratification that—via nonexplicit ways—is played by  school. One should remember, for example, the publication in 1971 of

137

138

Luiza Cortesão

La Reproduction by Bourdieu and Passeron; also in 1971 of L’École Capitaliste en France (The Capitalist School in France) by Baudelot and Establet; in 1970 of Idéologie et Appareils Ideológiques de l’État (State Ideology and Ideological Apparatus) by Althusser; in 1971 of Deschooling Society, by Illich; and in 1970 of Class, Codes and Control, vol. 1, by Bernstein, the second volume of this work in 1973, and the third volume in 1975. It is extremely important to underline that Freire writes in Chile, by the end of the 1960s—and therefore already in exile and after the already mentioned Angicos experience—Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Apart from other important contributions, in that work he denounces the reproductive role of social stratification played by school. In fact, the metaphorical concept of “banking education,” which he conceived—having already worked over it extensively—in that book constitutes in itself a lucid and historical condemnation of the taming and reproducing role of modern traditional schooling, which, as already mentioned, was studied by many others, mostly in the 1970s. We therefore have to recognize that Freire even anticipated the type of sociological analysis under development in that decade. Besides the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that he finished in Chile— in which this type of analysis and critique are explicitly present—he had also published, for example, in 1967 Educação como Prática de Liberdade (Education as Freedom Practice) and, in Santiago in 1969, Extensión o Comunicación? (Extension or Communication?). He had already participated in several meetings with diverse audiences and conducted several conferences and debates in universities from many countries, both in the American continent as in Europe, always discussing those ideas. It was with all this experience—and in the context of his exile—that between the invitation to work at Harvard and the possibility of going to Switzerland, Freire chose Europe, working mostly at the World Council of Churches (WCC) (Conseil Ecuménique des Eglises, n.d.). And he, himself, connects his work with the sociocultural, political, and scientific characteristics of the milieu in which he lived: The book [Pedagogy of the Oppressed] came up in an historical period, full of intense disquietude. The social movements in Europe, in the United States, in Latin America, in each space–time with its own characteristics …. Guerrillas in Latin America; base‐communities, African liberation movements, the independence of the former Portuguese ­ ­colonies, the struggle in Namibia, Amílcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, their leadership in Africa and its repercussion outside Africa. China. Mao. Cultural Revolution. The living extension of the significance of May 1968. Political‐unionist and pedagogical‐unionist struggles, all obviously ­political, mostly in Italy. (Freire, 2000, p. 121) Living and working in this ebullient context where ideas were debated—some of which, as was seen, had characteristics very similar to his own ideas—it is, therefore, natural that Freire freely participated in it, in the fashion that seemed to him most interesting and adequate to his own reasoning about education.

Freire Working in and from Europe

The Three Key Areas of Freire’s Work in Europe Observing the intense work that—in different fields—Freire conducted in this epoch, it is possible to identify at least three aspects, manifest throughout his sojourn in the European context: (a) his permanent and militant interest in the less favored and in the oppressed, which he termed the “ragged of the world” (Freire, 1981, p. 31), constituting the “Third World of the First” (Freire, 2000, p.  123); (b) the research and work conducted in the contexts of colonization and decolonization; and (c) work conducted, and contacts held, in the academy and over his research and intervention work. We now refer, first—although briefly—, to his work with (and not about) those he considered the “Third World of the First” (Freire, 2000): mainly the migrant workers flooding Europe; second, we consider his intense work with (and about) the problems of colonialism, and later of decolonization, which he developed from Geneva with African countries accessing independence, particularly with Guinea‐Bissau; finally, a brief reference is made to some meetings, productions, interactions, and interventions developed in the framework of the academic and educational panorama of the time, as well as to some echoes that this kind of work found in Europe. Working with the “Third World of the First” At a time when many central European countries were receiving and using the labor force of many immigrants trying to escape from misery in their own countries, Paulo Freire made evident his lifetime position of sociopolitical intervention for these groups of laborers, arriving from different countries but mostly from a semiperipheral Europe. It is possible to find in different texts—by Freire (2000) himself, and by Gadotti (1996), for example—evidence of activities he conducted in this field. For instance, in Pedagogy of Hope he speaks extensively of numerous encounters that he frequently had with migrants, contacts that mostly allowed him to understand—but also to intervene over—issues of exploitation and discrimination, to which they were subject. Freire, himself, explains the circumstances leading him to work in that field: It was at that time, and due to the Pedagogy, that I came into contact with the harsh reality of one of the most dramatic dimensions of the Third World of the First. The reality of the so‐called immigrant‐workers. Of Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Greeks, Turkish, Arabs, in Switzerland, in France, in Germany. Experience of racial, class, sex discrimination. (Freire, 2000, p. 123) In the same book, he wrote: It would not be too much to underline how much discussions with young German university students, for long hours, enriched me, either in Geneva or in their respective universities in Germany, while observing their

139

140

Luiza Cortesão

i­ ndisputable pleasure by theoretical reflection, the seriousness with which they defied me, anchored in the careful and rigorous reading they had done alone or with their teachers. In the same way, how much it enriched me to discuss with worker leaderships, Italian or Spanish. With the first, as I have said, in meetings in Geneva or in Italy; with the second only in Geneva, given that at the time both me as my “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” were banned from entering Spain or Portugal. Franco’s Spain, as well as Salazar’s Portugal banned us both. The Pedagogy and me. (pp. 122–123) The references that Paulo Freire himself makes about this type of work that he conducted in Europe are multiple. For example, still in the Pedagogy of Hope he recalls some of those encounters: “In a seminar which I attended in Germany to discuss alphabetization and post‐alphabetization of Portuguese workers …” (p. 123) or “I attended meetings with migrant workers myself, in Switzerland, in France, in Germany, where I heard speeches that spoke much more of the desire for a better life” (p. 124). Or still, “In meetings with immigrant Italian, Spanish and Portuguese workers, amongst whom there were some who had read the Pedagogy in Italian, Spanish or French” (p. 127). It is noteworthy that, as always with these activities—also in Europe—what Freire intended was much more than literacy. He intended, in fact, to raise “­conscientization” throughout the alphabetization process. Freire would tell us, later, in respect to the work he conducted in this field, that: One of the tasks of progressive popular education, yesterday as today, is to seek, by means of a critical understanding over how social conflicts arise, to be of help in the process in which the frailties of the oppressed becomes a strength capable of transforming the strength of the oppressors into weakness. This is one hope that moves us. (Freire, 2000, p. 126) Working in Contexts of Liberation and Decolonization Movements Work conducted by Freire—especially with countries that after independence became known as official Portuguese expression countries—made blatantly evident how much of the context of opposition to colonialism, by then experienced in Europe, and also how much of the political events occurring in the aftermath of the Portuguese revolution of April 1974 (from which, among other things, resulted in the end of the Portuguese colonial empire), articulated with the ­political and socioeducational posture that Freire defended already and kept defending still. In fact, the sum of problems experienced by then found in Freire the ideal militant, one who had the ideological positioning, the academic ­knowledge, the field experience, the capacity for analysis, and the necessary commitment to undertake the task. On the other hand, it is important to underline Freire’s appetite for work as a consultant for educational reforms in territories now becoming independent. That appetite is very explicit, for example, in some of the texts comprising his book Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau (Letters to Guinea‐ Bissau) and posteriorly, in 1990, in a dialogue with Donaldo Macedo (Freire & Macedo, 1990). To give an example, he states in the Letters: “I would like to

Freire Working in and from Europe

underline the satisfaction with which we received … the official invitation of the  government of that country (Guinea‐Bissau) to discuss the basis for our ­collaboration in the field of alphabetization” (Freire, 1978b, pp. 14–15). That book, Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau, in itself unveils already a little about the intensity of the debates and activities that took place in this field of work—­ activities conducted, in many cases, in a strict collaboration with the team ­working in Switzerland, in the Cultural Action Institute (CAI). One can easily understand that in order to transform their intervention into action they ­frequently had to leave Geneva, traveling to African countries (such as Guinea‐ Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé, Tanzania, and Zambia). Once there, they observed, studied political and cultural characteristics in context, absorbed, ­analyzed, discussed, and wrote. Freire corresponded mainly with Mário Cabral, the minister of education by then. Political, theoretical, and methodological questions pertaining to processes of literacy/conscientization, and arising amid complex political conditions—by then experienced in African countries that were fighting for independence or recently independent—, were already the subject of several analyses. This point, not being discussed in this text, surely deserves further exploring. Nevertheless, we cannot keep from referring to some of the problems and difficulties resulting from Freire’s certainty about the importance of articulating all of the alphabetization processes to the characteristics, problems, local knowledge, and cultures present in contexts where his alphabetization campaigns were to be implemented. That positioning of him came into conflict with some decisions of a political nature taken by governments of different African countries. One of the problems—which came to be of the utmost importance—was related to the ­decision to impose the Portuguese language in the alphabetization process. We should not forget that only a small number of the population spoke Portuguese at the time. And even if it was true that the creole was—and still is—spoken in some areas, the truth is that for many peoples in Guinea‐Bissau there were other mother tongues. Freire was well aware of the problems this linguistic diversity represented to an alphabetization process intending to be also a process for conscientization. In his book Alfabetização: Leitura do mundo, leitura da palavra (Literacy: Reading the Words and the World), and in a dialogue with Donaldo Macedo, he states: While examining and studying the cultural and linguistic diversity of Guinea‐Bissau I came to a better position to understand the educational needs of the country. What I could not do in Guinea‐Bissau was to outdo the political limitations of the moment. As a foreigner I could not impose my proposals about Guinea‐Bissau’s reality and about needs, as political agents perceived them. For example, the linguistic issue was one I was not able to overcome, although I had extensive and intense conversations with educators about my concerns regarding the implementation of an alphabetization campaign in the language of the colonialists. Yet, the leaderships considered politically advantageous to adopt the Portuguese language as the main vehicle for the alphabetization campaign. (Freire & Macedo, 1990, p. 53)

141

142

Luiza Cortesão

And further —and always in a dialogue with Macedo—Freire also expresses, not without some bitterness, as a brief of all work conducted in Guinea‐Bissau: Talking about evaluation, I would reiterate again that the so‐called failure of our work in Guinea‐Bissau was not due to the “Freire method.” This failure demonstrated with all clarity the unfeasibility of the use of the Portuguese as the only instruction vehicle in the alphabetization ­campaigns. This is a fundamental point. (Freire & Macedo, 1990, p. 63) Besides fieldwork, meetings, and debates that took place, Freire refers to important written production in reports and several other works, such as, to give an example, the report “Impressions de Paulo Freire Sur Son Voyage en Afrique” (Impressions of Paulo Freire Over his African Travels), from 1971; or “Guinea‐ Bissau: Record of an Ongoing Experience,” published in 1977 in Convergence (Freire cited in Jardilino, 2008); or even the “Quatro Cartas aos Animadores Culturais de São Tomé e Príncipe” (Four Letters to Cultural Animators in Sao Tomé and Príncipe) (Freire, 1978a) from 1978 and published in that same year in Spanish and German; the problems faced in the alphabetization process of Guinea‐Bissau are also described, with extreme clarity, in Alfabetização: Leitura do mundo, leitura da palavra with Donaldo Macedo, and published in 1987 under the title Literacy: Reading the Words and the World; and, evidently, his best‐known work in that field, the Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau published in Brazil in 1978 and at the same time in English and French. Academic/Educational Activities During the time he lived in Geneva, Freire kept in touch with different thinkers and conducted other works, besides—as previously mentioned—the work he has done with immigrants and all the important activities he developed in different African countries. It is not our intention here to study contacts, influences, and convergences taking place in the theoretic, political, and cultural environments of the time—the European environment. Many texts have been produced about the work of Freire, seeking to identify relationships between his works and the works of other authors. Freire himself did that, well before he arrived in Europe. As an example, he gives notice of an agreement between his work and Gramsci’s ideas, an agreement that Peter Mayo, for instance, also studies in different works (e.g., Mayo, 2004a, 2004b, 2013, 2018). In the 1990s Freire himself declared, in a workshop in London: I read Gramsci only in exile. I read Gramsci to find out I had been greatly influenced by Gramsci, well before having read him. It is amazing to discover that someone’s thinking influenced one in the absence of contact with his intellectual production. (Freire, 1995 cit. in Mayo, 2013, p. 54) Besides Gramsci, Gadotti also notes the affinity of Freire with Kosik and Habermas. The relation between Habermas and Freire is the object of several

Freire Working in and from Europe

Table 7.1  Authors Quoted by Freire in Pedagogy of Hope Name

Country

1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Marx

Germany

1883

Lukács

Hungary

1885

Gramsci Italy Marcuse Germany

1971 1891

1937

1898

1979

Fromm

Germany

Sartre

France

1905

Arendt

France

1906

Ponty

France

1908

Weil

France

1909

Memmi

Tunisia

Fanon

Martinique

Kosik

Czech Rep.

Heller

Hungary

Freire

Brazil

Legends:

1900

1980 1980 1975 1963 1943 1920 1925

1961

1926

2003

1929 1921

1997

Period in which Freire has worked in, and from, Europe.

studies, such as the studies of Morrow (2013), Torres (2014), and Morrow and Torres (1998). Convergences and parallels between Kosik’s Dialectics of the Concrete (1995) and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed are described, for example, by Diana Cohen in her 1988 work Radical Heroes: Gramsci, Freire and the Politics of Adult Education. Many of these, and other, “proximities” were not a result of actual meetings. Gramsci, for instance—and as can be seen in Table 7.1—, was long dead (1937) when Freire landed in Europe. All indications point out to those “meetings” taking place before and after his arrival in Europe. He tells us himself, by reference to situations—some of which had taken place a long time ago and others being contemporary: Interesting in the context of infancy and adolescence, in living side by side with the wickedness of the powerful with the frailty of the dominated, a frailty in need of being transformed into strength, that the f­ounding time of SESI, covered with “welds” and “bandages,” of old and pure “guesses,” for which my new and emerging critical knowledge provided a sense, I have “read” the reasons for being, or at least some of them, the plots of books already written which I had never read, and of books still  waiting to be ­written and that would cast a light over the living memory that branded me. Marx, Lukács, Fromm, Gramsci, Fanon, Memmi, Sartre, Kosik, Agnes Heller, M. Ponty, Simone Weill, Arendt, Marcuse …. (Freire, 2000, pp. 19–20) In Table 7.1 we can see that Freire had the chance of making direct contact only with some of the authors he quotes as being of significance to him. Others are

143

144

Luiza Cortesão

thinkers influencing him only through the readings he had done or with whom he discovered and declared spontaneous convergence processes to exist. As for Habermas, the meeting that was set between them did not happen in the end. In his preface‐letter to Freire, to be included in the “Pedagogical Letters” (posthumous publication), Balduíno Andreola (2000) recalls: “I pity, Paulo, that your unexpected departing has prevented an already set meeting with Jürgen Habermas in your next trip to Germany, in 1997, to attend the Congress of Adult Education” (p. 25). Now we examine some signs of effects related to activities Freire conducted in that field and in that epoch. Much evidence of this can be found in several works, from references to published papers and books, to meetings, conferences, and courses conducted in different institutions. Our intention is to report on activities that allow us to gain some insight into the influence—and great acceptance— Freire already had at the time. Over that period, alone or, in some cases, in coauthorship, he wrote—and/ or had translated and published in several languages—several books (see Gadotti, 1996). One should take notice that some of them were, almost ­simultaneously, published in several European countries, a fact that makes evident the interest they aroused. In the book Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia (Paulo Freire: A Biobibliography), Gadotti registers that in Europe, for example, the Letters to Guinea‐Bissau were edited simultaneously, in 1978, in Paris and in London. Sometimes with slightly different titles, the text Conscientização (Conscientization) was, in Europe, edited in Madrid, Spain, in 1972 and in Porto, Portugal, in 1977. As Gadotti also notes, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was the book most edited in Europe in that period: in Italy in 1971; in Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Holland in 1972; in France and Greece in 1974; in Spain in 1978; and in Germany in 1979. Gadotti further refers to the existence of translations for this book in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, and Flemish.3 The interest aroused, and Freire’s intervention in the old continent, are also made evident by the multiplicity of texts published, by him and about him, in  journals, in recorded—and later published—interviews and conferences, in ­several countries and in different European languages. Many of those texts were published in France, Italy, and Switzerland, but also—although in smaller number—in Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Belgium. If we consider the number of publications and the many editions of this type of works in different European countries, for example, in Gadotti’s biobibliography (1996)—even if only referring to texts published in this continent—, as well as the number of European countries in which those publications took place, it will be possible to have an idea of the acceptance and of the enthusiasm with which Freire’s work was welcomed in 1970s Europe. To give a later example, in the first edition of Pedagogy of Hope in 1992, Freire himself reports to us about the interest aroused and about analysis and debates that were initiated in Europe in respect to Pedagogy of the Oppressed in a ­convulsing Europe, a place to debate ideas, which questioned itself over social, cultural, and political problems:

Freire Working in and from Europe

Those were, with a number of implications and outspreads, some of the historical, social, cultural, political and ideological plots concerned, on the one hand, with the curiosity aroused by the book, and on the other with the readings also made out of it, of its acceptance. Of its refusal. Of criticisms over it. (Freire, 2000, p. 121)

Freire and Europe/Europe and Freire As we know, as he headed for his long exile Freire first worked in Chile. He presented conferences in several universities in the United States, with a passage through Harvard, until he finally reached Europe, where—as already ­mentioned—he was welcomed (having chosen it himself ) in Switzerland by the WCC. He elected Switzerland to live, working—based in that country—during the entire 1970s in several European and African countries. A text of Andreola and Bueno Ribeiro (2005) registers a small excerpt in which Freire underlines the importance of being able to teach/intervene in any context: I would rather come to the Council, because for me being a teacher is not a problem. I am a teacher in a corner of a street. I do not need a university context to be an educator. It is not the title that the university will give me what interests me, but the possibility to work. And by that time I knew that the Council was prepared to give me the margin the university was not. I was afraid, while leaving Latin America, to lose touch with the real and that I would start frequenting libraries and operating over books, that that would not satisfy me and would lead me to complete alienation. (p. 110) Further in the same text the authors claim that “WCC made possible for him to actually be a teacher in every corners of this world” (p. 111). His exile started out, therefore, with a long peregrination until he reached the WCC, where he felt at ease and with the necessary freedom to develop all of his multiple tasks. No one ever asked me in the World Council, in ten years’ time, if I was either this or that from a religious perspective. … Maybe I had never been so free, while a worker, as I was there. (Freire & Guimarães, 2000, pp. 104–105) To summarize, we can say that Freire, the politician, the scientist, the writer, the poet, and the militant was, in 1970s Europe, the right man in the right place. Considering all that has been said about Freire’s work quality, diversity, and intensity and mostly the enthusiasm that his work aroused throughout Europe, we can concede that this excellent relation with the context in which he worked— the 1970s—stemmed from two factors: on the one hand, from the atmosphere experienced in Europe then; from the cultural effervescence that was present in different fields; from the permanent philosophical, political, and critical analysis

145

146

Luiza Cortesão

of social issues; from the debates taking place and from students’ and workers’ claims who struggled for a more dignified life and the right to better citizenship conditions (for all, and not just for a few). It was, therefore, a complete context where the type of contribution from his work, as Vygotsky would say, was at an ideal “proximal distance” for it to be enthusiastically understood and welcomed. It was a contribution intending to produce propelling effects in some social interventions for which he was fighting or had already fought. On the other hand, this was also an atmosphere in which Freire could feel “at home,” feel creative, and be a researcher‐actor‐intermediary, for it was a context where utopia was walking free, in which the struggle for a better world was shared by many in cultural, educational, and scientific contexts—the latter, at the time, very attentive to social issues.

Notes 1 It was noted, posteriorly, that General Castelo Branco was implicated in the

coup d’état that took place right after, in 1964.

2 We cannot keep from mentioning the important part in the resistance to the

Portuguese dictatorship of authors/singers such as Zeca Afonso, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, Sérgio Godinho, and Zé Mário Branco. 3 Just in the 1996 book, Gadotti identified 27 editions published worldwide in several languages.

References Andreola, B. (2000). Carta‐prefácio a Paulo Freire. In P. Freire (Ed.), Pedagogia da indignação: Cartas pedagógicas e outros escritos (pp. 15–25). São Paulo: Editora UNESP. Andreola, B., & Ribeiro, M. B. (2005). Paulo Freire no Conselho Mundial das Igrejas em Genebra. Estudos Teológicos, 45(2), 107–116. Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective. New York: Anchor Books. Cohen, D. (1988). Radical heroes: Gramschi, Freire and the politics of adult education. New York & London: Garland Publishing. Conseil Ecuménique des Eglises. (n.d.). Impressions de Paulo Freire sur son voyage en Afrique [Report]. Geneva: Bureau de l’Education, Conseil Ecuménique des Eglises. Devereux, G. (1980). De l’angoisse à la méthode, dans les sciences du comportement. Paris: Flamarion. Freire, P. (1967). Educação como prática de liberdade (5th ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, Paulo. (1978a). Carta aos animadores e às animadoras culturais. Ministério da Educação e Desportos de São Tomé e Príncipe. Retrieved from http://acervo.paulofreire.org:8080/xmlui/handle/7891/1160 Freire, P. (1978b). Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau. Registros de uma experiência em processo. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.

Freire Working in and from Europe

Freire, P. (1981 [1970]). Pedagogia do oprimido (10th ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogia da esperança: Um reencontro com a Pedagogia do Oprimido (7th ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., & Guimarães, S. (2000). Aprendendo com a própria história II. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1990). Alfabetização: Leitura do mundo, leitura da palavra. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Gadotti, M. (2013). Alfabetizar e politizar: Angicos, 50 anos depois. Revista de Informação do Semiárido – RISA, 1(1), 47–67. Gadotti, M. (Ed.) (1996). Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia. São Paulo: Cortez e IPFP Brasília: UNESCO. Gos, J.‐P. (2014). On ze route (de nouveau). Paris: Société des Écrivains. Jardilino, J. R. (2008). Paulo Freire, filósofo e cientista social: Singularidade e universalidade do seu pensamento. Revista Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana, 10, 41–56. Karabel, J., & Halsey, A. H. (Eds.) (1979). Power and ideology in education. New York: Oxford University Press. Kosik, K. (1995). Dialética do concreto (6th ed.). São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Lyra, C. (1996). As quarenta horas de Angicos: Uma experiência pioneira de educação. São Paulo: Cortez. Mayo, P. (2004a). Gramsci, Freire e a educação de adultos: Possibilidades para uma ação transformadora. Porto Alegre: Artmed Editora. Mayo, P. (2004b). Liberating praxis: Paulo Freire’s legacy for radical education and politics. London: Praeger. Mayo, P. (2013). The Gramscian influence. In R. Lake, & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 53–64). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Mayo, P. (2018). Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire. Revista Internacional de Educação de Jovens e Adultos, 1(1), 147–156. Morrow, R. (2013). Rethinking Freire’s “Oppressed”: A “Southern” route to Habermas’s communicative turn and theory of deliberate democracy. In R. Lake, & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 65–87). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (1998). Jürgen Habermas, Paulo Freire e a pedagogia crítica: Novas orientações para a educação comparada. Educação, Sociedade & Culturas, 10, 123–155. Ricoeur, P. (1978). O Conflito das interpretações: Ensaios de hermenêutica. Rio de Janeiro: Imago. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Tournier, Maurice. (2007). Les mots de Mai 68. Toulouse: Presses Universitaire du Miraile.

147

149

8 Freire and Africa A Focus and Impact on Education N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

Introduction Any contribution to the significance and influence of such a leading scholar‐ activist as Paulo Freire, with unique undertaking and universal appeal in the actualization of the transformative potential of theory, is both daunting and enlightening. Daunting in the sense that many have written about the scholar and offered a critique of his seminal ideas, with the ever‐present possibility that one additional contribution might misrepresent and or misconstrue the scholar’s major contributions to education; enlightening in the sense that his work might be, once again, relevant to particular present‐day contexts. We also acknowledge two possibilities that can influence works about historical influencers, namely, the tendency to perpetuate a myth around such figures and the tendency to fall into the self‐made biographical narrative that fails to acknowledge those who have influenced our icons. Consequently, in this work, we would like to highlight Juan Luis Segundo and Amílcar Cabral, as influencers of Freire, whose ideas greatly shaped what we know as Freire’s philosophical activist contribution and contribution in Africa. This aspect of the narrative is often a missing piece in the literature when Freire is portrayed as the initiator of this radical philosophy that has become a major source of critical participatory pedagogy. Indeed, Freire’s originality of thought and immense contribution must be acknowledged while at the same time recognizing influencers outside the borders of modernity‐centered scholars attributed with such credit. Ultimately, in this chapter we hope that our contribution will further highlight some of Freire’s important educational ideas and their implications for pedagogy and argue that specificities of the significance of the integration of his ­transformative pedagogy into institutional and national policies and practices in different African countries would require empirical studies beyond anecdotal accounts. Most of what we articulate herein is independent of specific country or geopolitical cases yet relevant to the continent in the context of its independence movements and postindependence contexts. Consequently, we highlight only The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

150

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

general thoughts about how Freire’s contribution interacts with, or manifests in, such contexts. Anecdotally, one of us asserts that in all his years of education in Mozambique, he never heard of Paulo Freire or his goal of conscientização (“awareness” also referred to herein in its English form, “conscientization”) and that he became familiar with Freire only during graduate school in the United States. Considering this experiential case part of our question, thus, became: Was Mozambique’s literacy campaign—of which he has vivid memories of ­participating in through community school during evenings and day classes— influenced by other forces such as the Cuban literacy campaigns or Freire or both? In the absence of a clear‐cut answer based on empirical studies, therefore, it seemed safer not to draw any definitive conclusion on Freire’s actual influence in Mozambique. This same caution might serve our arguments about other countries in Africa, even when mentioned in the literature as places that Freire interacted with and to which he contributed. On the whole, although acknowledging that literature about Freire in Africa constitutes an important voice that provides a hint about his influence on education in Africa, we are also aware of the importance of acknowledging epistemologies and local knowledges present in such spaces. Shortcomings in this area contribute, perhaps unconsciously, to colonial and neocolonial reference to African language groups as “tribal” and “creole” (Budge, 2015, p. 5). On the whole, in this chapter, we advance with caution when making claims of Freire’s contributions and in regard to choice of language about Africa and aspects pertinent to the continent and its people. As Africans and co-contributors of this chapter, we hope to bring to our analyses our own critical dispositions and understandings of some of the seminal ideas of Paulo Freire, whose transformative and emancipatory educational contributions have influenced our own scholarship. In other words, our work often resonates with Freirean thought and practice, intertwined with an eagerness to pursue critical educational ­discourses and praxis in and about African education. As an educator and a social justice advocate, Paulo Freire was able, in his ­lifetime to defy the existing education systems and curricula as well as suggest and implement changes and recommendations. Stemming from his personal experiences growing up in Brazil—a former Portuguese colony with a shared common history of colonization with African countries classified as Lusophone Africa—and the challenges he faced as an impoverished hungry young man failing to master his lessons, Freire questioned not only his poverty but the very system of education of his time. Freire is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated scholars whose pedagogy has influenced the world of educators worldwide. Perhaps it is safe to say that courses on foundations of education, philosophy of education, education theory, and pedagogy that do not incorporate aspects of Freire’s thoughts and practice are virtually incomplete. It might also be safe to say that, what Dewey is for American education, Freire is for global education. Freire seemed to understand the educational problem as a human problem, a perspective influenced by liberation ­theology and the hermeneutical circle advanced by theologians such as Juan Luis  Segundo and Gustavo Gutierrez. It is, thus, imperative to understand Freire  within this backdrop of liberation theology’s call for praxis and the

Freire and Africa

­ ermeneutical circle’s active interpretation of scripture in light of human reality. h Like Segundo in relation to theological dogma, Freire saw irrelevance in the dogmatic nature of education and sought to develop a new methodology to interpret and apply text, rather than dismissing the content of text per se. For both liberation theology and Freirean pedagogy, justice and liberation were ultimate ends of their methodologies. Therefore, those who adopted these methodologies saw their roles as a calling toward responsibility to humanity—note that our conceptualization of calling lies on an understanding that wherever one’s heart, mind, and volition intercept with the needs of others, lays a major source of meaning, that is, one’s calling. We argue that Freire’s work with the World Council of Churches in Geneva was a favorable platform to enhance his calling, consolidate his methodology, and test and spread his pedagogical practice (Freire, 2014). The context of liberation struggles in Lusophone Africa was conducive to the experimentation of his methodology and seemed to have propelled Freire to asking deeper questions about his positioning and those of others who had a responsibility to educate and to lead educational projects, especially in reference to the oppressed or formerly oppressed. The buzzword reconstruction, in the so‐called developing and postcolonial countries, enhanced this conduciveness as it presupposed that such countries (of the oppressed) were once full‐fledged civilizations arrested by colonialism. Freire (2014) recognized the inherent historical wisdom of the people of Guinea‐Bissau when describing the conditions that he anticipated encountering: We knew that we were going to work not with “cold” and “objective” intellectuals or “neutral” specialists, but with militants engaged in the serious effort to reconstruct their country. By reconstruction, I mean, because Guiné‐Bissau did not start from zero, but from its cultural and historical sources, from something that is theirs, from their people’s very soul, which the colonialists’ violence was unable to kill. From zero she starts in relation to the material conditions in which the invaders left her, once politically and militarily defeated, in an impossible war, they had to abandon her definitively after the April 25th, with a legacy of problems and neglect, which speaks well of the colonizers’ “civilization efforts.” (p. 2) This recognition, of finding a culture that once thrived and a team of Guinean militants committed to restoring a country and culture once subjugated, constitutes evidence that Guinea‐Bissau was as much a terrain for Freire’s learning as it was for his experimentation and contribution. What might be understated in narratives about Freire is his own recognition and praise of the role and influence that Amílcar Cabral had on him and from whom he understood that the war in Guinea‐Bissau was a “cultural fact and a factor of culture” that birthed a level of political consciousness lacking in many “lettered” societies. Along with the interaction with Cabral’s thought and influence, the influence of Segundo’s hermeneutical circle seems evident in Freire’s wrestling with his role in Guinea‐Bissau and the concept of help. For instance, he posits that, “it is not too much to insist that authentic help is a practice in which those who are involved help one another, mutually, growing together in a common effort to know the reality they seek to

151

152

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

transform” (Freire, 2014, p. 3). Cabral (1996) had already wrestled with this issue of understanding reality and context, as evident in his speech pertaining to the weapon of theory, which he framed in the following argument: The ideological deficiency, not to say the total lack of ideology, within the national liberation movements—which is basically due to ignorance of the historical reality which these movements claim to transform—constitutes one of the greatest weakness of our struggle against imperialism, if not the greatest weakness of all. (p. 3) Knowing the reality, one seeks to transform is a fundamental step in Segundo’s hermeneutical circle, which calls for comprender la realidad (to understand reality) as the important first step toward praxis. Segundo described the hermeneutical circle as, “the continuing change in our interpretation of the Bible which is dictated by the continuing changes in our present‐day reality, both individual and societal” and that “each new reality obliges to interpret the word of God afresh, to change reality accordingly, and then to go back and reinterpret the word of God again, and so on” (Segundo, 1976, p. 8); thus, the understanding of reality is foundational to this method and process. For Freire, this comprender la realidad manifests itself in the form of conscientização of the reality in which one exists and operates. This preeminence of comprender la realidade informed his approach to the task in Guinea‐Bissau as reflected in the following statement (Freire, 2014): Our collaboration to design the project and to implement it would depend on our ability to know better the national reality, reinforcing what we already knew about the struggle for liberation, the experiments performed by the PAIGC in the old liberated areas, through the reading of all the material we could collect, privileging the work of Amílcar Cabral. (p. 4) Confronting the realities in African countries with their neocolonial/­ neoapartheid contradictions and reproductions of structural inequalities facilitated in part by the education systems, in many ways, our work has a stealth assimilatory dimension to it whereby we often have made arguments in defense of deliberative inquiry and transformative action without tangibly revealing our allegiance to Freirean thought and practice. In other words, we all have had different encounters with Freire’s work. However, what propelled us to accept, enthusiastically, with gratitude the invitation by the editor Professor Carlos Alberto Torres to write on Freire is our sincere and humble determination to enact pedagogical practices along the lines of deliberative inquiry. Like Freire, we acknowledge that there is more to learn when one listens, than when one wants only to talk, culminating in a humanizing educational experience such that the learning space is organized around collective and mutually enriching goals. Indeed, we are scholars who endeavor to listen and, when necessary, to talk with others in a similar way we draw also on seminal views of Freire in this chapter to articulate our reconsidered understandings of his timely interaction with, and potentially phenomenal contributions to, education in Africa. We now turn to a discussion of the relevance of his educational work to African education, more specifically universities.

Freire and Africa

The Works of Paulo Freire: Relevance to African Education In the chapter titled “From the Pedagogy of the Oppressed to A Luta Continua: The Political Pedagogy of Paulo Freire” in the book Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter coedited by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, Carlos Alberto Torres stated that “the works of Paulo Freire have been influential in pedagogical practice in Latin America as well as in Africa” (Torres, 1993, p. 119). Throughout the paper and particularly in the section on “the African Background” Torres (1993, p. 128) recalled that Freire was first introduced to Africa through the Tanzanian experience. Indeed, with the “Arusha Declaration” of African socialism and its philosophy, practice of education elaborated in Education for Self‐Reliance, and language policy, Ki‐Swahili became the medium of instruction in the formal school system and for the adult literacy campaign. Generally, Freire left an indelible mark on the African continent, directly or indirectly. His philosophy revolutionized scholars and thinkers and resonated with intellectuals in African countries that acquired their nominal independence prior to the works gaining worldwide recognition, and reaffirmed those who had become aware of the continued “oppression” of the poor even after dislodging colonial rule. Godonoo (1998) summarizes Freire’s contributions to the African continent by stating the following: Freire’s work has resonated with millions of Africans who have become disillusioned with failed regimes across the continent. Thus, many Africans who have read and listened to Freire have become willing risk‐ takers for the sake of social Justice, building social movements and organizations that seek to challenge the various regimes. The pro‐democracy movements on the African continent strive for justice and the delivery of a “humanizing environment” for all citizens, inspired by the work of Paulo Freire. (p. 36) Freire’s image as a transformative intellectual serving the interests of moral, social, and political liberation of educational institutions all around the world, including Africa, began in the 1940s and continued unabated into the 2000s— beyond his death in 1997. He was imprisoned by the military in 1964 for 70 days as a result of implementing his literacy program and was expelled from Brazil for 16 years. Ironically, despite the adversity faced in his native land, he grew in influence around the world and, eventually, also in Brazil. His most laudable and inspirational work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1970, is considered one of the most revered texts ever produced in educational discourses over the last 5 decades. His experience of overcoming adversity and becoming a celebrated scholar and a model for transformative education all over the world constituted a ground for his commitment to justice and testament of the significance of his contribution. His appointment as a consultant to the Office of Education of the World Council of Churches propelled him to develop literacy programs for Tanzania, Guinea‐Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique and facilitated the dissemination and influence of his scholarly work in Africa. His ideology, philosophy,

153

154

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

and political outlook were focused on changing the status quo of an omnipotent elite with absolute power over the existence of those whom they could control and whose lives, thinking, and future they could control through education or through deliberate “miseducation” (Woodson, 2000). His awareness of the mindset of the oppressed and the student in a controlled learning space prompted an inquisition into the programming of their consciousness. Freire held the conviction that education could not be practically separated from the reality of the learners; hence the need to incorporate the lived daily experiences of the learners. Education needed to be holistic and to include the daily experiences of the learners. The idea of the “school in the country” meant that people would not have to be uprooted from their residences and everyday routines in order to attain an education, nor would they need to overlook their experiences and contributions to their education. By far, his notable influence pertinent to Africa is his thesis on conscientized communicative action. Through conscientization, Freire contributed to the advancement of a thesis of communication that required people to listen attentively to one another in order to liberate the mind from oppression and inhumaneness. Simply put, it is not merely sufficient to speak one’s mind but rather one needs to listen to others in order to effect change. In this reflective action approach, Freire advocated for a critical and liberatory role in the cultivation of an emancipatory humanity. A common theme that runs through his work is the advancement of human freedom and critical consciousness. In his words, “Only beings who can reflect upon the fact that they are determined are capable of ­freeing themselves” (Freire, 1998, pp. 68–69). Of significance to this contribution is Freire’s well‐documented objection to what became known as the banking approach to education. According to Freire, many university students, teachers, and those at the lower levels of the education system follow a system of teaching through narration whereby students are trained to memorize voluminous texts and are then subsequently expected to regurgitate such texts. Education through banking discourages students from critically engaging with the text and communicating their understandings through reasonable and intersubjective articulations (Freire, 1993, p. 53); thus, at the onset, banking education was very problematic for transformative teachers who envisaged that students learn through communicative engagement. If  depositing information were the only form of learning, then learning alone would be visibly defective because learning, by its very essence, implies that one engages with meanings and then endeavors to construct, reconstruct, and even deconstruct such meanings. This means that learning would be made redundant if enacted upon in a banking way. The problem with such a form of learning is that it does not allow for meaning‐making, yet constructing meaning can never just be about that which enters the mind. Humans, who learn, do so communicatively; that is, they engage with texts and other humans and then proffer justifications for the meanings they have constructed and reconstructed in the broader context. Our understanding of Freirean educational thought is that he wanted people to comprehend the material and then critique the learning process and not just to accept everything they were told or coerced to internalize. Although banking education is not the focus of this chapter, we evoke it here to enhance

Freire and Africa

the contextual and philosophical framework that aids in examining Freire’s work in the context of postcolonial education in Africa. This brings us to an examination of Freire’s main educational thoughts and how they offered African ­educators a way to transcend their educational malaises.

Dialogical Praxis, Hope, and Transformation On examining constitutive aspects of Freirean epistemology, one cannot overstate the impact the notions of dialogical praxis, hope, and transformation have on both the psyche and pedagogical actions of educationists in the formal teaching and learning spaces as well as nonformal educational experiences. For purposes of this contribution, we examine the aforementioned concepts in relation to educational processes, with illustrations from university teaching and learning—more specifically, pedagogy as well as mass literacy programs. By way of prefacing this section, suffice it for us to say that Paulo Freire as a humanist was mostly interested in human actions such as thinking, rethinking, and doing in relation to transformative activities that involve human beings. For him thinking and rethinking can be couched under the practice of reflection— that is, a human activity that can lead to transformation of the world (Freire, 1993, p. 125). First, for Freire, transforming events in the world cannot happen independently without reflective action. Freire was attracted to the notion of action‐ reflection that invokes (re)thinking of situations in the material world with the aim to transform them. According to Freire, humans do not embark only on action‐reflection when they envisage that they can transform events in the world. They do so dialogically in relation to one another so that their thoughts and actions toward transformation become praxiological—a matter of doings things in association with change. Freire quite explicitly refers to a dialogical praxis as a pedagogical way to transform the world, more specifically pedagogy in universities (Freire, 1984, p. 436). Dialogical praxis by Freire came to be associated with transformative action in many African educational processes, because the practice allowed space for teachers and students to engage critically with one another and to re(construct) renewed insights that came to bear on their multiple subjectivities, traditions, and cultures. Quite significantly, in this context, dialogical praxis offered teachers and students the pedagogical space to pursue new transformative possibilities for human living. When students and teachers embark on a dialogical praxis, they not only perceive their roles as being critical and reflexive, but also as colearners or coconstructors of knowledge they stimulate one another to take political action of a liberatory kind Freire (1985). Taking political action has some connection with learning because it juxtaposes contestation and controversy. No wonder Freire considered pedagogical spaces as sites informed by “political clarity” and the desire to learn with a “constant and open curiosity” (Freire, 2004, p. 15). In a way, Freirean dialogical praxis is constituted through a readiness of teachers and students to engage with one another in an atmosphere of coinventiveness and an openness to seeing things with a possibility toward political empowerment.

155

156

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

Second, Freire (1984, p. 27) raises the poignant issue that being critical, open, and reflexive about our thoughts, practices, and social interrelations implies a deep interconnectedness with what it means to be conscientized. Conscientization, as Freire contends, demands that humans need to develop inquiring minds, be open minded and curious about things and have an acknowledgement that there remains more to learn as one’s understanding of society and its concomitant problems is deepened. Profoundly conscientized humans are intent on drawing on their vast knowledge and experience to appreciate otherness and a consideration that human beings are still unfinished products as they endeavor to transform their lives in relation to what is yet to come. In other words, humans’ willingness to take things into critical scrutiny happens in conjunction with their consciousness to see things as they could be otherwise. Humans, in a Freirean manner, are not just encouraged to look at the face value of things and events in the world. Rather, they are compelled to confront the unexpected or the improbable. In other words, having hope implies that one is not always certain about things and consequently having hope is tantamount to having an inclination toward the unexpected. Alternately, we do not entirely share McLaren’s sentiment that Freire’s work is not poststructuralist (McLaren, 1994). On the contrary, having inclinations toward the unrealized and what is still in the making corroborate the fact that Freire’s work is novel, underscored by a tendency toward poststructuralism. Third, Freire (2004) is a serious proponent of the democratic educational ­project. When humans, he avers, commit themselves to the democratization of education, they not only enhance the transformation of their societies but also offer much hope to the humanization of the world. As he aptly remarked, Here is one of the tasks of democratic popular education, of a pedagogy of hope; that of enabling the popular classes to develop their language—not the sectarian, authoritarian, gobbledygook of educators but their own ­language, emerging from and returning to their reality, sketches out the conjectures, design anticipations of their new world. (p. 81) What Freire proposes is a language of possibility whereby people make sense of themselves, but also one where people listen to one another with the hope of inclusivity by incorporating previously powerless people into the world, able to assume their responsibilities as full human beings with a voice to speak. When humans become empowered to speak their minds without fear and assume their worth in the world, they will less likely be oppressed, marginalized, and destined to function on the periphery of society, for they will be equipped with the tools of deliberative engagement and concern for the other. Freire (1998, p. 93) argues for making a language of possibility (and hope), a much‐yearned virtue for sociopolitical aspiration. In this way, following Freire’s footsteps, humans need to assume a language of possibility that would bring them in contact with others so that they (humans) can collectively coconstruct and alter political events in the world. Moreover, a humanized form of political change is created when humans embark upon the act of reshaping political events in the world and are entrenched, deeply, in cultivating a democratic project of doing things in association.

Freire and Africa

Formal colonization, in essence, was designed to dehumanize and marginalize the colonized. African countries were still engaged in the process of reconquering their humanity when Freire produced his education theories and practices. Speaking of the literal meaning of language, in the Brazilian context and Freire’s experience as it was conceived in Angicos, originally, there was a common language, which was different from the African contexts where colonial languages were languages of instruction in the education systems. This was a major point of departure between Freire and Cabral, as Freire looked favorably at local languages whereas Cabral looked favorably at Portuguese as a unifying language (Gadotti, 2012). Hence, the additional challenge in Africa for the need for Decolonising the Mind as articulated by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1998). In the language factor, Tanzania with the use of Ki‐Swahili as a medium of instruction for formal and nonformal education presented a situation closer to that of Brazil and so Nyerere’s policy of education for self‐reliance matched that of Freire. In sum, we have argued that, broadly speaking, the influence of Freirean thought and practice on African education predominantly revolve around three aspects: dialogical praxis, conscientization, and democratization/humanization. We shall now show with reference to educational processes on the African continent, how the aforementioned notions of Freireanism have manifested.

Manifestations of Freireanism Through/in Educational Processes in Africa Although many independence movements of the 1970s favored Freire’s ­pronouncements, it is not evident if the new leaders followed through in implementing substantive change to the condition of the formerly oppressed African peoples. However, what is important at this moment is the fact that although his philosophy might have inspired African independence movements, the notion of re‐Africanizing the continent inspired him, thus proving true to his “­dialogical” approach in bringing about change. Although there is more focus on his involvement in Guinea‐Bissau, Freire’s reach was felt in other parts of Africa (Nyirenda, 1996, p. 3). It would seem that the novelty of Freire’s ideologies regarding education would be embraced in many African countries but it did not as there was more excitement and advocacy to change the colonial education systems. The process was more uphill than the new governments had hoped for, because the new leaders bore the precepts of their former colonial leaders. Budge (2015) argues that, to date, there still exists in African education systems and curricula, the very methods of teaching that Paulo Freire painstakingly pointed out but could not advance the African cause. Budge states that, “However banking education across Africa is not just a relic of colonialism. After the wave of independence in the 1960s and ’70s, this approach to education seems to have become further entrenched” (Budge, 2015 , p. 3). Budge (2015, p. 4) shows concern over the extended use of the banking method of education in postcolonial African countries and draws from Okigbo (1996) and Nyirenda (1996) to show that the new African governments had not figured

157

158

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

out ways to incorporate Freire’s suggestions for the transformation of their education systems, and by extension, for the full emancipation of the citizens. Jackson and Rosberg (1984), cited by Budge, demonstrate the disservice of the banking method of education and how by employing it, new governments alienate the masses and promote classism, which echoes the pronouncements made by Freire. Budge (2015) notes that the colonial systems have not been easy to dislodge, adding that the new leadership may be unwilling to share their newfound power. Freire advanced the notion that the oppressed must fight for their freedom. In like manner, Budge suggests that those people who feel disempowered in the current postcolonial regimes should fight for their share of the cake, so to speak. Nyirenda (1996) also points to the fact that decades after the advocacy of Freire, his vision and views can still be the relevant answer to the challenges of present day Africa: Hence, it can be argued that to that extent Freire’s educational ideas have relevance in the context of present day Africa whose societies are changing rapidly towards democratic practices. These societies are currently still commanded by elites, be they military or bourgeois politicians, and the ordinary citizens have become mere objects or things without being aware of it. The key concept is that of conscientization which consists of a liberating process on the part of the dominated conscience to get rid of the influence exercised by the dominating consciousness. The role of education should be seen from the viewpoint of the masses in the construction of a democratic society or an open society. Such a society cannot be constructed by elites in Africa since they are incapable of providing the bases for political and social reforms. This society can only be the result of the struggle of the masses who are the only ones who can make such change. (p. 14) Budge concludes by stating that “it is important to note that this ‘demand‐driven’ approach is a not a panacea, nor its absence the only contributing cause of the lack of citizen involvement or meaningful change in African societies” (Budge, 2015 , p. 9). Because Africa had been besieged by colonial rule, Freire saw the importance of delivering the message of liberation that had meaning and would be long lasting. Freire’s philosophy had the burning desire to rehumanize people and free them from all forms of social exploitation. His drive was for the oppressed and learners alike to extricate themselves from “capitalist, political, and economic manipulation” by authoritarian regimes. Education for Freire was viewed as a tool of liberation, consciousness, as well as a path toward rediscovering and reaffirming the dignity of the self as a collective being. In the first place, as has been referenced earlier, Freire’s work is associated with critical pedagogy. McLaren (1994) posits the following about critical pedagogy: Critical pedagogy argues that pedagogical sites, whether they are universities, public schools, museums, art galleries, or other spaces, must have a vision that is not content with adapting individuals to a world of

Freire and Africa

­ ppressive social relations but is dedicated to transforming the very cono ditions that promote such conditions … It means creating new forms of sociality, new idioms of transgression, and new instances of popular mobilization that can connect the institutional memory of the academy to the tendential forces of historical struggle and the dreams of liberation that one day might be possible to guide them. (p. xxxii) And, following such a Freirean notion of critical pedagogy, many previously colonized universities on the African continent such as in Tanzania, Guinea‐ Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and South Africa adopted Freire’s praxis of critical pedagogy that “speaks to a new way of being and becoming human” (McLaren, 1994, p. xv). One of us remembers his years as an undergraduate student at the University of the Western Cape in the late 1970s and 1980s in South Africa where Freire’s work has been judged as highly transformative and gregarious by “organic intellectuals”—those university scholars who situated Freire’s work within the liberation struggle against apartheid and in their pedagogical struggles in university classrooms and seminar halls as well. Of course, for the apartheid state such an acknowledgement of, and allegiance to, liberatory education, was considered as politically inflammatory and subversive at the time and often the cause of insurgency. Nevertheless, we recognized and affirmed our loyalty to Freirean liberatory education as African universities, and their scholars especially from the 1980s onwards began to refocus toward cultivating a renewed form of human freedom and political emancipation. For us, Freire’s work on critical pedagogy constitutes “a quest for the historical self‐realization of the oppressed by the oppressed themselves through the formation of collective agents of insurgency” (McLaren, 1994, p. xv). Although Freire’s critical pedagogical work is not primarily concerned with the politics of race, African (black) insurgent intellectuals at universities, like us, found his work highly critical and humanistic and, a means to advocate our academic legitimacy and situatedness in the hierarchy of scholarship. Secondly, against the backdrop of Africa’s postcolonialism from the 1970s onwards, Freire’s work also resonated with the struggle for the democratization of education on the continent, in particular at many of Africa’s universities. Central to a Freirean democratic education project is the notion of cultivating an autonomous intellectual. Moreover, in terms of a democratic education agenda, in order to flourish, people have to learn to think for themselves and, express themselves more independently against the oppressions they are steeped in them. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (2004, p. 45) attributes the climate of repression prevalent on some African campuses to a lack of educational self‐ determination and institutional autonomy. For him, some African universities, because of colonial and postcolonial despotisms, had suffered the wrath of an erosion of academic autonomy, manifested in the banning of disciplines such as political science and sociology in Rwanda and Senegal and law in Mozambique in the 1970s (p. 47). Similarly, Freirean scholarship was censored at transformative universities in South Africa. Just being in possession of a copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a student at that time would have most definitely resulted in political ­incarceration and torture by the apartheid police. University students fighting

159

160

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

for liberation during the apartheid or colonized years, were already a stigmatized people—students and teachers were viewed as potential liberators and political insurrectionaries intent on disrupting technicist education. Such repressive and undemocratic moments in the history of (South) African universities are reminiscent of the political attack some authoritarian African states waged against universities that resulted in disastrous “brain drain” from some universities to other institutions abroad. It is with such a politically naïve onslaught against universities in Africa that Freire’s democratic education provided hope for reaccentuating the significance of intellectual autonomy on the continent. The political and academic turnaround at several universities on the African continent during the 1990s and 2000s can be attributed to the fact that democratic engagement as advocated by Freire became associated with the realities, theories, and practices of several African universities (Zeleza, 2004, p. 60). What is quite remarkable was the reemergence of intellectual and institutional autonomy in the mode Freire would have wanted higher educational institutions to transform. Third, Freire’s work cannot be articulated outside of the local, cultural, ethnic, and traditional understandings of what it means to be an African university, more specifically, what it means to be a university that cultivates humanity. Arguably, it was Freire who subtly reminded African universities to recognize the importance of accentuating their local understandings of things in the world. Of course, the idea of a rationalistic university that relies exclusively on reason and eloquence to advance its academic agenda does not seem feasible at all. Such an idea of an African university would be remiss of the many insights, voices, thoughts, and narratives associated with the diversity of Africa’s people. It is for this reason, as argued elsewhere, that an African university ought to articulate a combined narratival‐reasonable notion of education—that is, a form of higher education that does not dismiss justification but simultaneously draws on the narratives of people contributing to the knowledge traditions of such educational institutions (Waghid, 2014). At the core of the latter argument is the idea that African educational institutions in the Freirean sense, ought to remain attenuated to narratives and rationality on the grounds that any form of criticality— or critical consciousness Freire would assert—cannot be remiss of what N’Dri Assié‐Lumumba (2005) refers to as fusing the local with the global. For Assié‐Lumumba education in Africa fuses understandings of one’s culture with other diverse cultures, a fusion used to respond to problems on the African continent. As aforementioned, Freire believed that the new governments in Africa had colonial tendencies, of continuing the oppressive legacies of the former authorities. New leaders had/have inherent traits from the former repressive regimes. In this regard, they implemented the same systems that they had fought against; hence the resistance from Freirean protégés. Freire conscientized African intellectuals to know their own worth and power with his pedagogy (Thomas, 1996): The language of conscientization as well as its praxis has influenced a host of popular communications strategies in Africa, in apartheid‐ridden South Africa as well as in a number of other countries in Africa. Botswana and its tradition of community radio, popular theatre in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Zambia, Lesotho, Botswana and Zimbabwe. (p. 25)

Freire and Africa

Paulo Freire hoped for a transformation of the education systems, a shift from what and how education was delivered. Noting that education was used as a tool for political, social, and economic subjugation, Freire devised and proposed a model that would help free people from oppression. Freire believed that this would help the people to transcend their “wretchedness” and live dignified lives. Bhattacharya (2011, p. 90) attributes Freire’s urgency to his personal experiences in the Brazilian context of the need for democratic system making room for the voices of the masses. Tackling the socioeconomic elements of poverty does not bring to light nor address the political nature of perpetual poverty. The citizens continue to suffer injustice, lack of dedicated representation in the political arena, thus resulting in unremitting generational suffering. The interests of the poor remain unaddressed. In examining and leveling the political playing field, the Freirean approach holds a better alternative for the poor. Straubhaar (2014, p. 232) cites Tikly (2001, p. 166) showing that there was a movement to apply the Freirean precepts to education, illustrating the political eminence of education, especially for postcolonial states in Africa. As with Guinea‐Bissau, Freire was a proponent of a socialist government that would improve the lives of its citizens, cutting across the class divide. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire expresses some fundamental aspects about education, which he employed in his interactions with the postindependence leadership of Guinea‐Bissau. His influence in Guinea‐Bissau is recorded in his letters to the new leadership encouraging them and helping toward setting up an educational system that catered to the needs of the people and thus refused to participate as a superior authority with articulate plans for them. Thomas argues that “Freire has always maintained that his method is not a recipe, valid for all times and places but that it needs to be adapted, honed, and molded to the culture, modes of experience and expectations in any society” (Thomas, 1996, p. 68). In a review of Freire’s Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea Bissau, Ramirez (n.d.) reveals how the notion of education as a political act was particularly relevant as he engaged in Guinea‐Bissau. Freire aimed to be the teacher who was willing to learn from the learner because the learner is to be perceived as a full human capable drawing from person life experience to teach the teacher, rather than being perceived as a vessel in which to deposit the teacher’s ideologies. Freire argued that learners in such contexts had major life lessons to teach him, as they had just attained their independence, and that knowledge was crucial in paving the way forward in terms of implementing adult education. The arguments in the letters were built upon the conviction that the education system that was in place was not particularly relevant to the African experience and their needs. Ramirez posits the following: The main objective of the colonial educational system was the “de‐ Africanization” of the people. According to Freire, the colonial educational system was “discriminatory, mediocre, and based on verbalism” …. It was a school for the minority, as only few were given access to it. This exclusion created a sense of inferiority and inadequacy among the people. Everything that was taught in the schools came from the colonizers‐ their history, their culture, their language, and their geography. (para. 8)

161

162

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

If Freire had come with the same pedagogical paradigm of prescribing solutions to the situation in Guinea‐Bissau, he would not only have conformed to the colonial ideologies but also failed to empower the very society that he was called upon to assist. Without a doubt, there is a need to “re‐Africanize” Guinea‐Bissau through an adult education system charged with the authentic African experience, relevant for the development of the people to which it is directed, therefore giving back control to the people (Ramirez, n.d.). The culture of the people of Guinea‐Bissau needed to become visible in order for the system to be able to address their predicaments and strive for a better education system. What Freire advocated for in the case of Guinea‐Bissau was an overhaul of the existing education system, the restructuring of the system and reorientation of the educators so that their knowledge carried the identity of the Guinea‐Bissau that had been dismantled by the Portuguese Empire (Ramirez, n.d.). Ramirez observes that in line with the Freirean thought on education, the following held true for Guinea‐Bissau: Adult literacy education should provide the tools for a critical analysis of reality and promote processes in which the learners should also be educators. He warned against the bureaucratization of education and the creation of a “packaged” knowledge to be “consumed.” He continually referred to the link between education and production and the need for people to be conscious about the reality around them. How and what is learned must be consistent with the plan for a new society. In addition to raising these concerns, he mentioned that his letters were merely suggestions to be considered and not solutions being offered. (para. 18) To sum up, Freire’s investment in the Guinea‐Bissau process, Budge points out that the new postindependence leadership were zealous for the emancipation of the masses, a movement from what the Portuguese had established ­during colonialism in stating that, “The new regime in Guinea‐Bissau envisaged a radical, revolutionary approach to education and Freire was enlisted ‘as a collaborator’ to help them design a mass literacy programme” (Budge, 2015, p. 1). Paulo Freire’s pedagogy appealed to many countries and intellectuals in Africa, although some of his profound contributions were in Lusophone Africa. Budge (2015, p. 1) points out that “In the 1970s, Freire had contact with independence movements and governments across Africa. He was inspired by opportunities for re‐Africanization and how literacy could contribute to national production and construction.” Torres (1993) acknowledged, at least in the case of Guinea‐Bissau, citing in part the work of Linda Harasim (1983), ” that this method failed, not so much for the essence of the method, but rather because of its inadequacy for an African paradigm considering the lack of development of the “material conditions,” ­prevalence of internal contradictions related to the social structure that evolved from the colonial context (Torres, 1993, p. 133).

Freire and Africa

Conclusion In this chapter, we have provided some hallmarks of Freire’s intellectual contribution to human thought and practice at universities in Africa. We want to conclude by showing how the hallmarks of dialogical praxis, conscientization, and transformation guided principles of teaching and learning in the postcolonial African university with specific reference to, for instance, the recent student protestations in South Africa. Following Freire’s ideology, African universities changed from exclusively transmission‐based approaches that emphasized unidirectional knowledge transfer to that of deliberative engagement with thought and practice by both university teachers and students have been motivated to bring into question knowledge constructs and political understandings in and about society. The Freirean message that reverberated through some African university classrooms was to listen, think, respond, and then offer plausible political solutions to Africa’s sociopolitical and pedagogical dilemmas. No longer were (and are) African teachers and students prepared to be silenced into oblivion as if they have nothing or little to contribute toward their own intellectual and societal advancement. On the contrary, as Freire would have wanted, African universities to become volatile and disruptive sites of political and socioeconomic contestations. No wonder university closures during the 1990s and 2000s were imminent and several academics and students excommunicated on the grounds of their sociopolitically inspired pedagogical convictions. As a corollary of such a deliberate violation of humans’ right to speak their minds and to commit themselves to political change on the continent, diasporic educational aspirations ensued, often highlighting the need for African universities to resiliently pursue their intellectual roles to enable the public good. In other words, African universities no longer just focused their intellectual efforts on teaching and learning about the disciplines but also refocused their attention toward the humanization of society. Henceforth, African universities became enabling institutions of higher pedagogy focused toward actuating societal and political change. Education for liberation and education for empowerment became slogans of the contemporary African university. Nowadays, neo‐Freirean thought seems to be prevalent at many African universities. Most recently, student protestations against escalating tuition fees at South African universities, resulted in a call for “fees‐must‐fall” that targeted neoliberal managerialist dispositions toward the running of universities. The #fees‐must‐fall campaign is a constant reminder that a call for the demise of coloniality in African universities is real and that (South) African universities have not become complacent in the ongoing struggle for human freedom and emancipation. Freire would have been proud of students’ resistance against managerial governance of African universities but would have been equally perturbed by the violent student disruptions that have marred the democratic education project on the continent. Moreover, it would not be inappropriate to mention that inasmuch as Freirean liberation pedagogy has been concealed and propagated by many educationists at some African universities, it has also been opposed and dismissed by those

163

164

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

who consider studies on education, liberation, and social justice as unwarranted to pedagogy. In fact, there is sufficient evidence that, in the case of South Africa, for instance, many faculties/schools/departments of education, including the one where one of us currently works, have largely ignored Freire in course offerings, despite Freire having been considered as the most important educator for more than 50 years. Despite postcolonial and postapartheid claims of criticality, openness, diversity, cosmopolitanism, and democratic engagement at several African universities, these claims have not always manifested in critical debates in relation to Freire’s critical and liberatory pedagogy—as one would have expected. Instead, what has happened and become evident in higher education discourse, is a leaning toward the works of major Freirean thinkers, such as bell hooks, Henry Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz, Ramon Fletcha, Adriana Hernandez, Ron Glass, and Malak Zaalouk. Consequently, although some scholars might have been dismissive of Freire’s contribution, his seminal ideas are indeed recognized through the works of the latter scholars, confirming that critical education as espoused by Freire has not been distanced from this iconic luminary in education. We see this in faculties of education in Africa, which currently accentuate the importance of initiating prospective teachers into notions of ­ideology, ethics, criticality, humanization, reflection, and change. As Donaldo Macedo (Freire, 1998, p. xxxii) aptly reminds us in his foreword to Freire’s Pedagogy of Freedom: Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Freedom courageously us to break away from the rigidity of a technicist training approach to education in order to embrace those fundamental encounters that will prevent us from deceiving our conscience. In Pedagogy of Freedom, he brilliantly reminds us about the social order that according to Jean‐Paul Sartre, “sanctions misery, chronic hunger, ignorance, or, in general, subhumanity.” In essence, educators who refuse to transform the ugliness of human misery, social injustices, and inequalities, invariably become educators for domestication who as Sartre suggested, “will change nothing and will serve no one, but will succeed only in finding moral comfort in malaise.” In sum, the Freireanization of higher education on the African continent remains in potentiality as universities endeavor to contribute to the moral and political enlargement of African communities. It is not inconceivable to claim that African higher education has learned a lot from Freire and the three concepts of dialogical praxis, conscientization, and transformation will continue to manifest, as African universities struggle to contribute to the advancement of science, education, and humanity. Certainly, for African higher education, Freirean thought and practice, at least for now, would remain endemic to institutional and sociopolitical change. On the whole, possibilities for a Freirean effect on educational processes in most of Africa, in conjunction with local/endogenous perspectives, did not materialize significantly due to the economic crisis and subsequent structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in the 1980s, when education discourses and actions shifted to existential mode in reaction to the liberalization policies of the

Freire and Africa

Bretton Woods Institutions. For instance, in 1985, a so‐called “African Education Strategies” meeting was organized by the World Bank in Dijon (France) and led to its 1988 Education in Sub‐Saharan Africa publication and ensuing policies. It is worth mentioning that Mwalimu Nyerere himself resigned from the Tanzanian Presidency in 1985 when he refused, out of principle, to adopt and implement SAPs policies that have been in essence antithetical to a human‐centered and transformative vision of education. In conclusion, a systematic empirical research, beyond the scope of this chapter, is necessary to unravel the past and ongoing dynamics of the struggle to pursue a Freirean type of transformative pedagogy toward social progress in Africa.

References Assié‐Lumumba, N.’. D. T. (2005). African higher education: From compulsory juxtaposition to fusion by choice‐forging a new philosophy of education for social progress. In Y. Waghid, & B. van Wyk (Eds.), African(a) philosophy of education: Reconstructions and deconstructions (pp. 19–53). Stellenbosch: Department of Education Policy Studies, Stellenbosch University (DEPS). Bhattacharya, A. (2011). Paulo Freire. In Paulo Freire (pp. 85–172). Rotterdam/ Taipei/Boston: Sense Publishers. Budge, T. (2015). Freire’s legacy for communities seeking change in Sub‐Saharan Africa. In M. A. Peters, & T. Besley (Eds.), Paulo Freire: The global legacy (pp. 187–198). New York: Peter Lang. Cabral, Amilcar. (1996). The weapon of theory. Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Havana. Cossa, J. (2018). Addressing the challenge of coloniality in the promises of modernity and cosmopolitanism to higher education: De‐bordering, de‐ centering/de‐peripherizing, and de‐colonilizing. In E. J. Takyi‐Amoako, & N.’ D. T. Assié‐Lumumba (Eds.), Re‐visioning education in Africa (pp. 193–204). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Freire, P. (1984). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, P. (2004). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2014). Cartas à Guiné Bissau: Registros de uma experiência em processo. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Gadotti, M. (2012). Paulo Freire na Africa. In M. Gadotti, & J. E. Romão (Eds.), Paulo Freire e Amílcar Cabral: A descolonização das mentes. Série Unifreire: Vol. 3 (pp. 55–107). Sao Paulo: Editora e Livraria Instituto Paulo Freire. Godonoo, P. (1998). Tribute to Paulo Freire: His influence on scholars in Africa. Convergence, 31(1), 30. Harasim, Linda M. (1983). Literacy and national reconstruction in Guinea Bissau: A critique of the Freirean literacy campaign. PhD dissertation, University of Toronto.

165

166

N’Dri Thérèse Assié‐Lumumba, José Cossa, and Yusef Waghid

Jackson, R. H., & Rosberg, C. G. (1984). Personal rule: Theory and practice in Africa. Comparative Politics, 15(4), 421–442. McLaren, P. L. (1994). Foreword. Teacher empowerment and school reform. In M. Escobar, A. L. Fernandez, & G. Guevara‐Niebla (Eds.), Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico (pp. ix–xxxiii). New York: SUNY Press. Nyirenda, J. E. (1996). The relevance of Paulo Freire’s contributions to education and development in present day Africa. Africa Media Review, 10, 1–20. Okigbo, C. (1996). Contextualising Freire in African sustainable development. Africa Media Review, 10, 31–53. Ramirez, Veronica. (n.d.). Review of Freire, Paulo (1978). Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea Bissau. New York: Seabury Press. Reviews of Paulo Freire’s Books. Retrieved from http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_sc/freire/vr.html. Segundo, J. L. (1976). The liberation of theology (John Drury, Trans.). New York: Orbis Books. Straubhaar, R. (2014). The multiple influences on nonformal instructional practices in rural Mozambique: Exploring the limits of world culture theory. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 215–240. Thomas, P. N. (1996). Locating Freire in Africa today: Problems and possibilities. Africa Media Review, 10, 21–30. Tikly, L. (2001). Globalisation and education in the postcolonial world: Towards a conceptual framework. Comparative Education, 37, 51–71. Torres, C. A. (1993). From the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” to “A Luta Continua”: The political pedagogy of Paulo Freire. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 119–145). London; New York: Routledge. wa Thiong’o, N. (1998). Decolonising the mind. Diogenes, 46(184), 101–104. Waghid, Y. (2014). African philosophy of education reconsidered: On being human. London; New York: Routledge. Woodson, C. (2000). The mis‐education of the Negro. Chicago: African American Images. Zeleza, P. T. (2004). Neo‐liberalism and academic freedom. In P. T. Zeleza, & A. Olukoshi (Eds.), African universities in the twenty‐first century: Knowledge and society. Vol. 1: Liberalisation and Internationalisation (pp. 42–68). Dakar: CODESRIA.

167

9 Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia The Cases of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

Introduction This chapter introduces the applications and influences of Paulo Freire’s ideas and practices in three Asian countries: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. In the case of each country, Freire’s ideas are interpreted in unique ways and applied to different fields. The chapter concludes with brief illustrations that relate Freire’s ideas to social, cultural, and educational problems in diverse Asian contexts. Readers can use these examples of the practical application of Freire’s ideas in three countries (Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea) as comparative lenses to what Freire called “limit situations” in their own countries that might be adaptable to a local reinvention of Freirean pedagogy.

Paulo Freire in the Context of Asia Recent critical theories of education such as Marxism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism come from traditional Western epistemology. Historically, the West was a political and economic predator of non‐Western nations during periods of colonization. So the fact that it is attempting to “recolonize” Asian ideas and contexts by subsuming them in Western theoretical frameworks is, to say the least, disconcerting. What Freire called critical thinking about education is deeply rooted in the struggles of the people for land and sustenance in “Third World” countries and, especially, of the marginalized and oppressed people in “developed” countries. Third World populations have suffered at the hands of homegrown oppressors wielding their self‐serving interpretations of Western culture to ensure their generations of hegemonic control. Over the years, these experiences at the people’s expense were exported to developed countries as paradigms of Western skill and diplomacy and then reimported to the Third World as politically menacing theoretical frameworks.

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

168

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

Again, this study intends to demonstrate that Paulo Freire has been recreated appropriately in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. His struggles to provide literacy training to the hungry masses in Latin America as a tool for “reading the world” and increasing their self‐perception as “culture makers” provided inspiration in terms of how to change the world of our peasant populations. But sympathy with their difficult struggles will not solve our peculiarly Asian problems. Every community has peak moments of delight and sorrow within its particular context. This study hopes to trace how a certain community has recreated (or reinvented) Paulo Freire. Here, then, are three points that illustrate how Freirean praxis is related to social, cultural, and educational problems in an Asian context. First, many countries in Asia have been colonized politically and culturally for a long time. For instance, Korea was for 35 years a Japanese colony and Taiwan was colonized by Japan between 1895 and 1945. In addition, most countries in Asia suffered hardship and painful scars under colonial oppression. Colonization does not just change political institutions. Through the oppressive experience of colonization, the “natives” eventually lose their languages, religious beliefs, communal feasts, and social customs. Worst of all is the fact that these people participate in their gradual diminishment extremely reluctantly. They know very well that their social and cultural assimilation into the colonizers’ strategy is highly related to their willingness to sacrifice (or maintain) a semblance of their traditional cultural identity. In cases where indigenous cultures have been systematically distorted by their rulers’ oppression, it is nearly impossible to revive the original spirit of these cultures. Freirean pedagogy is about promoting people’s cultures and languages, thereby providing them with an arena to practice politics as an extension of their new‐found status as “subjects of their own stories.” After a few decades of self‐discovery and sharing their reclaimed culture through Freirean pedagogy, Asian people find creative ways to liberate themselves from a distorted colonial legacy. Second, Asia has suffered from a complicated process of modernization. What a nation is pursuing is no longer dependent on national vision but on global economic fluctuation. Therefore, “modernization” has been harshly criticized and has been transformed into other trends enforced by societies willingly transformed into participants in the global economy. Following the experience of colonization, many countries have suffered from dictatorship. Korea, for example, achieved economic growth very quickly after the Korean War. But the high rate of Korean industrialization was led by the relentless 18‐year dictatorship of the Park regime and, as a result, many important issues such as preserving traditions, protecting human rights, promoting social justice, and resolving ideological conflicts were relegated to the sidelines. As in Taiwan and Korea, many Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and so on failed to understand modernization as “full development of both industries and human capacity” (Prajuli, 1986). Third, Asian experiments with social revolution have not yet contended, in principle, with the question of how elitism can be resolved and how the populace can become both leader and subject of social movements. Paulo Freire spent a lifetime trying to dialogically contradict the belief that education belongs only to

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

educators. Popular education “challenges the traditional way of ‘teaching’ people, an ‘education’ that makes them passive learners; one that silences them and makes them conform. It challenges attitudes and social structures that oppress people” (PEPE, 1999). Han argues that popular education is part of an “older” tradition of social movements and has been used as a tool for political domination (Han, 2001). He further states that the most important work of popular ­education is to break down the boundary between who teaches and who learns, between high culture and popular culture, and between academic knowledge and popular knowledge. This study aims to trace Paulo Freire’s influence in Asia. Freirean pedagogy, originated and developed in a Latin America context, has efficacy beyond the scope of that region and is theoretically applicable to a global context. Freirean pedagogy does not merely imply educational changes between educators and learners but also suggests methods for social transformation among different social classes, ethnic groups, and religions. Thinking of its influence on Asian communities, it is not seen as an authentic theory of education with its own power field and methodology. Rather, it has been considered as a tried and true system of adult education that has maintained its collaborative character and manifold features malleable to a variety of contexts and conditions. In such a context of Freirean pedagogy in East Asia, the comparative studies of Paulo Freire’s influence upon educational movements in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are presented. And three different practices of Freire’s thoughts in three different countries provide more contextual ways to reinvent him in the region. In particular, these cases show how Paulo Freire could never be accepted as a singular figure to lead a social transformation, given that he had been variously interpreted in each country. Such different approaches to Freire and his thoughts direct us to rethink of the essence of education, which is not neutral nor static.

Paulo Freire in Japan Akira Kusuhara and Hiroyuki Nomoto introduced Paulo Freire’s ideas to Japan with their translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1979. A new translation was published in 2011. Many pedagogues have tried to understand and interpret Freire’s ideas for a Japanese context. Forty years ago, phenomenology and psychoanalysis were groundbreaking concepts in educational research. However, Freire’s debt to these disciplines was not the major concern of Japanese teachers and educational scholars; what most intrigued them was his notion of “education for critical consciousness, which was called “the unifying thread in his work” and “the motor of cultural emancipation.”1 Japanese audiences wondered whether and where they could find the Japanese equivalent of what Freire labeled “conscientization.” They have struggled, ever since, to persuade readers that both the “oppressor” and the “oppressed” exist in Japan although, as every Zen meditator knows, those apparently contradictory structures exist within the self. However, it was easier for Japanese readers to understand the need for what Freire called “alphabetization” in the postcolonial chaos of Africa and South America.

169

170

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

We can find an affinity between Zen practice and Freire’s concept of conscientization. Shigeru Asanuma (1986) has already discussed a Japanese educator’s practice after the war, which was called “Seikatsu Thuzurikata” (Life Spelling). After the war, the realism of private disclosure and Marxist historical materialism dominated the cultural ethos of Japanese writings. Institutionally, Japanese imperialism and militarism were totally expelled and replaced with liberal democracy. However, liberal democracy did not easily take root in the Japanese masses. Instead, although the masses were inundated by symbolic slogans against militarism and imperialism, Marxism took over their consciousness. It was easy for the Japanese to condemn the outer bodies of their poverty and inferiority under the guise of the oppressor’s dominance and power. The implication of this difficulty to locate what Freire called “limit situations” in the Japanese quotidian may be surprising to Western readers. So I have attempted to reinterpret what Freire meant by “revolutionary praxis” by setting it in a Japanese context. I assume that his idea of “praxis” was not confined to its Brazilian birthplace but may be transferred to other countries and cultures. In Japan, I found his idea was open to reinterpretation in the context of innovative pedagogical practice. Is It Possible for a Japanese Educator to Emulate Freire’s “Revolutionary Practice?” It must have been realized that the poverty and the deprivation of the masses was rooted in the inferior consciousness of the masses rather than materialistic power relations. As Foucault (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982) noted, power does not come from the top but from the bottom. That implies that we should be aware of the power that comes from the inner but not from the outer. Freire’s concept of conscientization points to the subconsciousness of the oppressed, which is constituted of our own ego voluntary activities. Seikyo Muchaku (1951) had been a middle school teacher among ordinary educators slightly influenced by Japanese Marxism and the traditional Life Spelling method. But what made him an extraordinary educator was neither Marxist theory nor antimilitarism. “Revolutionary practice” was born in and out of the classroom in his leadership. In this practice, a student was a subject and doer of life but not an object of teaching. The conscientization of the student enlightened his/her own oppressing ego dominating the self. In phenomenological terms, transcendental ego was formed in the individual ego monad in that revolutionary practice. Muchaku is now a Zen Buddhist monk. We can trace the influence of Zen practice in his epoch‐making revolutionary practice after the war. The transcendental subjectivity was made possible in the individual “Satori” of Zen, which is enlightenment of the self. After the transcendence, his students became the subjects of practices of their lives. Symbolic Exchange and Paulo Freire A prominent Japanese teacher, Shuji Masuda (2001), started a nonelitist essay writing class so that students in his public school could find a way to ­discuss the effects of growing up on the margins of Japanese society. The students’

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

autobiographical journaling clearly demonstrated a desire to be liberated from the physical and psychological hardships of being raised in conditions of poverty and abuse. The children’s fear of expressing themselves had led to silence and shame about their childhood experiences. Masuda found that children can emancipate themselves from depressive feelings by writing honestly, and even humorously, about their everyday lives. As Freire notes, “action and reflection occur simultaneously.” He does not suggest that critical reflection has to be pessimistic. Critical reflection can be creative, even joyful. This creativity springs from children’s natural optimism. Children suffer most from frustration and obstacles in respect to which they have harbored resentment and have a surplus of emotion, for example, love and hate toward others as either their protectors from harm or the agents of their grief. When we scrutinize Masuda’s students’ essays, their worlds are filled with tears and laughter. As nascent journalists, they developed the life skills of what Jacques Lacan (1987) called “subversive self‐ reflection” and Jean Baudrillard referred to as “symbolic exchange.” When they were able to release their shame, and disclose their secrets, they took pride in their resiliency that may lead eventually to the sense of subjective emancipation about which Freire wrote. Humorous poetry is another popular Japanese medium for “decoding” and thereby gaining some perspective on otherwise dolorous existential circumstances; this is accomplished by transforming the poles of “antithetical contradiction” and revealing the poet/author as the subject of his or her story. Freire’s concept of decoding makes it possible for dialectical change to occur. This is what Jean Baudrillard referred to as the concept of “symbolic exchange.” Once the student identifies herself or himself as the subject in a real world situation, (s) he freely writes about her or his own life world as (s)he sees and senses it. The teacher does not suggest what (s)he should write about. The only assignment is her or his written exposure of the mundane “limit situations” causing the shame, fear, or negative stance. When young people write about themselves and their existential conditions, however unpleasant, the exercise stimulates simultaneous reflection and action. This transformation from object (victim of circumstance) to subject (“doer”) illustrates the symbolic exchange between reflection and action in the student author’s mind. (S)he takes the opportunity to observe her/ his interrelations with others. As an alternative to the dialectic of the watcher and the watched, educators and those in the act of educating themselves, turn out to be “co‐investigators” (Freire, 1979 [1970], p. 112). “Decoding” Beyond Reification: Simulation and Simulacrum We are likely to be dominated by a false consciousness regarding education. False consciousness inevitably leads to the “reification” of pedagogical discourse. Pedagogical false consciousness consists of a simulacrum of concrete reality. A simulacrum is an image developed through the simulation of the individual’s virtual entity. Jean Baudrillard (1984 [1981]) asserted that God was a simulacrum as a result of this kind of simulation. The “higher power” remains a virtual entity because the spirit of the individual self is incapable of recreating the real entity. Baudrillard sees the contradiction inherent in a representation that presupposes

171

172

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

the symbol is equivalent of what he calls “the deep reality.” According to him, the image (a) reflects the deep reality, (b) conceals and transforms the deep reality, (c) conceals the nonexistence of the deep reality, and (d) has nothing to do with any reality (Baudrillard, 1984 [1981], p. 8). Anthropologists, for instance, have used the label “primitive” to describe New World indigenes encountered by European voyagers from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries as a result of internal scientific struggles. The natives have to be seen as “primitive” to validate the “science of anthropology” as a superior Western institution capable of discerning less advanced exemplars of Homo sapiens. Baudrillard uses dialectical logic to verify the being of the virtual entity in terms of the countermovement of the individual discipline. For instance, education is validated by noneducation. This type of self‐negation is a result of what he describes as the “simulation movement.” Law and order are needed to counteract chaos and crisis as part of the simulation necessary to create a simulacrum of “the ideal society.” Reports of the mediocrity of Japanese students convinced the masses to shift their educational goals toward more traditional educational values, emphasizing rote learning and incessant drills to acquire “basic skills.” The images employed to propagandize the return to what Freire would call the “banking education” standard included a teacher facing about 40 students seated in straight rows of desks in a single room. The mass media employs this image of classroom instruction as something worried parents can relate to whereas more contemporary classroom instruction is often illustrated by smaller groups of smiling students in an open classroom. Perhaps both images are distorted because the “proper” or “most effective” educational context depends, like beauty, on the eye of the beholder. Why must we have what Baudrillard would consider a prime example of “pseudo‐consciousness” when it comes to school and education? Why is it so difficult to come up with an acceptable image of individualized instruction? The images displayed to the majority of people are always converted into stereotypes of dominant images because, apparently, they denote hegemonic legitimacy. How can we escape from false consciousness when it comes to critical pedagogy? Paulo Freire has provided a methodological concept to avoid the presumptive reification of banking education. He assumes that the “generative theme” moves from the general to the particular. This methodology is one of the main tenets of the aforementioned concept of conscientization. As he puts it, “The perception and comprehension of reality are rectified and acquire new depth. When carried out with conscientization, the investigation of the generative theme contained in the minimum thematic universe introduces and begins to induce educatees to think critically about their world” (Freire, 1999, p. 85). As he suggests, decoding is a way of avoiding the fallacy of pedagogical reduction from the concrete to the abstract. A generative theme is no way an abstraction: “It can only be apprehended in a human‐world relationship” (Freire, 1999, p. 87). Thus, decoding depends on students being able to use their experiential “wisdom” to “problematize” the world of human relationships. For Freire, “this dialectical movement of thought is exemplified in the analysis of a concrete existential, ‘coded’ situation. Its ‘decoding’ requires moving from the abstract to the concrete; this requires moving from the part to the whole and then returning in the parts; this in turn requires that the Subject recognize herself/himself in the

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

object (the codified existential situation) and recognize the object as a situation in which (s)he finds herself/himself with other Subjects” (Freire, 1999, p. 86). As Freire suggests, decoding familiar existential situations is a way to protect generative themes from the imposition of false consciousness. Next, I introduce a modeling concept for decoding. Modeling with narratives will help us understand the issues students confront in their day‐to‐day lives. Decoding Educators’ Stories as Models of Pedagogy It has been 40 years since William Pinar published his groundbreaking work concerning curriculum theory in 1976. He declared that our concern with proper curriculum was part of our struggle to regenerate a lost or atrophied dimension of human self‐consciousness. According to Pinar, there was an urgent need to regenerate curriculum development around the themes of “self‐understanding” and “self‐development” (Freire, 1979 [1970], p. 22). He urged educators to consider what kind of strategy can be developed to offer a viable alternative to the hegemonic curriculum discourse that always diverted discourse about the complexity of fresh approaches to curricular discourse into the most simplistic rote‐ learning model? Pinar strongly believed we had to engage in constant struggle with the hegemon for the contested terrain: a simulacrum of banking education. So, it is important to build an educational image whose character progressives and critical pedagogues can assimilate as an identifiable model. Why do we need this model? Because a metaphysical or conceptual simulacrum will not help us initiate our pedagogy. What we need is to illustrate the lived world of a “model” character whom we can understand in the context of the subjective dimension in which we lead our everyday lives. As Alfred Schultz suggested, focusing on the “typicality” of our everyday lives could provide a bona fide model of a teacher’s classroom curriculum. The storytelling approach practiced by Professor Masuda might be more useful for developing teachers’ professional ability than a cognitive “recipe” for instruction. Teachers develop hope when they are able to understand and empathize with what Freire called the “humanness” of their students. This sense of common cause cannot be explained in logical terms but must be understood through teachers’ life stories. Shiro Maggie (2004) is a well‐known Japanese magician. The Japanese network NHK TV created a series devoted to famous graduates visiting and teaching classes at elementary and junior high schools from which they graduated years before. Shiro’s story included his memories of a miserable childhood. He lamented his mediocrity in all areas of school life. He did poorly in scholastics and in physical education. There was no sense of gain or triumph in his school days. Not a single pleasant memory. His utter lack of confidence carried over into the workplace after he completed middle school. He lost hope of being anything more than a mediocre magician. One day, he started to talk about his unlucky life and his inability to succeed while performing his magic act. The audience began to laugh at this unexpected and spontaneous confession of his existential struggles. Perhaps Shiro’s reflections on his weakness and obscurity made them uncomfortable and created a discrepancy, a gap between the expected and the

173

174

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

unexpected that the philosopher Henri Bergson (1951) posited as the source of laughter. I would assume that humorous transcendence could lead to a kind of phenomenological reduction. The audience reaction, as unexpected as Shiro’s confession, initiated his disconnection from and perspective on his dead‐end destination that changed his life. At his former elementary school, Shiro Maggie asked the sixth graders to find and disclose their weaknesses during a performance of magic. They were made so anxious by this assignment that many of them lost sleep. They had little or no experience of self‐reflection or confronting their weaknesses. Some family members chose to tell them about weaknesses about which the students were unaware. Still, the students managed to speak of their weaknesses to the audience. Their stories were painful to recount. A few students wept. Others felt more confident. Some felt their souls had been cleansed and low self‐esteem washed away. They felt reborn. Shiro Maggie wept as well, after witnessing the students’ performances. In the documentary, he discusses his miserable years at that school and how he felt the disclosure of his story added another dimension to his life. It seems to be therapeutic but created self‐revolutionary reborn for the individual.

Paulo Freire in Taiwan Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy has influenced the work of key Taiwanese academics in recent years. Freire became better known in Taiwan after Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published in Mandarin by Professor Yung‐Chuan Fang at National Taiwan Normal University in 2003. The National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan displays 98 doctoral dissertations and 448 master’s theses that cite publications by Paulo Freire. Most of the academic works are in the field of education, including adult education, general education, curriculum and instruction, teachers’ professional development, special education, and minority group education. The rest are in the fields of social development, politics, psychology, and the arts and humanities. This part of the chapter categorizes and introduces Freire’s main ideas applied in different fields of research, including adult education, critical consciousness/conscientization, minority group empowerment, the teacher’s image, teacher–student relationships, liberation from oppression, and reinventing Freirean ideas to investigate fieldwork. The Influence of Adult Education Moreland and Lovett (1997) indicated that the concept of lifelong learning began with comments and reflections criticizing traditional education as well as an urgent need to respond to rapid social changes in order to achieve the goals of deinstitutionalization and demonopolization. In 1998, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education marked the beginning of a year of lifelong learning by publishing its “White Paper Approaching a Learning Society,” which emphasized a more equitable nationwide allocation of learning opportunities. In 1990, Dr. Chiou‐Rong Wang completed her doctoral dissertation, Study of Freire’s Critical Adult Teaching Model. Dr. Wang taught at several universities

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

and continues her study of Freire, especially in the field of adult education. Taiwanese Professor Wu‐Hsiung Huang proposed the idea of a “community university” led by community members’ desire to understand the modern society through social reflection. Since 1998, 84 community universities2 have been established in Taiwan. There have been several academic works that have examined community universities in Taiwan. In 2006, Dr. Tien‐Jien Lee’s doctoral dissertation, Study of the Reconstruction of Freire’s Idea of Critical Consciousness and Its Practical Experiences at Community Universities, reflected on ideas regarding the emancipation of knowledge through the framework of critical consciousness. In his research, Dr. Lee helped learners develop critical consciousness through the practice of innovative curriculum design at community universities. In 2009, Dr. Bon‐Wen Lin’s doctoral dissertation, Praxis and Position of Social Activists’ Participation in Community Universities, pointed out that community universities were led by social activists who set out to achieve the goal of social reconstruction in Taiwan. The Rise of Critical Consciousness To make up for the lack of critical consciousness in Taiwan’s public school system, many academic works have sought to apply Freire’s ideas to the field of education. In a master’s thesis titled A Study on Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy: Junior High School Chinese Teachers’ Critical Consciousness of Curriculum, Shiue‐Ling Hung (2006) questioned whether teachers of Chinese at junior high schools have knowledge of the process of critical consciousness and how it might affect their teaching. Ms. Hung found that the oppressive nature of official pedagogy limits teachers’ critical consciousness when they practice curriculum design and actual teaching. However, her informants claimed they were not totally impeded by these strictures and sought different responses to the structural limitations, which demonstrated a degree of pedagogical subjectivity. Yi‐Huang Shih’s (2005) doctoral dissertation Paulo Freire’s Theory of Conscienti­ zation and Its Implications on Moral Education indicated that, when liberation‐ minded teachers practice moral education in Taiwan, they should first deal with students’ fear of freedom. Furthermore, teachers and students should commit themselves to eradicating the hegemonic myths the ruling class produces so that a humanizing moral education can be initiated and given room to develop. In Hsiao‐Wen Chen’s (2016) master’s thesis, Conscientization of Multicultural Consciousness for Pre‐service Teachers in a Remote Elementary School Remedial Program, the author incorporated ideas from different stages of Freire’s theory of conscientization to understand if preservice teachers were equipped with critical consciousness. The researcher found that eight of the participating preservice teachers tended to assimilate the disadvantaged students from a remedial program as quickly as possible into the mainstream curriculum, with little or no regard for the nature or severity of their handicaps. Those teachers lacked critical consciousness. Wan‐Ching Ke’s (2013) doctoral dissertation, Research on Self‐Filming by Female Immigrants from Southeast Asia: Learning Process and Self‐Representation,

175

176

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

followed a group of female immigrants from Indonesia as they narrated their stories on video. Ke’s study found that this autobiographical exercise affirmed their sense of subjectivity and offered them opportunities to “read the world” by making them conscious of their oppression through their portrayal of their life worlds and of the powerful interplay of word and image. Empowering Disadvantaged Groups Oppression exists in different parts of Taiwanese society. Recent academic publications have focused on distinct oppressed groups in our island nation and the authors have sought to adapt Freire’s ideas to describe and empower them. In Freire’s words, “while both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people’s vocation” (Freire, 1979 [1970], p. 44). Kuo‐Yuan Lin’s (2010) master’s thesis Discourse, Power, Destigmatization: The Investigation of the Practice of Critical Identity Curriculum examined the mainstream discourse produced by Han chauvinism that prevented local aboriginal groups from self‐realization. Lin (2010) applied Freire’s pedagogy of liberation and the problem‐posing method to design and develop a “critical identity curriculum” that enabled participating students to enhance their ethnic and cultural identities while empowering them to continue to resist oppression from Taiwanese mainstream society. Most of the new immigrants are women with backgrounds of low socioeconomic status (SES) who came to Taiwan from various Southeast Asian countries to marry local men with similar SES and found jobs at the social margins. Shih‐ Ting Yang’s (2016) master’s thesis The Oppressive Experiences of Three Southeast Asian Immigrant Women pointed out that these new immigrants are endowed with negative images in mainstream society. Unjust treatment in factories and as domestics in Taiwanese households oppresses them. Po‐Shuan Lee’s (2012) master’s thesis, Voicing/OrganizingMmovement: A Study of Grassroots Media by Marriage Migrants, adopted Freire’s perspective of emancipative education to discuss female immigrants’ socially critical writings in grassroots media. In addition to racially disadvantaged groups, there are a growing number of economically disadvantaged students in Taiwanese classrooms. Yu‐Po Cheng’s (2013) master’s thesis, The Class Culture Analysis of Kindergartens in the Disadvantaged Community: A Critical Pedagogy Viewpoint, examined how the educational system represented and reproduced class oppression through curriculum design. At the junior high school level, a technical education program exists that functions as a premature tracking system, attracting students from low SES backgrounds. Shu‐Min Chuang’s (2014) doctoral dissertation The Study of Student Life Experience in a Junior High School Technical Education Program: Perspectives of Critical Pedagogy revealed that the lack of resources and teachers in technical education programs exacerbates students’ poor test results and lowers their motivation for learning, resulting in a cycle of failure and underclass reproduction. In addition, Yu‐Hsuan Lin’s (2007) doctoral dissertation, The Identity Formation of “Playgirls” and Its Educational Implications, discussed the “bad girls” from working‐class families and their marginalized experiences at schools, which demotivated them from pursuing further education so they

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

worked at low‐paying jobs after graduating from high school, got married earlier than their counterparts, and ended up reproducing their parents’ SES status. Freire’s ideas have applied in these academic works and given the oppressed groups voices to name their worlds. The Changing Portrait of the Teacher In Confucius’s time, the teacher’s image was divine. However, with the extreme social changes in recent years, the public has started to develop different expectations of teachers. In Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach. Paulo Freire pointed out that teachers should be treated with dignity as contributors to a nature’s culture, not as the babysitters of the poor and marginalized. In Feng‐Hsiung Wang’s (2014) doctoral dissertation Teacher’s Image in the Post‐Teacher Labor Union Era: No Longer the Divine Image But Still a Model of Aspiration, the researcher interviewed stakeholders in the field of education, including policymakers, experts in teacher training, teachers’ union representatives, principals, parents, and school teachers. The research suggested that, in present‐day Taiwan, teachers are (a) educational practitioners with educational expertise; (b) character breeders with educational love; (c) educators with the ability to reflect, criticize, and create; (d) action researchers of teaching; (e) modern citizens actively participating in social affairs; (f ) proponents of social values; and (g) activists who strive for human rights. Transforming the Teacher–Student Relationship Paulo Freire’s problem‐posing education and his emphasis on meaningful, two‐ way dialogue between teachers and students have inspired Taiwanese education scholars and working teachers to apply his methods, both in their research and in their classrooms. Li‐Ly Chen’s (2008) doctoral dissertation, A Study of Verbal Interactions Between Teachers and Low‐Achieving Students in Junior High School Classes: Focused on Paulo Freire’s Dialogic Pedagogy, explored teachers’ verbal interactions with low‐achieving students at selected schools and found that participating teachers were convinced that they were cultural workers with expertise. However, they were not convinced that students have the freedom to learn what they please, that education and politics are inextricably linked, or that classes should be student centered. Yung‐Wei Lee’s (2004) master’s thesis, Paulo Freire’s Dialogical Pedagogy and Its Transformation, explored and discussed the realm of dialogical pedagogy from various perspectives, including humane society, liberalized education, and democratic dialog. As a high school teacher, Lee focused on the realization of Freire’s dialogical pedagogy—in the “culture circles” at the senior high school where he taught. Lee tried to build a horizontal relationship between teachers and students; to think with students rather than for them; to reflect reality in his reading and writing assignments; to actively ensure a better learning environment. Hsiu‐Wen Huang’s (2011) doctoral dissertation, Action Research on Applying a Dialogue Teaching Program in General Education in University, designed a dialogical pedagogy program at one university to understand the

177

178

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

impact of the program on interactional experiences in an art class through the achievements of the teacher and the students. In recent years, there has been a trend to promote critical and dialogical practice in Taiwan through the progressive ideas of learning communities and student‐centered classes. For example in her master’s thesis, Arts Revival Classroom: Practice of teaching through interaction, Chun‐Fang Cheng (2015) posited that students are more motivated to learn in the classroom by transcribing their responses during instructional dialogues. In Shu‐Huei Guo’s (2016) master’s ­thesis, Action Research on Teaching Critical Thinking by Applying “Flipped Classroom” to Fourth Graders: A Case Study in Social Studies, the author found that participating students’ critical thinking capability improved and that they tended to be more willing to do new things and solve problems with a positive attitude when what Paulo Freire described as teacher‐driven banking education was consciously altered to something of a more dialogical nature. Reinventing Freire Freire continually insisted that, in order to stay fresh, his ideas had to be constantly “reinvented,” not just repeated. Freirean critical consciousness techniques have been applied in different research fields in Taiwan. Chuan‐Ya Wen’s (2002) master’s thesis, Applying Paulo Freire’s Theories to Education Reform in Taiwan: An Experiment at a High School Teachers’ Workshop examined the impact of “loose ideas” from a 9‐year, integrated educational reform on teachers who used to follow a more standard curriculum. Wen adopted the format of the teachers’ workshop to promote teachers’ learning through cooperation and autonomy. She found that participating teachers transformed their thinking about personal authority after taking the workshop. Yueh‐Lan Lee’s (2016) master’s thesis, Between Acting and Realities: Towards a Self‐Reflexive Practice of People’s Theater, used people’s theater to unveil the fractured reality of new female immigrants in dramatic representations of their living spaces, identities, languages, and cultures. Chien‐His Ni’s (2015) master’s thesis Future Citizens, Participate Now! Political Participation Experiences of Taipei High School Students focused on students’ interpretation of their political participation experiences. Ni (2015) explored participating students’ perceptions of their own roles as students and citizens in order to encourage students to take action toward acquiring power to change the current situation of inequality and oppression. In the field of social work, Hsiao‐Ling Huang’s (2012) master’s thesis, No Surrender! A Reflection on Practices in the Anti‐Oppression Movement of Injured Occupational Workers, studied social movements and developed an “antioppression movement of occupationally injured workers” to examine and reflect that most movements were limited to seeking that their rights be redressed rather than on gaining political and societal power. Since Sheng‐Yao Chen first initiated the Paulo Freire Institute (PFI) at Chung‐ Chen University in Taiwan in 2009, Freire’s educational ideas have been disseminated in different fields. The Paulo Freire Institute was moved to National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in 2016 at the inception of a new stage of the promotion of Freire’s philosophical ideas for educational practice. NTNU cooperated

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

with the PFI at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to start an annual Paulo Freire Institute Summer Program, which has served 370 students from Taiwan, Denmark, Egypt, Italy, South Korea, Portugal, and Thailand since 2007. Freire’s ideas are being reinvented in different educational aspects in Taiwan through the promotion of close relationships between PFI at UCLA and PFI at NTNU.

Paulo Freire in South Korea Paulo Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire’s best‐known book was brought to Korean attention in 1971 by Dong‐Hwan Moon, who was a professor in the Christian Education Department at Hanshin University (Hwang, 2000). Because Freire’s revolutionary thinking resembled the “theology of liberation,” which called for a new role for the church in Latin America, it was not surprising that a revolutionary theory of education in Latin America should be introduced by a theologian who was himself exploring social transformation. It might have been at the time of his work with the World Council of Churches (WCC, 1965–1970) or during his sabbatical year at the Union Theological Seminary in New York that he came to realize the extent of oppression in the “Third World” and introduced Paulo Freire in the Korean context (Hwang, 2000, p. 28; Shin, 1992, p. 14). He preceded Freire at the WCC, leaving the year the Brazilian arrived. In addition to those who were identified as Christian, radical intellectuals adapted Freirean methodology to local social movements for democratization. At first, it provided clarity about some of the social contradictions that Korea shared with suffering, “underdeveloped” Third World countries in the 1970s. Korean intellectuals could especially relate to the  “culture of silence” that Freire had struggled to mitigate with his revolutionary literacy campaign and that led to his incarceration and escape from Brazil in 1964. The significance of Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, particularly its analysis of social structure in the first chapter, which provides a radical point of view about the Third World, was not lost on Korean intellectuals. Those who read the book rarely if ever applied Freire’s discussion of his research strategies and methods in the following chapters to their work or research in the realm of education. Student political activists tended to focus on the first chapter in the book. In my opinion, Freire’s thought played the role of stepping‐stone to Marxism‐Leninism and “Ju‐Che” thought3 by activists in the 1980s popular movements. On one hand, Paulo Freire was a guiding theorist to provide sociopolitical analysis in education, particularly, of countries in the Third World. On the other hand, Freire was considered a methodologist who combined politics and pedagogy to raise people’s consciousness about their “limit‐situations” while teaching them to read and write their language. Rarely was he viewed as an educator pursuing liberation through educating the oppressed. Pedagogy of the Oppressed has, however, been read as a book of critical methods. College students and

179

180

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

social critics alike adopted Freire’s early books4 as “how‐to” manuals for raising people’s critical consciousness. In fact, it was unthinkable that radical theories such as Freirean pedagogy could be brought into Korean society while people were under the harsh dictatorship of Park’s regime. The Korean Congress granted Park a new constitution that allowed him to prolong the life of the regime without risk. This constitution, called the “Yushin” constitution, was used for the purpose of maintaining political power.5 It played an active role in demolishing any resistance to Park’s regime and, as a result, prohibited people from pursuing democracy. Freire’s thought has been closely related to education in critical social movements such as community movements (Yoon, 2000), labor and union movements (Jung, 1999), peasants’ movements (Lee, 2000), college student movements, and adult basic education (Noh, 2000) as well Christian movements (Lee, 1992). Social movements toward “democratization” in the Korean context can be defined as “political, economic, educational, and cultural movements for social transformation to vindicate the benefits of the populace and to treat the people as a subject” (Man‐Hee, 1995, n.p.). In 1987, Korea had a historically transformative experience that has been referred to as “the revolution of democratization.” This experience gave people the right to elect a president directly. The most important thing is that the change did not occur from a top‐down policy, but by bottom‐up pressure from the masses. Freire played a crucial role in influencing people’s critical consciousness. However, the significance of Freirean pedagogy today is rarely mentioned by those who used to praise Paulo Freire. The division between oppressors and the oppressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed may be applicable only to revolutionary times. The revolutionary epoch in Korea has ended. Pedagogy of the Oppressed provides too rough an analysis to be utilized for social transformation in a stabilized social structure. It requires readers to have a keen perception of current exploitation, indirect and subtle by nature, to extrapolate from the book. A more up‐to‐date compendium of resistance methodologies providing comparatively minute analyses and strategies is necessary. Times have changed in a world with more diverse products, greater job structure variety, and the like. Nobody speaks of “labor aristocrats.” Current times, themes, and situations in Korea have become similar to those in the United States. Freirean Pedagogy and Eui‐Sik‐Hwa [Conscientization] Eui‐Sik‐Hwa had been the central concept in popular education in Korea. This along with Min‐Joong pushed social actions into radical and class‐based struggles. Literally, Eui‐Sik‐Hwa means “becoming conscious.” Practically, it meant to be radical, to be critical, to be revolutionary, and to be aware of political conditions. In fact, the term came from the Korean translation of “conscientization” from Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The concept of conscientization was connected to that of “dialogue” in the Korean Christian Academy. The pedagogy of conscientization of the organization then had been practiced by critics of traditional pedagogy for indoctrinating certain values. The term conscientization was used to take a critical stance

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

against educational practices that transferred certain ideologies. For both arguable concepts of conscientization and praxis, Freire calls for liberated consciousness freed from all underlying beliefs; however, his followers and others committed to the field of popular education often inculcated given values or stressed their own ideological doctrines. Therefore, Freirean conscientization implies transformation of individuals as well as social conditions. Individual change starts from a change in consciousness. This is a useful concept in popular education, community organizing, and popular theology. Conscientization brings about transformation, which becomes the power to change a society from the bottom up. Thus, conscientization is part of the empowerment teaching used in organizing communities. Conscientization begins with reflective action. The first stage of community organization is to help people reflect on their lives and define who they are through dialogue. All organizing activities need to be preceded by thoughtful consideration and consciousness‐raising. However, the meaning of conscientization has changed since its introductory phase within the active operations of popular culture movements and adult literacy campaigns. Many of the difficulties of heightening people’s consciousness and their concomitant desire to organize communities through popular education came from the disparity between the awareness and understanding of the concept and the complex re‐learning ­process involved with durable conscientization. Meanwhile, Eu‐Sik‐Hwa or conscientization is a synonym of “humanization” to many Korean intellectuals (Han, 2001, p. 16). Besides, there are typically three kinds of steps in terms of people’s consciousness for social change: semi‐intransitive, naïve‐transitive, and critical transitive consciousness. People can, theoretically, attain critical transitive consciousness yet remain at the stage of semi‐intransitive or naïve transitive consciousness. Even though Freire claims the concept of conscientization is neither dogmatic nor sequential, Freirean pedagogy was interpreted as dogma or a collection of useful axioms by those who wanted to memorize clear methods for social transformation. In conclusion, the actual meaning of conscientization cannot be detached from practical methods in social movements (Hwang, 2000; Kim, 1973; Lee, 1992; Lee, 2000; Lee, Choi, & Kim, 1998; Shin, 1992). As Karl Marx’s theory of “class struggle” became an axis for social change in Korea, Paulo Freire’s use of the term “conscientization” caused him to be considered a revolutionary.6 Freirean Pedagogy in the Practice of Popular Education There have been several types of Freirean pedagogical practice in Korea. These include Yahak (night school), the community organizations (CO) Teachers organizations (the Korean Teachers Union), and the Korea Christian Academy, which are only some of the organizations who experimented with Freirean practice in a Korean context. First, Yahak took charge of literacy issues and offered public literacy classes. Because illiterate people in Korea are seen as handicapped, literacy classes were formed in a clandestine manner. Interestingly, although Freire’s theory of liberation

181

182

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

through education was founded and tested in adult literacy programs in both Brazil and Chile, it was not used in adult basic education in Korea. It is noteworthy that the literacy rate in Korea had already attained a high level as compared to other countries in the world. After gaining independence from the Japanese, the Korean government initiated national campaigns for adult basic education, including literacy, with the help of international organizations (Kim & Yoo, 2001).7 Illiteracy stems from an illiteracy of consciousness as well as political illiteracy. Furthermore, people who are illiterate usually fail to take action to remedy the situation or seek social solutions because of overwhelming feelings of powerlessness and shame. Although the definition of literacy grew complicated with the inclusion of terms such as “postliteracy” and “functional literacy” in the lexicon, literacy education was revived as a useful tool of civic education. This happened at about the same time as the community movement. Paulo Freire and his literacy method inspired elite groups to meet the populace in shantytowns, using key words and themes and the codification of existential situations familiar to their students as teaching/learning materials. Although it is not certain that Yahak teachers knew or mentioned their debt to Paulo Freire, his name was remembered when they were asked by their colleagues what to read and what to discuss with members of the communities (Yoon, 2000). Second, the intent of the CO movement, influenced both by Saul Alinsky8 and Paulo Freire, was to increase the power of ordinary people living in working‐class and marginalized communities, mostly in North and South America. Conscientization is a prerequisite of “community organizing.” The CO movement disseminated popular education by training organizational leaders who worked as labor union members, Yahak teachers, activists involved with the urban poor, people’s organization leaders, and student movement activists. The movement provided useful tools in terms of both philosophical perspectives and practical methods. At first, the CO movement was committed to the proposition that people ought to become the subjects of their “communities,” loosely interpreted as an organization of any size. Whereas Urban Industries Missions [UIMs]9 affected the development of workers’ struggles for democratic transformation in the workplace, those organizations originating from the CO movement and the people in them had been trained in CO programs. Third, Min‐Joong” education became popular through a publication titled Monthly Mook: Min‐Joong Kyoyuk in 1985. Because popular education had originated in public school systems, school teachers gradually began to participate in critical education movements. As a matter of fact, school education had not been considered a type of popular movement, because the latter had traditionally been active against unjust regimes10 whereas schools had not. However, teachers raised concerns about the top‐down implementation of educational policies and called for a more democratic environment for school education. Considering the crucial role of school education in Korean society, teachers’ arguments were deemed important and heard. The “Declaration for Democratization of Education” was proclaimed by teachers belonging to the Council of Secondary School Teachers YMCA Korea.11

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

It originated in 1986 after many radical teachers embraced Min‐joong Kyoyuk publications. The declaration begins with the following statement: We, the teachers who should pursue the truth with students are heartbroken when watching the wretched reality of today’s education. Realizing that we cannot shirk the responsibility of our never‐ending history, we finally made the decision not to maintain forced silence any longer. The righteous students following us with complete trust shame us. We remain uninterested in the eloquent demands of history. Our futile gestures as puppets have to stop. This is an example of critical self‐reflection by teachers who felt they should have been in charge of their students’ social transformation and fostered their critical consciousness. Although calling for the formation and involvement of a collaborative triumvirate12 that would incentivize genuine educational reform in Korea, the fact remains that revolutionary changes in teachers’ consciousness were a powerful impetus for educational transformation. Their demands that social transformation and democratization be made possible on the basis of the democratization of education were not easily dismissed. Fourth, the Korea Christian Academy (KCA) was established to promote social dialogue through which public consent was pursued. Based on Christian precepts, the KCA tried to disseminate the belief that the social movements of nation‐building and renewal were urgently required to overcome biases and prejudices hindering social diversity and common understanding, because Korea’s social fragmentation was rooted in a lack of trust. The KCA’s was one of the first organizational efforts to attempt to create dialogical relations among people with diverse perspectives and work experiences. It was the “intermediary groups” of the KCA, who were chosen to play a pivotal role in social development. The KCA held various meetings and training programs to promote dialogue as the most essential element of their efforts at social restoration and renewal. In a 2‐year series of conferences, they made and discussed resolutions. As a result of these discussions, the idea of cultivating leadership through practice was suggested in order to bring about concrete changes in both the social and political domains. The concepts of “pressure” and “reconciliation” were employed in order to reach educational objectives such as the formation of the “intermediary.” A despotic rule needed to be stopped by “pressure,” which, however, would be practiced by “reconciliation” rather than by more violent means, such as militancy or struggles between social classes. The intermediary aimed to establish well‐­balanced power dynamics among like‐minded social interest groups. Overthrowing the government, obtaining political power, and becoming a profit‐oriented group were not viable alternatives. Warned by the government to be less critical, the  KCA attempted to institute a dialogical popular movement. People in the organization believed that education would become the most essential element in social transformation but considered education to be official or hegemonic knowledge (Apple, 1993), far removed from ideological indoctrination, either radical or conservative. In this sense, the KCA actively adopted Paulo Freire’s

183

184

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

assertions as stated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1979 [1970]) and Education as the Practice of Freedom (1973).

Discussion and Conclusion This chapter is a comparative case study exploring the historical and political‐ pedagogical importance of Freire in some East Asian countries, including some of its applications in pedagogy and social policy. We engaged in a dialogue across the region, with a focus on specific experiences in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Some of the lasting contributions of Freire are highlighted and show their remarkable resilience, including the concepts of consciousness‐raising, dialogue, and the tensions between pedagogy of the oppressor and pedagogy of the oppressed in past and contemporary situations. In fact, in the past Freire’s work has been seen as a resource to confront oppression, dictatorship, and violence. Yet the legacy of Freire’s work in East Asian countries cannot be fully analyzed in this chapter. A more holistic and comprehensive analysis is needed, incorporating other countries and situations for the analysis. There are important findings that we would like to emphasize in comparative perspective. At first, Taiwan case study shows that Freire’s influence seems more in the academic field than on real “transformation” in the society. However, after Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated, people found it easier to learn Freire’s ideas, which means more academic discussions both in graduate schools and in informal gatherings. This might be part of the reason why there are 98 doctoral dissertations and 448 master’s theses citing Freire’s publications. Because of their ongoing collaboration with the Paulo Freire Institute at UCLA, the PFI at NTNU in Taiwan is disseminating Freire’s ideas and providing future teachers and educational administrators with the opportunity to explore Freire’s methods and the concept of critical consciousness in order to dedicate their teaching and organizational skills into work that will benefit those on the margins, counter the neoliberal “all for me” mentality and increase the possibilities that the planet can be changed into a kinder, more just, and less anxious place for generations to come. Many Taiwanese scholars have used Freire’s signposts and legacy to growth intellectually into what could be characterized as representatives of critical studies in education, such as Chen‐Wei Chang’s (2009) doctoral dissertation, Voices of the Oppressed in Higher Education: A Case Study of Two‐Year Junior College Students in Taipei, Taiwan. The creation of the Paulo Freire Institute in Taiwan, a more than ten years old venture by two universities and now located at the National Taiwan Normal University, in Taipei, is an indication of the lasting legacy of Freire in the country. Another indicator of the presence of Freire in Taiwanese academia is the recent translation by the PFI‐Taiwan of the award‐ winning book First Freire into Chinese, 弗雷勒思想探源:社會正義與教育, under the leadership of Prof. Hsiao‐Lan Jen and Prof. Chien‐Cheng Chang. This new bibliographical material will affect Chinese‐speaking readers everywhere. Then, Korea shows an important case similar to some extent to Taiwan because of the transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and accelerated growth

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

­ aking Taiwan and Korea two of the economic tigers in the region (Page, 1994). m Undoubtedly, these changes affected education, particularly higher education and social movements and trade unions praxis. Freire played a meaningful role in these transitions more than four decades ago (Yoo, 2007, 2008). Not surprising, his Pedagogy of the Oppressed becomes emblematic of a new way to develop consciousness‐raising and seeing a more humane, and indeed less banking education model. Despite these contributions, the current situation in Korea is not the same as it was 40 years ago when Freire’s contribution to the postcolonial liberation of Third World countries, and particularly social struggles, were the sign of the age, and were introduced in the country through a Korean reading of the theology of liberation. There are contributions of Freire in looking at peace and solidarity movements in Korea, but no longer connected with his Marxist roots—particularly considering the North Korean regime ideology—and definitely not in the forefront of the academic conversation in the country. Yet, one may argue that consciousness‐ raising continues to be a central concept for moral education, because the teaching of ethics is a key concern in a country like Korea. Likewise, some influences of Freire, though vaguely detected, may be found in key projects of the Korean government such as the idea of a strong public diplomacy institutionalization and the heavy investment in global citizenship education since the tenure of Ban Ki‐moon as United Nations General Secretary. Both concepts may be seen as offspring of popular education models and conscientization in the civil society, and Freire’s conviction that citizenship‐building should be framed in the context of humanization and not just technocratic or human capital values. All these new initiatives in Korea are enmeshed in the convoluted dialectics of the global and the local, dialectics that Freire began to explore at the very end of his life, but could not complete his work in this area. Lastly, Japan, one of the most developed countries in the world and the country with the second highest gross domestic product in Asia, offers a fascinating contrast between tradition and modernity in pedagogy. But it should be reminded that Japan was suffering from poverty and chaos during and after the war. Japanese militarism deconstructed sanity and confidence among the Japanese. Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed has been well known among Japanese pedagogues since it was translated into Japanese about 40 years ago. Many of them were shocked by Freire’s sophisticated conceptualization with Latino‐American horizon, which could be interpreted as the harmony of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Those are groundbreaking concepts for Japanese educational researchers. Another important insight is the intricate connections between Zen philosophy and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Both key concepts of oppressor and oppressed, as Freire himself seems to suggest in some of his most psychologically oriented writing, reside in the same consciousness. Coincidentally, Seikyo Muchaku, one of the famous “spell‐writing” educators, is a Zen monk, who practiced the revolutionary students’ autobiography. As any Zen meditator knows, those apparently contradictory structures exist within the self. Conscientization hence invites a sense of epistemological self‐vigilance, as Carlos Alberto Torres has said in several of his works on Freire, particularly his award‐ winning book First Freire (Torres, 2014).

185

186

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

The key Freirean concept that influenced Japanese educators is education for critical consciousness, which was called “the unifying thread in his work.” Retrospectively, this concept may have affected relevant practices performed by a prominent Japanese scholar, Shuji Masuda, with an original approach to self‐ authorship asking his students to write about their own coming to terms with their consciousness, identity, and fears. One of the conclusion of the Japanese case study is that decoding of educators’ stories as models of pedagogy offers a fascinating window to the contributions of Freire to Japanese education. As Shigeru Asanuma (2015) explored, Freire’s conceptualization of “decoding” has elevated the horizon of practice spelling out students’ own self‐consciousness and the transcendental ego for Japanese educators. Yet, the Japanese case study poses an important question that is very difficult to fully answer: Is it possible for a Japanese educator to emulate Freire’s “revolutionary practice? Asanuma explores this question opening a new window of experimentation with the work of Baudrillard, whose work rarely has been explored vis‐à‐vis Freire’s work. Enter Vygotsky who offers a platform of understanding of the work of Freire and Jean Baudrillard and then decoding confronts reification. Here Freire dances hand in hand with Baudrillard’s simulation and simulacrum concepts, close relatives of Freire’s adoption of the concept of false consciousness from the early Marxist tradition. These three comparative case studies, which offer glimpses of Freire’s presence in East Asia, should stimulate more research and praxis, investigating further the history and applicability of Freire’s thought in the region. As three scholars who have humbly written these pages, we themselves in our daily life and scholarly agenda have been trying to reinvent rather than repeat Paulo Freire. This was always the mantra of the old Sensei, and we want to honor his wishes with our own work.

Notes 1 SeeDenis Goulet’s Introduction to Education for Critical Consciousness. (New

York: Continuum, 1974).

2 In the beginning, community universities in Taiwan serve mainly elder citizens

for lifelong learning purposes. However, in recent years, community universities start to attract younger people to take professional curriculum for preparing their second skills. Currently, about 40% of students at community universities are 40–60 years old and about 30% are 20–40 years old (Wu, 2018). 3 It means literally “subjective.” However, in short, Ju‐Che thought is considered as ideology from the North Korean government. Although Kim Il‐Sung had pursued socialist ideas according to Marxism‐Leninism, he and his successor wanted to have their own way of developing political ideology. 4 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and Education for Critical Consciousness (1973). 5 The word “Yushin” means “to create the new,” even though the reality was totally different from the meaning. It gave exclusive power to the president, who would be able to enact emergent laws in order to control national security. President Park actually depended on its arbitrary power nine times until he was killed by his followers on October 26, 1979.

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

6 The term was popularized by Dom Hélder Câmara (1909–1999), Archbishop of

Recife and Olinda, one of the ecclesiastical founders of the Catholic Base Community Movement, an inspiration to activists, and a fierce opponent of the military regime (1964–1986) that exiled Freire as a subversive and a traitor [editor’s note]. 7 The rate of illiteracy was reckoned at 78.8% in a 1948 study, which was certainly inaccurately high as Japanese was the country’s official language during the colonial period. However, according to Jong‐Suh Kim, by the end of 1950s, the literacy rate in Korea had increased to 94% (Kim, 1959). Considering the fact that the Korean War occurred between the two indicators, the increase could be the most remarkable in world history. Since the 1960s, there has been no need for a literacy program on a national level. The government thought the literacy rate was satisfactory (Kim & Yoo, 2001). However, it was revealed that the latter indicator might be wrong, because independent research reported that the literacy rate was around 80% in the mid‐1980s (Hwang, 1982). 8 Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) was a Chicago community organizer and author of Rules for Radicals (1971). 9 Following the tradition of community organization movements from the late 1960s, the UIM aimed at organizing laborers through similar methods as those used by CO movements. In the urban‐industrial areas, CO leaders actively attempted to organize and raise laborers’ critical consciousness so they saw society from a more critical perspective. 10 There had been two military coups during the 1960s–1980s. Then, it was well accepted that these were known as military regimes rather than governments that were democratic. 11 This was written by the Council of Secondary School Teachers of YMCA Korea on May 10, 1986. Although the Mook event in 1985 was considered to have been carried out by some radical teachers, it diffused the need for change in schools and the school system among schoolteachers. 12 Composed of teachers, students, and parents.

References Apple, M. W. (1993). The politics of official knowledge: Does a national curriculum make sense? Discourse, 14(1), 1–16. Asanuma, S. (1986). The autobiographical method in Japanese education. The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 6(4), 5–26 Reprinted in Contemporary Curriculum Discourses, William Pinar (Ed.). New York: Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 151–167. Asanuma, S. (2015). Paulo Freire and revolutionary practice of a Japanese educator. In Annual Report of Study of Education 2014–2015: Vol. 34 (pp. 1–14). Tokyo: Tokyo Gakugei University. Baudrillard, J. (1984 [1981]). Simulacres et simulation (Akiko Takehara, Japanese Trans.). Tokyo, Japan: Hosei Daigaku Pub. Bergson, H. (1951). Laugh (1976 Japanese translation). Tokyo: Iwanami. Chang, C. W. (2009). Voices of the oppressed in higher education: A case study of two‐year junior college students in Taipei, Taiwan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

187

188

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

Chen, H. W. (2016). Conscientization of multicultural consciousness for pre‐service teachers in remote elementary school remedial program. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Tung‐Hua University, Haulien County, Taiwan. Chen, L. L. (2008). A study of verbal interactions between teachers and low achieving students in class in junior high school: Focused on Paulo Freire’s dialogic pedagogy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Cheng, C. F. (2015). Arts revival classroom: Practice of teaching through interaction. Unpublished master’s thesis, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taipei City, Taiwan. Cheng, Y. P. (2013). The class culture analysis of old kindergartens in the disadvantage community: Viewpoint of critical pedagogy. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Chengchi University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Chuang, S. M. (2014). The study of student life experience of technical education program in junior high school: Perspectives of critical pedagogy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Kaohsiung Normal University. Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (2nd ed., with an afterword and an interview with Michel Foucault). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freire, P. (1979 [1970]). Pedagogia do oprimido (Yusaku Ozawa, Akira Kusuhara, et al., Trans.). Tokyo: Aki Shobo. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness: Vol. 1. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Freire, P. (1999). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Guo, S. H. (2016). An action research on teaching critical thinking by applying “flipped classroom” to 4th graders: A case study in social studies. Unpublished master’s thesis, Ming‐Chuan University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Han, S. (2001). Issues on popular education. The formation and development of popular education. (pp. 75–196). Seoul: Kyoyukkwahaksa. Huang, H. L. (2012). No surrender! A reflection on practices in the anti‐oppression movement of the occupational injured workers. Unpublished master’s thesis, Shih‐Hsin University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Huang, H. W. (2011). An action research on applying the dialogue teaching program in general education in university. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Tung‐Hua University, Hualien City, Taiwan. Hung, S. L. (2006). A study on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy: Junior high school Chinese teachers’ critical consciousness of curriculum. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Chung Cheng University. Chiayi County, Taiwan. Hwang, J. (1982). Current status and problems of social education. Private Education (Sahak), 22, 36–41. Hwang, M. (2000). A comparison of human liberation education between Paulo Freire and Dong‐Hwan Moon. In Christian education (pp. 1–70). Suwon, Korea: Hanshin University. Jung, H. (1999). A study on learning experience of homeless after losing a job. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Seoul National University. Ke, W. C. (2013). Research on self‐filming by female immigrants from Southeast Asia: Learning process and self‐representation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Kaohsiung Normal University. Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. Kim, J. (1959). A survey of the illiterate, December 31 of 1959. Research report: Vol. 5. Seoul: Central Institute of Education.

Freirean Ideas and Practice in Asia

Kim, S. (1973). New challenges of Christian education from the perspective of Paulo Freire. In Christian education (pp. 1–74). Suwon: Hankook University of Theology. Kim, K.‐S., & Yoo, S.‐S. (2001). Illiteracy eradication movement in Korea during the U.S. military occupation, 1945‐1948. In Research on literacy education in Korea. Seoul: Kyoyookbook. Lacan, J. (1987). In J. A. Mirere (Ed.), Mental disease (Japanese translation). Tokyo: Iwanami. Lee, C. T. (2015). Is it the correct trend of multi‐entrance system? Lee: don’t torture young generation, change back to the uni‐entrance system. Retrieved from https://www.thenewslens.com/article/14641 Lee, G. (1992). Culture circle and basic Christian community as the realization of conscientization. In Christian education (pp. 1–89). Seoul: Yonsei University. Lee, P. S. (2012). Voicing/organizing/movement: A study on grassroots media by marriage migrants. Unpublished master’s thesis, Shih Hsin University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Lee, S., Choi, Y., & Kim, Y. (1998). The analytic study of the process of educational reform in Korea. The Journal of Elementary Education, 12(2), 187–210. Lee, T. J. (2006). Study of reconstruction of Freire’s idea of critical consciousness and its practice experiences at community universities. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Cheng Chi University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Lee, Y. L. (2016). Between acting and realities: Towards a self‐reflexive practice of people’s theater. Unpublished master’s thesis, Shih‐Hsin University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Lee, Y. W. (2004). Paulo Freire’s dialogical pedagogy and its transformation. Unpublished master’s thesis, National University of Tainan, Tainan City, Taiwan. Lee, U. (2000). An analysis of conscientization in the history of Korean peasants movements: From the perspective of Paulo Freire. In Christian education (pp. 1–83). Seoul: Korea Presbyterian University. Lin, B. W. (2009) Praxis and positions of social activists’ participating in Community Universities. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Kaohsiung Normal University. Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. Lin, K. Y. (2010) Discourse, power, destigmatization: The investigation on the practice of critical identity curriculum. Unpublished master’s thesis, Tzu‐Chi University, Hualien County, Taiwan. Lin, Y. H. (2007). The identity formation of “playgirls” and its implication on education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Man‐Hee (1995). Popular education toward a new way. (pp. 1–26). Korea: Anyang. Masuda, S. (2001). Waratte nobasu kodomono chikara (Growing children with laughing). Tokyo: Shufunotomo‐sha. Moreland, R., & Lovett, T. (1997). Lifelong learning and community development. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 16(3), 201–216. Muchaku, S. (1951). Yamabiko Gakko (Echo School). Tokyo: Iwanami. Ni, C. H. (2015). Future citizens, participate now! Political participation experiences of Taipei high school students. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Noh, I. (2000). A study on establishment and ideological directions of adult education [Sahoe Kyoyukhak] in Korea. Unpublished dissertation, Seoul National University.

189

190

Chen‐Wei Chang, Sung Sang Yoo, and Shigeru Asanuma

Page, J. (1994). In S. Fischer, & J. J. Rotemberg (Eds.), The East Asian miracle: Four lessons for development policy. NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1994: Vol. 9 (pp. 219–269). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. PEPE. (1999). What is popular education? Retrieved from http://pepe.org/subdir/ poped.html Prajuli, P. (1986). Grassroots movements, development discourse and popular education. Convergence: An International Journal of Adult Education, 19(2), 29–40. William, P. (1976). Currere: Toward reconceptualization. In Curriculum theorizing (pp. 396–414). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan. Shih, Y. H. (2005). Paulo Freire’s theory of conscientization and its implications on moral education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Shin, B. (1992). Christian popular education by Dong‐Hwan Moon: In the comparison with pedagogy by Paulo Freire. In Christian education (pp. 1–84). Suwon, Korea: Hanshin University. Torres, C. (2014). First Freire: early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Wang, F. H. (2014). Teacher’s image in the post teacher labour union era: No longer the divine image, yet still the model of aspiration. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Chi Nan University, Nantou County, Taiwan. Wang, C. R. (1990). Study of Freire’s critical adult teaching model. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Wen, C. Y. (2002). Applying Paulo Freire’s theories to education reform in Taiwan: An experiment at a high school teachers’ workshop. Unpublished master’s thesis, Shih‐Hsin University, Taipei City, Taiwan. Wu, P. M. (2018). The new growing number of community universities. Young people are attracted to take curriculum at community universities. Retrieved from https://udn.com/news/story/6928/3423623?from=udn_mobile_indexrecommend Yang, S. T. (2016). The oppressive experiences of three Southeast Asian immigrant women. Unpublished master’s thesis, Providence University, Taichung Coty, Taiwan. Yoo, S. S. (2007). Freirean legacies in popular education. KEDI Journal of Educational Policy, 4(2). Yoo, S. S. (2008). Democratization during the transformative times and the role of popular education in the Philippines and Korea. Asia Pacific Education Review, 9(3), 355–366. Yoon, J. (2000). Unconstitutionality of prohibition from extracurricular lecture and normalization of school education. KEDI (Korea Education Development Institute) Forum of Educational Policy, Seoul, Korea.

Videotapes Masuda, Shuji. (2002). A dancing poems classroom [Videotape]. NHK TV. Maggie, Shiro. (2004). Yokoso Senpai (Welcome our alumna) [Videotape]. NHK TV.

191

10 Freire in China Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma

Freire “Came” to China Although Paulo Freire had become a world‐renowned educator in the 1960s and 1970s, Freire was not well known in China until the 1990s when his educational ideas and practices introduced by Chinese educational scholars. Freire “came” to China, opening up a new perspective on foreign education for China, demonstrating a distinctive educational concept with developing countries’ characteristics. As we know, China’s reform and opening up began in the 1980s. Before that, China knew little about foreign countries (except the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the socialist countries) and knew less about the remote Latin American countries. After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, it began to quickly build a socialist country and had long taken the Soviet Union as a model for development. After the Sino‐Soviet split in the 1960s, the Chinese government began to turn its attention to Western capitalist countries. In 1964, China State Council requested the establishment of some institutions to study foreign counties in major Chinese universities. Three main research institutions on foreign education were established by Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University, and Northeast Normal University. However, more than a year after the establishment of these research institutes, the “Cultural Revolution” broke out in 1966. Therefore, the study of foreign education was also suspended. After the Cultural Revolution (which lasted for 10 years) ended, the original system of foreign research institutions was restored. China has increased its efforts to learn and study foreign issues and promoted the development of research on foreign education since the reform and opening up began in the 1980s. It can be said that Freire “came” to China through Shanghai and researchers from the Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University. Shanghai is China’s largest city and has been a foreign trade port since the 1840s, and it gradually became the most prosperous port and economic and financial center in the Far East and an international metropolis in Asia. Due to its

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

192

Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma

unique geographical location and cultural characteristics, Shanghai has become an important city for the introduction and integration of foreign ideas and cultures and the promotion of East–West exchanges. Living in this internationalized and open city, the researchers from the Institute of International and Comparative Education (IICE) at East China Normal University have undertaken the major task of studying education in Western Europe and North America and later began to pay attention to the study of education in developing countries. The study of Latin American education is a new area in the field of China’s comparative education. China’s comparative education research has mainly focused on education in developed countries since the 1980s, focusing on understanding, learning, and introducing advanced educational philosophies and practices in developed countries. In the 1990s, Chinese comparative education scholars saw that there are many aspects in developing countries that can learn from, so they began to strengthen research on education in developing countries. Researchers from the IICE have basically mastered one or two foreign ­languages that include English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish, and so on. Zhicheng Huang, a Spanish‐speaking researcher (who graduated from Shanghai International Studies University, majoring in Spanish language and ­literature), took up the task of studying Latin American education responsibly. Professor Huang studied at the University in Chile for 3 years in the 1980s; then he went to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in the 1990s and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain as a visiting scholar for 1 year in 2005. While studying in Chile, Huang read the main works of Paulo Freire. Freire’s thoughts and theories made a deep impression on him, which led to the later focus on the study of Freire. When Freire passed away in 1997, Professor Huang was a visiting scholar at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He happened to attend a grand remembrance of Freire held by the UNAM and deeply felt the reverence for Freire in Mexican education. The atmosphere of the meeting was solemn and a large portrait of Freire with a beard was hung on the curtain. In the process of remembrance, the speaker kept looking at Freire’s portrait. Sometimes it was like he couldn’t help having a friendly conversation with Freire; sometimes he seemed to be swearing excitedly to Freire. The heart is so devout that it moved the whole audience (Huang, 2003). What makes these Latin American scholars so emotional? Where is the charm of Freire? With these questions, Huang began collecting literature and conducting investigations in Mexico to do a systematic study on Freire’s ideas, theories, and practices. He introduced Freire to China, promoted the propagation of Freire’s educational philosophy in China. By doing this, China’s educators learned about Freire and his education ideas, and Freire’s educational thought also ­contributed to China’s education reform and development accordingly.

The Spread of Freire’s Thoughts in China Freire’s thoughts spread widely after he was introduced to China, primarily in three ways: first, letting more people understand and learn Freire’s educational thought by the publication of books and papers; second, spreading Freire’s ideas about school reform through classroom teaching and in‐service training for

Freire in China

teachers and administrators in primary and secondary schools; and third, facilitating the implementation of Freire’s concept of liberating education in the schools through curriculum reform. The Publication of Books and Papers Although there were sporadic articles introducing Freire in China before the 1990s, it is Huang who first conducted a more comprehensive and systematic study on Freire. In 1997, Huang wrote four papers on Freire published in the Journal of Foreign Education, one of China’s major academic publications on foreign education. The titles of these four papers are as follows: The Background of Paulo Freire’s Educational Thought, Journal of Foreign Education, 1997(3); Paulo Freire’s Early Liberating Education Practice in Brazil, Journal of Foreign Education, 1997(4); Paulo Freire’s Liberating Education Theory, Journal of Foreign Education, 1997(5); Paulo Freire’s Recent Education Practices in Africa, Journal of Foreign Education, 1997(6); In 2003, Huang published Pedagogy of the Oppressed—A Study on Freire’s Theories and Practices of Liberating Education (Beijing: People’s Education Press). This is the earliest and groundbreaking work on Freire’s educational ideas and practices in China. In addition, some research on Freire was included as a book chapter in Huang’s published works, such as: Freire’s Educational Theory and Practice, Education of Brazil (chapter  5), Changchun: Jilin Education Press, 2000. Liberating Education Trends, The Path of Western Educational Thought—An Overview of International Educational Thoughts (chapter 12), Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 2008. Liberating Education, New Thought and Theories of International Education (chapter 7), Shanghai: Shanghai Education Press, 2009. Besides, Huang also published several papers on Freire in various journals in China: A Review of Freire’s Teaching by Dialogue, Global Education, 2001(6). Commentary on Freire’s Liberating Education Curriculum Construction, Global Education, 2003(2). Courses Constructed on an Interdisciplinary Approach to Generative Themes— Freire’s New Interdisciplinary Curriculum Plans, Global Education, 2003(3). On the Practical Significance of Freire’s Liberation Education Theory, Foreign Education Research, 2003(7). Liberating Education—The path of Latin American Education, Chinese Ethnic Education, 2005(3). It can be said that Huang from East China Normal University played a very important role in introducing Freire to China. He expanded Freire’s influence in China through the publication of papers and books, through inservice training and classes for teachers and graduate students, and through attending national or international academic conferences in Shanghai and somewhere else.

193

194

Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma

Besides Huang, other Chinese scholars did research on Paulo Freire and translated Freire’s books from English to Chinese: Zhang Kun (2008), Education Is Liberation: A Study on Educational Thought of Freire, Fuzhou, Fujiang Education Press (A book based on the author’s doctorate thesis) Paulo Freire, translated by Gu Jianxin, Zhao Youhua, and He Shurong (2001), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Shanghai, East China Normal Press. Daniel Skugelunsic, translated by Zhou Qiuxia and Yexin (2016), Paulo Freire, Haerbin, Hei Long Jiang Education Press. So far, there are two books, three Chinese translations of Freire’s works, two doctoral dissertations, 31 master’s thesis papers, and 189 papers on Freire published in China. The number of articles involving Freire in Chinese various magazines is countless. This shows that Freire has indeed “come” to China. The Development of Courses and Teacher Training The traditional mission of East China Normal University is teachers’ preparation and training. It not only carries out preservice teachers preparation but also provides teachers inservice training. In addition, there is a National Training Center for Principals of Middle Schools under the Ministry of Education on campus. Therefore, Freire’s ideas have been widely disseminated through formal courses at universities and inservice training courses for teachers and principals. Attendance at National and International Seminars The First International Symposium on Critical Education was held by Northeast Normal University in Changchun in 2015. Huang made a report titled “The Practical Significance of Freire’s Critical Educational Thoughts to China’s Education Reform” at this symposium. Huang also attended the International Symposium on Comparative Education held in Mexico in 2016. He gave a speech titled “The Achievements of Shanghai’s Education Reform” that linked Freire’s thoughts to the impact of Shanghai’s education reform.

Freire’s Influence in China Freire’s influence continued to expand after he came to China. The impact of Freire in China is mainly reflected in three aspects: impact on educational thought, on curriculum reform, and on teaching reform. Impact on Educational Thought China has a 5,000‐year history and also has a long tradition of education. The traditional Chinese educational thought is so deep rooted that Confucius’ educational thought still deeply influences modern Chinese education. The Chinese educational tradition has both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, many

Freire in China

efforts have been taken to try eliminating the defects in traditional education during Chinese education reform. Among these defects, the major one is education for examination, through which the main goal of teaching and learning is to pass exams. What’s worse, the standard for measuring education quality is the number of students admitted to universities. As Freire’s educational ideas are extensive and profound, many of them are worth learning. For example, Freire proposes that education should aim at cultivating critical consciousness (conscientização); he thinks education must be linked with the liberation of the people and the cultivation of their critical consciousness. Freire reveals to the public the characteristics of traditional education under the dominant Brazilian culture. He believes that traditional education is a kind of domesticating education, purpose of which is to domesticate people to be consistent with existing systems and cultures, that is, to train people without critical awareness and creativity (Torres, 1978). At the same time, Freire also criticizes the traditional pedagogical approach as the “banking method” and ­lecture‐style teaching and proposes “liberating education” and “teaching by dialogue” accordingly (Freire, 1970, p. 73). These educational thoughts triggered new thinking and criticism of traditional education by Chinese education scholars. In China’s long history of education, one of the basic characteristics of education is the emphasis on the transmission of knowledge. It forms an education for examination, in which teachers are responsible only for imparting knowledge, students can learn only passively, and test scores mean everything. This kind of education does not encourage students to give different opinions on the knowledge taught by teachers, nor will it cultivate critical thinking. Traditional teaching is teacher centered, which means teachers care only about their own lectures in the classroom and ignore students’ different learning needs. This is just as Freire clearly reveals: teacher is the subject, student is the object. There is no dialogue or communication between teachers and students. This kind of education is like a banking method, in which the student is the account and the teacher is the depositor. The more deposits in student accounts, the less critical their consciousness (Freire, 1970). There has been widespread thinking and discussion among Chinese teachers to examine Chinese traditional education according to Freire’s liberating education concept. It is worth noting that critical thinking has now become a basic competence universally recognized by the international education community. Without critical thinking and innovation, students will not have the capacity for sustainable development, regardless of how good the performance of Chinese students in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Therefore, the cultivation of students’ critical thinking has been one of the basic requirements in the reformed outline of China’s education development. Should education be teacher centered or student centered? Although the student‐centered approach is more popular in the international community, Freire believes that both teachers and students are subjects and that the object is the world that needs understanding and transformation correspondingly (Freire, 1970). From this point of view, Chinese teachers are aware of the relationship between teachers and students in the process of teaching and students’ subjectivity

195

196

Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma

in learning. And they gradually formed the view of “dual‐subject,” that is, teachers and students are both subjects in school teaching. However, Chinese teachers still advocate the importance of teachers’ leading role in this dual‐subject teaching process. Impact on Curriculum Reform China has carried out curriculum reforms since 2000. Prior to this, the curriculum of Chinese schools was all arranged and formulated by the Ministry of Education. That is, a unified set of teaching materials was used throughout the country, without taking into account the differences between places and schools. So the new curriculum reform policy divides the national primary and secondary school curriculum into three levels: national curriculum, local curriculum, and school curriculum. The national curriculum is developed by the Ministry of Education, using uniform standards; local and school curriculum are developed by provinces and schools according to their own features respectively. The purpose of this curriculum reform is to decentralize the rights to curriculum development so that it can be more adaptable and conducive to different situations in places and schools. In the course of developing the school curriculum, Freire’s generatives themes are appreciated by Chinese teachers. Freire believes that the content of education comes from the real world, so the content of the curriculum can be constructed on this basis. When designing course content, one must choose current, realistic, and specific situations that can reflect people’s wishes. Then, putting these situations as questions to people and challenging them, so they can respond to it positively (Freire, 1970). During the designing of their own school curriculum, many Chinese schools have referred to some examples of foreign school curriculum development, including Freire’s generatives themes. The design of school‐based curriculum in many Chinese schools is based on the traditions and characteristics of local schools and the students. The course content is constructed on interdisciplinary generative topics and forms a school‐based curriculum that has its own characteristics and adapts to students’ different developments. It is very common that Chinese schools use generative topics to develop curriculum content. This has also become a major feature of Chinese curriculum reform. Impact on Teaching Reform Because of the deep influence of traditional education, Chinese teaching has long been dominated by lecture style. When Freire’s teaching by dialogue was introduced to China, China was implementing teaching reforms. The novel ideas and methods of dialogue teaching immediately attracted the attention of the Chinese education community. Freire’s dialogue teaching is based on equal, two‐way communication between teacher and student. Dialogue teaching is a kind of democratic spirit, which helps to cultivate students’ critical thinking and innovation. Dialogue teaching emphasizing questions, dialogue, and communication highlights a value orientation of education: democracy and equality. Questioning generates

Freire in China

thinking, which can create dialogues; and dialogues lead to communication, which can bring cooperation. Only when teachers and students cooperate effectively can the teaching task completed. The biggest difference between lecture teaching in traditional education and dialogue teaching in liberating education is the former advocates that teacher’s authority is established by ­disseminating fixed knowledge; the latter requires that teachers and students discuss and study together and recognize, reveal, criticize, and reform the real world jointly (Shor & Freire, 1987). Chinese schools mainly use Freire’s dialogue teaching to reform lecture‐style teaching in traditional education. This kind of democratic, equal, interactive, and mutually encouraging dialogue teaching method has been accepted by the majority of Chinese teachers. It has also been used in a large number of teaching practices in schools and has made some achievements.

Freire Is Still “Living” in China Freire experienced a life of fighting for the ideals of democratic society and public education. As Freire said: “I never stopped fighting. I will strive to fight for democracy and the education of the people wherever I am” (Freire, 1993, p. 140). Freire’s life is a mixture of great and ordinary experiences. When asked about his evaluation of himself, Freire said frankly: “I think I can get such evaluation after I die: ‘Paulo Freire is a living person. He has the pursuit of love and knowledge, so he understands the existence of life and humanity. He is alive, loving and constantly exploring. He is a man with a strong curiosity’. This is what I hope to evaluate my life, even if all my education discourses no longer draw people’s attention” (Freire, 1993, p. 136). Although Freire’s hometown was far away from China and he had never been to China, Freire’s thoughts still came to China, which aroused the attention and concern of the Chinese education community. Some basic research on Freire has been carried out and some papers and books about Freire published by Chinese scholars; some curriculum and teaching reform based on Freire’s educational ideology have also been implemented in Chinese schools and made significant achievements. In the future, Freire will still “live” in China. This is because Zhicheng Huang, professor of the Institute of International and Comparative Education, East China Normal University, is preparing to establish the Paulo Freire Institute (PFI) in China, which will develop a cooperative research relationship with the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Paulo Freire Institute. It will join the “PFI Movement” headed by Carlos Alberto Torres, director of the PFI at UCLA. This will gradually strengthen the cooperation and exchanges of research on Freire between China and the international and expand Freire’s influence in the world. It can thus be seen that Freire “came” to China, influencing China, and will still “live” in China and continue to influence the reform and development of Chinese education.

197

198

Zhicheng Huang and Qing Ma

References Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogía del oprimidos. S.A. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York: Continuum. Torres, C. A. (1978). La praxis educativa de Paulo Freire. (pp. 114–119). S.A. Mexico: Editores Genika. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation. (pp. 99–108). South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Zhicheng, H. (2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed – A study on Freire’s theories and practices of liberating education. Beijing: People’s Education Press.

199

11 Reading Freire in the Middle East Vision 2030 and the Reimagining of Education in Saudi Arabia Jevdet Rexhepi

Education is not the key to transformation, but transformation is in itself educational. —Freire, 1990

Introduction The insights of Paulo Freire on popular education’s emancipatory potential, since the debut of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in the late 1960s, continue to inspire practitioners and inform a range of scholarship.1 The intervening years have witnessed a variety of practical applications of Freirean pedagogy in developed/ developing countries, in social movements, by expanding conceptual horizons in various academic disciplines, and we see its continued outward popularity in the expanding literature2 and the Freirean institutes that have opened in universities across the globe.3 In short, the legacy of Freire in the realms of popular education and critical pedagogy remains vibrant. Yet, much of the extant work pertaining to and/or inspired by Freire has been performed in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The field is notably bereft of study4 on the relevance and implications of Freire in the Middle East.5 This represents a specific gap in understanding the potential for reinvention of Freirean pedagogy and critical literacy, in a region with immense ethnoreligious, sociocultural, geopolitical, economic, and historical significance. As a contribution to addressing this research gap, this chapter briefly explores the relevance and implications of Freirean pedagogy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (SA), a key Arab and global Sunni Muslim polity, in the context of its Vision 2030 social‐ economic reform. I provide a kind of preliminary guidance pertaining to Freire’s theoretical and practical cachet in this Middle Eastern nation, noting difficulties but also possibilities.

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

200

Jevdet Rexhepi

SA remains (along with Egypt) the most important Middle East Arab (and arguably, the key Sunni Muslim) nation for several reasons. First, there is the country’s importance as the Custodian of Islam’s Two Holy Houses (Makkah and Madinah).6 With the influence of its elite Islamic scholarship, the financial resources it has to propagate Islam, and its service to millions of annual hajj and umrah pilgrims,7 SA unequivocally sets the tone for Islam globally. The position of SA in this regard cannot be underestimated. Second, SA possesses enormous economic and geopolitical influence. It is the world’s largest oil producer (13% of the daily global supply) and in recent years has become a leader in sustainable technology (desalination, solar, wind, and arid farming techniques). SA is prepping to launch the largest initial public offering in history with a 5% placement of Aramco. SA likewise represents the vanguard of Sunni Muslims in the Middle East, who face an expansionist‐minded Khomeinist Iran (representing Islam’s Shia minority). Along with Israel, SA remains a key U.S. ally in a volatile Middle East.8 Third, SA is attempting to “ride the tiger of modernity,”9 as many others before have tried and failed.10 What is different is the Saudis are not pushing a simple top‐down imitation of foreign forms, a sort of Herodian method à la Ataturk or Egypt’s Albanian Khedive Mehmet Ali. The momentous top‐down/ bottom‐up process in SA resembles acculturation (not assimilation). Vision 2030 aims to strike a balance between Islam and traditional culture and values, with partial transformation of the res publica with non‐Islamic (neoliberal) features, but it is doing so on its own terms: “Our vision is a strong, thriving and stable Saudi Arabia…with Islam as its constitution and moderation as its method” (Council of Economic and Development Affairs, 2016, p. 7). One of my students replied to me that Saudis want to modernize their nation not because they are dissatisfied or embarrassed with it but rather because they love it. Similar to other contexts, time will show how the rhetoric of reform measures up to the reality.

Chapter Outline I begin with a discussion on my development and use of an Islamic analytical optic to interrogate the subject.11 I demonstrate my rationale for its validity, in terms of its explanatory, practical, and normative scope and because Islam remains central to individual and collective daily lives in SA, including in the social contract between ruler and ruled.12 Next, I provide a brief historical background of SA and an overview of its higher education sector, from inception to today. Later, I probe the nature of SA’s latest and arguably most sweeping reform in its history, Vision 2030. I present a summation of the main internal factors driving reform, along with some predominant external trends. As noted, I close by highlighting potential impediments to success for the educatory transformation vis‐à‐vis Vision 2030 but also areas of possibility. This leads to my critical comparative look at the relevance of some theoretical and practical elements of Freirean pedagogy in SA, with related ideas from the Persian Muslim theologian and philosopher, Al‐Ghazali. Based on my attempt to

Reading Freire in the Middle East

ascertain the relevance of Freirean pedagogy in Muslim SA, to provide edifying context I review some similarities (and differences) in education theory and practice between the two but with a few caveats. First, the temporal separation between them of a millennium may invite charges of anachronism. This charge seems less than durable, considering scholars unavoidably stand on the shoulders of giants who came before. With the possible exception of Ibn Khaldun who came centuries after, Al‐Ghazali offers an elaborate, systematic, and durable Islamic theory of education, which influences how Muslims today engage the fundaments of religious/nonreligious sciences. Second, from an orthodox Islamic perspective there are differences in worldview and ideology, that is, SA’s Islam and the blend of Catholicism, Marxism, and liberation theology informing Freire.13 It raises an interesting question: can one disassociate certain theoretical‐practical elements from an individual’s corpus of work deemed practical for use in other contexts (i.e., critical literacy not grounded in an a priori assumption of a kind of master–slave dichotomy)? I see this pragmatically. For example, one can be fundamentally opposed to a scholar on 90% of matters, but this does not confer simply dismissing or ignoring them. They form part of the intellectual landscape, with history and constituents. More edifying is to critically read their work, locate ideas or techniques that may offer realistic traction in and ultimately help benefit one’s field or country of study, and thus seek an impetus toward refinement (perhaps even of one’s own assumptions). Third, there is the perhaps controversial use of Al‐Ghazali, theologian, and Sufi, in the context of Hanbalite SA. I expand on my rationale for why Al‐ Ghazali is actually a relevant comparative choice, in light of SA’s push for a “pre‐1979 Islam.”14 Owing to the space limitations of a book chapter, this represents a very brief treatment of a topic that demands a fuller exposition. This situates the discussion on Freire’s relevance to education in SA. Approaching this in the context of a Muslim Middle East nation meant proceeding with an appreciation for standpoint and thus noting SA’s resounding Islam‐ based perspective. Not doing so, or for that matter probing ideological and perhaps even contextual differences that may have hindered prior work on Freire in the Middle East (i.e., Riyadh, SA 2018 is not Recife, Brazil 1963), would in the words of Dorothy Smith amount to a “peculiar eclipsing.” Despite ideological differences, a remarkable nexus in purpose seems to be emerging, in the case of an Islamic articulation of educational philosophy drawn in this case from Al‐Ghazali and elements of Freirean pedagogy (i.e., critical literacy and seeking the best societal possible outcomes). Additionally, SA’s attempt to pursue neoliberal reform, replete with its own set of valuations, might be profitably interrogated using forms of Freirean critical literacy. Moreover, active learning, dialogue, and forms of critical literacy imparted to Saudi university students can provide a tempering long‐term effect, fostering critical independent thinkers who can succeed for themselves and for their nation. As this chapter discusses possibilities, and reimagining Freire, I endeavor to show how and why his pedagogy is relevant in SA. I end with a brief narrative recounting of a teaching experience of mine last semester. Although not a clinical delivery of Freirean pedagogy, I believe it amounted to a reinvention in a somewhat

201

202

Jevdet Rexhepi

restricted pedagogical environment. It demonstrates how a creative and sensitive pedagogy, in my case pursued in a variation on a classroom space, helped students (and their professor) cultivate dialogue and critical forms of literacy through active learning.

Methodology and Disclaimer This chapter benefits from a review of existing open source literature on higher education in SA. It is by no means exhaustive. It is a point of departure for future critical analyses of the Middle East,15 in terms of critical pedagogy, global citizenship education (Torres, 2017), and exploration of crucial youth and gender issues (Herrera & Bayat, 2010; Zine, 2004, 2008). The chapter rests on a few interlinked dimensions. First, it builds on my work since 2016 as an assistant professor at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University,16 a private royal institution in SA’s Eastern Province. This has afforded me an invaluable insider’s view of SA higher education and exposure to a rich sociocultural and ethnoreligious mosaic. The exilic dimensions (Rexhepi, 2008) of my present work as expat professor influences greatly my pedagogy and perspectives on life. If I may repurpose Freire’s comment on social movements, that teachers should “expose themselves to the greater dynamism” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 37), I find freedom17 and empowerment in my hiatus from North America, finding myself thrust into the midst of a dynamic national movement for societal reinvention. Second, I am not a scholar of Islamic knowledge, an alīm. I do not lay claim to that rarified title. I am a humble student of knowledge who has pursued lifelong study of Islam for three‐plus decades in formal‐informal settings across the globe, with an emphasis on the policy and practice of education across Islamic history (Berkey, 1992; Hodgson, 1975; Stanton, 1990).18 Recent work as a social scientist with the U.S. Department of Defense (2011–2016) helped me further glean insights on the diversity and interdependence of the human domain in the Muslim Post‐Ottoman Space. Third, this chapter benefits from my decade‐plus experience working in the field of comparative international education. Trained as a comparativist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) (2006–2010), I have researched the impacts of globalization on higher education in Albania (2013), studied its effects on pedagogy in the United States (Weldon et  al., 2010), and served as program fellow with the UCLA Paulo Freire Institute (PFI), where I originally thought to research Freire’s relevance to higher education in Muslim nations.

Analytical Framework—Pointing to an Islamic Critical Theory When I considered what theoretical anchor to use for this chapter, I reflexively reached for critical theory. Indeed, I incorporated a variety of critical theorists in my book (Rexhepi, 2013), and thought their use here could provide a robust critical framework. This led to me thinking deeply on the importance of my own

Reading Freire in the Middle East

standpoint—scholar, American‐Albanian expat‐academic, and Muslim—but also that of the research subject country. Was holding SA up to scrutiny using a secular lens the only method of analysis? Did an Islamic lens exist? What would it look like? I considered the pros/cons of utilizing an Islamic analytical worldview to scrutinize SA, including objectivity. According to Boss, Doherty, LaRossa, Schumm, and Steinmetz (1993, p. 20), “Theorizing is the process of systematically formulating and organizing ideas to understand a particular phenomenon. Thus, a theory is the set of interconnected ideas that emerge from this process.” For the Frankfurt theorists (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972; Wiggershaus, 1995), a criterion for a critical theory is that it be explanatory, practical, and normative.19 In other words, it should (a) explain deficiencies in the current social reality, (b) identify actor(s) who can change it, and (c) provide norms for criticism and achievable goals for social transformation. In this vein, an Islamic analytical optic (an Islamic critical theory) can help (a) explore, explain, and understand human existence, meanings, and social trends; (b) locate agents who can articulate and drive change; and (c) analyze and deconstruct reality and point to achievable outcomes/solutions. For example, poorly performing areas of SA’s education system have been noted (National Commission for Academic Accreditation & Assessment [NCAAA], 2015).20 Second, students, parents, faculty, administrators, policymakers, and external actors, are variable agents of change.21 Third, this optic may attune to Islamocentric realities and nuances a secular optic may gloss over and/or problematize a priori (i.e., SA’s faith‐based ordering of society). An Islamic critical optic can permit us to critically deconstruct and assess the educational reality in SA and then seek to identify relevant methods to transform it. Thus, an Islamic critical theory, anchored in an Islamic worldview, can provide penetrating insights into the salience of education reform in SA and the relevance of Freirean pedagogy.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia It was not until 1932 that the modern Saudi state was established. King Saud had struck an alliance with Britain against the Ottomans and the Hashemite “King of the Hejaz” Sharif Hussein, uniting a concatenation of tribes threading across Hejaz and Nejd. The event forever changed the fortunes of the Saud clan and its allies. It followed two prior failed attempts to take power, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when Ottomans still had suzerainty over Makkah‐Madinah. SA granted an oil exploration concession to Standard Oil of California in 1933, and petroleum exports began in 1939. It was a global game changer. With the sea of oil resting under the sea of sand secured, SA established an enduring economic and political partnership with the United States. Flush with enormous capital afforded by its position as the global oil producer par excellence, and as Custodian of the Two Holy Houses, SA wielded vast regional and global influence. Wealth also enabled SA society to remain insulated and unaffected by forms of cultural imperialism. Yet, with the rise of globalization and increasing interdependence of nations in economic, political, sociocultural, and communicative terms, and the pressing militant Islamist threat represented by post‐1979

203

204

Jevdet Rexhepi

Khomeinist Iran, SA’s new generation of leaders saw the need to tap into dormant sectors of society and begin the grand tack from rentier state to a post‐oil economy. In order to make this transformative shift a reality, education as technique became an economic imperative.

Higher Education in Saudi Arabia Modern university education in SA began in 1957, with the establishment of King Saud University in Riyadh. Higher education expansion continued in the following decades, with a rapid growth in infrastructure and bureaucracy to service a growing population. The bureaucracy has consolidated in recent years, but new institutions with oversight power emerged, including the NCAAA and its National Qualification Framework,22 which authorizes new private institutions. Universities in SA are public and private, that is to say, state run and privately operated. Curriculum largely coheres with a U.S. and British standard, with some adhering to an Australian model. Classes are taught in English (Islamic Studies is the exception), and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses feature prominently. SA has poured enormous resources into creating world‐class institutions like the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).23 Today, SA has approximately 28 public universities, 10 private universities, and hundreds of colleges, including vocational and technical. Higher education enrollment capacity surged to 2.4 million in 2017, from 850 K in 2009.24 SA ranks 39th among 188 countries in the Human Development Index and is categorized in the high human development category and 47th in terms of quality of higher education and training respectively. Many higher education institutions have separate male and female campuses; for some Saudis, this strikes a balance between enabling access to schooling while maintaining cultural traditions and family values. Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University, a public women’s university in Riyadh, is the largest women‐only university in the world.25 An interesting aside is that prior to the twentieth century, education in equivalent pre‐SA Ottoman kuttabs and madrasas where nonreligious sciences like arithmetic and foreign language were also taught, was open to men and women (however segregated). This contrasted to Britain’s Oxford (a modern institution), which in the same period was male only. Thus, modernizing per Western standards meant SA had to effectively pursue retrograde action and remove women from schools.

Charting a New Path—Vision 2030 It is my pleasure to present Saudi Arabia’s vision for the future. It is an ambitious yet achievable blueprint, which expresses our long‐term goals and expectations and reflects our country’s strengths and capabilities; our real wealth lies in the ambition of our people and the potential of our younger generation. They are our nation’s pride and the architects of our future. (Council of Economic & Development Affairs [CEDA], 2016, p. 6)

Reading Freire in the Middle East

Vision 2030 intends to reduce SA’s oil dependence, diversify its economy, and develop its public sector; it as an “achievable” pathway to change, albeit an ambitious and imperfect one. Internal factors driving this reform include moving away from an oil‐based economy, privatizing government‐controlled sectors and businesses, addressing regional geopolitical pressures, reducing unemployment, and creating 1.2 million new jobs by 2022. External trends imbuing this effort are (apart from the aforementioned geopolitical forces), the neoliberal architecture of the vision, as well as globalization, internationalization, and in educatory terms, the reimagining of pedagogical and learning methods/outcomes geared toward market needs. Falling under the purview of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, the vision26 hinges on successful privatization of government‐controlled sectors like energy (Aramco), foreign direct investment (FDI), and harnessing human capital. The recognition of its youth demographic, comprising 60% females, presupposes the need to reorient and reinvent the education sector. US$50 billion has been reserved for education in the 2018 budget.27

Neoliberalism—the Right Fit for SA? The neoliberal model hardly needs any introduction at this point. At a fundamental level, it is about orienting people as citizens, or human capital, around market needs and making them useful contributors to the economy. According to a key premise of neoliberal reform, markets are more effective than governments in providing services, hence the push for privatization reforms. The basic neoliberal theory apropos education is that with targeted financial inputs, quality control, and methods of accountability (testing), standards in schools and the quality of human capital will improve in line with market needs and thereby lead to economic success. Producing graduates to compete in the knowledge economy and meet the demands of the local job market (Saudization) is a prominent goal of Vision 2030. Stromquist offers a mixed review of the implications of neoliberalism in higher education, seeing expansion of offerings and more access, with a downplaying of teaching as a core function, a constant hunt for revenue, stratification of institutions, and a growing contingent faculty (2018). This scenario has multiple implications for students and teachers. For example, excessive focus on performance can create an environment where rigor and deep knowledge make way for a results‐centric “teach to the test” paradigm. Students and teachers pay in terms of loss of knowledge and lack of job security. Further issues relate to student welfare, where underperforming students simply fall away. Will underperforming institutions, those likely populated by students of limited socioeconomic means, draw the same funding as higher performing ones? Who will make the funding decision, government or markets? Does a market‐oriented paradigm encourage or allow for the cultivation of critical thinking among students? Following the irrepressible logic of capital (where capital flows to where it can draw the highest return), SA has already faced the negative effects of brain drain. This deprives SA a return on significant scholarship investments to educate students overseas,28

205

206

Jevdet Rexhepi

it fails to diminish local knowledge and market gaps, and there is the lost prestige where graduates who finish Harvard slip off to a tech job in Palo Alto. The neoliberal turn can lead to other previously unforeseen ruptures in SA society and invite more systemic changes at the macro governmental level. The availability of more expensive, higher performing institutions with more prestige and stronger accreditation will create separation with those who cannot afford access. Likewise, despite the public corruption drive, as public sector concerns move into private hands, how will this affect quality and efficiency, and will a lack of oversight reintroduce corruption? The devolving of power to nonstate actors may also potentially diminish state authority and reorient power centers, in academe and beyond. These are important points for policy makers to consider.

Axis of Possibility—Reading Freire in the Middle East In this section, I discuss one of the essential axes of Freire’s thinking, pedagogy, contrasted with related educational ideas from the Muslim scholar Al Ghazali (1058–1111 ce). I chose Al‐Ghazali because of his towering status among ulema (scholars) and for his theory of education, which is one of the most extensive in the Muslim world. It also owes to Al‐Ghazali’s “conciliatory” Islam, which dovetails in spirit with what Crown Prince MBS aims to revert SA to. As reported from Riyadh by Martin Chulov for The Guardian: What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn’t know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it. (Chulov, 2017, para. 4) This potentially represents a historic break from the misery 60 years of failed reactionary militant Islamism, in all its sordid incarnations, has produced in the Middle East.29 We are simply reverting to what we followed—a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions. 70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and immediately. (Chulov, 2017, para. 5) MBS makes a powerful point and offers a realization of the “lost 30 years” many Saudis often describe in conversa tions. But in order to help tamp down passions across the region, SA needs to act quickly to counter the khawarij (renegade) trend in Islam while also providing a robust alternative to the Islamist’s siren call. In this vein, Abdal Hakim Murad of Cambridge University proposes a thoughtful embrace of and immersion in tradition by twenty‐first century Muslims. He argues that advancement in Islam is not a relentless push forward, often into the unknown, but rather a turning back (tawba) into the firmament of tradition, and thus security.30

Reading Freire in the Middle East

Potential Criticisms of Freire First, I address some criticisms of Freire through an Islamic optic, elements that might give Muslims pause regarding taking Freire on board. I articulate these based on my experience reading Freire, as a Sunni Muslim, and my belief one can utilize noncontradictory techniques outside one’s own tradition for the sake of transformational empowerment. As a preamble, I think a critical reading is something Freire himself would commend, that is, holding his ideas up to scrutiny to render their relevance in different times/spaces. The first point concerns the rendering of existential reality into a specific unit of analysis, or a binary dichotomy, from which the subsequent critique flows. Indeed, the title of Pedagogy of the Oppressed shows Freire frames (and prefers) one side of his dichotomy. Do all human relations fit an oppressor– oppressed matrix? Is it objective? Who defines the categories (is it up to an enlightened vanguard), and based on what standard/standpoint? Can individual or collective existence ever not connect with this binary/unit of analysis? Freire (1971) says: But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub‐oppressors.” The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity (p. 45). Is the oppressor always only the sole model available to the oppressed in terms of what it means to be a man? There is an interesting antecedent to this figuration from Ibn Khaldun, 600 years earlier. The similarities to Freire are striking: The vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive characteristics, his dress, his occupation, and all his other conditions and customs. The reason for this is that the soul always sees perfection in the person who is superior to it and to whom it is subservient. It considers him perfect, either because it is impressed by the respect it has for him, or because it erroneously assumes that its own subservience to him is not due to the nature of defeat but to the perfection of the victor. If that erroneous assumption fixes itself in the soul, it becomes a firm belief. The soul then, adopts all the manners of the victor and assimilates itself to him. This, then, is imitation…. (1967, p. 116) I am not negating the reality of structural oppression. Yet, there are many reasons why people might suffer outside of structural causes—natural disasters, long‐term illness, and civil war. The point is suffering (and oppression) can exist outside the confines of a structural theory of oppression, or at least those that may not fit a neat binary. Likewise, paradigms an outsider might deem oppressive (i.e., a particular monotheistic faith, absolute monarchy), can be enlightened and superior for citizens living in those paradigms. Is it for the outsider to assess

207

208

Jevdet Rexhepi

and judge indigenous truth claims, or further, to suggestively problem‐pose the inaccuracy of such claims and thus potentially risk distorting them? Another potential area of difficulty from an Islamic perspective seems to be the notion of the ontological vocation of the learner; for Freire, it is a secular process of becoming more human (1971). That the incomplete human must move toward freedom to achieve humanity invites questions about freedom; that is, freedom from what/for what. Freire provides an answer for the first (freedom from what he defines as cultures of injustice, ignorance, exploitation, fear, etc.), but the second is less clear. Why is it important we fight oppression, and to what end? Do terrestrial concerns (land) drive the impulse, tribal matters (nationalism), or the fair distribution of creature comforts? What moral‐ethical framework girds Freire’s ideas on humanity and this seminal vocation? Can Freire’s normative pedagogical worldview countenance a comprehensive monotheistic worldview? This vocational purpose of humans seems at odds with the Islamic conception. The Qur’an is emphatic: “I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me.”31 As Nofal notes (1993, p. 5), “For Al‐Ghazali, the purpose of society is to apply shari‘a, and the goal of man is to achieve happiness close to God. Therefore, the aim of education is to cultivate man so he abides by the teachings of religion, and is hence assured of salvation and happiness in the eternal life hereafter. Other worldly goals, such as the pursuit of wealth, social standing or power, and even the love of knowledge, are illusory, since they relate to the transient world.” In short, his own personal spiritual inclinations aside, Freire’s focus on humanization via conscientization appears removed in a practical sense from a spiritual or transcendent reality (central to Islam), in favor of secular (worldly) concerns or goals. This may be difficult for SA Muslims to countenance. Again, I raise these potential criticisms to help clarify where an orthodox Islamic perspective might diverge from Freire’s secular one. I also did it to highlight the commerce and perspectival connectivity between Freire and Al‐Ghazali. Considering Freire’s relevance to SA is crucial, because SA does function within an operative Islamic and sharia‐based paradigm,32 and as noted, Vision 2030 derives a similar impetus. The comparison of Al‐Ghazali with Freire is pertinent to contemporary SA in several ways.33 As noted, MBS has declared his intent to tack away from more reactionary and absolutist interpretations of the Islamic faith. The success of this islah, or renovation of Islam, as propounded in SA, has potentially enormous ramifications for peace and stability in the Middle East and globally.

Pedagogy in Freire and Al Ghazali The foundation of Freire’s pedagogy, which are anchored in his moral and ethical values and principles, is fundamentally an emancipatory project for both the student and teacher, and it extends to the wider community or society. This is similar in Islam to individual acts and those that extend to the ummah (community),34 for example, the zakat (purification), which has both a deep spiritual and earthly purpose, for the self and the ummah. What are the positive and negative meanings

Reading Freire in the Middle East

of pedagogy for Freire? Is his epistemological foundation compatible with an Islamic educational ethos? What elements of Freirean pedagogy might be ­relevant to SA? One of the most important things in tradition, and scholarship, is to define terms. In order to illustrate the perspectival differences of education concepts in Islam, as a kind of thought exercise, let us take the meaning of the word “education” itself. It derives from the Latin ex‐duco, generally translated as “to lead out.” This can be a tendentious point when considered in the domain of Islamic spiritual and intellectual thought, precisely because it involves rival meanings of what education is, what it is supposed to mean; more broadly, it draws in questions about the meaning of life/existence and thus the human ontological vocation. So, does education confer the inculcation or transfer of knowledge from outside and into the subject? Freire’s notion of banking education and Al‐Ghazali’s criticism of uncritical taqlid (imitation) in educatory matters, training, and to some degree in spiritual matters are similar. If education confers a kind of ex‐duco drawing out something from within the student subject, I again see ­parallels with Freire’s concept of critical consciousness, but in a deep Kantian self‐reflection (transcendental idealism). Froebel and to some degree Dewey likewise advocate a kind of drawing out the personality or substance of the students, rather filling them with data. Al‐Ghazali clings to the Islamic concept of fitra—the primordial self or religious nature that is present in all humans, though it can be covered over (kufr)—and thus what is drawn out and nurtured (through study and religious practice) is this essential luub (seed). Freire posits that education and learning extend far beyond a rote transfer of information from instructor to student: “knowledge is transferred to and deposited in the learner. This is a static, verbalized method, a concept of knowledge that ignores confrontation with the world as the true fount of knowledge” (1971). Banking education (where the student is an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the instructor) is clearly problematized. For Freire, the student is not a passive receptacle (neither for that matter is the teacher). Freire’s method of teaching, or pedagogy, is an active model based on self‐actualization, and dialogue between two contributory parties: teacher and student. Freire believes teachers must love their students, and teaching. They must grasp the importance of dialogue, listening to and closely observing their class: “Another fundamental aspect related to the early experiences of novice teachers, one teacher training programs should pay the closest attention to if they don’t already, is teachers’ preparation for ‘reading’ a class of students as if it were a text to be decoded, comprehended” (1998). The successful model for Freire is where the learner is able to gain critical consciousness of their position and perceive in a critical manner how power relations inflect this position and thus begin to sketch out mental maps of how they might positively confront and work to change this reality. In other words, there is freedom in critical literacy, or knowing, not in ignorance (passive or otherwise). Paulo articulates the dialectical nature of his method: Human beings know through a process that does not end in a cognizable object that can be communicated to others who are equally cognizant. Knowledge is therefore a process resulting from the continual interaction between human beings and their

209

210

Jevdet Rexhepi

surroundings (1971). Learning as a continuous process becomes problematized (defanged) if the student merely desires to mimic and/or attain the tools of those who oppress her/him. There is a distinction made, in terms of how the student (as oppressed) must distinguish her/himself from the oppressor. Like Freire, education goes beyond training the mind and a banking model of data accumulation for Al‐Ghazali. Education instead involves all aspects of the learner’s personality—intellectual, religious, moral, and physical. In a striking line in Al‐Mustafsa, Al‐Ghazali (1987) writes how the noblest knowledge is where reason and tradition are coupled. Thus, theoretical learning must connect with practical implementation, or praxis. True learning positively affects behavior, and students can make practical use of it (Ghazali 1993). Education is a richly conceived concept by Freire, with aesthetic, ethical, psychosocial, and political dimensions on both individual and collective levels, intimately linked to education’s transformative potentialities. Unlike Al‐Ghazali, Freire extends his theory to include critical critique of existential reality, with a presiding political quotient. In summary, Freire was a Christian educationalist who sought to link training, literacy, and politics. Al‐Ghazali was a more or less radical Muslim exegete and scholar who spent much time engaging opponents in key debates of his age (philosophy, Mu’tazila theology, Shiism, and Sufism), though he was also aware of the importance of politics and discusses this in the context of training. They both orient toward critical learning through dialogue, rigor, and reflective analysis. There is commonality in their preference for active teaching. Al‐Ghazali seems to incline to a hierarchy between teacher and student, doubtless a product of his age and seems more to do what matters of respect and decorum. What inclines them toward one another in a Freirean sense is how both seek to minimize the role of the teacher, so as not to impel a dominating presence in the learning exchange. There is solo refinement as student and teacher, but it is together as a contrapuntal symphony of parts that they ascend to new heights: “knowing is a social process, whose individual dimension, however, cannot be forgotten or even devalued. The process of knowing, which involves the whole conscious self, feelings, emotions, memory, affects, an epistemologically curious mind, focused on the object, equally involves other thinking subjects, that is, others also capable of knowing and curious. This simply means that the relationship called ‘thinking’ is not enclosed in a relationship ‘thinking subject—knowable object’ because it extends to other thinking subjects” (Freire, 1998, p. 92). What brought me to consider the relevance of Freire to SA, my current university teaching home, was my thinking deeply and contrapuntally about a Muslim nation actively assessing and confronting its own problems. Mohammed Arkoun was an influence in this regard (2003), whose work attempts to chart a path to rethink Islam based on a critical though expansive reading of tradition in the present age.35 Using Al‐Ghazali, who preceded Freire by 800+ years, was because of the fact that, as men of their age, they offered rigorous theories of education that have proved their vitality. With an eye on SA’s normative, sharia‐based Islamic society, I sought to highlight just a few of Freire’s ideas alongside Al‐ Ghazali’s in order to gain some theoretical insights on crossover potential. The few examples show there is consistent commerce between an Islamic philosophy

Reading Freire in the Middle East

of education and elements of Freire’s radical pedagogy. An ideal ex‐duco scenario would be where critical literacy implemented from a young age could help SA youth use their exceptional talents and skills to read their realities and find their individual and collective voices in order to foment a radical reappraisal of the reimagining of Saudi society. A more viable and pragmatic option is to consider how small‐scale but sustained reinvention of Freirean pedagogy in SA classrooms can demonstrate its viability, in terms of the cultivation of independent critical thinking students, in‐line with the goals of Vision 2030. In the context of a turbulent region broken apart first by the 2003 Iraq invasion, and since 2011 by devastating civil wars, coups, and expansion sectarian terror proxies, SA has avoided the wider Middle East’s descent into chaos and destruction. It has reacted boldly, by taking the opportunity to chart an ambitious development course to guide its nation through troubled waters. I see Saudi youth as the key to the success of this effort to renovate Saudi society. Freirean concepts like active learning, dialogue, and critical literacy are largely missing in the standardized curriculum here I am familiar with, and along with qualified, critical thinking teachers, they are essential elements in developing the human capital Vision 2030 seeks. Freire has applicability in SA, and as an anecdote in the final section shows, finding Freire in SA may come down to reinventing and implementing his ideas, in real‐time.

Discussion—Freire’s Relevance to SA and Vision 2030 Can a creative and critical reading of Freire’s pedagogical methods, like active learning, dialogue, and engendering critical literacy, empower Saudi youth? This was the simple initial question that provoked this brief chapter. I am aware the very premise I began with invites questions, if not perplexed stares: reading Freire and contemplating his relevance in the context of a Middle Eastern Arab Muslim monarchy pursuing neoliberal reform. I wondered what Freire would think. Would he find a sort of cherry picking of his ideas abhorrent? Doubtless, there is a line between reimagining and coopting. I suspect the young Freire, full of fire, ready to take on the Brazilian junta, might object. The Freire of the mid‐ 1980s onward, resting on the wisdom of decades, who witnessed firsthand the highs and lows of his struggle, victories and defeats, and contradictions, would not I think. I never met the man. But from what Dr. Torres has shared and what I’ve gleaned from his few interviews, I suspect Freire would see it as a pragmatic compromise, a modus vivendi—students would ultimately be the beneficiaries of at very least the exchange of knowledge, dialogue, and potentially, the awakening of an emancipatory critical literacy faculty. Focused on a post‐oil economy and reorienting toward a more tolerant and moderate Islamic path, SA’s Vision 2030 reform makes transforming education a priority. It is a multitiered agenda aimed at revitalizing teacher training and curricula, and moving beyond a rote learning‐banking model, that instead will produce critical thinking‐global citizens to compete in the knowledge economy and meet local market demands (Saudization). Yet, there are looming obstacles to reform: an entrenched poor work ethic, a crippling regulatory environment and

211

212

Jevdet Rexhepi

an overall distaste for change. The pragmatic MBS realizes economic renewal in the kingdom is doomed in the absence of a revitalized social compact between the government and Saudi citizens. As a Saudi colleague at my university confided to me: Our kids deserve and need a social life. What they have now is untenable. We educate them for the next life, maybe the most important thing, but what about this life? The Qur’an requires us to seek out and get our piece of dunya (the world). Entertainment, women driving, are just realities we need to accept and implement BUT! according to our own tastes. It takes time…Rome wasn’t built in a day (personal communication, May 12, 2018, Khobar, SA). Expanded entertainment offerings may have a simpler rationale (probably not unlike the assorted vices available in western countries). According to Karen House (2017), the Saudi government has sought to distract its citizens from the pain of change (and rising taxes) by opening hitherto banned entertainment options (movies, concerts, wrestling, etc.). Though not always in agreement with him, I feel Thomas Friedman puts it well: Perfect is not on the menu here. Someone had to do this job—wrench Saudi Arabia into the 21st century—and M.B.S. stepped up. I, for one, am rooting for him to succeed in his reform efforts.36 Considering SA’s very traditional and very youthful human terrain (two thirds of its 33 million are under 30), and its neoliberal reform trajectory (which I have reservations about), I see space for a creative cultivation of Freirean‐inspired pedagogy, critical literacy, active learning, and social engagement (these are directly mentioned in the Vision itself ); these might help remedy some current deficits. For example, SA has been grappling with a brain drain issue; in many cases local higher education is simply far below the standard students require, what society could benefit from, and what the market is seeking. For example, the King Abdulaziz Center for Teaching & Learning Development37 could implement Freirean‐inspired teacher‐training course pilot study to train faculty in (a) dialogue, (b) putting students at the center of learning, and (c) enhancing value by connecting learning to the existential reality of their lives. This could encourage Saudi youth to think creatively and critically about themselves and their dreams, and connecting to something larger than themselves could further help foster a stronger ethos of civic responsibility and promote concepts of global citizenship.

Freire Found in SA “Critical thinking, dialogue, and rigorous engagement with the material and your individual and collective realities.” I write these words in my course syllabi, and I ask my students at the beginning (and end) of the term what it means to them. In hindsight, this exercise is as much for me. I recall my experience as an

Reading Freire in the Middle East

undergraduate; drifting through each lecture, and sensing that teaching was not supposed to be the equivalent of bad performance art. From a place of conscious intersubjectivity, as professor, I want the technique to have meaning for my students. I try to connect learning to their lives. In other words, to put students as active learners at the center of the learning encounter has to be more than a theoretical platitude. Last December, I had rather innocently thrust my students to the center of what turned into a critical thinking (and I will say Freirean‐inspired) learning encounter, in a quite unorthodox (for SA) way. For final class presentations in a communications course, and to help break the monotony, I filed the class out into an open‐air seating area to deliver their polished oratory; it turns out, in full view of other students, and faculty.38 I did not plan on a viewing audience. I had tried to conduct class surreptitiously, no announcements, not wanting to drive my young charges into fits for having to deliver speeches in front of unexpectedly large audiences rather than our large though “cozy” class of 32. Then a wonderful thing happened. Students not my own came and sat down to listen. Two faculty also joined. My students did not seem bothered. It was a hot, windy day, not ideal for outdoor lounging, but inviting to the spirit. I sat under the relative shade of a date palm, observing. The café owner just inside our building decided to bring out free cookies. Time seemed to decelerate. There was no prompting from me to the students, who were smiling as usual, talkative, but focused. When one finished, words of encouragement, sporadic claps, and then the round of questioning for each speaker would start. The students were interrogating one another’s topics on their own terms. It was poignant, focused, and respectful, and the important point was that they perhaps unwittingly had themselves become the teachers. I was a bystander. So it went for the next hour. When a question came seemingly beyond the topic, eyes turned to me, and I quickly swatted it back into their court, where verbal deliberations and negotiations with this rebounded reality began anew. They were thinking critically, adducing if not the totality of their existential realities, then the moment we were all sharing together, at a university in Khobar. SA. I realized I was a learner that day as much as a facilitator. Part of me wondered if they would take whatever level of self‐empowerment or critical optic they had polished into lives beyond the relatively utopic confines of the university space. Then phones rang, texting began, and class was over. This anecdote brought to mind how active learning, dialogue, and forms of critical literacy à la Freire can be transmitted to learning environments in SA. It can happen by doing, through the connected efforts of teachers and students (and supportive administration). Thinking of the anecdote intensified some of the old questions on the purpose of education—if it is indeed a repository of the social fabric of a nation, will its marketization, tethered to the notion students as human capital exist to serve the economic well‐being of society, benefit the social roles‐lives of students? Is there a deeper purpose to it beyond assuaging market needs? In the context of SA, I posit some questions for future study: 1) Is technocratic quasi‐neoliberal reform contextually appropriate in SA? 2) Does the rhetoric of reform in SA speak to local needs and realities?

213

214

Jevdet Rexhepi

It is a critical time for SA, with lots of moving parts. Vision 2030 is not a deus ex machina. Saudis need to ride this tiger themselves. They have the momentum, and a wealth of resources. As related here, SA can benefit in their education project by taking on board some of the very practical yet radical pedagogical lessons of Freire, like active learning, dialogue, and critical literacy. If SA can dial in societal transformation that coalesces with Islam and local tradition and values, a dynamic and secure Arab‐Muslim nation in the heart of the Middle East is an achievable vision. Perhaps this will augur, beyond refinement, a true renaissance, with the pre‐1979 Islam Saudis will live and show to the world. In a turbulent age, the positive ramifications of that would be hard to overestimate. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave … —Thompson, (1971, p. 68)

Notes 1 See Gadotti (1994, 2008), Mayo (1997, 2001), Torres (1990, 1998, 2005), and

Torres & Morrow (2002).

2 Other authors in this volume (Gadotti, Brandão, Costa, Lownds, and Torres)

provide crucial discussion on some of the key social‐historical contexts of Freire’s earlier work in critical literacy. 3 See https://www.freire.org/about/network. 4 Lifelong Learning in Palestine (LLIP) is a notable exception (Silwadi & Mayo 2014). 5 The absence of research may owe to fundamental perceived contradictions between Marxist and Islamic philosophies of life, where Islam heavily inflects the societies in the region. Yet, the picture is more complex. Freire, despite Marxist ideological bearings, remained deeply moved by his own Catholic beliefs. 6 Hajj is a requirement for all able‐bodied Muslims with financial means to facilitate the journey. 7 Having visited Makkah for hajj, and umrah, I have witnessed firsthand the seamless logistical provision for and eminently caring handling of millions of pilgrims at the world’s largest annual religious pilgrimage. 8 Trump selected Saudi Arabia (SA) as his first overseas trip as U.S. president; it was a signal of the rekindled ties between the two nations (après Obama’s controversial pro‐Iran tilt), acknowledgment of the new power center in SA (most prominently the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, i.e., Muhammad Bin Salman [MBS]), and recognition of SA’s importance as a major regional and global actor. 9 Although presenting some extremely problematic views, Julius Evola nevertheless presents fascinating points for consideration, in terms of the search for meaning in secular modernity, and in its absence, the attempt to resacralize and reestablish connections to the past/tradition. 10 The notion of local imitation of the habits and techniques of more powerful external foes (in order to learn the secret of their success, as it were) emerges

Reading Freire in the Middle East

in Toynbee’s figuration of the Herodian, as opposed to the Zealot, who retreats fiercely into tradition to hone an ever‐scrupulous practice of traditional methods (1968). 11 See Dr. Fawzia Gilani‐Williams (2014). 12 I found a heuristic analytical framework hewn from Arkoun’s rendering of Social Imaginaire (2003) to be an extremely edifying (and interesting) means of conceptualizing SA; however, time limitations meant I could not fully articulate the concept here. 13 It is clear from his own writings and that of his interlocutors that Freire held fast throughout his life to Catholic religious beliefs, including an afterlife and a form of purgatory. Less clear are his specific soteriological beliefs. See works by Elias (1976, 1994) and Schipani (1984, 1988). 14 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/24/i‐will‐return‐saudi‐arabia‐ moderate‐islam‐crown‐prince. 15 I explore these issues in more detail in a forthcoming longitudinal study in SA (Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship ED in Comparative Perspective: Responsibilities of Teacher Training Institutions. Principal Investigators: Dr. Jevdet Rexhepi, PMU‐SA; Dr. Carlos Alberto Torres PI, UCLA‐USA). 16 www.pmu.edu.sa. 17 This freedom (and duty) rings true with Al‐Ghazali’s admonition that a learner (which I am) should “devote themselves to the search for knowledge” (1993). 18 Qur’an is the final divine revelation given by Allah (God) to humanity, through His final Prophet Muhammad. Hadith are sayings of the Prophet. Fiqh pertains to Islamic law. Tafsir is exegesis of the Qur’an. Sira is the study of the life of Muhammad (similar to English biography). 19 For Horkheimer, a theory is also critical to the extent it seeks human emancipation, “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (1982). 20 See Tayan (2017); Elyas & Picard (2013); Mazi & Altbach (2013). 21 There is a parallel with Freire here, for whom education “is in the service of extending individual capacities and {likewise} social possibilities” (Giroux 1989). 22 http://www.ncaaa.org.sa/en/Releases/NationalQualifFrameworkDocuments/ National%20Qualification%20Framework.pdf. 23 It seems to be paying dividends, as SA registered over 650 new patents in 2017 with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. 24 http://uis.unesco.org/country/SA. 25 www.moe.gov.sa/en/pages/default.aspx. 26 The changes extend to fighting corruption, good governance, and revising hitherto inviolable social norms pertaining to women’s rights. 27 Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017‐12‐19/ key‐figures‐in‐saudi‐arabia‐s‐2018‐budget‐2017‐fiscal‐data. 28 The King Abdullah Scholarship Program. 29 Islamism is an umbrella term for a smattering of movements often with contradictory aims, that have worked to unseat what they perceive to be un‐Islamic largely Sunni governments (Syria is the recent exception). The intellectual roots

215

216

Jevdet Rexhepi

of this trend emerge from modernist “ijtihadis” like Afghani, Mawdudi, Banna, Qutb, and Khomeini. A more austere and literalist interpretation of Islam eventually came to the fore in SA post‐1979, when extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Makkah, and with Khomeini’s 12er Shia project in Iran that deposed the Shah. 30 From an Islamic perspective this invites a crucial point on how we read the world, and texts, and what we bring to them, that is, our education, emotions, sociopolitical worldviews, affiliations, and so on. Islamic hermeneutical tradition, over time, became limited to a small class of scholars and these tools and the understanding were not effectively transmitted to the laity. The age of new media and rapid access to information further enable the breaking down of this traditional transmission, with a proliferation of errant readings by “YouTube Sheikhs” who retain a kind of cult celebrity status mostly among youth. Muslim educators need to reimagine the modus operandi of their work and challenge jejune interpretations of an ancient and clearly delimited faith tradition, while also confronting an ossifying status quo entrenched at the opposite end of the interpretive spectrum. 31 From The Translation of the Meaning of the Qur’an, by Marmaduke Pickthall, chapter 51, verse 56. Retrieved from http://corpus.quran.com/translation. jsp?chapter=51&verse=56. 32 For a short primer on shariah (and jihad), see Rexhepi, J. (2013), Jihad, Shariah, and Their Implications for Security and Geopolitics: https://community.apan. org/wg/tradoc‐g2/fmso/m/fmso‐monographs/197120. 33 Al‐Ghazali made perhaps his biggest mark and contribution as an usooli scholar, not as a theologian. Al‐Mustafsa (1987) is his key‐work on usool (sources, principles, rules). Ironic is how a key work on usool in the Hanbali tradition (SA follows this school), Ar‐Rawdah by Ibn Qudamah (the usool the madhab is based on), is an abridgment of Al‐Ghazali’s earlier work! 34 In Islam, the act of praying in a congregation has individual and collective importance, and it is a point of distinction. Muslims raise their hands to the ears at the onset of prayer, uttering the divine phrase, Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest). It constitutes a symbolic turning away from the world (dunya) and reorienting in submission toward peace and freedom. Prayer is thus a moment whereby people, social creatures, merge in a shared though ineffable individual and transformative worship, and adoration of the One Creator/God/Allah. 35 I find Arkoun’s development of social imaginaire similar in some respects to Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” (2006), and Said’s notion of “imagined geographies” (1978). Whereas Anderson focuses on a kind of modernist rendering of nationalism and concordant affiliations, Said identifies a social constructionist purpose in terms of framing the “other.” 36 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi‐prince‐mbs‐arab‐spring. html. 37 https://ctld.kau.edu.sa/Default.aspx?Site_ID=322&Lng=EN. 38 Some faculty had a big issue with my exercise. Administrative staff I spoke to were very enthusiastic.

Reading Freire in the Middle East

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities. London & New York: Verso. Arkoun, M. (2003). Rethinking Islam today. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 588(1), 18–39. Berkey, J. P. (1992). The transmission of knowledge in medieval Cairo: A social history of Islamic knowledge. New York: Princeton University Press. Boss, P. G., Doherty, W. J., LaRossa, R., Schumm, W. R., & Steinmetz, S. K. (Eds.) (1993). Sourcebook of family theories and methods: A contextual approach. New York: Plenum Press. Chulov, M. (2017, October 24). I will return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam, says crown prince. The Guardian, Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2017/oct/24/i‐will‐return‐saudi‐arabia‐moderate‐islam‐crown‐prince Council of Economic & Development Affairs (CEDA). (2016). Vision 2030. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Retrieved from https://vision2030.gov.sa/download/ file/fid/417. Elias, J. (1976). Paulo Freire: Religious educator. Religious Education, 71(1), 40–56. Elias, J. L. (1994). Paulo Freire: Pedagogue of liberation. Malabar, FL: Kreiger Press. Elyas, T., & Picard, M. Y. (2013). Critiquing of higher education policy in Saudi Arabia: Towards a new neoliberalism. Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, 6(1), 31–41. Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder. Freire, P. (1990). Aurora Online interview by Carlos A. Torres, with Paulo Freire: “Twenty years later, similar problems, different solutions.” Retrieved from http:// aurora.icaap.org/index.php/aurora/article/view/45/58. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers – Letters to those who dare teach (D. Macedo, D. Koike, & A. Oliveira, Trans.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gadotti, M. (1994). Reading Paulo Freire: His life and work. New York: SUNY Press. Gadotti, M. (2008). Education for sustainability. A critical contribution to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. São Paulo: Paulo Freire Institute. Ghazali (1987). Al Mustafs Min Ilm Al Usul (Vol. 2). Translation submitted as a dissertation by Ahmad Zaki Mansur Hammad). Chicago: University of Chicago. Ghazali (1993). Ihya’ Ulum ad‐Din. Karachi: Darul‐Ishaat. Giroux, H. A. (1989). Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle. Albany: State University of New York Press. Herrera, L., & Bayat, A. (2010). Being young and Muslim: New cultural politics in the global South and North. London: Oxford University Press. Hodgson, M. G. S. (1975). The venture of Islam: Vols. 1–3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Horkheimer, M. (1982). Critical theory. New York: Seabury Press. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1972). Dialectic of enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder. House, K. E. (2017). Saudi Arabia in transition from defense to offense, but how to score? Senior Fellow Paper. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

217

218

Jevdet Rexhepi

Khaldun, I. (1967). The Muqaddimah. New York: Princeton University Press. Mayo, P. (1997). Reflections on Freire’s work: A Maltese contribution. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 16, 365–370. Mayo, P. (2001). Revolutionary learning, biodiversity, and transformative action. Comparative Education Review, 45, 140–148. Mazi, A., & Altbach, P. G. (2013). Dreams and realities: The world‐class idea and Saudi Arabian higher education. In L. Smith, & A. Abouammoh (Eds.), Higher education in Saudi Arabia. Higher Education Dynamics: Vol. 40. Dordrecht: Springer. Morrow, R., & Torres, C. (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas. New York: Teachers College Press. NCAAA (2015). National Qualifications Framework for Higher Education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: National Commission for Academic Accreditation & Assessment. Nofal, N. (1993). Al‐Ghazali. Thinkers on Education. Prospects: The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, 23(3–4), 519–542. Rexhepi, J. (2008). Exilio. In Dicionario Paulo Freire: Ideologia. Brazil: Grupo Autêntica. Rexhepi, J. (2013). Globalization and higher education in Albania. New York: Rowman Littlefield‐Lexington Books. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Schipani, D. S. (1984). Conscientization and creativity: Paulo Freire and Christian education. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Schipani, D. S. (1988). Religious education encounters liberation theology. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation–Dialogues on transforming education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Silwadi, N., & Mayo, P. (2014). Pedagogy under siege in Palestine: Insights from Paulo Freire. Holy Land Studies, 13(1), 71–87. Stanton, C. M. (1990). Higher learning in Islam: The classical period A.D. 700–1300. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Stromquist, Nelly. (2018). Identities and education. Comparative perspectives in an age of crises. 28th CESE Conference, May 28–June 1, University of Cyprus, Nicosia. Tayan, B. M. (2017). The Saudi Tatweer education reforms: Implications of neoliberal thought to Saudi Education policy. International Education Studies, 10(5), 5 61–71. Thompson, H. S. (1971). Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Random House. Torres, C. A. (1990). The politics of nonformal education in Latin America. New York: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (1998). Education, power and personal biography: Dialogues with critical educators. New York: Routledge. Torres, C. A. (2005). La praxis educativa y la educación cultural liberadora de Paulo Freire. Xátiva, Spain: Instituto Paulo Freire D’Espanya. Torres, C. A. (2017). Theoretical and empirical foundations of critical global citizenship education. New York: Routledge.

Reading Freire in the Middle East

Toynbee, A. (1968). Civilization on trial and the world and the West. New York: Meridian Books. Weldon, P. A., Rexhepi, J., Chang, C. W., Jones, L., Layton, A., L., Liu, A., … Torres, C. A. (2010). Globalization and higher education in Southern California: Views from the professoriate. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 41(1), 5–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2010.532360 Wiggershaus, R. (1995). The Frankfurt School: Its history, theories, and political significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Williams, F. G. (2014, June). Islamic critical theory: A tool for emancipatory education. International Journal of Islamic Thought, 5. Zine, J. (2004). Creating a critical faith‐centered space for antiracist feminism. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 20(2), 167–187. Zine, J. (2008). Canadian Islamic schools: Unravelling the politics of faith, gender, knowledge, and identity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

219

221

12 Paulo Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

Introduction On this, the twentieth anniversary of Paulo Freire’s untimely death, it is ­important to reflect both on the enormous contribution he made to understanding the ­relationship between literacy, the process of learning, and political consciousness, and on his capacity to inspire teachers and social activists with his nonviolent dialogical approach to social change. Freire was a man of Latin America, but he came often to the United States beginning in the late 1960s, and he had many friends and millions of followers here. His appearances were “events,” which left everyone who heard him speak and who interacted with him changed forever. It could be argued that, like John Dewey, Freire’s books and his words influenced so many but that his ideas never took hold in educational institutions, except for the relatively few who were able to implement Freire’s methods in their classrooms. Yet, that does not diminish his greatness as either a social activist or an intellectual. In this essay, we write from a personal point of view about how we each encountered Freire and how we view his influence in two different periods of recent U.S. political history—first, at the height of his prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, and second, after Freire’s death in the 2000s. We conclude by reflecting on how Freire’s educational philosophy can help us combat Trumpism and its vision of a postefficiency market for schooling.

The 1970s and 1980s: Freire’s Global Reach and Influence Paulo Freire first came to the United States in April 1969. He was invited to be a visiting professor at the Center for Studies in Education and Development at Harvard University. At the time, Freire was in exile in Chile, where he had been living after he decided to leave Brazil when the military took over the country in

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

222

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

1964. Interviewed many years later about this decision to go into exile, Freire said, “I preferred to continue living rather than delivering myself to a sort of slow death or to cynicism” (Araújo Freire, 2005, p. 206). The Chilean Christian Democratic (Partido Demócrata Cristiano [PDC]) government of Eduardo Frei (1964–1970)—a coalition of several political factions—was receptive to the large Brazilian exile community. This was mainly because of president Frei, who considered the presence of these exiles consistent with the long, democratic ­tradition in Chile and his own attempts to make progressive reforms in the face of the growing influence of Marxist ideas on the Chilean population. According to some of his biographers (Schugurensky, 2011), Freire was exposed to Marxism during his exile in Chile, and, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, incorporated these ideas into his writings for the first time. It is difficult to dispute that the very word “oppressed” conveyed more than just being “left out” of the educational system or subject to a poorly conceived “banking” style of teaching and learning. Freire’s pedagogy had developed into an effort to liberate adults in the lowest socioeconomic strata through building a consciousness of the powerful economic and social forces that systematically kept them in their place. Yet, even though these were clearly “class analysis” Marxian ideas, Freire strictly and steadfastly maintained his nonviolent approach to liberation—what Schugurensky (2011) and Torres (2014) call Marxist humanism. Freire viewed liberation as a process of consciousness‐raising for all, not just the poor, and education and discussion were the paths to reaching that goal. By the late 1960s, the cohesiveness of the PDC coalition was breaking down, and there were indications that the exiled “leftists” from Brazil would not continue to be welcome. This happened as the political ideological divisions within the PDC widened. There were denunciations coming from the right‐wing factions in the party. “Paulo was accused of having written a book against the Chilean people and against the Chilean government. He was able to disprove these accusations by turning over the originals of the writings to his Chilean government liaison” (Araújo Freire, 2005, p. 214). Nevertheless, the incident convinced Paulo not to publish the nearly completed Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Chile as he had intended. He sent the book to an American pastor Richard Shaull, who loved the manuscript. It was in this moment that he received the invitation from Harvard and from several other U.S. universities. Eight days later, he also received an invitation from the World Council of Churches in Geneva that would have begun in September 1969. He worked out an arrangement in which he would stay at Harvard until February 1970 and then take up the Geneva invitation. This is how Paulo Freire ended up coming to the United States (Araújo Freire, 2005, p. 214). Arriving at Harvard in 1969, Freire was plunged into the midst of the antiwar movement and the ongoing activism around race, including the black power movement. Cambridge was a hotbed of antiwar and black movements, and Freire quickly came to understand that oppression was not limited to developing countries. He realized in this initial U.S. experience that liberation pedagogy had to consider race and gender in addition to class oppression. While in Cambridge, he also visited other institutions and developed close relations with various individuals in the United States, especially in Boston and at

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, which had an active group of adult educators interested in Freire’s work. He also successfully brought Pedagogy of the Oppressed to publication (in September 1970) first in the United States (translated from Portuguese into English by Herder and Herder, and not published in Portuguese until 1974, by Paz e Terra). Yet, Freire never felt comfortable in the role of university professor, and this was the case in his stay at Harvard. As he explained decades later, “I preferred being a professor on the corner of a street than being an educator in the context of a university … I am not interested in spending a year studying a book … I prefer studying practice for a year” (Araújo Freire, 2005, p. 216). This is the reason he gives for turning down offers to stay in the United States at universities and heading for Geneva to the World Council. “I knew in that period that the Council would give me the freedom (to engage in practice) that the university would not give me” (p. 216). And, indeed, in the 1970s, while at the World Council, Paulo traveled to many countries, met with various groups, and used these meetings to extend the use of his pedagogical approach to “liberate the oppressed.” He was particularly active in former Portuguese Africa (see Letters from Guinea‐Bissau, for example). At the same time, at the urging of Pierre Furter, he also took a position at the University of Geneva, where he lectured occasionally and worked with a team of adult educators in the faculty of psychology and educational sciences. As Torres (2014) writes in a recent biography of Freire’s early writings, “There is no question that Paulo Freire’s border‐crossing perspective in the 1960s resulted in a transdisciplinary approach that has gained even more recognition in the new century” (p. 11). The Stanford Seminar It is in this context that I sought out and met Paulo Freire in early 1979. I was spending a sabbatical year in Paris in 1978–1979 and was invited by Michel Carton and Pierre Furter to give a series of lectures over several months at the University of Geneva. Furter was close to Paulo and arranged a meeting for me with him at the World Council. Paulo did not know me at all—my books had not been translated into Portuguese, and I was not involved with adult education. But, of course, Paulo was already a guru to anyone who was doing critical analysis in the political economy of education, including me. Pedagogy of the Oppressed was almost 10 years old at that time and was enormously influential. Where we crossed paths intellectually was that we both saw educational systems in capitalist countries as primarily colonizing, reproductive institutions that were everything that they claimed they were not and very little of what they claimed they were. Paulo’s work was to communicate this to education workers and to the oppressed of the world themselves, and great communicator he was. Our 1 hour together in his office in Geneva was an incredible experience for me (as for almost everyone who met Paulo). I felt that I was not only with a great activist intellectual, but with a great humanitarian. I walked away convinced that I had to bring him to Stanford, and over the next 3 years, we figured out how to do that and how to best make his visit useful for him and for us. The result of those conversations was to design a 2‐week seminar limited to 25 participants at Stanford in July 1983. Paulo did not want to give “classes.” And he

223

224

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

wanted to interact with students who would be actual educational practitioners and to create a diverse group of participants. We put out a general call to the community (including education students at Stanford) and had several hundred applications, from which we picked a group that we thought would get the most from Paulo and who would also give the most to the seminar in terms of their experiences. Carlos Torres, then a student at Stanford, and Arturo Pacheco, then a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and I facilitated the seminar, which met morning and afternoon for 10 working days over the 2 weeks. Let’s remember. This was the early 1980s—the Reagan era. It was a period of a huge shift politically—against organized labor, against government help for the poor, against raising the minimum wage, against the Left, and against the culture of liberation and multiculturalism. Neoliberalism and structural adjustment was in full swing in Latin America, driven by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and U.S. multinationals. Paulo’s coming to Stanford in this environment was very different from his visit to Harvard in 1969–1970. Then he was hardly known to U.S. educators and academics (Pedagogy of the Oppressed had not been published), and the political environment in the United States open to discourse about new, revolutionary approaches to education and to political change as at any time since the mid‐1930s. In the 1969–1970 visit to the United States, Paulo was a learner as much as he was a teacher. He was exposed to the black power and feminist movements, which were much more advanced than in Latin America. By 1983, he was a world‐famous figure representing a distinct nonviolent Left position against what the United States had become politically. His philosophy of teaching and engagement with the world were the opposite of the kind of economic educational “solutions” being proposed by the Reagan administration for U.S. schools and by the heavily Reagan‐influenced IMF and World Bank’s economic/social prescriptions for Latin America and the rest of the world. In this context, our seminar at Stanford was cast as a conversation that could help this group, most as progressives and many as activists, to work politically to make education more relevant to marginalized populations, and to help us be more effective politically as educators. Correctly or incorrectly, we looked to Paulo for inspiration at a time of great self‐doubt. The main discussion in the seminar and in the one general audience lecture Freire delivered on July 28 to a standing room only audience (see Figure 12.1) revolved around two of Freire’s key concepts in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The first was the internalization and acceptance of oppression on the part of both the oppressor and the oppressed, and therefore the need to work with people politically in terms of where they were. This process of concientização for Freire was undertaken through education, which intertwined political concientização with breaking the barrier of illiteracy—a main means of oppression in developing countries. Learning to read with the help of and in the context of understanding the relations of political and economic oppression was, for Freire, at one and the same time, an act of liberation (freedom) and the basis for a theory of action. The second concept we worked on with Freire at Stanford was his idea that the education system itself in every country was based on a “banking” theory of ­education, in which knowledge was structured, well defined, and defined by

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

Figure 12.1  Poster advertising Freire’s lecture, July 28, 1983.

­ thers, to be banked by students (accumulated), rather than as a process of probo lem‐solving and discovery by students (and teachers). The “banking concept” is a metaphor used by Freire to suggest that, in this model, students are regarded as empty bank accounts that remain open to deposits made by the teacher.… Freire’s concerns about banking education was not only related to classroom dynamics, but also to its long‐term implications for the development of human agency and ultimately for social transformation. He argued that the relations promoted by the banking education model reflect even broader oppressive dynamics. The more students focus on storing the deposits entrusted to them, the more they accept a passive role, the more they tend to adapt to the world as it is, and the more they acquire a fragmented view of reality. (Schugurensky, 2011, pp. 71–72)

225

226

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

With his focus on low‐income students, Freire also saw teaching and learning in schools as a path to liberating students from constraints on how and what to learn, and, ultimately, to replace the oppressive ideological structures of unequal societies. These ideas were incredibly empowering to seminar participants (and to those who attended his lecture). They presented a theoretical basis for transforming society nonviolently, and to do so through a liberating model of education. They were particularly useful for us at that moment in U.S. history, because Freire argued convincingly that dialogue was needed to develop a broad base of support for social transformation. This dialogue ultimately required an educational process that reflected on oppression and its causes, and from that reflection, the development of a politics of transformation. Even so, the seminar was not without its conflicts. There were a number of participants of color in the seminar, and a sense among some of them that Freire’s analysis did not recognize sufficiently the racial underpinnings of class‐based politics both in the United States and Brazil. They argued, quite correctly, that racism and racial politics are key components of the relation between the white working class and white elites. How were we to win back the white working class that had voted for Reagan and his antipoor agenda without dealing with the underlying racism used to bring less‐educated whites into the right‐wing fold? Could Freire’s methods of concientização deconstruct racism within the oppressed classes at the same time that it deconstructed oppressive power relations between the rich and poor? There was also disagreement on the possible role for Freirean pedagogy in schools in terms of liberating the larger society. I am not even sure that Paulo himself was clear on this issue. He certainly believed that his pedagogical method would improve learning in the schools and would, especially for the children of the poor—kept in place socially by the very education that was supposed to provide them mobility—begin to engage them politically. In the late 1980s, Freire teamed with Ira Shor to “talk” a series of books on using Freire’s methods to concientizar students in U.S. classrooms and from that work in classrooms, to build social movements and transform society (Shor & Freire, 1987). These books were aimed at teachers as potential dialogical leaders and social activists. However, seminar participants raised questions about how parents and school administrators would react to attempts by teachers to introduce politically based dialogues in U.S. classrooms in the absence of major political and social movements outside the classroom supporting such teaching. Nicaragua and the Literacy Campaign Later that summer, at the end of August and early September, I joined Paulo as he visited Nicaragua and its Literacy Campaign. Nicaragua was in the middle of the Sandinista revolution, and under Contra attack. Yet, the literacy campaign and other reforms were being implemented, and we could observe these programs in action. They were using Freire’s methods to teach illiterate peasants and workers to read. I can never forget the day we visited one of the literacy program “schools,” and I sat in the room with Paulo as the adult students, some of them in

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

their sixties, went to the blackboard to spell out words. As each person came to the board, and with some difficulty managed to successfully spell the word, a look of indescribable happiness spread across his or her face. A happiness that reflected a newfound sense of accomplishment and self‐worth—of empowerment. As I describe it now, I worry that it seems trite, but it was the most un‐trite act one can imagine—the act of very poor, marginalized human beings regaining their humanness. Maybe they went on to help build the revolution, maybe not. But there was no going back from what they had achieved, and Paulo’s insights and praxis had helped them do it. Seeing Paulo in Nicaragua, in “his element,” meeting with activists and adult educators, working with them in the literacy campaign, helped me understand why this was so much more interesting and motivating for him than lecturing at universities. It was also evident to me in Nicaragua that Paulo was a man of the developing world, despite his long‐lasting belief that his ideas were just as relevant for teaching and learning in the developed world. In December 1987, Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, two pioneers of education for social change, came together to “talk a book” about their experiences and ideas. Though they came from different environments—one from the rural mountains of Appalachia, the other from São Paulo, the largest industrial city in Brazil—Myles and Paulo shared a vision and a history of using participatory education as a crucible for empowerment of the poor and the powerless. Their remarkably common experiences represent more than 100 years of educational praxis. One of the reasons that Paulo Freire wanted to talk a book with Myles, he often said, was that he was tired of the North American audiences telling him that his ideas were applicable only to Third World conditions. “No,” he said, “the story of Myles and of Highlander Center shows that the ideas apply to the first world, too.” (Bell, Gaventa, & Peters, 1990, pp. xv–xvi).

The 2000s: Finding Freire Post‐Freire, When Another World Was Possible In August 2005, I returned from spending 11 months in Brazil, more optimistic than ever about the possibility of social change in Latin America and globally. Although I saw firsthand the inequality and poverty endemic to the Brazilian political and economic system, I also saw, felt, and experienced a culture of change and possibility everywhere I went. I was born in 1984, in the northeast state of New Jersey in the United States, in an integrated, working‐class community. I was the daughter of labor organizers and for as long as I could remember I had been taught that people were not poor because they were lazy, but because the economic system thrived from people’s exploitation. My political consciousness evolved during the late 1990s and early 2000s, an era when the neoliberal economic paradigm captured by the Washington Consensus was increasingly being called into question. During my freshman and sophomore year of college I dedicated myself to student activism, and more specifically, an anti‐sweatshop student organization. This group’s model of change was based on the power of the university to influence the actions of the companies that produce university

227

228

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

apparel and the power of students to force the university administration to ensure that these companies engaged in fair labor practices. I participated in a variety of other political events during those years as well, including a march on Washington to defend affirmative action at our university, a protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Miami, national conferences of students hosted by the United Students Against Sweatshops, and pickets at my own university in support of graduate students and lecturers fighting for better working conditions. This was my context as I went off to Brazil in the fall of 2004, a young woman with experience in the student activist realm of social justice, but eager to discover new ways of making a difference. While I was abroad in Brazil I had the opportunity to connect with dozens of political activists, who were also interested in and dedicated to finding a way to address social and economic inequalities: a pedagogy of change. Many of the people I talked to believed that grassroots education, which helps to develop a community’s critical consciousness, is the first step to transforming society. They told me that this popular education method was based on the ideas of Paulo Freire. Before arriving to Brazil I had read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but it was only that year, meeting and seeing people in Brazil who were actively practicing what he wrote, that I truly began to understand what Freire was saying. I was inspired by the stories of women who stood up to their abusive husbands after taking a popular education course, the stories of black communities that began to embrace their black identity. As Torres (2014) writes, “popular education rose from a political and social understanding of the conditions endured by the poor, as evidenced by their most visible problems … with the intention of shedding light upon these conditions at both the individual and collective experience” (p.  107). During my year abroad, I became increasingly convinced that this method of organizing—staring where people are at and growing our movements outwards—was the approach that the United States left needed to take. Freire had already passed away, but I had become a Freirean activist in a post‐Freirean era. The following sections are the lessons that I learned from Freire in the early 2000s, at this particular historical moment when we all thought that another world was possible. Freire’s Relevance for Politics and Education in the United States Many circumstances around the world changed to make popular education in the 2000s different than the popular education that existed in the 1980s during its heyday. Liam Kane (2001) writes that the late 1980s until the end of the century was a period of “crisis in popular education and a need to rethink the basics” (p. 28). Due to the decrease in openly dictatorial governments in Latin America, there were questions as to whether or not popular education needed to continue to work outside of the formal education system. Also, because of the defeat of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, people questioned popular education’s ability to incite large‐scale revolutionary change. “Popular education of the 1990’s seems to have lost some of the radical edge of earlier years” (Kane, 2001, p. 29). In the face of a neoliberal economic paradigm that “objectively” claimed the failure of past state intervention, a totally free market economy had been

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

presented as the only reasonable future. Large‐scale alternatives no longer seemed to exist. It was, as Francis Fukuyama (1989) said, the “end of history.” Yet, in 1999, the antiglobalization movement burst into global consciousness at the Battle in Seattle, the first World Social Forum took place a few years later, and there were countless other mobilizations for a more just global economic system. Popular education was part and parcel of cultivating this optimism, in a moment of despair. In the last book that Freire wrote before he died, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, he writes, I should stress that this book is about hope and optimism, but not about false optimism or vain hope. Of course, people will say—including some on the left for whom the future has lost its problematic essence and is now  no more than a given—that this optimism and hope of mine are ­nothing but the daydream of an inveterate dreamer. I am not angry with people who think pessimistically. But I am sad because for me they have lost their place in history. There is a lot of fatalism around us. An immobilizing ideology of ­fatalism, with its flighty postmodern pragmatism, which insists that we can do nothing to change the march of social‐historical and cultural reality because that is how the world is anyway. The most dominant ­contemporary version of fatalism is neoliberalism. With it, we are led to believe that mass unemployment on a global scale is an end‐of‐the‐ century inevitability. From the standpoint of such an ideology, only one road is open as far as educative practice is concerned: adapt the student to  what is inevitable, to what cannot be changed. In this view, what is essential is technical training, so that the student can adapt and, therefore survive. This book, which I now offer to those who are interested in this theme, is a decisive NO to an ideology that humiliates and denies our humanity. (Freire, 1998, pp. 26–27) This quote from Freire articulates a core belief that change is both necessary and possible. Kane (2001) said that, “Above all, rather than an academic theory, popular education in Latin America is understood as the intellectual property of grassroots movements in which the notion of people as ‘subjects’ of change has a real meaning” (p. 248). He goes on to say that popular education has the following characteristics: ●●

●●

●●

●●

The curriculum comes out of concrete experiences and material interests of people in the communities. It is overtly political, critical of the status quo, and committed to progressive and social change. Its pedagogy is collective, focused primarily on group learning and ­development, distinct from individual development. It attempts, wherever possible, to forge a direct link between education and social action.

Popular education is a theory of education and social change, with two ­dimensions. The first dimension is the pedagogy’s ability to develop a person’s

229

230

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

intellectual understanding of the way in which different social conditions have cultivated the inequality in which she or he currently lives. The second dimension of this pedagogy is its ability to channel this new understanding into action that challenges these structural relationships of inequality and leads to social change. In this way, people in positions of inequality around the world—people who Freire referred to as the “oppressed”—could rise up and liberate themselves from their oppression. However, Freire was not writing a “methodology.” For Freire, a methodology was a series of specific steps—a teaching “method”—that people should follow in order to achieve their goals. Rather, Freire wrote about a theory of knowledge and an educational philosophy that could be flexible in many different situations and circumstances. Optimism—The “Unfinishedness” of Human Beings The unique “unfinishedness” of human beings is the basic belief that drives all of Paulo Freire’s actions, thoughts, and undying optimism. Freire believes that the world is always changing and that the future is undetermined, which means our futures are also not yet determined. Freire writes, In truth, it would be incomprehensible if the awareness that I have of my presence in the world were not, simultaneously, a sign of the impossibility of my absence from the construction of that presence. Insofar as I am a conscious presence in the world, I cannot hope to escape my ethical responsibility for my action in the world … It means recognizing that History is time filled with possibility and not inexorably determined—that the future is problematic and not already decided, fatalistically. (Freire, 1998, p. 26) Understanding the “unfinishedness of human beings” is important, because it sheds light on the reason that Freire’s pedagogy is so optimistic. Although not all humans are aware of their ability to change the future, the realization of one’s ability to act for change—what he defines as a critical consciousness—is an inherent possibility of our human condition. Throughout his essays, books, letters and interviews, the “unfinishedness of our human condition” is referred to again and again because it is the necessary starting point from which one can understand the theory of change he is proposing. He says, “education is that specifically human act of intervening in the world” (Freire, 1998, p. 6). What he means is that education’s purpose is to make people more human, and a basic characteristic of being human is realizing one’s ability to question, intervene, re‐ create, and transform one’s own reality. Education Is Never Neutral—Actively Maintaining/Changing the Status Quo Freire is often criticized for the way in which he “politicizes” education. However, in Freire’s view these criticisms are not valid because education can never be neutral. Education is always either actively maintaining or actively changing the status quo. In response to an attack of Freirean literacy programs, which strive to teach

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

people both how to read words and how to better understand the complex world around them, Freire wrote: “The defendants of the neutrality of literacy programs do not lie when they say that the clarification of reality at the same time as learning to read and write is a political act. They are wrong, however, when they deny that the way in which they deny reality has no political meaning” (Gadotti, 1994, p. 55). This response shows how Freire never refutes the political nature of his educational projects; what Freire does deny is the validity of the term “neutral.” When students are taught different facts and occurrences, without any explanation on how to apply this knowledge, Freire believes that they are being denied their ability and right as humans to use their knowledge to intervene in the world. Another example of this “education neutral mentality” is the way “problem” students are often told, at a very young age, that rather than continue their regular education it would be best for them to go to trade schools to acquire concrete skills and get a job. Freire believes that this kind of education is not a “neutral” way of dealing with the future. Rather, this is an active way of making students mold themselves to mainstream society, therefore denying their human right to intervene and change what should have been presented as an undetermined future. There is nothing wrong with learning a trade if that is the student’s choice; what is wrong is the denial of possibilities that often initiates this choice and the assumption that trades can be learned in isolation with the rest of the world. Freire wrote, “I do not accept (because it is not possible) the ingenuous or ­strategically neutral position often claimed by people in education or by those who study biology, physics, sociology, or mathematics. No one can be in the world, with the world, and with others and maintain a posture of neutrality” (Freire, 1998, p. 73). Banking Model of Education (Knowledge Is NOT Quantitative) The notion that education is never neutral leads into the next two lessons Freire offers concerning the “banking model of education” and “problem‐posing education.” In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire discusses mainstream public education systems, which he defines as organized through the banking model of education.” This terminology is now used in various contexts around the world to describe a type of education in which teachers are seen as the “depositors” of knowledge into the “receiving” minds of the students. This was the model that Freire encountered in the Brazilian public school system in the northeast of Brazil. He wrote about how teachers were considered the “owners” of knowledge with the goal of “giving” this knowledge to their students. The students, on the other hand, were assumed to be passive in the learning process, not bringing any knowledge with them to the classroom. Implicit in this model of education is the concept of intelligence as something quantitative and concrete which can be measured. Freire writes, In the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator not re‐creator. In this view the person is not a conscious being; he or she is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty “mind” passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside. (Freire, 2000, p. 75)

231

232

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

The implication in this model of teaching is that students do not learn to be ­critical thinkers. They are taught facts, but they are not taught to use these facts or understand these facts in a critical way that they can apply to the world. They know the capital of Brazil is Brasília, but they do not understand what being the capital implies, what Brasília might mean to them, how decisions made in Brasília may affect their own lives. Problem‐Posing Education (Teaching Is Constructing Knowledge and Is Dialogical) The alternative type of education that Freire suggests involves actively ­constructing knowledge through a constant dialogue between the students and the teacher. He calls this problem‐posing education: The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co‐investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re‐considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own … Problem‐posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. (Freire, 2000, pp. 81–84) Problem‐posing education is dialogical, meaning it is based on an interaction, a dialogue between the teacher and the students. Knowledge is presented in a problematic way in which students have to discuss and answer questions, learning with each other but still being directed by the teacher. The teacher, however, is not asking these questions and stimulating the student’s curiosity simply as an exercise, but rather for her or his own benefit as well. Although the teacher’s knowledge is not considered equal to the students’ knowledge, he or she is also not the owner of knowledge devoid of the ability to learn through the dialogue. Reflection‐Action‐Reflection—Education for Social Action Although many people in the United States agree with Freire on his negative characterization of the banking model of education and strive to practice what he described as problem‐posing education, they often forget the most important aspect of Freire’s philosophy: education is for social action and intervening in the world. What this means is that all education is an interaction between reflection and action. Although a teacher may spend 2 hr studying something in the classroom, this new knowledge is not true education unless some kind of action is taken based on this knowledge. On the other hand, if a group decides to act without reflecting on these actions both before and after, the act loses its meaning as well. One of Paulo Freire’s most quoted statements describes this interaction between reflection and action: When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating “blah,” “blah,” “blah” … on the other hand, if

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

action is emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism. The latter—action for action’s sake—negates true praxis and makes dialogue impossible. (Freire, 2000, pp. 87–88) This lesson applies to both classroom education and the actions of labor unions and political organizations. The former must remember the importance of taking action, whereas the latter must remember the importance of serious reflection on any actions taken. The Starting Point Is People’s Knowledge and Backgrounds Freire emphasizes over and over again that any educational project has to start with the knowledge of the people, what they know, and their realities. A simple example of this is the way Freire implemented his literacy programs. In these literacy programs, before anything was taught a community research team (consisting of educators in and outside of the community) would do a study on the “universal language” of the people. This means that they would spend a few weeks recording words they repeatedly heard and common phrases used by the people in the neighborhood. After this initial period, a curriculum to teach people how to read and write would be created based on the actual language and words the people were using in their daily lives. Freire did not believe students came to the classroom with “empty” minds, which is the principal reason he criticized the banking model of education. People have thousands of life experiences and respect for the knowledge acquired through these experiences is essential for any educational program. Freire writes, It’s impossible to talk of respect for students for the dignity that is in the process of coming to be, for the identities that are in the process of construction, without taking into consideration the conditions in which they are living and the importance of the knowledge derived from life experiences, which they bring with them to school. I can in no way underestimate such knowledge. Or what is worse, ridicule it. (Freire, 1998, p. 62) If an educational program does not start within the realm of the students’ ­previous experience it is intangible and therefore becomes meaningless words— “blah, blah, blah.” What Freire Did Not Say—Nondirective Education People in the United States frequently misinterpret Freire’s belief in building curricula that take the students’ previous knowledge into consideration as a promotion for “nondirective” education. Nondirective education is a practice where the curriculum is based on the daily whims, interests, and impulses of the students. Nondirective education has no set goals as to where the learning is headed; the teacher is simply a facilitator. However, this is not what Freire was advocating. In his theory on learning, the teacher is neither the owner of knowledge nor simply a facilitator in the discussion. Liam Kane defines the reduction of Freire’s

233

234

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

­hilosophy into a promotion for nondirective education as “basismo,” or p “grassroots‐ism.” Though popular education respects the value of “popular” knowledge, only an educational practice rooted in basismo would expect popular movements, purely from their own experience, to come up with the best ideas for taking their struggle forward. Popular education has to bring “popular” scientific, academic or “systematized” knowledge into contact—the “dialogue of knowledges”—to maximize the potential of education’s contribution to change. Educators have a key function in determining which particular “systematized” knowledge a group will be exposed. (Kane, 2001, p. 163) The intentional directionality in popular education raises a contradiction. Although a popular educator attempts to stimulate independent and critical thinking in people, she or he must also have a clear idea of the aims and objectives in the learning process. The line between directing the learning process and manipulating the students, however, can be unclear. An important task for U.S. activists is sorting out this delicate relationship between directive teaching and learning. For example, how do we promote an educational program that takes people negative experiences with unions seriously, while also promoting the importance of working‐class organizing? How do we address the real racial tensions felt among different communities, while also teaching about how white supremacy structures our racial understandings? These are key questions for activist and organizers in the United States, as our movements are small and we  need to learn how to build with people who are not always on the same ­ideological wavelength. Humility Versus Sectarianism The main reason Freire considers his educational projects a progressive pedagogy for change, as opposed to a manipulating learning process, is the humility that is an essential part of the process. By humility he means acknowledging the fact that no one knows the best answers for the future. Sectarian organizations, on both the left and right, are blinded by their belief and certainty in the future. “Sectarianism, because it is mythicizing and irrational, turns reality into a false (and therefore unchangeable ‘reality’) …. The leftist‐turned sectarian goes totally astray when he or she attempts to interpret reality and history dialectically and falls into essentially fatalistic positions” (Freire, 2000, pp. 37–38). In contrast, a savvy political organizer is not afraid to listen and learn about the world, dialogue with people and learn with people. A leader cannot consider herself or himself the “liberator of the oppressed,” because any social change that comes from the top down is not true liberation. Freire is humble enough to realize that he does not know, and cannot know, how the future should be. At the same time, he spent his entire life optimistic that grassroots action today, based on serious critical reflection of the many complex realities, would eventually bring about a world that everyone would love to live in. How exactly that world would look, only time could tell.

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

Techniques Versus Practice On a last note, it is extremely important for U.S. educators to realize that Paulo Freire was describing what he envisioned as a political project, a way to change the world, a theory for social action. However, the specific techniques that Freire described for achieving these goals—picture codification, group skits, theater performances, participatory activities—are used in various contexts, even some conservative contexts, all over the world. The literacy techniques Freire developed have been incorporated into many literacy programs. Health organizations often use codification and visual representations of health issues to promote safe health practices. It was recorded that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) once ordered 2,000 copies of a book called Participatory Techniques for Popular Education (Kane, 2001, p. 66). However, these specific techniques that Freire and other popular educators developed are simply tools in the overall popular education project. These tools can be used by conservatives and progressives alike, and their use does not imply that true Freirean education is being practiced. Peter McLaren, a U.S. academic who writes on Freirean theory, notes that Freire’s work will probably always be domesticated and pulled out of its political context by many people. He defines this as pseudo‐Freirean education (McLaren, 2003, p. 164). This is why it is important to evaluate the way in which people are using popular education “tools” in order to determine if they are actually practicing popular education. These are some of the lessons that I took from Freire in the early 2000s: the “unfinishedness” of human beings, that education is never neutral, the critique of the banking model, the need for reflection and action, starting the educational experience with people’s own knowledge and backgrounds, a critique of nondirective education, an embrace of humility, and distinguishing between techniques versus practice. This was an era when social movements were taking political power across Latin America, when activists in the United States were mobilizing against the global economic system, and when we all thought that another world was indeed possible. Freire helped us theorize a method to build that other world.

Current Context: Revisiting Freire in a Moment of Educational Efficiency and Trumpism We have come a long way since the early‐2000s, when the global justice ­movement was on the rise and the popularity of books such as Joseph Stiglitz’s (2002) Globalization and its Discontents seemed to represent an end of the Washington consensus. In October 2008, when the financial economic crisis hit, more people purchased Karl Marx’s Capital than at any moment in recent U.S. history, searching for an explanation to the crisis. That same month, we elected our first black president, an historical moment for a country that only six decades before did not offer full citizenship rights to African‐Americans. Barack Obama brought some real gains to working‐class people in the United States, including a health care system that—although not perfect—was much more inclusive and ­expansive

235

236

Martin Carnoy and Rebecca Tarlau

than ever before. As important, and under severe constraints imposed by Republican obstructionism, Obama was able to gradually lead the U.S. economy out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Despite these concrete progressive policy gains, for U.S. education Obama largely represented a continuation of George W. Bush’s educational regime. Obama’s flagship educational reform, Race to the Top, is often referred to as No Child Left Behind “on steroids,” policies that increased high‐stakes standardized testing and offered charter schools as solutions to the “failing” public educational system. This emphasis on raising test scores deemphasizes the importance of critical dialogue. It produces a different kind of education from what Paulo envisaged and from what most thoughtful educators believe is the ultimate goal of good education, which is to help nurture critical, questioning thought. That said, Obama greatly expanded grant programs for low‐income students to attend university, imposed regulations on private, for‐profit higher education, and, in the last years of his administration, pushed for a Common Core, national curriculum intended to raise standards for public education. For progressive states such as California and Massachusetts, among others, the Common Core represented an opportunity to improve teacher education and to increase funding for low‐income school districts. Then, in 2016, the unthinkable happened: our country elected Donald Trump, a billionaire businessman who ran on an “antiestablishment” platform, but in fact represented a return to the Reagan‐era free market logic, with a new brand of white nationalism. Trump offered an explanation for U.S. inequality that resonated with many white, working‐class populations: immigrants were stealing their jobs, the establishment was wasting their money in foreign wars, and there was “a crisis in urban centers”—code words for lazy African‐Americans. Trump told people that he would bring back U.S. jobs, take our troops out of the Middle East, and end free trade agreements that were offering other countries an unfair advantage on the global market. He also continued the attack on public education, appointing as head of the Department of Education Betsy DeVos, whose goal is literally to end the government’s “monopoly” on public education through more charters, more vouchers, especially for religious schools, and more accountability mechanisms—but even less meaningful ones—across the country. Educational efficiency is synonymous with privatization. High test scores are the same as a good‐quality education. Paulo Freire has never been so important for U.S. educators. Although the political situation is bleak, Trump has also ignited a resistance movement. People want to be involved, they want to organize, they are appalled at the hatred that Trumpism represents and ignites. But, how do we start? What strategies should we take? Our country has never been so divided; how do we build a collective, mass movement for progressive change? If Freire were alive today, he might remind us that first we must learn how to read our world, try to understand the structural reasons for our current political and economic conditions, and then we can take action. Donald Trump’s election is, of course, a symptom of a larger issue: economic inequality and a lack of social mobility. The attack on public education is an extension of a “common sense” belief that “parent choice” is a form of social justice, that “entrepreneurship” is a solution to government bureaucracy. Freire might tell us that instead of posting on Facebook about how much we hate Trump, we need to go to the

Freire’s Continued Relevance for U.S. Education

communities where he is popular and listen to their explanations for why they ­supported him, and use their own language as the basis for a “problematization” of these positions. He might also tell us that in the communities that are currently being scapegoated—Latino immigrant, African American, Muslim communities— we need to take back our schools, move away from repetitive test‐taking and think about how to support a more engaging, dialogical education, which connects ­theory to practice. Freire could remind us that technology might be innovative, but in the current context, dialogue is also a form of innovation. Freire might tell us that the world is “unfinished,” that Trump brings both horrors and real opportunities for political organizing, and that the future is up to us. Educators in the United States are revisiting Freire because it is a political ­necessity. Freire’s dialogical method is a critical tool to communicate in a world that is increasingly complex, politically polarized, individualized, and, in many countries, increasingly unequal. Social activists also need to revisit Freire. He can teach us how to reach across the deep political crevasses that divide the working class so we can confront racism and anger and the very different interpretations that different working class groups have of their common oppression. If ever there was a time for reintroducing Freire into the schools, onto the campuses, and into the political resistance groups springing up everywhere in the country, it is now.

References Araújo Freire, A. M. (2005). Paulo Freire: Uma historia de vida. São Paulo: Editora Villa das Letras. Bell, B., Gaventa, J., & Peters, J. (Eds.) (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Fukuyama, F. (1989). Have we reached the end of history?. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Gadotti, M. (1994). Reading Paulo Freire: His life and work. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kane, L. (2001). Popular education and social change in Latin America. London: Latin America Bureau. McLaren, P. (2003). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. Vol. 16: Continuum Library of Educational Thought. New York, NY: Continuum. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press.

237

239

Part III Freire and the Epistemology of the Global South Intersections and Relationships

241

13 Rereading Freire and Habermas Philosophical Anthropology and Reframing Critical Pedagogy and Educational Research in the Neoliberal Anthropocene Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

Introduction Our Reading Freire and Habermas (Morrow & Torres, 2002) used a thesis of convergence and complementarity between the two theorists as a reference point for situating Freire’s project within the larger context of the collapse of the Soviet Union and post‐Marxist critical social theory. Convergence referred primarily to the core categories of Freire’s pedagogy, as well as the political strategy that emerged with his radical democratic approach to the transformation upon his return from exile to Brazil. In the case of Habermas, the possibility of convergence dates earlier to his break with the pessimistic neo‐Marxism of his Frankfurt School critical theory mentors in the late 1960s, especially as developed in his theories of communicative action and deliberative democracy. The question of complementarity, on the other hand, opened up questions of mutual interrogation, respective blind spots, and productive points of friction. To revisit this book after nearly two decades presents a daunting challenge that introduces various problems of selection, emphasis, and revision in light of hindsight, subsequent scholarly discussion, and the current horizon of crisis and possibilities. This task is further complicated by the fact that in the interim we have not devoted any coordinated effort to the further development of its themes. This reflects not only that our attention was distracted elsewhere, but that its favorable if perfunctory reception in the occasional review did not appear to raise issues that were necessary to respond to. It was cited with some frequency, though not commensurate with the visibility of Freire and Habermas and ­without detailed critical commentary. Particularly noteworthy, as well as disappointing, was the complete neglect of the book within the community of more specialized Habermas scholarship, in part a reflection of the more general lack of discussion of educational theory in that context. If Freire’s untimely death had not ­undermined a proposed conference concerned with a dialogue with Habermas,

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

242

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

there might have been more of a response. Though the problematic of education seems more recently to have come to the attention of Axel Honneth—a former student of Habermas whose theory of recognition has emerged as a major contribution to critical social theory (Honneth, 2012), he surprisingly does not link his discussion with the contributions of Habermas, let alone Freire, despite the extensive reception of Habermas in educational theory and research (Murphy & Fleming, 2009). This neglect is particularly surprising given the centrality of educational reform in Germany and the democratic public sphere in Habermas’s earliest writings, the concept of a critical‐emancipatory knowledge interest, the theory of communicative action, and the leitmotif of collective learning that underlies his distinction between strategic (or instrumental) rationalization and social rationalization. Moreover, Reading Freire and Habermas has been cited primarily to provide some authority for confirming or clarifying specific points unrelated to the implications of the Freire‐Habermas relation. Consequently, there was little effort to extend or further develop the particular issues we introduced, despite occasional informative exceptions (Borman, 2011; Huttunen & Murphy, 2012; Knowles & Lovern, 2015). Nor was there much negative criticism, in part a reflection of the pervasive pluralist spirit of letting a “million Freires” blossom, despite the wide range of potentially contestable comparative arguments or, most controversially, situating Freire as a “post‐Marxist” critical social theorist. Historical Perspective: Themes for Further Exploration We are writing this chapter on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and more than two decades since Paulo Freire’s passing. From the perspective of an historicist understanding of social theory—how theoretical concepts need to be transformed in response to fundamental social change—such time frames give rise to the necessity of appraising that history of praxis/reflection. An obvious question thus arises: What have been the interim historical shifts that need to be taken into account in order to reappraise that earlier effort? Viewed retrospectively, we would single out four central themes that we continue to defend and would be particularly suitable for further development, though that cannot be taken up here: ●●

●●

A defense of a postpositivist, critical modernist conception of knowledge and the social sciences—shared by Freire and Habermas—that was directed against both the relativism of radical postmodernism and the certainties of Marxism (Morrow, 1994). This theme could be expanded along a number of lines, focusing on more recent developments relating to our earlier survey of reproduction and transformation in education (Morrow & Torres, 1995): more extensive use of Pierre Bourdieu in light of his later work; reference to subsequent publications on Foucault’s theory of power, governmentality, and the practices of freedom; and the need to more explicitly recognize “indigenous methodologies” (Smith, 1999), especially in relation to participatory action research. Situating Freire in relation to Enrique Dussel’s Latin American liberation philosophy was concerned with deprovincializing Habermas’s European focus and introduced the perspective of what would now be called Freire’s “Southern

Rereading Freire and Habermas

●●

●●

theory.” The subsequent migration of postcolonial theory to Latin America, which contributed to the emerging concept of the epistemology of the Global South, confirmed the strategic importance of our concerns. However, the increasingly influential “decolonial option” and critique of Eurocentric epistemology developed by Walter Mignolo and others calls into question the ostensible “Eurocentrism” of both Habermas and Freire. Nevertheless, such sweeping critiques of Western modernity neglect its internal diversity and countermovements, hence forms of “epistemic disobedience” that long preceded Mignolo’s call for non‐Western resistance and made the projects of Habermas and Freire possible. In short, their dialogical approaches to questions of local and indigenous knowledge, hybridity, and democratization provide (Morrow, 2008, 2009), we would argue, a persuasive alternative to Mignolo’s proposed strategy of “delinking” from European modernity (Morrow, 2013a). The discussion of Freire’s relation to liberation theology (which was linked to Enrique Dussel’s liberation philosophy) suggested another corrective to Habermas, whose perspective still took for granted the classic sociological secularization thesis. Only subsequently has Habermas introduced a revised conception of a “postsecular society” and the problems of “translation” of religious perspectives in the public sphere (Habermas, 2002, 2008 [2005]). These debates provide an instructive context for rethinking Freire’s relation to liberation theology as an example of a theological “translation” of his critical pedagogy, which is otherwise grounded in postmetaphysical, “secular” theoretical arguments that for Freire were always framed within what now would be called a “postsecular” humanistic sensibility, as we will see. Locating Freire in relation to Habermas’s more explicit post‐Marxist critical social theory provided a strategy for elaborating the implications of the primacy of democratization for Freire, especially in advocacy of participatory and deliberative democracy and critical citizenship that informed his political engagements upon returning to Brazil. As he noted in an interview in 1988, referring to his identification with Henry Giroux’s conception of “critical pedagogy,” Marx is a “really critical milestone” and a necessary resource for critical thinking, but he should not be followed as “a rule, as an orthodox thing”: “Giroux passes through Marx, but he does not necessarily stay in Marx” (Freire, Matos, & Rio, 2017 [1988]). The subsequent international proliferation of references to post‐Marxist theory suggests an agenda concerned with the further clarification of these issues in relation to Freire and Habermas (Morrow, 2013b). The term post‐Marxist, it should be emphasized, does not represent a  shared alternative theoretical position, as opposed to diverse critical theoretical expressions of a rejection of classical “Marx‐ism” as a self‐enclosed ­metanarrative of history and prophetic revolutionary political project (Therborn, 2008, p. ix).

Rereading as Reframing: The Agenda Largely setting aside the preceding issues, the present “rereading” of Freire and Habermas focuses on drawing out some of the implications of understanding of Freire’s historicist methodology, as evident in the metatheoretical foundations

243

244

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

of his social scientifically informed praxis‐oriented pedagogical program.1 The resulting strategy suggests a revisioning as a returning to and a reframing, in order to briefly update and bring to a broader audience a project worthy of constructive criticism and further development. This task is elaborated in two parts. Part I reframes the strategy of comparison by clarifying the historicist methodology underlying Freire’s praxis‐oriented dialogical pedagogy. The goal of the first section on the “logic of reinvention” is to reframe the strategy of comparison by developing a more explicit analysis of the deep structure of Freire’s theoretical strategy by differentiating its relatively stable, “core” generative categories and the “peripheral”—contingent, changing, and contextual—social theoretical concepts used for social diagnosis and local contextualization. This distinction between the foundational and diagnostic aspects of his theoretical program will serve a number of purposes. Most important, it becomes possible to think about the process of reinvention more self‐consciously, hence to interpret Pedagogy of the Oppressed more reflexively, based upon an explicit “critical” and “restorative” hermeneutics, to use Paul Ricoeur’s distinction. In the process, it becomes possible to avoid various problematic strategies of interpreting his classical text: ritualistically as a sacred book, ambiguously in the form of an epigraph whose meaning can be taken for granted within a particular politically correct canon, or superficially as a more or less “outdated” precursor. The second section of Part I focuses on clarifying the core/peripheral theory distinction—reframed as foundational/diagnostic—through the discussion of a strategic example of each of the two types of theorizing. On the one hand, in order to illustrate the logical characteristics of the more stable central ontological and pedagogical categories, Freire’s example of reinventing a pedagogy of “machismo” or gender domination is analyzed. The goal is to illustrate the generative character of the core concepts and their capacity to operate at three different levels: ontological, ethical, and historical‐empirical. On the other hand, the historical and changing character of social theoretical concepts and social diagnosis is illustrated though an analysis of Freire’s shifting perspectives in the three phases of his career in response to his awareness of changes in the social sciences, as well as the social realities they attempted to explain and transform. Part II, however, is concerned with a foundational question that we did not address adequately in the original Freire‐Habermas comparison. Though we mentioned the problematic of “philosophical anthropology,” its significance as a distinctive approach to the theory of human nature and its importance for grounding Freire’s foundational, core concepts was not clarified. The remarkable interim expansion of discussions in several disciplines relating to philosophical anthropology (Dallmayr, 2013b; Honenberger, 2015), however, provides a catalyst for addressing and further developing Freire’s own brief reference to the “anthropological” assumptions of his pedagogy. Within the pantheon of core concepts, these post‐Kantian anthropological arguments can be seen to have a grounding function that is potentially revisable in response to the changing multidisciplinary scientific findings about the distinctive features of the human species. Taken together, in short, Freire and Habermas provide an in‐depth rationale for a pedagogical “political anthropology,” a term introduced in the early work of Carlos Torres to describe Freire’s pedagogical project that is further developed

Rereading Freire and Habermas

here (Torres, 1978). Recognizing the anthropological foundations of Freire’s pedagogy facilitates a deeper understanding of his historicist methodology and the generative character of his core concepts that make possible the distinctive ongoing “reinventions” that are an inherent feature of his praxis‐oriented pedagogy. As we will conclude, developing these anthropological foundations also has crucial implications for confronting the epochal challenge of the environmental crisis. Though we mentioned environmental movements, we did not adequately address the fact that ecopedagogy had become a new—if unfinished—focus for writing and publication at the end of Freire’s career (see Misiaszek and Torres, Chapter 25 in this volume). The subsequent labeling of the “anthropocene,” as roughly beginning with the industrial revolution, provides a new reference point for rethinking ecopedagogy, as well as a new agenda that both supplements and requires revising the older questions relating to social justice education, critical citizenship, and educational research (Misiaszek, 2017).

Part I: Reframing the Comparison of Freire and Habermas Freire and the Logic of Reinvention Versus Reconstruction Though recognizing the historicism of Freire’s pedagogical methodology, our earlier comparison with Habermas did not adequately address the depth structure—the metatheoretical foundations—of his praxis‐oriented pedagogical program, which is quite distinct from social science research programs and paradigms. We tended to view Freire’s critical pedagogy as a relatively seamless, consistent whole because our reference point was the “progressive postmodernism” that he eventually identified with upon his return to Brazil, which explicitly rejected the epistemological certainty and class reductionism that was often apparent in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Nevertheless, we questioned this later self‐description in terms of the then fashionable terminology of postmodernism, which reflected the circumstances of his dialogue with Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren. Instead, we located the deeper affinities of his position with the postfoundationalism of the later Habermas. Nevertheless, our earlier strategy did not adequately address the historicist methodology or “logic of reinvention” underlying Freire’s approach. A distinction used in the history and philosophy of science to analyze natural scientific research programs (Imre Lakatos) can be adapted for this purpose: the “core,” defining concepts that are essential and foundational for a theoretical project or paradigm, as opposed to “peripheral” arguments that can be dispensed with or changed in response to novel research findings that call them into question. In other words, a research program can revise or even reject its peripheral theories without jeopardizing the foundational core theory. The case of the human sciences, however, is rather different because the object of inquiry—human history—changes continuously, often in terms of a sequential logic described through periodization and sometimes evolutionary concepts. Nevertheless, social life does have deeper, species‐specific ontological aspects that

245

246

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

remain constant (e.g. subject–object relations, the interpretive capacities of subjects) and make possible the generation of these historical variations. In contrast to the slow evolution of nature, the “nature” of society—the basic organizational principles of its reproduction and transformation—often change fundamentally over relatively short periods a time, a point implicit in the d ­ istinction between evolution and revolution, or historical classifications of types of societies. To return to the case of Freire, his praxis‐oriented pedagogical program can be contrasted to scientific research programs. Though dependent upon and informed by the historical social sciences, Freire’s goal is not a social science research program oriented toward the production of new knowledge. Its focus is instead on the use of educational institutions (whether formal and informal) and pedagogical processes more generally (e.g. in social movements, civil society, and democratic dialogue) for the transformation of society through the facilitation of critical‐ reflexive consciousness and its practical embodiment in social action. The criteria of adequacy are thus not based on the growth of knowledge, but the capacity to generate diverse contextual “reinventions” that provide validating justifications and reconfigurations of the core concepts. The outcome is a praxis‐oriented program, hence a generative framework of general concepts and questions for informing and motivating transformative pedagogical practices. Thus, the relatively stable core categories become activated pragmatically through their interpretation and translation as social practices in particular “applied” context of learning. Consequently, a comparative review of the more successful examples of critical pedagogy projects reveals the constant uncoupling and recoupling of the core, generative categories with the situated and contingent social theoretical concepts relating to epochal diagnosis and local contextualization. This contrast can be characterized as a distinction between the foundational concepts (hence, core, generative) of the pedagogical paradigm and the diagnostic concepts, hence the social theoretical and methodological assumptions that guide contextualization. This metatheoretical understanding was first anticipated in the early writings of Carlos Torres with the identification of Freire’s foundational political anthropology as the generative framework for understanding Freire’s dialogical pedagogy in relation to social research and historical contextualization (Torres, 1978), first exemplified in his research on the politics of nonformal and adult education (Torres, 1990), and later “reinvented” for Latin American popular education more generally. Similarly, Henry Giroux in the mid‐1980s, but writing for a North American audience, popularized a conception of critical pedagogy as a “language of possibility,” identifying the distinctive function of the core pedagogical categories as follows: “What Freire does provide is a metalanguage that generates a set of categories and social practices that have to be critically mediated by those who would use them for the insights they might provide in different historical settings and contexts” (Giroux, 1985, pp. xviii–xix). Nevertheless, he neither explicitly recognized the anthropological dimension Freire’s pedagogy nor elaborated the specific methodological and sociological implications of contextualization, The distinctive contribution of our book on Freire and ­ Habermas was thus an attempt to synthesize these issues in terms of a critical social psychology—which we would now reemphasize is grounded in a political anthropology—and its relation to the late Freire’s pluralistic understanding of

Rereading Freire and Habermas

social theoretical diagnosis and its convergence with critical social research understood as a crucial resource for the “reflection” necessary to further develop praxis. From this metatheoretical perspective, the core generative concepts take the form of a transformative “methodology,” though not a “method,” a distinction found in the postpositivist social science literature. A social scientific method is a specialized technique, for example, survey research, that is relatively indifferent to the purposes of values that guide its use. In contrast, a methodology in this more technical sense refers to an overall strategy for investigation (e.g. research design) that may use a variety of technical methods, as long as the process of investigation is guided by specific purposes and explicit values. In the case of critical social theories based a “critical theory of methodology,” the research design is based on linking analysis agency and structure (e.g. social and cultural reproduction) with values relating to processes of liberation and humanization and the reduction of alienation and dehumanization (Morrow, 1994). Similarly, a Freirean methodology—as a praxis‐oriented pedagogical program—necessarily gives primacy to the strategic role of dialogical learning, but this does not ­preclude the use of more structured instructional methods if they contribute to the overall goals of a critical education project. The distinction between the stable foundational and changing diagnostic concepts also has important implications for reflexive validation and further development of Freire’s pedagogy. Even if particular educational experiments may appear to fail or not live up to expectations, the resulting necessary criticisms have no direct relation to refuting the validity of his core concepts, even if problematizing the adequacy of the diagnosis underlying particular applications. Consequently, such failed “praxis” should give rise to “reflection” based in part on critical evaluation research. Indeed, from this perspective, the history of the “reinventions” of Freire provides a potential comparative laboratory for developing more adequate criteria of “failure” and “success,” as well as informing the construction of more empirically grounded diagnostic strategies and contributing to the reconstruction of core concepts. The existing critiques of the use of Freire’s as a “method” are thus valid to the extent that they target strategies that lose sight of conscientization as part of a larger emancipatory pedagogical process. Where such “radical” critiques often go astray is that they often tightly and a historically couple his core concepts with a specific, time‐bound and situational diagnosis, as in the case of Freire’s apparent embrace of revolutionary Marxism‐Leninism in chapter 4 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.2 To this day, there are contexts—especially Latin America—where the vague but dogmatic mantra of this understanding of Freire’s “Marxism” and “socialism” is ritually repeated in a “sectarian” manner that lacks adequate historical and empirical “reflection,” as Freire would say. Freire’s Understanding of Reinvention: Rethinking “Machismo” The complex character of Freire’s core pedagogical concepts as part of a critical pedagogical methodology can be illustrated by considering his own discussions of reinvention, which refer primarily to social theoretical recontextualization

247

248

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

and a rejection of unreflexive, mechanical efforts to “import” his pedagogy into different social and cultural contexts. To use the terminology just introduced, the primary focus of his understanding of reinvention is thus on revising the peripheral, social theoretical assumptions that inform the contextualization of educational reform. As he put it: Reinvention requires of me that I recognize that the historical, political, cultural, and economic conditions of each context present new methodological and tactical requirements, so that it is always necessary to search for the actualization of … ideas with every new situation. In other words, the way that I struggle against machismo in Northeast Brazil cannot be possibly the same way that one should fight against machismo in New York City (Freire, 1997, p. 326).3 This emphasis on reinvention as recontextualization is certainly appropriate for relatively routine forms of translation, such as generalizing the “Freire method” of adult literacy training in developing the broader agenda of “popular education” in Latin America. In this case, the learners have sociocultural similarities as part of the popular classes, but the methodology is extended to formal education and the range of educational levels. But even in the case of popular education it is a necessary to recognize a second type of analysis: reinvention as conceptual reconstruction of the core categories. For example, “critical literacy” applied to children has rather different implications than for illiterate adults, and these can and have been illuminated by developmental psychology, as well as generating new research questions about individualistic, cross‐cultural bias in Piaget’s models of cognitive and moral development. Indeed, such reconstructive possibilities are an essential dimension of the generative potential of the core concepts. Hence from his own radical historicist perspective, every contextual reinvention requires some degree of conceptual reconstruction involved in the respecification and differential elaboration of his core categories. This process is enabled by the high level of generality of his core concepts and complemented by bodies of empirical research and accumulated practice in particular domains. Though this kind of analysis could be extended to other generative concepts (and their negative opposites) such as dialogue or conscientization, Freire’s example of machismo has the advantage of illustrating some particularly important issues. The methodological issues involved in conceptual reinvention—which is to say conceptual reconstruction—raise other complex and often controversial issues. Freire’s use of the example of machismo is thus particularly illuminating because relates to questions that he confronted explicitly only later on in his career when faced with feminist critiques of his earlier apparent class reductionism and exclusive focus on male workers. The previous distinction between the logic of contextual reinvention and conceptual reconstruction, however, can help deal with these issues. The problematic of machismo can be traced back to gender domination as a particular form of oppression, a concept whose multiple dimensions he addressed only later. Viewing oppression as a foundational generative concept sensitizes us to how it operates at various levels: ontological (hence, anthropological, as a form of dehumanization distinctive of the human species); ethical (as a

Rereading Freire and Habermas

violation of human dignity, freedom, and autonomy); and historical‐empirical (its appearance in different social formations and configurations of domination). At the first level, given its generality as an ontological concept, oppression cannot be reduced to the Marxian concepts of “working class” or “proletariat,” which are very specific to capitalism and alienated wage labor. Such social forms of formally “free labor” emerged only very late in human history and have also undergone fundamental transformation in the history of capitalism. Consequently, slavery—the most dehumanizing form—and “bondage” more generally, can best described as the primordial form of oppression, a point implicit in Freire’s use of Hegel’s “master–slave” metaphor as a transhistorical concept useful for describing the generic structure of domination, at least in its agent‐ based form. As a level of an ethical concept, oppression takes on a normative or value meaning that becomes the basis of social critique, as well as directing attention to empirical issues related to power and domination. The terminology that Freire used to describe the negative effects of oppression originated in concepts of alienation and reification (i.e. treating like a “thing” or “object”) originating in Hegel and Marx, though supplemented by the interpretations of Erich Fromm and Frantz Fanon. The effects of the exercise of oppressive power—as expressed in the many forms of domination evident in social history—are generated by processes of “alienation” and nonrecognition through which humans become “estranged” from and deprived of their innate capacity for freedom and autonomy. Consequently, even though they are ontologically “subjects” by “nature,” they are treated as if they were inhuman “things” or “objects” (hence reified and dehumanized). Further, alienation theory can be extended to an ethical critique and the analysis of the domination of nature (Dickens, 1996). At the third level, as an historical‐empirical concept, the meaning of oppression is necessarily historical and contextual, a point obscured by essentializing uses of the term. As a generative, ontological category, oppression also takes many historical forms in modern and premodern social formations, for example, social class, gender, race, colonialism, and dehumanizing responses to differences more generally (e.g. sexuality, disability, ethnicity, etc.). Though most of these forms of oppression long preceded capitalism, it has exploited such preexisting prejudices—given the intrinsic moral indifference of markets—in the absence of specific legal regulation and its enforcement. Most important, the contextual analysis of oppression as an historical‐empirical concept presupposes supplementary sociological and cultural anthropological theories that are grounded in empirical and historical research, necessarily fallible and subject to progressive revision in light of the social history of domination and social reproduction (Morrow & Torres, 1995). Otherwise the eloquent metaphor of a “pedagogy of the oppressed” becomes subject to rhetorical abuses in the context of sectarian polemics, whether in the populistic identification with an undifferentiated collective class subject such as “the people,” or the political fragmentation characteristic of identity politics, resulting in the paradox of an “oppression olympics” in competition for claims to victimhood (Hancock, 2011). Important theoretical advances have provided new conceptual resources for addressing the empirical and historical complexity of domination, but it has

249

250

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

proven difficulty to translate that understanding into effective transformative practices. For example, oppression in feminist theory has been instructively differentiated in terms of its “five faces”: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (Young, 1990, pp. 39–65). Similarly, the concept of “intersectionality” (originating in feminist and race theory) has emerged as part of a critique of class reductionism and in response to the multidimensional character of domination (Hancock, 2016). Nevertheless, integrating these insights into the construction of political projects based on “unity within diversity” as advocated by Freire requires candid recognition of how an obsessive focus on identity politics has unwittingly contributed to the rise of right‐wing populism and obscured the foundational realities of increasing inequality and the need for economic redistribution (Fraser, 1997; Honneth, 2017). Contingent Social‐Theoretical Analysis: The Three Phases of Freire’s Education as an Educator The primary objective of our second example is to introduce some of the ­hermeneutic issues of interpretation posed by the historical development of Freire’s work and its assumptions about diagnostic social scientific concepts. We take a middle road with respect to the classic question of authorial intention: the  author’s self‐understanding cannot be ignored, and yet creative authors ­cannot be fully conscious of their intentions or anticipate the full implications and tensions within their own arguments, especially as evident in posthumous, competing uses and interpretations. Comments by Rosa‐María Torres provide a useful point of departure: During our interview in 1985, he corrected me that his work is not split in two: the first Freire, and the latter Freire. Rather, it is one single Freire in movement, in a perpetual state of learning and in continuous reflection about his own work. (Torres, 1998, p. 1) We qualify his self‐understanding, by relating it to the two forms of theorizing in his work—the foundational and diagnostic. Yes, there is “one single Freire in movement” that revolves primarily around the continuity evident in what we have described as his core, generative pedagogical concepts. Nevertheless, at the level of assumptions about knowledge and the social theoretical concepts that he used to contextualize his pedagogy, his diagnostic thinking underwent important changes that require some form of periodization, which we describe in terms of the three phases of his career. But even here there is a basic continuity of intention that cannot be ignored: repeated, if rather vague and general references to the relation between “science,” liberation, conscientization, and dialogue. From the perspective of his career as a whole, this continuity of scientific intention can be summarized as follows: that the contextualization of his pedagogy must be guided by an understanding of objective social reality that is informed by reflexive, nonvalue free, social scientific analysis sensitive to relations of power and domination. Reflexivity here implies simultaneous responsiveness to the diversity of standpoints, competing forms of empirically grounded evidence, and

Rereading Freire and Habermas

awareness of the necessary dialogue between expert and popular knowledge (or expert and lay knowledge as characterized by sociologist Anthony Giddens’s conception of a “double hermeneutic”). The three phases of his career were defined by changing interpretations of the requirements of realizing this ­multifaceted intention. Our strategy can be also justified by a related expression of Freire’s self‐ understanding, again from the 1985 interview: Over and over again he demanded that his critics contextualize his work historically, acknowledge the evolution of his thought and his self‐ criticism, and allow him … the right to continue thinking, learning and living beyond his books and, in particular, beyond Education as a Practice of Liberty (1967) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1969), where many admirers and critics left him virtually suspended. (Torres, 1998, p. 1) Without such an historical perspective, debates about the “true” Freire are resolved either by arbitrarily selecting particular citations that fit one’s theoretical agenda or concluding that he was simply inconsistent. An example of the latter is Ronald Glass’s provocative critical contention—based on citations from throughout his career—that Freire’s epistemological approach was “lacking clarity.” Most seriously, “he equivocated between accepting the radical indeterminateness of knowledge and arguing for a natural science kind of certainty.” Consequently, “if knowledge is tied to human interests (Habermas) and relations of power (Foucault) that embed ideological commitments … then explanations of oppression continually beg the question of their validity.” What is thus required, Glass concludes, is a “nonfoundational” approach (Glass, 2001, pp. 21–22). Glass’s critique can best be addressed—as we did in our earlier study—by a consideration of Freire’s intellectual development—his “education as an educator”— using the perspective of the “final Freire” and his related unconscious convergence with Habermas’s postfoundationalism as a reference point for reassessing the previous two phases. These three phases were closely related to his geographic locations, professional responsibilities, and political engagements: 1) The pre‐exile period before 1964 was defined by development of an innovative adult literacy program, a process that was supplemented by related agricultural extension experience in Chile (Torres, 2014). This phase was guided by an elite‐mass model of society and a liberal democratic approach to the contribution of education to “fundamental democratization” as part of a developmental nationalist project of modernization in Brazil as understood within the emerging Latin American tradition of dependency theory. A crucial aspect of his methodological approach to dialogical education was the use of multiple empirical methods to investigate the social realities and popular culture of learners, especially the ethnographic analysis of generative themes and the use of participatory action approaches to community and local development (Flores‐Kastanis, Montoya‐Vargas, & Suárez, 2009). This phase was interrupted by a military coup in 1964, which reflected an elite response to the perceived threat of mass, grassroots democratic mobilization, though framed in the ideological rhetoric of anticommunism.

251

252

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

2) The exile period from 1964 to 1980, which involved extensive international experience: relocation in Chile from 1964 to 1969, followed by a year of teaching at Harvard, and then work for a decade as an educational consultant for the World Council of Churches in Geneva. The experience in Chile culminated in a Marxist turn that can be related to the trauma of exile, his exposure to the remarkable international reception of Marxism in Chile, and his conviction that in most of Latin America that the only alternative to fascist authoritarianism was revolution as envisioned by the Cuban revolution, especially the example of Che Guevara. A problematic feature of this Marxist phase (which was extensively shared by a Latin American intellectual generation), however, was a tendency to see Marxism in foundationalist terms as a self‐sufficient, scientific program of theory and praxis that could dispense with dialogue with the “bourgeois” social sciences. In practice, however, his work with the World Council of Churches included consultant activities with both new revolutionary regimes and democratic reform projects sponsored by governments and nongovernmental organizations. Consequently, there was an unresolved tension between the democratic and revolutionary models, especially because, as critics charged, he unsuccessfully attempted to graft his dialogical pedagogy onto a Marxist‐Leninist conception of revolutionary “democracy” based on “communion” with “the masses” or “the people.” This persistent democratic deficit was also reflected in the lingering Eurocentrism of Latin American revolutionary theory, especially its lack of understanding of the experiences of African descendants of slaves and indigenous peoples. Such problems in his initial appropriation of Marxist theory arose in part from not realizing the conflicts between the humanist (existential, phenomenological, historicist) and antihumanist (structuralist) interpretations of Marxism that he attempted to integrate in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Moreover, this initial engagement with Marxism did not give any evidence of a deeper understanding of Gramsci, the primary reference point of his relation to the Marxist tradition in his third phase, as part of a complex Gramsci reception in Brazil (Coutinho, 2012). 3) The period of his return to Brazil in the 1980s until his death in 1997 included work as a university professor, engagement with the radical democratic Worker’s Party headed by Lula da Silva, and a 2‐year effort at the end of the 1990s to initiate the reform of the public education system of Sao Paulo (O’Cadiz, Wong, & Torres, 1998). Though the resulting new social theoretical perspective was not treated in a systematic way, his political involvements gave priority to democratization for realizing broadly socialist goals, his social analysis rejected class reductionism and recognized the diversity of oppression, and epistemologically he embraced a “critical” or “progressive postmodernism” that rejected both relativism and dogmatic claims to certainty in favor of reflection on praxis informed by a plural understanding of social research (Freire, 1993; Freire & Macedo, 1993). In questioning his use of the terminology of postmodernism to describe this phase, we argued in Reading Freire and Habermas that the more theoretically sophisticated postpositivst philosophy of social science provided by Habermas and contemporary critical social theory and research could more effectively clarify what he had in mind. Moreover, this interpretation is also in principle consistent with Freire’s r­elation to a

Rereading Freire and Habermas

democratic, historicist Gramsci in this period, at least to the extent that Gramsci’s concepts and political strategies become subject to criticism from the social sciences and diverse sociopolitical standpoints (Mayo, 1999).

Part II: From Philosophical Anthropology to the Anthropocene and Ecopedagogy Philosophical Anthropology: The Social Construction of What? This theme is concerned with reframing the relations among the core pedagogical concepts, especially their ontological foundations and characteristics. Though we mentioned philosophical anthropology in our earlier study, it was not explicitly differentiated as a particular strategy for conceptualizing an ontology of human nature. Instead, our Freire‐Habermas comparison referred more concretely to a “critical social psychology of the dialogical and developmental subject” and rather ambiguously to a “postfoundationalist humanism.” The task of this section is to situate Freire’s philosophical anthropology as a specific post‐Kantian approach to human nature and its relation to domination, freedom, autonomy, and a “postsecular humanism.”4 As well, we locate the foundational basis of convergence between Freire and Habermas here, especially in the distinctive form of a political anthropology that gives primacy to humanization and collective learning. The question of reconstructing Freire’s political anthropology thus becomes one of identifying the configuration of ontological concepts that, beyond the example of oppression discussed earlier, define the overall unity of his pedagogical program. Though we mentioned that Freire’s dialogical and developmental conception of the subject suggested a “philosophical anthropology,” our Freire‐Habermas study did not elaborate its possible significance beyond the following prefatory comment: “Whereas social and cultural anthropology as an empirical discipline was primarily concerned with the analysis and description of cultural differences, philosophical anthropology involved reflection on the constants and uniformities of the human species” (Morrow & Torres, 2002, p. 91). Another way of introducing the topic is to ask philosopher Ian Hacking’s question: “the social construction of what?” (Hacking, 1999). So‐called “blank slate” theories of human nature based on complete environmental determination neglect this question and can no longer be taken seriously from the perspective of neo‐Darwinian theory (Pinker, 2002). Even Marx referred to human “species being” in contrast to “dog” being, so it is difficult to deny that he had a minimal philosophical anthropology of human nature based on assumptions about biological predispositions of humans as historical beings, though the details of what he had in mind and its relation to Hegel and Feuerbach and his later writings remain disputed (Geras, 1981). Though the early Marx influenced both Freire and Habermas, their anthropologies also include insights from German idealism, American pragmatism, Freud, Fromm, Piaget, and many others as part of a critical social psychology, which we described as follows: We view both as working within a shared critical theory of the dialogical and developmental subject. Their approach presumes a “dialogical subject” because it rejects a monological and transcendental theory of the subject,

253

254

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

that is, one based on an abstract, metaphysical “I” that individualistically “knows” the world. Instead, they locate selfhood and identity formation in contexts of intersubjective communication. Their strategy is “developmental” because it argues that identity formation has, despite variable cultural contents, directional potential for growth than can be fully realized only under optimal conditions of socialization. With respect to Habermas, such concerns are most evident in his preoccupation with a theory of communicative action, moral development, and emancipatory reason. In the case of Freire, parallel concerns can be detected in terms of what has come to be called his pedagogy of liberation and conception of cultural action. (Morrow & Torres, 2002, pp. ix–x) To shift the focus to the philosophical anthropology implied by such a historical social psychology introduces a number of new questions. Because our primary reference for addressing this question here is Freire, the earlier discussion of the logic of contextual reinvention and conceptual reconstruction provides a point of departure. The central concern is the question of relations among the core pedagogical concepts, especially the significance of his fundamental social ontology of the “human” understood as a philosophical anthropology of a very particular type: a political anthropology. As suggested in the earlier discussion of machismo and gender domination, concepts such as oppression, dehumanization, and humanization are generative and operate at different levels: ontological, ethical, and in concrete empirical‐historical configurations. Philosophical anthropology thus represents a particular approach to the ontology of generative concepts such as oppression. Not all of the core concepts, however, are ontological, as opposed to comparative ideal types, for example, banking versus critical education. Before turning to these anthropological issues, however, a digression on the problematic of philosophical anthropology is necessary. Many authors unfortunately use the term philosophical anthropology as simply synonymous with theories of human nature. To take a recent example from the philosophy of education, in an otherwise laudable neo‐Deweyean effort to compare the philosophical anthropological foundations of the political philosophies of Dewey, John Rawls, and Leo Strauss, authors Fleury and Garrison fall back on a standard dictionary definition of the term as a theory of human nature (Fleury & Garrison, 2014), thus ignoring work on philosophical anthropology relating to the American pragmatist tradition (Margolis, 2009; Pihlström, 1998). Consequently, their use of the term adds nothing to their argument, which suffers from a failure to identify philosophical anthropology more historically and precisely as a specific, post‐Kantian tradition that originates in the writings of Kant, Herder, Hegel, especially the “left” Hegelians Feuerbach and the early Marx. Though such questions—summarized by Kant as “what is man?”—were anticipated by Hume and Rousseau’s discussions of human nature, Kant’s critical epistemology framed the topic in terms of what he called “anthropology” as part of a distinctive ontological theory of human nature and conceptualizing its relation to human history and freedom. Human nature—without further qualification or methodological specification—refers to so many different, conflicting, and incompatible theories and methodologies—from the scientism of Skinner’s

Rereading Freire and Habermas

behaviorism and sociobiology to speculative metaphysics of theology—that it is of limited use in the context of social theory. And philosophical anthropology serves only to overcome this vagueness when situated within the trajectory of German idealism and historicism, including the influential early twentieth century reformulations of authors—to cite some more well‐known examples—such as Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, and Ernst Cassirer (Glock, 2012). Though Habermas has personally avoided identifying directly with German philosophical anthropology because of its conservative uses, one of his earliest publications was in a philosophical dictionary entry in 1958 that provided a succinct definition of enduring value that has an obvious relation to aspects of his own project (Honneth & Joas, 1988). As noted critical theorist Fred Dallmayr recently put it: Regarding the original meaning of philosophical anthropology, I still find Jürgen Habermas on target when he writes that it “integrates and digests the findings of all those sciences which—like psychology, sociology, archeology or linguistics—deal with “man” and his works,” while it is “not in turn a specialized discipline.” Perched “between empiricism and theory,” its task is “to interpret scientific findings in a philosophical manner” (Dallmayr, 2013b, p. 363) Habermas’s own first installment on his own political anthropology appeared a decade later in the form of the theory of the critical‐emancipatory knowledge interests elaborated, as he put it earlier, “perched between empiricism and theory” (Habermas, 1971). Similarly, also in the late 1960s, Freire refers to his “vision of man” as a “scientific humanist one”: Our pedagogy cannot do without a vision of man and of this world. It formulates a scientific humanist conception which finds its expression in a dialogical praxis in which teachers and learners, together, in the act of analyzing a dehumanizing reality, denounce it while announcing its transformation in the name of the liberation of man (Freire, 1972, p. 20, 1985, p. 57). Emphasis added. The task of this introductory discussion is primarily to situate the problematic of philosophical anthropology in relation to Freire’s pedagogy, describing it as a “political anthropology.” A more extensive discussion would require a comparative analysis of competing anthropologies, for example, post‐Kantian theological anthropologies, of which liberation theology is a radical variant (Dorrien, 2012), as well as the more influential German anthropologies in the early twentieth century (Rehberg, 2009). Discussions of Freire’s Anthropology Before turning to a reconstruction of Freire’s anthropology, it is instructive to briefly review what has been described as the “relatively scant” literature on Freire’s theory of human nature (Harris, 2011, p. 20), which can be characterized as rather uneven, conflicting, and at times rather confused. Broadly speaking,

255

256

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

with occasional exceptions to be discussed later, two kinds of approaches dominate: ritualistic and dismissive. On the one hand, there are ritualistic, appreciative commentaries on his theory of human nature that may mention philosophical anthropology but provide no in‐depth clarification of its history, methodological foundations, or significance for his other core pedagogical concepts. This tendency is particularly evident in the literature in Spanish and Portuguese. The term is primarily used to give a certain philosophical authority to his pedagogy, without making a comparative effort to situate his anthropology by relating it to either competing versions or how he exactly he used the German sources that were his primary source of inspiration. At best, such interpretations simply list authors who influenced Freire’s anthropology, then review his work in terms of his conception of what one author has called a homo educandus that grounds an “anthropology of liberation” (Hernández Romero, 2010). Unfortunately, some also read into his concepts meanings that conflict with his explicit intentions, such as equating the “incompleteness” of humanization with the ideal of “perfectibility” (Perdomo, 2014 [2009]). Nor has the question of philosophical anthropology been central for those who have reconstructed the Freirean legacy in Brazil. The comprehensive Freire dictionary published in Portuguese and Spanish has no entry on the term, though it is occasionally mentioned in passing: “Freedom is a concept central to Paulo Freire’s anthropology, around which he constructs his pedagogical theory” (Streck, Redin, & Zitoski, 2015 [2008], p. 308).5 Even in the extensive study edited by Moacir Gadotti and others, the only significant reference to philosophical anthropology is an article by Carlos Alberto Torres who makes reference to German “anthropology” (Spengler, Alfred Weber, and Max Scheler are mentioned), as one of several influences on Freire, without detailing the exact impact (Torres, 1996, p. 118). The dismissive approaches, on the other hand, contend that Freire’s theory of human nature contributes little to his project, or should be simply abandoned because of its problematic assumptions. For example, one commentator tries comparing Freire’s understanding of human nature with Richard Rorty’s antifoundationalist neopragmatism, rather than the more congenial Dewey. He concludes that such concerns are “distracting” and “unhelpful”: “his assumptions about the universality of human nature, albeit a good rhetorical tool, are not very central to his perspective on education” (Gungor, 2012, p. 133). Frank Margonis goes so far as to claim that Freire’s pedagogy is “constrained” by its “dialogical philosophical anthropology” because it leads to “deficit portraits” of oppressed students, arguing that “we need to reconcile the aims of critical pedagogy” by abandoning an “a priori commitment to the dialogical self ” (Margonis, 1999, pp. 103–105). This apparently well‐intended effort to avoid Eurocentrism thus simply ignores the literature on the “pedagogy of difficulty” that confronts issues relating to emotion and resistance as central to Freirean pedagogy (Boler, 1999). Moreover, Margonis is in effect dismissing Freire’s dialogical presupposition on purely political grounds, despite a more recent convergence in a number of disciplines that reconfirms its transhistorical anthropological validity: “It is the use of differentiated techniques, among them symbols, in dialogic communication that contributes to the evolution of the human species as the dialogic species”

Rereading Freire and Habermas

(Weigand, 2010, p. 13). A similar and even more damning denunciation of Freire’s philosophical anthropology can be found in the work of Chet Bowers, who has long viewed Freire’s pedagogy as the “trojan horse” of Western neoliberalism. The key to his critique is a caricature of Freire as an advocate of “total autonomy,” thus downplaying his stress on solidarity, dialogue, and historical contextualization (Au & Apple, 2007). This tactic leads to the conclusion that he should “be viewed as an essentialist thinker whose philosophical anthropology is based on Western assumptions that were also the basis of the Industrial Revolution” (Bowers, 2005, p. 132).6 An alternative strategy for analyzing and reconstructing Freire’s philosophical anthropology, especially as a distinctive political anthropology, was introduced in the early work of Carlos Torres. The problematic of Freire’s anthropology was first noted in the eloquent foreword of the original Portuguese (and Spanish) editions by Ernani Maria Fiori, who pointed out that “anthropology becomes education” with political intent as a “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Fiori, 1970, p. 13), even though in the book Freire explicitly referred to cultural and social anthropology only in the context of ethnographic analysis of generative themes. Creatively building on Fiori’s suggestion, Carlos Alberto Torres, writing in 1977, went further by describing Freire in terms of a “scientific pedagogy” whose epistemological dimensions are grounded in a “political anthropology” concerned with the insertion of human consciousness in history (Torres, 1978, p. 7). This “scientific” characterization—which resembles Habermas’s conception of “post‐ metaphysical” theory—is of strategic importance because of the tendency in the early reception of Freire in Latin America and elsewhere to view him somewhat misleadingly and too narrowly as a “Christian thinker” (Jarvis, 1987), partly because of his early association with the Catholic Action Movement. Though Torres’s early discussion of Freire’s anthropology raises a number of issues worthy of further exploration, in the present context we can only highlight the strategic importance given to Hegel’s master–slave metaphor as an anthropological concept, an analysis that eventually appeared in an English version nearly 20 years later (Torres, 1994). Our focus here, however, is limited to a basic reconstruction of Freire’s self‐understanding of his anthropology in retrospective reflections. Freire’s Self‐Characterization: A Minimalist Reconstruction Though Freire makes frequent reference to human nature throughout his career in contexts relating to defining “man,” it appears that only once in his later work does he explicitly discuss, however briefly, the possibility that his pedagogy contains a philosophical anthropology. The resulting self‐characterization raises some interesting questions, including drawing attention to the difficulty that authors may have in self‐reflection and reconstructing the multiple dimensions of their own work. For example, the minimalist reconstructive strategy used here must piece together the central themes of his references to his anthropology because they are never presented in a more unified, systematic way. In the discussion that follows Freire’s anthropology is reconstructed in the form of three, interrelated theses.

257

258

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

The key reference to the anthropological grounding of his pedagogy appears in a section of about four pages in the Pedagogy of Hope, which is presented somewhat anecdotally as a response to his critics. In these recollections on the writing of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he could have also referred to Fiori’s original introduction to the Portuguese edition, in acknowledging that “a particular anthropology is implicit (when not clear and implicit)”: Ultimately, or perhaps one might say, in the overall context, not only of the passage cited, but of the whole book (could it have been otherwise?), a particular anthropology is implicit (when not clear and explicit)—a certain understanding or view of human beings as managing their nature in their own history, of which they become necessarily both subject and object. This is precisely one of the connotations of that nature, constituted socially and historically, which not only founds the assertion made in the passage quoted, but in which are rooted, consistently, I feel confident, the  positions on political pedagogy that I have argued over the course of the years. (Freire, 1994, p. 97) Here is the passage to which he refers, using the earlier and more familiar translation in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. (Freire, 2005a, p. 56) Clearly, this is a rather condensed version of the highlights of his anthropology that neglects many subthemes and a key complex of issues. To examine his claims more closely, these two citations can be broken down into two, interrelated theses. It is important to recall that as anthropological claims, they need to be transhistorical, hence not specific to capitalism or modernity. The first citation introduces the argument that humans “manage their own history,” which can be rephrased in terms of an ontology of humanization that gives direction to history, hence the possibility, implicit in this passage, of “progress.” As he puts it in the original text, humanization is viewed as an “ontological vocation” that is directed against “dehumanization.” Accordingly, in every phase of human history, from hunting and gathering tribes to the present, this struggle for overcoming dehumanization through humanization must be evident in some form. For purposes of discussion, this will be called the historical ontology of dehumanization‐ humanization as a species‐specific struggle (also a collective learning process) for freedom and autonomy within relations of solidarity. Humanization is also an “ontological vocation,” which is described as follows:

Rereading Freire and Habermas

It is because this is “the way we are” that we live the life of a vocation, a calling, to humanization, and that in dehumanization, which is a concrete fact in history, we live the life of a distortion of the call—never another calling. Neither one, humanization or dehumanization, is sure destiny, given datum, lot, or fate. This is precisely why the one is calling, and the other, distortion of the calling. (Freire, 1994, p. 98) An ambiguity of this macro‐historical formulation, however, is obvious: what is the motivational and social psychological basis—the anthropological subject—of humanization? Part of the answer to this question can be found in the second thesis regarding the social psychological dynamics underlying the struggle for humanization: the ontology of struggle as oppression‐liberation. The focus here is on the primary obstacle to humanization as oppression: the oppressors use of “violence” to abrogate “rights” that are implicitly universal in some sense (most inclusively, the “right to be human”). Moreover, oppressors also dehumanize themselves in the process of dehumanizing others. Only the oppressed, in the process of “freeing themselves” (hence a process of liberation or emancipation) can overcome this violent relation of domination exercised by the “oppressive class,” simultaneously, freeing the oppressors. The oppressive class can neither free themselves nor the oppressed. It is important that such passages (e.g. reference to social classes) should not read as empirical descriptions specific to capitalism, as opposed to “anthropological” generalizations. Consequently, reference to rights here takes a transhistorical form and need not refer to formal legal rights in the modern sense and may apply to customary rights in tribal societies struggling against the rise of chiefdoms and empires. Similarly, “class” here should not be taken in an exclusively capitalist sense. Nor should oppression be limited to immediate interpersonal relations, thus excluding impersonal structural relations of domination. Though not mentioned in these brief remarks, the allegory of Hegel’s master– slave dialectic as a struggle for recognition informs the ontology of oppression‐ liberation and its relation to the potential process of mutual recognition that liberates both oppressed and oppressor. This theme is discussed by Freire elsewhere in relation to particular historical cases of domination, especially peasants, workers, and the colonized. Human history was thus constituted by the episodes of particular forms of domination‐liberation. Upon closer examination, however, the preceding self‐description of his anthropology is incomplete from the perspective of his work as a whole because it neglects to clearly identify the dialogical, development subject that is the condition of possibility of the two more political dimensions. Yet he does consider this issue in Pedagogy of the Heart in a series of comments about human nature more generally: “I cannot think the issue of liberation, and all that it implies, without thinking about human nature” (Freire, 2000, p. 87). The key claim is related to “dialogism”: I now return to the discussion of a dialogic relationship, while a fundamental practice to human nature and to democracy on the one hand, and on the other, as an epistemological requirement …. This is how I will work through

259

260

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

the issue of dialogism. Instead of describing a profile of the concept of ­dialogism, I will begin by attempting to comprehend its foundation, what makes of it a strategic requirement, rather than solely the tactics of “smart” subjects toward reaching results. Dialogism must not be understood as a tool used by the educator, at times, in keeping with his or her political choices. Dialogism is a requirement of human nature and also a sign of the educator’s democratic stand. (Freire, 2000, p. 92, emphasis added) Such “dialogism” can be rephrased and expanded to construct a third anthropological thesis: an intersubjective ontology of the dialogical, development subject. This subject is also implicitly developmental, as evident in Freire’s frequent reference to the dialectic of “being” and “becoming.” Translated into the language of developmental psychology, the early formation of the individual can be viewed as passing through formal (and “existential”) stages of cognitive, moral, and ego understanding that stabilize as “being” at particular stages but are compelled to always “become more.” In other words, this third anthropological thesis refers to the innate potential for humanization that is undermined most visibly by the historically pervasive dehumanizing effects of oppressor‐oppressed relations. Again, it is important to recall that oppression here is a transhistorical category that can be metaphorically translated into the paradigmatic image of master– slave, as the most extreme readily recognizable form. Another crucial feature of Freire’s anthropology is that the processes of becoming and humanization are ultimately an expression of what Erich Fromm called “biophilia” as a primary innate human disposition relating to the love of life on the part of a dialogical species, despite its potential sociohistorical deformation as the destructive “necrophilia” that underlies dehumanization. To summarize, Freire’s understanding of his political anthropology, when pieced together, can be summarized in terms of three ontological theses that can be phrased in his basic terminology, as supplemented by important clarifications. Taken together, for Freire these three anthropological characteristics define the uniqueness of the human species and its relation to freedom and autonomy: ●●

●●

●●

That evolutionary and social history has a contingent potential for directionality as cumulatively evident, despite regressions, in processes of dehumanization‐ humanization; awareness of such humanizing possibilities gives rise to moral obligations that constitutes a distinctive human “vocation”; That humanization is constructed in part through struggles of oppression‐ liberation, whose intersubjective logic can be understood metaphorically in terms of Hegel’s allegory of recognition in the master–slave dialectic and the principle that no one can be free until all are free; That the necessary condition of possibility of humanization and struggles for mutual recognition is a dialogical (and developmental) subject whose self‐ understanding is constituted through mutual recognition and a dialectic of being and becoming that can flourish only under conditions of relative nonoppression that release the potential of biophilia and reduce its pathological ­distortion as necrophilia in relation to both society and nature.

Rereading Freire and Habermas

Each of these foundational anthropological arguments are based on generative concepts in the sense described previously, referring simultaneously to three kinds of questions: (a) an ontological focus on species‐specific, innate predispositions and potentialities; (b) an ethical dimension that can be articulated and debated communicatively given the human capacity for moral reasoning and reflection; and (c) the historical world of agency, structure, and social conflict through which such issues becomes concretized in particular social relations, institutions, and struggles. This type of multilevel reconstruction could also be applied to Freire’s formulation of “dialogism” just cited, which can be reconstructed as follows, using his phrasing: Ontological: “dialogism is a requirement of human nature.” Ethical: embracing dialogism as part of an ontological vocation: “his or her political choice,” “a sign of the educator’s democratic stand.” Historical‐Empirical (here: strategic pedagogical practice); “the tactics of ‘smart’ subjects toward reaching results” in a particular educational context. “Secular Theology” or “Postsecular Humanism”? Though the preceding discussion suggests that Freire’s self‐understanding is fairly coherent, especially when pieced together and further specified, there are various reasons to argue that it needs to be supplemented by more systematic reconstructions that go beyond his own self‐understanding. These issues can be illustrated by what is de facto the most influential—if brief and cryptic— description of Freire’s anthropology in a widely cited essay by Stanley Aronowitz, which was given widespread visibility by being cited in Donald Macedo’s introduction (Freire, 2000) to the 30th anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 2005b [1970], p. 25). Unfortunately, he does not provide any clarifying comments and then mysteriously omits the following citation in the 50th year edition: Freire’s pedagogy is grounded in a fully developed philosophical anthropology, that is, a theory of human nature, one might say a secular liberation theology, containing its categories that are irreducible to any other philosophy. (Aronowitz, 1993, p. 12) Each phrase in this concise, instructive formulation raises issues that are not really addressed in the rest of Aronowitz’s article but need to be either problematized, qualified, or underscored. Most generally, in simply equating philosophical anthropology with a theory of human nature, readers are again provided no guidelines for reflecting on the theoretical and methodological significance of Freire’s theoretical strategy beyond the provocative yet puzzling characterization of it as a “secular theology.” Unfortunately, this term is unsatisfactory for at least three reasons. First, it is now questionable because secular theology has taken on very different, often conflicting, meanings in subsequent discussions within the field of theology, where it is associated with the “death of God” debate and later

261

262

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

“postmodern” theology influenced by Jacques Derrida. Freire’s pedagogy is simply not directed toward these kinds of issues. Second, the reference to secular theology could also be erroneously interpreted as linking Freire with the kind of messianic eschatology often attributed to Marx’s philosophy of history. Freire’s conception of humanization as “incompletion” and rejection of social class as “the motor” of history explicitly distances itself from any deterministic or teleological philosophy of history. Third, given that Aronowitz alludes to a relation between Freire’s supposed secular theology and his personal support of liberation theology, this terminology has encouraged some to exaggerate the significance of the Christian origins of aspects of Freire’s thought (Kirylo & Boyd, 2017), failing to take into account the classic distinction between the “logic of discovery” of a theory and its “logic of justification.” Freire simply does not ground his pedagogy as a “theological anthropology.” What he does do is suggest that Christians—along with believers in other monotheistic religions, indigenous polytheisms, or secular humanism— can all potentially reconcile their beliefs with a pedagogy of liberation whose appeal is universal. He gives Christian examples of such dialogue and reconciliation because he can speak from authority given his personal experience. From this perspective, Christianity cannot persuasively claim a unique or “privileged” status as a necessary condition of access to worldly liberation. For this reason, Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the most influential founders of liberation theology, made a clear distinction between “liberation” as a sociopolitical concept and “liberation” in the theological context of Christian redemption. In contrast to human freedom and autonomy, which as Freire reiterates is not a “gift,” “The Bible presents liberation—salvation—in Christ as the total gift, which… gives the whole process its deepest meaning …. Liberation can thus be approached as a single salvific process” (Gutiérrez, 1973 [1971], p. x). Similarly, as the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel—one of Freire’s early sources of inspiration—concluded, referring to his distinction between “being” and “having” (a theme also found in the non‐Christian Erich Fromm and adopted by Freire): It is quite possible that the existence of the fundamental Christian data may be necessary in fact to enable the mind to conceive some of the notions which I have attempted to analyze; but these notions cannot be said to depend on the data of Christianity, and they do not presuppose it… I have experienced {the development of these ideas} more than twenty years before I had the remotest thought of becoming a Catholic‐cited in. (Treanor & Sweetman, 2016) Aronowitz also raises another issue that needs to be treated with caution: describing Freire’s anthropology as “well developed.” That may be the case in the sense of being comprehensive in scope when reconstructed, nevertheless it is merely sketched in an accessible outline form, without any technically detailed theoretical justification as a philosophical anthropology. It can be argued, in other words, that it is clearly unfinished and in need of further development in relation to later discussions and research, as we have suggested in the case of our Habermas comparison.

Rereading Freire and Habermas

Aronowitz’s final point—that Freire’s categories “are irreducible to any other philosophy”—has taken on increasing importance because it recognizes the depth of Freire’s originality, casting doubt on the many conflicting efforts to reduce Freire to some shorter or longer list of influences or appropriate him in the name of a particular revolutionary vision. One of the major advantages of Freire‐Habermas study was to compare two completely independent, yet convergent political anthropologies. The most fundament problem with Aronowitz’s formulation, beyond the issues just noted, is that the label “secular theology” has connotations that obscure the distinctive epistemological status of Freire’s postmetaphysical anthropology, in Habermas’s sense of the term (Habermas, 1992), making it qualitatively different than theology—a mode of metaphysical thought—or essentialist thinking more generally. Freire’s anthropology is neither purely “secular” nor is it “theological” in a meaningful sense: grounding itself in a conception human‐divine relations, as part of a salvational historical motif of liberation, or even an appeal to faith as “ultimate concern” in Paul Tillich’s sense. Consequently, the resulting cosmopolitan humanism is potentially open to diverse forms of life and conceptions of ultimate meaning as a framework for pedagogical praxis, without claiming to provide a substitute for or alternative to any of them. In other words, Freire’s radical democratic humanism is no more theological than contemporary normative political philosophy in general. Nevertheless, the theme of secularity remains of crucial importance but needs to be reframed in relation to more recent discussion of “postsecular society” by Habermas and others. Freire’s position was not purely secular because it was not based on militant atheism in the sense of popular forms of “secular humanism.” As Habermas now acknowledges, in revising his earlier uncritical acceptance of the Weberian secularization thesis in discussing contemporary “postsecular society,” religious contents necessarily must be included in the public sphere through complex processes of reciprocal “translation,” which is to say, a detailed elaboration of what Freire would call dialogue: “To be sure, this requirement of translation must be conceived as a cooperative task in which the nonreligious citizens must likewise participate if their religious fellow‐citizens, who are ready and willing to participate, are not to be burdened in an asymmetrical way” (Habermas, 2008 [2005], pp. 131–132). Freire’s anthropology was thus from the beginning postsecularist in the sense given to that term by Habermas, given his concern with dialogue with diverse religious and secular perspectives and recognition of the need for translation— hence reinvention—of critical pedagogy in the context of many forms of life. And it is in this context of mutual translation that we need to understand his excitement with the emergence of liberation theology as a complement to his pedagogy of liberation. As a noted in a letter to a young theology student in 1969, alluding to his excitement: “Sometimes I think that although I am not a theologian but rather enchanted by theology, this has influenced many aspects of what I see as my pedagogy”—our translation as cited in (Torres, 1981, p. 36). Fred Dallmayr— who acknowledges the example of Freire—has critically and constructively reformulated Habermas’s concept of the postsecular under the heading of a “postsecularist humanism” that embraces dialogue with non‐Western religious

263

264

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

traditions as part of a shared concern with the “humanization of humanity” (Dallmayr, 2013a). This postsecular dimension has enabled Freire’s pedagogy to become a “traveling theory” that has appealed to Christian and non‐Christian audiences around the world. Nevertheless, Freire’s proposed dialogue with religious traditions is a demanding one that requires forms of critical thinking that are threatening to religious traditionalism and fundamentalism of all kinds. Indeed, as in the case of Hegel’s theory of religious alienation, Freire recognized the dehumanizing potentials of religion, its contribution to “social sin” in its alienating forms, an issue evident in the problematic role of the Catholic Church in the history of Latin America (Torres, 1992). Despite the continuing vitality of liberation theology among intellectuals, the sobering reality has been its stalled growth as a popular movement and the massive expansion of evangelical Protestantism in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere (Hagopian, 2009). In short, a critique of religion is built into the generality of his anthropological categories: a recognition of the alienating potentials of religion, capitalism, or any other institution that dehumanizes and violates human dignity. Paradoxically, the Bible never condemned the institution of slavery, and Christians discovered a critical hermeneutics necessary for doing so only in the wake of the Enlightenment secularization of theological accounts of freedom in German idealism and slave revolts inspired by reading the Bible “from below.” Postmetaphysical Political Anthropology: “Programmed to Learn” Habermas’s postsecular turn has also made him more sensitive to the methodological difference between theological and non‐metaphysical, philosophical justifications of emancipation: Already the communicative‐theoretical version of the concept of emancipation in Knowledge and Human Interests could be “unmasked” as the secularizing translation of the divine promise of salvation. (Of course, since then I have become more cautious when using the expression “emancipation” beyond the area of the biographical development of individual persons, since social collectives, groups, or communities cannot be imagined as ­subjects writ large.) I only want to say that the evidence of my relation to a theological heritage does not bother me, as long as one recognizes the methodological difference of the discourses; that is, as long as the philosophical discourse conforms to the distinctive demands of justificatory speech. In my view, a philosophy that oversteps the bounds of methodological atheism loses its philosophical seriousness. (Habermas, 2002, p. 160) Assuming that Freire’s postsecular humanism is grounded in a form of postmetaphysical philosophical anthropology as defined by Habermas, it also makes a claim to indirect scientific justification in sense of being “perched between empiricism and theory.” Freire’s justification of his pedagogy can be viewed as implicitly accepting a similar understanding of the “methodological difference” between theological and scientific argumentation. Consequently, even though he

Rereading Freire and Habermas

­ ccasionally did engage in appeals based on theological arguments, as in using his o personal voice as a Christian when speaking to Christian audiences, these discussions were not part of the grounding of his pedagogy as an autonomous, universalizing project. Nevertheless, Freire never pursued the grounding of his “scientific humanism,” despite oblique references to the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin. Even then he avoided taking a position with respect to Teilhard’s theological interpretation of history, focusing primarily on the link between Teilhard’s “hominization” and his own understanding of “humanization.” Nor did he ever refer to Fromm’s investigation of the implications of the research on the evolutionary origins of aggression, as part of the justification of his own scientific humanism (Fromm, 1973). Unfortunately, such questions have also been almost completely neglected in the neo‐Freirean legacy. Nevertheless, Freire’s aspiration to ground his anthropology post‐metaphysically is implicit in a reference that kept cropping up in his later writings, though drawing almost no commentary: citation of Nobel Prize French geneticist François Jacob’s 1991 reference in an interview to the human species as “programmed to learn.” Freire deploys Jacob to justify several claims: as indicating an innate predisposition the relates to hope and the “inconclusive” nature of human beings (Freire, 2000, p. 44); as a source of “ever‐increasing curiosity” in the pedagogical relationship (Freire, 1998, p. 32); the thesis that “we are indisputably programmed beings, but we are in no way pre‐ determined” (Freire, 2005a, p. 169); and the contention that problem is not the opposition between the “innate” or “acquired” but “the relationship between the two” (Freire, 1994, p. 97). And, of course, the necessary complement of being “programmed to learn” is to be “programmed to teach,” as observed by the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson: “Care is a quality essential for psychosocial evolution, for we are the teaching species” (2001, p. 205). The originality of Freire’s political anthropology derives from his effort to synthesize the relations between three themes he discussed half a century ago, whereas for the most part such issues have been discussed separately in specialized research. And indeed, there is now an extensive body of interdisciplinary empirical research that has reconfirmed Freire’s basic intuitions and posed new questions. Dehumanization‐humanization, for example, has been increasingly studied in psychology and philosophy, along with related issues such as degradation and humiliation (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014; Kaufmann, Kuch, & Webster, 2011). With respect to the second anthropological theme, the origins and character of oppression and its relation to egalitarianism have become widely discussed in primatology and evolutionary theory (Boehm, 1993, 1999). And an increasingly influential form of contemporary “republican” liberal political philosophy, “nondomination” has become a prerequisite of the exercise of freedom (Pettit, 1997), which complements in significant ways Axel Honneth’s recognition theory of freedom (Honneth, 2014 [2011]). Finally, the third theme was the focus of our earlier discussion of Freire’s ontology of the dialogical, developmental subject under the heading of critical social psychology in relation to Habermas (Morrow & Torres, 2002, pp. 90–114). That discussion could now be extended in relation to the work of primatologist and comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello (a recent winner of the prestigious Stuttgart Hegel Prize) and his collaborators, for example, (Tomasello, 2008).

265

266

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

Significantly, Tomasello provides an empirically rich and systematic confirmation of “shared intentionality” as the foundation of the “ontological gap” between humans and animals (Tomasello & Moll, 2010). Freire has argued for more than a half a century that the anthropological distinctiveness of the human species derives from the shared intentionality based on intersubjectivity as the condition of possibility for critical consciousness and the historicity evident in projects related to “becoming.” His early articulation of this thesis can be traced to his appreciation of the philosophy of the Mexican‐Catalonian philosopher Eduardo Nicol (1907–1990), who was in turn strongly influenced by the philosophical anthropology of Ernst Cassirer. As Freire notes, Nicol makes dialogue “indispensable to the act of knowing,” hence subjects thinking in relation to each other as part of a “co‐subjective‐objective” relation, “whose action on the object would be one of ‘co‐participation’ ” (Freire, 1974, pp. 123–124). This ontological and epistemological theme reappears more empirically in Freire’s reference to the “co‐ production” of knowledge and the “co‐intentional” nature of education (Freire, 2005b [1970], p. 69). Moreover, even in the domain of literacy pedagogy where Freire began, there has also been a profound transformation propelled by research in many different fields, including neuroscience. Such work confirms Freire’s insights into the priority that needs to be given to “critical literacy” in a sense that includes but goes beyond conscientization: “reading is not just about ‘decoding’ the information before our eyes … It is within the process of transforming individuals into literate beings, that society itself is transformed” (Wolf, 2016, p. 3). Moreover, such research opens up new avenues for exploration. On the one hand, unlike language, literacy is primarily a social construction and implicitly a site of social contestation related to sociocultural reproduction: “we were never born to read. The brain that reads is not a given. Literacy is a cultural invention, which means that there is no genetic program that can dictate its design” (Wolf, 2016, pp. 3–4). On the other hand, given that “the brain that learns to read ‘deeply’ cannot be assumed,” we are confronted with a new challenge for critical literacy posed by the “fragmented, less focused” reading style of the “digital reading brain” which threatens “the very kind of intelligence that has flourished from the historical development of sophisticated, expert reading” (Wolf, 2016, pp. 4–5). The Epochal Challenge: From Political Anthropology to Ecopedagogy The problematic of the epochal crisis represented by the anthropocene provides a dramatic illustration of a central theme of the previous discussion: how historical recontextualization may have important implication for rethinking and reconstructing Freire’s core pedagogical categories, especially as supplemented by the insights of subsequent research in the natural and human sciences. The neglect of the environmental crisis in our previous Freire‐Habermas comparison, for example, contributed to overlooking the question of how questions of oppression and dehumanization‐humanization also have implications for relations between the human species and nature. This theme had been introduced in the later “dialectic of enlightenment” phase of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s critical theory in the early Frankfurt School, which proposed an

Rereading Freire and Habermas

a­ nthropology that viewed the domination of humans and nature as a tragic expression of instrumental reason (Leiss, 1974). Habermas’s theory of communicative action, however, rejected the pessimistic anthropology of his mentors, stressing instead the potentialities for collective learning and ecological ­ democracy (Gunderson, 2014b). Dealing with these issues requires a longer term reconstruction of Freire’s project that confronts the epochal challenge of linking philosophical anthropology to what has been described as the imperative of a “future” environmental ethics (Gare, 2016). That theme was not adequately addressed in our earlier study on Freire because of our neglect of his use of the concept of “biophilia,” which he appropriated from Erich Fromm. The particular anthropological significance of biophilia derives from both its status as an innate love of life and its potential negation and deformation as “necrophilia” as expressed in “antidialogical” action. We would now view biophilia—which Fromm explicitly linked to his later environmental concerns—as a key mediating bridge between Freire’s philosophical anthropology and ecopedagogy (Gunderson, 2014a). The theme of biophilia also draws attention to the need for further developing a series of more general issues relating to the Fromm‐inspired psychoanalytic dimension of Freire’s anthropology and critical social psychology. Unfortunately, Freire does not discuss the biophilia‐necrophilia distinction in any depth, which could give rise to misunderstandings. Most important, Fromm’s use of biophilia does not depend upon the later Freud’s pessimistic drive theory based on a polarization of the “instincts” of life and death.7 As in the case of the relational and intersubjective wings of the object‐relations tradition of psychoanalytic theory, Fromm views destructiveness as derivative from the “crippling” frustration of biophilia, not as an independent, destructive anthropological drive in the form of an “instinct”: It is the outcome of unlived life, of the failure to arrive at a certain stage beyond narcissism and indifference. Destructiveness is not parallel to, but the alternative to biophilia… Necrophilia grows as the development of biophilia is stunted. Man is biologically endowed with the capacity for biophilia, but psychologically he has the potential for necrophilia as an alternative solution. (Fromm, 1973, p. 366) Subsequent to our earlier study, ecopedagogy and the naming of the anthropocene have introduced a form of environmental crisis theory of epochal significance, hence requiring fundamental reconsideration of the contingent social theoretical and political assumptions of contextualization. Moreover, the more recent issue here is one of potentially cataclysmic human‐induced climate change, not merely the more potentially manageable, sustainability issues of pollution, environmental degradation and resource depletion. To be sure, education is only one site for responding to these issues, but one of strategic longer‐term significance given its anticipatory responsibility for developing critical citizenship capable of facilitating the stable and resilient forms of democratic deliberation that need to balance concerns with the more traditional emancipatory principles of redistribution and recognition (Fraser & Honneth, 2003) with the challenge of the anthropocene (Misiaszek, 2017; Torres, 2017).

267

268

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

Notes 1 Constraints of space and focus preclude analyzing the relation of Freire’s

educational praxis program to other intellectual sources or “matrixes” of Latin American liberation philosophy, especially the complementary “sociological matrix” represented by Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda (1925–2008), as exemplified in his pioneering development of participatory action research (Flores‐Kastanis, Montoya‐Vargas, & Suárez 2009; Mendieta, 2016). 2 It should be recalled that the final, fourth chapter was not part of the original draft and was somewhat hastily written in response to the reaction of colleagues who wanted him to apply his pedagogy to the then topical question of revolutionary leadership. Consequently, the chapter was not primarily concerned with a general theory of revolution, as opposed to providing strategic, if somewhat idealistic cautions for already existing revolutionary parties that had seized power through a coup d’état against authoritarian regimes. 3 The imperative of reinvention was thus integral to Freire’s overall approach. As he insisted in a conversation with Moacir Gadotti and Carlos Alberto Torres after a lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1991, in a conversation with led to his approval of a Paulo Freire Institute that was implemented in Brazil in November of that year, he did not want a fellowship of followers because he should be reinvented, not repeated. 4 The anthropological approach represented by Freire and Habermas can thus be seen as a variant of a “left ontology,” to use the somewhat problematic term of an otherwise interesting recent anthology that nevertheless fails to discuss philosophical anthropology and does not adequately address Habermas’s ontological position (Strathausen, 2009). 5 This important resource is now available in English with a new preface (Torres, 2012). 6 Bowers’ analysis can be compared to an earlier, distinctive Latin American critique of Freire by the Argentinian philosopher and anthropologist Rodolfo Kusch (1922–1979), a pioneering defender of the “barbarism” of indigenous culture against the pretentions of European “civilization,” in an essay that was included in an early book by Carlos Alberto Torres (Torres, 1981, pp. 139–155). The focus of Kusch, however, was not directly on Freire’s anthropology, as opposed to his developmentalist assumptions about modernizing popular indigenous culture. Kusch has subsequently been revived as part of Walter Mignolo’s decolonial project, which provides a more sophisticated alternative to Bowers critique of Freire. For example, Catherine Walsh, now associated with the decolonial network, was an early member of the Freire network in the United States who became disenchanted with Freire though her work with indigenous peoples in Ecuador, despite a more recent partial reconciliation in viewing him as a “grandfather” and “ancestor” (Walsh, 2015). For a critical response to the decolonial approach from the perspective of Habermas and Freire, based on recognizing the realities of hybridization and possibilities for dialogue between indigenous and critical modernist knowledge, see (Morrow, 2013a). 7 The anthropological implications of Freire’s rather selective and limited reliance on Fromm’s social psychoanalytic interpretations (Freud is never cited) remains a relatively unexplored topic, despite the more recent Fromm revival (Braune, 2014).

Rereading Freire and Habermas

But such questions are of crucial importance not only for ecopedagogy but further developing the psychoanalytic dimensions of Freire’s theory of liberation along lines consistent with object‐relations theory and Honneth’s recognition theory (Honneth, 1996 [1992]), thus rejecting the classic Freudian “death instinct” drive model shared by Lacan and Marcuse, despite their completely opposed political interpretations (McLaughlin, 2017).

References Aronowitz, S. (1993). Paulo Freire’s radical democratic humanism. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 8–24). London & New York: Routledge. Au, W., & Apple, M. W. (2007). Freire, critical education and the environmental crisis. Educational Policy, 21, 457–470. Boehm, C. (1993). Egalitarian behavior and reverse dominance hierarchy. Current Anthropology, 34(3), 217–240. Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitarian behavior. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press. Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotion and education. New York: Routledge. Borman, D. (2011). The idolatry of the actual: Habermas, socialization and the possibility of autonomy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Bowers, C. A. (2005). How the ideas of Paulo Freire contribute to the cultural roots of the ecological crisis. In C. A. Bowers, & F. Apffel‐Marglin (Eds.), Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the environmental crisis (pp. 131–148). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Braune, J. (2014). Erich Fromm’s revolutionary hope: Prophetic messianism as a critical theory of the future. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Coutinho, C. N. (2012). Gramsci’s political thought (Pedro Sette‐Câmara, Trans.). Leiden: Brill. Dallmayr, F. (2013a). Dialogue and cosmopolis. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Dallmayr, F. (2013b). The return of philosophical anthropology. In A. K. Giri, & J. Clammer (Eds.), Philosophy and anthropology: Border crossing and transformations (pp. 357–364). London & New York: Anthem Press. Dickens, D. (1996). Reconstructing nature: Alienation, emancipation and the division of labour. London: Routledge. Dorrien, G. (2012). Kantian reason and Hegelian spirit: The idealistic logic of modern theology. Malden, NY: Wiley. Erikson, E. (2001). The Erik Erikson reader. New York & London: W. W. Norton. Fiori, E. M. (1970). Aprender a decir su palabra. El método de alfabetización. In P. Freire (Ed.), Pedagogía del oprimido (pp. 11–27). Mexico, D.F.: Siglo Veintiuno. Fleury, S., & Garrison, J. (2014). Toward a new philosophical anthropology of education: Fuller considerations of social constructivism. Interchange, 45, 19–41. Flores‐Kastanis, E., Montoya‐Vargas, J., & Suárez, D. H. (2009). Participatory action research in Latin American education: A road map to a different part of the

269

270

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

world. In S. Noffke, & B. Somekh (Eds.), The Sage handbook of educational action research (pp. 453–466). Los Angeles: Sage. Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. New York & London: Routledge. Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political‐ philosophical exchange. London: Verso. Freire, P. (1972). Cultural action for freedom. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness (Myra Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York: Seabury Press (Continuum). Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power and liberation (Donaldo Macedo, Trans.). South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1993). Foreword. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. ix–xii). London & New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1994). In R. R. Barr (Ed.), Pedagogy of hope: Reliving the pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1997). A response. In P. Freire, J. W. Fraser, D. Macedo, & W. T. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 303–330). New York: Peter Lang. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Critical Perspectives Series. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the heart (Donald Macedo & Alexandre Oliveira, Trans.). Continuum: New York. Freire, P. (2005a). Teachers as cultural workers: For those who dare to teach (Donald Macedo, Dale Koike, & Alexandre Oliveira, Trans.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Freire, P. (2005b [1970]). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Myra Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York and London: Continuum. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1993). A dialogue with Paulo Freire. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 169–176). London and New York: Routledge. Freire, P., de Matos, G., & Rio, V. (2017 [1988]). An unpublished interview with Paulo Freire: Radical pedagogy and social transformation. Sapere pedagogico e Pratiche educative, (1). https://doi.org/10.1285/i9788883051333p9 Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. Gare, A. (2016). The centrality of philosophical anthropology to (a future) environmental ethics. Cuadernos de Bioética, 27(3), 299–317. Geras, N. (1981). Marx and human nature: Refutation of a legend. London: Verso. Giroux, H. (1985). Introduction. In P. Freire (Ed.), The politics of education: Culture, power and liberation (pp. xi–xxv). South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Glass, R. D. (2001). On Paulo Freire’s philosophy of praxis and the foundations of liberation education. Educational Researcher, 30(2), 15–25. Glock, J.‐J. (2012). The anthropological difference: What can philosphers do to identify the differences between human and non‐human animals? In C. Sandis, & M. J. Cain (Eds.), Human nature. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 70 (pp. 105–132). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gunderson, R. (2014a). Erich Fromm’s ecological messianism: The first biophilia as humanistic social theory. Humanity and Society, 38(2), 182–204.

Rereading Freire and Habermas

Gunderson, R. (2014b). Habermas in environmental thought: Anthropocentric Kantian or forefather of ecological democracy? Sociological Inquiry, 84(2), 182–204. Gungor, Ramazan. (2012). Re‐imagining Paulo Freire through Rortian neo‐pragmatism. Presented at the Adult Education Research Conference, Saratoga Springs, NY. Gutiérrez, G. (1973 [1971]). A theology of liberation (Sister Caridad Inda & John Eagelson, Trans.). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests (Jeremy J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon. Habermas, J. (1992). Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays (William Mark Hohengarten, Trans.). Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2002). In E. Mendieta (Ed.), Religion and rationality: Essays on reason, God, and modernity. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2008 [2005]). Between naturalism and religion: Philosophical essays (Ciaran Cronin, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what?. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hagopian, F. (Ed.) (2009). Religious pluralism, democracy and the Catholic Church in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Hancock, A.‐M. (2011). Solidarity politics for millennials: A guide to ending the oppression Olympics. Houndsmills, UK & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hancock, A.‐M. (2016). Intersectionality: An intellectual history. New York: Oxford University Press. Harris, F. (2011). A source for Freire’s philosophy of human nature and its educational implications. Encounters on Education, 12, 19–36. Haslam, N., & Loughnan, S. (2014). Dehumanization and infrahumanization. Annual Review of Psychology, 399–423. Hernández Romero, Ó. A. (2010). Hacia una antropología de la educación en América Latina desde la obra de Paulo Freire. Magistro: Revista de la Maestría en Educación de la Universidad Santo Tomás, Bogotá D.C., 4(8), 19–32. Honenberger, P. (Ed.) (2015). Naturalism and philosophical anthropology: Nature, life, and the human between transcendental and empirical perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Honneth, A. (1996 [1992]). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts (Joel Anderson, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Honneth, A. (2012). Erziehung und demokratische Öffentlichkeit: Ein vernachlässigtes Kapitel der politischen Philosophie. Zeitschrift der Erziehungswissenschaft, 15, 429–442. Honneth, A. (2014 [2011]). Freedom’s right: The social foundations of democracy (Joseph Ganahl, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Honneth, A. (2017). The idea of socialism (Joseph Ganahl, Trans.). Cambridge, UK, Malden, MA: Polity. Honneth, A., & Joas, H. (1988). Social action and human nature (R. Meyer, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huttunen, R., & Murphy, M. (2012). Discourse and recognition as normative grounds for radical pedagogy: Habermasian and Honnethian ethics in the context of education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31(2), 137–152.

271

272

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

Jarvis, P. (1987). Paulo Freire: Educationalist of a revolutionary Christian movement. Convergence: An International Journal of Adult Education, 20(2), 30–41. Kaufmann, P., Kuch, H., & Webster, E. (Eds.) (2011). Humiliation, degradation and dehumanization: Human dignity violated. Dordrecht: Springer. Kirylo, J. D., & Boyd, D. (2017). Paulo Freire: His faith, spirituality, and theology. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Knowles, F. E. Jr., & Lovern, L. L. (2015). A critical pedagogy for Native American education policy: Habermas, Freire and emancipatory education. Houndmills, UK & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Leiss, W. (1974). The domination of nature. Boston: Beacon Press. Margolis, J. (2009). The arts and the definition of the human: Toward a philosophical anthropology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Margonis, F. (1999). Relational pedagogy without foundations: Reconstructing the work of Paulo Freire. Philosophy of Education, 99–107. Mayo, P. (1999). Gramsci, Freire and adult education: Possibilities for transformative action. London: Zed Books. McLaughlin, N. (2017). The Fromm‐Marcuse debate and the future of critical theory. In M. J. Thompson (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of critical theory (pp. 481–501). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mendieta, E. (2016). Philosophy of education. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2016/entries/liberation Misiaszek, G. W. (Ed.) (2017). Educating the global environmental citizen: Understanding ecopedagogy in local and global contexts. New York: Routledge. Morrow, R. A. (1994). Critical theory and methodology. Newbury Park & London: Sage. Morrow, R. A. (2008). Paulo Freire, indigenous knowledge and Eurocentric critiques of development: Three perspectives. In C. A. Torres, & P. Noguera (Eds.), Social justice education for teachers: Paulo Freire and the possible dream (pp. 81–100). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Morrow, R. A. (2009). Habermas, Eurocentrism and education: The indigneous knowledge debate. In M. Murphy, & T. Fleming (Eds.), Habermas, critical theory, and education (pp. 63–77). London & New York: Routledge. Morrow, R. A. (2013a). Defending Habermas against Eurocentrism: Latin America and Mignolo’s decolonial challenge. In T. Bailey (Ed.), Global perspectives on Habermas (pp. 117–136). London: Routledge. Morrow, R. A. (2013b). Rethinking Freire’s “Oppressed”: A postcolonial route to Habermas’s communicative turn and theory of deliberative democracy. In R. Lake, & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 65–87). New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (1995). Social theory and education: A critique of theories of social and cultural reproduction. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical pedagogy and transformative change. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Murphy, M., & Fleming, T. (Eds.) (2009). Habermas, critical theory, and education. London & New York: Routledge.

Rereading Freire and Habermas

O’Cadiz, M. d. P., Wong, P. L., & Torres, C. A. (1998). Education and democracy: Paulo Freire, social movements, and educational reform in São Paulo. Boulder, CO: Westview. Perdomo, C. R. (2014 [2009]). La dimensión anthropológica del pensamiento pedagógico de Paulo Freire. Alicante, Spain: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Pettit, P. (1997). Republicanism: A theory of freedom and government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pihlström, S. (1998). Pragmatism and philosophical anthropology: Understanding of human Life in a human world. New York: Peter Lang. Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Penguin. Rehberg, K.‐S. (2009, April). Philosophical anthropology from the end of World War I to the 1940s and in a current perspective. Iris, 1, 131–152. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London & Dunedin, NZ: Zed Books/University of Otago Press. Strathausen, C. (Ed.) (2009). A leftist ontology: Beyond relativism and identity politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Streck, D. R., Redin, E., & Zitoski, J. J. (Eds.) (2015 [2008]). Diccionario Paulo Freire. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Auténtica Editora. Therborn, G. (2008). From Marxism to post‐Marxism. London: Verso. Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tomasello, M., & Moll, H. (2010). The gap is social: Human shared intentionality and culture. In P. M. Kappeler, & J. B. Silk (Eds.), Mind the gap: Tracing the origins of human universals (pp. 331–350). Dordrecht: Springer. Torres, C. A. (1978). La praxis educativa de Paulo Freire. Mexico: Gernika. Torres, C. A. (1981). Leitura critica de Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Loyola Ediçoes. Torres, C. A. (1990). The politics of nonformal education in Latin America. New York: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (1992). The church, society, and hegemony: A critical sociology of religion in Latin America (Robert A. Young, Trans.). Westport, CT & London: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (1994). Education and the archaelogy of consciousness: Freire and Hegel. Educational Theory, 44(4), 429–445. Torres, C. A. (1996). A voz do biógrafo latino‐americano: Uma biografia intellectual. In M. Gadotti, et al. (Eds.), Paulo Freire: Uma biobliografia (pp. 117–148). Sao Paulo: Cortez Editora/Instituto Paulo Freire. Torres, C. A. (2012). Preface to the English edition. Fifty years after Angicos: Paulo Freire, popular education, and the struggle for a better world that is possible. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. vii–xv). Lantham, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2017). Theoretical and empirical foundations of critical global citizenship education. New York: Routledge. Torres, R.‐M. (1998). The million Paulo Freires. Convergence, 31(1–2), 107–117.

273

274

Raymond Allen Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres

Treanor, B., & Sweetman, B. (2016). Gabriel(‐Honoré) Marcel. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy Retrieved from https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2016/entries/marcel Walsh, C. E. (2015). Decolonial pedagogies walking and asking. Notes to Paulo Freire from AbyaYala. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 34(1), 9–21. Weigand, E. (2010). Dialogue: The mixed game. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Wolf, M. (2016). Tales of literacy for the 21st century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

275

14 Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire Ratna Ghosh

Introduction Gandhi and Freire were two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century: Gandhi for his nonviolent resistance to colonial rule and Freire for education and the politics of liberation. Born in 1869 in India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is known around the globe for leading the greatest nonviolent, anticolonial struggle in history, and his ideas of nonviolence and satyagraha are emulated by many. Less known is his interest and work in education. He has been studied not only by historians, political scientists, and postcolonial theorists but also by people interested in psychology, sociology, women’s studies, and peace studies. No one would doubt his genius in mobilizing different factions of society in the entire subcontinent in joining the freedom struggle and using nonviolence as the weapon to put an end to the violence of colonization and exploitation of India. But scholars have also noted the great contradictions that existed simultaneously in his ideology and that have had repercussions in postindependence India. There are two areas in particular where this is evident: his conception of women and his views on the caste system in India. His ideas on education were so radical that they were not implemented in postindependence India because they were thought impractical in a country that needed to recover from colonial enslavement. Although he appealed to women to be an integral part of the freedom movement, brought them into public life and into politics, and gave them great respect as homemakers, he did not challenge the social basis of inequality of men and women (Patel, 1988). He advocated separate roles and responsibilities for them. Similarly, although he fought ceaselessly against the evils of untouchability, he did not challenge the caste system itself. In fact, almost never mentioned in writings on Gandhi, he defended the “traditional hierarchies of caste and gender” (Rao, 2014, p. 294) that are the foundations of inequality in Indian society. Although his ideas on the caste system changed and he rejected the idea that untouchability was an essential part of Hinduism (Nanda, 2012), he did not oppose the social stratification of the caste system. Although he thought of the

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

276

Ratna Ghosh

practice of untouchablity as “a plague … (that) every Hindu should combat” (Gandhi, 1932, p. 20), he considered the four divisions of the caste system to be “fundamental, natural and essential” (Gandhi in Nanda, 2012). His ideas of social change were rooted in the social class and context of his time. Gandhi was named a “mahatma”1 and assassinated soon after independence (1948), but he was neither “a god nor a demon” (Pathak, 2016). Paulo Regulus Neves Freire was born in Brazil in 1921. Recognized worldwide for his literacy method of bringing about revolutionary social change through conscientization and praxis, Freire had a great impact on progressive thinkers through his ideas about the possibility of education to transform the world. Both Freire and Gandhi brought a message of hope for oppressed people. Both developed educational models that would liberate the minds of people. This chapter begins by looking at commonalities in their lives and thinking, examinging the intellectual roots of the main ideas developed by Gandhi and Freire, then comparing their educational philosophies and discussing their main contributions to education that aimed to end injustice and oppression.

Commonalities Gandhi and Freire had several things in common. Both were revolutionaries but they both found unconventional, nonviolent ways to stimulate profound social change. Although they were from distinctly different societies they both lived and worked in colonial/postcolonial societies. Both worked for the oppressed and saw oppression as dehumanizing. Gandhi saw the colonizer as oppressor because the British were still ruling India when he became a prominent leader of the independence movement. Both had been born into well‐off middle‐class families. Freire was born in Brazil a century after it had gained its independence from Portugal and he saw in class inequality the social relations of domination. Their philosophies were based on their personal experiences with oppressive governments and the poverty of large numbers of people who were the most oppressed. They were both very spiritual and influenced by their religious upbringing: Freire by Christianity and Catholicism and Gandhi by Indian philosophy and Hinduism. Both had high levels of education but formal schools had been bad experiences for them. Although they were both from middle‐class families Freire experienced poverty when his father had an untimely death. They both experienced oppression: Freire experienced poverty as a child and wrote: “Experience showed me…the relationship between social class and knowledge” (Gadotti, 1994, p. 5). Gandhi experienced racism in South Africa and saw the cruel effects of untouchability in India although he himself was not from a low caste. Consequently, they both developed radical theories of personal and social liberation through pedagogy (Heger, 2012). Their common struggles against oppression, their experiences with colonialism, racism, casteism, and classism influenced their ideology of freedom—they both saw education as the practice of human freedom (Bhattacharya, 2010). They had common core values: humanism, liberation, freedom, empowerment, and social responsibility to society at large (Narayan, 2000). Freedom was not

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

seen as only political: freedom from ignorance, vulnerability, and fear were perhaps more important to both of them; freeing the self from the ego through service to society was of crucial importance at the individual level. Their ideas on education focused on different aspects: Freire’s objective was conscientization, a critical awareness of people’s own situation and learning to determine the cause of one’s oppression, whereas Gandhi concentrated on self‐ realization, the ultimate goal of life in Hinduism, and self‐knowledge. But both focused on the practical realization of values—social and ethical—in the lives of the students; for Freire praxis was reflection and action in the direction of the structures that were to be transformed because the aim was to change the world (Freire, 1970). For Gandhi the aim was service to society: “true education lies in serving others” (Rajput, 1998). Although both favored using craft as a tool for teaching and indigenous content that would be relevant to the lives of students, they differed on the emphasis they put on the means with which to educate. For Gandhi craft was the focus around which all education was to be given. Influences and Development of the Concepts of Satyagraha and Conscientization Gandhi and Freire contributed two most significant concepts to the world— satyagraha and conscientização, but in both cases, they were strategies built on ideas derived from several sources. The concepts of Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) and conscientização (critical awareness of one’s reality through reflection and action) were born in countries of the South but have transcended their geographical regions and become universal (Bhattacharya, 2010). The ideas of both Freire and Gandhi were a complex mix of the social experiences of their positions in their respective societies and the influences of several philosophies and ideologies. Rooted in Catholicism for Freire and Hinduism for Gandhi, they both applied moral reasoning to social problems. That ideas that created their theories of education were shaped by a firm belief in God, dignity of human life, and dignity of labor. Albert Einstein is known to have pointed out that Gandhi’s great contribution to our time was his determination to moralize politics. Gandhi believed that the moral values that applied to the various areas of public life (such as politics or business) could also be applied to private life. Love, truth, and nonviolence could be practiced by individuals in every aspect of life as his most famous saying indicates: Be the change you wish to see in the world. The earliest influence on Gandhi was Sri Rajchandra who he met when he returned to India as a lawyer from London and who acted as his spiritual guide. But Gopal Krishna Gokhle, one of the foremost social thinkers during the independence movement, was his political guide. Gandhi devoted seven chapters to Gohkle in his Autobiography (1940). He followed the writings of Buddha, Mohammad, and Christ (and was especially struck by the Sermon on the Mount); but he also read Socrates and ancient Hindu texts such as the Upanishads and the Gita. Gandhi’s ideas on basic education are rooted in the philosophy of ahimsa (nonviolence) his core principal, as well as satyagraha (truth) and sarvodya (the welfare of all). Gandhi was deeply affected by the book Unto This Last by John Ruskin, the prominent British social thinker and art critic whose ideas on political ­economy

277

278

Ratna Ghosh

were translated and paraphrased by him in his mother tongue Gujerati and given the title Sarvodaya—from the Sanskrit words—sarva (all) udaya (uplift). Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography that after reading Ruskin’s book on a train ride in South Africa he could not sleep and “I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the book” (Gandhi, 1940, Part IV, p. 358). The Gandhian ideals of equitable distribution of wealth, dignity of labor, and communal social structure based on an agricultural economy were ideas that Ruskin espoused in his book. Like Ruskin, Gandhi believed in a hierarchical order of society but sought to improve conditions for the poor and oppressed. In India, he worked for the upliftment of the lowest castes (the so‐called “untouchables” whom he called “Harijans”). He attempted to resolve the social inequalities that exist in Indian society not by attempting to change structural differences but by a new social order through lifting the rural masses and untouchables and integrating them into the hierarchical caste system (Rao, 2014, p. 204). In postindependent India, sarvodaya grew into a  popular movement (to a limited extent) for self‐organization and people’s ­democracy as a Gandhian approach to peace and nonviolence. Another book that had a great impression on Gandhi was Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You; as Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography, it “overwhelmed” him and “left a lasting impression” on him (Gandhi, 1940, Part 11, p. 165). Published in 1894 in Germany, Tolstoy’s book was banned in his native Russia. It lays out the principle of nonviolent resistance when confronted with violence in the spirit of self‐denial as suggested by Christ. Tolstoy was the person with whom Gandhi had the most prolonged correspondence and it was Tolstoy’s work that inspired in him ideas about peace and justice. From Tolstoy’s ideas and guided by the moral ideas of the Bhagwad Gita, Gandhi took the idea of satyagraha (in Sanskrit satya means truth, and agraha translates to firmness) and went beyond self‐denial (as suggested by Tolstoy) to self‐realization through nonviolence or civil resistance. “The literal meaning of satyagraha is to get hold of the truth and so the meaning of the word is strength of the soul…. Violence has no role to play in satyagraha” (Bhattacharya, 2010, p. 21). Although he was strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy and the two agreed on nonviolence and resistance to state authority, Gandhi differed in political strategy. Tolstoy was a pacifist but Gandhi was for political involvement. He was a nationalist and prepared to use nonviolent force (Bhattacharya, 2004). Although satyagraha and passive resistance had initially been used synonymously, Gandhi later distinguished satyagraha from passive resistance and preferred to refer to the concept as civil disobedience or noncooperation, which was proactive rather than reactive. Passive resistance he said, was a weapon of the weak: “Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatsoever; and it ever insists upon truth. I think I have now made the distinction perfectly clear” (Gandhi, 1966, p. 350). Ahimsa and satyagraha are intrinsically connected. Satyagraha is not merely opposition against oppression—it is a ­process of reconstructing society through love and the search for truth. Freire on the other hand, developed a deep understanding of the lives of the poor rural families and laborers among whom he worked. Although he struggled to get himself educated and taught in high school and at the tertiary level, it was his work as director of education that brought him to confront the disconnection

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

between elitist educational policies and practices and the reality experienced by the working class. His thoughts were undoubtedly influenced by Marxism, existentialist ­philosophy, critical theory, and other Latin‐American thought, especially his connection with liberation theology (Lange, 1998; Mann, 1995) because “he mingles the voice of Christian conscience with radical, even revolutionary, political thought and theory. He draws freely from critical theory as he quotes and applies writings by Marx and Engels, Lenin, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong” (Heger, 2012, p. 165). There are also similarities of ideas with Ruskin and Gandhi in Freire’s thought. Freire’s ideas on humanization and dehumanization are connected to the revolutionary ideas of Frantz Fanon on colonization and decolonization although they did not agree on the use of violence. Fanon strongly believed that colonialism in its very nature is violent and greater violence is necessary to overcome it. Although Freire recognized that violence is essentially part of an unjust society, and violence may be important to overcome the oppressors’ power, he did not advocate violence. He emphasized love although the concept of love in Freire’s thoughts have not been a focus in his theories and he did not define love or explain how education is an act of love. Both Freire and Gandhi spoke of love as being essential in a society that is just and fair. Freire thought of love as “an act of courage, not of fear…and the cause of liberation” (Freire, 1970, chapter  3). This is similar to Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence as an act of courage, not of fear. For Gandhi, love should not only be an essential part of a child’s education but the child should learn that hate could be conquered by love. Truth, love, and nonviolence would be the means toward achieving a humanistic society. For both, humanization was the means to break the cycle of injustice. And love is essential to attaining humanity. The concept of “conscientization” (conscientização in Portuguese), popularized by Paulo Freire, now understood as critical awareness, was developed around 1964. Freire himself wrote that although it was generally believed that he was the author of this concept, in reality it was “created by a group of professors from the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies)” among who he named the philosopher Alvaro Pinto and professor Alberto Guerreiro (Freire, 2001, p. 29; Kress & Lake, 2013, p. 172). Both Freire and Gandhi were very spiritual as well as religious. Although he was not a theologian, Freire was a devout Catholic. Gandhi was a staunch Hindu from a traditional Hindu vegetarian community and family that strictly followed the caste hierarchy and practiced “untouchability.” The concept of untouchability involves the idea that lower caste people whose occupations entail “polluting” activities were strictly segregated from higher castes because their very touch (and in some areas of the country, even their sight or shadow) would pollute the higher castes. Segregated not only in their living accommodations they were also denied using water from the same wells and were not allowed in temples and other social institutions such as schools, which left them uneducated and ostracized from the main society. Unlike social class, caste position is given at birth and there is no question of changing caste status: it is hereditary. Gandhi worked vehemently for the economic upliftment of the poor and removal of social exclusion of the lower castes, calling them “Harijans” or the “children of God” so that

279

280

Ratna Ghosh

they would be integrated in Indian society. But what is less well known is that he did not advocate for a change in the structure of Indian society to eliminate caste. In fact, he supported the caste hierarchy: Gandhi believed that the caste hierarchy was “not a human invention but an immutable law of nature…like Newton’s law of gravitation” (Gandhi, 1962, pp. 13–23). It was not until the new Indian Constitution that the use of the term “untouchables” was abolished and the social disabilities associated with untouchability were made illegal in 1950. Nevertheless, this extreme discrimination continued in India after Independence and still continues (to a somewhat lesser extent) because legislation cannot change societal attitudes. Despite the de jure elimination of discrimination based on caste, de facto it is very much alive. Had Gandhi fought against the social system of caste (which would include the “untouchables”) as he fought for independence from British rule, the impact on independent India would have been very different because the country continues to be plagued by caste politics and caste discrimination in society. The person who challenged Gandhi on the social institution of caste was B.R. Ambedkar, a highly educated individual from an “untouchable” caste who had, with help from social reformers graduated from Bombay University and achieved higher degrees in Columbia University in the United States and a DSc from London University, and like Gandhi had been admitted to the bar in London. Ambedkar, considered the father of the Indian Constitution, pushed for equal opportunities in education for the lower castes who Gandhi called “Harijans”—a term Ambedkar thought was patronizing and that has since been replaced by the term “Dalit.” He challenged Gandhi’s belief that the main obstacle to the problem of the oppressed lower castes was economic. He insisted that the main causes of their subjugation were their lack of self‐concept and their inferiority complex, which could be reversed only through education.

Educational Philosophies For both Freire and Gandhi, education was an integral part of the reconstruction of their respective societies, Brazil and India; education was not the end but the most important means to that end. Gandhi’s first major book on education, The Problem of Education was published in 1932 although in 1919 he had started and edited a weekly newspaper called Young India in English in which he wrote on the topic of education as well as other social and political matters. From 1933 he started another weekly newspaper called the Harijan, in English, Hindi, and in his native language Gujarati, although the three language editions did not necessarily have the same contents. Freire published Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1968, his first book, and went on to become a prolific writer. The books on and by Gandhi and Freire have been translated in many languages. Freire considered class oppression in Brazilian society as the major factor that kept the rural and the poor people illiterate and vulnerable; and it was therefore, necessary to break the cycle of oppression of the poor by elites. For Gandhi, the people of India had to break the colonial suppression to which they had been subjected, and it was necessary to free India from colonial subjugation. He imagined a country in which the rural and urban people could get closer to a

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

“Ram Rajya” (kingdom of God) where the power of the state would be based on moral laws (Pandey, 1997). To achieve this, it was essential to remove people from Western industrial civilization through an education that would be indigenous. A traditionalist who was also critical in his thinking, for Gandhi modernization and industrialization involved violence against people as well as against nature. Freire was born 52 years after Gandhi in a more Western, industrialized part of the world. He saw scientific progress as being important and essential but, like Karl Marx he hoped for equitable distribution of products. He saw the conflict in situations when oppression had to be confronted although he did not condone violence. For Gandhi, violence was never justified but he did not hesitate to use nonviolent force such as boycotts, sit‐ins, strikes, and demonstrations, and his famous fasts caused several crisis situations. For Freire, the means to achieve the objective of changing society was conscientization of the masses, and for Gandhi it was Nai Talim (Basic Education) in which he suggested a curriculum for mass elementary education following the spiritual principle that knowledge and work are not separate. Both these models had similar goals: conscientization was freedom from ignorance, vulnerability, and fear; Nai Talim was not only political freedom from the colonial power but freedom of the colonized mind, freedom from fear: “Education is that which liberates” (Gandhi, 1946). Both Freire and Gandhi saw the image of the oppressor as being imprinted on the minds of the oppressed. Both aimed for a harmonious social order and individual freedom. Gandhi wanted more equitable distribution of wealth but for him the social order did not imply equality of caste and gender status. Reflecting his principle of sarvodaya (upliftment for all), Gandhi’s educational philosophy was primarily based on education for a holistic development of each individual. To him the individual and society were not separate but complementary. The full development of the child was for the well‐being of the individual child, and it did not aim for achieving the greatest good for the greatest number. Rather, education was to aim for the well‐being of everyone because he saw no tension between the well‐being of one person and that of another. So devoted he was to the idea that Gandhi had named his house in South Africa “Sarvodaya.” As mentioned previously, Freire’s pedagogy of literacy education was conscientização, which he explained as “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 1970, p. 35). He believed that learning to read and write can be powerful tools for raising political awareness and critical consciousness. But most important, this consciousness must lead to action (praxis) that would liberate people from oppression by attacking the root causes of social oppression. It is this praxis that makes education political because it deals with social class and power, and therefore, conflict. Consciousness must be raised to eliminate the “fear of freedom” that affects the powerless so that education becomes liberating. Praxis One of the greatest similarities in the educational philosophies of Gandhi and Freire is that they both involved theory, reflection, and action (Pathak, 2016). Transformation of society through building collective consciousness is not

281

282

Ratna Ghosh

­ ossible without action and reflection: “praxis” in Freire’s words. That is why p they were both strongly opposed to the banking concept of education. To Gandhi becoming literate was more than mechanical ability to read and write, more than memorizing what is given as knowledge. Education was self‐ transformation, which was to be achieved through student participation and consciousness of their experiences. To Freire banking education was passive transmission of information, which makes students accept their situation of oppression. Freire thought of teaching as a political process and not just transferring knowledge. In a democratic system of education students and teachers must learn from each other. But there is potential violence in revolutionary change. What is involved in praxis? Freire’s conscientization involves developing consciousness to transform reality but he falls short of explaining and stating how reflection and action would play out in society. How was praxis to transform society? What is the process? For Gandhi it was nonviolent means such as boycotting goods and noncooperation with colonial dictates. But Freire does not explain how society could be transformed. Both emphasized love and Freire’s strong connection with Catholicism is evident in his expectations of praxis but he does not explain how love is to be used to transform reality. For Gandhi, religion and love were important, but he was categorical: the answer was not violence but that nonviolent force was to be used if necessary.

Educational Experiments The theories and ideas about education of both Gandhi and Freire were based on their personal experiences with teaching. Gandhi started experimenting with his model of schooling in South Africa before he did so in India. Similarly, Freire started in Brazil but his model of literacy education has been popular in many countries around the world and has influenced critical pedagogy. In 1904 when Gandhi was in South Africa he established The Phoenix Settlement where he started experimenting with communal living. Devoted to the principle of nonviolence, the settlement sought to struggle against inequality, injustice, and the racist laws in South Africa. So, in this farming community all persons received equal wages no matter what their status and what they did. It was a thriving community and when he left 3 years later one of his sons came from India to look after the settlement. While at the Phoenix Settlement Gandhi had combined manual work with the education of children, and he built on this concept in the Tolstoy Farm, a community and school he started with the help of a German associate, Herman Kallenbach, in 1910. Here he introduced vocational training to both boys and girls in coeducational classes. He made this the headquarters of his campaign of satyagraha in reaction to the discrimination against Indians and aimed to build an environment that would develop in children the ideals of social service and moral citizenship. Children between the ages of 6 and16 worked on the farm and had about 2 hr of book learning. Although the Tolstoy Farm was disbanded in 1913 it had served

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

as an ideal laboratory for Gandhi’s educational experiments of the holistic ­development of boys and girls. Both manual labor in school and coeducation were bold moves at that time, and regular subjects were taught through the medium of the native language and by unconventional methods. Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and there he set up the Sabarmati Ashram where he continued his social and educational experiments. Freire developed an deep understanding of the effects of poverty and social class on the education of people. His educational thought began to develop when in 1946 he was appointed director of education at an institution set up to help workers’ and their families. He was struck by the disconnection between the workers’ lives and the elitist educational practices (Gadotti, 1994, p. 6). Although Freire became a school teacher while he was still in school and had worked as director of education, his philosophy of education crystallized while he was doing his doctoral work at the University of Recife. He earned his PhD degree in 1959 and taught history and educational philosophy in the same institution. During that time he worked among the poor and disaffected people and carried out his educational experiments. He used slides related to the daily problems of people to make them aware of the injustices and gradually they became conscious of the “culture of silence” in which they had been entrapped. “The response to this experiment was fantastic and in 2 weeks we were able to make aware and educate about 6,000 people” in Freire’s words to a graduate student from India, George S. George in an interview (Freire, 1991, p. 4). In 1963 he carried out his first large‐scale experiment with 300 farm workers who were taught to read and write in 45 days. Seeing this amazing success, the president of Brazil and the minister of education invited him to lead the national literacy program with an aim to make two million people literate by 1964, but the idea of conscientizing the masses to their unequal position in society made the ruling class nervous. The military coup that took place in 1964 put an end to his plans for the country’s literacy program and Freire was jailed and later exiled.

Role of Teacher Both Gandhi and Freire had teaching experience and recognized the crucial role of the teacher in the education process. Although both Freire and Gandhi had taught primary and secondary school, Freire had also taught at the tertiary level. He had earned a doctorate in education. Whereas Freire saw banking education as a teacher‐directed process in which the teacher “deposited” knowledge into the minds of the students, Gandhi wanted the teacher to be directive and a role model for students. For Freire, the teacher was crucial in breaking the silencing of the oppressed students through dialogue in order to communicate because without communication between student and teacher there is no education. Gandhi thought that the teacher should serve as a living example with his (sic) own life and character to impart a spiritual education. He expected the teacher to be so devoted to the development of the child that he did not worry about the economic aspect of teaching. As a

283

284

Ratna Ghosh

matter of fact, one rationale for his focus on crafts education and vocational training was to earn money for teachers’ salaries that he thought would enable schools to be self‐sufficient (Adams, 2009). Method of Teaching Gandhi and Freire did not espouse the same method of teaching. Freire discovered that dialogue was the best way to reach the oppressed to break their “culture of silence” with an aim to liberate people and give them agency and voice. His method was reflection on their own experiences that connected to their histories and realities of exploitation. As a means to liberation, education is a process of “becoming” when a person begins to know not merely the word, but more important, the real significance behind the words that give meaning to the world around them. Freire recognized the relationship between social class and power and, therefore, focused on the political nature of education. His method of teaching was that the teacher obtains from the community some generative words that reflect the social reality of the daily lives of the students for discussion in “cultural circles” (Gadotti, 1994, p. 20). The method of education advocated by Gandhi was the principle of “learning by doing.” Learning through reflection on doing has been advocated by great educators such as Tagore and Dewey. This kind of experiential learning tries to stimulate the individual’s mind to think creatively, independently, and critically. He emphasized the significance of education in the mother tongue and like Freire he stressed the need to connect to life experiences of learners. Both Gandhi and Freire focused on the poor and oppressed but at different stages of their lives. Freire was concerned about adult workers and Gandhi’s focus primarily was on the children of the rural masses who made up the majority of Indians. Gandhi disagreed with the conception of education as the development of the 3 Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic), which he thought was inappropriate education for India’s disadvantaged people. Education to Gandhi was not merely cognitive development but development of the hand and soul. To him, education meant acculturation and training of the whole person, which should aim to improve the 3 Hs—“heart” (character), “hand” (practical skills), and the “head” (mind)‐ rather than the 3Rs. By education of the “heart,” he meant moral training, or “character” development. Spiritual or moral development was more important to him than intellectual or vocational learning (Kumar, n.d.). While he was teaching, Gandhi had found that moral training could not be imparted through memorizing and reciting hymns. “Just as physical training was to be imparted through physical exercise, even so the training of the spirit was possible only through the exercise of the spirit. And the exercise of the spirit entirely depended on the life and character of the teacher” (Gandhi, 1940, p. 149). In addition to spiritual development for character formation, his revolutionary idea was manual labor for all students. Gandhi saw the danger of the widening gap between the poor rural masses and the urban elites who were getting Western education. Because the majority of Indian people were in the villages, Gandhi envisioned an education that involved the life of the community and not merely

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

formal education in schools: he advocated popular education both through ­formal schooling and informal education through mass political participation. In a society that was highly stratified, he insisted that education should focus on the dignity of labor. He believed that manual skills and vocational training would be of most use to the majority of people who were poor and rural in a country like India. He focused on the development of human personality, on maintaining discipline, and learning the value of dignity of labor through manual work, and in developing a culture of the peace (Devi, n.d.). The vehicle for learning through doing was crafts, which he thought would stimulate the individual to be independent but also train the mind to think creatively and critically: “handicrafts are to be taught not merely for production work but for developing the intellect” (Deshmukh, n.d.). His emphasis on crafts such as spinning and the spinning wheel symbolized self‐sufficiency. Both Gandhi and Tagore favored craft education but for Gandhi, craft was the focal point for learning around which all education should revolve, and he borrowed heavily from Tagore’s Siksha Satra experiment2 in which craft education played a major role (Bhattacharya, 2010). An alternative model of mass elementary education referred to as “Basic Education” or “Nai Talim” was proposed by Gandhi in 1936. It was a major departure from the Brahmanical tradition of earlier education in India as well as from the colonial model of education. In its philosophy, content, and method of teaching it was a radical change emphasizing apprenticeship and manual skills and native language as the medium of instruction. Vocational training was the focus and all subjects were to be taught through doing crafts. The Ministry of Education and Social Welfare of the Government of India described Gandhi’s concept of basic education in 1956: “Basic education as conceived and explained by Mahatma Gandhi, is essentially an education for life and, what is more, an education through life. Its aims are creating eventually a social order free from exploitation and violence” (Pandey, 1997, p. 182). Gandhi valued self‐sufficiency and autonomy and therefore wanted financially independent schools that would be free of political control, without interference from government and state bureaucracy. Levels of Education Gandhi’s thoughts on education as well as his experiments in teaching were largely about children and adolescents, although later in life he did become interested in preschool and adult education. On the other hand, although Freire carried out research on the education of children of the working class, the focus of this experimentation, educational theories, and pedagogy was the adult population. His major contribution to education was outside the formal school mainly in providing literacy programs to adults whereas Gandhi’s Nai Talim was a basic education program for the formal school system at the elementary level. Whereas Freire focused on agency and voice for the adult student through education, Gandhi thought of “education for life” that would be closely associated with life: “education for life” meant “education for the sake of life … it is a matter of teaching the art of living” (quoted in Sykes, 1988, p. 51).

285

286

Ratna Ghosh

Gandhi’s views on basic education for all ages were greatly influenced by his philosophy of satya (truth) and ahimsa (nonviolence) his core principle. His ­philosophy included a firm belief in God. He opposed secular education but did not insist on any organized religion or religious belief in education. He had felt the absence of spiritual knowledge in his own education. And although he ­himself sought God within Hinduism, he believed that other faiths contained their own value and were to be respected and worthy of study. To him religion was “service of humanity”: “The term ‘religion’ I am using in its broadest sense, meaning thereby self‐realization or knowledge of self ” (Gandhi, 1940, p. 47). Gandhi thought that spiritual training was more difficult than physical and mental training and it was particularly important for all students to be acquainted with the scriptures of their own religion because “training of the spirit is to build character and enable one to work towards a knowledge of God and self –realization” (Gandhi, 1940, p. 149). In his experimental school in South Africa the Tolstoy Farm, he introduced spiritual training and the students participated with their fellows in their respective religious observances. Although Freire was not a theologian he was a Catholic and his religious beliefs shaped his educational theories. “Freire expressed his ideology as equal parts Jesus Christ and Karl Marx” (Religious Literacy Project, n.d.). Although he was critical of the church he was also a man of faith who had left‐wing political beliefs. It was difficult for him to reconcile his religious faith and the oppression and discrimination he saw in his largely Catholic society (Madero, Chapter 23 in this volume). Because most of Gandhi’s work was carried out during the time India was colonized his focus was education as the practice of human freedom (Bhattacharya, 2004). Gandhi was jailed for disobeying orders and for nonviolent resistance to the British Empire; Freire was exiled because he was perceived as inciting workers to question their oppression and make demands from the ruling classes. Throughout the course of his life Gandhi spent about 7 years in jail. He was arrested four times, the first time when he was in South Africa and subsequently in India. For Gandhi, real freedom would come when the people of India were able to free themselves not only from political freedom but more important, from the domination of Western values imparted through education, Western culture, and ways of living that had been ingrained in educated Indians (Bhattacharya, 2004). Similarly, Freire spent 70 days in jail before he was exiled to Chile with a brief period in Bolivia. Later he was able to go to Brazil but he spent time in the United States and several years in Switzerland as special educational advisor to the World Council of Churches developing and advising countries around the world on literacy education.

Critiques Gandhi thought of education as the holistic development of children and emphasized spiritual development toward a harmonious community whereas Freire saw education as a tool for raising collective consciousness for action against existing inequality. Gandhi’s Basic Education involved the 3 Hs: head, heart, and

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

hand rather than reading, writing and arithmetic. As such, it is not only inclusive but also broader than Paulo Freire’s conscientization (Kumar, n.d.). This is perhaps because Freire dealt with adults who were poor and oppressed, and Gandhi’s focus primarily was the development of children who he wanted to create a better society when his country became independent. Freire and Gandhi have both been severely critiqued. Whereas Freire has been accused of “the arrogance of transforming himself into a conscientizer” (Stuchul, Esteva, & Prakash, 2002, para. 15) Gandhi has been criticized for his “puritanical, conservative and pacifist thinking” (Pathak, 2016) that was considered to be against progress and development and detrimental to postcolonial India. He did  not succeed in ending discrimination against “untouchables,” for although he drew attention to the social evil of “untouchability” he could not erase this heinous practice (Rao, 2009). This was because he did not attack the basis of oppression—the caste system—which has now become entrenched in a spiraling complexity of inequality and quotas. Gandhi did not attack the root causes of discrimination as Freire aimed to do. No structural changes were attempted to change the oppression and the degradation experienced by the lower castes in the educational environment and in society in India. Freire was exiled for his method of education in Brazil and Gandhi’s Basic Education (Nai Talim) was rejected by the National Planning Committee, which did not think that vocational education would be a suitable approach that was broad enough to teach various academic subjects that were needed to prepare citizens in an independent India that emerged after decades of British rule. Both Gandhi and Freire have been criticized by feminists. Gandhi’s thoughts on women were contradictory and ambivalent. On the one hand he encouraged women to participate in the struggle for independence from British rule. He is known to have challenged the colonial authorities in 1931 at the Round Table Conference in London for a complete repudiation of special representation of women by pointing out that “women …happen to be half of the population of India” (Gandhi, 1931, n.p.). On the other hand he emphasized their responsibilities as home maker and their secondary role to men. He saw women’s education as playing a crucial role in the education of children. He expressed views on the position of women in political, social and domestic spheres and despite the fact that he supported and encouraged a few women to take leadership roles in the freedom movement he believed that their role was supportive. Freire has been criticized for his perspective of oppression as lacking a complex analysis of experiences which would incorporate the multiple oppressions of women, racial and cultural minorities as well as those of different classes (Weiler, 1991). Failing to take into account the basic differences between forms of oppression (particularly of women) and the complexities involved in multiple oppressions, he has also been criticized for using sexist language and a patriarchal notion of revolution. “There has never been a moment when reading Freire that I have not remained aware of the sexism of the language” wrote bell hooks in 1993. She also pointed to his construction of “a paradigm of liberation wherein freedom and the experience of patriarchal manhood are always linked as though they are one and the same” (hooks, 1993, p. 148).

287

288

Ratna Ghosh

But like Gandhi whose views on the effects of untouchability changed with time, he also developed a more “nuanced view of oppression and subjectivity as relational and discursively as well as materially embedded” (Gale Group, 2002). Feminists have used Freire’s views of liberatory education to their great advantage as have progressive educators.

Conclusion Both Gandhi and Freire have been among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century whose ideas have had global impact on thinking about social and political change and education’s role in it. Freire’s aim was to empower the socially marginalized whereas Gandhi offered an effective alternative to violence. A man who could mobilize the vast subcontinent of India to peacefully resist colonial authority, Gandhi struggled with the contradictions between the theoretical and the spiritual, as well as the practical and the real (Parekh, 1989). Freire too “embodies a contradiction, a unity of opposites in struggle…the intersections of power and inequality” that pose problems in obtaining democracy along with equality (Gibson, 1994, p. 6). Yet, these contradictions and “blind spot(s) in the vision of men who have profound insight” (hooks, 1993, p. 148) are likely to be distressing but should not eclipse their transformational visions. Gandhi and Freire were more complex than is immediately apparent. Nonetheless, they were undoubtedly paradigm shifters.

Notes 1 The Sanskrit word for “great soul.” 2 Tagore established Siksha Satra in 1924. Now a nonresidential school, it was

initially a residential school for children of rural people who were underprivileged and poor and also accepted nonresidential students. It was the result of several years of experiments in the Institute of Rural Reconstruction in Sriniketan near his educational institutions in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. It aimed at providing all‐round education to children through arts and crafts as well as sports and vocational subjects that would enable them to earn a decent living but also improve life in the community.

References Adams, Abha. (2009, April 1). Gandhi on education: Relevant but still ignored. Work Wise. Livemint. Retrieved from http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/ ZbAasECpOPxEkLxjilaNUM/Gandhi‐on‐education‐relevant‐but‐still‐ ignored.html Bhattacharya, A. (2004). Grundtvig, Tagore, Gandhi and Freire. Their educational thoughts: Viewed from a third world perspective. Kolkata: Jadavpur University & Indian Paulo Freire Institute.

Juxtaposing the Educational Ideas of Gandhi and Freire

Bhattacharya, A. (2010). Education for the people: Concepts of Grundtvig, Tagore, Gandhi and Freire. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Deshmukh, S. P. (n.d.). Gandiji’s basic education: A medium of Value education. Bombay: Sarvodaya Mandal & Gandhi Research Foundation Retrieved from http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/basic_edu.htm Devi, A. H. (n.d.). Gandhi’s concept of education and its ethical perspectives for the development of peace. Bombay: Sarvodaya Mandal & Gandhi Research Foundation Retrieved from http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/g_edu.htm Gale Group. (2002). Freire, Paulo (1921–1997). Encyclopedia of education. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social‐sciences‐and‐law/education‐ biographies/paulo‐freire Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1991). Experiments in education. Retrieved from http://acervo. paulofreire.org:8080/jspui/bitstream/7891/2498/3/FPF_OPF_07_066.pdf Freire, P. (2001 [1979]). Conscientização: Teoria e prática da libertação: Uma introdução ao pensamento de Paulo Freire (3rd ed.). São Paulo, Brazil: Centauro Editora. Gadotti, M. (1994). Reading Paulo Freire: His life and work. New York: SUNY Press. Gandhi, M. K. (1931). Speech given at the Round Table Conference (Nov. 1930‐Jan. 1931), London. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/ indianroundtable029616mbp/indianroundtable029616mbp_djvu.txt Gandhi, M. K. (1940). An autobiography or the story of my experiments with truth (Mahadev Desai, Trans.). Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. (1966). Letter to Mr. ——, 25 January 1920. In The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: Vol. 19. New Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Gandhi, M. K. (1962). Varnashramadharma. Ahmedbad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. (1932). From Yervada Mandir (Ashram Observances). Ahmedabad: Navajivan Mudranalaya. Gandhi, M. K. (1946). Harijan. In Selected works of Mahatma Gandhi. Vol. V: The Voice of Truth, Part II, Section XI: Basic education and students. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gibson, Rich. (1994). Paulo Freire and the contradictions of literate democracy. Paper presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference, San Diego, CA, November 30–December 3. Heger, R. L. (2012). Paulo Freire: Neglected mentor for social work. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 23(2), 159–177. hooks, b. (1993). Speaking about Paulo Freire. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire (pp. 145–152). New York: Routledge. Kress, T., & Lake, R. (Eds.) (2013). Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Toward historicity in praxis. London: A & C Black. Lange, E. (1998). Fragmented ethics of justice, Freire, liberation theology and pedagogies for the non‐poor. Convergence, 31(1–2), 81–94. Kumar, A. (n.d.). Philosophical trends, theories of educational intervention and adult learning. UNESCO Retrieved from http://aladin.uil.unesco.org/paldin/pdf/ course01/unit_04.pdf

289

290

Ratna Ghosh

Mann, B. (1995). The pedagogical and political concepts of Mahatma Gandhi and Paulo Freire: A comparative study on development and strategic political education in the Third World. Hamburg: Krämer. Nanda, B. R. (2012). Gandhi and his critics. Oxford Scholarship Online. Narayan, L. (2000). Freire and Gandhi: Their relevance for social work education. International Social Work, 43(2), 193–204. Pandey, R. S. (1997). East–west thoughts on education. Allahabad: Horizon Publishers. Patel, S. (1988). Construction and reconstruction of women in Gandhi. Economic and Political Weekly, 23(8), 377–387. Parekh, B. (1989). Gandhiji’s political philosophy: A critical examination. London: Macmillan. Pathak, A. (2016). Neither God, nor demon. Economic and Political Weekly, 51(53), 158–159. Rajput, J. S. (1998). Gandhi on education. New Delhi: National Council for Teacher Education Retrieved from http://www.schoolofeducators.com/wp‐content/ uploads/2012/02/GANDHI‐ON‐EDUCATION‐BOOK‐COMPLETE.pdf Rao, P. (2014). Trends in the historiography of Indian education: A critical review. Delhi: Orient Black Swan. Rao, P. (2009). Gandhi, untouchability and the postcolonial predicament: A note. Social Scientist, 37(1–2), 64–70. Religious Literacy Project (n.d.). Paulo Freire. Cambridge: Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University Retrieved from https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/paulo‐freire Stuchul, Dana L., Esteva, Gustavo, & Prakash, Madhu Suri. (2002). From a pedagogy for liberation to liberation from pedagogy. Retrieved from http://www.swaraj.org/ shikshantar/gustavo2ls3.htm Sykes, Marjorie. (1988). The story of Nai Talim: Fifty years of education at Sevagram, 1937–1987: A record of reflections. Retrieved from http://home.iitk.ac.in/~amman/ soc748/sykes_story_of_nai_talim.html Weiler, K. (1991). Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. Harvard Educational Review, 61(4), 449–475.

291

15 Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News Insights from John Dewey and Paulo Freire John Rogers

The chief advantage of education is the assurance it gives of not being duped. … Judged by this criterion education is not only backward but it is retrograding. This is the era of bunk and hokum. —John Dewey, “Education as Politics,” 1922d Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem‐posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. —Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970 In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, during which hundreds of overseas sites created fictional stories that were circulated as news through social media platforms such as Facebook, educational professionals have focused a good deal of attention on the role of schools in helping students recognize ­misleading and false news stories (Alcott & Gentzkow, 2017). The topic of “fake news” featured prominently in national conferences for both English and social studies teachers in fall 2017.1 Practitioner journals (such as ASCD, Educational Leadership, and Phi Delta Kappan) have published articles, blogs, and resources on how educators should respond to “fake news” (see, e.g., ASCD, 2017; Crocco, Halvorsen, Jacobsen, & Segallet, 2017; Palmer, 2017). Similarly, National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the Education Writers Association all have examined educators’ strategies for working with students on the topic of “fake news” (Alvarez Boyd, 2017; Pasquantonio, 2017; Wong, 2017). Because the manipulation of news stories is a global phenomenon, it should come as no surprise that countries beyond the United States also are grappling with the role of education in preparing students to identify “fake news.” The president of the Italian Parliament initiated a program about “fake news” for 8,000 high schools in October 2017 (Horowitz, 2017). Pope Francis has promised to address the problem of “fake news” on the next World Communications Day. The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

292

John Rogers

Zyad Limam, the editor‐in‐chief of Afrique Magazine, discussed “fake news” and the need for media literacy at a November 2017 international forum in Qatar (Rajaendram, 2017). Reports from the United Arab Emirates and Israel suggest that higher education institutions in the Middle East also are tackling the challenge of “fake news” (Badam, 2017; Glum, 2017). Notably, this issue has been taken up by Andreas Schleicher, education director of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). Speaking before the 2017 Global Education and Skills Forum, Schleicher reasoned that changes in the way information is produced, distributed, and accessed create the need for new student competencies. Distinguishing what is true from what is not true is a critical skill today. … Exposing fake news, even being aware that there is something like fake news, that there is something that is written that is not necessarily true, that you have to question, think critically. That is very important. This is something that we believe schools can do something about. (Kershaw, 2017, para. 8–10) Schleicher assigns high stakes to such understanding (Coughlan, 2017). The ability to distinguish information that is “fake” from “real” will be assessed on the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and included in OECD’s new measure of global competency (OECD, 2017). Amid the rush of concern and calls for educators to act, less attention has been directed toward understanding the underlying social and pedagogic issues presented by “fake news.” This focus on immediate action likely is grounded in the belief that political crisis demands a timely response. It may also reflect a view that the problem of “fake news” is both wholly new and transparent and hence not subject to illumination from historical or philosophical analysis. The narrative driving much public discourse holds that the 2016 U.S. presidential election represents a turning point from the transmission of straightforward social and political facts to a more confusing and obfuscated media environment. What seems to matter most is not why or how information has been corrupted (or what this means) but rather that consumers of information are able to distinguish the “authentic” from the corrupt. In this chapter, I aim to broaden the discussion of what it means for educators to engage “fake news” by examining how John Dewey and Paulo Freire addressed related issues in their own historical contexts. My primary jumping off point is Dewey’s 1922 article, “Education as Politics,” which analyzes how schools should respond to what Dewey terms the “propaganda regime” that grew up with the rise of mass media technology and the new industry of public relations in the wake of World War I. In language that seems to anticipate our current moment, Dewey describes living in an era of “bunk and hokum” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 329). Yet, unlike most commenters today, Dewey understands the flow of false and misleading information as driven by particular class interests and enabled by failing educational practices. His central message is that “bunk and hokum” represent an epistemic and pedagogic crisis. Dewey’s vision for “education as politics” stretches beyond the narrow goal of helping students to distinguish fake from

Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News

real, highlighting the need for young people to forge an active and empowered relationship to news and information. Similarly, Paulo Freire examines the ways that dominant models of schooling are implicated in the spread of misinformation as well as the potential for education to play a transformative role. A central theme of Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the way that traditional models of teaching conceal reality and sustain the myths that hold hierarchy in place. Freire helps us understand how and why information about social and political life is distorted and how this process affects both the oppressor and the oppressed. Like Dewey, Freire envisions an alternative approach to education that, more than merely differentiating the true from the false, reconstructs how young people understand knowledge and their own epistemic power. The remainder of this chapter elaborates the respective responses of John Dewey and Paulo Freire to what we refer to today as the educational problem of “fake news.” I consider how each makes sense of the problem, its causes, its effects, and its potential transformation. In section two, I offer an extended discussion of Dewey’s “Education as Politics” as well as other related Dewey scholarship.2 Section three presents a brief analysis of these issues in the context of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Finally, section four summarizes similarities and differences in Dewey and Freire and highlights the significance of their work for efforts to understand and challenge the bunk and hokum in our present moment.

John Dewey John Dewey’s concerns with what we today refer to as “fake news” emerged amidst growing threats to public understanding and civil liberties after the United States entered World War I in April 1917. Although Dewey initially supported President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to join the conflict in Europe (Dewey, 1917a), within months he expresses alarm at the “peculiar mental effect of war upon the [U.S.] civilian population” (Dewey, 1917b, p. 276). In articles published in the New Republic in September and October 2017, Dewey notes that the war spawned “emotional instability,” “suspicious attitude[s]” (Dewey, 1917b, p. 276), and “intolerance at diversity of opinion” (Dewey, 1917c, p. 295). It also led the public to be more susceptible to rumors of all sorts, fostering “extreme credulity as to both good news and bad” (Dewey, 1917b, p. 276). A year later, as World War I draws to a close, Dewey extends his analysis by criticizing the government’s “manipulation” of information through both “censorship” and “cultivated propaganda” (Dewey, 1918a, p. 108, 1918b, p. 118). Writing again in the New Republic, Dewey outlines the ways that emergency war powers granted government agencies the ability to control the flow of information to the public—for example, supervising telephone and telegraph lines and regulating the press. Dewey worries that even after these special powers are lifted, the “centralized agencies for communication and propagation of facts and ideas” will remain (Dewey, 1918b, pp. 118, 120). One key outcome from the war, he reasons, is a “paternalistic care for the sources of men’s [sic] beliefs … the kinds of facts and opinions that are brought to public attention.” A second

293

294

John Rogers

­ utcome is the understanding that “propaganda disguised as the distribution of o news is the cheapest and most effective way of developing the required tone of public sentiment” (Dewey, 1918b, pp. 118, 120). For Dewey, the corruption of information brought on by the war effort presented two challenges for democracy and education. First, it exposed the danger of appeals to democratic ends through undemocratic means. Dewey imagines the absurdity of government agents saying: “Let us make democracy safe for the world by a careful editing and expurgation of the facts upon which it bases the opinions which in the end decide social action” (Dewey, 1918b, pp. 120–121). Second, it highlighted the failure of existing public schools to ensure an intelligent and informed public. Despite Dewey’s initial hope that recent reforms in public education had raised the “average level of political intelligence,” he came to understand, over the course of the war, that citizens educated in American schools could be manipulated easily through appeals to fear and suspicion (Dewey, 1917d, p. 274). The power of war propaganda not only challenged Dewey’s assessment of the body politic, it also called into question his progressive view of social change. In Democracy and Education (published just before America’s entry in World War I), Dewey (1916) envisions democratic schooling gradually spreading democratic habits and ways of being throughout society. The movement toward more humanistic and egalitarian social relationships, he reasons, “depends more upon the adoption of educational methods calculated to effect the change than upon anything else.” He asserts: “[W]e may produce in schools a projection in type of the society we should like to realize, and by forming minds in accord with it gradually modify the larger and more recalcitrant features of adult society” (Dewey, 1916, p. 326). Dewey’s optimistic view from 1916 fails to account for the powerful counterforces unleashed by the war that shape public understandings through control of the news. Soon after identifying these challenges to American democracy, Dewey leaves the United States for an extended stay in Japan and China. Only when he returns home a few years later does he again take up the issues in earnest. Upon returning to the United States in early 1922, John Dewey publishes a series of articles in the New Republic expressing concerns about the health of American democracy and the quality of public education. He worries about William Jennings Bryan’s campaign against science in the Scopes trial (Dewey, 1922a), sympathizes with Walter Lippmann’s critique of public opinion as ill‐ informed3 (Dewey, 1922b), and chides public schools for not preparing students for robust citizenship in a complex world (Dewey, 1922c). Then, in the October 4, 1922 issue of the New Republic, he draws these themes together with a broader discussion of news and propaganda in “Education as Politics” (Dewey, 1922d). “Education as Politics” begins with the assertion that the defining feature of modern American society is the creation, distribution, and consumption of misinformation. “This is the era of bunk and hokum—there is more of it in quantity, its circulation is more rapid and ceaseless, it is swallowed more eagerly and more indiscriminately than ever before” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 329). Dewey describes a “régime of propaganda,” initiated during the war but now advanced through both government and private means, which controls and organizes the stories

Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News

distributed as news. The purveyors of these stories act strategically. They play off the fears and concerns of the public through a “judiciously selected supply of ‘news.’ ” And then, drawing upon the emerging science of advertising, these stories are packaged to entice consumption. “[I]t is easy to add the spice, the emphasis, the exaggeration, the suggestions which will convey to the mass what they themselves conceive to be fundamentally true” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 331). Dewey only hints in “Education as Politics” at what we might term a political economy of bunk and hokum. That is, he offers only oblique commentary on who the “moulders of public opinion” are or might be, let alone what interests they aim to advance (Dewey, 1922d, p. 333). He tells us simply that “it has become an object for some men to influence the beliefs the masses hold” (p. 330). Here, his 1918 New Republic article “The New Paternalism” is instructive in its description of the emerging public relations industry. Dewey acknowledges that “business conditions almost automatically force these agencies into highly concentrated forms” because “large capital” is required to gather and distribute the news. The leaders of such agencies, he reasons, almost invariably are friendly with other elites, as “reflecting the views of the powers that be gives access to sources of information, while lack of subserviency shuts off such access.” In this way, “capital in one form is friendly to capital in other forms” (Dewey, 1918b, pp. 118, 119). For Dewey, bunk, and hokum include not simply “invented or consciously colored fact” but also narratives that distort how the public understands social and political problems. News stories, for example, can create “confusion and error in the public mind” by ascribing blame to individuals or minority groups rather than to elites or broader structures shaping society. Such explanations feed into what Dewey sees as a tendency within “human psychology … [to] attribute to conscious design and set purpose most of the bad consequences to which attention is suddenly called.”4 Because the circulation of stereotypes often finds a receptive audience, the public’s attention is distracted from the “real causes of the evils against which they contend.” Such causes, Dewey points out, “usually lie much deeper,” and so the news directs the public to deal with “symptoms rather than with forces.” In this way, the regime of propaganda produces both “ignorance” and “intellectual confusion” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 331). Dewey presents an historical explanation for the rise of “the present reign of bunkum in human affairs.” During previous generations most people followed local matters in which they had “some direct experience.” On such topics, the “mass of men” demonstrated “shrewdness and employed judgment.” More recently, explains Dewey, the modern industrial state, with its systems of mass transportation and mass communication, “invaded and largely destroyed” the “self‐centered locality.” Dewey reasons that, as a consequence, his contemporaries are “compelled … to live as members of an extensive and mainly unseen society.” Distant and largely incomprehensible economic and political conditions unleash disruptive forces, leaving local residents with little understanding of the issues shaping their everyday experiences (Dewey, 1922d, p. 329). Dewey explains that these changes to local community life have come alongside the emergence of new and cheaper means of creating and distributing news. That shift has created a market opportunity for those interested in controlling public opinion. Dewey concludes: “Given … the new need of knowing about

295

296

John Rogers

­ istant affairs on the one hand and the interest in controlling their exercise on d the other,” it is not surprising that “the era of bunk, of being systematically duped, of undiscriminating sentiment and belief, is ushered in” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 330). Yet, even as he argues that broad historical forces establish the preconditions for this era, Dewey highlights the culpability of “what passes as an educational system” for failing to “safeguard against surrender to the invasion of bunk, especially in its most dangerous form—social and political bunk.” That is, the flow of misinformation might be inevitable, but “susceptibility to a welcoming reception of it” is not. Schools should develop what Dewey describes as “discriminating intelligence.” But, instead, they provide “no protection against being duped” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 332). Dewey outlines two reasons for this “ineptitude” of schools. First, public schools teach “traditional material” drawn from a “remote” and distant past. Such subject matter may have been valuable at some historical moment but bears no relevance to contemporary problems. Dewey here hints at a broader argument he outlines in Democracy and Education. Presenting students with static information developed long ago offers them no opportunity to develop their capacity for thinking which “occurs with reference to situations which are still going on, and incomplete” or when “issues are uncertain or doubtful or problematic” (Dewey, 1916, p. 155). When subject matter is isolated from real‐world problems and issues, knowledge becomes “scholastic,” more suited to maintain class distinctions than promote understanding of and ability to address pressing conditions.5 Hence, Dewey argues, the mere acquisition of “traditional material” not only fails to protect against propaganda, it adds to further confusion. “The specialist in any one of the traditional lines is as likely to fall for social bunk even in its extreme forms of economic and nationalistic propaganda as the unschooled person; in fact his credulity is the more dangerous because he is so much more vociferous in its proclamation and so much more dogmatic in its assertion” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 332). The second way that schooling “fosters an undiscriminating gulping mental habit” is by presenting an overwhelmingly positive view of society and social life. Dewey speaks of a “systematic, almost deliberate, avoidance of the spirit of criticism in dealing with history, politics and economics.” Schools “wall off ” students from any information about “social problems … political evil … [or] industrial defects.” Encouraging an idealized view of American history and social institutions is understood to be the best way to develop loyal citizens. The unrelenting focus on positive stories leaves students believing that any problems they encounter must be attributable to character failures. “[L]ike the pulpit,” Dewey explains, the school “compensates for its avoidance of discussion of social difficulties by a sentimental dwelling upon personal vices” (Dewey, 1922d, pp. 332–333). The consequence of this miseducation, according to Dewey, is to send students out into society in a “condition of acquired and artificial innocence.” Young people are “ripe to be gulled.” They lack the habits of critical thinking that would help them recognize false or misleading information or to see beneath the prevailing “confusion, ignorance, prejudice, and credulity.” School graduates also are unprepared when they encounter social ills that are never addressed in the curriculum. Dewey notes that the contrast between “things as they are actually found to be and things as they had been taught in schools” produces “indifference,” “disillusionment,” and “cynicism” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 333).

Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News

Notwithstanding his deep concerns about the growth of bunk or his scathing critique of public schooling, Dewey still holds out hope for democracy and education in 1922. Earlier that year, Dewey had rejected Walter Lippmann’s conclusion (in Public Opinion) that public misunderstanding requires turning over most decisions to an elite cadre of experts (Dewey, 1922d; Lippmann, 1922). He thus concludes in “Education as Politics” that “what needs consideration and criticism is the quality of popular government, not the fact of its existence.” The quality of popular government, he continues, “is bound up with the quality of the ideas and information which are circulated and to which belief adheres.” What is needed, Dewey asserts, is fundamental changes to education and political life that will remake schools as “dangerous outposts of a humane civilization” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 333).6 Dewey envisions education transforming skills, habits, and identities. The primary skill is the ability to “discriminate.” Discrimination refers to something broader than distinguishing fact from fiction; it is the ability “to make distinctions that penetrate below the surface.” For Dewey, the “froth and foam” of the floating surface represents the loud and flashy ideas that purveyors of news use to excite interest. These ideas are “emphatic” and “conspicuous” but communicate little meaning. Students must learn to look beneath such presenting information to the underlying political and economic structures that shape everyday experience. In Dewey’s words, young people need to be able to “detect conditions that fix the contour of the surface, and the forces which create its waves and drifts” (Dewey 1922d, pp. 329, 332). Dewey also views education as a process for shaping habits of mind that counter the powerful call of bunk and hokum. A “trained mind” offers “inward protection” against those who use sensational stories or stereotypical opinions to draw interest toward particular news stories. Dewey speaks of cultivating habits such as “suspended judgment” that encourage students to pause and consider all sources of information with skepticism. He hopes that students will develop a deep commitment to the values of inquiry—a “desire for evidence” and “appeal to observation rather than sentiment” (Dewey 1922d, pp. 332–333). Finally, Dewey draws attention to the potential for education to forge student identities that challenge the propaganda regime. He advocates for education to produce a “mind that prefers not to dupe itself or be the dupe of others” (Dewey, 1922d, p. 333). This phrase suggests that students should establish an empowered relationship to prevailing systems of information and to those who would use information as a tool of control. Dewey wants education to develop energetic political agents capable of making and advancing intelligent assessments of pressing social issues, even when faced with complex, bewildering, or purposefully misleading stories in the news.

Paulo Freire Like Dewey, Paulo Freire is concerned with the role of education in shaping understanding and relations of power in a world characterized by disinformation and social hierarchy. Yet, Freire (1970) writes Pedagogy of the Oppressed almost a half‐century after Dewey publishes “Education as Politics,” and he does so in a very different political context. The military dictatorship that governed Brazil in

297

298

John Rogers

the late 1960s made no pretense of ensuring a free and open press (let alone the freedom for Freire to work and live.) Freire’s interest in the corruption of public understanding is thus not so much focused on the press but rather with the oppressive social relations that give rise to the narratives undergirding how people make sense of reality. A central theme in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the way that systems of power obscure understanding. The oppressed cannot truly see or recognize the conditions shaping their everyday experiences because their vision is distorted by the oppressor’s consciousness that “tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination” (Freire, 1970, p. 44). Immersed within an “oppressive reality” that “absorbs those within it,” the oppressed not only accept the legitimacy of prevailing relations but often concede their own ignorance and incapacity for learning (pp. 36, 49). In this way, the oppressor leaves the oppressed “submerged” in myths, unable to “perceive clearly the ‘order’ which serves the interests of the oppressors whose image they have internalized” (p. 48). Caught up in “magical beliefs,” the oppressed are “unaware of the causes of their condition,” and hence unwilling to question, let alone challenge, their exploitation (pp. 50, 51). Freire argues that dominant forms of education are deeply complicit in dehumanizing the oppressed and corrupting their understanding of themselves and of the broader world. Teachers commonly seek to fill students with facts that bear no relation to one another or to the students’ interests and concerns. This approach to education “stimulates the credulity of students” in at least two ways (Freire, 1970, p. 66). First, it fails to provide students with the analytic tools necessary to advance critical understanding. Banking education, for example, prevents students from seeing the relationship among streams of information—“the ties which link one point to another and one problem to another”—that would enable them to recognize overarching systems of power (p. 60). Second, it socializes students to a passive role in relation to knowledge and social life more generally. The banking concept poses the student as an empty vessel needing to be filled. The student is not an agent who has the power to question or interpret, or to engage in dialogue with others. As a result, banking education is an “exercise of domination [over students] … with the ideological intent … of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression” (p. 65). As an alternative to dehumanization, Paulo Freire advances education for ­liberation—or the practice of action and reflection for the purpose of transformation. Freire contends that liberation requires “reject[ing] the banking concept in its entirety” (Freire, 1970, p. 66). This entails a fundamental reconsideration of students’ relationships to knowledge, teachers, and the broader social world. Learners should no longer consume external messages or communiqués or propaganda. Instead, they must respond with intention to the “problems of men in their relations with the world.” Within “problem‐posing education,” students join teachers as “critical co‐investigators in dialogue” (p. 68). Such a shift in student–teacher relations is facilitated through dialogue in which no party asserts the exclusive power to narrate or to assert epistemic authority. Students come to recognize their “power to perceive critically” the social world and their place within it, as well as their capacity for creative action (p. 71). It is through this empowered relationship to knowledge and action that individuals become “truly human” (p. 58).

Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News

Freire presents a brief but highly illuminating discussion of how his pedagogic ideas might be applied to the news. He suggests that “magazine articles, newspapers, and book chapters” offer a valuable resource for problem‐posing education (Freire, 1970, p. 116). Freire recommends that the analysis of these materials begin with a presentation about the author (or reporter) so that participants approach the material as human‐created text that expresses a particular (rather than an authoritative) understanding of social reality. As is clear from Freire’s previous discussion about using taped interviews in thematic investigation circles, the introduction of the author also opens up opportunities for participants to examine the role of the media and intellectuals more generally within the power structure. In addition, Freire suggests that participants in thematic investigation circles analyze how editorial writers in various newspapers address particular events. He suggests that groups consider: “Why do different newspapers have such different interpretations of the same fact?” At one level, Freire views this practice as a way to foster the habit of criticism. More generally, he sees it as a way to forge a new agentive identity in relation to mass media. He wants participants not to understand themselves “as passive objects of the ‘communiques’ directed at them, but rather as consciousnesses seeking to be free” (Freire, 1970, p. 116).

Dewey and Freire on the Meaning of “Being Duped” Like many current educational and political leaders worried about the growth of “fake news,” John Dewey and Paulo Freire envision an important role for education in ensuring that students will not be duped. Yet, for both Dewey and Freire, “being duped” denotes something more than falling for a false news story. It means accepting knowledge claims with no attempt at analysis, with little or no realization that a claim has been advanced and with no recognition that such claims emerge from an interconnected system of knowledge and power. “Being duped,” in this sense, expresses a set of problems related to psychology, epistemology, sociology, and hierarchy. In this concluding section, I suggest that Dewey and Freire, each in his own way, underscore the importance of framing educational responses to “fake news” in light of these four problems. First, John Dewey and Paulo Freire understand being duped as a psychological problem in which socially constructed impulses lead people to swallow easy explanations. Dewey infers that as people in modern industrialized societies increasingly encounter challenges outside their own daily experiences, they fall back on stereotypes and attribute difficulties to individual failings. Freire focuses on the ways that hierarchical social relations condition the oppressed to psychological feelings of ignorance and inadequacy that lead them to accept the ideas of the oppressor. Because Dewey and Freire both worry that these habituated responses cut short analysis, they advocate a critical education that will develop new mental habits (such as skepticism and curiosity) associated with inquiry. Second, Dewey and Freire conceive “being duped” as an epistemological ­problem in which people mistake the acquisition of disconnected nuggets of information to represent knowledge of complex social issues. Formal education

299

300

John Rogers

often focuses students’ attention on isolated facts about places or things rather than real issues and open questions associated with the problems of living together in society. Academic expertise based on amassing particular bodies of such facts does little to help people make sense of information in other domains. As information flows from numerous sources on countless issues, it is not surprising that many are unsure about which facts are trustworthy. Dewey and Freire assert that meaningful understanding emerges as we shift our focus from the transmittal and reception of information to participation in systematic investigation. They also highlight the importance of looking beyond isolated facts in order to recognize patterns, associations, and causal relationships. For Dewey, education should help students understand events or conditions as the product of particular causes or precipitating forces. For Freire, education must enable students to identify how facts connect within an overarching system of power. Third, Dewey and Freire hold that “being duped” is a problem of the sociology of knowledge characterized by a failure to recognize that information about social life is produced by people with particular social histories that are connected to particular systems of power. When audiences do not attend to the ways that news stories are authored and disseminated, they are likely to view the information as objective and not subject to further analysis. Dewey’s commentary about a “propaganda regime” or about the ways that media sometimes gains access to the powerful by representing their interests, reminds us that students need analytic tools to assess stories in light of the systems that produce the s­ tories. Similarly, Freire’s strategy of introducing biographical information about reporters positions participants in thematic investigation circles to consider how information in news stories emerges from particular methods, perspectives, and interests. Fourth, Dewey and Freire understand “being duped” as a problem of hierarchical social relationships in which those with power and agency transmit information to the passive and disempowered. Such relationships are not exclusive to schools, but when found within schools they acculturate students to unquestioningly accept authority and authoritative claims. These relations encourage students who prefer (in Dewey’s terms) to “dupe [themselves] or be the dupe of others” or (in Freire’s words) to be the “passive objects of communiqués.” Both Dewey and Freire envision education as a way for students to forge new identities as inquirers. For Dewey, this is a path to active and empowered citizenship, whereas for Freire, this is the path to liberation. Dewey and Freire’s responses to these four problems suggest an approach to helping students navigate our own era of bunk and hokum in a way that is more substantive and meaningful than a narrow focus on identifying false or misleading stories. Since the 2016 presidential election, a number of educational and civic organizations have posted tools that students can use to evaluate whether particular online news or information is trustworthy. These checklists highlight surface features of stories or websites that signal the degree of confidence (or the level of suspicion) that students should associate with the information provided. Such resources may well assist students in filtering some of the news they access (though McGrew, Ortega, Breakstone, and Wineburg [2017]7 suggest that these checklists rarely capture the strategies used by expert fact‐checkers). Whether effective or not, these approaches aim to develop better lie detectors.

Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News

Dewey and Freire point us toward a more expansive agenda. Rather than attending to individual instances in which information may have been corrupted, they focus on the relationships of knowledge and power that are bound up in educational practice, systems of mass communication, and the structures of political and economic institutions. No checklist can address these broader issues nor can they be addressed comprehensively in any single lesson, or unit, or even course in media literacy. What is needed is to refashion the entire enterprise of education so that students interact with one another, with educators, and with information in more empowered ways. The goal of education for Dewey and Freire is new forms of social, epistemic, and political agency. “Education as Politics” and Pedagogy of the Oppressed thus present valuable resources for those who wish to develop educational responses to “fake news” today. A close reading of these texts pushes us to broaden the educational project beyond helping students merely filter out “false” news stories. These texts also prompt us to grapple with a deeper crisis laid bare by “fake news.” The growing number of people being duped is symptomatic of a withering public sphere that is not providing a cross‐section of citizens with the opportunity to recognize, deliberate, and act upon the problems they face. Dewey and Freire similarly express concern that the public sphere has been eclipsed (by structural changes in society) or eviscerated (by military dictatorship.) They both envision a central role for education in addressing this problem. But they also recognize that reconstructing the public sphere requires both the transformation of individuals and the transformation of political and social institutions through which power and information flow. We would do well to remember these lessons today.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Anthony Berryman and Joseph Kahne for their insightful f­ eedback on early drafts of this chapter.

Notes 1 The National Council for Teachers of English conference included 11 sessions on

fake news and the National Council for the Social Studies conference presented more than 25 such sessions. See http://convention.ncte.org/app/uploads/2017/ 10/program‐Saturday.pdf; https://www.socialstudies.org/conference/fake‐ news‐detectors/49186 2 I spend more time elaborating Dewey’s work on this topic than I do on Freire’s writing both because Dewey touches more directly than Freire on the theme of “fake news” and because readers of this volume are likely to be less familiar with Dewey’s 1922 article than with Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 3 Dewey does not, however, support Lippmann’s vision of democratic elitism as a rejoinder to this failure of public opinion—a theme he touches upon in this book review and then develops at great length in The Public and Its Problems (1927).

301

302

John Rogers

4 Dewey here anticipates what social scientists today refer to as the “fundamental

attribution error.” See for example Ross (1977).

5 In his 1908 essay, “The Bearings of Pragmatism on Education,” Dewey contrasts

the education of the leisured classes who accumulate disconnected knowledge and cultural artifacts as possessions with that of the “lower classes” whose education is “more of less consciously designed” to make “them the passive and willing upholders of the existing order” (Dewey, 1908, p. 182). 6 Dewey says little about his ideas for changing political structures in “Education as Politics.” He develops these ideas within his broader political theory in The Public and Its Problems, published in 1927. 7 See McGrew, Ortega, Breakstone, and Wineburg (2017), footnote 9, for a very useful list of such resources.

References Alcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Report No. w23089. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research. Alvarez Boyd, S. (2017). 5 ways teachers are fighting fake news. National Public Radio Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/16/ 514364210/5‐ways‐teachers‐are‐fighting‐fake‐news ASCD. (2017). Avoiding the fake news trap. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ publications/newsletters/education‐update/apr17/vol59/num04/Tools‐to‐ Debunk‐Fake‐News.aspx Badam, Ramolo Talwar. (2017, November 14). Teach UAE pupils how to spot fake news, study finds. The National (UAE Edition). Retrieved from https://www. thenational.ae/uae/education/teach‐uae‐pupils‐how‐to‐spot‐fake‐news‐award‐ winning‐study‐finds‐1.675716 Coughlan, Sean. (2017, March 18). Schools should teach pupils how to spot “fake news.” BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/education‐39272841 Crocco, M., Halvorsen, A.‐L., Jacobsen, R., & Segall, A. (2017). Teaching with evidence in this age of fake news. Phi Delta Kappan, 98, 67–71. Dewey, J. (1908). The bearings of pragmatism on education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 4: 1899–1924: 1907–1909 (pp. 178–191). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 9: 1899–1924. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1917a). Democracy and loyalty in the schools. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 10: 1899–1924: 1916–1917, journal articles, essays, and miscellany (pp. 158–163). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1917b). Conscription of thought. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 10: 1899–1924: 1916–1917, journal articles, essays, and miscellany (pp. 276). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1917c). In explanation of our lapse. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 10: 1899–1924: 1916–1917, journal articles, essays, and miscellany (pp. 292–295). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Education for “Not Being Duped” in an Era of Fake News

Dewey, J. (1917d). What America will fight for. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 10: 1899–1924: 1916–1917, journal articles, essays, and miscellany (pp. 271–275). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1918a). The cult of irrationality. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 11: 1899–1924: 1916–1917, journal articles, essays, and miscellany (pp. 107–111). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1918b). The new paternalism. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 11: 1899–1924: 1916–1917, journal articles, essays, and miscellany (pp. 117–121). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1922a). The American intellectual frontier. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 13: 1899–1924: 1921–1922, essays on philosophy, education, and the Orient (pp. 301–305). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1922b). Public opinion. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 13: 1899–1924: 1921–1922, essays on philosophy, education, and the Orient (pp. 335–336). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1922c). Education as a religion. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 13: 1899–1924: 1921–1922, essays on philosophy, education, and the Orient (pp. 317–322). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1922d). Education as politics. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey. Vol. 13: 1899–1924: 1921–1922, essays on philosophy, education, and the Orient (pp. 329–334). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works of John Dewey. Vol. 2: 1925–1953: 1925–1927, essays, reviews, miscellany, and “The Public and Its Problems.”. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Glum, Julia. (2017, October 23). Fake news around the world: Schools in Israel, Italy teach students to spot “super yellow journalism.” Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/fake‐news‐students‐youth‐italy‐israel‐691079 Horowitz, Jason. (2017, October 18). In Italian schools, reading, writing, and recognizing fake news. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2017/10/18/world/europe/italy‐fake‐news.html Kershaw, Allison. (2017, March 18). School children “should be taught to recognise fake news.” The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/home‐news/school‐children‐taught‐recognise‐fake‐news‐donald‐ trump‐andreas‐schleicher‐a7636251.html Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York: Transaction Publishers. McGrew, S., Ortega, T., Breakstone, J., & Wineburg, S. (2017). The challenge that’s bigger than fake news. American Educator, 41, 4–9. OECD. (2017). PISA 2018 global competence. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/ pisa/pisa‐2018‐global‐competence.htm Palmer, E. (2017). The real problem with fake news. Education Leadership, 75(3), Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational‐leadership/nov17/ vol75/num03/The‐Real‐Problem‐with‐Fake‐News.aspx Pasquantonio, Victoria. (2017). Real things teachers can do to combat fake news. PBS Newshour. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/real‐ things‐teachers‐can‐combat‐fake‐news

303

304

John Rogers

Rajaendram, Rebecca. (2017, December 3). Teaching kids to be media‐savvy. The Star – Malaysia. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com.my/news/ education/2017/12/03/teaching‐kids‐to‐be‐mediasavvy/ Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 173–220. Wong, Alia. (2017). Fighting fake news in the classroom. Education Writers Association. Retrieved from https://www.ewa.org/blog‐educated‐reporter/ fighting‐fake‐news‐classroom

305

16 Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire1 Peter Mayo

Introduction The radical debate on education frequently features references to Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, often cited in the same breath. All this occurs despite the fact that they lived and operated at different times and in different contexts. Some of their ideas are considered central to discussions on education and power. Indeed there has been a connection between the thought of one and that of the other; needless to say Gramsci was the source of influence. Paulo Freire encountered Gramsci’s thought in the mid to late 1960s, around about the time when he wrote his most famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In a talk in London (Freire, 1995) he states that he gained acquaintance with Gramsci’s thought when he lived abroad in exile realizing that they shared similar ideas; he claims to have “known” Gramsci’s ideas before reading the work. In actual fact, it was Marcela Gajardo in Chile, during Freire’s time of exile there, who introduced him to Gramsci’s work by lending him the anthology of writings Letteratura e Vita Nazionale (Literature and National Life) (Morrow & Torres, 1995). It was the time when Freire’s pedagogical ideas began to become more robust through his exposure to a whole range of writings, extending beyond those of the Brazilian Catholic Left; the French Catholic Left, especially Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Leopando, 2017); and those of writers such as John Dewey, the latter also through the mediating influence of Anisio Teixeira (Morrow & Torres, 1995). They extended beyond all these to incorporate a variety of other writings, especially Marxist ones. One can notice the difference between Freire’s early work as captured in Educação como prática da liberdade, published in English as part of Freire (1973), and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Torres, 2014), especially when appreciating the Marxian dialectical streak that runs throughout the latter book (Allman, 1999), at least the first three chapters.2

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

306

Peter Mayo

Marxian Influence Karl Marx’s ideas are combined with those of Radical Christianity in Freire. Marx’s influence on Gramsci was inevitable given his declared socialist revolutionary stance. Valentino Gerratana edited a four‐volume collection of the Quaderni del Carcere (The Prison Notebooks, henceforth the Quaderni) in which he lists Karl Marx’s works that were consulted by Gramsci, Il Capitale (Das Kapital) among them, without of course the Paris Manuscripts and Die Deutsche Ideologie. Gramsci underlined the cultural dimension of revolutionary practice; indeed many are those who attribute this aspect of Marxism to him. At the same time, we should not overlook the political economic aspects of his work. The latter are strongly present in Notebook 22 dealing with American Fordist production. He underscores the contextual differences between the United States and certain European countries, including Italy with its residual economic and political forces, which made Fordist production possible in the former country. The United States, according to Gramsci, had less residual shackling forces than certain European countries, for instance far fewer “parasitic” classes living on rent. Some texts by Marx and Engels were published late in Gramsci’s life (when in prison) or after his death for him to have access to the ideas contained within them, even though some of these ideas must have been percolating through the corridors of socialist and communist politics for him to have obtained awareness of them. In contrast, Freire drew from several writings by Marx, notably from the earlier period of writings with Friedrich Engels, including Die Deutsche Ideologie and Die Heilige Familie. They feature in the background to some of the points made in Freire’s celebrated Pedagogia do Oprimido (Freire, 2013)—Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in English 50 years ago (a 50th anniversary edition has just been produced by Bloomsbury Academic). As far as the first three chapters go, this book is written in that dialectical style one associated with Marx. Other ideas from Marx feature, albeit often crudely, if not, at times, in a contradictory manner to Freire’s overarching pedagogical philosophy, in such works as Cartas da Guinea Bissau (Freire, 1978, in the English version) where Freire addresses the social relations of production in a poor newly independent African country (Guinea Bissau) following a bloody war of liberation ended through the Captains’ Movement (Cortesão, in Borg & Mayo, 2007, p. 212), which brought down Portugal’s colonial dictatorial regime. In this work, and precisely in Carta 11, Freire echoes the idea of a “polytechnical education,” from Marx’s 1866 Geneva Resolution, promoting the view of education being intertwined with production. It is probably here more than anywhere else that Gramsci’s influence on Freire can be directly felt, especially in the discussion on intellectuals that echoes Gramsci’s writing regarding organic intellectuals; Freire speaks of the emergence of a new intellectual forged in the unity between theory and practice. This concept of intellectuals reemerges in his later discussion with fellow Latin American exile, Antonio Faundez (Freire & Faundez, 1989). Despite his 1995 reference to convergences between his thought and that of Gramsci, there is no reference to the latter in Pedagogy of the Oppressed where there is neither any reference to Gramsci’s best known signature concept, hegemony.3

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

Ideology The works of Gramsci and Freire are rooted in the conception of ideology conveyed in one of the aforementioned Marx and Engels (1970) writings where it is stated that every social class striving to replace another seeks to promote its specific interests and weltanschauung as that of society in general, rendering them “universal” to which there seems to be no alternative (pp. 65–66). There is a strong affinity between the formulation in question and Gramsci’s definition of hegemony, and this from a manuscript, Die Deutsche Ideologie (The German Ideology), to which Gramsci is supposed to not have had access as it was published by the Marx‐Engels Institute in Moscow 3 years before his death. Gramsci regarded “common sense,” containing fragments of “good sense,” as reflecting dominant hegemonic interests. Common sense in Gramsci’s usage represented a distorted and contradictory worldview and form of consciousness. He considers this a type of “folklore” a term that largely has pejorative connotations for Gramsci (1975), referring to an uncritical absorption of this worldview (p. 1396).4 For Gramsci, this common sense can be overcome by a systematic study of philosophy, viewed in its broader context, which can lend itself to the development of a more coherent process of thinking. This can well constitute the purpose of much of the forms of workers’ education and other adult education initiatives that Gramsci proposed and in which he was involved, albeit, in the majority of cases, for a short time, given the limiting surrounding circumstances (e.g., education on the island of Ustica while awaiting trial or the short‐lived Institute of Proletarian Culture). Needless to say, this view has often exposed Gramsci to the criticism of pathologizing human beings. This criticism is also leveled at him by certain postmodernists who detect, in his work, an enduring Eurocentric discourse symptomatic of an Enlightenment grand narrative. Likewise, Freire exposed, in his early work (Torres, 2014), instances from his interactions with peasants and other folk that reflected specific states of consciousness pertaining to a hierarchy rising from naïve‐consciousness to critical‐ consciousness; he points to magical justifications of circumstances and the attribution of poverty to “God’s will”—“You will always have the poor among you” never mind the context in which these words by Jesus Christ were reported to have been uttered and that this statement can lend itself to different interpretations, a plausible one being: one can never be complacent, with regard to the state of society, as the struggle against poverty remains an ongoing one. With regard to Freire’s hierarchy of consciousness levels, there is, once again, the danger of pathologizing and not recognizing forms of knowledge and learning traditions, including Indigenous traditions, existing alongside established scientific thought. One therefore needs to tread warily in such contexts, without underestimating the power of ideology and “colonization of the mental universe” (Ngũgĩ, 1981, p. 16) of the colonized or subaltern. Freire exposes ways by which persons embrace the oppressor consciousness, wanting to be like the oppressor, which, in terms of the dialectical relations between oppressor and oppressed, would signify simply a change of personnel. The dialectical relationship would remain intact (Freire, 1970). Hegemonic situations are complex as people’s contradictory aspirations and states of

307

308

Peter Mayo

c­ onsciousness lead them to take different roles, oppressors in one situation and oppressed in others. Freire’s discussions around the “oppressor within,” a term Audre Lorde used, and later (Freire, 1997) on subjectivities that are “multiple and layered” (pp. 303–329) indicate that this is a recurring thought in his body of work. He insisted that we are persons in process, struggling to become more coherent, all part of “ser mas” (being more), an effort resulting from an awareness of our “unfinishedness” (Freire, 1998).

Hope Springs Eternal Gramsci and Freire refuted economic‐determinist theories of change that are evolutionary and that conveyed the sense of a fatalist and historical predestination, as if history has a life of its own—a moving force. There is, of course, an element of voluntarism in the writings of the young ­Gram­sci deriving from his initial influence by Italian Idealist and Crocean ­philosophy. Idealism has often been decried in Italy for keeping the country’s philosophy provincial. It is however accorded the merit of steering Italian ­ humanist thinking away from positivism, the sort of positivism that Gramsci confronted in his linguistics work as a student of philology; Matteo Bartoli, his mentor and leading Italian philologist, once hailed him as the emerging force destined to overcome the grammarians. Freire’s early work, notably the text contained in the English volume, Education for Critical Consciousness, based on his PhD thesis (Educação Como Prática da Liberdade) also reveals a voluntaristic streak. As with Gramsci’s Hegelian roots, this influence on Freire partly came from his reading of authors on the Christian Left, including French writers (Leopando, 2017) and the American theologian Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr, besides the Brazilian exponent of Christian “personalism,” Tristan de Ataide. Later, this idealist position is eschewed in both Gramsci and Freire as more emphasis is placed on the social relations of production. It is fair to say that Gramsci and Freire saw history as possibility. They closely observed and wrote about capitalist developments, Fordism and neoliberalism featuring in the work of Gramsci and Freire respectively. In Notebook 22 dealing with Taylorized Fordist production, Gramsci tackled the issue of “profit’s falling rate” with Taylorization being one of the means to counter this process.5 Intensified global capitalist reorganization (Foley, 1994, 1999) is the scenario Freire encountered especially in the latter stages of his life. Freire had been focusing on neoliberalism in his writings immediately before his passing away on May 2, 1997; some of his writings from the final period survive (Mayo, 2001, 2004).

Education in Its Widest Sense Gramsci embraced a broad view of education, very “life‐wide” to adopt the current doxa. It is one that explores “altre vie” (other ways) apart from schooling and learning within formal institutions. This would suggest that he had a firm belief in the ability of the working class to organize its own learning settings.

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

He believed in what once came to be known as “independent working class education” to which his own efforts also made a contribution (see the work of Colin Waugh here 2009). Many of these alternative paths can be found or developed throughout civil society, the term used differently from the way it is used today. Gramsci conceives of “civil society,” a term given different nuanced meanings especially from the time of the Scottish Enlightenment until the present day, as  a  site of struggle and contestation wherein certain agencies or institutes strengthen the hegemonic relations in place whereas others contest and renegotiate them. Civil society is located as a site of struggle at the interstices of hegemony itself. The revolution, involved in challenging, renegotiating, and finally changing hegemony primarily, but not only, through Civil Society (Burgherliche Gesellschaft – Bourgeois Civil Society – at the present time), remains a lengthy one to echo Raymond Williams’ (1960) view. Gramsci favored, for this purpose, alliances with popular forces (even Catholic masses) including intellectuals with the potential to achieve wide resonance in terms of progressive ideas. Well documented, in this regard, is his friendship and  association (Gramsci, 1995) with the intellectual prodigy Piero Gobetti (pp. 44–45), one of the finest young Italian thinkers of the period and editor of La Rivoluzione Liberale (The Liberal Revolution), a non‐Marxist whose views on many issues converged with those of Gramsci. Of particular relevance is the work of Piero’s widow, educator and active partisan, Ada Gobetti and her ideas on emancipatory education, although this lies beyond the scope of this chapter. In Gramsci’s thinking, the Party, presumably the PCd’I (Partito Comunista d’Italia) as it was called then, was accorded a pivotal role in the process of intellectual and moral transformation. It had a coordinating role and was regarded as “Il Principe Moderno” (The Modern Prince). Like Machiavelli’s Principe, it had to bring about national unity—in Gramsci’s view, a “national popular” unity. Freire, for his part, saw the Workers’ Party (PT), of which he was a founding member, as, in all probability, likely to give political viability to the aspirations of a whole range of movements for the democratization of Brazilian society. It must have been regarded as a lynchpin reflecting ideas and policies deriving from the struggles of various movements, from the church’s Pastoral Land Commission to peasant leagues, trade unions and the Movimento Sem Terra (MST)—the landless peasants’ movement. Freire also conceived of a large space in which critical educators can engage, that is to say to explore sites of action and learning that lie beyond the school walls. He does this in many places especially in the Horton and Freire (1990) and Escobar, Fernandez, Guevara‐Niebla, with Freire (1994) recorded discussions. The operative phrase Freire adopted was to have one tactical foot inside and one strategic foot outside the system—the closest UK version would be “in and against” adopted in the late 1970s. From a Gramscian perspective, this had to be complemented by a formation, in the Gramscian sense, that enables one to transcend the system, the sort of transcendence that can, in the long run, lead to the sort of reformation that can bring about a change on the scale of the Protestant Reformation; not a passive revolution (top down) but one steeped in popular consciousness and that reflects the collective will. Like Gramsci, Freire believed that the system contains its own contradictions that can be explored and availed of.

309

310

Peter Mayo

Hegemonic structures are not monolithic, as they are incomplete. They allow spaces to be exploited through subversive action necessitating, as Freire (in Escobar et al., 1994) says, one’s being able to swim against the current (pp. 31–32). This is akin to Gramsci’s notion of “guerra di posizione” (a war of position, as opposed to a “guerra manovrata,” a war of maneuver or frontal attack). Hegemonic structures of relations—relations is the key word here—­contain within their own interstices, the spaces for change to occur. Freire, in his later work, identified social movements as providing useful contexts and means of support for action that challenges the current hegemonic arrangements. As São Paulo’s secretary of education, Paulo Freire strove, with his collaborators, to forge links between state apparatuses and social movements with each recognizing the other’s own space and identities. O’Cadiz, Wong, & Torres, (1998) indicated how the social movements feared cooptation and were wary in their dealing with the state (O’Cadiz, 1995, pp. 163–173). Freire argued that one would work with social movements to regenerate oneself without trying to take them over; he argued this way with regard to parties and also the state. The latter stages of his life were characterized by the emergence of several movements including the Landless Peasant movement—the MST—that had, among other things, a broad educational program including itinerant schools and even a higher education institution named the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandez. (Kane, 2001; de Sousa Santos, 2017; Mayo & Vittoria, 2017). A widespread democratization movement seemed to be revitalizing Brazilian society, a society that appeared to be roused for transformation.

Praxis: Philosophy and Pedagogy Praxis is the central notion in the thinking of both Gramsci and Freire. The “philosophy of Praxis” was the kernel of Gramsci’s political thought, contrasted with “common sense.” Benedetto Croce, his earlier mentor and chief cultural source of reference in Italy at the time, separated philosophy from religion, the former being the preserve of intellectuals with religion furnishing the philosophy of life for common folk. In contrast to this separation, Gramsci conceived of a philosophy that would accommodate intellectuals and masses6 in a historical bloc (Borg & Mayo, 2002, p. 89); not to be confused with a simple alliance that might be ephemeral. A historical bloc is something deeply rooted over a period of time. One example here would be the bloc involving the Northern industrial bourgeoisie and the landowning class in the south of Italy or, given the Freire connection, the landowning class in Brazil’s Nord‐Este and the bourgeois class in the country’s South East. Praxis is also the kernel of Freire’s pedagogical politics and is of key importance in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970; Gadotti, 1996; Mayo, 2004). It is the means through which one can confront the social contradictions. Praxis, according to the Freirean conception is the means whereby on stands back from what one lives through to obtain critical distance, thus engaging in reflection for collective action (In Freire’s view, liberation is not an individual but a collective act) that helps transform the reality in question. As Paula Allman

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

(1999) reminds us, the process involved is not a sequential one—that is, action leading to reflection leading to transformative action—but, to the contrary, it is one that occurs in a dialectical manner (Allman, 1999). Freire engaged in published dialogues with, for the most part, like‐minded individuals who viewed different episodes from their lives, including imprisonment (Betto & Freire, 1986) and exile (Freire & Faundez, 1989), as engendering praxis. These situations recall the period of Gramsci’s incarceration when isolation led him to embark on a substantial body of reflection, some of which consisting of sophisticated rumination on his area of political action. Political discussions around thought and action extended to the prisons (Mayo, 1999, p. 91). As well‐ researched films and documentaries show, there was interaction with members of different factions of the Left in Italy who were incarcerated in some of the same prisons where Gramsci was confined; some were supportive of Gramsci whereas others were hostile, arguing vehemently against straying from the Leninist concept of the “united front.” The process of codification and decodification in Freire’s pedagogical approach at Angicos best captures the idea of praxis in operation, although as Aronowitz (1993) and others warn us, we should not convert this approach into an easily transferable “method” when it needs to be reinvented according to the contexts involved. The most important thing here is the overarching philosophy of praxis, lest we become guilty of another form of “cultural invasion.”

Authority and Freedom Gramsci and Freire provide converging and contrasting insights with regard to the dynamics in the learning settings. There are those who argue that Gramsci’s views on schooling are at odds with Freire’s approach—banking education vs. dialogue some would argue (see Entwistle, 1979). To what extent did Gramsci favor “banking education”? Gramsci saw dialogue as an important feature of the relationship between intellectuals and masses and also as an aspect of hegemony, a set of reciprocal relations where every pupil is a teacher and every teacher a pupil. All this seems to suggest that Gramsci was not averse to dialogue as long as it was grounded in rigor. In his view, any progressive form of education must be predicated on substance. He refers to the teacher, who simply provides a baggage of facts, as mediocre, which speaks volumes for what he thought about this type of banking education. In his denunciation of the “popular universities” he stated that more importance is attached to pomp and impressing (“lustra”) than effective learning. Despite underlining the rigor involved in the teaching of Latin, he recognizes that the subject will have to be replaced, his formulation qualified by the statement that it will take quite a subject to replace it in terms of imparting the same level of rigor and intellectual discipline (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 39–40). He  feared that the reforms will shortchange working‐class and peasant‐class ­students in that they will be exposed to a laissez faire pedagogy, without having alternative routes to important, though never ideologically innocent, knowledge that middle‐class pupils can obtain through what are now termed “invisible ­pedagogies” and “habitus.”

311

312

Peter Mayo

In this day and age, this watered down pedagogy would be favored, in keeping with the fad of “facilitation” [sic], the term Freire used at first, especially in his piece, in the Harvard Education Review, on literacy work in São Tome e Principe, but which he later avoided, as he admitted in a number of published conversations. In a dialogue with Donaldo P. Macedo, Freire (Freire & Macedo, 1995) declares that “facilitator” connotes a laissez faire, and nonrigorous pedagogy, stressing education’s directive orientation, hence his eschewing the notion of facilitator.7 He has no problem with “teacher,” one who exudes authority but does not adopt an authoritarian approach. (p. 378). Gramsci proposes an education that is based on rigor and that enables children to be well‐informed and insightful human beings, critical citizens if you will. Gramsci (1971) refers to the instruction‐education nexus (p. 36). He was not averse to dialogue; to the contrary, he advocated dialogical and other types of pedagogy grounded in knowledge that substantiates points made—in short, a repudiation of dialogue for its own sake, which gives a semblance of participation but which, in effect, constitutes “mere educativity,” an education shorn of knowledge and skills that would leave pupils, who cannot obtain them from other sources, in a marginalized subaltern state. The second phase of Gramsci’s proposed Unitarian school is that characterized by the “creative school” where presumably participation, peer tutoring and dialogue would occur, with the teacher acting only as a “friendly guide” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 33). This creative process is meant to benefit from a rigorous foundation put in place during the first phase. Emphasis is placed, by Freire (1998), on “authority and freedom.” This recalls Gramsci’s posing the issue of spontaneity and conscious direction (direzione consapevole); one should not exist without the other. This has implications for situations that are broader than simply those relevant to schooling. One can think here of the Arab groundswell (see chapter cowritten with Linda Herrera in Mayo, 2012; De Smet, 2016; Bayat, 2017) and how lack of political direction led to the Brotherhood hijacking the whole process. The question to be asked, in these situations, is: who is providing the conscious direction, if any? Uprisings can take a trajectory that is very different from that widely augured at their outset. As for the more micro dynamics of authority and freedom, Gramsci is also instructive. When writing on the Unitarian School, Gramsci sought to strike an equilibrium involving the authority associated with the classical school and the freedom associated with then contemporary exponents of romantic education, as inspired by texts such as Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau, which, Gramsci (1971) argued, required a change. This type of education had to move from romanticism (untrammeled freedom when learning) to classicism (pp. 32–33), the latter connoting balance between rigor and freedom of exploration and experimentation; authority and freedom. Another curricular question involves a nuanced discussion around possible contrasts and affinities regarding the two thinkers. Quaderni 4 and 12 on the Unitarian extol the virtues of the classical school in what is, according to Manacorda (Gramsci, 1972), an epitaph for a school that was but that cannot continue to be given that society changed considerably since the classical school was in its heyday (p. xxix). I have argued this point in several writings (see Borg & Mayo, 2002, pp. 102–103; Mayo, 2015, p. 91) One necessitated a new school

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

for new times. For Gramsci, however, la Riforma Gentile (the education reform introduced by Giovanni Gentile, minister of public instruction during the Fascist period of government) dragged the educational process backwards, providing two different tracks (academic and professional—the latter term, professionale, signifying vocational). This type of tracking was purportedly based on merit and aptitude but, in effect, it was socially conditioned in terms of class location. Extolling the finer qualities of the “old” classical school is in keeping with the leitmotif of Gramsci’s cultural writings, namely his advocacy of the need for all students/pupils to access established knowledge to avoid marginalization— cracking the code of power, if you will, put more crudely. This discussion has wide implications for not only schools but also universities today. The neoliberal functional and market driven university of today can be seen, from a Gramscian perspective, as something detrimental to the majority of people who, following 1968 and the student uprisings then, have gained greater access to these institutions of higher learning. The massification process of universities emerged after and partly as a result of this period, without unfortunately any qualitative adjustments made to provide manageable educator‐student ratios. Any invocation of the problematic Humboldtian ideal, elitist and very much tied to bildung, can serve as an epitaph for a university that “was” (read: purported to have been) but that cannot be any longer, as an institution for the majority, as society has changed. The modern university can appear to stand at a crossroads and take different pathways, perhaps becoming more community oriented, but the one it took is decidedly at odds with the Gramscian‐Freirean view of things. It mainly serves the needs of industry, perhaps in a more sophisticated manner than would be the case with other educational settings serving to produce “trained gorillas” (gorilla ammaestrato) for Fordist production. In short, as many have argued, universities have, for the most part, and in their massification versions, become glorified training agencies for the majority, while the minority remained ensconced in elite universities where they hone their skills and deepen their knowledge to become or reinforce their position as the classe dirigente, the ruling class. These elite institutions, which have resisted the neoliberal reforms and, in the case of Europe, the Bologna harmonization process (e.g., the Grandes Écoles for the academic elite—read: predominantly social class and ethnic elite—in France), also become the means, through scholarships and other funding mechanisms, to attract and possibly co‐opt the best and brightest of the subaltern.8 Raymond Williams often wrote about this (see Politics and Letters), himself being the son of a railway signalman from Pandy, on the Anglo‐Welsh border, who was sent by  his headmaster at Abergavenny, Wales, to Cambridge (Inglis, 1995, p. 65). Gramsci’s argument would be, given what he wrote with regard to language and  hegemony (see Ives, 2004, chapter  3), that these institutions can estrange potential “organic intellectuals” from their communities. (Mayo, 2015, p. 55) They can do so through such means as equipping these potential intellectuals with a language and demeanor at the furthest remove from those of the communities from whence they emerged. In so doing they would jeopardize their chances of being “organic intellectuals” with respect to any struggle in which these communities and their political organizations are engaged. They would

313

314

Peter Mayo

give them the semblance of traditional intellectuals who absolutize their activity (Thomas, 2009) and, in so doing, conceal their social function of maintaining the status quo, thus helping to consolidate the hegemony of dominant groups. Of course, universities and other higher education institutions have often served as settings for counterculture manifestations (think Paris and Rome 1968 and more recently Unnibrent in Vienna and demonstrations in London, Gezi Park‐ Istanbul, Chile, and Quebec—Giroux, 2014; Mayo, 2012) and have also produced intellectuals who, by their functions, challenged the status quo—nothing is straightforward and unidirectional when it comes to cultural transmission and mediation. This is how relations of hegemony are challenged—recall 1968 and its legacy for universities. In this context, matters of culture are important and one avoids the acquisition (and critical appropriation) of “high‐status” culture at one’s peril. There are therefore parallels between diversification in higher education and the Gentile Reforms as presented and criticized by Gramsci. Although it is easy to point to the Gramscian focus on high‐status culture, to say that Gramsci (1991) gave short shrift to popular culture would be wide off the mark given that he accorded importance to the role of this culture as a vehicle for hegemony and also revealed his fascination for aspects of this culture as manifestations of the “popular creative spirit” which can be channeled politically to emancipatory ends. His influence on cultural studies testifies to his importance in the study of the political role of popular culture in its various forms. As far as the ideas on schooling are concerned, contrasts are invited with Freire’s position. One would be hard pressed to find references to high status knowledge in Freire save for questions concerning standard language and dialects or other languages—shades of Gramsci’s writings on “normative” and “spontaneous grammars” (Ives, 2004). It is popular forms of learning that feature prominently in Paulo Freire. This comes across not only in his popular education writings but also writings, such as those by O’Cadiz et al. 1998). discussing his work as education secretary in the Erundina (Mayor) Municipal Government of São Paulo. The notion of “popular” is emphasized in the name given to the schools that elected to enter the reform project—Escola pública popular e democrática (popular public and democratic school). For Freire however the popular is only the point of departure in education. It is part and parcel of the pupils’ existential situation from where one must begin when teaching effectively. The curricula in these schools are predicated on thematic complexes deriving from research carried out in the surrounding communities. However, one finds little material regarding the higher order learning ­connected with subjects to which the initial popular themes gradually lead. The reforms did not last long, in view of the subsequent defeat of the PT in the municipal elections. There was not enough time therefore to gauge the extent to which starting from the popular and moving into higher forms of knowledge and learning allowed the menino/a popular (popular child) of the megalopolis to effectively grasp what Michael Young (2013) calls “powerful knowledge.” This is knowledge that enables one to be effective in life, including, I would add, being politically effective—not remaining on the outskirts of economic, social and political life.

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

The type of powerful knowledge that needs to be mastered varies from context to context. Young (2013) mentions math and science and of course one would add language issues where even the colonial language in certain former colonies serves as a powerful form of knowledge providing access to power corridors denied to those not in possession of it. Today Ben Williamson (2015) refers to coding as an important form of knowledge in many societies. Each society at  ­different times had its different forms of “powerful knowledge.” Powerful ­knowledge differed from age to age and context to context (e.g., theology and metaphysics in Europe during the Middle Ages in contrast to Science, in the Western world, from the eighteenth century onward, and information and ­communications technology today). Because Freire regards the learners’ “existential situation” as only the initial step in the process of knowledge acquisition, then indications regarding the gradual move from popular thematic complexes to subjects constituting ­powerful knowledge would have been greatly appreciated. On the other hand, dividing knowledge into generative themes derived from research carried out in the school’s surroundings and the rest of the city (O’Cadiz et al., 1998), makes popular culture become an important aspect of the learning process. Apart from the written word, this learning process includes the living (shades of Grundtvig) spoken word to generate a radically democratic “popular public and democratic” education. Where Freire makes an important contribution is in the way one teaches ­powerful knowledge, underlining its ideological underpinnings and social stratification role throughout history, showing how the subject’s introduction was contingent on historical interests. In short this knowledge is to be learned not in a technical manner but through an approach that makes the learner aware of its  underlying politics. The language issue in Guinea Bissau provides a clear example here, as is the case with language issues in most postcolonial contexts. The challenge, deriving from Gramsci, is to be careful not to throw out the knowledge baby with the ideological bath water. Critical appropriation remains a key notion in this context.

Conclusion Finally, one can argue that the points of contrast and convergence between Gramsci and Freire’s ideas are conditioned by the contexts from where they emerged. Some might posit limits to their relevance to a number of contexts. Education is after all context driven. For instance, Gramsci, for all his writings about different societies especially the Arab world and its influence on Western civilization (Boothman, 2007, p. 65), provides views on education that can be  regarded as Eurocentric, as is the case with most Western Marxist views. To  what extent would a “Unitarian School” embrace knowledge that extends beyond the Eurocentric framework, given the ever changing demographic ethnic composition of societies, including his own Italy today, with massive waves of migration crossing the globe, recently at an unprecedented rate? How does one account for the portability of cultures and knowledge traditions that occurs

315

316

Peter Mayo

within this scenario? What effects will this have on schooling and other forms of education, including popular education (Kane, 2001)? Gramsci’s well documented writings on the contributions of non‐Western societies to global knowledge are instructive with regard to according credit to those stereotypically represented as deficit. They are paradoxically those to whom Western institutions are indebted in many ways. This insight by Gramsci and many others (Miguel Asin Palacios, Edward Said, and Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh, among others) would provide the basis for a curriculum that becomes less Eurocentric and more appreciative of traditions and knowledges brought to different societies by people and movements outside the western framework. In this regard, Freire’s notion of authentic dialogue is key in that it has potential to foreground the power dynamics involved in dialogical exchanges between different people from different contexts and social locations: who dialogues with whom and from which position of power and authority? (Wright, 2009). This is crucial for any society— societies cannot be homogenized. “Banking education” suppresses the varieties of cultures and knowledge traditions different people bring with them to the learning setting. A genuine dialogical education, predicated on awareness of the power dynamics involved, allows for these knowledge traditions and cultures to interact and possibly, in the long run, intermesh into hybridized knowledge. These notwithstanding, a number of basic insights, from Gramsci, have wide resonance, such as that of mastering the powerful knowledge of a given society not to remain politically marginalized. One other insight having broad resonance is the Freirean maxim that whatever ideas we draw from different patterns of thinking and action, be they from Gramsci, with regard to Italy and different parts of the world during his time, or Freire, with regard to Brazil and parts of Latin America, these do not transfer across nations and contexts in cargo‐cult style. They cannot be transplanted but must be reinvented, as education remains context based.

Notes 1 This is a thoroughly revised, updated, and condensed version of a paper that

originally appeared in Encyclopaideia published by ClueB in 2013 subsequently revised for inclusion as a chapter in Mayo (2015). It is a substantially revised version of the paper bringing in fresh insights, engaging new literature. I am indebted to the reviewer of the chapter for very challenging questions and suggestions. Any remaining shortcomings are mine. 2 Freire’s original intention was to develop a book of three chapters that hold together, with a dialectical streak running through them. This plan changed as a result of the publishers’ insistence that Freire should write and add a fourth chapter, in light of Frantz Fanon’s and Albert Memmi’s insights on colonialism and the work of other thinkers (see Schugurensky 2011 on this). I have always felt that the dialectical streak stops at the end of the third chapter as the fourth comes across as an “add on” where such themes as “divide et impera,” “cultural invasion” itself and “Unity for Liberation” are thrown in as if “hanging on a line.” However some of the themes suit the colonial context of the discussion and can, with some

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

imaginative “piecing together,” connect with the earlier ones developed in the first three profound chapters. Relating “divide and rule” to the “oppressor within” concept constitutes one example of tracing relations between different themes in the book. 3 I am indebted here to the appointed reviewer for this handbook chapter. 4 Borg & Mayo (2002), pp. 87–108. Carmel Borg’s translation from Italian. 5 Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith in Antonio Gramsci (1971, p. 280). 6 In the English language, and especially in Britain, “masses” has negative connotations in conservative thought but positive ones in socialist discourse, as Raymond Williams is at pains to point out (Williams, 1983 [1976], p. 192; 1982 [1958]). 7 Freire in Shor and Freire (1987, p. 103), Freire and Macedo (1995, p. 394), Freire (1993, p. 116), and Gadotti et al.(1995, p. 50). 8 I am indebted, for this point, to the appointed reviewer for this handbook chapter.

References Allman, P. (1999). Revolutionary social transformation: Democratic hopes, political possibilities and critical education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Aronowitz, S. (1993). Paulo Freire’s radical democratic humanism. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire. A critical encounter (pp. 8–24). New York & London: Routledge. Bayat, A. (2017). Revolution without revolutionaries: Making sense of the Arab spring. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Betto, F., & Freire, P. (1986). Una scuola chiamata vita. Bologna: EMI. Boothman, D. (2007). L’Islam negli articoli giornalistici gramsciani e nei Quaderni del Carcere (Islam in Gramsci’s journalistic writings and in the Prison Notebooks). NAE, 18, 65–69. Borg, C., & Mayo, P. (2002). Gramsci and the Unitarian School. Paradoxes and possibilities. In C. Borg, J. A. Buttigieg, & P. Mayo (Eds.), Gramsci and education (pp. 87–108). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Borg, C., & Mayo, P. (2007). Public intellectuals, radical democracy and social movements. A book of interviews. New York: Peter Lang. De Smet, B. (2016). Gramsci on Tahrir. Revolution and counter‐revolution in Egypt. London: Pluto Press. Entwistle, H. (1979). Antonio Gramsci. Conservative schooling for radical politics. London, Boston & Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Escobar, M., Fernandez, A. L., & Guevara‐Niebla, G., with P. Freire. (1994). Paulo Freire on higher education. A dialogue at the National University of Mexico. Albany: SUNY Press. Foley, G. (1994). Adult education and capitalist reorganisation. Studies in the Education of Adults, 26(2), 121–143. Foley, G. (1999). Learning in social action: A contribution to understanding informal education. London & New York: Zed Books. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York & London: Continuum. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York & London: Continuum.

317

318

Peter Mayo

Freire, P. (1978). Pedagogy in process. Letters to Guinea Bissau. New York & London, Continuum. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York & London: Continuum. Freire, P. (1995). Reply to discussants. In M. F. Cowen, & D. Gastaldo (Eds.), Freire at the Institute (pp. 61–67). London: Institute of Education, University of London. Freire, P. (1997). A response. In P. Freire with J. W. Fraser, D. Macedo, T. McKinnon & W. T. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 303–329). New York: Peter Lang. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom. Ethics, democracy and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Freire, P. (2013). In J. F. Mafra, J. E. Romão, & M. Gadotti (Eds.), Pedagogia do oprimido (o manuscrito). São Paulo: Editora e Livraria Instituto Paulo Freire, Universidade Nove de Julho (Uninove), Ministério da Educação. Freire, P., & Faundez, A. (1989). Learning to question. A pedagogy of liberation. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1995). A dialogue: Culture, language and race. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 377–402. Gadotti, M. (1996). Pedagogy of praxis. A dialectical philosophy of education. Albany: SUNY Press. Gadotti, M., Paulo, F., & Guimarães, S. (1995). In B. Bellanova, & F. Telleri (Eds.), Pedagogia: Dialogo e conflitto. Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale. Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Quentin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Eds. & Trans.). New York: International Publishers. Gramsci, A. (1972). In M. A. Manacorda (Ed.), L’alternativa pedagogica. Florence: La Nuova Italia. Gramsci, A. (1975). In V. Gerratana (Ed.), Quaderni del carcere, edizione critica (Vol. 4). Turin: Einaudi. Gramsci, A. (1995). The southern question (Pasquale Verdicchio, Ed. & Trans.). West Lafayette, IN: Bordighera Incorporated. Gramsci, A. (1991). Passato e presente. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking. Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Inglis, F. (1995). Raymond Williams. London & New York: Routledge. Ives, P. (2004). Language and hegemony in Gramsci. London & New York: Pluto Press. Kane, L. (2001). Popular education and social change in Latin America. London: Latin American Bureau. Leopando, I. (2017). A pedagogy of faith. The theological vision of Paulo Freire. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1970). In C. J. Arthur (Ed.), The German ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Mayo, P. (1999). Gramsci, Freire and adult education. Possibilities for transformative action. London & New York: Zed Books. Mayo, P. (2001). “Remaining on the same side of the river”: A critical commentary on Paulo Freire’s later work. Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, 22(4), 369–397.

Praxis, Hegemony, and Consciousness in the Work of Gramsci and Freire

Mayo, P. (2004). Liberating praxis. Westport, CT: Praeger. Mayo, P. (2012). Politics of indignation. Imperialism, postcolonial disruptions and social change. Winchester: Zero Books. Mayo, P. (2015). Hegemony and education under neoliberalism. Insights from Gramsci. New York & London: Routledge. Mayo, P., & Vittoria, P. (2017). Saggi di pedagogia critica. Oltre il neoliberismo. Analizzando educatori, lotte e movimenti sociali (Essays in critical pedagogy. Beyond neoliberalism. Analyzing educators, struggles and social movements). Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (1995). Social theory and education. A critique of theories of social and cultural reproduction. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Ngũgĩ, w. T.’o. (1981). Decolonizing the mind. The politics of language in African literature. Oxford: James Currey & Heinemann. O’Cadiz, M. d. P., Wong, P. L., & Torres, C. A. (1998). Education and democracy. Paulo Freire, social movements and educational reform in São Paulo. Boulder: Westview Press. O’Cadiz, M. d. P. (1995). Social movements and literacy training in Brazil: A narrative. In C. A. Torres (Ed.), Education and social change in Latin America (pp. 163–173). Melbourne: James Nicholas Publishers. Santos, B. d. S. (2017). Decolonizing the university: The challenge of deep cognitive justice. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. London & New York: Continuum. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy of liberation. Dialogues on transforming education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Thomas, P. D. (2009). The Gramscian moment. Philosophy, hegemony and Marxism. Leyden: Brill. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Waugh, C. (2009). Plebs. The lost legacy of independent working class education. Occasional paper. Sheffield, UK: Post 16 Educator. Williams, R. (1982 [1958]). Culture & society. London: Hogarth Press. Williams, R. (1960). The long revolution. Middlesex, UK: Penguin. Williams, R. (1983 [1976]). Keywords. A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana Press. Williamson, B. (2015). Programming power: Policy networks and the pedagogies of learning to code. In A. Kupfer (Ed.), Power and education. Contexts of oppression and opportunity (pp. 61–87). Basingstoke, UK & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wright, Handel Kashope. (2009). Handel Kashope Wright talks to the project about Interculturalism vs Multiculturalism, Youth in Canada, USA and Europe, his relationship with project founder, Joe Kincheloe and critical pedagogy’s influence on his own work. Webcast, University of British Columbia, June 10, The Paulo & Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy, McGill University, Montreal. Young, M. (2013). Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: A knowledge‐based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 101–118.

319

321

17 Education for Humanity Freire and Sen Re‐Examined Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

Introduction In the year 2015, 193 countries signed an ambitious set of 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Goal 4 explicitly calls for inclusive and equitable education and the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all. This broad goal has seven targets with a range of accompanying indicators for each of these targets. Countries are now actively designing policies and implementing activities with the aim of achieving the targets by 2030 (UNESCO, 2017). The basic thrust of SDG 4 is to strengthen the present education system. The underlying assumption is that the existing education systems is well designed to meet the needs of all countries and all that is needed is, to have it disseminated more widely to all and to ensure the quality of the present system is of the highest level. What is not challenged or debated is, if the existing education system is the “right” system for the challenges global society will face in the twenty‐first century. The design of the present education system can be traced back to the start of the industrial revolution (Melton, 2003; Soysal & Strang, 1989). With origins in Prussia it began with an 8‐year compulsory course of primary education that was later extended to include secondary schooling. The design of the system focused on building basic technical skills, primarily literacy and numeracy, which were considered necessary in the modern industrial world. Noteworthy also was an added emphasis on music and religious (Christian) education (Soysal & Strang, 1989). As a consequence, many modern education systems across the world have very similar structures with religious studies substituted in some cases with civic\citizenship studies. The system worked successfully, fulfilling the needs of a work force necessary to “man” factories and increase production of goods and services in the most economically efficient manner. It served many countries well and in particular, the present cadre of developed countries. It also planted the seeds for an ­economic value to education. As empirical studies began to establish correlations between The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

322

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

education attainments, economic productivity and economic growth, this system began to take root in policy making in countries across the world (O’Sullivan & Sheffrin, 2003; Smith, 1776). Consequently, education systems now began to focus on what economists called the “human capital” of a country. The seminal work of Gary Becker, “Human Capital” (Abel & Deitz, 2012; Becker, 1994; Mincer, 1993) established that developing disciplinary skills in students was key to increasing economic productivity and hence economic growth. The key assumptions underlying this chain of causality were—(a) economic growth as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) is synonymous with well‐being; (b) human capital is key to economic growth; and (c) education is the key to building human capital. Although the present education system appears well suited to our needs if the fundamental paradigm of economic growth and well‐being is accepted, recent studies have provided empirical evidence that indicate a disconnection between the two (Easterlin, 1974; Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2010). For instance, a paper by Rogers et al. (2012) makes a case for how economic globalization and an emphasis just on GDP or material wellbeing at the expense of subjective and other forms of objective well‐being has been a primary contributor to the increasing prevalence of unhappiness, insecurity, poor interpersonal relationships and for the tendency to ignore emotionally satisfying behaviors such as social engagement and affiliation. Clearly the sole focus on economic growth has not led to human well‐being. To address this issue, we draw on work by Paulo Freire (1921–1997) and Amartya Sen (b. 1933) who put forth alternate models, for education and human development respectively; both designed to increase human flourishing and not just material wealth. Sen’s model proposes a system of development based on providing the institutional space for enhancing the capabilities of individuals to achieve the functionings they have reason to value. Freire, on the other hand, advocates a model of education that empowers and liberates individuals to become fully human or manifest their humanity to the fullest through building our critical consciousness and dialogic engagement. In this paper, we demonstrate that both models are key to achieve human flourishing. We propose a model of education that draws from both these frameworks, and result in a system based on providing the space for enhancing the capabilities or freedoms of individuals to achieve the functioning they have reason to value (Alkire, 2002; Nussbaum, 1997; Robeyns, 2006; Unterhalter, 2005; Walker, 2006). We reason that such a framework might be optimal due to the structure and function of the human brain and describe how such learning would develop the “whole brain.” We combine these various philosophies into a single model and posit that an integrated brain approach to education is compatible with human flourishing. We argue that the individual is neurobiologically “wired” to adapt to an education system that adheres to the capability framework. The argument that education is key for human flourishing is not new. Early philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates among others have advocated for education that liberates the mind and provides the virtues that allow humanity to improve on its state of eudemonia or closely translated human flourishing. Some like Aristotle take virtue as fundamental in eudemonia but also acknowledge the

Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Reexamined

importance of external factors such as health, wealth, and beauty. Others like Stoics hold that only virtue is necessary and argue that external factors are irrelevant (Colish, 1990; Osler, 1991; Verbeke, 1983). Our integrated model proposed for education titled “LIBRE” focused toward human flourishing builds on competencies natural to human brain networks.

Education: Capabilities, Instrumental Freedoms, and Institutional Reforms Each individual comes to this world with a set of endowments and attributes. Endowments primarily relate to external factors such as economic wealth, social environment, and ecological conditions. Attributes on the other hand relate to personal traits such as gender, physical qualities, and neurobiological characteristics among others. Individuals are able to convert their attributes with the support of their endowments to capabilities through a complex network of institutions (Chopra & Duraiappah, 2008). The interplay of these institutions and the access to them by individuals to a large extent determine the capabilities of individuals. Sen identifies five instrumental freedoms—political freedom, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, and protective security as essential for individuals to achieve their functionings (Sen, 1999). Education in his framework is grouped under social opportunities. Therefore, the access to education is an instrumental freedom that should be available for all individuals. He stresses the role institutions play in providing equitable access to these instrumental freedoms: Individuals live and operate in a world of institutions. Our opportunities and prospects depend crucially on what institutions exist and how they function. Not only do institutions contribute to our freedoms, their roles can be sensibly evaluated in the light of their contributions to our freedom. (Sen, 1999, p. 142) We define institutions as the formal and informal rules and regulations designed by society to guide the behavior of individuals (Chopra & Duraiappah, 2008; North, 1990). The former constitute written and codified rules. Examples of ­formal institutions would be the constitution, the judicial laws, the organized market, and property rights. In the case of the formal educational institutions, this would include rules and regulations on curricula, assessments, and criteria for establishment of educational organizations such as schools, universities and  so on. Informal rules on the other hand are rules governed by social and behavioral norms of a society, family, and/or community (Ensminger, 1997; North, 1990). This might include norms groups and societies might have regarding access to education by girls. In many instances, informal institutions, over time, might evolve into formal institutions or in some cases be mitigated by ­formal institutions. In other words, institutions are highly path dependent and as North asserts, for institutional change to be a stable process, it should be an evolving and continuous process (North, 1990).

323

324

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

Organizations are defined as groups of people with a specific objective (North, 1990). Organizations can include political bodies (governmental departments, political parties), economic bodies (firms, family farms), social bodies (clubs, churches), and educational bodies (schools, universities). It is the combination of institutions and organizations that decide ultimately the rate of conversion of an individual’s assets and attributes to the bundles of functioning. An example might best demonstrate the process of conversion. Let’s assume that there are four children; two live in a country that has strong institutions overseeing the access to education and the other two live in a country that has poor institutions and limited instrumental freedoms in education. Within the country that has the instrumental freedom of education, one child comes from a wealthy family and the other comes from a poor family. However, both children have access to the same level of education because of the equitable access offered by the instrumental freedoms they have in their country. The two children in the country with limited instrumental freedoms offer a different story. The child from the rich family is able to access the necessary high‐quality education from private schools whereas the child from the poor family has no choices. The latter therefore is not able to acquire the functioning of being knowledgeable, which then leads to being not able to achieve many other of the functionings because they are dependent on the ability to be knowledgeable. The real challenge as we see in the capability framework is the provisioning of these instrumental freedoms. And this in turn shifts our attention to the underlying institutions that oversee the provisioning of these freedoms. In the case of education, institutions are mostly created and controlled by a group of elites who are believed to have the required experience and know what is good for the learner. In this way they serve as instruments for social and cultural perpetuation (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). It would seem that a first step in the move toward an education system designed for human flourishing would be a mechanism that allows learners to have their voices heard in the design of the formal institutions overseeing the ability to be knowledgeable and would require a revision of curricula that emphasizes developing not only the analytical skills but also the socioemotional skills, collectively called the twenty‐first century skills. Education as Liberation of Individuals and Human Flourishing In this context, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy and pedagogical framework naturally complements the capability approach to education. The ultimate purpose of education is to empower and liberate individuals to manifest their humanity to the fullest. Freire regarded this as the “ontological vocation” of human beings and firmly believed that only by fulfilling this vocation can any form of situational or social transformation take place. He located the education system “as a subsystem within the larger productive system, political system, structural system” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 202), and therefore posited education as a political act in order to attain liberation. The pedagogy of the oppressed stressed on the critical role of education in the process of liberation; however, it also recognized that the prevalent form of education is incompatible with this goal.

Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Reexamined

Before applying the capability approach to education, we need to understand how the institution of education—formal and informal—has become a tool for oppression. Understanding the existing manifestation of modern‐day oppression, particularly in education, allows us to contemporize Freire’s critical pedagogy. American political theorist Iris Young asserted that oppression is when a well‐intentioned liberal society places systemwide constraints on certain groups to limit their freedom or when few people’s choices or policies cause embedded unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols (Young, 2004), that privileges some people at the expense of others. In short, oppression occurs when people reduce the potential for other people to be fully human, inhibiting their process of flourishing as human beings. The ways in which schools as educational institutions become instruments for perpetuating social and cultural oppressions can be understood through their hidden curriculum, those “unstated norms, values, beliefs, routines and social relationships” (Giroux, 2001, p. 47) that are transmitted through “the social structure of the classroom, teacher’s exercise of authority, rules governing the teacher‐student relationship … curriculum priorities” (Martin, 1976). Social prejudices and biases exist not only among students but also in teacher–student, teacher–teacher, student–student relationships, or those involving other staff in the school. These too comprise the hidden curriculum and influence learners’ perceptions of self and others, as well as acceptable social behavior, and can deepen the culture of oppression within and outside the school environment. Sen views human flourishing as the expansion of capabilities, defined as the ability to achieve valuable functioning that individuals have reason to value (Nussbaum, 1997; Robeyns, 2006; Sen, 1999). Functionings are the doings and beings that a person values; examples include having adequate nourishment, being literate, being free from avoidable diseases, having self‐esteem, and being part of community voices and actions among others (Sen, 1999). Capabilities are the alternate baskets of functionings that individuals are able to choose (Sen). Sen sees education purely as an institution that offers the freedom for individuals to be literate. Freire, on the other hand demands that, for education to augment human flourishing and liberation, it must enable people to critically understand their reality, the underlying causes, and multiple consequences and, armed with this knowledge, to collectively engage in the act of transforming this reality (Freire, 1970). What is understood by liberation is freedom from an oppressive mindset that normalizes the act of treating others as mere objects and means to an end, thus dehumanizing them. It also includes freedom from a mindset that manifests as disbelief or lack of faith in one’s own ability to attain a radically better life; or as a fatalistic outlook toward life where the individual perceives himself or herself as a powerless pawn in the hands of fate or destiny (cf. Freire, 1970). It also manifests as having blind faith in those controlling power and in the institutions and systems created by them, such as blind faith in the authority of textbooks, teachers, politicians, clergy, and religious scriptures among others. Freire’s critical pedagogy regards education as a lifelong process of learning and unlearning and entails an intense churning of beliefs, values, and worldview. It is an intense process as it is not easy to revise habitual ways of thinking, responding,

325

326

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

perceiving, and forming perceptions about self and others. But that is precisely what a truly humanistic and liberating education does—prod us to critically test our worldview—if it is in accordance to the needs of the time, is it inclusive or exclusive, and is it progressive or does it make us hostage to archaic beliefs?

Education as the Practice of Freedom Freire criticized the prevalent banking model of education, which by virtue of being narration‐heavy, robs students of their agency by its very design, based on the asymmetrical power relation between them and the teachers. Designed a century ago, with roots in the Prussian system discussed earlier, this system has deliberately stifled the student ability to critique and explore. Its primary focus has been on nurturing the individual to be an economically efficient production being. By engendering an oppressed mindset, this model of education has become a negative externality of the human capital approach by disempowering learners, inhibiting their natural curiosity to learn, and distancing education from their lived reality. In response to the banking model, Freire proposed the problem‐posing ­education where learning is essentially driven by the learner’s inquiry, by using everyday words that have a direct connection to student’s lives. In this way, ­problem‐posing education can become a tool that enables learners to understand the causes of the oppression—the socioeconomic and political forces that  subjugate them—and empowers them to transform their reality—at the ­subjective/individual level as well as their objective reality through their own critical reflection, action, volition, and agency. In essence, critical consciousness allows people to perceive their social location in terms of their class, caste, gender, religion, and other parameters that frame their identity, and then critically analyze and understand the structural/systemic, cultural and physical causes and manifestations of exclusion and marginalization that prevent them from accessing their social and education entitlements and thus, their full potential. According to Freire, for learning to be truly liberating and empowering, learners need to have trust in their own ability to create knowledge from their own observation and lived reality. It is equally important for the learners to perceive the teacher or textbooks as capable of being wrong or making mistakes. As students embark on the journey of developing critical consciousness, they naturally begin to question the fundamental nature of concepts and phenomena around them, naming them in their own terms and language, and subsequently deconstructing the oppressive figures and systems that define their lives so far. This mindset of  doubting, questioning, and independently verifying facts and phenomena eventually lifts the veil of infallibility from the figures of authority—teachers, parents, elders, religious leaders, textbooks, media, and so on. Freire believed that “knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (Freire, 1970, p. 72). It becomes very crucial for students to engage with their immediate reality and community, through reflection‐action‐reflection, in order to transform their

Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Reexamined

own thoughts and self, as well as their situation. Freire emphasized the role of praxis—“reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire, 1970) in the process of developing critical consciousness. This resonates closely with Sen’s thoughts on education for social transformation, where he calls for a new kind of education that (1) enlarges and amplifies the horizon of critical understanding of the people, to create an education devoted to freedom or capability expansion; and (2) demands an open and creative education, working to increase certainty about the role of the people in the process of creating, of transforming power and of knowing their society, their reality, in order to participate (Sen, 1999) We call this the ability to be knowledgeable. The functioning of just being literate can no longer be seen as a sufficient condition of our educational institutions. It can be argued that education must be seen to produce the humane human with critical thinking skills—the so‐called cognitive regulation but also the competencies to be able to regulate attention and emotion. The basic functioning individuals have reason to value irrespective of their social‐economic‐cultural attributes would be the freedom to be knowledgeable. We define knowledgeable in this paper based on the Freirean ideology as the ability to think critically, reflect, understand, empathize, and act compassionately. Therefore, achieving the functioning of being knowledgeable as defined in this paper is highly dependent on: (a) a given bundle of commodities (say teachers, curricula, schools); (b) on a range of personal and social factors (e.g., age, gender, neurobiological characteristics, health, nutrition, social status, and so on); and (c) instrumental freedom of social opportunities governed by institutions (e.g., formal, informal, and nonformal educational systems) (Chopra & Duraiappah, 2008; Drèze & Sen, 2002).

The Dialogic Nature of Education for Liberation In Freirean pedagogical tradition, dialogue acquires a whole new meaning. He calls dialogue “an act of creation” and “an encounter between men/women, mediated by the world, in order to name the world” (Freire, 1970, p. 89). The act of naming the world is important here as it allows people, who have hitherto been rendered voiceless, to reclaim this right. Freire outlines various conditions that transform a dialogue into “an act of creation” or “an encounter.” The first is that dialogue must be infused with love for the world and for the people (p. 89). Dialogue cannot exist without humility and “requires immense faith in people, in their power to recreate and their ability to attain their vocation to be fully human” (p. 90). In addition, it also requires mutual trust and hope. In fact, he writes, “If the dialoguers expect nothing to come of their efforts, their encounter will be empty and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious” (p. 92) and finally, true dialogue demands that people engage in critical thinking, which recognizes the “indivisible solidarity between people and the world,” recognizes reality as a process and not as an unchanging entity, and also thinking which is rooted in action (p. 92). This qualification of dialogue as a transformative encounter is resonant with the notion of human flourishing as the ultimate objective of education, rather all human endeavor.

327

328

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

Having said that, problem‐posing education can fulfill its function as the practice of freedom only if it can overcome the “teacher‐student contradiction” (Freire, 1970), wherein students become coinvestigators in dialogue with teachers, as equal conscious beings. Together, both teacher and students “become subjects of the educational process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism” (p. 86). This predicates the need for the teacher too to develop his or her critical consciousness, and identify their role as equal comrades in the journey of understanding their reality and re‐creating knowledge through common reflection and action. “The teacher is no longer merely the‐one‐who‐ teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teaches. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow… no one teaches another, nor is anyone self‐taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are ‘owned’ by the teacher” (p. 80). This nonhierarchical relationship between the student and teachers is critical, as without it there can be no critical consciousness. In essence, “problem‐posing education relies upon dialogue and critical consciousness, democratic teacher‐student relationships, the co‐creation of knowledge through interaction, and a curriculum grounded in students’ interests and experiences” (Bartlett, 2008, p. 40).

Education: Human Capital to Capability Expansion This demands reorganizing the structure of our education system, its content, curriculum, administration, and policy as well as the relationship dynamics between teachers, students, and the community. However, this is not to say that our present education systems have failed. Since the industrial revolution, education was seen primarily for its value in increasing private rates of return in the form of income and wealth. This might be one main reason why education institutions have not changed over the past 100 years. The fundamental goal has not changed. The education system established a century ago was designed to provide the knowledge needed to support the industrial revolution and a production oriented society. This over time evolved into the sole goal of acquiring the skills required to maximize individual utility that was measured by income. The human capital framework and the rate of return methodology has influenced the development of our present education systems (Klees, 2016; Samoff, 2013; Vally & Motala, 2014). It is therefore not an issue of education systems not delivering on what they have been designed to achieve; they actually have done a very good job for the past 50 years. The real issue at hand is the goal we are aiming for as a society. If the goal is skills for employability and income generation, then the focus should be on strengthening the existing educational systems, improving delivery and making it equitable. But if the goal is something loftier that not only includes employment and income generation but goes to the very heart of human well‐ being, then a different education system is required.

Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Reexamined

In fact, a recent survey of educators and employers highlighted by the World Economic Forum (2016), the bastion of the human capital approach, has ­highlighted the shortcomings of the present education system and has called for a more holistic approach that builds what they call global competencies.

Global Competencies: A Neuroscience Perspective Any model of education that seeks to achieve human flourishing necessarily needs be in harmony with the seat of education, namely the human brain. Models of education are uniquely human endowments and must be developed and evaluated from not only economic perspectives but also from neurobiological ones that are compatible with principles and neural design, function, and development. Recent research from the brain sciences has shown that a fundamental process that underlies all learning is neuroplasticity. Neurons are the basic information processing units in the brain. They communicate with one another through a structure called the synapse. The outcome of new learning is new synapse formation. A physical structural change needs to take place in the brain that manifests in the creation or removal of synapses. For learning to occur, the brain needs to rewire and build new connections between neurons. This ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning is called “neuroplasticity.” Thus, a model of education where the objective is to build human capital for human flourishing will be successful only if it is compatible with the principles of neurobiological design and development. Although groundbreaking advances in medical imaging technology have revolutionized our understanding of the brain structure, organization, and functioning, such research have been conspicuously absent from classroom practices of learning. In the following sections we highlight how recent neurobiological research from the brain sciences suggests that a combination of critical pedagogy and capability approach would nourish and develop the whole brain, leading to critically aware, caring global citizens who are committed to the well‐being of self and others. Freire’s approach that proposes education as a means to liberation in conjunction with Sen’s capacity approach for human flourishing might provide a formula that not only ensures “whole brain development” but could also be key to building sustainable and peaceful societies. Brain Structure and Function The outer layer of neural tissue of the brain in humans is called the cerebral ­cortex, which is broadly demarcated in terms of the neocortex and allocortex with a transitional area between the neocortex and the allocortex called the ­paralimbic cortex, (Figure  17.1). Brain imaging experiments over the last 2 ­decades have revealed broad functions of the three subcortices. The neocortex, which forms approximately 75% of the cerebral cortex, is  involved in sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial ­reasoning, conscious thought, and language. The allocortex, which is much smaller than the neocortex, is responsible for different kinds of memory and the

329

330

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

Neocortex

Allocortex Paralimbic System

Figure 17.1  Connections (continuous arrows) between different brain cortices, created by current education curricula.

olfactory systems. The paralimbic cortex, which is an important part of the discussion in this paper, constitutes a group of interconnecting brain structures involved in the emotion processing, goal setting, motivation, and self‐control. Broadly speaking, the paralimbic system can be conceptualized as the “feeling and reacting brain” that is interposed between the “thinking brain” and the output mechanisms of the nervous system namely, human behavior. Brain Development and the Functioning of Being Knowledgeable The building of human capital focuses on building skills of analytical thinking, literacy, and numeracy that results in ensuring the growth of material wealth and consequently economic growth. Such skills promote and ensure the development and plasticity of the neocortex and the allocortex. However, they might not necessarily lead to human flourishing. Human beings are social animals who are also emotional in nature. The social nature of human beings brings to the fore the role of a human being as a participant in a larger societal structure. For human flourishing to occur the emotional needs of the self and the other need to be ensured. It is to fulfill this need that we need to recall the philosophy of Paulo Freire. According to Freire, the primary requirement for freedom from an oppressive mindset is humanization—the ability to recognize others as fellow human beings and not as mere objects. The second is to recognize the fact that only when every other human being flourishes will there be true freedom from oppression. This demands that education be redesigned to develop and nourish (the cognitive and socioemotional parts of the brain), that is, both the neocortex and the paralimbic cortex. The paralimbic system not only regulates response to emotional stimuli but also sets the level of arousal and is involved in motivation and reinforcing behaviors. Therefore, education systems need to be redesigned to include explicit instruction in skills to develop the paralimbic cortex. Thus, high‐quality education needs to be structured to ensure the development of the “whole brain” namely the neocortex, the allocortex, and the paralimbic cortex (Figure 17.2).

Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Reexamined

Neocortex

Allocortex Paralimbic System

Figure 17.2  New connections (dotted arrows) to be created by proposed LIBRE curriculum, in addition to those created by current education curricula.

Way Forward: LIBRE The change from a human capital to a capability‐oriented education system will need to emerge from within the citizenry. This in line with the Freirean philosophy that encourages a bottom‐up approach to our pedagogies for building twenty‐first century skills. There will no doubt be resistance to this change as many would argue that the education system we have has contributed to has led to advancement in science and technology and living standards never witnessed before in human history. But what we must acknowledge and is increasingly echoed across many countries is that rapid globalization coupled with many emerging global challenges such as climate change, increasing inequality, and decreasing understanding of the “other” demands a new education paradigm. We thus argue for a revolution in education—one that is restructured to promote global citizenship and human flourishing rather than cater only to the narrow political or economic agenda of countries. We propose LIBRE, a novel integrative curriculum with a vision and mandate to build global citizens. The LIBRE curriculum, with roots in neuroscientific evidence, is designed to integrate the pedagogical approach of critical inquiry with mindfulness, empathy, and compassion training resulting in a student‐led and interactive learning experience. With roots in neurobiological design, LIBRE will be the first curriculum designed to nourish the “whole brain.” In keeping with Sen’s ideology, it will be focused on building human capital for human flourishing and will require explicit learning of socioemotional skills in addition to the skills of literacy and numeracy. The basis for recognition of others as human beings relies on empathy which forms the basis for societal structure and nurturing empathy is necessary for sustenance and preservation of the human race (Rifkin, 2009). However, empathy (as defined as a feeling for another) may not be enough to formulate or assess character. Whereas empathy is a mode of relating to and understanding how someone feels, compassion requires taking it

331

332

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

further; it is not only feeling for another person but includes taking action to alleviate another’s pain (Jazaieri et al. 2014; Klimecki, Leiberg, Ricard, & Singer, 2013). This is in sync with the philosophy of Freire discussed earlier that states that the primary requirement for freedom from an oppressive mindset is to possess the ability to recognize others as fellow human beings (mindfulness), to recognize that true freedom occurs only when every other human being flourishes (compassion), and finally to regulate all behavior to ensure these states (mindfulness). We postulate that explicit instruction of the skills of mindfulness, empathy, and compassion will build human connections and also ensure the development of the paralimbic cortex. Finally, we propose that all learning needs to be inquiry oriented. The ­process of inquiry needs to be critical and reflective and arrive at sound conclusions taking into account scientific evidence along with common world knowledge. Freire’s critical pedagogy regards education as a lifelong process of learning and un‐learning and entails an intense churning of beliefs, values, and worldview. To achieve this, learning systems will need to be adapted in order for concepts of analytical thinking and inquiry to connect with those of socioemotional skills. Learning should be designed to build new connections between the neocortex, specifically the frontal areas and the paralimbic cortex in order to develop habitual ways of thinking, responding, perceiving, and forming that will modulate and guide actions, beliefs, and learning both on and off the classroom (Figure 17.2). We believe that LIBRE would allow individuals to recognize the inherent interconnectedness and dignity of all life and instill the values of acceptance, equality, respect for diversity, empathy, and compassion in us. Education that is based on this approach has the potential for triggering a powerful surge of positive transformation and restoring peace and sustainability in society.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to acknowledge Aishwarya Khurana, a summer intern at UNESCO‐MGIEP for formatting the manuscript and Hymavathy, a project student at the National Brain Research Centre for assistance in creating figures for the manuscript.

References Abel, J., & Deitz, R. (2012). Do colleges and universities increase their region’s human capital? Journal of Economic Geography, 12(3), 667–691. Alkire, S. (2002). Valuing freedoms: Sen’s capability approach and poverty reduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bartlett, L. (2008). Paulo Freire and peace education. In M. Bajaj (Ed.), Encyclopedia of peace education (pp. 39–45). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Becker, G. S. (1994). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Education for Humanity: Freire and Sen Reexamined

Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London: Sage Retrieved from http://www.public.iastate.edu/~carlos/607/ readings/bourdieu1.pdf Chopra, K., & Duraiappah, A. K. (2008). Operationalizing capabilities in a segmented society: The role of institutions. In F. Comim, & S. Alkire (Eds.), The capability approach: Concepts, measures and applications (pp. 362–381). New York: Cambridge University Press. Colish, M. L. (1990). The Stoic tradition from antiquity to the early middle ages. Vol. 2: Stoicism in Christian Latin thought through the sixth century. Leiden: Brill. Drèze, J., & Sen, A. (2002). India: Development and participation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. Nations and Households in Economic Growth, 89, 89–125. Ensminger, J. (1997). Changing property rights: Reconciling formal and informal rights to land. In J. N. Drobak, & J. V. C. Nye (Eds.), The frontiers of the new institutional economics (pp. 165–196). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Penguin Books. Giroux, H. A. (2001). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press Retrieved from https://codkashacabka.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/we‐make‐the‐road‐by‐ walking‐myles‐and‐paolo‐freie‐book.pdf Jazaieri, H., Lee, I. A., McGonigal, K., Jinpa, T., Doty, J. R., Gross, J. J., & Goldin, P. R. (2014). A wandering mind is a less caring mind: Daily experience sampling during compassion meditation training. Journal of Positive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1025418 Klees, S. J. (2016). Human capital and rates of return: Brilliant ideas or ideological dead ends? Comparative Education Review, 60(4), 644–672. Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2013). Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(6), 873–879 http://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst060 Martin, J. R. (1976). What should we do with a hidden curriculum when we find one? Curriculum Inquiry, 6(2), 135–151. Melton, J. V. H. (2003). Absolutism and the eighteenth‐century origins of compulsory schooling in Prussia and Austria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mincer, J. (1993). Investment in human capital and personal income distribution. In Studies in human capital: Collected essays of Jacob Mincer (pp. 3–31). Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Publishing. North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Osler, M. J. (1991). Atoms, pneuma, and tranquility: Epicurean and Stoic themes in European thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Sullivan, A., & Sheffrin, S. M. (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

333

334

Anamika Gupta, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, and Anantha K. Duraiappah

Rifkin, J. (2009). The empathic civilization. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Robeyns, I. (2006). Three models of education: Rights, capabilities and human capital. Theory and Research in Education, 4(1), 69–84. https://doi. org/10.1177/1477878506060683 Rogers, D. S., Duraiappah, A. K., Antons, D. C., Munoz, P., Bai, X., Fragkias, M., & Gutscher, H. (2012). A vision for human well‐being: Transition to social sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 4, 1–13. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2012.01.013 Samoff, J. (2013). Institutionalizing international influence. In R. Arnove, C. Torres, & S. Franz (Eds.), Comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local (4th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, A. (1776). Of the nature, accumulation, and employment of stock. In An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. London: Methuen & Co. Retrieved from https://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf Soysal, Y. N., & Strang, D. (1989). Construction of the first mass education systems in nineteenth‐century Europe. American Sociological Association, 62(4), 277–288. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2112831.pdf Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J. P. (2010). Mismeasuring our lives: Why GDP doesn’t add up. New York: The New Press. UNESCO. Leading education 2030. (2017). Retrieved from http://en.unesco.org/ education2030‐sdg4. Unterhalter, E. (2005). Global inequality, capabilities, social justice: The Millennium Development Goal for gender equality in education. International Journal of Educational Development, 25(2), 111–122. Vally, S., & Motala, E. (Eds.) (2014). Education, economy and society. Johannesburg: UNISA Press. Verbeke, G. (1983). Presence of Stoicism in medieval thought. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Walker, M. (2006). Towards a capability‐based theory of social justice for education policy‐making. Journal of Education Policy, 21, 163–185. https://doi. org/10.1080/02680930500500245 World Economic Forum. (2016). The Future of Jobs Report. Retrieved from http:// www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf Young, I. M. (2004). Five faces of oppression. In L. M. Heldke, & P. O’Connor (Eds.), Oppression, privilege, and resistance: Theoretical perspectives on racism, sexism, and heterosexism (pp. 37–63). Boston: McGraw‐Hill.

335

18 Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action” Afonso Celso Scocuglia

Introduction Since the beginning, Paulo Freire’s pedagogy feeds on his basic readings, convergences, and connections with other thinkers of the human/social sciences and education. From the ideals of the progressive Catholicism and the developmentalist nationalism of the 1950s and 1960s—present in his works Educação e atualidade brasileira (1959)1 and Educação como prática da liberdade (1984a)—of the Marxist progressism—increasingly present in Pedagogia do oprimido (1984b), Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos (1984c), Educação e mudança (1979)—passing through the “African writings,” among others, until his declared “progressive postmodernism”—present in Pedagogia da esperança (1996)— many thinkers influenced Freire, to a lesser or greater extent. Karl Jaspers (1958), Maritain (1966), and Vaz et al. (1962), as well as the ideologists of Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB)2 and John Dewey (1971), among others, influenced Freire’s ideas initially and until the mid‐1960s. Hegel (1966) and the “superstructural” Marxism influenced the continuity developed in Pedagogia do oprimido (1984b). Since then, this base has been mixed with the convergences and connections of ideas that go from Piaget to Gramsci, reaching the possibilities of complements, partnerships, thematic extensions, and conceptual reinventions. It is important to emphasize that, although Paulo Freire’s legacy results from these readings, convergences, and connections, his “thought in action” has never been dominated/limited by any school or ideological tendency. Paulo Freire has always argued that his work was incomplete. It was declared incomplete and in need of complements. For that very reason, he established numerous connections with other authors, fleshed out his ideas, and doubted his own certainties. This is the fundamental basis of the decisive connections of his ideas with other thinkers. Such connections have constructed the central axis of his political‐­ pedagogical thought.

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

336

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

We can demonstrate this by identifying, as an example, the main theses of the Delors/UNESCO Report (1996),3 based on the contributions of education thinkers from all over the world who prospect the twenty‐first century, such as “learning and lifelong education” and the “pillars of education” (learning to learn, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be). That is, the Freirean theses present in those ones selected by UNESCO as fundamental representatives of the passage from the twentieth century to the twenty‐first century are evident. With one important difference: for Freire, there are no neutral learnings and epistemologies. They are always loaded with the politicity that is intrinsic to the practices and theoretical reflections in the field of educational sciences. In addition, from the bases and connections of the theoretical amalgam constructed by Freire, throughout the formulation of his “thought in action,” we find that the concrete possibility of being complemented and reinvented is one of the most current features of Paulo Freire’s thought and of all political‐pedagogical burden of the Freirean legacy (Scocuglia, 2013, 2015). More than that: in our view, such connections constitute the very driving force of the present and of the reinvention of his praxis. Moreover, the impossibility of a single model or a single author embracing the plurality and complexity of educational practices and pedagogical reflections has  always been intrinsic to Freire’s propositions. For this reason, he built his  thoughts inspired by Dewey, Anísio Teixeira, Vieira Pinto, Hegel, Marx, Goldmann, Lukács, Amílcar Cabral, Gramsci, among others. He dedicated part of his work to the dialogical books written with Frei Betto, Gadotti and Sérgio Guimarães, Ira Shor, Antonio Faúndez, Adriano Nogueira, and the members of the Instituto de Ação Cultural—IDAC,4 such as Rosiska de Oliveira, Claudius Ceccon, and others. Without forgetting that many of his writings were marked by the orality, thus, waiting for interlocution and dialogue, and that his ideas are studied in connection with Freinet, Habermas, Piaget, Morin, and many others. In this sense, we sought to understand the bases and connections of Paulo Freire’s political‐pedagogical thought, explained throughout his discourse and placed in his main books published in Brazil, following an itinerary of bibliographical references, approximately chronological, of his written production.

The Political‐Educational Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire In this section, we start from the bases and connections that constitute Paulo Freire’s political‐educational thought. To do so, we present here the itinerary of the research that we carried out. The Research Itinerary In order to understand the bases and connections addressed in this study, considering the binomial education and politics as the central axis of Paulo Freire’s thought, we had as a concern the understanding of (a) the relations between education and politics in the initial moments of the Freirean discourse; (b) the relations between education and politics throughout the development and

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

changes in this author’s thought; (c) the importance that these relations acquire, constituting the guiding thread of the progression of his discourse; and (d) the substantial differences in the analytical treatment of these relations and their notorious qualitative changes, for example, in the categorization of conscientization, dialogue, and cultural action. As a starting point, we agree with Rossi (1982, pp. 90–91), when he presents the following thought: A common error in the analysis of Freire’s work is precisely to ignore the clear evolution of its conceptions, which begins with an idealism shaped by its attachment to modern Catholic thought, and reaches its growth towards the dialectical approach to reality that characterizes his last writings. If his Education as a practice of freedom is influenced by conceptions of Jaspers and Marcel on the philosophical level, the Pedagogy of the oppressed already shows a clear approach to the best radical tradition, from Marx and Engels to modern revolutionaries. And from other lines of contemporary critical analysis.5 We corroborate this reflection, noting the capacity for progression of Paulo Freire’s ideas. As a man of his time who often defied his own certainties, advocate of the process of critical knowledge and conscious of his incompleteness, Freire did not stop making history and being made by it as he liked to repeat in his lectures and debates in Brazil and abroad. Thus, it is easy to see that Freire in Educação como prática da liberdade, originally written in 1965, is not the same as, for example, in Política e educação, from 1993, once there are between them 3 decades of actions and reflections. Therefore, we can affirm that, in his trajectory, there are several Paulo Freire connected. And that these connections were forged from his readings of the world and the words, including the words of the many thinkers with whom he had a theoretical dialogue. While walking the paths of this historical and dialectical construction, Freire built a complexus thought (i.e., weaved together), which can be understood in its multiple components and dimensions of the issues it focuses on, the uncertainties that it contains, as well as the difficulties of rational treatment of its various aspects (Morin, 2000). Naturally, the polyphonic spiral that characterizes his writings and the frequent return to subjects that are (re)problematized, from new perspectives, do not allow us to treat the parts of his work separately, nor to be totally linear. We also need to consider the political‐educational totalities and contradictions implicit and explicit throughout the history of the constitutive ideas of Freire’s discourse. A discourse that, in advocating the pedagogy of the oppressed, denounces oppression; in denouncing the “banking” education, proposes a “problematizing” education; by placing the difficulties of the subordinates in organizing themselves as a class, shows the facilities of the oppressors in “being a class” in the exercise of direction/domination. A discourse that, in striving for the necessity of dialogical action as the matrix of the pedagogy of the oppressed, does not forget the authoritarianism and the qualitative precariousness of most of our schools that contributes to the production of the failure of the children, young people and adults in the subaltern social strata.

337

338

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

With regard to the books selected for the discursive analysis of thematic c­ontent, we begin emphasizing Educação como prática da liberdade and Pedagogia do oprimido (works already cited). These writings mark the beginning of Freire’s vast bibliography, bringing his concerns and methodological proposals for adult literacy and trying to formulate the first matrices of a “pedagogy of resistance” to the processes of oppression, developed on a large scale throughout Latin America in the 1960s. In the book Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos (1984c), the concern with the politicity of the educational practices with adults— as nonneutral knowledge processes—is pretty clear. It is also essential for our thematic content his understanding of education embedded in the conflict between social classes (although his analysis has never been restricted to such an approach), clarifying his theoretical approaches to various Marxist authors— identified from the work Pedagogia do oprimido—starting from Marx himself. Following the Freirean production, the Marxist incorporations that define the economic infrastructure deserve main attention and prominence, once until that moment Freire had been weaving his analysis almost exclusively in the spheres of the so‐called superstructure. These incorporations are especially important for the author’s theoretical and practical progression: they are some of the revelations contained in the African writings published, for example, in Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau (1980b), in A importância do ato de ler (1982) and in other writings, such as Vivendo e aprendendo (Freire et al., 1980). In these texts are notorious the theoretical approaches to some Gramscian theses incorporated through the readings of the work of Amílcar Cabral (1976), leader of the Guinean anticolonial struggle. Among the dialogical books, written together with several interlocutors, we highlight the following: Sobre educação (1982, 1984) and Aprendendo com a própria história (1987b) with Sérgio Guimarães; Pedagogia: diálogo e conflito (1985a) with Sérgio Guimarães and Moacir Gadotti; Por uma pedagogia da pergunta (1985b) with Antonio Faúndez; Essa escola chamada vida (1986) with Frei Betto; Medo e ousadia: o cotidiano do professor (1987a) with Ira Shor and Na escola que fazemos (1988) with Adriano Nogueira. We also draw attention to the work Educação na cidade (1991), a book that  contains reflections on the challenges faced by Freire in the Municipal Department of Education in São Paulo. In the last writings, we also highlight Pedagogia da esperança (1992), Política e educação (1993) and Pedagogia da autonomia (1996). In the latter, the author position himself before the uncertainties of the paradigm crisis in the social sciences and education, investing firmly against the teleological “determinisms” of the history (e.g., in the positivisms and in a significant part of orthodox Marxisms).

Exploring the Bases and the Initial Connections: Education for Development, Freedom and Critical Awareness Paulo Freire’s initial writings have as one of their matrixes the thinkers of the ISEB, considered as the main ideologists of developmentalist nationalism since the 1950s in Brazil. According to Isebian nationalism, the bourgeoisie would be

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

the right class (at that historic moment) to lead the basic reforms that would lead the country to the development. Added to these ideas are the practices of populism, inheritance of Getúlio Vargas, described by Ianni (1968, p. 206) as “a mass policy specific to a stage of Brazil’s economic‐social and political transformations.” Still according to this author, “the populism is, despite the political‐­ ideological distortions that are inherent to it, a mechanism of politicization of the masses. And when this politicization occurs in a period of crisis of the political power of the bourgeoisie, it becomes extremely dangerous” (Ianni, p. 208). In this context, Freire’s connections with the progressive populism,6 in the government in Pernambuco (Miguel Arraes) and in the federal government (João Goulart), project his pedagogical proposals as an attempt to overcome the traditional and conservative regional and national political action, although the characteristic of maintaining control and directing popular actions (including via “literacy‐conscientization”) cannot be ignored as part of this same process. These proposals defended the definitive incorporation of the democracy and progress through the national‐developmentalist path, especially when we focus on Educação e atualidade brasileira (1959). It is important to point out that the first ideas about an education for national development, using the liberal‐bourgeois democracy as a way, move toward an education for freedom—thought as people’s right, against massification, as the possibility of the existence of individual consciousness. According to the theses disseminated by the ISEB, one of the serious problems to be faced was the Brazilians’ lack of political participation, that would be explained by the tradition of a people with a past and a present linked to external domination, marked by the historical structures of dependence. This history, made of authoritarianism and paternalism, corroborated by populism, would have led the Brazilians to mutism (later, Freire will say “culture of silence”) and apoliticity. On the other hand, our author considered that the current capitalist industrialization, progress and democracy could lead Brazil to “be for itself,” autonomous and independent. It was essential, at that moment, to “awaken the consciousness” to this reality. In this “awakening,” the educational contribution would be one of the fundamental bases. Mixing these conceptions with the influence of existentialist philosophy—also filtered by the ISEB’s “factory of ideologies”—, and with the components of a (progressive) Christian humanism, Paulo Freire defends the construction of the nation, as a formation process, and the strengthening of the state. In connection with the anticolonialist and anti‐imperialist struggle, this idea is approached from the criticism of the colonial existence and the need for a project of national existence (Paiva, 1980, pp. 82–83). In this way, the so‐called “Paulo Freire Method” served to the refreshment of the ideas inherent to the transition to modernity through the overcoming of the magical consciousness tied to the archaic society and to the institution of new forms of consciousness. The surpassing of the naïve and magical consciousness toward a critical consciousness was at the heart of the binomial literacy‐conscientization. In Educação e mudança, Freire (1979, pp. 40–41) points out the characteristics of the naïve consciousness and critical consciousness. The naïve consciousness would be have the following characteristics: (a) simplicity and not deepening in

339

340

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

the “causality of the fact itself ” and the consequent “hasty and superficial conclusions”; (b) the consideration that the “past was better”; (c) possibility of “fanaticism”; (d) underestimation of the “simple man”; (e) “its explanations are magical”; (f ) “it is fragile in the discussion of problems”; (g) “it has a strong passionate content”; (h) “it presents strong magical understandings”; and (i) the affirmation of “static and non‐mutable reality.” On another level, critical consciousness would be characterized as follows: (a) by “depth in the analysis of problems and no satisfaction with appearances”; (b) by the understanding that “reality is changeable”; (c) “for substituting magic explanations for authentic principles of eventuality”; (d) for trying to “verify and test discoveries”; (e) for trying to “get rid of prejudices”; (f ) for being “intensely restless”; (g) it “accepts the delegation of the responsibility and authority”; (h) being “inquiring, it investigates, forces, shocks”; and (i) for “loving dialogue and be nourished by it” and for “not repelling the old for being old” nor “accepting the new for being new,” but accepting them “in so far as they are valid.” Thus, it was sought the necessary education for that developing society that was being democratized. From this point of view, the author’s view of the school focuses on progressive education’s denunciation of anachronism, ornamental and overly literary teaching, based on memorization and verbalism—what he later called “banking education.” He followed the ISEB’s analytical tradition and the influence of the renovators like Fernando Azevedo and especially Anísio Teixeira (1966)—exponents of progressive education7 in Brazil (influenced by John Dewey’s proposals). Like these educators, Freire defended a proposal of progressive education in line with reality and adequate to national development and liberal democracy. The educational process was seen as a democratic instrument generated in the community through the discussion of its own problems, via “communication of  consciences” or via “intersubjectivity.” It was understood that this type of training provided the participation of individuals in a “democratic‐personal‐ communitarian” atmosphere. To achieve these objectives, a progressive method with the student in the center of the pedagogical‐educational process would be indispensable. It is important to consider, in this initial amalgam, the influence of Álvaro Vieira Pinto’s philosophy. According to this philosopher, in order to exist, the human being needed to be aware of historicity and the historicity of consciousness. It should be noted that it is exactly the consciousness that determines humans and the world (Kantian enlightenment), allowing the individual to be capable of freedom (this conception will later be altered and reconstructed by Freire). Note also that Freire does not use the categorization that involves social class and its consciousness, as he will do from the Pedagogia do oprimido (Freire, 1984b). Human consciousness is understood as an awareness of its dignity and freedom. Underpinning such proposals, certain philosophical currents imbricated one another—especially the Christian existentialism and the personalism—, marking the primarily “superstructural” approach from the first moment of his intellectual production. In the academic thesis already mentioned, Freire (1959, p. 8) writes: “Man is a being of relationships that, being in the world, is capable of going beyond, projecting, discerning, knowing … and perceiving the temporal

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

dimension of his existence as a historical being and creator of culture.” On the other hand, this Christian existentialism was intrinsically linked to culturalism. It establishes an existential‐culturalist synthesis, the basis of a pedagogical proposal that gives theoretical support to his propositions on adult literacy. In this sense, it is fundamental to understand the emphasis given to the so‐called cultural circles, substituting formalized and institutionalized education, and to the culture books as an alternative to the alphabet books traditionally used in schools. The nondiscovery of humans as makers of culture would imply the culture of silence, the submission, and the perpetuation of subalternity. This process, according to Freire, would be linked to the extreme social‐political‐economic‐ cultural dependence that the country had undergone throughout its history. From another perspective, we can note the placement of personalistic parameters of analysis, linked to the existential‐culturalist synthesis mentioned. It is advocated a democratic society, based on economic and political pluralism and the dignity of the human person. The theoretical contribution of Maritain (1966), influential among Catholics in the 1940s and 1950s, is emphasized here, incorporating the concern for an education of the person for the attainment of dignity and inner freedom: “free people (through knowledge, will and love) would gather around the common good, they would humanize themselves by contributing to humanization and the liberation of others” (1966, p. 143). On this route, several currents that contributed to Paulo Freire’s thought converge in political intentions and in the attempt to formulate an educational proposal—understood as an instrument for the transformation of consciousness and the existence of people in the world and with the world. The relations between education as a process of conscientization and education as an achievement of freedom are constant marks of Freire’s political‐pedagogical discourse. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the relations between education and politics (which are the central axis of Paulo Freire’s “thought in action,” as we have defended since the beginning of our research) undergo significant changes throughout the construction of his discourse. The concept of “conscientization,” for example, initially thought as a psycho‐pedagogical product, progresses toward the understanding of the educational contribution to the pursuit of “class consciousness” under the inspiration of Marxist precepts. Let us follow the thought of the author: When I first heard the word conscientization, I immediately realized the depth of its meaning, because I am absolutely convinced that education as a practice of freedom is an act of knowledge, a critical approache to reality. At the spontaneous level, the man when he comes close to reality simply makes the experience of the reality in which he is and for which he seeks. This awareness raising is not yet the conscientization, because the latter consists in the critical development of the awareness raising. (Freire, 1980a, p. 25) We note an excessive credit to the transforming power of education. The goal would be to achieve a certain degree of awareness that would lead to understanding of the need for national development and liberal democracy and the engagement of

341

342

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

the popular strata in this political process, led by fractions of the modern bourgeoisie, but also by conservative forces that directed Brazil. According to Isebian thinkers, the class fractions of the (modernizing) national bourgeoisie would be the only ones capable of performing such transforming leadership. Freire quotes Vieira Pinto when he says that “naïve consciousness believes itself superior to facts, dominating them from the outside and, therefore, thinks itself free to understand them as it pleases.” On the other hand, “critical consciousness is the representation of things and facts as they occur in empirical existence, in their causal and circumstantial relations” (1984a, p. 104). According to these conceptions, the educational process should promote the elevation from one “level of consciousness to another one,” for the acceptance of change, dialogue, democracy and, mainly, the consent of favorable reforms for national development. For this, Freire emphasizes that the process of conscientization will not result only from economic changes, however important they may be. For him, criticality would be the result of pedagogical work supported under auspicious historical conditions. In the search for criticality, the conscientization could not be part of any kind of education, but a process aimed at “social and political responsibility, and decision.” However, following Torres’s thought (1979, p. 16), “the conscientization could be confused with the rosy mantle of abstract and well‐intentioned but empty humanism.” Referring to the forces that intend to install and/or maintain alienation and try to prevent the conscientization, he repels massification as the introjection of the “oppressive shadow.” He understands that “casting this shadow through the conscientization is one of the fundamental tasks of a truly liberating and therefore respectful education of man as a person” (1984a, p. 37). Massification, as part of the process of domination, prevents the “individual from being himself.” On the contrary, “education for freedom” would represent the antidote to the vector of alienation and concealment of the real. Freedom is thought existentially, that is, the discovery of the individual as a free person as opposed to castrating domestication. It is an “education for the man‐subject of his own history.” In this perspective, Freire defends dialogue as the main pedagogical vehicle of a conscientious education that seeks freedom as an alternative for the person’s construction, against massification and alienation and against the introjection of the oppressive shadow. The educational process at its various levels should contribute to such changes by building a national critical consciousness based on democracy, dialogue, freedom, and especially on the progressive values of a society that was moving to modernity.

The Bases and Connections of the Progression of Paulo Freire’s Thought: The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Cultural Action for Liberation At investigating Freire’s work in its entirety, we must consider Pedagogia do oprimido (1984b) as a starting point for a deeper, more consistent and more rigorous theoretical elaboration, especially as regards its social, economic,

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

and political foundation. The approach to Marxian and Marxist thoughts is notorious, especially as regards a reading of the world that takes into account, for example, the questions concerning the social classes and the conflict between them—resulting in an educational vision dipped (without being imprisoned) in such conceptualization. It is also in this book that Freire “begins to see” (in his words) the politicity of the educational act more clearly, although education is not yet explicit in its political wholeness but only in its political “aspects.” We emphasize that the Marxian‐Marxist approach is made (nondogmatically) through superstructural parameters related to the understanding of the connections of education‐consciousness‐ideology‐politics. It should also be noted that the existentialist and personalist currents (defining his initial “idealistic humanism”) are still present, now mixed with the incorporations of Marxist thought. Following his work (after Pedagogia do oprimido), in the seventies, we will note a greater clarity of theoretical ground and an attempt to undo the amalgam and encompass other Marxist references, for example, the writings of Antonio Gramsci (1982, 1984). In short, with respect to the sequence related to the binomial education‐politics, we can present the following statement: (a) in Educação e atualidade brasileira (1959), Freire advocates an educational practice focused on national development and the construction of a bourgeois/liberal democracy; (b) in Educação como prática da liberdade (1984a) advocates an education for freedom (existential / personal) in search of the “humanization of man” through psycho‐ pedagogical conscientization; (c) whereas in Pedagogia do oprimido (1984b) he postulates an educational process for the “revolution of the oppressive reality,” for the elimination of the “conscience of the oppressor introjected in the oppressed” through political‐dialogical action. Thus, regarding the pedagogia do oprimido: It has to be forged with him and not for him, as men or peoples, in the unceasing struggle for recovery of his humanity. Pedagogy that turns oppression and its causes into an object of reflection of the oppressed, which will result in his necessary engagement in the struggle for liberation, in which this pedagogy will be done and redone. (Freire, 1984b, p. 32) By treating the educator–learners relationship in parallel with his concerns with the relationship between the leaders and the oppressed layers, the author proposes a pedagogy with the oppressed (subaltern) and not for the oppressed, what it would mean about him. Along the same path, he indicates “oppression and its causes” as reflective mediation of the oppressed in search of engagement in the liberating struggle. This methodological movement would unleash critical consciousness and political‐organizational participation against oppression. The fundamental problematic of the oppressed and the construction of a pedagogy (hegemony, according to Gramsci8) in order to be formulated with him is concentrated on the reception of the values, interests, and needs of the oppressors in his conscience, which would prevent the real perception of the situation

343

344

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

of subalternity in which he is and the taking of a position in the opposite direction. According to Freire (1984b, p. 32): The great problem lies in how the oppressed, who harbor the oppressor in themselves, can participate in the elaboration, as double, inauthentic beings, of the pedagogy of their liberation. Only insofar as the oppressed discover themselves as the hosts of the oppressor can they contribute to the dissemination of their liberating pedagogy. It is noted that the “big problem” occurs at the level of the consciousness/ideology relationship, that is, in the “superstructure” and not at the level of the relations of production or inter‐structural relations, as Freire himself will later conceptualize, in Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau (1980b). In fact, for the author, the struggle of the oppressed and their liberation are directly connected to the perception of this oppressive/alienating situation and to the creation of alternatives to this situation. This is what we perceive when he writes the following thought: Their struggle is between them being themselves or double beings. Between expelling or not the oppressor within. Between not being alienated or being alienated. Between following prescriptions or having options. Between being spectators or actors. Between acting or having the illusion that they act, in the action of the oppressors. Between saying the word or having no voice, castrated in their power to create and recreate, in their power to transform the world …. Liberation, therefore, is a birth. And a painful birth. The man born from this birth is the new man who is only viable in and by overcoming the oppressor‐oppressed contradiction, which is the liberation of all. (Freire, 1980b, p. 36) In the treatment of this theme, the influence of the Hegelian9 philosophy appears in the prioritization of the spheres of consciousness and ideology, especially in the emphasis on the “master–slave relationship” and the transformation of reality through the transformation of enslaved consciousness. This is what can be seen from the following excerpt: What characterizes the oppressed, as a “servile consciousness” in relation to the master’s consciousness, is to make themselves almost as a “thing” and become, as Hegel points out, in “consciousness for the other”. The true solidarity with them lies in their struggle for the transformation of the objective reality that makes them to be this “being for the other.” (Freire, 1980b, pp. 37–38) Along these way, the author emphasizes the importance of the “vanguard,” the “revolutionary leadership,” insinuating the political‐party action (although he does not deepen the question), “explaining to the popular masses their own action” and “to activate in a consciously way the further development of the revolutionary experience”—theses based on Lukács (1968). For Freire (1984c, p. 109),

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

“there is no conscientization if from its practice does not result the conscious action of the oppressed, as a social class exploited, in the struggle for their liberation.” The author also makes the following addition: The pedagogy of the oppressed, as a humanist and liberating pedagogy, will have two distinct moments. The first, in which the oppressed will unveil the world of oppression and commit themselves to praxis and transformation; the second, in which, once the oppressive reality has been transformed, this pedagogy ceases to be of the oppressed and becomes the pedagogy of men in a permanent process of liberation. (Freire, 1984b, p. 44) In fact, the construction of the political‐pedagogical thought is dynamically processed with the incorporation of new analytical categories. Although the disappearance of the personalist and existentialist roots, expressed since his first writings, cannot be affirmed. This is what we can apprehend when Freire categorizes the cultural action as education and political epistemology. For him, “cultural action for liberation is an act of knowledge in which learners assume the role of cognitive subjects in dialogue with the educator, who is also a cognitive subject…” (Freire, 1984c, p. 48). Cultural action that, in its amplitude, assumes “utopian and hopeful” characters, on the one hand, and “denunciation‐announcement,” on the other. Utopia “not because it feeds on impossible dreams” or because it is “idealistic” or “because it tries to deny the existence of classes and their conflicts.” Utopian and hopeful because, in the service of the liberation of the oppressed, “it is done and rebuilt in the social practice, in the reality, and implies making the denunciation and announcement into something dialetical” (1984c, p. 59). Thus, from his work Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos, the (intrinsic) politicity of education gains the center of Freirean analysis and discourse. And so his conceptualization shifts from Marx’s “conscious action” (“making oppression more oppressive, adding to it the consciousness of oppression”) to “class consciousness” with the theoretical contributions of Goldmann and Lukács.10 From Goldmann (1978), he incorporates the overcoming of “real consciousness” by the “maximum of possible consciousness.” For the “maximum,” the work of mobilization and organization of subordinates would become indispensable, because it is in the “practice of this communion … that conscientization reaches its highest point” (Freire, 1984c, p. 97). From the Lukacsian concept, Freire uses the practical and pedagogical senses. And he shows us the clear progression of the concept of “conscientization”: Class consciousness demands a class practice that, in its turn, generates a knowledge at the service of class interests. While the ruling class as such constitutes and strengthens ‘self‐consciousness’ in the exercise of power, by which it overrides the dominated class and imposes its positions on it, the latter can only attain self‐consciousness through revolutionary praxis. Through this, the dominated class becomes ‘class for itself ’ and, acting according to its being, not only begins to know, in a different way, what it

345

346

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

knew before, but also to know what it did not know before. In this sense, it always implies a class knowledge. Knowledge, however, that cannot be transferred; it is created, through action on reality. (Freire, 1984c, p. 141) It is fundamental to focus, in addition to Lukács’s own conceptualization, on the emphasis on the education‐awareness relationship from the gnosiological point of view. The emphasis on the rights to (a) knowledge of what was known in another way and to (b) knowledge of what was not known, allowing (c) the production/creation of self‐knowledge by subordinates, shows the concern to read the pedagogical in its political fullness. However, we can affirm that there are few moments of such significant changes in the Freirean discourse, as that of the approaches to Marxist economic thought. It should be recalled that up to now his main writings have been influenced by Marxisms with superstructural concerns, that is, they have prioritized the spheres of consciousness, ideology, politics, and, until then, the sphere of work, for example, was treated in the perspective of Hegel (master–slave), already mentioned. From the African writings (already cited), products of the work of Paulo Freire and IDAC in Guinea‐Bissau and other African countries (1970s)—which attempted socialist reconstructions of a newly liberated colonial past—the vision of social infrastructure as a fundamental educational context stands out. For example, the work on rice farming or the physical reconstruction of Guinean towns and cities, devastated by anticolonialist war for so many years, is apprehended as “content” and as “method” of a new education, “the education of the new person,” an education of the human being as “history maker,” produced in the gestation of a new hegemony11 (i.e., of a new pedagogy), of a counterhegemony (and therefore of a counterpedagogy).

The Bases and Connections of the Radicalization of Paulo Freire’s Thought: The Production, Work and Transformation of Society as Contexts of Political Education We have previously defended the idea that the open (nondogmatic) incorporation of socioeconomic—infrastructural—Marxist analytical categories determines a significant rupture in Paulo Freire’s political‐pedagogical thought. The previous great “background”—social transformation thought in superstructural terms—is restructured. The reinventions of society and education necessarily go through the transformation of the productive process and all the relationships involved in this process. For this reason, we agree with Rossi (1982, p. 91), when he writes: It could be said, at this point, that Paulo Freire approaches a Gramscian vision. Man must assume his role as subject of History, not as an abstract individual, but as long as he is situated within concrete conditions,

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

c­ onditions which are constituted from the economic organization of society, from the position of man within the productive structure of that same society and those relations which, as a consequence, he establishes with his fellows, relations which are essentially organized from that same position which he occupies in production. At this point, it is convenient to synthesize, for the purpose of comparative analysis, that, in Educação como prática da liberdade, Freire defended the change in society through an “internal reform” of man, via “conscientization.” With the presence of economic categories, completing his theoretical analysis, his political‐ pedagogical conceptions are restructured. In Rossi’s words (Rossi, 1982, p. 91), Freire surpasses idealistic humanism by replacing it with a concrete humanism. On the other hand, when we presented the moment related to the beginning of the “rupture” of the Freirean discourse, we affirmed that the work Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos (1984c) brought to the fore a more incisive and rigorous sociological analysis, bringing to the surface the question of social classes and the struggle between them as a fundamental advance of Freire’s thought, including in relation to specifically pedagogical issues. We showed the theoretical foundations of the restructuring of his educational proposal “as a cultural action of the dominated in search of their class consciousness.” We also pointed out that it is from the works carried out in Africa that we will notice how the incorporation of the theoretical infrastructural categorization marks the radicalization of the educational‐political proposals of this educator. Naturally, we can say that the contribution to the education and educators from Guinea‐Bissau (as well as the revolutionary process in Tanzania, São Tomé and Principe, etc.), the collaborative experience for the “reinvention of power,” of the productive process, the educational work of the party, in short, the African experience of liberation through the socialist route, radicalize Freire’s thought. In this sense, the inspiration, the writings and the legacies of Amílcar Cabral (1976) were decisive. Characterizing Cabral’s performance at the head of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea‐Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), Freire (1980b, pp. 23–24) highlights: “His political clarity and coherence between his choice and his practice are at the root of both his refusal to spontaneity and his rejection of manipulation.” Cabral knew that the guns alone did not make war, hence his constant preoccupation with the political and ideological formation and hence also the special attention he paid to the education work in the liberated zones (during the guerrilla war against the Portuguese troops). In this task, according to Cabral (1976, pp. 212–213), the petty bourgeoisie would only have one way: “to strengthen his revolutionary consciousness … to identify with the working classes, not to oppose the normal development of the revolution process … to commit suicide as a class.” Freire (1980b, p. 21) emphasizes “the reorganization of the mode of production and the critical involvement of workers in a distinct form of education, in which they are called to understand the work process itself more than they are trained to produce.” Note the importance given to work as a source and context of education. That is, one of the fundamental bases of socialist pedagogy is present. Thus, literacy, an initial part of the implementation of transformative education, would represent a “systematization of the knowledge of rural and urban workers achieved as a result

347

348

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

of their practical activity.” The productive work is approached to education at the moment in which “one no longer studies in order to work, nor does one work in order to study; one studies in the process of working,” as Freire wrote in Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau (Freire, 1980b, p. 22). The “theoretical” (educational) context and the “concrete” context (the productive activity) are unified. Therefore, in addition to the “systematization of knowledge” through “the practical activity of workers that do not exhaust in itself, but for the reasons that motivate it,” our author identifies a fundamental source for the educational plans under development, that is, the popular knowledge. In this regard, he writes the following words: Alongside the reorganization of production, we highlight that this is one of the central aspects to be critically understood and worked out by a revolutionary society: the valuation, not idealization, of the popular wisdom that involves the creative activity of the people and reveals the levels of their knowledge about reality. (Freire, 1980b, p. 29) By working on this Freirean conception (“always starting from popular knowledge through the search of the vocabulary universe, customs, popular values”), we can see a significant approach in relation to Gramsci’s thought about the passage from the “common sense” to a “philosophy that transforms the world.” It is interesting to note that the approach to these two thoughts (both political and educational, although in Gramsci there is the predominance of a political concern and, in Freire, a political‐pedagogical one) happens, even without Freire having registered it (with references or quotes). Therefore, Freire emphasizes the importance of revolutionary practice as a “midwife of consciousness” and the virtual facility in understanding (in the “school” theoretical context) this practice through literacy. It also be noted the existence of the “guerrilla schools,” that is, in the midst of the guerrilla war there were several schools “under the trees and the battle trenches,” guided by the leadership of Amílcar Cabral. Freire draws attention once again to the Guinean leader’s legacy, fully corroborated by all staff of educators, when he says that “One of the main goals of the transformation of our teaching is to link the school to life—to link it to the community where they are, to the neighborhood. Connecting school to productive work, especially agricultural work, to bring it closer to mass organizations” (Freire, 1980b, p. 50). According to our author, the model of the Escola de Có (Guinea‐Bissau) produced a new type of educator‐intellectual. A “new intellectual” in Gramsci’s sense (1982). For him, the great explanatory key was in the binomial education‐ work and, more specifically, in the inseparability of the manual works with the intellectual works. The productive activities in agriculture, health, hygiene, food, and so on, were associated with the reflection on these practices, in a continuous and dynamic process. Thus, Freire signals that Insofar as these experiences are systematised and deepened, it is possible to derive from the productive activity, more and more, the programmatic contents of n disciplines which, in the traditional system, are transferred, that is, in a verbalistically way. (Freire, 1980b, p. 25)

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

It is important to note that in these school, pedagogical, and educational concerns, specifically curricular concerns, the school‐production synthesis, as a practical manifestation of the education‐work link, gives the fundamental tone of Freire’s discourse. The basic principles of his pedagogical proposal are present, as the permanent concern with “banking education,” that is, with the transmission of knowledge in supposedly ignorant and empty “deposits.” But even in the face of the progress made by the Escola de Có (conceived as a model for the definitive implantation of socialist education based on the inseparability of education‐work) Freire warns against the risk of repeating what the capitalist system does with “its” workers, teaching them its (of the system) needs. Certainly, in order to avoid the risk, the inseparability of the productive work and the educational process must be directed toward the prioritization and privilege of labor over capital. In one of the most important letters sent to the educators responsible for the literacy program, Freire (1980b) offers an interesting synthesis of what he sees as the main and permanent goal of any social transformation: the gestation of the “new man.” For him, the synthesis education‐work/school‐production is basically the support of this gestation. In this sense, the new man and the new woman to whom this society aspires can not be created except through the productive work for the collective well‐being. He is the matrix of knowledge around him and of what detaching from him refers to him. This means that such an education can not have a selective character, which would lead, in contradiction with socialist objectives, to strengthen the dichotomy between manual labor and intellectual work. (Freire, 1980b, p. 125) And he elucidates: On the contrary, it is necessary to overcome this dichotomy so that in the new education the primary, secondary, university education is not essentially distinguished from the factory or productive practice of an agricultural field, nor is it juxtaposed to them. And even when, as a theoretical context, it is found outside the factory or the agricultural field, this does not mean that it is considered a higher instance than that nor does this mean that those are not in themselves schools as well. (Freire, 1980b, p. 24) We corroborate the thesis of Rossi (1982), already mentioned, including Freire as one of the theoretical foundations of “work pedagogy” and the construction of “socialist education paths” and we perceive the importance of Freire’s progression from an idealistic humanism to the concrete humanism. Certainly one of the theoretical foundations of this “concrete humanism” is the synthesis of labor, production, and (possible) revolutionary action, as sources of a political education of the subaltern strata. That is: An education completely different from the colonial one. An education through work, which stimulates collaboration and not competition. An education that gives value to mutual aid and not to individualism, that

349

350

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

develops the critical spirit, creativity and not passivity. An education based on the unity of practice and theory, between manual labor and intellectual work, and therefore encourages learners to think right. (Rossi, 1982, p. 95) In sum, we can say that although the political education of subordinates indicates the permeabilization of education with work, of school with production, in the capitalist pole, this educational proposal finds great barriers. Logically, the capitalists are not interested in an education that prioritizes the synthesis of manual labor with the intellectual and advances the construction of the consciousness of the workers as “class for themselves.” It is important to reiterate two important changes in Paulo Freire’s “thought in action” in the progressive and, increasingly, radical direction. One contextualized in the 1960s in Latin America and the other in the Africa of the socialist revolutions of the 1970s. The sequence of the works referenced demonstrates this assertion and confers notoriety to the various moments of his discursive itinerary.

Final Considerations In these final considerations, our challenge is to construct a synthesis of the bases and connections of a complex thought (fabric together, with edges and amalgams previously shown), especially in relation to its movement that is progressive and prospective. It is essential to emphasize: if there is a permanence/constancy in Freire’s thought, it must be characterized by its incessant movement. What is  constant is the permanent construction/reconstruction movement of its ­political‐educational praxis. Initiating this synthesis, we can consider: first, from its initial basis (amalgam of the national‐developmentalist with liberal democracy, personalism and existentialism, not forgetting the influence of progressive Catholicism), we can see an open incorporation of certain political and ideological parameters proposed by the classic socialists, especially Marx and Engels. Several Hegelian references to these writings stand out, such as the work A ideologia alemã (Marx & Engels, 1982), concerning the so‐called “superstructure.” In the Pedagogia do oprimido (1984b), “classes” appear in the context of social oppression, although they are not yet central categories in the construction of Freire’s discourse. In Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos (1984c), education begins to be effectively conceived within the class conflict, as an act of “class” knowledge, in search of the  mobilization‐organization of the oppressed and as “cultural action” which builds “class consciousness.” Here, Goldmann (1978) and Lukács (1968) make a fundamental contribution. However, the incorporations of the various Marxisms, in which Hegel’s inherited “superstructural” analytical concerns predominate, also give way to the “infrastructural” theoretical approach, visible in African writings, as in Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau, and in various dialogical books, such as Pedagogia: diálogo e conflito, Por uma pedagogia da Pergunta, Medo e ousadia: o cotidiano do professor (all already cited), written in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

An important example of this progression can be noted through the concept of work, one of the fundamental categories that undergoes new analytical treatment. What was previously thought through Hegel’s “master–slave dialectic” is subsidized in Marx’s political economy, in the pedagogy of struggle of Amílcar Cabral and appears as a “political‐educational context” in which work is understood as a marker context for school curriculum content and adult literacy. It is important to note that in these writings (mentioned earlier) there is the approach to Gramsci’s ideas through nuclear themes such as “hegemony,” “new intellectuals” in the organization of culture and “party as intellectual‐collective.” The inclusion of “infrastructural” categorization as a relational basis of what occurs in the “superstructure” of society, that is, the prioritization of work and collective production as a political‐educational principle and locus, marks a new point in the constant movement of Paulo Freire’s discourse. The defense of a necessarily “interestrutural” (interstructural) analysis (in which the “superstructure” is not merely a reflection of economic relations), while at the same time not overshadowing existentialist and personalist issues, evidences the permanent updating of his political‐educational concerns associated with a fierce antidogmatism. We must not forget that one of the indelible foundations of Paulo Freire’s practice and theory is the question of democracy: liberal, social, socialist… but always democracy. This is a central political issue that supports Freirean thought at all times. Even during the time of an approach to the “left” populism and developmentalist nationalism of the 1950s and 1960s. It is important to note that, even when approaching Marxisms that not infrequently include authoritarian positions, Paulo Freire never admitted the present totalitarianism of the real socialisms (and communisms). Democratic radicalism has always been one of his firmer and more permanent positions. Thus, if in his writings the humanization will not be done without the destruction of the society of exploitation and human domination, the itinerary to the attainment of such possibility is always democratic. This fact, among others, makes him current and included in the discussions of the crisis of determining paradigms, in which “other reasons” are intended in order to put human praxis at the center of the world’s decisions. Decisions based on the ethics, the social solidarity, and the conquest of democracy. Thus, in this sequence of syntheses, what could we emphasize as the principal in terms of the proper categories of our author’s political‐pedagogical thought? In other words, what (and how) in the various theoretical amalgams has been changed (or not) from categories such as “dialogue,” “conscientization,” “pedagogy of the oppressed,” and so on? One observation is fundamental: separating political thought from pedagogical thought (in order to try to be didactic in the explanation), we note that the political rupture, in the sense of adherence to popular social movements and workers (as social and political class), is accompanied by a pedagogical evolution. In other words, education and pedagogy did not cease to be realized through dialogue, they did not fail to prioritize the act of knowledge, the search for critical consciousness. But what used to be predominantly psycho‐pedagogical, became primarily political‐pedagogical.

351

352

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

The moment that marks this passage brings the oppressed as a central discursive category and the denunciation of “oppressive dehumanization” as a political path of emancipation. The awareness of oppression and the consequent struggle against the ideology of the oppressor, “lodged in the naivety of the oppressed conscience,” give the tonic of the change of the analytical approach. The last chapter of the Pedagogia do oprimido locates the segment of rupture of Freire’s discourse and the existence of an “other Paulo Freire”—different from that one in Educação como prática da liberdade, for example, which is embodied in Ação cultural para a liberdade, in the Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau and in all the sequence of his writings from the 1980s and 1990s. The dialogue, admitted at first as a possibility of “interclasses” mediation, is rethought and understood as “action between the equals and the different, but against the antagonists” in social conflicts. The conscientization, engendered by Vieira Pinto’s and the Isebians’s contribution, in stages of consciousness (naïve, transitive, critical), gradually shifts to the Lukacsian class consciousness. On the other hand, the adoption of “classes‐in‐class‐struggle,” previously absent or nebulously placed, constitutes an important displacement of his social analysis, sometimes in a repetitive way, and sometimes exaggerated. Important: Freire does not admit in his writings the determinism of the “class struggle as the motor of History” that, inexorably, would lead to socialism and communism, as Marx does. In this sense, with the politics being “substantive” and the pedagogy being “adjective,” the initial conception of an education for the “internal” change of man, via a psycho‐pedagogical conscientization and that would imply the transformation of the entire society, is turned upside down (as Marx attempted with Hegel, while still being partially Hegelian). In the last writings (1990s), it is evidenced the defense of education “for autonomy and for the ability to direct,” or as defended by Gramsci, for the “counterhegemony of subordinates.” Education to form full citizens and not an education that, in addition to the thousands of students summarily expelled from school (or without effective access to it), continues to form citizens of second, third, fourth … classes. Citizen education that does not advocate liberal cynicism, directly responsible for misery and the Brazilian social catastrophe. Education that “not being the maker of everything is a fundamental factor in the reinvention of the world.” And, as Freire emphasizes (1993, p. 14): As a process of knowledge, political formation, ethical manifestation, search for beauty (…) it is an indispensable practice of human beings (men and women) and specific of them in History as a movement, as a struggle. History as a possibility does not dispense with the controversy, the conflicts that in themselves would already engender the need for education. History as a possibility rejects the “end of history” and the mechanical‐positive‐ linear understanding (which thinks the future as an inexorable process), ­implying a different path for the understanding of education. In this respect, the following words of Freire (1993, p. 97) are enlightening: The overcoming of the mechanistic understanding of History, for another which, dialectically perceiving the relations between consciousness and

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

world, necessarily implies a new way of understanding History. History as a possibility. This intelligence of History, which rules out a predetermined future, does not, however, deny the role of the conditioning factors to  which we are subjected. In rejecting History as a game of certain ­destinies, as a given object, by opposing the future as inexorable, History as a ­possibility recognizes the importance of decision as an act that implies rupture, the importance of consciousness and subjectivity, of critical intervention of human beings in the reconstruction of the world. That would mean, in Freire’s words, “to put the human‐social being at the center of our concerns.” This approach reinforces the importance of intersubjectivity in history and the decisive contribution of education in the search for a new rationality marked by social solidarity, ethics, minimization of inequalities, individual and group choices, respect for differences. New rationality that reiterates history as a possibility of the new, repeals the priority role of the economic and reinstates existential, common, and everyday problems at the center of social, political, cultural, and also economic actions. The history and the political education of the twenty‐first century need to know (even more) about Paulo Freire. Not as a single and isolated author, but rather connected with so many other thinkers as we sought to show. We can find, at the bases and connections of his works, certain indicative responses for possible solutions to the paradigm crises, including in the fields of education and pedagogy. After all, in our view, the education as a practice of freedom, the construction of pedagogies of the oppressed, the cultural action for liberation and social change, the rights of the popular classes for the knowledge and the construction of critical consciousness, the work as a principle of progressive education, the education of the question (of the problem and of the research), the constant search for dialogue and autonomy, the history as a possibility of conquest of the viable novel (based on denunciation and of the announcement), the democracy and the ethics as the foundation of cognitive justice, the respect for the differences of scientific knowledge and popular knowledge (but not the superiority of the former), the indignation against social injustices and inequalities, the hope as the light of the education of present and future time, among others, ideals that support Paulo Freire’s thought, will continue to institute and prospect relevant political‐pedagogical paradigms.

Notes 1 Educação e atualidade brasileira, Paulo Freire’s thesis for his entry at the

University of Recife in 1959, which remained in the original form (mimeographed) until 2001, when it was published by Cortez. For the present work, we used the original version (Freire, 2001 [1959]). 2 The ISEB was created in the early 1950s when the state “officialized” the nationalism as an ideology of the developmentalist nationalism. The main Brazilian intellectuals of the “progressive” currents participated in the ISEB. Among others, we can highlight Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Hélio Jaguaribe, and Anísio Teixeira, who influenced the initial construction of Paulo Freire’s “thought in action.”

353

354

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

3 This report was published in Brazil as a book titled Educação: um tesouro a

descobrir by Cortez/UNESCO (Delors et al., 1998).

4 The IDAC brought together various exiled Brazilian and Latin American

activists and intellectuals. This institute was another example of teamwork that has always characterized Paulo Freire’s trajectory. From the Serviço de Extensão Cultural (SEC) of the University of Recife (beginning of the 1960s) to the Secretaria Municipal de Educação of São Paulo (late 1980s and early 1990s), in all phases of his trajectory, collective work defined the praxis of Paulo Freire. 5 All the quotations transcribed here have been translated freely, from the originals in the Brazilian Portuguese language, especially for this publication. 6 In Brazil, we find two major branches of populism in the 1960s: a more progressive/reformist and a more conservative one, both manipulators. Considering all its ambiguities and contradictions, among the “progressives,” we can highlight the populisms led by Goulart, Arraes, and Brizola, and among the conservatives, Adhemar de Barros and Carlos Lacerda. The populisms did not include, among their virtues, political coherence and homogeneity. On the contrary, they have always been synonymous of contradiction, incoherence, and multiple divisions (both right and left). 7 We know about Freire’s tribute to some of the main Brazilian progressive educators such as Fernando Azevedo and Anísio Teixeira. On the other hand, Brazilian progressive education is indebted to John Dewey’s propositions. As one of the striking influencers of progressive education, Dewey advocated a practical education, solving “living” problems through the past experiences of his students, an education against the memorization/transmission of knowledge that is ready and made by others. The original influence of Dewey, via Anísio Teixeira, is one of the foundations of Freire’s pedagogical proposals. 8 It is important to remember, with Gramsci (1982), that hegemonic relations are essentially pedagogical relations. 9 In Pedagogia do Oprimido (1984b, p. 37), Freire reminds us of Hegel, referring to “seigniorial consciousness” and “servile consciousness.” The former would be independent and would have the nature “to be for itself.” The latter would be dependent, “living especially for the other.” 10 The Human Sciences and Philosophy (1978) by Lucien Goldmann, and History and Class Consciousness ‐ Studies in Marxist Dialetics (1968) by Georg Lukács. 11 For Gramsci (1982, 1984), the struggle in the field of consciousness is as important as the struggle in the field of economics. In other words, the struggles in the territory of the “superstructure” effectively contribute to the construction of a “counterhegemony” of the subordinates. In fact, the Italian politician defends a triple way for such a construction: the investment in the “crisis of hegemony/ crisis of authority”; the “position war” and the “action of the intellectuals.”

References Cabral, Amílcar. (1976). Unidade e luta [Mimeo]. Delors, J., et al. (1996). Learning: The treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty‐first Century (highlights). Paris: UNESCO.

Bases and Connections of Paulo Freire’s “Thought in Action”

Delors, J., et al. (1998). Educação: Um tesouro a descobrir (Guilherme João de Freitas Teixeira, Trans.). Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty‐first Century (highlights). São Paulo: Cortez;. Brasília: MEC/UNESCO. Dewey, J. (1971). Experiência e educação (Anísio Teixeira, Trans.). Rio de Janeiro: Companhia Editora Nacional. Freire, P. (1979). Educação e mudança. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1980a). Conscientização. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1980b). Cartas à Guiné‐Bissau. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1982). A importância do ato de ler. São Paulo: Cortez/Associados. Freire, P. (1984a). Educação como prática da liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1984b). Pedagogia do oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1984c). Ação cultural para a liberdade e outros escritos. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1991). Educação na cidade. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogia da esperança. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (1993). Política e educação. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogia da autonomia. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (2001 [1959]). Educação e atualidade brasileira. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P., et al. (1980). Vivendo e aprendendo. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Freire, P., et al. (1982). Sobre educação: Vol. 1. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., et al. (1984). Sobre Educação: Vol. 2. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., et al. (1985a). Pedagogia: Diálogo e conflito. São Paulo: Cortez/Associados. Freire, P., et al. (1985b). Por uma pedagogia da pergunta. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., et al. (1986). Essa escola chamada vida. São Paulo: Ática. Freire, P., et al. (1987a). Medo e ousadia: O cotidiano do professor. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., et al. (1987b). Aprendendo com a própria história. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P., et al. (1988). Na escola que fazemos. Rio de Janeiro: Vozes. Goldmann, L. (1978). The human sciences and philosophy. London: Routledge. Gramsci, A. (1982). Os intelectuais e a organização da cultura. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Gramsci, A. (1984). Concepção dialética da história. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Hegel, G. (1966). Fenomenologia del espiritu. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econômica. Ianni, O. (1968). Colapso do populismo no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Jaspers, K. (1958). Razão e anti‐razão do nosso tempo. Rio de Janeiro: ISEB. Lukács, G. (1968). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Cambridge: MIT Press. Maritain, J. (1966). Rumos da educação. Rio de Janeiro: Agir. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1982). A ideologia alemã. São Paulo: Cortez. Morin, E. (2000). Os sete saberes necessários à educação do futuro. São Paulo: Cortez Brasília: UNESCO. Paiva, V. (1980). Paulo Freire e o nacionalismo‐desenvolvimentista. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. Rossi, W. (1982). Pedagogia do trabalho: Caminhos da educação socialista. São Paulo: Moraes.

355

356

Afonso Celso Scocuglia

Scocuglia, A. C. (2013). A teoria só tem utilidade se melhorar a prática educativa: As propostas de Paulo Freire. Rio de Janeiro: De Petrus et Alii Editora. Scocuglia, A. C. (2015). A história das ideias de Paulo Freire e a atual crise de paradigmas. João Pessoa: Editora da UFPB/ABEU. Teixeira, A. (1966). Educação no Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Nacional. Torres, C. A. (1979). Diálogo com Paulo Freire. São Paulo: Loyola. Vaz, Henrique de Lima et al. (1962). Cristianismo, hoje. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UNE.

357

Part IV Class, Gender, Race, Religion, the State, and a “Missing Chapter” in Freire’s Oeuvre

359

19 Paulo Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education Michael W. Apple

Freire, Dialogue, and Praxis What does it mean to take our responsibilities seriously? How do we ground ourselves in opposition to the oppressive realities that affect so many people in our societies? How do we learn from each other about varied economic, political, and cultural struggles that are crucial for social transformation—and about viewing the world in which we live and the place of educational movements in it ­differently? What perspectives do we need to do this and to whom should we turn to get and build these resources? These questions are intimately related to the issue of the politics of knowledge and the politics of who can legitimately count as knowers. To bring these points home, I focus on one of the most important figures in the history of critical education, Paulo Freire. I employ his example to do three things: (a) raise issues about the ways in which upwardly mobile class fractions within the academy may unfortunately depoliticize his efforts and also may employ his work as a class conversion strategy; (b) connect his work to the emerging literature on postcolonialism, globalization, and critical pedagogy that provides answers to these questions and (c) connect his work to a detailing of a number of crucial tasks in which critical educators need to engage to counter these depoliticizing tendencies and to take account of new critical perspectives. Focusing on Freire is crucial here. Of course, in every nation in the world, there have been and are people whose lives are dedicated to answering and acting upon the questions I raised. There are those who recognize that education is not a neutral activity, that it is intimately connected to multiple relations of exploitation, domination, and subordination—and very importantly to struggles to deconstruct and reconstruct these relations. In every nation in the world, there are those people who have devoted their lives to creating new visions of educational possibilities and new practices that embody them. Yet, some individuals are able to generate insights that are so powerful, so challenging, so compelling, that they become teachers (and I use this word with the utmost respect) of hundreds, even thousands, of other people not only in their own nations but in many others.

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

360

Michael W. Apple

I know of no one more powerful in this regard than Paulo Freire. My use of the present tense (the word “know”) here shows that even after all these years how difficult it still is for me to think of him in the past. For he was that rarity— “teacher and friend.” He was important to all of the many people in so many countries who recognize that our task is to “name the world,” to collectively build an education that is both counterhegemonic and is part of the larger ­terrain of struggle over what counts as literacy, who should control it, and how critical literacy (what he called conscientization) was connected to real ­struggles by real people in real relations in real communities. For him, an education that was not connected to the struggles for emancipation and against exploitation was not worthy of the label “education” (Freire, 1970). In so many ways, he also and profoundly embodied the values of care, love, and solidarity that I and many others have argued are so very important in an education that is worthy of its name (see Apple, 2013; Darder, 2002; Lynch, Baker, & Lyons, 2009; Torres, 2014). Yet, I do not want to simplify either Paulo or my complex relationship to him. Of course, as you know he was the author of a number of absolutely crucial theoretical books that served as the focal point of a number of generations of critical educational work. In fact, he had completed a new volume, The Pedagogy of Autonomy (Freire, 1997) that was published in the months before he died and was in the middle of working on another during that period of time. Of course, as you also know, he suffered greatly, as so many, many people in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and elsewhere did during a time of horrible repression. He also risked trying to put his ideas into practice by serving as the secretary of education of the city of Sao Paulo later in his career. He became something of a lightning rod for all of the social criticism by rightists during that period. And because of this, the social and educational activists that he brought into the ministry actually had more freedom than might otherwise have been possible. Attention was on Paulo, not as much on the attempts on the ground, so to speak, to create a more socially just education. All this must be recognized and he deserves our utmost respect for all of this. But there is something more personal that I need to say, something that speaks to why I respect him so much. As I read his material, there were places—­ sometimes entire arguments—with which I disagreed. (Indeed, there were many progressive social and educational activists and writers in Brazil and elsewhere who had similar worries). I was fortunate enough to have many conversations with him, sometimes in front of large audiences and sometimes in the privacy of a home or an office, something I detail later in this chapter. Paulo wanted to ­discuss; he made dialogue into something of an art form. However, this did not mean that he wanted to dominate. He always listened carefully to my and others’ arguments. He agreed or he disagreed. He didn’t wear a mask of congeniality. He wanted to deal with the hard questions. He fully understood that not dealing with the hard questions was an excuse to let the voices of the powerful work through you. He wanted (perhaps demanded is a better word) others to do the same. Hours would go by, even in those large public dialogues between the two of us—and I cannot remember wanting it to end. The time we spent in those large public conversations went by too fast; too much was

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

left to say. Even the audience felt the same. I cannot say this about too many other people. In the process of these public and private conversations, there can be no doubt that I changed—but so did he. His willingness to take a radical intellectual and political position in times of grave danger—when everything is conspiring against you—and yet to change his mind, to see where one might have been wrong, is the characteristic of all too few people. Whether it was expanding his concerns to include a wider array of dynamics of power involved in the politics of recognition (gender and race, as well as class) or dealing with the increasingly powerful realities of globalization, he constantly enlarged the issues on which he worked to new ideas, new terrains of struggle. Because of this, Paulo will remain in me and in so many other people—as a model of radical commitment, as a model of what one does when better arguments are given than your own, as a  model of combining theory and practice into a pedagogical/political praxis, and as a model of a fully human being. I return to this idea of radical commitment later in this chapter.

The Politics of Class Conversion Strategies But how are we to honor that legacy? In what follows, I shall not do what so many others have. I shall not use this chapter to write a complete descriptive review of Paulo’s ideas; nor shall I spend much time examining the possible contradictions found within them (see, e.g., Taylor, 1993; Weiler, 1997). This is not because I respect Paulo’s ideas less than other people who have chosen to write about what he stood for. Indeed, there are few authors for whom I have greater respect than Paulo. Instead, because so many others have written or will write reviews of his arguments, I wish to change the focus. Because I assume that many people are already familiar with the central core of his ideas, I want to extend the implications of his arguments and suggest a number of ways we can go forward if we are to take his life and work as seriously as these things deserve. For it seems to me that at this current historical conjuncture, his arguments and commitments are even more crucial than they ever have been. But, in doing so, I must distance myself from some “Freireanos.” There has been something like a Freire “industry.” Multiple books have been written on his work and influence. Article after article appears, often restating what has been said before. This is certainly not necessarily bad. Indeed, it is a mark of an act of political commitment on the part of these authors that they have consciously chosen to employ Freire’s work as a foundation for their own. Further, even though what is written by many of these authors may have been said before, each new generation of critical educators must rediscover Freire’s work anew to ­connect itself to the long history of educational struggles against exploitation and domination. Yet, I must be honest here, especially because Paulo himself insisted on speaking the truth. I have many worries about this “Freire industry.” Too many people have employed Freire as both writer and person as part of mobility strategies within the social field of the academy. As I say later on in this chapter, Bourdieu (1984) would recognize this as a set of conversion strategies in which members

361

362

Michael W. Apple

of an upwardly mobile fraction of the new middle class substitute linguistic ­activity—radical sounding words and supposed friendship and closeness to ­radical actors—for lived political action of a more substantive kind. They, thus, engage in the collection of cultural and social capital that they hope to someday convert into economic capital gained through academic advancement and ­prestige. Thus, for some individuals, getting close to Freire, using his books and language, was at least partly a strategy (in Bourdieu’s words, a conversion ­strategy) of career advancement in which being seen as part of his circle gave one legitimacy in the social field of critical education. I realize when I say this that there is a danger of overstating this claim. However, in this case I believe that Bourdieu’s analysis is useful. Status is related in complex ways to markets in social and cultural capital in academic fields (Bourdieu, 1984, 1988). And too often, members of the new middle class within the academy solve their class contradictions by writing in an elaborately abstract but seemingly “political” manner, by being seen as a member of a “critical” community of ­academics and as someone who from the outside looks as if she or he is part of the inner circle of Freire initiates; yet their political work is limited to writing political sounding words on a page. One of the major elements that gave Paulo Freire such legitimacy was not only that he focused on and wrote about a particular kind of educational/political praxis, but that he himself had engaged in the hard and disciplined (and sometimes dangerous) work of putting theory and practice together. He had actually helped build programs that were not meant to simply be rhetorical. For him, education had to be about changing society. Yet, unfortunately, some parts of the Freire “industry” have recuperated much of his work into the safe haven of the academic world. In the process of supposedly “politicizing the academic,” one of the latent effects of this has been the opposite. They have too often succeeded in largely academicizing the political. In the process, much of what gave Freire’s work its meaning—its concrete connections to lived struggles in favelas, in rural areas, among (the identifiable, not abstract or anonymous) large groups of oppressed and exploited people, and so on—is vitiated. It is not connected to social movements in which the writer herself or himself is involved (in part because the writer herself or himself is unconnected in any meaningful and organic way to large‐scale social movements). It becomes something we only write about and study. Here I must admit that I am suspicious of those individuals who have appropriated Freire’s language and name but who themselves have not been sufficiently engaged in putting such work into concrete practice. I do not want to be misunderstood here. I am not claiming in any way that there is not crucial political/intellectual value in serious academic work; nor am I taking a vulgar pragmatist position here. Indeed, like Freire himself, I believe that we must be very critical of a position that is antibook and antitheory. And like him, I “prefer knowledge that is forged and produced in the tension between practice and theory” (Freire, 1996, p. 85). Rather, I want us to take seriously the historical conjuncture in which we live. In a time when the university puts immense pressure on people to act like possessive individuals and when forms of solidarity are being fractured ideologically and materially both within the university

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

and between cultural workers at universities and other sites of struggle in “the real world,” I want us to explore the possibility that one of the uses of Freire and other radical scholar/activists among some people has been to create an illusion of political commitment while managing to make no sacrifices in one’s goal of individual advancement and prestige. I also want to claim that this strategy is made easier because of the disconnection between the persons doing the writing and the concrete historical and current struggles to put Freire’s work into practice in multiple sites, from schools, universities, and communities to unions to other oppressed groups. Yet, this disconnection is something Paulo Freire would have never wanted. He better than anyone knew both intellectually and bodily what was at stake in the struggles over literacy, culture, economy, and power. And he more than almost anyone else I knew understood that “naming the word and the world” was part of an ongoing and never‐ending struggle in which we could never be satisfied with abstract commitments. They had to be acted upon, embodied, lived. They could not be incorporated in new middle‐class conversion strategies, nor could they be consistent with the possessive individualism increasingly becoming the dominant form of subjectivity in all too many nations. It is this very issue—the transformation of subjectivity and the ways in which schooling fits into this—that concerns me here. There are very powerful ideological transformations occurring in all of our societies. They are actually part of a large‐scale “educational project”—a project paradoxically similar to what Paulo called upon us to do—to radically change common sense. In this case, however, these ideological transformations are aimed in directions exactly the opposite of what Freire stood for. Whereas Freire’s aim was to “reawaken” the individual and collective sensibilities of oppressed people—and of those people who “unconsciously” occupied positions of power as well (see, Swalwell, 2013)—through the processes of critical literacy, there is a new and quite powerful dynamic at work today. Rather than “naming the word and the world” as a site of structures of exploitation and domination and of self‐conscious struggles to alter it, we are to embrace this new world. Progressive social criticism and literacy practices based on such criticism are to be replaced by what Gramsci would have called “active consent.” In this social and pedagogic project, we are to be convinced that there are no realistic alternatives to the neoliberal and neoconservative projects and outlooks that circulate so widely. In the process, such active consent will make it much harder for emancipatory educational projects such as those articulated by Freire to go on or even to seem sensible to those who are oppressed. Freire himself clearly saw the dangers associated with the development and widespread acceptance of neoliberal beliefs and practices. In his book, Letters to Cristina (Freire, 1996), he commented on what he saw happening all around him. He quoted the following statement that he originally had written in his “letters”: The dominant class, deaf to the need for a critical reading of the world, insists on the purely technical training of the working class, training with which that class should reproduce itself as such. Progressive ideology, however, cannot separate technical training from political preparation, just as it cannot separate the practice of reading the world from reading discourse. (p. 83)

363

364

Michael W. Apple

He then added a commentary on it based on what was happening in the 1990s, a situation he called “reactionary postmodernism.” Perhaps never before has the dominant class felt so free in exercising their manipulative practice. Reactionary postmodernity has had success in proclaiming the disappearance of ideologies and the emergence of a new history without social classes, therefore without antagonistic interests, without class struggle. They preach that there is no need to continue to speak about dreams, utopia, or social justice … [The] postmodern reactionary … suggests in his pragmatic discourse that it is now the duty of capitalism to create a special ethics based on the production of equal players or almost equal players. Large questions are no longer political, religious, or ideological. They are ethical in a “healthy” capitalist sense of ethics. (p. 84) For Freire, then, the equality promised by “we are all consumers”—and its accompanying depoliticization and its creation of the possessive individual— needs to be rejected. A pedagogy that focuses on production and consumption “without any preoccupation about what we are producing, who it benefits, and who it hurts” is certainly not a critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996, p. 84). But in saying this, he was not an apologist for the past. For him, the task was clear. We need to recognize the mistakes that progressive forces may have made in the past. By this he meant that such things as dogmatic and overly aggressive discourse, mechanistic proposals and analysis, an inflexible and teleological sense of history that removed or ignored historical specificity and human agency, pedagogies that limited “the marginalized classes’ universe or their epistemological curiosity about objects that have been depoliticized”—all of this was to be critically and radically examined. Yet, at the same time as we were to question what we have too often taken for granted, we must not let ourselves become enchanted by the present neoliberal ideology—“an ideology of privatization that never speaks about costs, the costs are always absorbed by the working class” (Freire, 1996, pp. 84–85). Thus, his own focus on class was clearly present. Freire’s position raises crucial questions about critical pedagogic work. How do we interrupt common sense? How do we create pedagogies that are deeply connected to the daily realities of people’s lives and to struggles to overcome exploitation and domination in a time when the right has already understood how such connections might be creatively (albeit manipulatively) made? Who is this “we” in the first place? How do we avoid the possible arrogance of a position that assumes that “we” know the best and only paths to emancipation and we will bring it to “you” (see, e.g., Luke & Gore, 1992; Weiler, 1997)? Thus, he and others rightly had to respond criticisms of what it meant to be fully committed to a critical and emancipatory education. I do not necessarily agree with all of the criticisms of Freire and of “critical pedagogy” in general. Although some of them are accurate and need to be taken very seriously, a number of them seem not to be based in a close reading of Freire himself or are themselves based on romanticized visions of teaching in which students necessarily have all of the resources within themselves that will somehow

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

emerge with the “correct” techniques of “self‐disclosure.” Many of the people making such claims have never spent significant amounts of time in schools, yet they assume that they can easily take pedagogies from a different context (e.g., working with adults) and simply reproduce them in schools. Not only is this arrogant and naive, but it is disrespectful of elementary and secondary teachers’ skills. Yet the questions that I raised previously are still important and they are of course quite difficult. In addition, our answers to them may be partial, flawed, contradictory, or temporary. Yet, only by asking the hard questions—as Paulo did—can we continue the never‐ending struggle of what Raymond Williams (someone whose theoretical work was independent of but had major parallels to Freire’s work) so poetically called “the long revolution” (Williams, 1961; see also Smith, 2008). Although these questions are difficult, they do have immense theoretical and practical implications. We should not pretend that they can be answered by one person, although Paulo Freire comes as close as anyone in our time to providing the outlines of answers to many of them. However, we do have paths to take to develop important partial answers—many of which have clear similarities to Freire’s emphases—to a number of the issues embedded in these questions. Some of these answers can be found in the work of “scholar/activists” in critical curriculum studies and critical pedagogy (see, e.g., Apple, Au, & Gandin, 2009; Au, 2011; Gottesman, 2016) and in the rapidly growing emphases on globalization, postcolonialism, and multiple emphases in critical pedagogy in education. It is to this that I want to turn.

Education and Power Over the past three decades many people, including myself, have been dealing with a number of “simple” questions, many of which were visible in my discussion of Freire in the first part of this chapter. We have been deeply concerned about the relationship between culture and power, about the relationship among the economic, political, and cultural spheres (see Apple & Weis, 1983). We have been equally concerned about the multiple and contradictory dynamics of power and social movements that make education such a site of conflict and struggle, about schools as possible sites of counterhegemonic knowledge production and identity formation, and about what all this means for educational work. In essence, we have been trying to answer a question that was put so clearly in the United States by radical educator George Counts (1932) when he asked: “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?” As I have shown elsewhere (Apple, 2013), Counts was a person of his time and the ways he both asked and answered this question were a bit naïve. But the tradition of radically interrogating schools and other pedagogic sites, of asking who benefits from their dominant forms of curricula, teaching, evaluation, and policy, of arguing about what they might do differently, and of asking searching questions of what would have to change in order for this to happen—all of this is what has worked through me and a considerable number of other people. We stand on the shoulders of many others, including Paulo Freire, who have taken

365

366

Michael W. Apple

such issues seriously; and in a time of neoliberal attacks with their ensuing loss of collective memory, we hope to have contributed to the recovery of the collective memory of this tradition and to pushing it further along conceptually, historically, empirically, and practically. Of course, no author does this by herself or himself. As Freire recognized, this is a collective enterprise. And no one who takes these questions seriously can answer them fully or without contradictions or even wrong turns or mistakes. As a collective project, it is one in which we not only stand on the shoulders of those whose work we draw upon critically but also one in which thoughtful criticism of our work is essential to progress. Compelling arguments cannot be built unless they are subjected to the light of others’ thoughtful analyses of the strengths and limits of our claims. I want to do some of that self‐reflective analysis here. Thus, my arguments in the rest of this chapter are meant to be just as powerful a reminder to me as they are to the reader of Freire and others. One of the guiding questions within the field of education is a deceptively simple one: What knowledge is of most worth? Over the past four decades, an extensive tradition has grown around a restatement of that question. Rather than “What knowledge is of most worth?” the question has been reframed in a way that Freire recognized as crucial to a transformative education. It has become “Whose knowledge is of most worth? (Apple, 2004, 2014, 1996). There are dangers associated with such a move, of course, including impulses toward reductionism and essentialism. These dangers arise when we assume, as some people have, that there is always a one‐to‐one correspondence between any knowledge that is seen as “legitimate” or “official” and dominant groups’ understanding of the world. This is too simplistic, because official knowledge is often the result of struggles and compromises and at times can represent crucial victories, not only defeats, by subaltern groups (Apple, 2014; Apple & Buras, 2006). However, the transformation of the question has led to immense progress in our understanding of the cultural politics of education in general and of the relations among educational policies, curricula, teaching, evaluation, and differential power. For example, often building on Freire’s work in Brazil and elsewhere, there has been an accompanying internationalization of the issues involved. Thus, issues of the cultural assemblages associated with empire and previous and current imperial projects have become more visible. Hence, for example, there has been an increasing recognition that critical education must turn to issues of the global, of the colonial imagination, and to postcolonial approaches in order to come to grips with the complex and at times contradictory synchronic and diachronic relations between knowledge and power, between the state and education, and between civil society and the political imaginary. For instance, under the influences of a variety of critical works on the history of literacy and on the politics of popular culture (Raymond Williams’s work was crucial historically here. See Williams, 1961, 1977; see also Apple, 2004), as in a number of other fields it became ever clearer to those of us in education that the very notion of the canon of “official knowledge” had much of its history in a conscious attempt to “civilize” both the working class and the “natives” of an expanding empire (Apple, 2014). The very idea of teaching the “Other” was a significant change, of course. For many years in Europe and Latin America, for example, the fear of working‐class and “peasant” literacy was very visible. Indeed, it is to

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

Freire’s credit that he recognized how threatening critical literacy among the oppressed would be to the ruling elite. This will be more than a little familiar to those with an interest in the history of the relationship among books, literacy, and popular movements. Books themselves, and one’s ability to read them, have been inherently caught up in cultural politics. Take the case of Voltaire, that leader of the Enlightenment who so wanted to become a member of the nobility. For him, the Enlightenment should begin with the “grands.” Only when it had captured the hearts and minds of society’s commanding heights could it concern itself with the masses below. But, for Voltaire and many of his followers, one caution should be taken very seriously. One should take care to prevent the masses from learning to read (Darnton, 1982, p. 130). This of course was reinscribed in often murderous ways in the prohibitions against teaching enslaved peoples how to read (although there is new ­historical evidence that suggests that many enslaved people who were brought to the Americas were Muslim and may already have been literate in Arabic). Such changes in how education and literacy were thought about did not simply happen accidentally. They were (and are) the results of struggles over recognition, over who has the right to be called a person, over what it means to be educated, over what counts as official or legitimate knowledge, and over who has the authority to speak to these issues (Apple, 2014; Mills, 1997). Indeed as Paulo Freire demonstrated through his writing and his entire life (see Darder, 2002; Freire, 1970; Torres, 2014), these are essential struggles that must be continued, expanded, especially in times of neoliberal and neoconservative assaults on the economic, political, and cultural lives of millions of people throughout the world (Freire, 1996). These struggles need to be thought about using a range of critical tools, among them analyses based on theories of the state, of globalization, of the postcolonial, and so much more. But none of this is or will be easy. In fact, our work may be filled with contradictions. Take for instance the recent (and largely justifiable) attention being given to issues of globalization and postcolonialism in critical education, to which I turn in my next section.

Globalization, Postcolonialism, and Education At the outset, let me be honest. Although I personally have gone into considerably more detail about how we might think about the relationship between globalization and social and educational transformation (see Apple, 2010), even with the immense gains made by newer theories and approaches, I no longer have any idea what the words globalization and postcolonial mean. They have become sliding signifiers, concepts with such a multiplicity of meanings that their actual meaning in any given context can be determined only by their use. As Wittgenstein (1963) and others reminded us, language can be employed to do an impressive array of things. It can be used to describe, illuminate, control, legitimate, mobilize, and many other things. The language of postcolonialism(s) (the plural is important), for example, has many uses. However, all too often it has become something of a “ceremonial slogan,” a word that is publicly offered so that the reader may recognize that the author is au courant in the latest linguistic forms. Its employment by  an author here is largely part of something I noted earlier, the conversion

367

368

Michael W. Apple

s­trategies so well captured by Bourdieu in Distinction (1984) and Homo Academicus (1988). Linguistic and cultural capital are performed publicly to gain mobility within the social field of the academy. In my most cynical moments, I worry that this is at times all too dominant within the largely white academy. But, of course, the postcolonial experience(s) (and again the plural is important) and the theories of globalization that have been dialectically related to them are also powerful ways of critically engaging with the politics of empire and with the ways in which culture, economy, and politics all interact globally and locally in complex and overdetermined ways. Indeed, the very notions of postcolonialism and globalization “can be thought of as a site of dialogic encounter that pushes us to examine center/periphery relations and conditions with specificity, wherever we may find them” (Dimitriadis & McCarthy, 2001, p. 10). It is this very focus on “dialogic encounters” that creates connections between the postcolonial imagination and Freire’s work (Torres, 2009). As they have influenced critical educational efforts, some of the core politics behind postcolonial positions are summarized well by Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) when they state that “The work of the postcolonial imagination subverts extant power relations, questions authority, and destabilizes received traditions of identity” (p. 10; see also Bhabha, 1994; Spivak, 1988). Educators interested in globalization, in the neoliberal depredations that are so powerful in our daily lives, and in postcolonial positions have largely taken them to mean the following. They imply a conscious process of repositioning, of “turning the world upside down” (Young, 2003, p. 2). They mean that the world is seen relationally—as being made up of relations of dominance and subordination and of movements, cultures, and identities that seek to interrupt these relations. They also mean that if you are someone who has been excluded by the “West’s” dominant voices geographically, economically, politically, and/or culturally or you are inside the West but not really part of it, then “postcolonialism offers you a way of seeing things differently, a language and a politics in which your interests come first, not last” (p. 2). Some of the best work in the field of education mirrors Robert Young’s more general claim that postcolonialism and the global sensitivities that accompany it speak to a politics and a “philosophy of activism” that involve contesting these disparities. It extends the anticolonial struggles that have such a long history and asserts ways of acting that challenge “Western” ways of interpreting the world (p. 4). This is best stated by Young (2003) in the following two quotations: Above all, postcolonialism seeks to intervene, to force its alternative knowledges into the power structures of the west as well as the non‐west. It seeks to change the way people think, the way they behave, to produce a more just and equitable relation between different people of the world. (p. 7) and Postcolonialism … is a general name for those insurgent knowledges that come from the subaltern, the dispossessed, and seek to change the terms under which we all live. (p. 20)

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

Here the struggle over knowledge from below is decidedly meant to “transform society.” Of course, what Young is saying here has clear resonances with Freire’s commitments. And what Young says about postcolonialism is equally true about theories of globalization and about the entire tradition of critical educational scholarship and activism. These reminders about insurgent knowledges however need to be connected relationally to something outside themselves.

Knowledge from Below If one of the most powerful insights of the literature in critical pedagogy and in the growing turn toward theories of globalization and postcolonial perspectives is the valorization of knowledge from below (Torres, 2009), is this sufficient? We know that the issue is not whether “the subaltern speak,” but whether they are listened to (Apple & Buras, 2006; Spivak, 1988). Yet this too can be largely a rhetorical claim unless it gets its hands dirty with the material realities faced by all too many subaltern peoples. A focus within the critical community(ies) on “knowledge and voices from below” has at times bordered on what Whitty called “romantic possibilitarianism” (Whitty, 1974). It is all so cultural that it runs the risk of evacuating the gritty materialities of daily lives and of economic relations. Yet with its brutally honest picture of what life is like for millions, even billions of people who live (exist is a much better word), on the edge, Mike Davis’ book, Planet of Slums (2006), demonstrates in no uncertain terms that without a serious recognition of ways in which the conjunctural specifics of the effects of global capital are transforming the landscape about which we sometimes too abstractly theorize, we shall be unable to understand why people act in the ways they do in such situations. Work such as Davis goes a long way toward correcting the overemphasis on the discursive that so often plagues parts of postcolonial and critical pedagogical literature in education and elsewhere. And many of us need to be constantly reminded of the necessity to ground our work in a much more thorough understanding of the realities the oppressed face every day. As Davis (2006) reminds us, words that we often take as nouns—such as food, housing, jobs, and education—are best thought of as verbs. They require constant effort and constant struggle. Thinking of reality in this way restores agency to people who we often see as simply passive in the face of forces of exploitation and domination (Tarlau, 2015). Once again, Freire so cogently recognized this, reminding us constantly that any work in education that is not grounded in these realities may turn out to be one more act of colonization. Freire’s refusal to ignore these gritty materialities that served as the foundation of both commonsense and an emerging critical consciousness is among his most important recognitions. It is very visible in the fact that his work is fundamental to the development of systemwide critical education in major sites throughout Brazil and elsewhere. For example, Luis Armando Gandin and I analyze the transformative educational policies and practices in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It is an example of

369

370

Michael W. Apple

how much the Global North has to learn from the Global South. As we demonstrate, critical social and educational policies and practices can indeed be grounded in these gritty material realities in lasting ways. The very fact that much of what has been going on in Porto Alegre is based in Paulo Freire’s arguments again says something crucial about the lasting effects of his intellectual and political efforts (see Apple, Gandin, Liu, Meshulam, & Schirmer, 2018; see also Tarlau, 2015).

The Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist As I have indicated, and as the example of Porto Alegre demonstrates, we still have much to learn—and relearn—from Freire. Yet, our task is not simply to be followers of Freire—or of any one person for that matter. As I argue in Can Education Change Society?, there is a wide range of radical historical figures who have played a large part in the development of counterhegemonic movements in education in the United States and elsewhere. Thus, expanding the range of people on whose shoulders we stand and who labored so long to keep the vast river of critical democracy alive in education is crucial (see Horton, 1990; Horton & Freire, 1990; see also Apple & Au, 2014). We need to ground our work in the memory both of the people and of the questions they asked—and when necessary go beyond them. But the work of expanding the range of people from whom we draw must never lead us to neglect the debt we owe to Freire. Perhaps the best way to do this is to connect Freire’s contribution to modeling the role and practice of living as a critical scholar/ activist. Here I am reminded of the radical sociologist Michael Burawoy’s arguments for a critical sociology. As he says, a critical sociology is always grounded in two key questions: (a) Sociology for whom? and (b) Sociology for what? (Burawoy, 2005). The first asks us to think about repositioning ourselves so that we see the world through the eyes of the dispossessed. The second asks us to connect our work to the complex issues surrounding a society’s moral compass, its means and ends. For many people, their original impulses toward critical theoretical and political work in education were fueled by a passion for social justice, economic equality, human rights, sustainable environments, an education that is worthy of its name—in short a better world. Yet, this is increasingly difficult to maintain in the situation in which so many of us find ourselves. Ideologically and politically much has changed. The early years of the twenty‐first century have brought us unfettered capitalism that fuels market tyrannies and massive inequalities on a truly global scale (Davis, 2006). Continuing a long contested history (Foner, 1998), “democracy” is resurgent at the same time, but it all too often becomes a thin veil for the interests of the globally and locally powerful and for disenfranchisement, mendacity, and national and international violence (Burawoy, 2005, p. 260). The rhetoric of freedom and equality may have intensified, but there is unassailable evidence that there is ever deepening exploitation, domination, and inequality and that earlier gains in

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

education, economic security, civil rights, and more are either being washed away or are under severe threat. The religion of the market (and it does function like a religion, because it does not seem to be amenable to empirical critiques) coupled with very different visions of what the state can and should do can be summarized in one word—neoliberalism (Burawoy, 2005), although we know that no one term can actually totally encompass the forms of dominance and subordination that have such long histories in so many regions of the world. At the same time, in the social field of power called the academy—with its own hierarchies and disciplinary (and disciplining) techniques, the pursuit of academic credentials, bureaucratic and institutional rankings, tenure files, indeed the entire panoply of normalizing pressures surrounding institutions and careers—all of this seeks to ensure that we all think and act “correctly.” Yet, the original impulse is never quite entirely vanquished (Burawoy, 2005). As Freire demonstrated constantly, the spirit that animates critical work can never be totally subjected to rationalizing logics and processes. Try as the powerful might, it will not be extinguished—and it certainly remains alive in a good deal of the work in critical pedagogy. Having said this—and having sincerely meant it—I need to be honest here as well. For me, some of the literature on “critical pedagogy,” a literature that was grounded in people such as Paulo Freire and that originally developed as a response to the questions with which I began this chapter, is a vexed one. Like the concepts of globalization and postcolonialism, it too now suffers from a surfeit of meanings. It can mean anything from being responsive to one’s students on the one hand to powerfully reflexive forms of content and processes that radically challenge existing relations of exploitation and domination on the other. And just like some of the literature on postcolonialism, the best parts of the writings on critical pedagogy are crucial challenges to our accepted ways of doing education. But once again, there are portions of the literature in critical pedagogy that may also represent elements of conversion strategies by new middle‐class actors who are seeking to carve out paths of mobility within the academy. The function of such (often disembodied) writing at times is to solve the personal crisis brought about by the “contradictory class location” (Wright, 1985) of academics who wish to portray themselves as politically engaged; but almost all of their political engagement is textual. Thus, unlike Freire, their theories are (if you will forgive the use of a masculinist word) needlessly impenetrable, and the very difficult questions surrounding life in real institutions—and of what we should actually teach, how we should teach it, and how it should be evaluated—are seen as forms of “pollution,” too pedestrian to deal with. This can degenerate into elitism, masquerading as radical theory. But as Freire and others have recognized repeatedly, serious theory about curriculum and pedagogy, and about education inside and outside of schools, needs to be developed in relation to its object. Indeed, this is not only a political imperative but an epistemological one as well. The development of critical theoretical resources is best done when it is dialectically and intimately connected to actual movements and struggles (Apple, 2006; Apple et al., 2003).

371

372

Michael W. Apple

Once again, what Michael Burawoy has called “organic public sociology” provides key elements of how we might think about ways of dealing with this here. In his words, but partly echoing Gramsci as well, in this view the critical sociologist: … works in close connection with a visible, thick, active, local, and often counter‐public. [She or he works] with a labor movement, neighborhood association, communities of faith, immigrant rights groups, human rights organizations. Between the public sociologist and a public is a dialogue, a process of mutual education… The project of such [organic] public sociologies is to make visible the invisible, to make the private public, to validate these organic connections as part of our sociological life. (Burawoy, 2005, p. 265) This act of becoming (and this is a project, for one is never finished, always becoming) a critical scholar/activist is a complex one. Because of this, let me extend my earlier remarks about the role of critical research in education. My points here are tentative and certainly not exhaustive. But they are meant to begin a dialogue over just what it is that “we” should do. In doing so, the memory of Paulo Freire is once again on my mind. In general, there are nine tasks in which critical analysis (and the critical analyst) in education must engage (Apple, 2010, 2013; Apple et al., 2018). 1) It must “bear witness to negativity.” That is, one of its primary functions is to illuminate the ways in which educational policy and practice are connected to the relations of exploitation and domination—and to struggles against such relations—in the larger society. 2) In engaging in such critical analyses, it also must point to contradictions and to spaces of possible action. Thus, its aim is to critically examine current realities with a conceptual/political framework that emphasizes the spaces in which more progressive and counter‐hegemonic actions can, or do, go on. Documenting these spaces and the agentic possibilities and actions that already exist must be done at the level of individual experience and at the institutional level (see, e.g., Dillabough & Kennelly, 2010). This is an absolutely crucial step, because otherwise our research can simply lead to cynicism or despair. Freire provides much of the epistemological as well political foundations for this. 3) At times, this also requires a broadening of what counts as “research.” Here I mean acting as critical “secretaries” to those groups of people and social movements who are now engaged in challenging existing relations of unequal power or in what elsewhere has been called “nonreformist reforms,” a term that has a long history in critical sociology and critical educational studies (Apple, 2012). This is exactly the task that was taken on in Freire’s descriptions of his pedagogic work with oppressed people in Brazil, in the thick descriptions of critically democratic school practices in Democratic Schools (Apple & Beane, 2007; see also Gutstein, 2006; Watson, 2012) and in the critically supportive descriptions of the transformative reforms such as the citizen

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

school and participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil (see also Apple et al., 2003, 2009, 2018; Apple, Ball, & Gandin, 2010). When accompanied by truly cooperative work with those individuals and groups who are building successful programs, institutions, and alternatives, this increases the power of such descriptions. Freire’s descriptions of his own practice provide rich sources for this as well. 4) When Gramsci (1971) argued that one of the tasks of a truly counterhegemonic education was not to throw out “elite knowledge” but to reconstruct its form and content so that it served genuinely progressive social needs, he provided a key to another role “organic” and “public” intellectuals might play. Thus, we should not be engaged in a process of what might be called “intellectual suicide.” That is, there are serious intellectual (and pedagogic) skills in dealing with the histories and debates surrounding the epistemological, political, and educational issues involved in justifying what counts as important knowledge and what counts as an effective and socially just education. These are not simple and inconsequential issues and the practical and intellectual/ political skills of dealing with them have been well developed. However, they can atrophy if they are not used. We can give back these skills by employing them to assist communities in thinking about this, learning from them, and engaging in the mutually pedagogic dialogues that enable decisions to be made in terms of both the short‐term and long‐term interests of dispossessed peoples (see Borg & Mayo, 2007; Burawoy, 2005; Freire, 1970). This was of course a key element in Freire’s intellectual, political, and practical efforts. His respect for the critical intellectual possibilities within oppressed communities was striking. 5) In the process, critical work has the task of keeping the multiple traditions of radical and progressive work alive (see Apple et al., 2009, 2010). In the face of organized attacks on the “collective memories” of difference and on critical social movements, attacks that make it increasingly difficult to retain academic and social legitimacy for multiple critical approaches that have proven so valuable in countering dominant narratives and relations, it is absolutely crucial that these traditions be kept alive, renewed, and when necessary criticized for their conceptual, empirical, historical, and political silences or limitations. This involves being cautious of reductionism and essentialism and asks us to pay attention to what Fraser has called both the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition (Fraser, 1997; see also Anyon et al., 2009; Lynch et al., 2009). This includes not only keeping theoretical, empirical, historical, and political traditions alive but, very importantly, extending and (supportively) criticizing them. And it also involves keeping alive the dreams, utopian visions, and “nonreformist reforms” that are so much a part of these radical traditions (Apple, 2012; Jacoby, 2005; Teitelbaum, 1993). “Purity” should not be our goal. Instead, we should be guided by an openness to expanding the critical understandings we need to more fully cope with the range of dynamics that are so destructive in our societies. If the Right has been so successful in part because it has been willing to build alliances across some of its substantive differences (Apple, 2006), so too should the Left.

373

374

Michael W. Apple

6) Keeping such traditions alive and also supportively criticizing them when they are not adequate to deal with current realities cannot be done unless we ask “For whom are we keeping them alive?” and “How and in what form are they to be made available?” All of the things I have mentioned in this taxonomy of tasks require the relearning or development and use of varied or new skills of working at many levels with multiple groups. Thus, journalistic and media skills, academic and popular skills, and the ability to speak to very different audiences are increasingly crucial (Apple, 2006; Boler, 2008). This requires us to learn how to speak in different registers and to say important things in ways that do not require that the audience or reader do all of the work. It should go without saying that these skills and values should be deeply present in one’s teaching as well. Here too, Freire’s ability to blend together complex political/epistemological analyses with connections to the daily lives of oppressed people—and at the same time open a space for dialogue across class and race differences—was exceptional. He was not an “instructor,” but a teacher is the fullest sense of that work. Yet, as he recognized, we must also actively put ourselves in the position of constantly being taught. 7) Critical educators must also act in concert with the progressive social movements their work supports or in movements against the rightist assumptions and policies they critically analyze. This is another reason that scholarship in critical education implies becoming an “organic” or “public” intellectual. One must participate in and give one’s expertise to movements surrounding movements to transform both a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. It also implies learning from these social movements (Anyon, 2005). This means that the role of the “unattached intelligentsia” (Mannheim, 1936), someone who “lives on the balcony” (Bakhtin, 1968), is not an appropriate model. As Bourdieu (2003, p. 11) reminds us, for example, our intellectual efforts are crucial, but they “cannot stand aside, neutral and indifferent, from the struggles in which the future of the world is at stake.” There was never a balcony in Paulo Freire’s life and actions. 8) Building on the points made in the previous paragraph, the critical scholar/ activist has another role to play. She or he needs to act as a deeply committed mentor, as someone who demonstrates through her or his life what it means to be both an excellent scholar and a committed member of a society that is scarred by persistent inequalities. She or he needs to show how one can blend these two roles together in ways that may be tense but still embody the dual commitments to exceptional and socially committed writing and research and participating in movements whose aim is interrupting dominance. 9) Finally, participation also means using the privilege one has as a scholar/­ activist. That is, each of us needs to make use of one’s privilege to open the spaces at universities and elsewhere for those who are not there, for those who do not now have a voice in that space and in the “professional” sites to which, being in a privileged position, you have access. This can be seen, for example,

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

in the history of the “activist‐in‐residence” program at the University of Wisconsin Havens Center for Social Justice, where committed activists in various areas (the environment, indigenous rights, housing, labor, racial ­disparities, education, etc.) were brought in to teach and to connect our ­academic work with organized action against dominant relations. Or it can be seen in a number of women’s studies programs and Indigenous, Aboriginal, and First Nation studies programs that historically have involved activists in these communities as active participants in the governance and educational programs of these areas at universities. These nine tasks are demanding. No one person can engage equally well in all of them simultaneously, although Freire comes as close as any one person can to these ideals. As he recognized, confronting the realities of education in a deeply unequal and often uncaring society so that we can collectively answer the originating question of this book will never be easy. What we can do is honestly continue our attempt to come to grips with the complex intellectual, personal, and political tensions and activities that respond to the demands of this role. Actually, although at times problematic, “identity” may be a more useful concept here. It is a better way to conceptualize the interplay among these tensions and positions, since it speaks to the possible multiple positionings one may have and the contradictory ideological forms that may be at work both within oneself and in any specific context (see Youdell, 2011). And this requires a searching critical examination of one’s own structural location, one’s own overt and tacit political commitments, and one’s own embodied actions once this recognition in all its complexities and contradictions is taken as ­seriously as it deserves. This speaks to the larger issues about the politics of knowledge, knowing, and people of which I spoke earlier and to which postcolonial authors such as Young (2003), Bhabha (1994), Spivak (1988), and others have pointed. Concepts such as “critical pedagogy,” “hybridity,” “marginalization,” “subaltern,” “cultural politics,” “globalization,” and the entire panoply of postcolonial and critical pedagogic vocabulary can be used in multiple ways. They are meant to signify an intense set of complex and contradictory historical, geographic, economic, and cultural relations, experiences, and realities. But what must not be lost in the process of using them is the inherently political nature of their own history and interests. Used well, there is no “safe” or “neutral” way of mobilizing them—and rightly so. They are meant to be radically counterhegemonic and they are meant to challenge even how we think about and participate in counter‐ hegemonic movements. How can we understand this, if we do not participate in such movements ourselves? Freire certainly did. So did E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, C. L. R. James, W. E. B. DuBois, Carter Woodson, Anna Julia Cooper, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and so many others. The fact that Paulo Freire was—and continues to be—part of a larger assemblage of people who document through their lives what it means to both understand and interrupt dominance should give us strength to continue the struggle for an education worthy of its name. Can we do less?

375

376

Michael W. Apple

References Anyon, J. (2005). Radical possibilities: Public policy, education, and a new social movement. New York: Routledge. Anyon, J., Dumas, M., Linville, D., Nolan, K., Perez, M., Tuck, E., & Weiss, J. (2009). Theory and educational research: Toward critical social explanation. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (1996). Cultural politics and education. New York: Teachers College Press. Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (Ed.) (2010). Global crises, social justice, and education. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2012). Education and power. Routledge Classic Edition. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2013). Can education change society?. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2014). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., Aasen, P., Cho, M. K., Gandin, L. A., Oliver, A., Sung, Y.‐K., … Wong, T.‐H. (2003). The state and the politics of knowledge. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., & Au, W. (Eds.) (2014). Critical education (Vols. 1–4). New York: Routledge Major Works. Apple, M. W., Au, W., & Gandin, L. A. (Eds.) (2009). The Routledge international handbook of critical education. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., Ball, S., & Gandin, L. A. (Eds.) (2010). The Routledge international handbook of the sociology of education. London: Routledge. Apple, M. W., & Beane, J. A. (Eds.) (2007). Democratic schools: Lessons in powerful education (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Apple, M. W., & Buras, K. L. (Eds.) (2006). The subaltern speak: Curriculum, power, and educational struggles. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., Gandin, L. A., Liu, S., Meshulam, A., & Schirmer, E. (2018). The struggle for democracy in education: Lessons from social realities. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., & Weis, L. (Eds.) (1983). Ideology and practice in schooling. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Au, W. (2011). Critical curriculum studies: Education, consciousness, and the politics of knowing. New York: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. (1968). Rabelais and his world (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge. Boler, M. (Ed.) (2008). Digital media and democracy: Tactics in hard times. Cambridge: MIT Press. Borg, C., & Mayo, P. (2007). Public intellectuals: Radical democracy and social movements. New York: Peter Lang. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo academicus. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (2003). Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2. New York: New Press.

Freire, Class Relations, and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist in Education

Burawoy, M. (2005). For public sociology. British Journal of Sociology, 56, 259–294. Counts, G. S. (1932). Dare the school build a new social order. New York: Henry Holt. Darder, A. (2002). Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love. Boulder: Westview. Darnton, R. (1982). The literary underground of the old regime. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. New York: Verso. Dillabough, J.‐A., & Kennelly, J. (2010). Lost youth in the global city: Class, culture and the urban imaginary. New York: Routledge. Dimitriadis, G., & McCarthy, C. (2001). Reading and teaching the postcolonial. New York: Teachers College Press. Foner, E. (1998). The story of American freedom. New York: Norton. Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus. New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder. Freire, P. (1996). Letters to Cristina. New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1997). The pedagogy of autonomy. Sao Paulo: Paz e Terra. Gottesman, I. (2016). The critical turn in education. New York: Routledge. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Gutstein, E. (2006). Reading and writing the world with mathematics. New York: Routledge. Horton, M. (1990). The long haul. New York: Doubleday. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Jacoby, R. (2005). Picture imperfect: Utopian thought for an anti‐utopian age. New York: Columbia University Press. Luke, C., & Gore, J. (Eds.) (1992). Feminisms and critical pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Lynch, K., Baker, J., & Lyons, M. (2009). Affective equality: Love, care, and injustice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and utopia. New York: Harvest Books. Mills, C. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Smith, D. (2008). Raymond Williams: A warrior’s tale. Cardigan: Parthian. Spivak, G. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson, & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Swalwell, K. (2013). Educating activist allies: Social justice pedagogy with the suburban and urban elite. New York: Routledge. Tarlau, R. (2015). How do new critical pedagogies develop? Public education, social change, and landless workers in Brazil. Teachers College Record, 117, 1–36. Taylor, P. (1993). The texts of Paulo Freire. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Teitelbaum, K. (1993). Schooling for good rebels. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Torres, C. A. (2009). Globalizations and education. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice. New York: Teachers College Press.

377

378

Michael W. Apple

Watson, V. (2012). Learning to liberate: Community‐based solutions to the crisis in urban education. New York: Routledge. Weiler, Katherine. (1997). The liberatory teacher: Reading the word and the world of Paulo Freire. Unpublished paper, Tufts University, Medford, MA. Whitty, G. (1974). Sociology and the problem of radical educational change. In M. Flude, & J. Ahier (Eds.), Educability, schools, and ideology (pp. 112–137). London: Halstead Press. Williams, R. (1961). The long revolution. London: Chatto & Windus. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. New York: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1963). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Wright, E. O. (1985). Classes. New York: Verso. Youdell, D. (2011). School trouble: Identity, power, and politics in education. New York: Routledge. Young, R. (2003). Postcolonialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

379

20 The Connections Between Education and Power in the Liberatory Feminist Classroom Appreciating and Critiquing Freire Sondra Hale

Introduction For many years I had been interested in the ways in which women and gender studies practitioners have borrowed from Paulo Freire, while giving his liberation pedagogy an overlay of feminist praxis and then adding a spice of Maoist criticism/self‐criticism. Upon the establishment of women’s studies around 1975, the feminist classroom supposedly epitomized consciousness‐raising (CR), collaboration, coalition‐building, and change built into the curriculum. There was a concentration on process (over product), which I saw at the time as egalitarian, even “revolutionary.” I saw women’s studies as not only radical, but open, contingent, and pregnant with action. This is, perhaps, a positive foundation for an emancipatory, liberatory process, but did it, somewhere along the way, lose its radical transformative edge? As a Freirean, I am not interested in a process that only makes us feel equal with each other or only makes us feel empowered. I am interested in the action that may or may not come from that.

The Problematics of Feminist “Process” and Pedagogy in a Diverse Environment A crisis has been brewing among academy and community feminists for some time, perhaps symbolically signaled by the walkout of the Women of Color Caucus at the 1990 National Women’s Studies conference (NWSA). Despite the growing critique by women of color of white/anglo‐dominated feminism in ­academia, and despite the charges of failure of theory, method, pedagogy, and community‐building, many academy and cultural feminists still claim to be committed to a “process” that they maintain enables them to deal with “difference” and “diversity” more effectively than it is dealt with in traditional disciplines and approaches. Is this, in fact, self‐delusional? Are feminist pedagogy and process a The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

380

Sondra Hale

“discourse of possibility” or a despairing failure? Following Raymond Williams, we might ask if we “make hope practical rather than despair convincing” (phrasing from Kenway & Modra, 1989, p. 1). One of the propositions of this essay is that, revealingly, the shared pedagogic qualities of feminist and ethnic studies have not been operationalized to create meaningful links among these fields, nor to move ahead with a truly emancipatory agenda. Perhaps we have just assumed the overlap of our pedagogies instead of analyzing it. If our raisons d’etre (to examine the “intersections” of oppressions) and our pedagogies overlap, why has feminist studies remained more focused on gender and sexuality and ethnic studies on race and ethnicity? To complicate things further, class, as a variable, has increasingly fallen between the cracks. In general, both feminist studies and ethnic studies have claimed to employ pedagogical strategies that challenge instrumental, transmission models of teaching that are basically uncritical of the problematics of learner, teacher, knowledge—and the relationship among these. Because conventional pedagogy did not take into account the broader sociopolitical context, that is, that social relationships are an integral part of the teaching/learning process, a critical, radical, and feminist pedagogy emerged. Liberatory pedagogy subsumes all of these. Such a pedagogical combination is about what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is learned, the relationship of the teacher and student, as well as about the nature of knowledge and learning. “Lusted [for example] argues for an understanding of pedagogy which recognizes that knowledge is produced, negotiated, transformed and realized in the interaction between the teacher, the learner, and the knowledge itself.”1 As we know, liberatory pedagogy has been associated with Paulo Freire (1971), and is one of the inspirations behind some ethnic studies classrooms. However, Freire’s neglect of gender and sexuality marginalizes women, lesbians, and gays as categories of people to be empowered, and has made him less attractive to feminist studies and, of course, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) studies with its increasingly fluid concept of gender. Still, feminists have, however, borrowed heavily from Freire and from others before him—­ sometimes without acknowledgement. Euroamerican feminists have often referred to “our” pedagogy as “feminist process,” as if it is one process, and as if it is only ours—an arrogance that warrants critical examination. Some feminists have baldly claimed that how we do something is more important than what we do; process takes precedence over product, with the result that “feminist process” became a major component of the feminist studies curriculum. Nonetheless, for some time we accepted our credo rather uncritically, as was ably pointed out in a provocative article by Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman that was widely discussed (1983), who challenged the pedagogical strategy (and essentialism) of searching for the “woman’s voice,” and by Frances Maher (1985), who opted for integrating some Freirean strategies, and by any number of women and scholars of color who often did not see themselves in the picture. Until the late 1980s, with the work of people such as Maher (1985), the pioneering ideas within feminist pedagogy went unchallenged in terms of the inadequate stress on social empowerment and action. For Renate Duelli Klein (1987)

Connections Between Education and Power in the Liberatory Feminist Classroom

and Nancy Schniedewind (1987), the project was to focus on “sisterhood, antielitism, leaderless consciousness‐raising groups and the power of collective decision‐making and activity” (Howe & Ahlum, 1973, p. 393). Klein focused on CR as a centerpiece method. She subsumed under CR an “interactive teaching and learning … being ‘other’ … in the women’s studies classroom; and the issue of power (asymmetrical teacher‐student relations, and the matter of the authority of the teacher)” (Klein, 1987, pp. 189–198) However, CR is treated as a given and is undertheorized; we do not know exactly what happens in the classroom when feminist studies students engage in it (Kenway & Modra, 1989, p. 8). Besides, CR suggests that there is an unknowing, perhaps ignorant subject who needs to be taught and brought into the light, so to speak—quite contrary to Freire’s thinking. Schniedewind (1987) forwarded five process goals, borrowing somewhat from the liberation pedagogics: mutual respect, trust, and community; shared leadership; cooperative structures; integration of cognitive and affective ­ learning; and action. But she does not spell out the last and most highly significant one—action. I have been trying to tease out the special and nontraditional pedagogic qualities of feminist and ethnic studies that can be translated into ways of receiving and generating knowledge in any field. The following practices are familiar to many of us as foundational feminist pedagogies (and I venture that many are foundational to ethnic studies as well). These practices bear resemblance to feminist collaborative art projects that were so prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s (see Hale, 2011). Some of these practices are also recognizable as guidelines for small‐ group dynamics in some peoples’ movements, grassroots activism, radical nongovernmental organization activities, and the new anarchical/nonhierarchical challenges to the state and neoliberalism, in general: ●●

●●

●● ●● ●●

●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

●● ●●

●● ●●

Generating the student/participant as subject, with knowledge emanating from her/him; Applying self‐disclosure as a way of using self as subject—later often referred to as “situating,” “positioning,” “locating” ourselves or intervening with the self; I sometimes think of it as modeling; Teaching and/or facilitating through question‐asking: the self as inquirer; Interjecting the experiential into theory and practice; Challenging a singular/essentialized “voice,” and recognizing the dynamism of “otherness” and “alterity;” Facilitating self‐definition (labeling/naming/renaming/−reappropriating); Fusing teaching and facilitating with critical CR, and dialogue with presentation; Creating space for the traditionally silenced; Validating everyone’s experience; Positively integrating pain and hostility into the classroom/group/community process; Building change into the process; Challenging the claims of neutrality and value‐free process in positivism and empiricism, and the resultant abstracting away of the researcher as a discrete unit; Fusing self‐knowledge and social knowledge; Building on each other’s ideas and work in collaboration;

381

382

Sondra Hale ●● ●●

●●

●●

Fusing theory with our everyday lives; Perhaps more important, to quote Freire, “Through dialogue, the teacher‐of‐ the‐students and the students‐of‐the‐teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher‐student with students‐teachers” (1971, p. 67); Again, to use Freire, subverting the banking system of education (where the student is a receptacle and knowledge is deposited) and replacing it with the partner‐teachers or what some feminist educators refer to as “teacher as midwife” (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986, pp. 217–219); Encouraging students to use their knowledge in everyday life, and I would add, everyday politics; and many others. Feminists and others such as contemporary anarcho‐activists also herald teaching in radical learning spaces (e.g., Hale & Kadoda, 2017; Haworth & Elmore, 2017).

Harris, Silverstein, and Andrews (1989) underscored interaction; cooperation and trust; connected, holistic thought; intuition and insight and closely related empathy; joining feeling and thinking; and social responsibility. Belenky et  al. (1986) in Women’s Ways of Knowing, single out “connected education.”

Power and Diversity in the Classroom and Beyond— the Ethnocentric Bias and Some Strategies for Addressing It By 1989 influential African American feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins intervened and outlined a strategy involving taking elements and themes of black women’s culture and traditions and infusing them with new meaning. She forwarded the idea of “rearticulated consciousness” and stressed concrete experience as a criterion of meaning, the use of dialog in assessing knowledge claims, the ethic of caring, and the ethic of personal accountability (Hill Collins, 1989). Assuming that we in feminist studies and ethnic studies are all still using some of these strategies in our teaching and community work, let me ask if these practices are still effective or if we are suffering from acute idealism? Has the increased diversity in our classrooms and big‐city communities made some of these pedagogical and process strategies obsolete, or at least impractical? Or, are these strategies more relevant now than ever before in the “post‐truth” era”? I would like to forward the idea (not entirely mine, and not new) that part of the problem with the process strategies referred to in the previous section is that they have often been imposed on the “Other” in the name of egalitarianism and community. One group developed and learned the rules and doled them out to the “invitees” and the “newcomers” (see Hale & Kadoda, 2017 for an example). A major concern I have had as a feminist studies teacher in a highly diverse university was that we are still trying to recuperate from an earlier period in which we had mainly white faculty in women’s studies programs. Although I have always been committed to ending that disparity with recruitment of women (or men) of color, I had begun to realize that what would also be involved is a simultaneous commitment to retraining myself and others to meet that diversity challenge. This can entail decentering oneself or at least self‐subversion.

Connections Between Education and Power in the Liberatory Feminist Classroom

And that brings me to the concept of “multiculturalism”—that 1990s and early 2000s buzz word—one that calls for some skepticism. The term lingers on, catches on, and so forth., even when as long ago as 1989 Michael Geyer’s postmodernist discussion of “multicultural education” should have flattened it. He did not speak of negotiating difference but saw a global process: the elimination of otherness. He asked if cultural diversity was giving way to a new homogenization of the world. To Geyer, the world was no longer diachronic and linear. Multiple presence replaces space. And culture, one newly constructed by us, will dominate science. These newly constructed global systems have already replaced primordial systems, making cultural difference a matter of folklore or residuals. Geyer suggested that this means the end of “ethnic exceptionalism” and to the importance of the deep past. Everyone is modern. Cultural differentiation will become a struggle for who imagines themselves and in which manner; and this is economically contested. According to Geyer and others, multicultural education will replace Eurocentric education no matter what. To him the rub is why and how. Will it be multicultural education at the service of the global economic system or of local markets? Building on Geyer’s ideas, I am asking if so‐called multicultural education will mean producing sound‐bites from “different cultures” to bring consumers closer together in a consumer culture: in our schools and universities, in our cultural production, and in our communities. Does this mean then that multiculturalism, in the end, is a globalizing, homogenizing process? Hale and Kadoda (2017) relate an experience of offering a diversity workshop in Khartoum, Sudan, and the surprising resistance participants had to such a critique of multiculturalism. Sandra Harding (1987, 1991) urged us to engage in a process of reinventing ourselves as “other” in an attempt to seize the agenda for multicultural education. Otherwise, multicultural education may be just a new form of learning about the exotic other. She asked if we are just trying to show how different we are, how like us they are, or, if we are trying to learn how to incorporate what is valuable in their culture into ours, or if we are trying to learn how to incorporate ours into theirs. She asked rhetorically how these differ from racist rationales. Our tendency is to use the lives of the oppressed as our starting point. Perhaps we should begin from another point while asking if only lives of the oppressed give us liberatory information. And I add, what ever happened to the progressive trend in 1960s anthropology of “studying up” that so creatively asked that we not start with the oppressed, but with the wealthy? Harding suggested, along with antiracism workers in recent years, that we can take responsibility for who we are, for example, in my case, as a middle‐class white woman. I can try to put myself in the same causal plane as others and experiment. For example, if I think that gender affects men’s behavior and beliefs, then I have to think about how being white affects mine. Are my thoughts valuable racially, lending new dimensions to old ideas? Harding (1991, p. 16) paraphrased Congolese philosopher Valentine Mudimbe in suggesting that we should reinvent ourselves as “other.” Mudimbe suggested that “just as European and American imperialists invented an Africa that would serve their purposes (they said they discovered it), so must Africans now invent a West that serves Africans’ purposes” (Mudimbe, 1988, p. 171).

383

384

Sondra Hale

Mudimbe suggested for Africans that: “a critical reading of the Western experience is simultaneously a way of ‘inventing’ a foreign tradition in order to master its techniques and an ambiguous strategy for implementing alterity” (1988, p. 171). Harding invited us to standpoint epistemology and the idea of contradictory perspectives that emanate from minority or reverse discourse. One way to start, Harding suggested, is to hail the positive parts of ourselves. This way we can choose our own history; we are not fixed forever. This can become a learning strategy instead of the usual dis‐learning strategy/pedagogy. Euroamericans can reinvent themselves as “other,” creating our own alterity in order to think and teach creatively about “difference.” It is important to note that Harding is presenting these ideas in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The late Ricky Sherover Marcuse was the first antiracism educator/activist I had heard espouse these views, that is, that white people had a race, that there were positives to that identity, and that we should take responsibility for who we are and not be ashamed of it. She referred to “hailing the positive parts of ourselves [i.e., white people].” Marcuse’s presentation was at a Bread and Roses conference at the University of California, Irvine, in 1978. Some Leftist feminists in the audience booed. The long‐range objective of many progressive educators is to enter an era of decentering the West, subverting Eurocentric bias in education, and reinventing ourselves as “other,” without sacrificing the teaching of key concepts of privilege, oppression, and power, that is, without subverting the raison d’etre of ethnic and feminist studies. There remains the very difficult problem of convincing students and others to embark on the ultimately liberating journey of giving up privilege. Are white women historically and culturally less able to deal with difference than are women of color? How have women of color “learned us” so much better than white women seemed to have “learned them”? We white women might want to listen to Gloria Anzaldua’s call for a borderland consciousness: a tolerance for ambiguity and ambivalence “because [she says] I am in all cultures at the same time” (1987, p. 77 and chapter 7). One recognizes her call as a signal for all of us to take a first step toward learning about ourselves as simultaneously “self ” and “other.” Is it “understanding” that we are lacking? There is a certain arrogance in the notion of “cultural understanding.” As an anthropologist, I view my field as having invented “difference” through the concept of culture in order to discern “discrete cultures,” only then to invite the Westerner to “understand” these “cultures” (either this is tautological or narcissistic).

Are These Merely Mechanics? Here I raise a series of questions that I have partially cribbed from a call for papers for a special issue of Radical Teacher on “Feminist Pedagogies and Difference in the Classroom,” which was to be edited by Frances Maher (ca. 1992). The call listed some of the themes that could be addressed. Some of these questions coalesce with a few of the strategies mentioned previously: (a) How do progressive teachers mediate among different student perspectives in courses, especially those that include topics on race, class, and gender? (b) How do we

Connections Between Education and Power in the Liberatory Feminist Classroom

situate ourselves—use our own gendered, raced, classed subjectivities in our teaching? (c) What are appropriate uses of our authority in the classroom context, particularly in terms of the tension between a respect for student perspectives and the problems caused by racist, sexist, classist, or homophobic students? (d) What are effective uses of autobiographical materials in particular courses? (e) How can collaborations be fostered across differences? (for an example, see Hale and Kadoda, 2017) (f ) What degree of conflict is appropriate, desirable, and necessary in the feminist classroom? Wonderful ideas often do not lead to tools. For example, if we can’t ask our students to read everything in sight, what can we do? We can pay more attention to classroom “mechanics,” those logistics that are usually at the bottom of our agendas when we discuss pedagogy. In general, we might want to observe more closely the politics of syllabus design and the language we use to assign the reading and the topics; the ordering of topics on the syllabus; some of the terminology used; and the manner (including vocabulary) in which the reading is presented to the students, for example, “handouts,” “recommended,” “required,” “supplementary,” “suggested reading,” “mandatory,” “reading for extra credit.” These all carry messages about importance or lack of it. Related to this is the politics of presenting ourselves: whether to and how to use personal/political disclosure in a diverse classroom. Can what I reveal have bearing on the life of a Chicana, an American Indian? When we encourage self‐ disclosure as a pedagogical strategy, is it riskier for a woman or person of color to be self‐revealing? What if the process is antithetical to her/his cultural upbringing? What if cultural silence is a form of resistance to white or dominant society? More important, do any of these ideas and processes lead to action outside the classroom, the community caucus, the arts performance? Or does “interactive pedagogy,” for example, focus only on classroom activities and not on the articulation of pedagogy with social transformation that is so crucial to praxis? Self‐disclosure, for example, in and of itself may not be useful. Perhaps only if that self is an active self. And this is dangerous. I speak from experience. There is the problem of being seen as “advocating,” as inciting, as propagandizing, in a world where people are convinced daily that “objectivity” is one of the positive virtues of a scientific and “even‐handed” society. Freire, of course, rejected the notion that education can be “neutral” or “objective.” All of these pedagogical suggestions I have presented have their limits—tools, information, inclusion, understanding, and raised consciousness. Again, let’s take CR as an example. CR does, indeed, help us to name our oppression. But naming is not enough. One might develop a heightened awareness of one’s pain but still feel powerless to do anything about it. There are limits to all of these processes if change is not built in. There are limits anyway. In 1989 Sucheng Chan argued that: …to avoid disappointment, bitterness, and cynicism, we must be modest in our goals. We should recognize that courses that fulfill an ethnic studies requirement [and I would add, Women’s Studies] cannot eradicate racism. All we can hope to do, if we are good teachers, is to get our students to

385

386

Sondra Hale

listen to us and to each other, to learn a few unpleasant truths, to gain the insight that people who do not look like ourselves nevertheless face similar dilemmas common to the human condition. Chan was directing her article to professors of color who teach general education ethnic studies classes. Her conclusion is that it is impossible to meet the needs of both white students and students of color in the same class. Although I agree that we should always have modest short‐term goals on our way to nirvana, still I think it would be unwise for any Euroamerican teacher to allow ourselves that loophole of “you can’t make everyone happy.” Nonetheless, a stated goal of early feminism is empowering everyone. Many newer and perhaps more radical approaches have taken front stage in recent years. Radical educators use Freire and expand on his ideas, taking us to social justice spaces, lifelong learning, new forms of activism that spill over into the classroom instead of, or in addition to, the opposite.2 Feminist studies and its variants are now deeply entrenched in Euroamerican institutions of higher education. Although minoritarians are among the most influential teachers and scholars, they are, nonetheless, embedded in an established institution with its traditional and limiting protocols.

Conclusion Noting what feminist educators have taken from Freire and what we have created for ourselves that deviates from Freire, we are still left struggling with the limits that the academic environment puts on us. If it is possible to build something together in the classroom—even if transitory, it has to begin with some trust and respect. A major problem is how to gain trust and respect when social media are constantly undermining educational institutions. We have been learning to speak from our locations as gendered, raced, and classed. If we are going to be lucky enough to have a chance to start again, we certainly have a lot more tools and strategies at our disposal, not to mention the diverse perspectives and commitment of many more women of color, people of color, queers and queers of color, and people of the Global South to help with community building. Still, is this a revolution? Is this what Freire and others were/are after? Can these pedagogical strategies lead to a radical transformation inside and outside the academy in an era of “post‐truth” and “alternative facts”?

Notes 1 Kenway and Modra (1989, p. 2) are paraphrasing Lusted (1986). 2 See, for example, Weiler (1991); McLaren (1995) and later, Giroux (2011); Torres

(2014); Occasional Papers from the University of Newcastle (e.g., Burke & Misiaszek, 2017; Hale & Kadoda, 2017); also, the papers in Haworth and Elmore (2017). Although I have not used the term “critical pedagogy” in this essay, a short piece by Willy Cardoso (2014) may be illuminating about the use of this term.

Connections Between Education and Power in the Liberatory Feminist Classroom

References Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. New York: Basic Books. Burke, P. J., & Misiaszek, L. I. (2017). Introduction to the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis. Occasional Papers, Issue 2. Newcastle, Australia: Centre for Excellence in Diversity in Post‐Secondary Education. Newcastle University. Cardoso, Willy. (2014). Why critical pedagogy? IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group, February 20. Retrieved from https://tdsig.org/2014/02/ why‐critical‐pedagogy. Chan, S. (1989). On the ethnic studies requirement—Part I: Pedagogical implications. Amerasia Journal, 15(1), 267–280. Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seaview. Geyer, Michael. (1989). Cultural difference in the global village. Presented at the Conference on Cultural Diversity and Liberal Education: Negotiating Difference in the Academy, University of Chicago, November 5–8. Giroux, H. (2011). On critical pedagogy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Hale, S. (2011). Power and space: Feminist culture and the Los Angeles Woman’s Building: A context. In S. Hale, & T. Wolverton (Eds.), From site to vision: The Woman’s Building in contemporary culture (pp. 39–81). Los Angeles: Otis Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design. Hale, S. (2014). The new Middle East insurrections and other subversions of the modernist frame. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 10(3), 40–61. Hale, S., & Kadoda, G. (2017). Chronicle of collaboration: Toward creating social justice spaces in Sudan. Occasional Papers. (pp. 35–52). Newcastle, Australia: Centre for Excellence in Diversity in Post‐Secondary Education, University of Newcastle. Harding, S. (1987). Feminism and methodology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Harris, J., Silverstein, J., & Andrews, D. (1989). Educating women in science. In C. Pearson, J. D. Touchton, & D. Shavlik (Eds.), Educating the majority: women challenge tradition in higher education. New York: American Council of Education. Haworth, R. H., & Elmore, J. M. (Eds.) (2017). Out of the ruins: The emergence of radical informal learning spaces. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Hill Collins, P. (1989). The social construction of black feminist thought. Signs, 14(4), 745–773. Howe, F., & Ahlum, C. (1973). Women’s studies and social change. In A. Rossi, & A. Calderwood (Eds.), Academic women on the move (pp. 393–423). New York: Sage. Kenway, K., & Modra, H. (1989). Feminist pedagogy and emancipatory possibilities. Critical Pedagogy Networker, 2(2–3). Klein, R. D. (1987). The dynamics of the women’s studies classroom: A review essay of the teaching practice of women’s studies in higher education. Women’s Studies International Forum, 10(2), 187–206.

387

388

Sondra Hale

Lugones, M., & Spelman, E. (1983). Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism and the demand for “The woman’s voice.”. Women’s Studies International Forum, 6(6), 573–581. Lusted, D. (1986). Why pedagogy? Screen, 27, 5. Maher, F. (1985). Pedagogies for the gender balanced classroom. Journal of Thought, 20(3), 48–64. McLaren, P. (1995). Critical pedagogy and predatory culture: Oppositional politics in a postmodern era. London & New York: Routledge. Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schniedewind, N. (1987). Feminist values: Guidelines for a teaching methodology in women’s studies. In I. Shor (Ed.), Freire for the classroom (pp. 170–179). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton & Cook. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Weiler, K. (1991). Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. Harvard Educational Review, 61(4), 449–475.

389

21 Engaging Gender and Freire From Discoursal Vigilance to Concrete Possibilities for Inclusion Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Freire, as a sensitive man, attentive to injustices, managed, within his epistemological possibilities and choices of readings of theoreticians and the world, to emphasize the road of dignity toward our being more human. And this is the legacy within which I believe that we can broaden his arguments and dialogue, bringing diversities that dignify the being [o ser e o estar] in the world (Eggert, 2012, in her Paulo Freire Encyclopedia entry, “Woman/ Man (Gender Relations, Relations in Dignity),” Portuguese translation in brackets)

Introduction: Relevancy, “Urgency,” and “Broadenings”: Discoursal “Self‐Subversion” at the Intersections of Gender and Freirean Studies This chapter aims to construct a narrative around the intersections of gender studies and the work of Paulo Freire. Although it is an imperfect operationalization, I use the term studies of gender/gender studies as inclusive terms that involve, among other interconnected concepts, sexuality and feminism, operationalized as: An interdisciplinary field that focuses on the complex interaction of gender with other identity markers such as race, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, and religion. Gender—femininity and masculinity—is such a basic form of social organization that its operation often passes unnoticed. Feminist scholarship demonstrates that traditional categories used for social analysis and their accompanying interpretive approaches often reinforce gender hierarchies and inequalities. Gender studies opens new paths of inquiry and offer fresh approaches to such questions as: Is gender different from sex? Is gender inequality based

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

390

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

on biological differences between men and women? What does masculinity studies have to teach feminists? Is sexual orientation genetic, personal choice, both, or neither? What is the meaning of transgender and is it the same as intersex? How is power exercised and reproduced? What is intersectionality? … What role does gender play in perceptions of cultural Otherness? What are the different forms of gendered violence? What role does gender play in medicine, science, and technology? … If you are interested in broader questions of social justice, this is the right major for you! (University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] Department of Gender Studies, n.d., my emphasis) It is this broad vision of gender studies, its methodological focus on “new paths of inquiry” and “fresh approaches,” and explicit and broad connection to social justice work that attract me to this particular description. I would add that I see this sort of knowledge production as formal, nonformal, or informal; institutionalized or popular. During the writing of this chapter, two major “mainstream” international magazines devoted significant coverage to “new” directions in gender studies: Time’s cover story, “Beyond ‘He’ or ‘She’: The Changing Meaning of Gender and Sexuality” (Steinmetz, 2017) and National Geographic’s special issue, “Gender Revolution” (National Geographic Society, 2017), with an accompanying documentary. Important critiques of the publications’ content (including images) followed. Although easy to dismiss for their flaws, these publications, which both reach large audiences, serve as a kind of “popular” barometer of perceived relevance of gender studies. Time is the world’s most circulated weekly news magazine, with four different international editions (all in English); National Geographic is published in 37 local language editions. Concurrently, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has been found to be the third most cited social science reference since the beginning of Google Scholar (Green, 2016), higher than Foucault, Marx, and Bourdieu. Thus, acknowledging the evidence of (at least some baseline of ) continued public relevancy of these currents (a term I use in this chapter despite the risk of implying “neatness” in separation/relationship between works), I ask, what is the purpose of the contemporary project (henceforth, “the project”) of “reading” gender and Freire in conversation with each other? What possibilities exist within this project to actually (in the sense of existing or occurring at this time) address concrete diverse manifestations of inequality, oppression, and discrimination? I believe that these currents’ shared theoretical and methodological attention to the power of language has proven to offer direct possibilities for confronting the intense intersections of the—isms and resulting concrete possibilities for liberation from them. Indeed, I argue that one of the shared strengths of the currents of gender studies and Freirean studies lies in their epistemological focus on, when necessary and often concurrently, recognizing, building on, debating, holding tight, and unbounding from both historical and contemporary internal currents with a self‐subversive (Hale, 2014) recognition that the same discoursal fluidity needed to address these issues will quickly render certain aspects of these analyses outdated.

Engaging Gender and Freire

Although, notably, these magazine discourses of “beyond,” “changing,” “revolution” imply an (unoriginal) urgency, despite of, or maybe because of, this continued relevance, I argue that, in this “wave” of study, a plateau of studying the intersections between currents of study around gender and Freire exists and requires new strategies of engagement. In other words, I am concerned with how to confront the ironic dilemma of a coexisting urgency and passé‐ness (and risk of lethargy) around the topic, which I believe stems from the fact that they are discourses that are “new for some and very old for other people” (de Sousa Santos, 2012, pp. 50–51). I argue that this dilemma perpetuates marginalization of concrete liberating work rooted in these discourses. Both gender studies and “Freirean studies” share overarching concerns for humanization and liberation, and in both, “new for some and very old for other[s]” language is a tool of action and reflection intimately tied to these concerns. Thus, I believe that engaging in a meta‐analysis—an analysis of analyses— of the language and discourse around gender and Freire, as I attempt to do in this chapter, both in Freire’s work directly as well as in the work of the people who analyze his work, is one response to these challenges as it offers a wider view of current challenges and future guiding directions as part of, to draw on Freirean studies, a project of utopistics (Torres & Teodoro, 2007). Stating that it is necessary to approach these questions, traditions, and work by colleagues with humility and respect is not a throwaway, self‐indulgent excuse to then embark in unbridled critique. Instead these values, embedded in the Freirean concept of dialogue, have guided my own work around Freire for the past 15 years as an aspiring “emerging” scholar on Freire; these concepts are an attempt to recognize and reflect the necessary burden that this exercise entails of me as the author. Although I discuss positionality further in Part 2, at the outset it is important to recognize the complexity of engaging with Southern knowledge (Latin America) from my complex position as a Northern scholar based in another, highly distinct Southern context (Asia). I particularly acknowledge the complicated issues around diverse experiences of privilege, (“authentic”) voice, representation, and critique. In considering this reality, I often return to Vavrus and Bartlett’s exploration of de Sousa Santos’ concept of epistemological diversity (de Sousa Santos, Nunes, & Meneses, 2007), in which they note, epistemological diversity signals the importance of historically, politically, and socially situating all knowledges. From this perspective, there are no knowledges that should be relegated to the imaginary “premodern,” as if untouched by colonialism, capitalism, or other major global forces. At the same time, no ways of knowing should be naively embraced as unproblematic or beyond the realm of contestation. All knowledges, it is argued, should be seen as contemporary, imbricated, partial, and situated. (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2012, p. 639, my emphasis) In this spirit, I have chosen Edla Eggert’s previously cited quote (from an entry on gender in the main text that I analyze in the chapter) as a point of departure for my own “contestation.” I aim, as Eggert highlights about the Freirean project, to “emphasize the road of dignity toward our being more human,” and that “this

391

392

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

is the legacy within which I believe that we can broaden his arguments and dialogue, bringing diversities that dignify the being [o ser e o estar] in the world.” I appreciate how the quote recognizes the way that limitations and possibilities exist as part of each other in the legacy of the conversation—indeed my own analysis is itself an urgent, incomplete, and time‐stamped engagement, with examples that may have a short shelf life (indeed my own analysis will not remain “politically correct” (a term loaded in itself )—but with a persisting aim of “broadening … arguments and dialogue.” This engagement takes the form of the five following parts: in Part 1, I outline my own framings around this problématique. In Part 2 I lay out my methodological strategy for this meta‐analysis. In Part 3 I present the resulting analysis. In Part 4 I offer supplementary analysis. In Part 5, I present some concluding reflections.

Part 1: Framings—On Not Getting “Bogged Down”/on Getting “Unstuck” In this section, I argue that this project requires a nuanced understanding about creating space—both discoursally and concretely—for ourselves and others to become/remain “unstuck.” In the paragraphs that follow, I discuss the underpinnings around this framework of creating space and lay out my epistemological underpinnings around ourselves in spaces (our positionalities) and our processes of reflection on these spaces (reflexivity). To begin thinking about space, I am drawn to the following quote in which, in writing about the life of the writer, professor, and 2016 Macarthur Fellow Maggie Nelson, the New Yorker magazine writer Hilton Als discussed Nelson’s experience with her graduate professor, the writer Wayne Koestenbaum: Koestenbaum’s work and guidance released Nelson from certain internalized academic expectations. She said, “I remember when I first met Wayne he told me, “Don’t get bogged down by the heavyweights.” It sounds so simple, but it was very freeing advice. A sense of permission. (Als, 2016, p. 8, my emphasis) I draw on this quote as a door‐opener, for myself and the reader, one that I return to now as I revisit, from a Freirean perspective, the fluid constellations of knowledge production around gender and Freire. These constellations can feel for the scholar/practitioner at any point in their trajectory as not mutually exclusively urgent, taken‐for‐granted, relevant, saturated, life‐sustaining (literally and figuratively), and/or suffocating. Depending on the context and the person reading this, issues around gender, specifically, and intersectionality of issues around social identifiers, more generally, are saturated in Freirean studies in some contexts but highly sensitive and/or underexplored topics in other contexts. I argue that this project first requires “a sense of permission” to not “get bogged down by the heavyweights.” Part of this requires abandoning notions of what this project should look like.

Engaging Gender and Freire

For instance, readers of this chapter will not find a primer on gender, though this chapter’s bibliography might be good a starting point. Definitions of gender and related terms are woven throughout the chapter, but providing these are not the chapter’s primary purpose. As well, although I discuss some of the different uses of feminism and gender, this chapter doesn’t aim to critically compare these two terms. Nor is this a mapping of everything that has been written about Freire and gender and/or feminism. Indeed, this has already been done by many of the authors cited in this chapter; indeed, it is my argument that new engagements are necessary beyond those that examine the basic “reciprocity” of gender ­studies/Freirean studies “currents.” As well, the number of possible directions for this chapter is overwhelming and potentially paralyzing in terms of analyzing their profound significance, such as that of the Women’s March and Solidarity Marches, which have happened during the writing of this chapter; there will certainly be other such events before it goes to press. Further considering notions of space as useful tool in navigating this project, I am drawn to Lather’s chapter section, Thinking Otherwise: A Praxis of Stuck Spaces, in which she draws on Ellsworth, noting, I am entirely persuaded by poststructural theory that it is what seems impossible from the vantage point of our present regimes of meaning that is the between space of any knowing that will make a difference in the expansion in social justice and the canons of value toward which we aspire. Implementing critical pedagogy in the field of schooling is impossible. That is precisely the task: to situate the experience of impossibility as an enabling site for working through aporias. Ellsworth calls this “coming up against stuck place after stuck place” as a way to keep moving within “the impossibility of teaching” in order to produce and learn from ruptures, failures, breaks, and refusals (Ellsworth, 1997, pp. xi, 9). (Lather, 2002, p. 189, my emphasis) I am very interested in the relationship of aporia, from Greek aporos (impassable), and passé (gone by). I argue that discourses around social identifiers, including gender, run the risk of existing in that strange space of being “stuck” while yet running the risk of being labeled “passé.” In other words, if these discourses are stuck, it is not possible for them to become un‐passé, creating a vicious, self‐fulfilling cycle. So, it is easy to get “bogged down,” bored, and/or paralyzed, perhaps simultaneously, in our work around them. In considering how Freire intersects with these discussions around social identifiers, I am struck by how the simultaneous seriousness and lightness—the “unburdening” from the heavyweights”—that exists within Freirean epistemology and how this dialectic creates spaces for creative lives that blend, challenge, and subversively occupy “liminal spaces.” I argue that this epistemological “dance” is a unique contribution of the legacy of his work. As Haywood and Mac an Ghaill (2012, p. 588) contended, Rather than deploy social and cultural categories as intersecting, the use of simultaneity facilitates a conceptual liminality. This liminality is a position

393

394

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

that is “necessarily ambiguous, since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space.” (Turner, 1969, p. 95, cited in Haywood & Mac an Ghaill) It is this simultaneity that interests me in this project—the search for ambiguities and things that have “slip[ped] through … classifications,” as well as ways to analyze these boundaries by interrogating the classifications themselves. I believe these “liminalities” are inherent in the Freirean concept of inédito viável, “that which has not yet been realized,” characterized by the concepts of incompleteness, inconclusion, and unaccomplishedness (Romão, 2007); to explore all of these concepts, I argue that a simultaneous epistemological seriousness and lightness are required. How one is situated in relationship to this exploration is a fundamental part of this project. Nagar and Geiger’s (2007) piece, “Reflexivity and Positionality in Feminist Fieldwork Revisited,” has continuously challenged my thinking about how I insert/reveal myself throughout a chapter such as this, as I have done in other writing (i.e., Misiaszek, 2015a, 2015b, 2017, 2018). Here, I purposefully quote at length a particularly salient passage of theirs in which they reflect on reflexivity issues within their own writing: We want to challenge and resist this demand to uncover ourselves in specific ways for academic consumption, because uncovering ourselves in these terms contradicts the purpose of problematizing the essentialist nature of social categories, which are, in reality, created, enacted and transformed. Gillian Rose (1997, 311) addresses this ontological problem when she argues that the “search for positionality through transparent reflexivity” is bound to fail because it relies on the notion of a visible landscape of power…. Finally, and perhaps, most dangerously, discussions of reflexivity generated feelings of paralysis among feminist scholars where the politics of representation results either in a “rather puritanical, competitive assessment among scholars” (Marcus 1992, 490) or in “tropes” that are sometimes seen as “apologies,” and at others as “badges” (Patai 1991, 149). And even these tropes do not always work. For example, Daphne Patai dismissively argues that self‐reflexivity, “does not redistribute income, gain political rights for the powerless, create housing for the homeless, or improve wealth” (in Wolf, 1997, 35). Terms like appropriation, exploitation and even surveillance are often attached to the very concept of “Western” research among “non‐Western” subjects, leading many white Western scholars, especially students, to conclude that they cannot step into “other” worlds and societies for research purposes; or that it should not be done because it is inherently unethical (Geiger, 1997b). How can we take positionality, identity and reflexivity out of misplaced struggles over legitimacy and transparent reflexivity, and turn them into more meaningful conceptual tools that can help us advance transformative

Engaging Gender and Freire

politics of difference in relation to our own research agendas? … we elaborate upon two interrelated and complementary approaches to reflexivity: A “speaking‐with” approach that treats both reflexivity and positionality as processes evolving over space and time; and crossing borders to build “situated solidarities” rooted in our specific (multiple) contexts and place‐ based location. (Nagar & Geiger, 2007, pp. 4–6, my emphasis) The spaces that Nagar and Geiger create in terms of thinking of ourselves and how this thinking relates to concrete tools for “transformative politics of difference” are useful to me. I particularly appreciate the consideration of whether or not these processes “work” for redistribution of income, political rights, housing, and wealth, again returning to the purpose of the project. As well, envisioning reflexivity and positionality as “processes evolving over space and time” allows for liminalities in thinking about our own social identifiers. I curate their words alongside those of Sondra Hale. Here, in Hale’s work engaging in her own processes of reflexivity, she looks at herself through a three‐ layered writing exercise (journal editor—journal author—subject of this special issue of journal): And here is where I return to the main point of this Afterword, the importance of uncertainty and making creative ventures out of mistakes or failures…. “Courage… required the willingness ‘to always be on guard against oneself ’” (751). I am exactly that—on guard against myself. I do not view this as a negative, however, but as an exciting, ongoing challenge. I find the kind of propensity for self‐subversion that Hirschman mentions to be more comfortable than to be at peace with myself. If missteps, delays, and miscalculations can propel someone or something into forms of success, then we should look at these more closely. For example, in terms of Westerners’ ethnographic research, perhaps silence and restraint from an outsider (whether or not it is looked upon dubiously) might result in the emergence of local, on‐the‐ground voices and activism. Do we Western scholars always feel a need to rush in and fill the vacuum—or what we may mistakenly see as a vacuum? Also, we often rush in to fill the vacuum because we want to see change come quickly when many of the current insurrections, for example, have heralded slowness as a virtue (reference to Castells (2012, 144–145), who is using Serrano’s ideas). (Hale, 2014, pp. 159–160, my emphasis) Like Nagar and Geiger, Hale is always concerned with concreteness—indeed the temptation to “fill the vacuum” for “change” is a concrete reflection on space and time within movements, one with material implications. The concepts of “uncertainty” and “creativity” as part of the project of self‐subversion are important to me on a personal level, and, as I mentioned in the introduction, I argue that they can be adopted at a discoursal level to consider new possibilities for this project. Indeed, Nagar, Geiger, and Hale provide me the language around positionality and reflexivity to confront the daunting but necessary task of “becoming unstuck”

395

396

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

in my thinking about my own positionality, one that cannot be easily understood spatially as neatly “centered” or “de‐centered.” My work draws on deep (10th generation) Appalachian and activist roots in the United States that intersect with Freire’s own path, along with my experiences in Latin America, Europe, and now in Asia. Here in Asia my work is particularly rooted in sustained engagements with African students in Asia. All of this engagement is a result of my own interconnectivity to co/mentors (including family) and mentees. In conclusion, I argue that creating space is an iterative process within this project. In the next section I introduce the processes that I used to “create space” in thinking about language in this project.

Part 2: Methodology—A Grounded Coding To explore to consider horizons of Freirean scholarship around gender—the Freirean idea of the inédito viável—I chose to conduct a grounded coding of the Dicionário Paulo Freire [Encyclopedia Paulo Freire] available in Portuguese, English, and Spanish (Streck, Redin, & Zitkoski, 2008, 2012, 2015). I argue that this process opens up spaces to reveal the way language around gender and Freire have concrete implications for struggles for liberation. I considered the strangeness of analyzing a dictionary in another reference‐ style book like this one, but I concluded that this exercise allowed me a starting point from which to explore future directions. By focusing on coding second‐ and third‐level analyses in the most recent large collection on Freire’s work (and work, in the 2 decades since his death, that “reinvents” his own), I was able to center a variety of authors in my analysis. I was already quite familiar with the dictionary as I was given the opportunity by Carlos Alberto Torres, editor of this book, as one of his doctoral students at UCLA, to write one of the chapters (entries) that he had been invited to write (Jones [Misiaszek] 2008). Another reason for presenting an analysis of the dictionary in an English‐language chapter such as this is that, on Google Scholar, the English version shows that it has been cited only four times, which points to a need to engage English‐ reading audiences with its material (comparatively, in the Brazilian Google Acadêmico the original in Portuguese has been cited 41 times and its 2015 edition 185 times; the Spanish‐language version of Google Scholar, Google Académico, revealed no direct citations, only one mention of a review of the Spanish‐language version). These facts signal some unsaturated spaces for engagement. This analysis was conducted using the Spanish‐language version of the ­dictionary, as it is most recently translated version and the only version available online (Streck et al., 2015). I supplemented it with the original hard‐copy version in Portuguese, as another consequence of my off‐centered positionality is that in writing the first draft of this chapter, I had no library access to the hard copy of the English version. Thus, although translations were later added in English (and, at times, bracketed in Portuguese) to this chapter, the central language for analysis is Spanish. Indeed, this has proven to be a strength of decentering English, as this multilayered process of incorporating the three translations revealed interesting inconsistencies/differences within the three texts that were

Engaging Gender and Freire

illustrative of larger questions of power and language. My coding and personal experience with the project have led me to believe that the entries have remained largely the same (I do not believe the majority of authors have had the opportunity to provide updates); thus, aside from introductions, the text is mostly dated at 2008. There have certainly been great developments in the field since then. For this reason, it is important to explicitly note the ethical dilemma of citing the author of the paragraphs that I analyze, for mine is an examination of the result of layers of work, many of which are out of the author’s (and editors’) control, including initial translation, editing, retranslation, and republication. I have attempted to center the text over the author by removing their names as subjects in the analysis, using their names only to cite the entry. As well, it is not of interest to me to code for an individual author and how they may identify in terms of gender; I am not looking at this variable in relationship to the language I am coding, because I believe this practice perpetuates binaries that are not useful in the context of my analysis. I began by searching the dictionary’s 230 entries, written by over 100 authors, for the following word(s)/stems: ●● ●● ●● ●●

género mujer (woman) femeni‐ sex‐

The following is a list of 19 entries in which one or more of these word(s)/ stem/s was found: 1) Coherence (COHERENCIA) 2) Democracy (Reconnecting the Personal and the Political) [DEMOCRACIA (Reconexión de lo personal y de lo político)] 3) Difference (DIFERENCIA) 4) Feminism (FEMINISMO) 5) Human Nature (NATURALEZA HUMANA) 6) Institute of Cultural Action (INSTITUTO DE ACCIÓN CULTURAL (IDAC)) 7) Justice/Social Justice (JUSTICIA/JUSTICIA SOCIAL) 8) Knowledge (Erudite/Popular/Experiential) [SABER (Erudito/saber popular/ saber de experiencia)] 9) Language (LENGUAJE) 10) Modernity/Postmodernity (MODERNIDAD/POS MODERNIDAD) 11) Racism (RACISMO) 12) Radicalness/Radical Education (RADICALIDAD/EDUCACIÓN RADICAL) 13) Recife (RECIFE) 14) Social exclusion (EXCLUSIÓN SOCIAL) 15) Teaching Work (TRABAJO DOCENTE) 16) Unity in Diversity (UNIDAD EN LA DIVERSIDAD) 17) Untested Feasibility (INÉDITO VIABLE) 18) Woman/Man [Gender Relations, Relations in Dignity [MUJER/HOMBRE (Relaciones de género, relaciones dignas)] 19) World (MUNDO)

397

398

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

I added these selected passages underneath their entry names to code in NVivo. It is important to note the effect of identifying these passages and then further coding them for subthemes has had on this grounded analysis; simply put, as the words/stems [género, mujer (Woman), femeni‐, and sex‐] are obvious themes that would necessarily be present in the dictionary, these words were the starting point—their inclusion in the dictionary is not the result that I was trying to prove. I was instead interested in their substance and the gaps that beginning here would lead me to. As I did this, as a refresher, I reviewed any cited quote within a primary source of Freire’s that the passages contained. I then coded the passages for references to Freire’s own books, which revealed that the passages drew on primary or secondary analysis of six works of Freire (the number of occurrences are indicated in parentheses): 1) Professora sim, tia não: cartas a quem ousa ensinar (Freire, 1993) [Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach (Freire, 1998)] (2) 2) Pedagogy of indignation (Freire, 2004) (1) 3) Pedagogy of hope (Freire, 1992) (6) 4) Medo e ousadia: o cotidiano do professor [A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education (Shor & Freire, 1986)] (2) 5) Extensão ou comunicação? (Freire, 1985) (1) 6) Aprendendo com a própria história (Freire & Guimarães, 1987) (2) Focusing on this meta‐analysis, I then coded for the following: 7) Author’s reflection of Freire’s reflection on gender and intersecting social identities This generated the highest number of nodes (9). This exercise reinforced my assumption of the need to engage in a meta‐analysis of their analyses instead of a primary analysis of Freire’s texts. As well, it reinforced my plan to engage in a third phase of engaging with supplementary texts that may or may not have been referenced in the dictionary, which I discuss in the next section. While coding, I wrote a series of 15 memos that further helped frame this chapter. In one of them, simply titled, “What’s missing, what’s okay,” I noted that I had observed balance of how authors refer to gender in a binary sense (Mujeres y hombres or hombres y mujeres (women and men or men and women), including in the eponymous entry, “Woman/Man (Gender Relations, Relations in Dignity).” But I began noticing a lack of reflection on language, including on gender identity and gender expression. I further noted no mention of the differences in experience of gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, and experiences with different understandings of feminism/s. As well, this “what’s missing, what’s okay” process led me to identify related references to the stem of “intersec‐”(i.e., intersectionalities) with only three references: the intersection of the tension between radical/sectarian (Sartori, 2015, p. 33), of processes of teaching and learning (da Cunha, 2015, p. 158), and in my entry, in reference to interpretations of liberation through intersections of theology, politics, and education (Jones [Misiaszek] 2015, p. 307). I argue that this points to a need in Freirean scholarship to more explicitly focus on intersectionalities,

Engaging Gender and Freire

and beyond, to consider other ways of conceptual framing such as liminalities (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 2012). From this memo, I saw the need to expand into a new series of codes, the ­following of which generated data that I examine further (number of coding cases in parentheses)2: 8) Lack of reflection on language a) By Freire (not highlighted by author, per Code 7, Author’s Reflection) i)  Sexist (1) ii)  Binary (1) b) By author: i)  Word choice (6) ii)  Heteronormativity (0) iii)  Christian centric (1) iv)  Binary (6) 9) Asia (1) In the section that follows, I lay out my analysis of this new series of codes.

Part 3: Dictionary Analysis—“The Words Tell us Stories” Carrying out this coding has led me to contend that there is series of further work to be done around nuancing language in Freirean studies. Before presenting some examples from this coding, I would like to note that one common result of coding is that often what is not found is more interesting than what is found. For example, I would like to begin by noting that the lack of the initial word stems [género, mujer (Woman), femeni‐, sex‐] in my own entry, “Liberation” (Jones [Misiaszek], 2008, 2012, 2015) is illustrative here of these gaps/silences. In one sentence, I note, “Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, Enrique Dussel, and James Cone are liberation theologians whose work has long been connected with that of Freire” (p. 215). This line in the entry raises the challenging issue of the choices that are made in citing. One challenge is the issue of essentialism—I do not want to imply these authors are homogenous only because of the way I perceive their gender identity (male). Indeed, these are very important scholars in the field. But that must be reconciled with the tough question of why I didn’t include the feminist, Mujerista, Womanist, and other theologians whose work was at the core of my dissertation (Jones [Misiaszek], 2009), as well as theologies of liberation from traditions other than Christianity that are also a part of my work. This is further noticeable to me because a project of cataloging these texts in multiple languages was an explicit component of my dissertation. Yet I was unable to recognize the challenge in trying to present this is a short‐ form of about 750 words. Confronting my history of citation decisions, which more deeply are concerned with such issues as essentialism, representation, privilege, voice, and knowledge legitimacy, and recognizing this same challenge in this chapter, is an important starting point for me. Another example of relevant gaps/silences in this book that I found was no mention of “heteronormativity” and “cisnormativity.” I believe that there are

399

400

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

great possibilities for Freirean studies to engage at the “gender studies” intersections with such concepts that have concrete implications in people’s lives. I now highlight some of the dictionary entries that I was able to code, suggesting some work to be done to make more explicit discoursal spaces for inclusion. I would also like to state at the onset that I receive the critique that what follows is “just semantics” and recognize that this popularly has taken on the meaning of arguing over small, technical matters. Despite this, I want to argue that concern over the meaning of words has implications for Freirean theory and that words do matter in terms of the discourse’s relevance to concrete struggle. For theory to be liberatory practice (hooks, 1994, chapter 5, pp. 59–75), the “nuts and bolts” of this construction—word and their meanings—must also be liberatory. For instance, in the entry “Human Nature,” I am struck by persisting binaries in both languages as well as the gendered language in Spanish: Freire alertaba también sobre la capacidad que tiene el hombre de destruir la naturaleza y auto destruirse. Él creía que “del alborozo del alma forma parte también el dolor de la ruptura del sueño, de la utopía” (1992, p. 33). Sin embargo, cree que de los escombros es posible hacer renacer la esperanza de una nueva historia, un nuevo hombre y una mujer nueva. El ser humano puede realizar sus capacidades, convirtiéndose en un ser capaz de transformar, crear y ejercer también el derecho de “decir su Palabra”, de comunicación” (Fiori (Prefacio) in Freire, 1987). (Segala, 2015, p. 361, my emphasis) Freire also warned about the human capacity to destroy nature and themselves. He believed that “the pain of ruptured dreams, of utopia is also part of the restless ness of the soul” (1992, 33). However, he believes that from the ruins it is possible to create the rebirth of the hope of a new history, a new man and a new woman. Human beings can fulfill their capacities, becoming able to transform, create, and also exercise their right to “say their Word,” their right to communication (Fiori, Preface, in Freire, 1987). (Segala, 2012, p. 177, my emphasis) Although both maintain a problematic “man/woman” binary, the subjects are slightly different in Spanish and English. The persistence of the Spanish “el hombre” (and original Portuguese (“o homem”) to mean “human[kind]” is notable considering a benchmark document on transforming this language, “NOMBRA: the Representation of ‘the feminine’ and ‘the masculine’ in language” (authored by the interdisciplinary Women Institute’s Language Advisory Commission in Spain, with the Spanish UNESCO Commission) is now 2 decades old (Alario, Bengoechea, Lledó, & Vargas, 1995). At the time, it recommended the use of more inclusive “generics” such as the substitution of “los seres humanos” for “el hombre” (17, my emphasis): Podemos decir: “Los derechos humanos” o “Los derechos de la humanidad,” en lugar de “Los derechos del hombre”; “Los derechos de la infancia,” en lugar de “Los derechos del nino.”

Engaging Gender and Freire

We can say: “human rights” or “the rights of humanity” instead of “the rights of man [el hombre]”; “the rights of [group of children]” instead of “the rights of the boy.” Similarly, in “Reality,” I see expressions of relationships by the author that could be further nuanced: En la relación entre los hombres y mujeres y de éstos y de éstas con el mundo, se construye una nueva realidad y se hacen nuevos hombres y mujeres (Gadotti, 2015b, p. 432, my emphasis) It is in the relationship between men and women and of these men and women with the world that a new reality is constructed and new men and women are made (Gadotti, 2012b, p. 332, my emphasis) It struck me that the relationships between men‐men and women‐women, in all their many variations, particularly beyond these gender binaries, are not reflected here. I have also noted this from another passage in which the author does not analyze this same issue in Freire’s own writing, such as this example where a heteronormative binary of “love between men and women” is followed by a more inclusive “love between human beings”: Para concluir, nada mejor que citar una de sus últimas frases escritas por Freire (2000 p. 67), en la Tercera Carta Pedagógica, que nos dejó inconclusa sobre su mesa de trabajo: “No creo en la amorosidad entre mujeres y hombres, entre los seres humanos, si no nos convertimos en seres capaces de amar al mundo” [reference to (Freire, 2004) in Andreola, 2015a, p. 356, “Mundo,” my emphasis)] Let us conclude by quoting one of the last sentences written by Freire (2000, p. 67) in the Third Pedagogical Letter, which he left unfinished on his desk: “I do not believe in ‘amorosity’ between women and men, among human beings, if we do not become able to love the world.” [reference to (Freire, 2004) in Andreola, 2012a, p. 437, “World,” my emphasis) Continuing to look at the progression of language/language sequencing, I  examined the structure of the following passage in “Knowledge (Erudite/ Popular/Experiential)”: … se trata de los saberes hechos de experiencia que son elaborados en la experiencia existencial, en la dialógica de la práctica de vida comunitaria en que se encuentran insertos, en el circuito dialógico “hombres‐mujeres‐mundo” (Bueno Fischer & Lima Lousada, 2015, p. 458, my emphasis) These are … knowledges made of experiences that are elaborated in the existential experience, in the dialogics of the practice of community life of which they are part, in the dialogical circuit “men‐women‐world.” (Bueno Fischer & Lima Lousada, 2012, pp. 206–207, my emphasis)

401

402

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

I argue that this is a strange construction. On the one hand, it could be read as hombres‐mujeres/mundo (men‐women/world), which presents the obvious binary challenges that I have already discussed. Or it could be read more subversively as women mediating between men and the world. But again, my main argument is that these classical cyclical relationships in Freirean thought shouldn’t be taken for granted and require this sort of nuanced examination. I engaged in more in‐depth analysis for other passages. For instance, in the case of the entry, “Social Exclusion,” I notice a series of overlapping issues: Sin embargo, ¿quiénes son los excluidos? A veces el término se refiere a las minorías étnicas, otras a los segregados por el color; a veces a los desempleados de larga duración; otras veces a los sin vivienda; en ciertos casos a los que hacen opciones existenciales contrarias a la moral vigente; en otros a las personas con necesidades diferentes [portadores de deficiências], a los portadores de SIDA [aidéticos], a los viejos o incluso a los jóvenes. Entre nosotros, excluidos son los desempleados, los subempleados, los trabajadores del mercado informal, los sin tierra, las personas que viven en las calles, los que viven en las favelas, los que no tienen acceso a la salud, educación, seguridad social, etc., los negros, los indios, las mujeres, los jóvenes, los viejos, los homosexuales, los alternativos, los portadores de necesidades especiales [portadores de necesidades especiais], en fin, una lista interminable (da Rosa Oliveira, 2015, p. 213) Who are, however, the excluded? Sometimes the term refers to the ethnic minorities; sometimes to those segregated by color; sometimes to the long‐ duration unemployed; other times to the homeless; in some cases, to those who make existential choices against the prevailing morals; in others to the bearers of deficiencies, to the HIV/AIDS positive people, the old or even the young. Among us the excluded are the unemployed, the underemployed, the informal workers, the landless, the street people, the people who live in slums, those who do not have access to health, education, social security, and more, the black, the indigenous people, the women, the young, the old, the homosexuals, those who live an alternative life, people with special needs … an almost endless list (da Rosa Oliveira, 2012, pp. 201, 364–365) My main argument here is that although this list may be rooted in a desire for inclusivity, it is overshadowed by a lack of consideration of the politics of each of these terms. Beyond the issue of gendered adjectives, and the complexities of the usage of terms like indios and negros depending on context, I believe that in English there is a need for careful consideration of the article “the” in conjunction with plurals and how this has been used in objectifying, homogenizing, and othering groups for centuries, according to University of Toronto linguist Sali Tagliamonte, who notes: Using the word “the” in front of a group is a way of highlighting the group’s otherness from the speaker and his or her audience, according to Eastern Michigan University linguist Eric Acton. “There’s this distancing effect,

Engaging Gender and Freire

like they’re over there….They’re signaling they’re not part of it—they’re distancing themselves from it.” (Abadi, 2016) Beyond that, there are contextual issues around personhood, such as using “older persons” to highlight individual personhood, particularly in contexts in which “the individual” exists in different ways with “the collective.” Concurrently there is a lack of consideration of (more inclusive) people‐first and (more problematic) identity‐first language, as illustrated by unevenness in the lists. Attempts can be strange: the English (and Portuguese) “bearers of ­deficiencies”; the confusion around how to identify in an attempt at people‐first language in Spanish, a change from the Portuguese aidéticos to Spanish portadores de SIDA (neither of which is inclusive of HIV). though this is added back into the (problematic) identity‐first English translation (HIV/AIDS positive people) instead of “person living with HIV/AIDS.” The use of terms like portador, which translates to bearer and medically as carrier, for instance, [is] highly offensive and stigmatizing to many people with HIV and AIDS. It is also incorrect: the infective agent is HIV. You can’t just catch AIDS. This term may also give the impression that people can protect themselves choosing a partner based on their appearance or by avoiding someone who they know has AIDS (Vancouver Island Persons Living With HIV/ AIDS Society, n.d., para. 8) In considering the power of these linguistic shifts, it is useful to point out that this same guide recognizes that these are discussions are global discoursal discussions: The HIV and Development Program of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has also developed useful policy and guidelines on how HIV‐related language should be used to empower and inspire rather than to distance or disempower. (para. 19) This tendency for the terms to pathologize, and thus, dehumanize, a person can also be seen, for example, in the unexamined use of the term homosexual. These terms are not static and a consideration of the fluid nature of their use (including derogatorily and subversively) can be seen in online spaces. For example, the Twitter account of Spanish project Moscas de Colores (2017b) defines the project as “a different point of view about sexual diversity through [sic] the words|Un punto de vista distinto sobre la diversidad sexual a través de las palabras.” They further define themselves as: A space of information, opinion and debate on such controversial as the issue of sexual diversity. With these posts we want to share our point of view on sexuality, a integrating point of view based on science and common sense. This blog complements our particular claiming project we publish on our website, a work which involves studying the words and expressions

403

404

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

used against those who do not fit to hetero‐normative canons, words that we shaped on original artwork and we collect to the greatest network lgbt [sic] dictionary. If on web we talk about what is or what was, in this blog we step more to opine, criticize, reply and, sometimes, also laugh (Moscas de Colores, 2017a) Participating authors compile “LGTB” dictionaries, now in 69 languages with 1,500 words, as well as the background of the words, because “the words tell us stories” (Moscas de Colores, 2017b, my emphasis). To employ the Freirean concept of reading the word to read the world (Freire, 2000), this relationship between language and fluidly evolving social conditions can be, in itself, a way to confront the topic of “social exclusion” that the entry itself seeks to define. These issues resurface for example in the following passage in the entry “Untested Feasability”: …es la voluntad política de todas y de todos los que como Paulo y con él vienen trabajando para la liberación de los hombres y de las mujeres, independientemente de la raza, religión, género, opción sexual [escolha sexual], edad y clase social… (Araújo Freire, 2015a, p. 280) …the political will of all those who, like Paulo and with him, have been working for the liberation of men and women, independently of race, religion, gender, sexual choice, age, and social class, making it concrete (Araújo Freire, 2012a, p. 414) This same example also highlights the challenges of lists. It begins with a binary understanding of gender orientation [men and women]. This is followed by the common practice of listing religion as an assumed and centered concept without acknowledging atheism or agnosticism. Opción sexual and the Portuguese and English escolha/choice are seen as derogatory as they imply a “choice and therefore can and should be ‘cured’” (GLADD, 2017a), to draw on the work of GLADD, “the world’s leading media advocacy organization” (GLADD, 2017b). A third example of the list issue can be found in “Power”: Por ello se trata de “empoderar” (un concepto desarrollado en las últimas obras de Freire, que usaba el término inglés empowerment), de fortalecer a las personas y sus organizaciones sociales y movimientos como los sin tierra, los sin techo, el de los habitantes de la calle [moradores de rua], de estudiantes, inmigrantes, mujeres, indígenas, homosexuales, negros, minorías, asociaciones religiosas, entidades sin fines de lucro, organizaciones no gubernamentales, etc. uniendo sus luchas específicas con las luchas globales de transformación (Gadotti, 2015a, p. 398) Therefore it is necessary to “empower” (a concept developed in Freire’s last works, that used the word empowerment in English), to strengthen people and their social organizations and movements, such as the landless,

Engaging Gender and Freire

the homeless, the street people, students, immigrants, women, indigenous people, homosexuals, blacks, minorities, religious associations, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and more, by joining their specific struggles to the global struggles for transformation (Gadotti, 2012a, p. 305) Although I don’t want to return here to the tensions of these terms, I would also like to note the assumption that all of their “specific struggles” need to be “unified in global struggles of transformation.” Although I am not questioning the strategy of bringing a particular social identifier to the forefront in a struggle, I do question the implication that these groups in their specific struggles are not already engaging in work around intersectionality. Furthermore, this example highlights the need in Northern contexts to consider the transformative potential of Southern constructions such as the Portuguese “uma pessoa em situação de rua” (a person in a situation of being on the street) (which I prefer to the Portuguese translation used here—“moradores da rua”), which offers potential for inclusivity in its person‐first language and implication that it is a “situation” not an inherent characteristic of the person. It also leaves open space for differing experiences in this “situation” (e.g., temporally). I also identified a lack of reflection of implications of gendered language in a reflection on Freire’s poetry in the entry “Recife” (Araújo Freire, 2012b, 2015b). The introduction and 1969 poem begins: La lectura de mundo de Paulo, y por coherencia su obra teórica, es ­marcada por este hecho: ser un hombre de Recife. Para ella Paulo escribió una poesía: Recife siempre Ciudad bonita Ciudad discreta Dif ícil ciudad Ciudad mujer. Nunca te das de una sola vez. Solo a los pocos te entregas Hoy una mirada. Mañana una sonrisa. Ciudad mañosa Ciudad mujer. Podías llamarte María de la Gracia María de la Peña María Betania María Dolores. Serías siempre Recife,… Paulo’s reading of the world, and thus coherently his theoretical work, is marked by this fact: he was a man from Recife.

405

406

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Paulo wrote a poem in honor of Recife: Recife always Pretty city Discrete city Difficult city Female city You never give yourself immediately You only give yourself bit by bit Today a look Tomorrow a smile Foxy city Female city You might be called Maria Maria da Graça Maria da Penha Maria Betânia Maria Dolores You would always be Recife,… My aim here is not to engage in the obvious gender analysis of this poem that is missing and clearly required. Indeed, I see the same potential to engage in a more nuanced analysis of these holes in other analyses of Freire’s poetry, such as in the eponymous entry “Poetry” (Thiago de Mello, 2015), which lacks any analysis around gender and Freire. I instead wish to use these examples to argue that there are spaces for further analysis of Freire’s less explored writings, including poetry, and other forms of literary expression of critical pedagogues who have followed in his tradition. For example, in my article, “The synergistic relationship of the humanities and social theory in Carlos Alberto Torres’ First Freire” (Misiaszek, 2015a), I explored the relationship of Torres’ social science theory to poetry and fiction, both his and others’. I have written about poetry as a tool of critical pedagogy for nonpoets that examines my own positionality to this topic. In addition, I explore positionality rooted in critical pedagogy in my own autoethnographic poetry in my previously mentioned work (Misiaszek, 2018). Finally, to reiterate, I want to argue that coding through a gender lens is a useful methodological and analytical tool in that it led me to also reexamine seemingly unrelated topics. In other words, in looking for spaces of particular discourses around gender, other issues around inclusivity become noticeable. For instance, through the grounded process, I became equally interested in coding for “binary” and “Asia” and found that the entry “Asia” illustrates Freire’s relative lack of on the ground experience yet influence on projects in the region (Andreola, 2015b). It reveals a strange meeting of issues around binaries and exoticism of the (overgeneralized) “Africa” and “Asia”: En la obra de Freire ¿es más profunda la marca de la racionalidad occidental o del espíritu afro‐asiático? Benedicto E.L. Cintra probablemente nos trae la respuesta en su tesis de doctorado titulada Entre o grego e o semita. En él y en su obra ¿predominaría la lógica de la razón moderna o la lógica

Engaging Gender and Freire

perenne del corazón? De cualquier forma en entrevista del Pasquin [cited earlier in the entry] él sintetizó su largo aprendizaje del exilio en esta frase: “Yo soy capaz de querer a cualquier pueblo.” (Andreola, 2015b, p. 64) Which is deeper in Freire’s work—the mark of Western rationality or the Afro‐Asian spirit? Benedito E. L. Cintra may bring us the answer in his PhD thesis titled Entre o grego e o semita [Between the Greek and the Semite]. Which predominates in his work‐the logic of modern reason or the eternal logic of the heart? Be as it may, in the interview given to Pasquim Freire summarized his long learning of exile in this sentence: “I am capable of loving, hugely,3 any people.” (Andreola, 2012b, p. 32) I am struck by the way that the entry problematically concludes with these rhetorical binary questions about the influence of “Western rationality/modern reason” versus “Afro‐Asiatic spirit”/ “eternal logical of the heart,” concluding with a statement by Freire that he was able to “love any [group of people].” Although I appreciate the sentiment behind Freire’s statement, it has an essentializing feel when it follows this series of questions in an entry titled “Asia,” which fails to call into question interpretations of how to define “modernity” or “rationality,” not to mention grouping of “Asia” with “Africa.” Particularly in a project in which so few perspectives from Asia are represented, this lack of analysis stood out to me. Related to this, I would like to highlight the problematic use of “we” in discussions of “Western” tradition, again in “Woman/Man”: En la tradición occidental cristiana tendremos una nueva mujer para componer el nuevo hombre en Cristo. Será María, la mujer virtuosa, inmaculada, instrumento de Dios. Virgen y madre. La maternidad pasa a ser sinónimo del feminismo bueno. Y la santidad pasa a ser representada en la maternidad (y no de cualquier maternidad como recuerda Marcela Lagarde y Los Ríos, 2005) y en la virginidad/ castidad. La mujer mala al contrario, está íntimamente relacionada con Eva, Satanás, María Magdalena. El cuerpo sensual y la idea de placer carnal está para Eva como el sacrificio y la donación está para María…. (Eggert, 2015, pp. 349–350, my emphasis) In the Western Christian tradition we will have a new woman to form the new man in Christ. It will be Mary, the virtuous, immaculate woman, the instrument of God, virgin, and mother. Maternity becomes synonymous with the good feminine. The good woman is a saint. And sanctity is now represented in maternity (and not just any maternity, as Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos, 2005, reminds us) and in virginity/chastity. On the other hand, the bad woman is closely related to Eve, Satan, Mary Magdalene. The sensuous body and the idea of carnal pleasure are related to Eve, while sacrifice and giving are related to Mary…. (Eggert, 2012, p. 427, my emphasis) Although I appreciate the mention of this well‐known Biblical critique, I am more interested in the implied engagement of a collective “we” in terms of

407

408

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

belonging to a religious tradition, an issue I mentioned previously. This is particularly important when engaging with Freire from a context that is not familiar with this tradition and may also be vulnerable to perpetuating this collective “we” and for scholars who may question “tradition,” “Western,” and “Christian” particularly as intersecting concepts, and furthermore because no analysis follows this passage to deconstruct the taken‐for‐granted concepts inherent in this well‐known example. The analysis of these two entries, “Asia” and “Woman/Man,” illuminates further possibilities for analysis that were generated by “starting with gender.”

Part 4: Supplemental Syntheses—Re/Engagement Across Contexts Following this analysis, in this third phase of this research, I examined supplemental primary and secondary analyses on gender and Freire. Here I would like to argue for the need to reemphasize the importance of the work of critical translators so these pieces can better “talk” to each other, as I believe they are not absorbing the rich “nutrients” that the other pieces offer and lead to some unnecessary gaps that may also contribute to this “plateau.” The work of Kathleen Weiler on this topic is widely cited in English‐language publications notably “Freire and a Feminist Pedagogy of Difference” (1991), “Myths of Paulo Freire” (1996), and “Rereading Paulo Freire” (2002). A standout article from the initial period in which Weiler was publishing extensively about Freire (early‐mid‐1990s) is by Sue Jackson (1997), “Crossing Borders and Changing Pedagogies: From Giroux and Freire to Feminist Theories of Education,” who both analyzed Freire directly and analyzed bell hooks on Freire and Weiler on Freire. Weiler is also included widely in Daniel Schugurensky’s relatively recent comprehensive book on Freire, Paulo Freire: A Transformative Triangle for the 21st Century (2011). Of note, however, is that in his “non‐exhaustive list of comparative studies on the works of Freire in relation to some other 80 thinkers, in no particular order,” Schugurensky states that he includes two items “compared not with another person but with [an] entire religious or social movement…[:] Islam and feminism” (Schugurensky, 2011, pp. 220–221). His list includes feminist thinkers. And although I recognize the impossibility of pleasing every reader, it was noticeable that there were only two references for “Freire and feminist pedagogies”: Butterwick (1987) and Weiler (1993), whereas I identified that the maximum number of references was 11 for “Freire and Antonio Gramsci” (Schugurensky, 2011, p. 218). There were numerous entries as recent as 2010. Seeing that the other reference to Butterwick (1987), a dissertation, although engaging, begs the question, why such old references, and why only to North American women? It is also notable that Schugurensky drew only on Weiler’s 1990s writing in other parts of his book (Weiler, 1991, 1996). Finally, this “Freire and feminist pedagogies” item also is not mentioned by any of the dictionary authors. Nuanced, critical archival work will continue to strengthen these sorts of lists.

Engaging Gender and Freire

However, there are no references to Weiler in the dictionary. I was not able to find any evidence of Freire engaging directly with her critiques in his writing. Related to this, I cannot find any evidence that her work has been widely translated. Similarly, I cannot find any evidence that she is engaging with the authors of the dictionary entries I have analyzed (though she has engaged with dictionary authors Gadotti, McLaren, Shor, and Torres). In Weiler (1996, p. 353) a small footnote references a particular source that she found useful for “English speaking students of Freire.” Although a small detail, it resonates with me now because the issue is of “English‐only speaking students of Freire,” itself tied into the privilege to both have the time, energy, and resources to study and at the same time have the privilege not to have to study. As well, bell hooks, author of “bell hooks Speaking About Paulo Freire—the Man, his Work” (hooks, 1993) and the oft‐cited chapter titled “Paulo Freire” in her seminal work, Teaching to Transgress (hooks, 1994) is cited only once in the dictionary in relationship to these early‐1990s discussions (Eggert, 2015). Most recently, as work at this nexus is (excitingly) fluid, as this chapter was going to press, Ecos de Freire e Pensamento Feminista: Diálogos e Esclarecimentos (Echos of Freire and Feminist Thought: Dialogues and Clarifications) (Macedo, 2017) was published, which will serve as a valuable reference in ongoing work at this nexus; future critical translation will support the further dissemination of this text. Finally, I argue for the importance of global work to re/invigorate praxis around Freire and gender and particularly to connect praxis in historically underrepresented spaces in the Global South. For example, continuously reexamining these gaps in Freirean scholarship led to initial discussions in 2010, which in turn eventually led to the previously mentioned International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis, founded in 2013, which aims to more visibly institutionalize work on gender and Freire, now with founding members in Argentina, Australia, China, Ghana, South Africa, Sudan, and the United States. We use the following guidelines in our current work: All projects should be framed by feminist methodologies, underpinned by Freirean principles. When thinking about projects, Founding Members are encouraged to consider that projects should have a focus on: ●●

●●

●●

●● ●● ●●

harnessing the intellectual capital of the network in a way that has an impact beyond the immediate network members. developing innovative methods and resources that can be used when working with communities redistributing the “outputs” of current research endeavors to reach a broader range of people and communities moving beyond traditional outputs/methods of research bringing research and activism together building sustainable relationships and ways of working (International Network on Gender, Social Justice, and Praxis, internal grant guidelines, unpublished).

I include these guidelines to illustrate a focus on the “concreteness” of this work.

409

410

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Furthermore, I see possibilities for our recently published Occasional Papers (Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education, 2017), as well as other work by founding members Penny Jane Burke, Ronelle Carolissen, and Sondra Hale and their collaborators (Burke, 2012; Burke & Jackson, 2007; Burke, Crozier, & Misiaszek, 2016; Bozalek, Leibowitz, Carolissen, & Boler, 2014; Leibowitz et al., 2012; Hale, 2014, 2007) to be translated and to engage with the dictionary scholarship; the Founding Members’ work itself is not representative of a homogenous group. I also propose further critical documentation and archival work around the work of Founding Member Liliana Olmos (and her colleagues), who has been working at the Freire/gender nexus since 1975, through such projects as cofounding the cross‐institutional popular education project Cooperativa de Trabajadores en Educación in Córdoba, Argentina, which counted among its inspirations Freire’s Pedagogía del Oprimido; this thread has extended through her more recent work (Olmos, 2009). To conclude, this third section layered my dictionary coding, pushed me to confront the history of citations on Freire and gender analysis from the 1990s onward, and to consider how my own work as part of collaborations across these geographical spaces could be situated in this conversation going forward.

Part 5: Conclusions—Evolving Struggle, Evolving Language Returning to this chapter’s opening conversation about Maggie Nelson, I carry and will continue to carry the weight, privilege, and responsibility of the task of engaging with these heaviest of intellectual heavyweights. I hope to have shown in this analysis the constant vigilance with which earlier‐trajectory scholars such as myself must approach the heavyweights. I could have engaged with a literature‐review style mapping of these engagements. But I chose to focus on the most recent large collection of writings on Freire, excerpted passages related to the themes of the chapter, and then engaged in a grounded coding, which was not confined to gender but which also showed where beginning with a gender lens, and thus a focus on positionality and reflexivity, took me. Addressing the chapter’s central questions, I have attempted to show the continuing relevance of “reading” Freire and gender in conversation with each other and how this reading can address concrete diverse manifestations of inequality, oppression, and discrimination. Finally, I have identified some key gaps in engagements among texts that point to the ongoing need for critical archival and translation work. To reiterate my argument, I believe that engagement in this sort of meta‐analysis is one way to challenge this “plateau” of scholarship on Freire and gender; I argue this is because this methodology allows for the gaze to shift away from both Freire’s own analyses and from others’ own analyses on Freire, to instead center new, forward‐looking possibilities within this project. In other words, it is not a critique for critique’s sake but one that instead highlights the necessary temporality of this work that we are all subject to. I argue that potentially being able to translate this discoursal vigilance into concrete possibilities for inclusion

Engaging Gender and Freire

makes it worth releasing this chapter for new meta‐analysis. It is a task that, to adapt Lather and Ellsworth: is impossible. That is precisely the task: to situate the experience of impossibility as an enabling site for working through aporias. Ellsworth calls this “coming up against stuck place after stuck place” as a way to keep moving within “the impossibility of teaching [and I would argue writing]” in order to produce and learn from ruptures, failures, breaks, and refusals (Ellsworth, 1997, xi, 9). (Lather, 2002, p. 189, my emphasis) It is the simultaneous lightness and seriousness that continues to draw me to read Freire and read others reading Freire, and read others reading others reading Freire to address these “impossibilities as enabling sites.” Freire is not the end game—his work allows for the constant possibility of using theory to (as all of these authors have also done) get “unstuck”—to have a “sense of permission”—to confront issues of social justice.

Acknowledgments I thank Professor Carlos Alberto Torres for the constant support in preparing this chapter and throughout my academic trajectory. I owe an intellectual debt to Professor Liliana Olmos for her mentoring on these issues since 2006, including in the final read of this chapter. I also owe an intellectual debt to Professor Penny Jane Burke, whose mentoring I have greatly learned from since 2008. I am grateful for the long‐standing work with all of the founding members of the International Network on Gender, Social Justice and Praxis. I am also grateful for the 2015 and 2017 peer reviews of this chapter. Finally, I thank (Professor) Greg Misiaszek for ceaselessly being my first reader, and my parents, Debbie and Chip Jones, veteran educators, activists, and the first feminists I knew.

Notes 1 Jeremy Adelman’s Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman

(Princeton: Princeton University, 2012).

2 I also coded for History and Lack of reflection on language—by Freire—generalization,

but found them less revealing than the codes I have chosen to present here.

3 This is a translation of the Portuguese enormamente; the adverb was omitted in

the Spanish translation.

References Abadi, Mark. (2016). “The blacks,” “the gays,” “the Muslims” — linguists explain one of Donald Trump’s most unusual speech tics. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/donald‐trump‐the‐blacks‐the‐gays‐2016‐10.

411

412

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Alario, Carmen, Bengoechea, Mercedes, Lledó, Eulalia, & Vargas, Ana. (1995). Nombra: la representación del femenino y el masculino en el lenguaje. Comisión Asesora sobre Lenguaje del Instituto de la Mujer (The Women Institute’s Language Advisory Commission), with the Spanish UNESCO Commission. Als, Hilton. (2016, April 18). Immediate family: Maggie Nelson’s life in words. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/ maggie‐nelsons‐many‐selves. Andreola, B. (2012a). World. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 436–437). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Andreola, B. (2012b). Asia. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 31–32). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Andreola, B. (2015a). Mundo. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 355–356). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Andreola, B. (2015b). Asia. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 63–64). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Araújo Freire, A. M. (2012b). Recife. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire Encyclopedia (pp. 336–341). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Araújo Freire, A. M. (2012a). Untested feasibility. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 412–415). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Araújo Freire, A. M. (Nita Freire)(2015a). Inédito viable. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 278–281). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Araújo Freire, A. M. (Nita Freire)(2015b). Recife. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 437–445). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Vancouver Island Persons Living With HIV/AIDS Society. (n.d.). Australian HIV/ AIDS media guide. Retrieved from http://vpwas.com/hiv‐and‐aids‐media‐guide. Bozalek, V., Leibowitz, B., Carolissen, R., & Boler, M. (2014). Discerning critical hope in educational practices. London; New York: Routledge. Bueno Fischer, N., & Vinícius Lima, L. (2012). Knowledge (erudite/ popular/ experiential). In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 206–207). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bueno Fischer, N., & Vinícius Lima, L. (2015). Saber (Erudito/saber popular/saber de experiencia). In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 458–459). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Burke, P. J. (2012). The right to higher education: Beyond widening participation. Milton Park; New York: Routledge. Burke, P. J., Crozier, G., & Misiaszek, L. I. (2016). Changing pedagogical spaces in higher education: Diversity, inequalities and misrecognition. New York: Routledge. Burke, P. J., & Jackson, S. (2007). Reconceptualising lifelong learning: Feminist interventions. London; New York: Routledge.

Engaging Gender and Freire

Butterwick, Shauna J. (1987). Learning liberation: A comparative analysis of feminist consciousness raising and Freire’s conscientization method. Master’s thesis, University of British Columbia. Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (2017, October). International Network on Gender, Social Justice, and Praxis. Occasional Papers Issue 2. Newcastle, Australia: University of Newcastle. da Cunha, M. I. (2015). Discencia/Docencia. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 158–159). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). da Rosa Oliveira, A. (2012). Social exclusion. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 364–366). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. da Rosa Oliveira, A. (2015). Exclusión social. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 213–215). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Moscas de Colores. (2017a). The blog of Moscas de Colores [Blog]. Retrieved from http://blog.moscasdecolores.com. Moscas de Colores. (2017b). Moscas de Colores [Twitter account]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/moscasdecolores. de Mello, T. (2015). Poesía. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 399–402). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). de Sousa Santos, B. (2012). Public sphere and epistemologies of the South. Africa Development, 37(1), 43–67. de Sousa Santos, B., Nunes, J. A., & Meneses, M. P. (2007). Introduction: Opening up the canon of knowledge and recognition of difference. In B. de Sousa Santos (Ed.), Another knowledge is possible: Beyond Northern epistemologies (pp. xix–lxii). London: Verso. Department of Gender Studies. (n.d.). About. Retrieved from http://www. genderstudies.ucla.edu/about. Eggert, E. (2012). Woman/man (Gender relations, relations in dignity). In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 426–427). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Eggert, E. (2015). Mujer/Hombre (Relaciones de género, relaciones dignas). In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 348–350). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Freire, P. (1985). Extensão ou comunicação? (8th ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1993). Professora sim, tia não: Cartas a quem ousa ensinar. São Paulo: Olho d’Agua. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2004). Pedagogy of indignation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Freire, P., & Guimarães, S. (1987). Aprendendo com a própria história, Coleção Educação e comunicação. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Paz e Terra.

413

414

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Gadotti, M. (2012a). Power. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 304–306). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gadotti, M. (2012b). Reality. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 332–333). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gadotti, M. (2015a). Poder. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 397–399). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Gadotti, M. (2015b). Realidad. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 431–434). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). GLADD. (2017a). GLAAD media reference guide—Terms to avoid. Retrieved from http://www.glaad.org/reference/offensive. GLADD. (2017b). About ‐ Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO. Retrieved from http://www.glaad.org/about/staff/sarahkateellis. Green, Elliott. (2016). What are the most‐cited publications in the social sciences (according to Google Scholar)? London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialscien ces/2016/05/12/what‐are‐the‐most‐cited‐publications‐in‐the‐social‐sciences ‐according‐to‐google‐scholar. Hale, Sondra. (2007). Appreciating and critiquing Freire: The connections between education and power in the feminist classroom. Forum: Paulo Freire at UCLA: A Dialogue on His Contributions 10 Years After His Death, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California‐Los Angeles. Hale, S. (2014). A propensity for self‐subversion and a taste for liberation: An afterword. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 10(1), 149–163. https://doi.org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.10.1.149 Haywood, C., & Mac an Ghaill, M. (2012). “What’s next for masculinity?” Reflexive directions for theory and research on masculinity and education. Gender and Education, 24(6), 577–592. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2012.685701 hooks, b. (1993). bell hooks speaking about Paulo Freire ‐ the man, his work. In P. Leonard, & P. McLaren (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 145–152). New York: Routledge. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. International Network on Gender, Social Justice, and Praxis. (n.d.). Network actions. Unpublished work. Jackson, S. (1997). Crossing borders and changing pedagogies: From Giroux and Freire to feminist theories of education. Gender and Education, 9(4), 457–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540259721196 Jones (Misiaszek), L. I. (2008). Libertação. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Dicionário Paulo Freire (pp. 247–248). Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora. Jones (Misiaszek), L. I. (2012, October). Liberation. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 214–216). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Jones (Misiaszek), L. I. (2015). Liberación. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 306–308). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL).

Engaging Gender and Freire

Jones (Misiaszek), L. I. (2009). Individual theologies, community pedagogies: Liberatory praxes of Latin American women educators. Doctoral dissertation, University of California‐Los Angeles. Lather, P. (2002). Ten years later, yet again: Critical pedagogy and its complicities. In K. Weiler (Ed.), Feminist engagements: Reading, resisting, and revisioning male theorists in education and cultural studies (pp. 183–195). New York: Routledge. Leibowitz, B., Swartz, L., Bozalek, V., Carolissen, R., Nicholls, L., & Rohleder, P. (Eds.) (2012). Community, self and identity: Educating South African university students for citizenship. Cape Town: Human Science Research Council Press. Macedo, E. (Ed.) (2017). Ecos de Freire e pensamento feminista: Diálogos e esclarecimentos. Porto, Portugal: Instituto Paulo Freire de Portugal. Misiaszek, L. I. (2015a). The synergistic relationship of the humanities and social theory in Carlos Alberto Torres’ “First Freire”. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 25(2), 5–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2015.1024401 Misiaszek, L. I. (2015b). “You’re Not Able to Breathe”: Conceptualizing the intersectionality of early career, gender, and crisis. Teaching in Higher Education, 20(1), 64–77. Misiaszek, L. I. (2017). Online education as “vanguard” higher education: An expert critical educator navigates “less traditional” higher education spaces in the US. Gender & Education, 29(6), 691–708. Misiaszek, L. I. (2018). China with “foreign talent” characteristics: A guerilla autoethnography of performing “foreign talentness” in a Chinese university. In Y. Taylor, & K. Lahad (Eds.), Feeling academic in the neoliberal university: Feminist flights, fights and failures (pp. 87–114). London: Palgrave. Nagar, R., & Geiger, S. (2007). Reflexivity and positionality in feminist fieldwork revisited. In A. Tickell, E. Sheppard, J. Peck, & T. Barnes (Eds.), Politics and practice in economic geography (pp. 267–278). London: Sage. National Geographic Society (Ed.) (2017, January). Special issue: Gender revolution (Vol. 231). Washington, DC: National Geographic Partners. Olmos, L. (2009). Formación docente y educación popular. Paper presented at the Sexto Encuentro Internacional del Foro Paulo Freire, São Paulo. Romão, J. E. (2007). Chapter 9: Sociology of education or the education of sociology? Paulo Freire and the sociology of education. In C. A. Torres, & A. Teodoro (Eds.), Critique and utopia: New developments in the sociology of education in the twenty‐first century (pp. 131–138). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Sartori, J. (2015). Activismo. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 32–34). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire: A transformative triangle for the 21st century. Continuum Library of Educational Thought. London: Bloomsbury. Segala, A. L. (2012). Human nature. In D. R. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Paulo Freire encyclopedia (pp. 176–178). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Segala, A. L. (2015). Naturaleza humana. In D. Streck, E. Redin, & J. J. Zitkoski (Eds.), Diccionario Paulo Freire (pp. 360–362). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1986). Medo e ousadia: o cotidiano do professor. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.

415

416

Lauren Ila Misiaszek

Steinmetz, Katy. (2017). Beyond “he” or “she”: The changing meaning of gender and sexuality. Time. Retrieved from http://time.com/magazine/us/4703292/ march‐27th‐2017‐vol‐189‐no‐11‐u‐s. Streck, D. R., Redin, E., & Zitkoski, J. J. (2008). Dicionário Paulo Freire. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora. Streck, D. R., Redin, E., & Zitkoski, J. J. (2012). Paulo Freire encyclopedia. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Streck, D. R., Redin, E., & Zitkoski, J. J. (Eds.) (2015). Diccionario Paulo Freire (translated from the 2nd Portuguese edition, revised and updated ed.). Lima: Consejo de Educación Popular de América Latina y el Caribe (CEAAL). Torres, C. A., & Teodoro, A. (Eds.) (2007). Critique and utopia: New developments in the sociology of education in the twenty‐first century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Vavrus, F., & Bartlett, L. (2012). Comparative pedagogies and epistemological diversity: Social and materials contexts of teaching in Tanzania. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 634–658. https://doi.org/10.1086/667395 Weiler, K. (1991). Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. Harvard Educational Review, 61(4), 449–475. Weiler, K. (1993). Freire and a feminist pedagogy of difference. In K. Geismar, & G. Nicoleau (Eds.), Teaching for change: Addressing issues of difference in the college classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review. Weiler, K. (1996). Myths of Paulo Freire. Educational Theory, 46(3), 353–371. Weiler, K. (2002). Rereading Paulo Freire. In K. Weiler (Ed.), Feminist engagements: Reading, resisting, and revisioning male theorists in education and cultural studies (pp. 67–87). New York: Routledge.

417

22 A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory Daniel G. Solorzano

In 1972, I was a high school social studies teacher at the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall—a youth correctional facility. I was part of a teacher training program called the National Teacher Corps. This was one of the first federally funded teacher training programs to prepare teachers to work in underserved Communities of Color—urban and rural. The year I participated, the program’s focus was on urban corrections. As a first‐year teacher, this is where I was first introduced to the work of Paulo Freire—Brazilian educator and critical social theorist. I continued my teaching career using Freirean Pedagogy at two community colleges in Chicana/o Studies and Sociology for 10 years (1975–1985).1 Fast forward to March 1986. Paulo Freire was in Southern California at Santa Ana College and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to discuss his ideas and experiences with educators and community organizers who were using, or considering using, his problem‐posing methodology. As a former community college educator and recent PhD, who was using Freirean Pedagogy, I attended the meetings and learned how other educators from mostly the K–12 sector were using Freirean Pedagogy. After that meeting, I begin to document a Chicana/o Studies course I taught at East Los Angeles College in 1979 and 1980 using Freirean Pedagogy. This work culminated in an article titled “Teaching and Social Change: Reflections on a Freirean Approach in a College Classroom” and was my first Freirean publication (see Solorzano, 1989).2 Freire was and continues to be that critical foundation and bridge along my intellectual and pedagogical career. This chapter represents the reflections of my journey of teaching and researching in Race, Ethnic and Women’s Studies, to Freirean Pedagogy, and on to critical race theory (CRT).

My Introduction to Race, Ethnic, and Women’s Studies As an undergraduate student in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I majored in Chicana/o Studies and Sociology and considered these disciplines as areas of critical social inquiry. Chicana/o Studies3 examines the lives, histories, and The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

418

Daniel G. Solorzano

cultures of Mexican‐origin people coming to and living in the United States. Like other ethnic studies programs, Chicana/o Studies emerged in the context of the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s. In those years, many of us also read foundational works in African American, Native American, Asian American, and Women’s Studies. In addition to the core texts in each of these ethnic studies fields, my interdisciplinary training also led me to the cultural nationalist frameworks (see Asante, 1987, 1991), the internal colonial models (see Barrera, 1979; Barrera, Munoz, & Ornelas, 1972; Blauner, 1969, 1972, 2001; Bonilla & Girling, 1973), Marxism and neo‐Marxism (see Barrera, 1979; Bowles & Gintis, 1976), Women of Color feminisms (see Anzaldúa, 1987; Hill‐Collins, 1986, 1990; hooks, 1990; Hurtado, 1996), and Freirean Pedagogy (see Freire, 1970a, 1970b, 1973). These works formed my intellectual roots as I pursued Freirean Pedagogy and later CRT in education.

My Introduction to Freirean Problem‐Posing Pedagogy As a high school social studies teacher in 1972, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed guided my pedagogy as an educator. For instance, one of the foundational tools of Freirean Pedagogy is problem‐posing method.4 Freire’s (1970a, 1970b, 1973) problem‐posing pedagogy starts from the premise that all education is political and thus schools at any level are never neutral institutions. He asserts that schools either function to maintain and reproduce the existing social order or empower people to transform themselves and/or society.5 Freire argues that when schools domesticate, they socialize students into accepting as legitimate the ideology, values, and structures of society’s dominant class. According to Freire (1970b), schools use the banking method to domesticate students and treat them as passive receptacles waiting for knowledge to be deposited by the teacher. They are taught in a pedagogical format where the teacher communicates with the students in one‐way monologues. This approach leads students to feel their thoughts and ideas are not important enough to warrant a two‐way dialogue with the teacher. Students are also dependent on the teacher for their acquisition of knowledge. Finally, teachers are seen as conduits through which the ideology and values of the dominant social class are transmitted to the students. Conversely, when schools liberate, students are viewed as subjects willing and able to act on their world. To create a liberating education, Freire developed the problem‐posing method, in which two‐way dialogues of cooperation, reflection, and action between the student and the teacher are the focus, content, and pedagogy of the classroom. Freire’s method includes three general and interlocking phases: (a) identifying and naming the problem, (b) analyzing the causes of the problem, and (c) finding solutions to the problem (Alschuler, 1980; Freire, 1970a, 1970b, 1973). In the naming phase, the educator enters the community or social setting. While in the community, she/he learns about the major issues and problems of the area by listening and speaking to the people and observing community life. After gathering the needed information, the educators develop generative codes.

A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory

These codes can be visual or physical renditions—as in pictures, drawings, maps, stories, articles, films, or other artifacts—of the significant themes or problems identified by members of the community.6 The codes are at the heart of the problem‐posing process because they are used to begin critical dialogue among the participants. When I first started teaching high school social studies at the Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, I created generative codes using my camera to take pictures of places in the community that my students described and found ­significant—places that were important for them.7 I would go out after school or on weekends and take photos of the places students described as important in their lives. Many of these photos became my initial documentation of the Chicano public art mural movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s.8 In the second or analytic phase, I brought these pictures (i.e., color slides) back to the classroom and they became our generative codes. We used these codes to describe and analyze the causes of the problem through dialogue with the participants. Photo 22.1—The Puppeteer is an example of a photo generative code I took in 1972. I used the Puppeteer photo to engage the young men in a dialogue on who benefits from conflicts within and between the African American and Chicana/o communities. Using the photo with the Puppeteer’s hands and strings helped us engage in a dialogue on social and political power both within their

Photo 22.1  The Puppeteer (artist unknown) (1972). Corner of Whittier Blvd. and Eastern Avenue in East Los Angeles. Source: Daniel Solorzano Personal Photo Archive.

419

420

Daniel G. Solorzano

Photo 22.2  Unidos Carnal (Brothers United) (artist unknown) (1972). Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles. Source: Daniel Solorzano Personal Photo Archive.

communities and in the larger Los Angeles community and beyond. Photo 22.2— Unidos Carnal (United Brothers) was another generative code I used to challenge the message of the Puppeteer photo and continue the dialogue on issues that bring neighborhoods and youth together and unite them for the common good. These photos were used to involve the youth in both critically reading their Words and their Worlds9 (see Freire, 1970a, 1970b, 1973). In the final or solution phase, participants—in collaboration with the educators/ facilitators—find and carry out solutions to the problem. This process of critically reflecting and acting on one’s reality by describing and defining a problem clearly, analyzing its causes, and acting to resolve it are key elements of Freire’s problem‐posing method. Participants are encouraged to view issues as problems that can be resolved, not as a reality to be accepted. Hence, participants felt their ideas are recognized as legitimate and that the problem posed can be resolved in a productive manner. In addition, participants and educators become dependent on each other for knowledge.10 Freire felt that one of the processes of learning in problem‐posing pedagogy is when a person moves from one level of consciousness to the next—from magical, to naive, to critical (see Freire, 1970b, 1973; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). For instance, in the Magical stage participants often blame educational inequality on luck, fate, or some higher being (i.e., God). Whatever causes the inequality seems to be out of the student’s control, so she/he may be resigned to do nothing about it. For example, a person at a Magical stage of consciousness may explain her/his condition this way: “In the U.S., if Chicanas do not get a good education it is because, God is in control of their destiny. If God wills it, then it will be.” In the

A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory

Naïve stage, participants place the blame on themselves, their culture, or their community for educational inequality. Because they’re informed by a Naïve consciousness, participants try to change themselves, assimilate to the white, middle‐class, mainstream culture, or distance themselves from their community in response to experiencing inequality. For instance, a person at a Naïve stage of consciousness may say: “In the U.S., if African Americans do not do well in life, it is because the Black community and Black culture don’t value education. And, if we don’t do well, it is our fault”11 At the Critical stage, participants look beyond fatalistic or cultural reasons for educational inequality and focus on structural or systemic explanations. A person with a Critical level of consciousness looks toward the overall social system and its educational discourses, processes, and structures as a response to educational inequality. For example, a person at a Critical stage of consciousness may explain, “In the U.S., if Native Americans don’t go to college, it is because from kindergarten through high school they are being socialized for working class or low status occupations that don’t require a college degree. It is the institutional structures like schools that keep Native Americans in their place” (see Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Freire also argues that in the process of learning literacy skills, the participants develop: ●●

●● ●●

The capacity to name and analyze the causes and consequences of the social conditions that they face, The ability to look at other possibilities or alternatives to their problems, and A disposition to act in order to change a problematic situation.

Freirean Pedagogy situates the curriculum on issues, examples, and language found in the everyday lives of participants. Freirean Pedagogy fosters the development of a critical race, gender, and class consciousness. In fact, as we develop our generative codes for our classrooms, we must try to identify those examples that depict the intersection of race, gender, and class subordination and engage our students in a dialogue at those intersections. When I went on to teach at the community college in 1975, I continued to use my camera to take pictures of the community to bring them back into the classroom to engage in a problem‐posing pedagogy. After 28 years at UCLA, I still use my photography to engage students in critical dialogue around issues of social and educational inequality (see Perez Huber & Solorzano, 2015). As one part of my ongoing development in Freirean Pedagogy and using the lens of critical theory (one of the precursors to CRT) to reflect on my own experiences as a college educator, I wrote an article titled “Teaching and Social Change: Reflections on a Freirean Approach in a College Classroom” (Solorzano, 1989). This article reflected on my implementation of Paulo Freire’s problem‐ posing method with community college students. I examined and critiqued Freire’s pedagogy and its application in the college classroom and then described the recent works that applied a Freirean methodology in the context of higher education. With that foundation, the students and I engaged in a problem‐posing exercise that ended in a California statewide boycott of films that depicted Chicanas and Chicanos in negative stereotypic roles. At the time (late 1980s), this was one of the first journal articles documenting the use of Freirean Pedagogy

421

422

Daniel G. Solorzano

and Students of Color in a college classroom. This article also became ­foundational as I was introduced to CRT in the early 1990s and began to see the intersection of Freirean Pedagogy, Race and Ethnic Studies, and CRT.

My Introduction to CRT My introduction to CRT began in June 1993 with an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education12 by Peter Monaghan (1993) titled, “‘Critical Race Theory’ Questions Role of Legal Doctrine in Racial Inequality.” The article introduced me to an emerging field that was challenging the orthodoxy of race, racism, and the law and mentioned legal scholars such as Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Linda Greene, Lani Guinier, Patricia Williams, and Mari Matsuda. CRT seemed to be a framework that helped answer some of the questions that had been troubling me—especially questions on how we center race and racism in our academic research and teaching. Yet, two reactions also went through my mind as I read the Monaghan (1993) article: Reaction 1: This is really a new and powerful way of looking at race and racism in the law and probably in education, Race and Ethnic Studies, and Freirean Pedagogy. My second reaction was: I’ve seen this before. In the months that followed I realized the language of CRT in the law resonated with my previous training and in the foundational works in Race, Ethnic and Women’s Studies, and Freirean Pedagogy. At that point, I returned to some of these early pivotal readings and tried to connect them to CRT. I immerse myself in the CRT legal artifacts in law libraries and attempted to incorporate them to my background and training in Race, Ethnic, and Women’s Studies, and Freirean Pedagogy. This is how my CRT journey began. With the power of historical hindsight and the strength of the multiple intellectual and community traditions, I worked with others to use CRT as a framework to help shape our methodologies as researchers and practices as educators. I found that CRT informed our praxis (where theory and practice meet) in multiple ways. In 1993 and 1994, I continued to comb the law archives reading and analyzing the CRT literature for insight and connections to work in the social sciences and education. I went on to define CRT as the work of scholars who are attempting to develop an explanatory framework that accounts for the role of race and racism in education and that works toward identifying and challenging racism as part of a larger goal of identifying and challenging all forms of subordination. With this definition in hand and my reading in CRT in the law, I further developed and applied five tenets of CRT in education (Solorzano, 1997): 1) CRT foregrounds race and racism and challenges separate discourses on race, gender, and class by demonstrating how racism intersects with other forms of subordination (i.e., sexism, classism, Eurocentrism, monolingualism, and heterosexism), which affect Students of Color. 2) CRT challenges traditional research paradigms and theories, thereby exposing deficit notions about Students of Color and educational policies and practices that assume “neutrality,” “meritocracy,” and “objectivity.”

A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory

3) CRT focuses research, curriculum, and practice on the lived experiences of Students of Color and views these experiences as assets and sources of strength. 4) CRT offers a transformative solution to racial, gender, and class discrimination by linking theory with practice, scholarship with teaching, and the academy with the community. 5) CRT challenges ahistoricism and acontextualism, and insists on expanding the boundaries of the analysis of race and racism in education by using ­contextual, historical, and interdisciplinary perspectives to inform praxis. These five intersecting elements are not new in and of themselves, but collectively they represent a challenge to some traditional modes of scholarship (see Figure 22.1). In the Freirean tradition, CRT names racist injuries (i.e., names the problem), identifies their origins (i.e., analyzes the causes), and seeks remedies for the injury (i.e., finds solutions). My first introduction to CRT in education was an article by William Tate in 1994 titled “From Inner City to Ivory Tower: Does My Voice Matter in the Academy?” Soon after, Tate coauthored an article with Gloria Ladson‐Billings in 1995 titled “Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education.”13 My first article was written in 1997, titled “Images and Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Racial Stereotyping, and Teacher Education.”14 As I reflect on my Freirean journey to CRT, I am drawn to Terry Curry’s (2008) article on Derrick Bell’s work on racial realism15 titled, “Saved by the Bell: Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism as Pedagogy.” Curry (2008) reminded me to revisit questions on who to acknowledge as we tell the story of the intellectual roots of the CRT tree in education. Throughout my academic career these questions constantly came up.16 Indeed, Curry (2008) addressed this very issue when talking about Derrick Bell’s work. He states: It is also relevant to discuss the tendency of whites to read into Bell’s scholarship nonexistent continuities with traditional white figures. In this regard whites attempting to understand the works of Bell align him with what they take to be radical figures in the Western tradition, like Michel Foucault, Centering Race & Racism

Challenge Ahistoricism

Commitment to Racial Justice

Challenge Dominant Ideology

Centering Experiential Knowledge

Figure 22.1  A model of the intersecting tenets of critical race theory (CRT).

423

424

Daniel G. Solorzano

Karl Marx, and Jacques Derrida, instead of confront[ing] the r­ acism inherent in assuming that it is only through white thinkers that Black thoughts can be understood or philosophical. To my [Curry’s] claim that his [Bell’s] work should be understood as a continuation of Black thought, exclusive of white influence, Bell replied [below]. (Curry, 2008, p. 44; emphasis mine) Here, Curry (2008) introduces his interview with Derrick Bell on this subject and how Bell reflected on his own academic roots. Bell states: You [Curry] have it exactly right. I consider myself the academic counterpart of Errol Garner, the late jazz pianist from my hometown, Pittsburgh, who never learned to read music fearing, as I understand it, that it would ruin his style. I think there must be value in Marxist and other writings, but I did not really read them in college and have had little time since. I am writing this in Pittsburgh where I have been celebrating my 50th law school reunion from Pitt Law School. I do care more about the thought and writings and actions of Du Bois, Robeson, Douglass, et al. I think during my talk at UCLA, I read from the 1935 essay by Ralph Bunche about the futility of using law to overcome racism. It made more sense than so much of the theoretical writings on law, past and present, that I can barely understand and have great difficulty connecting with my experience. And you [Curry] are right. At almost 77, I do not care to write in ways that whites can vindicate. (personal interview, October 2, 2007) (Curry, 2008, p. 44; emphasis mine) My genealogy of CRT in education took a similar route. In education we are often told that we must return to the legal foundations and tenets of CRT. Although I feel that CRT in the law has been critical and foundational to CRT  in education, I’ve also tried to show how CRT has deep roots in Race, Ethnic, and Women’s Studies and Freirean Critical Pedagogy. I believe it is our responsibility to reinvent CRT for the various fields and contexts in which we find ourselves. Again, Freire helped my thinking here. I have heard Freire respond to this very issue in various settings.17 For instance, in a question from Donaldo Macedo (Freire & Macedo, 1987), Freire addresses this question of reinvention: macedo:  Explain in concrete terms how one reinvents one’s practice and experience. freire:  … I cannot, then, simply use Lenin’s text and apply it literally to the Brazilian context without rewriting it, without reinventing it” (p. 92). Years later Macedo (1994) recounts another conversation on this topic when Freire states: Donaldo, I don’t want [my methodology] to be imported or exported. It is impossible to export pedagogical practices without re‐inventing them. Please, tell your fellow American educators not to import me. Ask them to recreate and rewrite my ideas. (Macedo, 1994, p. xiv)

A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory

I have taken Freire’s advice and applied it to CRT in education and would argue that: “I cannot simply use CRT’s text in the law and apply it to the education context without rewriting it, without reinventing it.” I believe this is what CRT scholars in education are doing. They are engaging with CRT in the context of the structures, processes, and discourses of educational research and praxis. In a Freirean sense, CRT has to continue to “reinvent” itself so as to work for the communities they serve. Over the years, my colleagues and I have worked to “reinvent” CRT in education by developing critical race tools to help understand the ways People and Communities of Color experience racism, the ways they respond to racism, and the wealth and assets they possess to survive racism and other forms of oppression.

Conclusion In this chapter, my intention was to provide a personal story of how I came to work in Race and Ethnic Studies and Freirean Pedagogy, and how they served as foundational to my work in CRT. I especially want to show how these frameworks informed and expanded my work in CRT—specifically the problem‐posing process. I acknowledge that the practice of teaching race and racism comes with challenges. However, through the intersection of Freirean problem‐posing pedagogy (Freire, 1970a, 1970b) and CRT, I hope educators can find ways to incorporate students lived experiences into their teaching and research. The development of CRT and Freirean Pedagogy (CRT&FP) is intended to assist current and future educators to dialogue and analytically develop critical pedagogical frameworks and theories that lead to social justice praxis in the community and educational settings. In telling my story and introducing CRT&FP as a pedagogical tool, I hope that it can serve to assist in the creation of genuine dialogue in many diverse settings. I urge the use and further development of CRT&FP as a pedagogical and analytical tool in all segments of the educational pipeline. My hope is that educators practicing various forms of social justice pedagogy may find a way to incorporate CRT&FP into their praxis as they work to support and assist Students of Color, their families and communities. In the end, the power of CRT&FP is when ­students and educators cocreate these critical race/Freirean teaching cases. I hope that encouraging educators to apply CRT&FP as a foundational framework to support problem‐posing dialogue around race, racism, and its intersection with other forms of domination can help develop critical consciousness and work toward social and racial justice.

Notes 1 I continued my teaching career at two California State University (1980–1984,

1988–1990) campuses and one University of California (1990‐present) campus— a total of 46 years. 2 Since that initial publication, I have published four other Freirean articles or chapters (see Ochoa, Benavides Lopez, & Solorzano, 2013; Smith Maddox & Solorzano, 2002; Solorzano, 2013; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001).

425

426

Daniel G. Solorzano

3 In the 1960s and 1970s the field was called the Mexican American Studies. 4 I later saw the connections of Freirean Pedagogy to Derrick Bell’s use of “racism

hypos” (see Bell, 2008a, 2008b).

5 Here Freire predates both social reproduction (Bowles & Gintis, 1976) and

resistance (Giroux, 1983) frameworks in education.

6 I also use demographic and social indicator data as generative codes to engage

my colleagues in critical problem‐posing dialogue.

7 The vast majority of my students were African American and Latino

young men.

8 For a brief history of the Chicano Mural Movement see www.sparcinla.org

(retrieved May 28, 2018).

9 We used Roach Van Allen’s (1967) Language Experience Approach to teach the

Word or basic literacy skills to the students. We also helped teach the Word and the World by discussing the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign (See Fagan, 1969, Ch.3: The Campaign Against Illiteracy). 10 When I get to the solution phase, I now use the work of Andre Gorz (1967). He argues that there are at least three types of social reforms, (a) Reformist Reforms: Reforms that maintain the structures of domination, (b) Non‐ Reformist Reforms: Reforms that challenge the structures of domination and improves peoples’ lives in the present but the structures of domination remain intact, and (c) Revolutionary Reforms: Reforms that challenge the structures of domination and leads to a radical transformation of society. 11 In the Magical and Naïve stages of consciousness, people have internalized these racial and cultural deficit explanations for their unequal conditions (see Kohli, 2017; Kohli & Solorzano, 2012; Perez Huber, Johnson, & Kohli, 2006 for a critical race examination of internalized racism). 12 The Chronicle of Higher Education is a weekly newspaper that addresses the latest news and information in the field of higher education. 13 An earlier version of this article was presented in April 1994 at the annual American Education Research Association Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. 14 An earlier version of this article was presented in April 1997 at the annual National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Conference in Sacramento, California. I presented my first CRT paper (with Octavio Villalpando) in November 1995 at the annual meeting of the Association for Studies in Higher Education in Orlando, Florida titled, “Critical Race Theory, Marginality, and the Experiences of Minority Students in Higher Education” (see Solorzano & Villalpando, 1998). 15 For Derrick Bell, racial realism is the reality that racism is a permanent fixture in U.S. society and black people (and other People of Color) will never gain full equality in the United States. He goes on to argue that even those hard‐fought civil rights achievements will produce only short‐lived victories as racial patterns (i.e., of the individual and the state) adapt in ways that maintain white dominance (see Bell, 1991a, 1991b). 16 See Renato Rosaldo (1994) on the challenge to traditional genealogy of Cultural Studies that excludes ethnic studies. See also, Richard Delgado (1984, 1992) on challenging white male “imperial scholars” in the field of civil rights law.

A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory

17 In the winter of 1991 Paulo Freire visited the Graduate School of Education at

the University of California Los Angeles. During his visit, he also engaged in dialogues with other groups outside of UCLA. In these situations, the question of application and reinvention of Freirean Pedagogy came up on numerous occasions.

References Alschuler, A. (1980). School discipline: A socially literate solution. New York: McGraw‐Hill. Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands, la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Asante, M. (1987). The Afrocentric idea. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Asante, M. (1991). The Afrocentric idea in education. Journal of Negro Education, 60, 170–180. Barrera, M. (1979). Race and class in the Southwest: A theory of racial inequality. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Barrera, M., Muñoz, C., & Ornelas, C. (1972). The barrio as internal colony. Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, 6, 465–498. Bell, D. (1991a). Racism is here to stay: Now what? Howard Law Journal, 35, 79–93. Bell, D. (1991b). Racial realism. Connecticut Law Review, 24, 363–379. Bell, D. (2008a). Race, racism, and American law (6th ed.). New York: Wolters Kluwer. Bell, D. (2008b). Race, racism, and American law. Teachers’ manual (6th ed.). New York: Wolters Kluwer. Blauner, R. (1969). Internal colonialism and ghetto revolt. Social Problems, 16, 393–408. Blauner, R. (1972). Racial oppression in America. New York: Harper & Row. Blauner, R. (2001). Still big news: Racial oppression in America. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Bonilla, F., & Girling, R. (Eds.) (1973). Structures of dependency. Stanford, CA: Stanford Institute of Politics. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books. Curry, T. (2008). Saved by the bell: Derrick Bell’s racial realism as pedagogy. Philosophical Studies in Education, 39, 35–46. Delgado, R. (1984). The imperial scholar: Reflections on a review of civil rights literature. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 132, 561–578. Delgado, R. (1992). The imperial scholar revisited: How to marginalize outsider writing, ten years later. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 140, 1349–1372. Fagan, R. (1969). The transformation of political culture in Cuba. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Freire, P. (1970a). Cultural action for freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review Monographs. Freire, P. (1970b). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

427

428

Daniel G. Solorzano

Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Seabury. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. London: Routledge. Giroux, H. (1983). Theories of reproduction and resistance in the new sociology of education: A critical analysis. Harvard Educational Review, 53, 257–293. Gorz, A. (1967). Strategies for labor: A radical proposal. New York: Beacon Press. Hill‐Collins, P. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33, S14–S32. Hill‐Collins, P. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, onsciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge. hooks, b. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Hurtado, A. (1996). The color of privilege: Three blasphemes on race and feminism. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Kohli, R. (2017). Internalized racism: The consequences and impact of racism on people of color. Los Angeles, CA: Center for Critical Race Studies at UCLA. Kohli, R., & Solorzano, D. (2012). Teachers, please learn our names!: Racial microaggressions and the K‐12 classroom. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 15, 441–462. Ladson‐Billings, G., & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97, 47–68. Macedo, D. (1994). Preface. In P. McLaren, & C. Lankshear (Eds.), Politics of liberation: Paths from Freire (pp. xiii–xviii). London and New York: Routledge. Monaghan, P. (1993, July 23). “Critical race theory” questions role of legal doctrine in racial inequality: Lani Guinier, ill‐fated justice dept. nominee, is one of its traditional adherents. Chronicle of Higher Education, A7–A9. Ochoa, V., Benavides Lopez, C., & Solorzano, D. (2013). Toward a critical race case pedagogy: A tool for social justice educators. In J. Donner, & A. Dixson (Eds.), The resegregation of schools: Education and race in the twenty‐first century (pp. 194–212). New York: Routledge. Perez Huber, L., Johnson, R., & Kohli, R. (2006). Naming racism: A conceptual look at internalized racism in U.S. schools. Chicana/o‐Latina/o Law Review, 26, 183–206. Perez Huber, L., & Solorzano, D. (2015). Visualizing everyday racism: Critical race theory, visual microaggressions, and the historical image of Mexican banditry. Qualitative Inquiry, 21, 223–238. Rosaldo, R. (1994). Whose cultural studies? American Anthropologist, 96, 524–529. Smith‐Maddox, R., & Solorzano, D. (2002). Using critical race theory, Freire problem posing method, and case study research to confront race and racism in education. Qualitative Inquiry, 8, 66–84. Solorzano, D. (1989). Teaching and social change: Reflections on a Freirean approach in a college classroom. Teaching Sociology, 17, 218–225. Solorzano, D. (1997). Images and words that wound: Critical race theory, racial stereotyping, and teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 24, 5–19. Solorzano, D. (2013). Critical race theory’s intellectual roots: My email epistolary with Derrick Bell. In M. Lynn, & A. Dixson (Eds.), Critical race theory in education handbook (pp. 48–68). New York: Routledge.

A Freirean Journey from Chicana and Chicano Studies to Critical Race Theory

Solorzano, D., & Villalpando, O. (1998). Critical race theory, marginality, and the experience of minority students in higher education. In C. Torres, & T. Mitchell (Eds.), Emerging issues in the sociology of education: Comparative perspectives (pp. 211–224). New York: SUNY Press. Solorzano, D., & Yosso, T. (2001). Maintaining social justice hopes within academic realities: A Freirean approach to critical race/LatCrit pedagogy. Denver Law Review, 78, 595–621. Tate, W. (1994). From inner city to ivory tower: Does my voice matter in the academy? Urban Education, 29, 245–269. Van Allen, R. (1967). How the language experience works. Retrieved from ERIC database (ED 012226). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=roach+van+allen&f t=on&id=ED012226

429

431

23 Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion Toward an Understanding of Freirean Religiosity1 Cristobal Madero S. J.

Introduction Many scholars have emphasized Paulo Freire’s humanism. They have argued that Freire was in search of more than just a better educational system or simply improving teaching and learning literacy techniques. Indeed, Freire proposes a new kind of society deeply rooted in the centrality of a better humankind; men and women who have received a call, a vocation to attain true humanity. Nonetheless, those within the educational field often forget that what informed Freire’s thought was not only his humanist background but also his Christian and Catholic roots. In asserting this, I am not implying that academia had not acknowledged Freire’s ties to Christianity and Catholicism in general but that it had not connected these religious ties to his scholarship. Here I seek to close this gap by showing how, informed by a Catholic background that accompanied him from baptism to death, Paulo Freire’s educational theory was influenced and even shaped by such religious inspiration. There are several ways of analyzing the relationship between Freire and religion. I tell the story of this relationship in three parts. In the first part, I portray Freire’s own religious experiences during different stages of his personal and professional life. There, I also touch on the ecclesiology behind his constant encouragement to the church to be a missionary and prophetic institution. In the second part, I develop four concepts that I believe capture the substance of Freire’s approach to religion: callings, myth, liberation, and communion. First, I introduce the concept of having a calling or vocation and how Freire understands such a calling or vocation should be pursued. Then, I present the idea of myth and truth in Freire. Specifically, I explain how faith in myths, in Freire’s thought, can shape the context for oppression. Consciousness and conscientization, I show, are the key tools to overcome these myths and to acquire truth. I continue by offering what many consider as Freire’s main contribution to Latin American theology: the idea of liberation. Finally, I introduce the concept of communion

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

432

Cristobal Madero S. J.

emphasizing how this communion, in a clearly religious sense, is key to understanding the dialogue that is the basis for an educational relationship. In the third part, I conclude by questioning what ways and to what extent understanding Freire’s relationship with religion would benefit the current debates on improving educational systems embedded in secular realms.

The Role of Religion in Freire’s Biography Although not a theologian, Freire was considered by many to be an educator who thought theologically in ways that stimulated theologians, pastoral workers, and religious educators throughout Brazil, Latin America, and the world. For instance, Carlos Alberto Torres affirms that Freire’s first book Educação Como Prática da Liberdade, in 1967 “becomes almost a mandatory reading for the ­continent’s Catholic educators” (Torres, 2008, p. 3) and Emanuel de Kadt (1970) includes him and his educational theory in his book, Catholic Radicals in Brazil. Freire is also the author who introduced the major collection of liberation ­theology in the English language, Liberation Theology: A Documentary History (Hennelly, 1990). He was not a theologian, but he was a Christian who lived his faith as open and reflective. Freire was raised as a Christian in the best sense of the concept: in an atmosphere of respect for those who were not believers in that religion. He comments, “Although my mother was Catholic and my father was a spiritualist,2 they always respected each other’s religious opinions. From them, I learned early on the value of dialogue. I never was afraid to ask questions, and I do not recall ever being punished for disagreeing with them” (Hennelly, 1990, p. 28). However, he admits that, “On the one hand, I was stimulated to grow; on the other hand, I  experienced a repressive puritanism that, I must admit, was not too overwhelming” (p.  32). This familiar experience of tolerance, sincerity, and even some puritanism led him to build a positive understanding of God, rejecting throughout his writings a distorted vision of God. This familiar experience is what led him to a political commitment, more accurately, to encounter Marxism and Marx revisionists such as Gramsci, Althusser, and Marcuse. Freire writes that “it was in the woods in Recife, refuge of slaves, and the ravines where the oppressed of Brazil live coupled with my love for Christ and hope that He is the light that led me to Marx. The tragic reality of the ravines, woods, and marshes led me to Marx.” And later that, “My relationship with Marx never suggested that I abandon Christ.” (Hennelly, 1990, p. 87). Some could find that there is a contradiction in terms in Freire’s beliefs. He would not be able to believe at the same time in Christ and in Marxism. Marx’s criticism of religion as the opium of the people shows, at least in one of his connotations, a hostility against Christians.3 However, what Freire emphasizes is that the problem is not to have and practice one’s faith; “the problem is claiming to have it and, at the same time, contradicting it in action” (Freire, 1997a, p. 104). Freire came to embrace his religiosity not only because of his family background but also thanks to the context of his native Recife. He came both to life

Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion

and to Christian life in Brazil, specifically, in the poorest region of the country: the Northeast. The region is characterized by its black population and scarcity of natural resources. It is also a region that was in the pastoral care of the Dutch at the opening of the twentieth century and also of Belgian Catholic priests who belonged to the Worker Priest Movement. Freire grew up in a region where pastoral care was provided by the cutting‐edge left‐wing of the Catholic Church. At the same time, spiritist movements were influential in the region.4 In the midst of this context, Freire shared the two main features of the people of the Northeast: he was poor and he was a believer. Freire himself thinks that because of his family socioeconomic and religious background, he “never accepted (their) precarious situation as an expression of God’s wishes. On the contrary, I began to understand that something really wrong with the world needed to be fixed” (Freire, 1996, pp. 13–14). He never blamed God for his poverty. Quite the contrary, he acknowledges such experience served him as a tool to understand the suffering of others. He writes, “My comprehension of hunger is not dictionary: once recognizing the meaning of the word, I must recognize the reasons for the phenomenon. If I cannot be indifferent to the pain of those who go hungry, I cannot suggest to them either that their situation is the result of God’s will. That is a lie” (Freire, 1997a, p. 45). He insists on the fact that God is not guilty for the evil of this world nor for the fatalism of Brazilian society, which he thinks is the product of a “historical and sociological situation, not an essential characteristic of a people’s behavior” (Freire, 2012, p. 61). What contributes most to the development of Freire’s ideas is that he deeply believes that to make God responsible for the suffering of the world serves the interest of the oppressors who “supported by the historic anesthesia of the suffering and patient populations … use God to their ends” (Freire, 1997a, p. 103). Indeed he cannot understand “how it could be possible to reconcile faith in Christ with discrimination on the basis of race, social class, or national origin. How is it possible to ‘walk’ with Christ but refer to the popular classes as ‘these stinky people’ or ‘riffraff. ” (p. 105). Or in other words, “how to reconcile fellowship with Christ with the exploitation of other human beings” (Freire, 1996, p. 86–87). This reflection is even more poignant when it is understood that Freire is writing not only from the most Catholic continent, but from Brazil, the most Catholic country in the world at the time. Freire’s religious experience also led him to recognize the crucial link between God and history. He always understood God as a presence in history that does not preclude him from making history, but rather pushes him toward world transformation (Freire, 1997a). Indeed, it is this conception of God operating in the midst of history, but at the same time allowing one to make history with him, that distances Freire from Marx; the former doesn’t believe in what the latter defines as the opium of the people. Quite the contrary, Freire thinks that, “Ideally, by exercising their right to believe in God, in God’s goodness, in God’s justice, in God’s presence in history, the oppressed, as a class and as individuals, will take history into their own hands and will recognize that making history and being history is the duty of men and women.”5

433

434

Cristobal Madero S. J.

Church and Critiques of the Churches’ Role Through the lens of his faith in Jesus Christ, Freire not only supports his educational theory but also criticizes a Catholic Church that was not fully accomplishing its role as a prophetic6 church in the midst of people’s suffering. His critiques can be divided into those that were directed specifically to the Catholic Church and those directed more generally to Christian churches. What is operative behind the critiques is a particular ecclesiology that understands the church as an institution with a prophetic mission. If the church is rooted in Jesus Christ’s words and deeds, there is no room for accommodation of the status quo. He claims that a reading of the gospels, in community, and led by prophetic ministers, is the way to create a church that stands along with the oppressed as Jesus did. Freire is conscious that there are conservative forces in the Catholic Church, which instead of prophecy just want stability. By doing so “they castrate the prophetic dimension of the church, whose witness becomes one of fear—fear of change, fear that an unjust world will be radically transformed, fear of getting lost in an uncertain future” (Freire, 1985, pp. 126–127).7 It is precisely for its historicity that the church can be prophetic. If it were not historical it could not be prophetic. Moreover, “deprived of its prophetic vision, it takes the road of formalism in bureaucratic rites where hope, detached from the future, becomes only an alienated and alienating abstraction” (Freire, 1985, p. 127). For Freire, a church without a prophetic mission will always serve the oppressors. His critique of the Christian churches in general has the same orientation as the aforementioned critique of the Catholic Church but with a broader focus in education. Freire believes that “the educational witness of the church resides in her utopian proclamation. Unfortunately, however, we have this painful confusion; instead of being and giving a testimony to this utopia, our  tendency is to content ourselves, to accommodate ourselves, to adjust ourselves” (Freire, 1997b, p. 449). Churches sugarcoat reality. In the words of Johannes Baptist Metz (1998), they emphasize Easter Sunday more than Good Friday. They think that they can act in a neutral way but that, again, means silence and accommodation. William Reynolds (2013, p. 137) comments, “Freire felt that the educational system and the Catholic Church were instruments in maintaining this culture of silence.” Freire is quite clear that being against neutrality is one of the criteria for an authentic Christian witness. He says that “I would not judge the teaching witness of any church simply in terms of numbers of religious schools that that church maintains or supports. My criterion for the teaching witness of the church would be the insight that she can never be neutral, because there is no such thing as neutral education.” Therefore, he continues, “I would judge the teaching witness of a church in light of the question whether it is a witness of the courage to love which is expressed in the search for the means by which man will be liberated. This necessarily involves a change in the oppressive structures of the situation” (Freire, 1997b, p. 449).

Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion

Callings, Myths, Communion, and Liberation Life Is a Calling to Fulfill At the very beginning of his first book, Educação como Prática da Liberdade, translated into English as Education for Critical Consciousness, Freire states that “To be human is to engage in relationships with others and with the world” (Freire, 1973, p. 3). Human beings reveal who they are when they are capable, with others, of changing reality. To assume this call to become human is not merely one choice among others. Freire thinks that even though “both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people’s vocation” (Freire, 2012, p. 43). I propose that he probably thinks this because of his own knowledge of situations in which men and women have been led into situations of dehumanization. Situations of oppression and liberation in his own Brazil, Chile, the United States, and Guinea‐Bissau showed him how human beings are called to search for their true humanity. To become truly human is for Freire a vocation that is at the same time both ontological and historical. It is precisely such understanding that anchors him in a Christian understanding of calling. It is God who calls both in the heart of every person and in the sufferings of the world. He writes that “the oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human” (Freire, 2012, pp. 65–66). Indeed, to be more fully human is what defines men and women in their inner core of their being. At the same time, it is an historical task that is attained sometimes as a result of dialectical struggles between oppressed and oppressors. Many claims have been made, in the past and in the present, among Marxist authors about the evident state of oppression that one class or group has upon another. Oppressing realities show an absence or a decrease in levels of human well‐being or flourishing in the oppressed. However, Freire points out that oppressors as well as oppressed are both victims of a lack of true humanity. Freire writes, “They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human” (Freire, 2012, p. 75). Living life in the way that oppressors do is against the call to be more human. Freire believes that, in order for everyone to become fully human, a pursuit for mutual humanization is necessary. When human beings cannot fulfill their vocation they do not simply become less human. Freire is quite clear when he writes: “Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality. And as an individual perceives the extent of dehumanization, he or she may ask if humanization is a viable possibility” (Freire, 2012, p. 43). It is difficult for a person who is in a situation of oppression to see ways to humanize his or her own situation. However, Freire is sure that “because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so” (p. 44). The struggle to attain more humanity, or in some cases even to recover it, is an essential part of the process to overcome dehumanization. Nonetheless, there is a distortion that Freire masterly unveils. He discovers that the oppressed “almost

435

436

Cristobal Madero S. J.

always … instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors…. To be men [sic] is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity” (Freire, 2012, p. 45). What it means to be human is shaped by the oppressors; they are the model of humanity. It is for that reason that Freire insists: “As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible…” and, “the central problem is this: How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?” (p. 48). On a practical note, Freire sets seven conditions for answering the call of attaining true humanity: (a) to recognize the relationship between the individual and the society; (b) to value the relevance of human action; (c) to accept the dialectical character of historical reality; (d) to be conscious of the unaccomplished in every human being; (e) to understand the importance of revolution and even a nondogmatic status of violence; (f ) to comprehend how human beings are beings in communication; and (g) to envision education as a process by which both students and teachers learn how to read and write and how to ask questions. Overcoming Myths There will be no true humanity if there is no social change. There will be no social change without an educational philosophy and practice grounded in an actual dialogue. There will be no true dialogue if those involved in it do not overcome myths in society, which are never neutral. In this context Freire thinks that it is absolutely crucial to overcome myths created by the dominant class, like “the myth of their superiority, of their purity of soul, of their virtues, their wisdom, the myth that they save the poor, the myth of the neutrality of the church, of theology, education, science, technology, the myth of their own impartiality. From these grow the other myths: of the inferiority of other people, of their spiritual and physical impurity, and of the absolute ignorance of the oppressed” (Freire, 1985, p. 123). This is, again, a highly religious theme in Freire’s life. The truth is the horizon of an honestly lived Christian life. There can be no freedom, if there is no truth. And Freire masters this principle in a way that he can put it in dialogue with the evil of the society of his time: myths that oppress the poor. The myth of absolute ignorance is probably the most dangerous myth in any society. When a group states the ignorance of another, and society organizes itself around that myth, a tacit permission is given to the so‐called nonignorant group to make the other group a part of them. “This myth implies the existence of someone who decrees the ignorance of someone else” (Freire, 2012, p. 133– 134). Thus, this is a problematic doorway whereby someone is educated without taking into consideration what their dreams or actual needs are, but also to violate human rights in the name of an apparent truth.8 What Freire is seeking with his educational theory are the skills that the oppressed need to unveil those myths of superiority. He writes, “We wanted to offer the people the means by which they could supersede their magic or naïve perception of reality by one that was predominantly critical, so that they could assume positions appropriate to the dynamic climate of the transition.”9 This

Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion

naïve perception, for instance about the neutrality of science (Freire, 1985, p. 157). Thus, the critical component is crucial in order to achieve the human vocation of every man and woman. Freire thinks that “the critical and dynamic view of the world, strives to unveil reality, unmask its mythicization, and achieve a full realization of the human task: the permanent transformation of reality in favor of the liberation of people” (Freire, 2012, p. 102). It is also crucial to overcome myths because they diminish the possibility of the oppressed to think in a cohesive way. Freire thinks that “they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature. To achieve this indispensable unity, the revolutionary process must be, from the beginning, cultural action” (Freire, 2012, p. 175). Otherwise, “at the moment when one is seduced by this falsification of reality, one ceases to be critical” (Freire, 1985, p. 158). Demythologization is a liberating experience that allows both the oppressed and the oppressors to walk closer to the truth and thus contribute to the edification of humanity in its fullness. Instead of the violence that imposes the truth of one group over another, Freire thinks that everyone holds part of the truth. He writes, “I believe that those who are weak are those who think they possess the truth, and are thus intolerant; those who are strong are those who say: ‘Perhaps I have part of the truth, but I don’t have the whole truth. You have part of the truth. Let’s seek it together’” (Freire & Faundez, 1989, p. 20). Again, dialogue and eventually the very process of education require the overcoming of myths in human and social relations, and more particularly, the process of consciousness and conscientization.10 Liberation as a Keystone Freire is attached to a Christian vision of God as a God present in history and who makes history. This is undoubtedly closely related to the ideas that many theologians since the 1960s developed in Latin America. Freire, again, without being a theologian, shares the same definitions used by many of the representatives of liberation theology.11 For instance, his thoughts about salvation are remarkable. He writes, “Salvation implies liberation, engagement in a struggle for it. It is as if the fight against exploitation, its motivation, and the refusal of resignation were paths to salvation. The process of salvation cannot be realized without rebelliousness” (Freire, 1997a, p. 105). The idea that salvation is something that has to be waited for in an inactive mode is rejected by Freire. He is aligned with liberation theology on this point. He writes that such an “understanding of the Gospels by the oppressed, linked with campaigns, protests, and demands for their rights, resulted, as I see it, on the one hand, in ‘converting’ many priests and religious to a prophetic understanding and practice and, on the other, in strengthening others in their manifest option for the poor” (Freire & Faundez, 1989, p. 66). It is not surprising that the Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops at Medellín in 1968 (the same year that the manuscript of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed started to circulate) declared that “Latin American education, in

437

438

Cristobal Madero S. J.

a word, is called to respond to the challenge of the present and the future for our continent. Only thus will it be capable of liberating our men.” For the Latin American bishops, including Dom Hélder Câmara, the Bishop of Recife who would be Freire’s mentor (Schugurensky, 2011, p. 17). “Education is actually the key instrument for liberating the masses from all servitude and for causing them to ascend ‘from less human to more human conditions’.”12 Upon completing his year of teaching at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard, Freire went to Geneva in 1971 to work as an advisor to the Education Department of the World Council of Churches. This council is made up of the different Christian churches around the world. This also was a place where Freire was in contact with the liberation component of the Christian engagement in the sociopolitical realm. He says: “Incidentally, the World Council of Churches, where I worked, had lent strong support to many African liberation movements even before my participation. I was not the one who initiated the involvement of the World Council with these movements. What I did was try to reinforce the already existing relationships” (Freire, 1987, p. 96). This commitment of the Council was rooted in the thought of theologians such as Edward Schillebeeckx and Jürgen Moltmann. Freire believes that the liberation of the people, which leads them to attain a true humanity, has to include the perspectives of people who are oppressed. He writes, “I am convinced that educational difficulties would diminish if the schools took into consideration the culture of the oppressed, their language, their efficient way of doing math, their knowledge of the world” (Freire, 1996, p. 16). There are some tendencies in education, as much today as in Freire’s times, which advance the conviction that technical knowledge or high‐culture knowledge is the only content that belongs in a curriculum. Freire thinks that the “union between knowledge and commonsense is essential for any understanding of political struggle, education and the educational process” (Freire & Fundez, 1989, p. 47). Indeed, the content of education has to be developed with the help of everyone involved in the educational process. The role of teachers in this model is a major point of reflection for Freire. Probably the best summary, in one of his later works, is the following: “We must scream loudly that, in addition to the activism of unions, the scientific preparation of teachers, a preparation informed by political clarity, by the capacity of teachers, by the teachers’ desire to learn, and by their constant and open curiosity, represents the best political tool in the defense of their interests and their rights” (Freire, 1998, p. 8). The teacher is an educator with political skills, who is able to dream and to learn continually. Indeed, “unhopeful educators contradict their practice. They are men and women without address, and without a destination. They are lost in history” (Freire, 1997a, p. 107). Besides that, a teacher who is not well prepared to educate in a liberating key, should not be teaching. She or he will eventually serve the interest of the oppressors. There are obstacles to an education for liberation. Freire identifies four: (a)  the treatment of students as objects under the banking education model; (b) bureaucracy and standardization of banking education; (c) neoliberalism as a developmental model; and (d) the pedagogy of both corporal punishment and  permissiveness. All four obstacles represent not only a perfect path for

Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion

impeding the implementation of an education for liberation but also a process that leads to the dehumanization of humankind. It is for that reason that an education ­oriented to the liberation of the person through the change of oppressive structures in society has the duty to fight against these obstacles that are essential parts of the banking model of education. Freire suggests that banking education inhibits ­creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human (Freire, 2012, pp. 83–84). To Be Human Is to Be in Communion The topic of communion in Freire’s work is central to his concept of dialogue. Communion has deep Christian roots. It is not only how Catholics name the main sacrament in their church but also a theological dynamic that they recognize in the Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are in communion, and share a communion that makes everything possible.13 The mission of the church emerges also from that communion. Therefore, communion implies more than simply a close relation of one to another in a social context. It means sharing something deeper, which allows a common action in order to do something good in moral terms. A superficial reading of Freire’s works might lead one to think that communion is just a strategy of cooperation. Such an interpretation would be understandable because of Freire’s emphasis on this feature of education. He writes, “An education through work, which stimulates collaboration, not competition. An education that places value on mutual help, not on individualism; that develops a critical spirit and creativity, not passivity. An education that is based on the unity between practice and theory, between manual labor and intellectual work.” (Freire, 2012, p. 93). Nonetheless, he asserts that communion has a deeper sense because something as relevant as “Salvation can be achieved only with others” (p. 146) and also because men and women are “beings for another” (p. 49). When the meaning of dialogue in Freire’s theory was explained earlier, it was said that leaders in political and educational endeavors—which are both different sides of the same coin—are required to have more than a close relationship with their constituents or their students, respectively, in order to have a dialogue. It may be said that the idea of communion is what is behind this concept of dialogue. Freire also thinks that “the man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self‐deceived” (Freire, 2012, p. 61) Again, the requirement is not just to establish a relationship, but to build true communion. Communion sets people free for relationship. If it liberates, then possibilities of attaining true humanity grow. Freire reflects, “We can legitimately say that in the process of oppression someone oppresses someone else; we cannot say that in the process of revolution someone liberates someone else, nor yet that someone liberates himself, but rather that human beings in communion liberate each other” (Freire, 2012, p. 133). Liberation is determined by this kind of communion.

439

440

Cristobal Madero S. J.

It is worth commenting that Freire does not have a definitive answer as to how to build up greater communion. In his educational theory, there are many clues but not a final answer. Yet what is most important in his work is the way in which he poses a question and offers an initial answer that suggests strategies for achieving greater degrees of communion in a Christian sense. He writes: “Sometimes I wonder why there is so much resistance on the part of many of us to experiencing this communion with the people, to respecting the understanding of the world they have…The only answer I can find is that in all this you can see the authoritarian attitude with which we are stamped” (Freire & Faundez, 1989, p. 45). In his works The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and later in Pedagogy of Hope, Freire develops the foundations for what he considers a true dialogue that builds communion. It has been already shown that communion is a concept that is at the core of human communication and understanding. Freire articulates the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love as the roots of such dialogue. Freire asks himself, “How can I dialogue if I consider myself a member of the in‐group of ‘pure’ men, the owners of truth and knowledge, for whom all non‐ members are ‘these people’ or ‘the great unwashed’?” (Freire, 2012, p. 90). The answer is that he cannot dialogue. In order to dialogue, all those involved in communication have to have faith in each other. “Dialogue further requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re‐create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human” (p. 90). Beyond all else, faith has to be placed in the vocation that every single person has in this world. Otherwise, “dialogue is a farce which inevitably degenerates into paternalistic manipulation” (p. 91). The second theological virtue is hope. Freire was a man of hope, one who believed in the presence of hope in every human being. He reflects, “Above all, my difference lies in my critical, in‐no‐way‐naïve optimism and in the hope that encourages me, and that does not exist for the fatalistic. This is a hope that originates in the very nature of human beings” (Freire, 1997a, pp. 43–44). Because human beings cannot live without hope, neither can dialogue between them occur without the same hope. Freire is clear when he states, “As the encounter of women and men seeking to be more fully human, dialogue cannot be carried on in a climate of hopelessness” (Freire, 2012, p. 92). “Nor yet can dialogue exist without hope. Hope is rooted in men’s incompletion… Hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying the world and fleeing from it” (p. 91). Freire also reflects that “if hope is rooted in the inconclusion of a being, something else is needed in order to personify it. It is necessary to accept the inconclusion that one becomes aware of. As one does that, one’s inconclusion becomes critical, and they may never lack hope again” (Freire, 1997a, p. 106). At the same time, hope is an essential part of being critical and not of being passive. This is why even “The dehumanization resulting from an unjust order is not a cause for despair but for hope” (Freire, 2012, p. 91). Love is essential in Freire’s educational theory. First of all, “Education is an act of love, and thus an act of courage” (Freire, 1973, p. 38). Speaking about teachers’ tasks, he also refers to the act of teaching in these terms: “It is a task that requires that those who commit themselves to teaching develop a certain love not only of

Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion

others but also of the very process implied in teaching. It is impossible to teach without the courage to love, without the courage to try a thousand times before giving up” (Freire, 1998, p. 3).14 By stating this, he wanted to introduce the language of love into educational work. He says that “we must dare, in the full sense of the word, to speak of love without the fear of being called ridiculous, mawkish, or unscientific, if not antiscientific” (p. 3). Freire believes that love is crucial to dialogue in the same way that faith and hope are crucial. He writes, “Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people…Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself ” (Freire, 2012, p. 89). Liberation of humanity through education is not just a strategic definition of goals and steps toward a specific end. It is much more than that. In order for each human being to attain true humanity, love is an absolutely essential component. To love the people and the world is key to dialogue, to liberation, and to attaining the possibility to be more. This is what Freire is highlighting here.

Conclusion Paulo Freire’s stature has been assessed from both technical and philosophical perspectives. In the current scholarly conversation, at least within the Anglo‐ Saxon frame that I investigated here, there are almost no efforts to connect Freire’s Christian and Catholic background with his educational theory.15 With the exception of the recent works of Irwin Leopando (2017) and James D. Kiyrlo and Drick Boyd (2017), few have tried to search for links between theology and education in a Freirean perspective. There are some scholars who think that avoiding religious aspects in the advance of knowledge makes the resulting knowledge less prone to any distortion. What they do not acknowledge is that the less scientific aspects of our background are often what provide a depth of meaning to what we attempt to do. If one tries to understand Freire without the religiosity that influenced his educational theory, one would diminish what he was trying to do with the powerful tool of education. In more radical terms, to not consider the religious dimension is to not understand Freire’s thought at all. From a theological viewpoint, it is a highly relevant task to unceasingly search for what God is trying to say to people in the midst of their history. From an educational perspective, it is essential to realize that if humanity is at the very center of the mission of education and, at the same time, a theological dimension is an essential part of every human, then theology must concern itself with the education of humanity. Here I have tried to show how religious themes are present and linked to key elements of Freire’s educational theory. Theological virtues, a particular ecclesiology, an idea of communion rooted in the Gospel, and a strong religious background in Freire’s thoughts allow me to conclude that his 50 years of work in the many areas of educational theory, were truly informed by his Catholic background. I believe that these findings, although of course not definitive, can contribute to ongoing conversations about Freire’s legacy. They introduce a ­factor that might widen the debate and study of this essential Latin American

441

442

Cristobal Madero S. J.

thinker and practitioner of education. I also believe that viewing educational change as making human beings more truly human could help the Catholic Church to be more prophetic as Freire himself urged, for the benefit of all humanity. Indeed, above all, such a prophetic focus would most serve to empower all those who experience, day after day, dehumanization as a result of oppressive social structures and oppressive attitudes.

Notes 1 Sections of this chapter have been adapted, with permission of the publisher,

fromMadero, Cristóbal. (2015). Theological dynamics of Paulo Freire’s educational theory: An essay to assist the work of Catholic educators. International Studies in Catholic Education, 7(2), 1–12. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/19422539. 2015.1072953. 2 This translation of espiritista into spiritualist, should be understood better as spiritist. (see note 9.) 3 Cf. Marx (1970), Marx & Engels (1964). However, Dennis McCann (1982) thinks that with this critique Marx “was merely reiterating Feuerbach’s point: Limit‐situations of distress or oppression, no doubt, are real; but their religious expression is illusory. Religion is an ‘opium’ because a religious interpretation of limit‐situations at some point must mythicize them as ‘given’ by God” (p. 172). 4 These spiritist movements were different than African ones. The former was present in the region under the influence of the French educator Allan Kardec. 5 Freire (1996), Letters to Cristina, p. 54. Freire quoted Pope John XXIII’s thoughts on development and social progress in one of his first works, Education for Critical Consciousness. I agree with Jones Irwin who says that this is another example of Freire’s closeness to Catholicism since his early career. Cf. Irwin (2012, p. 84). 6 By prophetic, Freire understands a church that imitates the courage of the prophets of the Old Testament. 7 See also Freire (1974). 8 It will not be a surprise to find this reflection on myths in the writings of Freire. As a Latin American, he surely was familiar with the book Facundo of the Argentinian author Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. In that work from 1845, Sarmiento tells the history of Latin America through two concepts: civilization and barbarism. The Spanish defined the native population under the label of barbarism, while defining themselves under the label of civilization. Of course, they assigned a positive value to the latter and a negative to the former. By doing so, they had the ideological power to oppress everything (culture, institutions, and so on) and everyone who was part of the life system under the label of barbarism. 9 Freire (1973), Education for Critical Consciousness, p. 45. Related with the magical perception of the world, it might be interesting to consider the interaction between literature and Freire’s theory. At the same time that the Brazilian was developing his theory in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the Latin American literature boom took place in Latin America and beyond. This movement was a literary group of authors who developed Magic Realism. Well‐known names are

Callings, Myths, Liberation, and Communion

the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Mexican Carlos Fuentes, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, and the Chilean José Donoso. 10 Conscientização is a concept that has been widely attributed to Freire. However, it was created by faculties in the Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies, mainly by the philosopher Alvaro Pinto and Alberto Guerreiro. Cf. Cruz (2013), p. 172. Freire (1990) also writes, “In 1965 I wrote an article for the review Civilisation et Developpement entitled ‘Education and Conscientization’. But it was Hélder Câmara who, as I have said, in his wanderings about the world, popularized the word so that it is a commonplace today in the United States, where a great number of articles are being written about conscientization” (p. 6). 11 Indeed, Gustavo Gutiérrez, who is known as the father of Latin American liberation theology, uses Freire’s early works in writing A Theology of Liberation. Cf. Gutiérrez (1988), pp. 57, 121, 136–137. In addition, Dennis McCann considers that “It is clear that Paulo Freire’s theory of conscientization provides [to liberation theology] the distinctive methodological principle.” Cf. McCann (1982), p. 157. See also Roberts (2010), p. 41. 12 Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops (1968), no. 4, 8. Charles A. Reilly (1986) comments that “Freire’s humanist philosophy and concientización programs were subsequently enriched by the theology of liberation and ecclesiastically legitimated through the Latin American Bishops’ Conference (Conferencia Episcopal Latinoamericana, CELAM) and its regional meetings at Medellín and Puebla” (p. 48). 13 The Pauline theology presents the highest development of this theology of communion. Cf. 1 Corinthians 12 : 4–6; 2 Corinthians 1 : 21–22; 2 Corinthians 13 : 13; Romans 8 : 11; Romans 15 : 15–16; Romans 15 : 30–32; Galatians 4 : 4–6. 14 See also Horton & Freire (1992), pp. 24–38. 15 In the Spanish language context this connection has not been reviewed. However, the works of liberation theologians, and of educational experts attest a relationship between the Freire’s religious roots and his work. See Torres (1980).

References Cruz, A. (2013). Paulo Freire’s concept of conscientização. In Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 146–169). London: Bloomsbury. de Kadt, E. (1970). Catholic radicals in Brazil. London: Oxford University Press. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness (Center for the Study of Development and Social Change, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1974). Las iglesias, la educación y el proceso (Sergio Paulo da Silva & René Krüger, Trans.). Buenos Aires: La Aurora. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation (Donaldo Macedo, Trans.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1990). Conscientizing as a way of liberating. In A. Hennelly (Ed.), Liberation theology: A documentary history (pp. 5–13). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Freire, P. (1996). Letters to Cristina: Reflections on my life and work (Donaldo Macedo, Quilda Macedo, & Alexandre Oliveira, Trans.). New York: Routledge.

443

444

Cristobal Madero S. J.

Freire, P. (1997a). Pedagogy of the heart (Ladislau Dowbor, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1997b). Witness of liberation. In M. Kinnamon, & B. E. Cope (Eds.), The ecumenical movement: An anthology of key texts and voices (pp. 447–449). Geneva: WCC Publications. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers (Donaldo Macedo, Dale Koike, & Alexandre Oliveira, Trans.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Freire, P. (2012). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Myra Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York: Bloomsbury. Freire, P., & Faundez, A. (1989). Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation (Tony Coates, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Gutiérrez, G. (1988). A theology of liberation. History, politics, and salvation (Sister Caridad Inda & John Eagleson, Trans. & Eds.). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Hennelly, A. T. (1990). Liberation theology: A documentary history. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1992). In B. Bell, J. Gaventa, & J. Peters (Eds.), We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Irwin, J. (2012). Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education: Origins, developments, impacts and legacies. London: Continuum. Kirylo, J. D., & Boyd, D. (2017). Paulo Freire: His faith, spirituality, and theology. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers. Leopando, I. (2017). A pedagogy of faith. The theological vision of Paulo Freire. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic. McCann, D. (1982). Christian realism and liberation theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Marx, K. (1970). Critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right (Joseph O’Malley, Ed., & Annette Jolin & Joseph O’Malley, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1964). On religion. New York: Schocken Books. Metz, J. B. (1998). A passion for God: The mystical‐political dimension of Christianity (Matthew Ashley, Trans.). New York: Paulist Press. Reilly, C. A. (1986). Latin America’s religious populists. In D. H. Levine (Ed.), Religion and political conflict in Latin America (pp. 42–57). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Reynolds, W. (2013). Liberation theology and Paulo Freire: On the side of the poor. In R. Lake, & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 127–144). London: Bloomsbury. Roberts, P. (2010). Paulo Freire in the 21st century: Education, dialogue, and transformation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. London: Continuum. Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops. (1968, September 6). Medellín document. Torres, C. A. (1980). Paulo Freire en América Latina. Mexico: Editorial Gernika. Torres, C. A. (2008). Paulo Freire and social justice. In C. A. Torres, & P. Noguera (Eds.), Social justice education for teachers: Paulo Freire and the possible dream (pp. 1–12). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

445

24 Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention” Power, the State, and Education in the Global Age Raymond Allen Morrow

The old is capable of remaining new when it remains faithful through time to the experience of original and founding intuitions and inspirations. (Freire, 1998, p. 41) …without knowing how this society works… we cannot work on developing new tactics vis‐à‐vis the larger emancipatory strategy because, for me, again the strategy remains the same. Freire, interview in (Darder, 2015, p. 140) The following discussion explores issues raised by the proliferating “reinventions” of Freire, especially in relation to power, the state, and globalization. The focus is both retrospective in reviewing existing work, as well as prospective in sketching some suggestions for theory, research, and practice. These issues are framed around a metatheoretical concern with exploring the “logic,” or methodology of “reinvention.” For this purpose a distinction is made between the relatively unchanging, core or paradigmatic assumptions of Freire’s dialogical pedagogy and the contingent, peripheral social theoretical presuppositions of what he called the generative themes of “epochal diagnosis.” This distinction also provides a framework for understanding the distinctive historicism of his methodology. The argument is developed in four sections. The first clarifies the notion of the logic of reinvention and is illustrated by reference to the three phases of Freire’s career. The second focuses on the limitations of his use of the master–slave metaphor and oppressor–oppressed model as the basis of a theory of power and transformation. The central theme of the final two sections is the question of the “reinvention of power” that Freire called for but could not complete. It is argued that a more comprehensive and multidimensional theory of power, the state, and education can best be realized through a recognition of the affinities and potential complementarities between two key theoretical perspectives: critical theories of social reproduction and transformation and the theory of governmentality that has emerged in the more recent reception of Foucault’s later work.

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

446

Raymond Allen Morrow

Reconstructing the Logic of Reinvention Even the best work on reconstructing Freire’s work and its origins in Brazil (Roberts, 2013; Schugurensky, 2011; Torres, 2014) has not given adequate attention to the metatheoretical implications of the shifts in Freire’s thinking in the course of his career. Nor do explicit discussions of “reinventing Freire” address this issue, even if providing insights into a specific context (Darder, 2002). Some of these questions were hinted at in a comparative study of Habermas and Freire but not sufficiently developed (Morrow & Torres, 2002). Extensions of this earlier analysis require a reconstruction of the distinctive methodological status of “reinventions,” which also makes Freirean critical pedagogy a unique form of “traveling theory” in Edward Said’s sense, giving rise to “a million Freires.” The metatheoretical basis of Freire’s pedagogy can be clarified by differentiating between its core or paradigmatic generative categories usually described as oppositions (e.g., critical versus banking education) and the peripheral social theoretical assumptions that inform what he called “epochal diagnosis.” Though these metatheoretical terms are drawn from the philosophy of science (Imre Lakatos on “research programs”), the context of the human sciences is different because the peripheral assumptions necessarily change in response to new social realities rather than simple falsification. In the case of Freire, the core assumptions are relatively stable because they are at high level of generality (ontological, epistemological, modernity as an epoch), as well as being coupled with the historicist and critical pragmatist proviso that their validity needs to be grounded in the context of practice viewed over the long run as a process of “humanization” or collective learning. Praxis and reflection can be renewed only through the construction of a new nexus between core generative concepts, the diagnosis of emergent historical realities, and testing and refinement of such reconfigurations through new experimental practices. Accordingly, instead of a “scientific research program,” Freire’s project could be called a “pedagogical praxis program” oriented toward facilitating critical thinking and motivating transformative practices in capitalist modernity. This basic distinction between the core generative concepts and social theoretical contextualization is, of course, implicit in the critical pedagogy literature. For Henry Giroux, the “language of possibility” is “contingent on particular ­historical contexts and political forces…in relation to larger global and transnational forces” (Giroux, 2012), just as for Michael Apple practice must be “grounded in an unromantic appraisal of the circumstances” (Apple, 1988 , p. 178). The advantage of making this metatheoretical feature of Freire’s thinking more explicit is that it allows a more rigorous understanding of historicization as the most fundamental methodological principle underlying his social theory. Freire’s pedagogical methodology of praxis, however, is not a “method” in the narrow sense of a technique indifferent to the purposes for which it is used. Consequently, his core generative categories became activated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed within a particular sociohistorical contextualization that ranged from assumptions at the level of the global world system, down through concentric circles ranging from the general to particular, hence regional, national, and local specifications: “The complex of interacting themes of an epoch constitutes its

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

‘thematic universe’,” revealing “limit‐situations” and potentials implicit in “untested feasability” (Freire, 2005 [1970], pp. 101–102). As he concludes, “I consider the fundamental theme of our epoch to be that of domination—which implies its opposite, the theme of liberation, as the objective to be achieved” (Freire, 2005 [1970], p. 103). Reconstructing Freire’s methodology also suggests that there are two dimensions of Freirean “critical thinking”: what can be called formal‐dialogical critical thinking that emphasizes a general reasoning capacity that can be reconstructed relatively independently of particular assumptions about social reality; and sociocritical thinking that involves the application of a theory of society to epochal and local diagnosis. Ideally, in the process of conscientization these two dimensions are integrated, though the reality of discrepancies opens up new ways of thinking about problems of “translation” between sociocritical diagnosis and pedagogical praxis (e.g., sectarianism). In his early work, he used the term “critical transitive consciousness” in defining formal‐dialogical critical thinking in relatively content free terms, focusing on how the power of reflection gives an “increased capacity for choice” necessary for “authentically democratic regimes”: “The critically transitive consciousness is characterized by depth in the interpretation of problems; by the substitution of causal principles for magical explanations; by the testing of one’s ‘findings’ and by openness to revision; by the attempt to avoid distortion when perceiving problems and to avoid preconceived notions when analyzing them; by refusing to transfer responsibility; by rejecting passive positions; by soundness of argumentation; by the practice of dialogue rather than polemics; by receptivity to the new for reasons beyond mere novelty and by the good sense not to reject the old just because it is old—by accepting what is valid in both old and new. Critical transitivity is characteristic of authentically democratic regimes and corresponds to highly permeable, interrogative, restless, and dialogical forms of life.” (Freire, 2005 [1967–1970], pp. 13–14) The content of sociocritical thinking is more difficult to summarize because of the variability of social contexts. Nevertheless, such thinking can be framed most generally, as did Freire, by referring to domination‐liberation as the sociocritical theme of “our epoch.” But it is not immediately obvious whether this theme is a core concept or a contingent, peripheral social theoretical one. Freire’s use here of “our epoch” is ambiguous because it is formulated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed in a conjectural context relating to the emergence of revolutionary movements in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, the problematic of domination and liberation also has a longer, unique epochal dimension as part of Western modernity, symbolized by the Enlightenment. This theme is also central to the history of the concept of emancipation, semantically equivalent to liberation for most purposes (Morrow, 2006). Emancipation thus overlaps with the history of human rights, evident in the succession of emancipations relating to men, women, the working class, slavery, colonialism, and so on. Consequently, this broader historical thesis about domination and liberation in modernity can be viewed as the foundational assumption of his critical pedagogy. And it is shared with Habermas’s defense of

447

448

Raymond Allen Morrow

modernity as an “incomplete project,” as well as Foucault’s commentary on Kant’s answer to the questions of the meaning of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which suggests a “critical philosophy,” “an ontology of ourselves, an ontology of the present”: “It is this form of philosophy that, from Hegel to the Frankfurt School, through Nietzsche and Max Weber, has founded the form of reflection within which I have attempted to work” (Foucault, 2007 [1997], p. 95). On the other hand, the contextual specification Freire developed in the late 1960s—drawing upon specific arguments of Marx, Fanon, and Che Guevara based on a revolutionary model of oppressors and oppressed in Latin America— is a contingent, peripheral social theoretical argument. In short, “our epoch” of modernity itself needs to be periodized in order to respecify domination and liberation in response to both new theoretical understandings and emergent historical experiences. This theme is both illustrated and obscured in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is evident because Freire explicitly introduces a methodology of epochal diagnosis grounded in overcoming domination through liberation, but obscured in an idealized and conjectural interpretation of revolutionary “leaders” and “masses” and capitalist “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Despite Freire’s later allusions to the limitations of these formulations, many contemporary readers continue to work within this sociologically problematic binary model of “rulers” and “ruled” as the basis of a critical theory of society. The “logic of reinvention” can also be used to frame the three basic phases of Freire’s intellectual and political development (Morrow, 2013). In each phase, he integrated his core categories with a specific contextual diagnosis that emphasized different aspects of the relations of formal‐dialogical and sociocritical thinking. In his first phase in Brazil, Freire developed his core categories in relation to social theoretical assumptions of theories of mass society and modernization, giving particular emphasis to contribution of formal‐dialogical thinking— what he then called “critical transitive thinking”—to facilitating fundamental democratization (Freire, 2005 [1967–1970]). The second phase signaled by Pedagogy of the Oppressed at the end of the 1960s was a response to the failures of democracy and the rise of authoritarian regimes in Latin America. In exile in Chile he underwent a political transformation, identifying with an idealized revolutionary Marxism as the only apparent alternative to authoritarianism. Consequently, there was a tendency to equate the competent use of formal‐dialogical thinking with a Marxist revolutionary sociocritical consciousness. In the third phase, linked with his return from exile and democratic transition in Brazil in 1980, he returns to a radicalized version of his earlier democratic phase, as well as acknowledging the diversity of forms of domination (Freire, 1994, 2000) and the primacy of autonomy (Freire, 1998). This stance also implied recognition of the diverse legitimate sociocritical perspectives that might result from skillful use formal‐dialogical thinking. These later writings were locally contextualized in terms of Brazil and Latin America but coupled with a preliminary epochal diagnosis relating to neoliberal globalization and environmental crisis. Freire’s analysis of globalization focused on a critique of fatalism that called for actively shaping globalization processes (Freire, 2000), anticipating, as

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

Manfred Steger later suggested, viewing globalization not only analytically, but in relation to competing ideological perspectives such as justice globalism, jihadist globalism, and imperial globalism (Steger, 2009, p. ix). Freire’s third phase thus took the form of a cosmopolitan social justice globalism grounded in the hope that “another world is possible.” Nevertheless, the incomplete nature of his emerging diagnosis posed more questions than it could develop in depth, a problem exacerbated by the limitations and ambiguity of his theory of power.

Reframing Epochal Diagnosis: Reinventing Power To deal with such issues it is necessary to rethink aspects of the theory of power that informs Freire’s effort to develop an analysis of neoliberal globalization. As he anticipated, in inviting others to contribute to his own reinvention, the key problem was not “taking power” but “reinventing power,” admitting that “In respect of these issues, I do not think I have much of a contribution to make, and I say this, not with false modesty, but with sadness” (Freire, 1985 , p. 179). The challenge is thus twofold: constructing new kinds of more humanizing social relations, which in turn presupposes a better analytical understanding domination and its relation to different forms of power. Freire’s apology has two key implications. On the one hand, looking back, it implies that taking power cannot be translated into democratically based radical transformation based on the assumptions of classical revolutionary Marxism (including Gramsci) about power. Hence Freire’s earlier optimistic reading of the possibility of his pedagogy mediating a post‐revolutionary dialogue between leaders and masses (“the people”) was based on problematic sociocritical assumptions. As he later acknowledges in an interview: “…history is always viewed through and inside of contradictions… How is it possible to suppress contradictions? Look revolutions do not have this power. The revolutions only lead to overcoming the principle contradiction of the moment; even though they thought that they could suppress all the contradictions. They thought they would suddenly be free of contradictions” (Darder, 2015 , p. 156). There was thus a fundamental tension between his dialogical educational methodology and the needs of a postrevolutionary society, which is why his educational theory was consistently rejected by the Cuban and Chinese revolutions. On the other hand, looking forward, it points to the need for a fundamental rethinking of the peripheral social theoretical concepts relating to power that would best enable the activation of his core pedagogical concepts in the context of democratization struggles in globalized neoliberal capitalism. A necessary point of departure for such a contemporary diagnosis of power is to problematize Freire’s use of the oppressor–oppressed model based on the master–slave metaphor in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In interpersonal contexts of visible power these concepts provide a powerful critical social psychological framework for illustrating the historical origins of extreme negation of dialogue in the personalized oppressions of slavery, authoritarianism, and patriarchal relations generally. Nevertheless, this focus suffers from two main weaknesses. On the one hand, it distracts attention from the more fundamental philosophical

449

450

Raymond Allen Morrow

anthropological foundations of mutual recognition as understood by Hegel. This theme is the basis of Axel Honneth’s effort to renew critical theory in terms a differentiation of the three primary sources of recognition: love (intimacy), rights (respect), and solidarity (esteem) (Honneth, 1996 [1992]). Honneth’s theory of recognition also provides a grounding for Freire’s ethics of care (Huttunen & Murphy, 2012; Morrow & Torres, 2002 , pp. 154–156). Furthermore, Freire’s reliance on the master–slave model is not adequate even for Marx’s understanding of early capitalism, let alone neoliberal globalization (Morrow, 2013 , p. 76). The problematic use of this imagery has its origins in French Hegel scholarship in the 1930s (e.g., Alexandre Kojève), which converted Hegel’s discussion of a feudal lord–peasant opposition into the more dramatic master–slave death struggle with some misleading consequences, especially when applied to class relations. Marx was aware of the feudal origins of Hegel’s metaphor, which is why he did not draw upon it as a basis for understanding class struggle in capitalism as often assumed. As recent scholarship has concluded, linking Marx’s theory of social classes with the master–slave dialectic is a “myth of Marxology” (Arthur, 1983). The oppressor–oppressed model thus provides limited insight into the emerging forms and networks of power that define the history of capitalism and its response to democratization: the ­commodification of peasantries, the incorporation of urban working classes, the rise of the middle sectors, the welfare state, complex organizations, and neoliberal efforts to shift control of individual behavior to market discipline and self‐management. This problematizing of Freire needs to be situated in terms of two important qualifications. First, viewing the master–slave metaphor as applying primarily to the special cases such as interpersonal, authoritarian, and patriarchal power does not jeopardize Freire’s core pedagogical categories. Nevertheless, it does require epochal diagnoses that more carefully differentiate and historicize the changing relations of instrumental power of individuals and groups and impersonal, institutional forms and networks of structural power. Awareness of this issue is especially important because one of the characteristics of what Freire termed “naive” thinking is a tendency to attribute social causality to personal power (often supernatural) and conspiracies. Second, this criticism of his epochal diagnosis is not that he is unaware of structural power or the diversity of oppression. The argument is rather that his admitted failure to “reinvent power” stems from problems relating to analyzing the changing relationship between the instrumental, intentionally deployed power of oppressors and the various forms of structural power that contribute to social reproduction. Many aspects of Freire’s discussion do recognize impersonal forms of power, whether as macro‐power (Marx, dependency theory), or micro‐ power as in Fromm’s “fear of freedom” or the enduring internalized effects of “cultural invasion.” And the cultural dimension of his understanding of impersonal power was reinforced by an eventual appreciation of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, though this was never systematically integrated into the standpoint of his third phase (Mayo, 2013). These unresolved problems in turn have contributed to incompletely historicized reinventions, even when Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is used for a structural

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

theory of power. Antonia Darder, for example, reappropriates Freire for the United States within a sociocritical model focusing on democratization, despite vague reference to “revolutionary dreams” (Darder, 2015). Nevertheless, the analysis is ultimately based on the problematic projection and transformation of the m ­ ission of Freire’s notion of the oppressed—“the people”—into a more heterogeneous category, but still tends to reduce all forms of oppression to the effects of capitalism and its increasingly invisible ruling class: “intersectionality arguments still fail to confront the totalizing impact of capitalism…racism, sexism, heterosexism, disablism, and all forms of oppression are deeply implicated in an interlocking set of relations that preserve and sustain the interests of capital” (Darder, 2015 , p. 38). Though this formulation is a well‐intended criticism of the separation of identity politics from a politics of redistribution, it glosses over the paradox that such oppressions were also characteristic of precapitalist societies and that  it was in (Western) capitalism that the diversity of oppression has been ­recognized—more recently even in “corporate ethics”—and addressed in public policies, with widely varying degrees of success. Not only does a ruling class model oversimplify the complexity of power relations, it also tends to reduce Freirean pedagogical tactics to the directive therapeutic task of “decolonizing our minds of hegemonic ideologies that made us complicit with our oppression” (Darder, 2015, p. 4) without confronting the pedagogical problems of reconciling conflicting standpoints with respect to what that might mean. Though Marx’s notion of a revolutionary class‐for‐itself had a certain coherence given his assumption of the unifying “objective interests” of the working class, such unity is even less plausible in the case of the omnibus, essentializing category of “the oppressed” (or equivalent uses of “the subaltern” or “multitudes”). The projection of this logic to the level of the American “oppressed” as a potential collective agent is simply wishful thinking, all too easily slides into sectarianism and fails to provide an adequate general sociocritical foundation for developing neo‐Freirean pedagogical tactics. Though the oppressor–oppressed model is useful for analyzing the historical origins of racism, patriarchy, suppressed working classes, and colonialism (and aspects of their persistence in some contexts), critical social analysis under conditions of formal legal equality and extensive democratic participation requires a much more nuanced, differentiated, and historicized model of social reproduction, domination, and resistance. Examples include Nancy Fraser and Iris Young on the “postsocialist condition” and the multiple faces of oppression (Fraser, 1997; Young, 1990), related debates on recognition and redistribution (Fraser & Honneth, 2003), the best work in the critical sociology of inequality, and the critical educational reproduction theory to be discussed in the next section. Consequently, Darder’s otherwise wonderful, experientially grounded reconstruction of Freire’s core pedagogical categories is wedded to a deeply flawed and partially anachronistic sociocritical epochal diagnosis of “how society works,” to cite Freire’s phrase. The rhetoric of the oppressor–oppressed relation is grounded in a conception of power that obscures fundamental features of contemporary capitalist social formations and their gradual incorporation of democratic participation: the shift from the primacy of personal to impersonal power and a related greater reliance on symbolic rather than coercive violence, especially as mediated by markets and

451

452

Raymond Allen Morrow

bureaucratic states (Sayer, 1991). And neoliberal globalization renders the impersonal, institutional faces of power even more invisible and difficult to conceptualize in terms of traditional categories of premodern power. The following two sections take up these questions in relation to two of the most important contributions to rethinking power and education in the global age: integral theories of social reproduction and transformation and Foucault’s theory of power and governmentality.

Integral Reproduction Theory Revisited Some time ago the present author and Carlos Alberto Torres defended— synthesizing existing research—what was termed an “integral” theory of social and cultural reproduction in education based on comparative historical analysis of agency‐structure relations in the context of the state, education and social movements (Morrow & Torres, 1995). Though the term is not ideal, integral does convey the goal of a synthetic and multidimensional approach that overcomes earlier polarizations such as structuralist determinism versus voluntarism and class reductionism versus the fragmentation of identity politics. As well, this approach implied a more empirically grounded “critical theory of methodology” as an alternative to the metanarratives of “grand theory” and the relativism of postmodernism (Morrow, 1994). Subsequently, Pierre Bourdieu’s work has regained a unique place as an exemplar of integral reproduction theory given his move away from strong structuralism, later concern with state power and resistance to neoliberalism, and the potential of his reflexive sociology to generate, beyond his own formulations, new questions in educational research (Morrow, 2014). Not surprisingly, in Argentina at least, Bourdieu and Freire can now walk arm in arm to inspire novel strategies of “popular education” (Pavcovich, 2012). Though integral reproduction theory has one of its earliest sources of inspiration in neo‐Marxist theory (early Frankfurt School, Gramsci, Althusser), it is also the outcome of a wide variety of other influences, starting with the early Bourdieu. So the broad contrast with neo‐Marxist reproduction theory needs to be highlighted. First, understanding the reproduction of inequality does not require either a structuralist base‐superstructure model (Althusser) or the instrumentalist assumption of a simple binary opposition of rulers and ruled. Instead, a relational understanding of structural power and agency explains how a plurality of more dominant groups—both intentionally and unconsciously—manage to maintain their advantages from generation to generation with the effect of reproducing inequalities of opportunity and outcomes. Similarly, relatively disadvantaged groups suffer from diverse deprivations relating to recognition and inequality but cannot be reduced to either “the working class” or even “the oppressed.” Second, integral reproduction theory is epistemologically postfoundationalist because it does not presuppose unifying, “objective” (revolutionary) interests of the oppressed that can be used to denounce the “false consciousness” of social agents, even if recognizing the need to problematize their self‐understandings. Third, integral reproduction theory argues not only that ideological incorporation is only partial, but that there are legitimate, competing visions of more democratic,

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

transformative alternatives that must be negotiated in the public sphere. Consequently, integral reproduction theory views transformation as part of a permanent democratic struggle. Despite more recent increases in economic inequality, various and often conflicting forms of resistance have succeeded in over the long run in gaining greater social justice and expanding the scope of human rights, though neoliberal globalization has eroded or reversed some of these advances. And Freire’s dialogical pedagogy, though criticized from neo‐Marxist perspectives as “idealist,” has had an immense practical impact on this transformative side of integral reproduction theory, precisely because of its capacity for historicization and nondogmatic reinvention. The context and timing of the publication of this earlier formulation of integral reproduction theory in the early 1990s, however, contributed to numerous weaknesses, but three are most pertinent here. First, the just emerging problematic of neoliberalism was not explicitly addressed, though soon developed in later work (Burbules & Torres, 2000). Further, Foucault’s theory of power was noted but marginalized, mainly because of his misleading reception (at the time) in postmodernism and the fact that his early theory of micro‐power appeared to dismiss the importance of state power. And third, related to the neglect of Foucault, there was a failure to make more explicit the understanding of power in educational reproduction theory and its relationship to Freire. Aspects of all three of these questions are addressed here. Theory, research, and activism informed by integral reproduction theories has been labeled in a variety of ways: critical education (Apple, Au, & Gandin, 2009), social justice education (Ayers, Quinn, & Stoval, 2009), and the critical sociology of education (Ball, 2004b). There is also extensive more specialized work on intersectional contexts such as gender, race, multiculturalism, and inclusive ­citizenship. Such research has provided empirically grounded, social theoretical contextualizations that have informed Freirean type reinventions, even if not necessarily using his name. Though many insights could be gained by focusing on other pioneers (e.g., Willis, Giroux, Aronowitz, etc.), the origins of integral reproduction theory is perhaps most closely mirrored in the creative evolution of the work of Michael Apple, one of the most prolific and influential critical sociologists of education. Though his earliest work reflected the influence of more deterministic forms of  reproduction theory, his later contributions soon reflected a radically ­historicized neo‐Gramscian hegemonic approach attuned to contemporary democracies and a neo‐Freirean concern with transformative practices and the responsibility of public intellectuals (Apple, 2013b). Though focusing primarily on the United States, and most recently preoccupied with the effects of ­neoliberalism on education and its appeal to conservative “common sense” (Apple, 2000 [1993], 2006), his approach has comparative implications and has been adapted by his students and others to a wide variety of international contexts (Weis, McCarthy, & Dimitriadis, 2006). The field of comparative education has also been a context where there has been a wide variety of theory and research relating to integral social reproduction theory. Particularly noteworthy here—partly because of Freire’s origins in  Brazil—has been work relating to Latin America and “popular education.”

453

454

Raymond Allen Morrow

The work of Carlos Alberto Torres has been particularly exemplary in continuing this tradition, defining his career as focusing on “the social foundations of Freire’s political philosophy of education” (Torres, 2009b, p. 14), linking Freire with ­critical theory in the Frankfurt tradition, and analyzing relations between the state, education and social movements. More specific contributions include (usually with extensive collaboration) a theory of “compensatory legitimation” in adult education (Torres, 1990, 2013), studies on Freire’s early Brazilian phase and later radical reform efforts as minister of education in São Paulo (O’Cadiz, Wong, & Torres, 1998; Torres, 2014) and a more systematic analysis of reproduction theory (Morrow & Torres, 1995). His comparative research is based on a methodology that he sometimes refers to as a “political sociology of the state,” building on earlier work on the selective rules underlying policy formulation, now extended to a wide‐ranging critique of neoliberalism in education (Torres, 2009a, 2009b).

Foucault, Power, and Governmentality The task of this section is to defend and selectively illustrate a general strategy for using Foucault as a resource for integral reproduction theory. First, this requires situating him independently in his own terms, drawing out the affinities with critical social theory, rather than as an expression of poststructuralism or postmodernism. Second, an overview of his shifting approaches to power is used to introduce his theory of governmentality. Third, the example of Stephen Ball’s creative use of Foucault’s theory of governmentality for educational policy analysis is used to illustrate its potential to supplement integral reproduction theory in the context of neoliberal globalization. Situating Foucault must take a position in relation to the complex and contradictory reception of his work. The present discussion focuses on his claims rather than locating his work in relation to poststructuralism or postmodernism. Postmodernism represents a classificatory device in social theory that is almost meaningless, whereas poststructuralism refers to a rather arbitrary cluster of French theorists responding to structuralism and Marxism as understood in France. But these theorists otherwise have little in common—­especially not a unifying theory of power. Even the best efforts to situate Foucault as a poststructuralist in educational theory end up stressing the differences within that ­tradition (Peters, 2001), as well as ignoring that Foucault has more in common with Bourdieu or Habermas—who are not part of the poststructuralist canon (Murphy, 2013). Equally problematic is to consider Foucault in complete ­isolation as a “master thinker”—despite his self‐identification as a “specific ­intellectual”—whose unique theory of power has supposedly undermined existing research on power and the state. More productive is to explore the affinities of his approach with critical social theory. First, unlike other so‐called poststructuralists, his identity as an historian gives his work an empirical and broadly explanatory dimension that makes possible a dialogue with critical social science. Second, his ambivalent relation to the Marxist tradition (Olssen & Peters, 2007)—responding to its dogmatic effect in

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

France—parallels that of Frankfurt critical theory or Bourdieu, a point lost in more recent neo‐Marxist efforts to appropriate Foucault for a theory of dominant ideology and instrumental social control (Flew, 2015). Third, though Foucault has added important new insights in understanding power/knowledge relations, this theme has always been central to the critical theory and sociology of knowledge traditions. For example, his theory of strategic rationality as a form of power parallels Frankfurt critical theory’s use of Max Weber’s theory of instrumental rationalization, though providing a more differentiated methodology for  understanding its deployment as governmentality (O’Neill, 1986). Fourth, Foucault’s critique of sovereign theories of power and rulership has affinities with the theory of domination and social reproduction developed in the Frankfurt School tradition, beginning with Fromm’s theory of “social character,” which in effect addressed a form of “micro‐power” by situating domination in relation to internalized personality structures (e.g., the authoritarian family in Weimar Germany). Finally, despite an early antihumanism, apparent epistemological relativism, and disavowing a concern with normative theory, the “final Foucault” emerged—from his distinctive perspective—as a defender of enlightenment, human rights, and a politics of engagement (Golder, 2015; Hoffman, 2014). Foucault’s preoccupation with power can roughly be traced through a shifting focus over three centuries: sovereignty, discipline, and security. Sovereignty in the eighteenth century reflected the classical juridical view of power as sanctions applied to legal violations. The resulting focus on subjugation and micro‐power questioned the conventional assumption of the primacy of the state for understanding the reproduction of social order. Though originating in the eighteenth century, discipline became a central category in the nineteenth century, shifting the locus of control to surveillance and correctional strategies of subjugation oriented to normalization and the production of compliant and docile subjects. This phase resulted in Foucault’s most repressive conception of power. Although this implied power was “productive” in constructing or producing subjects, productivity here was implicitly negative and repressive. As noted previously, these preoccupations of Foucault in this ­earlier work—a critique of the myth overcoming sovereign power by beheading of the king, disciplinary and micro‐power, normalization, docile subjects, ­panopticons—suggested only a limited use of Foucault for theories of social reproduction because of the resulting neglect of contemporary uses of state power and the potentials of agency. The third theme of security, while again originating in the eighteenth century in the context of the biopolitics of populations, fully unfolded only in the ­twentieth. The recognition of the significance of this theme for a theory of governmentality was delayed by the belated publication of his somewhat ­ ­fragmentary lectures on the topic (Foucault, 2007). Security entails a more subtle governmental rationality involving a flexible cost–benefit calculus that attempts to manage populations based on the probability of unacceptable risks resulting from deviance from norms. Significantly, these concerns converge in important ways with the “risk society” theory pioneered by Ulrich Beck in the critical social theory tradition. At this point the normative evaluation of the production of subjects also becomes more ambiguous. On the one hand, it can take a repressive

455

456

Raymond Allen Morrow

form in the contexts of responses to security threats or a deceptive one in the case of the neoliberal construction of the autonomous, self‐managed subject. Nevertheless, governmentality does not preclude the possibility that some forms of subject production and state power are better than others, as Foucault evasively alludes to at times. Consequently, forms of democratic governance can be envisioned that open up spaces for “practices of freedom” and self‐governance, despite the inevitably “dangerous” character of all forms of power. Underlying all of these shifts of perspective, however, was a critique of the theory of power as rulers and ruled that was directed against the French Marxist tradition: “Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all‐encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and serving as a general matrix—no such duality extending from the top down and reacting on more and more limited groups to the very depths of the social body” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 94). Such passages, however, cannot be read independently of Foucault’s later work on biopolitics, governmentality, and ethics, which moves closer to a critical social theory position and retreats from the risk of literal interpretations of the thesis that “power comes from below.” Power is relational and decentered, but this does not necessarily mean that all power comes from below, or that abuses of power cannot come from above, or deny that micro‐power ultimately presupposes the reality of macro‐power, especially the modern state. The preceding critique of Freire’s use of the images of oppressor–oppressed and their reinterpretation in terms of insufficiently historicized versions of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, shares key aspects of Foucault’s critique of Marxism, though developed in a form closer to critical social theory and integral theories of educational reproduction. Though the wider ramifications of Foucault’s theory of power and governmentality theory in education cannot be pursued here, see, for example (Peters & Besley, 2007), the work of Stephen Ball provides an instructive model for linking critical reproduction theory and governmentality. As Michael Apple points out, aspects of Foucault’s corpus “provide key elements of thinking anew about interruptive or transgressive possibilities…While I do not find Foucault’s work as compelling as others, Ball’s discussion is a significant reminder to and correction of those who read Foucault as simply a (more elegant) theory of social control” (Apple, 2013a, p. 213). Though Apple describes Ball as being “between two ­traditions”—critical (structural) sociology and poststructuralism, allowing them to “rub against each other,” it is also important to stress that he is appropriating Foucault independently from poststructuralism (or postmodernism). Ball’s understanding of the continuity between critical sociological reproduction theory and governmentality can be traced back to an early anthology in this area where he pairs his article on “performativity” in higher education with Carlos Torres’ earlier piece on structural selective rules in policy formation (Ball, 2004a; Torres, 2004). Though Ball did not provide any editorial rationale for positioning these two pieces together in a “regulation” section, it is clear that he saw them as  complementary. On the one hand, Torres’ discussion—working within the

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

t­radition of integral reproduction theory—was at a high level of generality, based on a distinction between the deep structure of policy formation (rules, rationalities) and its surface structure as content (accountability). What Ball in effect does is to provide an historically specific account of the emerging paradigmatic shift in educational policy formation that was just becoming labeled as “neoliberalism” and “performativity” by its critics. Though overtly using Lyotard’s concept of performativity as his point of departure, Ball’s pioneering article in the end frames itself—citing Mitchell Dean—in terms of viewing “performative regulation” as a manifestation of governmentality (Ball 2004a, p. 145, note 3). Governmentality approaches demonstrate how “rule at a distance” in education takes the form of ranking and testing regimes as a new form of panopticon, with the profound difference of being directed not toward “docility” as in prisons, but  to narrowly constructed accountability mechanisms that overtly confer autonomy on educational systems (Lingard, Martino, & Rezai‐Rashti, 2013). This autonomy, however, is limited by the chronic threat of neoliberal “reform” if the goals are not met. What is at stake in neoliberalism is thus not simply the commodification of education as privatization, but subjecting it to regulative rule at a distance through the technical rationality of indicators as measures of optimal performance. In more recent work, Ball has thus attempted to provide a more systematic sketch of the implications of his approach for reframing ­educational policy studies (Ball, 2013). The claim that Foucault’s theory of governmentality provides a useful supplement to theories of integral reproduction theory also depends on its capacity to provide insight into processes of transformation. Ball believes in this possibility— which was opened up by Foucault’s ethical phase—but does not develop the question very far, despite reference to a “governance turn” (Ball, 2009). To be sure, Foucault is not always very helpful in this context, given his failure to more clearly differentiate oppressive from democratic uses of power or develop an explicit conception of the “practices of freedom” that could link individual and solidaristic practices as found in social movements. Nevertheless, this possibility was implicit in the idea of critique and the public use of reason in struggles demanding that “we don’t want to be governed like that any more” (Foucault, 2007 [1997], p. 14), as well as his own political engagements (Hoffman, 2014). All of which suggests that his concerns can be complemented with the normative and empirical work in critical social theory, including Habermas, Honneth, Freire, Bourdieu, and many others. From this perspective, because power as domination cannot be abolished through a miraculous revolutionary process, the real utopian question is how to be governed well, hence the question of ­deliberative democracy. This theme is also implicit in the shift from statist “­government” as a bureaucratic relation (the Weberian model) to new forms of “governance” that break down the binary opposition between states and markets with the participation of “third sectors” and networks. Though such new forms of governance have been distorted by the neoliberal context, there is untapped potential for expanding democratic deliberation and accountability (Dale & Robertson, 2009; Triantafillou, 2012). Similarly, the organizational practices of “deep democracy” as countergovernmentality from below—as collective “self‐government”—was sketched some time ago by Arjun Appadurai in his ­analysis of an urban slum dwellers alliance in Mumbai (Appadurai, 2002).

457

458

Raymond Allen Morrow

Conclusion The preceding was concerned with reconstructing the logic of reinvention that underlies Freire’s methodology, a critique of his conjunctional sociocritical model of power based on the binary opposition of oppressor and oppressed, and introducing integral reproduction theory and governmentality theory as complementary alternatives. Raising these questions was partly motivated by the widespread reliance on Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a “classic” text without adequate reflection on its need for radical historicization. Most fundamentally, this requires understanding the logic of reinvention revealed by the shifting relations between his core pedagogical categories and sociocritical diagnosis. A key issue here is differentiating domination‐liberation as a core ontological concept and normative reference point from the more empirical question of the historical plurality of configurations of emancipations and liberations. Not only does this provide a way of legitimating and understanding Freire’s shift from a revolutionary to radical democratic stance in his third phase, it also informs the necessary retreat from a messianic conception of utopian hope toward one more grounded in diverse struggles here and now. Agreeing with Freire that “struggle generates hope as it goes along,” Rebecca Solnit has eloquently documented in Hope in the Dark that though the “fears and disasters” have been well studied, the “victories and possibilities” of humanization have been neglected: … the scale of change in the world and the collective imagination over the past few decades is staggering, in which the astonishing things that have taken place can brace us for entering that dark future with boldness… Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters. (Solnit, 2016 [2004], p. 13)

References Appadurai, A. (2002). Deep democracy: Urban governmentality and the horizon of politics. Public Culture, 14(1), 21–47. Apple, M., Au, W., & Gandin, L. A. (Eds.) (2009). Routledge international handbook of critical education. New York & London: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (1988). Teachers and texts: A political economy of class and gender relations in education. New York & London: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2000 [1993]). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York & London: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the “right way”: Markets, standards, God and inequality. New York & London: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2013a). Between traditions: Stephen Ball and the critical sociology of education. London Review of Education, 11(3), 206–217. Apple, M. W. (2013b). Can education change society?. New York & London: Routledge.

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

Arthur, C. (1983, Nov.–Dec.). Hegel’s master‐slave dialectic and a myth of marxology. New Left Review, 142, 67–75. Ayers, W., Quinn, T., & Stoval, D. (2009). Handbook of social justice in education. New York & London: Routledge. Ball, S. J. (2004a). Performatives and fabrications in the education economy: Towards the performative society. In S. J. Ball (Ed.), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in sociology of education (pp. 143–155). London & New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Ball, S. J. (2004b). The RoutledgeFalmer reader in sociology of education. London & New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Ball, S. J. (2009). The governance turn. Journal of Educational Policy, 24(5), 537–538. Ball, S. J. (2013). Foucault, power and education. New York & Milton Park, UK: Routledge. Burbules, N. C., & Torres, C. A. (Eds.) (2000). Globalization and education: Critical perspectives. New York & London: Routledge. Dale, R., & Robertson, S. (2009). Capitalism, modernity and the future of education in the new social contract. In T. S. Popkewitz, & F. Rizvi (Eds.), Globalization and the study of education (pp. 111–129). Malden, MA: Wiley‐Blackwell. Darder, A. (2002). Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love. Boulder, CO: Westview. Darder, A. (2015). Freire and education. New York & London: Routledge. Flew, T. (2015). Foucault, Weber, neoliberalism and the politics of governmentality. Theory, Culture & Society, 32, 7–8. Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: An introduction. New York: Vintage. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan: République Française. Foucault, M. (2007 [1997]). The politics of truth. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Fraser, N. (1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. New York & London: Routledge. Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political‐ philosophical exchange. London: Verso. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power and liberation. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving the pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the heart. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2005 [1967–1970]). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2005 [1970]). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York & London: Continuum. Giroux, H. (2012). Paulo Freire and the pedagogy of bearing witness. Counterpoints, 400, 116–123 Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42981524 Golder, B. (2015). Foucault and the politics of rights. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Hoffman, M. (2014). Foucault and power: The influence of political engagement on theories of power. New York: Bloomsbury.

459

460

Raymond Allen Morrow

Honneth, A. (1996 [1992]). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Huttunen, R., & Murphy, M. (2012). Discourse and recognition as normative grounds for radical pedagogy: Habermasian and Honnethian ethics in the context of education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31(2), 137–152. Lingard, B., Martino, W., & Rezai‐Rashti, G. (2013). Testing regimes, accountabilities and education policy: Commensurate and global national developments. Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 539–556. Mayo, P. (2013). The Gramscian influence. In R. Lake, & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 53–64). New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic. Morrow, R. A. (1994). Critical theory and methodology. Newbury Park & London: Sage. Morrow, R. A. (2006). Emancipation. In A. Harrington, B. Marshall, & H.‐P. Müller (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social theory (pp. 162–163). London & New York: Routledge. Morrow, R. A. (2013). Rethinking Freire’s “Oppressed”: A postcolonial route to Habermas’s communicative turn and theory of deliberative democracy. In R. Lake, & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s roots: Toward historicity in praxis (pp. 65–87). New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic. Morrow, R. A. (2014). Reproduction theories. In D. C. Phillips (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational theory and philosophy (pp. 706–711). Sherwood Park, CA & London: Sage Publications. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (1995). Social theory and education: A critique of theories of social and cultural reproduction. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical pedagogy and transformative change. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Murphy, M. (2013). Social theory and education research: Understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida. London & New York: Routledge. O’Cadiz, M. d. P., Wong, P. L., & Torres, C. A. (1998). Education and democracy: Paulo Freire, social movements, and educational reform in São Paulo. Boulder, CO: Westview. Olssen, M., & Peters, M. A. (2007). Marx, education, and the possibilities of a fairer world: Reviving radical political economy through Foucault. In A. Green, G. Rikowski, & H. Radnutz (Eds.), Renewing dialogues in Marxism and education: Openings (pp. 151–179). New York & Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. O’Neill, J. (1986). The disciplinary society: From Weber to Foucault. British Journal of Sociology, 37(1), 42–60. Pavcovich, P. L. (2012). Juanito Laguna va a la escuela: La educación popular desde la sociología de Pierre Bourdieu. Córdoba, Argentina: Editorial Universitaria Villa María. Peters, M. A. (2001). Poststructuralism, Marxism, and neoliberalism: Between theory and politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Peters, M. A., & Besley, T. (Eds.) (2007). Why Foucault? New directions in educational research. New York: Peter Lang.

Paulo Freire and the “Logic of Reinvention”

Roberts, P. (2013). Paulo Freire in the 21st century: Education, dialogue, and transformation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Sayer, D. (1991). Capitalism and modernity: An excursus on Marx and Weber. London & New York: Routledge. Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. London & New York: Continuum. Solnit, R. (2016 [2004]). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Steger, M. B. (2009). Globalisms: The great ideological struggle of the twenty‐first century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2004). The capitalist state and public policy formation: Political sociology of educational policy formation. In S. J. Ball (Ed.), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in sociology of education (pp. 156–176). London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Torres, C. A. (1990). The politics of nonformal education in Latin America. New York: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (2009a). Education and neoliberal globalization. New York: Routledge. Torres, C. A. (2009b). Globalizations and education: Collective essays on class, race, gender, and the state. New York & London: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2013). Political sociology of adult education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Triantafillou, P. (2012). New forms of governing: A Foucauldian inspired analysis. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weis, L., McCarthy, C., & Dimitriadis, G. (2006). New sociology of education: Revisiting the work of Michael Apple. New York & London: Routledge. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

461

463

25 Ecopedagogy The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

This chapter was written in a globalized way from Beijing to Los Angeles and many stops along the way. The authors finished this chapter in the mountains of Topanga, a rural area surrounded by all sorts of creatures, wildflowers, beautiful Pacific oaks, red rocks, and fresh clear air. In this environment so propitious to dialogue and writing they witnessed the constant dancing in happiness of laborious bees in the apiaries of Torres’ property. Watching the bees enjoying the wonders of summers producing their honey that they will also share the authors could not let this opportunity pass. The authors dedicate this chapter as Paulo himself might have done to the hard‐working bees whose presence on the Earth is so important for us as Earth and World to survive.

Introduction One of the eccentricities of the historical profession is its tradition of explaining very complicated events by means of very simple formulas (David Gilmour, 2006) The central thesis of this chapter is that Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is missing a chapter, chapter five, that Freire could not accomplish at the time of writing this emblematic book. We argue that historically Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter to Pedagogy of the Oppressed could be written as Paulo Freire himself might have written the missing chapter in his Magnum Opus, a chapter that would have focus on the environment as oppressed. The chapter could also have been titled “Chapter Five: Ecopedagogy.” We do not attempt to reinvent his lifetime’s work, though Freire himself insisted that this is what he wanted when he met Professors Torres and Moacir Gadotti one afternoon in 1991 at Kerckhoff Hall, at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and decided to create the first Paulo Freire Institute. When Torres and Gadotti suggested to Freire the creation of the institute after a The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

464

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

wonderful conversation with Torres’ friends and colleagues at UCLA, Freire agreed with the following tenets of needing to reinvent his work: Reinvention requires of me that I recognize that the historical, political, cultural, and economic conditions of each context present new methodological and tactical requirements, so that it is always necessary to search for the actualization of … ideas with every new situation. (Freire, 1997a, p. 326) A couple of years later, it was in a conversation with Gadotti and Torres in Freire’s house in São Paulo that Freire lamented the predatory cultures that oppressed the planet and insisted on the need of a planetary citizenship and ecopedagogy as a model to defend the planet, a most oppressed entity, in his words. He lamented not have addressed this key topic in his memorable book. Although not named as such by Freire directly, the essence of ecopedagogy was the subject in which he stated was the book’s missing chapter and was to be the topic of his next book, which unfortunately was not completed because of his death in 1997. Freire spoke about our planet’s oppression in many places, with “our” being all that is Earth. See the following excerpt of a later conversation at the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo. Freire was talking about eco‐pedagogy. In an interview at the Paulo Freire Institute, he talked of his love for the Earth, the animals, the plants: “I want to be remembered as somebody who loved the men, the women, the plants, the animals, the Earth”, he said on that occasion. In one of his last books, A Sombra desta Mangueira (literally, In the Shadow of this Mango Tree, published in English as Pedagogy of the Heart, 1998), he speaks of the pleasure of breathing pure air, the joy of entering a river that has no pollution, of stepping on grass, or the sand on the beach. He criticized the capitalist logic that gives no value to those free pleasures, and substitutes for them the pleasure of profit. Capitalism substitutes the free happiness of satisfying human needs for happiness that can be bought or sold, but above all, for satisfying the needs of capitalism—not human needs, but needs imposed upon human beings by the search for profits. Freire did not separate human needs from the needs of the planet. When he died, Freire was writing a book about ecology. (Gadotti & Torres, 2009, pp. 1261–1262) Ecopedagogy is an environmental pedagogy1 rooted in critical, popular education pedagogies, theories, and philosophies (Gadotti, 2000, 2008c; Gadotti & Torres, 2009; Gutiérrez & Prado, 2008; Kahn, 2010; Misiaszek, 2011). As with any pedagogical model, ecopedagogues’ definition and foci differ, but all ecopedagogies have a Freirean grounding. The specific goal of ecopedagogy, as defined in this reinvented chapter is to teach to critically understand the connections between human acts of environmental ills and social conflict (socio‐environmental issues) for praxis to end oppressions (Misiaszek, 2011, 2018). We focus on this definition of ecopedagogy in this chapter because it largely emerges from Freire’s writings and conversations on environmental issues and pedagogies.

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

As critical pedagogues center teaching to better understand oppressions by centering the perspectives of those who struggle the most for the goal of ending oppressions (Apple & Au, 2009; Apple, Au, & Gandin, 2009; Gadotti, 1996), ecopedagogues center socio‐environmental struggles in their teaching (Gadotti, 2008b, 2008c). Beyond human perspectives (anthropocentric lenses) ecopedagogues also center biocentric (i.e., planetary) oppressions—humans, other animals, other organic entities (e.g., plants), inorganic (e.g., landscapes, seascapes, and Earth as a single being (Gadotti, 2008b, 2008c; Gutiérrez & Prado, 1989; Misiaszek, 2018).2 Some scholars may object to writing a chapter in Freire’s name especially one that focuses specifically on an environmental pedagogy particularly; however, we would argue that this coincides with chapter 4 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As encouraged by colleagues and the publisher, chapter 4, a political analysis of the first three chapters, largely centering on leadership, was added to the initial manuscript, which originally included only the first three chapters (Schugurensky, 2011), this Missing Chapter is a political analysis of ecological oppressions about which Freire wrote in his later writings. In addition, we have provided extensive endnotes that will guide the reader with specific passages by and conversation with Freire on the topics within this chapter 5 and this introduction outlines our guidelines on the chapter’s construction. Freire the Environmentalist This introduction does not provide the space to fully elaborate upon all of Freire’s work coinciding with environmentalism as other scholars have done (Au & Apple, 2007; Gadotti, 2000, 2008a; Gutiérrez & Prado, 1989; Kahn, 2005) and on which we have written on previously (Gadotti & Torres, 2009; Misiaszek, 2011, 2018); however, we want to discuss a few key aspects of Freire’s environmental perspectives, within the first four chapters and post‐Pedagogy of the Oppressed. We argue that to understand all of Freire’s thoughts on the environment, his whole lifetime of work must be studied, coinciding with his own argument that we are all unfinished beings (Freire, 2000). Acritical readings of Pedagogy of the Oppressed sometime have led people to argue that Freire’s writings comparing humans to all other animals as hierarchical justifies calling Freire “antienvironmental.” Freire (2000) expanded upon educational scholars’ arguments such as John Dewey’s (1963) that humans are reflective beings who cannot be “trained” through behavioral educational models that are effective for all other animals, to discuss the ineffective of banking education as a tool of oppressive, domesticating control. By controlling how and what to reflect upon in banking education models to determine our actions, it counters human’s ability for critical reflection, as historical and political beings (Gadotti, 1996). Freire’s arguments in Pedagogy of the Oppressed show our ability, as humans, to transform the world, either positively or negative, while not devaluing nature. If anything, Freire emphasized the large responsibility that we have in changing the world within justice models for everyone and all else (i.e., Earth holistically). Alas, Freirean pedagogy centers on social contexts (historical and cultural) in postulating a problem‐posing approach and necessary transformational praxis

465

466

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

toward a better world. In this chapter, we reinvent Freire’s work to discuss the needed problem‐posing of socio‐environmental oppressions between the World and Earth. Countering all aspects of The World, such as neoliberalism and racism, is inherent to such problem‐posing teaching for transformation, but this also includes conflicts within local contexts. This does not mean a devaluing of cultures and traditions, but rather discussing the possibilities of socio‐ environmental solutions that coincide with local context, as well as what is needed for socio‐environmental well‐being within and outside of one’s local society (e.g., citywide, statewide, national, globally) and for nature’s inherent well‐being (i.e., planetary; e.g., planetary citizenship), including outside of human well‐being. One thread throughout many of Freire’s later writings (1997b, 1998b, 2004) is his disgust for economic globalization, as stated in the following passage under the subtitle of Hope in his book: I reject the notion that nothing can be done about the consequences of economic globalization and refuse to bow my head gently because nothing can be done against the unavoidable. Accepting the inexorability of what takes place is an excellent contribution to the dominant forces in their unequal fight against the “condemned of the earth.” One of the fundamental differences between me and such fatalistic intellectuals‐sociologists, economists, philosophers, or educators, it does not matter‐lies in my never accepting, yesterday or today, that educational practice should be restricted to a “reading of the word,” a “reading of text,” but rather believing that it should also include a “reading of context,” a “reading of the world.” (Freire, 1997b, p. 43) Freire discussed the socially constructed fatalism from neoliberal globalization within education and overall society, likening its universal adoption as “jumping on the train in the middle of the journey without discussing the conditions, the cultures, or the forms of production of the countries that are being swept along” (Freire, 1998b, p. 113). In chapter 5, we have expanded the processes of globalization beyond “sweeping” neoliberalism, to discuss how some other processes of globalization can deepen and widen humanization (Burbules & Torres, 1999; Torres, 2003, 2009, 2017a) and planetarism (Gadotti, 2008c; Gadotti & Torres, 2009; Misiaszek, 2015, 2016, 2018). Such processes of globalization counter neoliberalism, about which Freire wrote to a great extent, and other forms of oppression by global collective action by humans for all humans and for Earth. Ecopedagogues’ focus on planetary socio‐environmental justice, the teaching of processes that counter oppressive globalization process, is essential to end schools, families, and communities being “completely subjected to the greater context of global society that they could do nothing but reproduce the authoritarian ideology” (Freire, 1992, p. 14). Our Freirean reinvention on globalization is based on what we and other scholars have written on the many faces of globalization, through his own writings. With these same arguments in this and the previous paragraph, we have Freire discussing critically based global ­citizenship and its education, within his writings of the universal human ethic.

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The universal human ethic has many commonalities of what Torres (2017b) has named the Global Commons as universal goals for all humans. These Global Commons are necessary for global citizenship education (GCE) to be successful: a healthy environment to live in, peace, and personhood. Such universal human ethic, constructs of critical citizenship, and global commons can, partially if not fully, be reinvented by framings of biophilia as revolutionary utopia, which Freire adapted from Erich Fromm’s work in many of his books, such as the following: …to use Erich Fromm’s terms, the revolutionary utopia is biophiliac, whereas the right in its rigidity is necrophiliac, as is a revolutionary leadership that has become bureaucratic. Revolutionary utopia tends to be dynamic rather than static; tends to life rather than death; to the future as a challenge to man’s creativity rather than as a repetition of the present; to love as liberation of subjects rather than as pathological possessiveness; to the emotion of life rather than cold abstractions; to living together in harmony rather than gregariousness; to dialogue rather than mutism; to  praxis rather than “law and order”; to men who organize themselves reflectively for action rather than men who are organized for passivity; to creative and communicative language rather than prescriptive signals; to reflective challenges rather than domesticating slogans; and to values that are lived rather than myth that are imposed. (Freire, 1985, p. 82) In our reimagined chapter 5, we have Freire writing the term citizen of the world, which we perceive as similar to being a critical global citizen. Foundations As the previous sections have explained, Freire wrote upon many issues of the environment encapsulating the idea that education to be grounded in social justice must be also grounded in environmental justice.3 Freire argued about this important environmental justice issue: I do not believe in loving among women and men, among human beings, if we do no become capable of loving the world. Ecology has gained tremendous importance at the end of this century. I must be present in any educational practice of a radical, critical, and liberating nature. (Freire, 2004, p. 25) …the notion seems deplorable to me of engaging in progressive, revolutionary discourse while embracing a practice that negates life‐ that ­pollutes the air, the waters, the fields, and devastates forests, destroys the trees and threatens the animals. (Freire, 2004, p. 120) These two passages are from his book Pedagogy of Indignation (2004) published posthumously in 1997, which included a number of writings in which he directly focused on ecopedagogy. The next section describes how we constructed the Missing Chapter from such writings and body of work holistically, as well as discussing some of the difficult issues we encountered in writing the chapter.

467

468

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

Reimagining the Missing Chapter The Missing Chapter will rely on Freire’s themes of the first four chapters of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and our attempt to reinvent, in broad strokes, how Freire wrote about environmental pedagogies (EP). The phrase “broad strokes” indicates that we are certain that there are many details Freire would have written differently but it is our goal that the overall essence of the chapter would be identical. Needless to say, there are numerous difficulties and questions in representing Freire and his most famous book. One of the key questions that we have posed to ourselves is the following: What time period is best to situate the Missing Chapter? In answering this question, we determined the following three contextual possibilities: (a) as part of the original manuscript in 1960s Chile, (b) as an additional chapter in a revised version of Pedagogy of the Oppressed before his death in 1997, or (c) in 2019. Each of these possibilities have positive and negative issues in their reasoning, as well as numerous complex difficulties. We found there were too many unknown factors if the chapter would be historically positioned in 2019 and the risk of “presentism” that may undermine the actual contributions of Pedagogy of the Oppressed as Morrow and Torres in this volume argue that: Most important, it becomes possible to think about the process of reinvention more self‐consciously, hence to interpret Pedagogy of the Oppressed more reflexively, based upon an explicit “critical” and “restorative” hermeneutics, to use Paul Ricoeur’s distinction. In the process, it becomes possible to avoid various problematic strategies of interpreting his classical text: ritualistically as a sacred book, ambiguously in the form of an epigraph whose meaning can be taken for granted within a particular politically correct canon, or superficially as a more or less “outdated” precursor. (Morrow & Torres, Chapter 13 in this volume) In the spirit of Freire’s discussions of humans as “unfinished beings,” the question is what contexts should we draw from, such as experiences and readings he would have done if he would have been alive in 2019? An example of this importance from readings he would have done for the past 20 years can be witnessed by how he significantly changed a final draft of Pedagogy of the Oppressed after he read Frantz Fanon’s (Fanon, 1963) book Wretched of the Earth (Gadotti & Torres, 2009). In the end, we decided to write the chapter as if it were an additional chapter for a revised version of the book in 1997, because it was around this time that Freire increasingly focused upon environmental issues and it allowed us to use much of his work that he was writing on ecopedagogy through self‐reflections that we avoid overextending our analysis on what he might have written in the present day but also, once again, within his argument of humans as unfinished beings. In addition, we wanted to respect the fact that Freire in the mid‐1960s in Latin America with its Volksgeist did not write this chapter. Yet, a parallel cultural companion in Freire’s work at the time, and who himself was another genius of

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

the twentieth century and made memorable contributions, Ivan Illich spoke of the Tools for Conviviality (Illich, 1973), which indisputably Freire would have accepted, evidenced by a book that was in process shortly after Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published (Freire & Illich, 1975). Ivan Illich instructed us in Tools for Conviviality (1973), a book that had its origins in 1972 and conversations in the Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC), Cuernavaca, a place visited by Freire frequently, that: Such a political choice of a frugal society remains a pious dream unless it can be shown that it is not only necessary but also possible: (1) to define concrete procedures by which more people are enlightened about the nature of our present crisis and will come to understand that limits are necessary and a convivial life style desirable; (2) to bring the largest number of people into now suppressed organizations which claim their right to a frugal life style and keep them satisfied and therefore committed to convivial life; and (3) to discover and revalue the political or legal tools that are accepted within a society and learn how to use them to establish and protect convivial life where it emerges. (p. 116) To elaborate on one additional aspect of “broad strokes” mentioned in the first paragraph of this section, we focus the pedagogical, sociological, political, and philosophical aspects of ecopedagogy as we reinvent Freire’s work for the Missing Chapter, rather than elaborate with specific examples. Freire wrote in a storytelling fashion of his own experiences of analysis of texts and theories, in which text and theories are meaningless throughout contexts. In a conversation with Carlos Alberto Torres, the coauthor of this chapter, Freire explained this inseparability between theory and practice: All the time before I wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the time during which I wrote it represented moments full of practice about which I thought theoretically I could never understand the meaning of texts without first having a comprehension of the context of texts. I could never understand the reading of the written word without the reading of the world that pushed me to rewrite the world, that is, its transformation. (Freire, 1993) Endnotes in the Missing Chapter: An Important Note In writing the Missing Chapter, we are limited by not knowing what Freire would have selected in his firsthand or read experience in writing on ecopedagogy. Because of this we have limited our writing to what had previously been written, not to give ourselves too much liberty in detailing what events he would have chosen or not. We have drawn upon some of the specifics that he himself chose to write upon. Without question, this Missing Chapter is different from what Freire would have written for this and other reasons, but our hope is to capture the essence of what he would have written. We have included extensive endnotes throughout the Missing Chapter that clarify our own interpretations of Freire’s

469

470

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

work rather than endnotes that would have been written by Freire. To clarify, the endnotes we have provided is for our own justification of the Missing Chapter’s contents and not part of the chapter itself, unless otherwise noted.

Chapter Five: The Missing Chapter The first sentence of this book,4 also provided here, focused on axiological points of humanization—the valuing of humans, others and oneself, through issues of ethics and aesthetics—with the argument that a person’s being is determined within society with “more anthropological than anthropocentric” reflections.5 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. (Freire, 2000, p. 43) As such, historical realities constructing humanization or dehumanization (anthropological); however, the possibilities of either wagers on their reflections as “a person as an uncompleted being conscious of their incompletion.” (anthropocentric)—what Carlos Alberto Torres (Torres, 1978) has named political anthropology. Education must focus to deepen and widen these reflections, viewing themselves as unfinished and transformable beings, as well as societies as unfinished. As someone who struggles with his own contradictions, I was aware of the need for self‐reflection inspecting our own thinking about things, people, the planet, and also about thought and knowledge itself.6 Thus, inevitably, I concluded that nothing could be forever conclusive, and that all of us live in this essential incompleteness and unfinishedness, which obscures both our objectivity and subjectivity in the quest for the truth, and at the same time. Throughout this book’s chapters, education is deconstructed as too often a fatalistic tool to dehumanize people as responsible for the oppressions upon them and reconstructed as transformative possibilities toward a more humanizing world. Transformation emerged from our histories of continuously reading the world, searching for answers of our curiosities, fears, and wonderment—this is being human.7 The need for education is to continue these critical reflections in our action within the World without restraint to end oppressions. Our views of social justice should be global in reading our and others’ reality, to recover our citizenship, in the fight for a better, more just world.8 When we discuss humanization of the world, there is a universal human ethic, that includes goals for all humans to be able to dream of possible utopias with one another, with education needing to aligned with such goals, within an environment that we can breathe in, drink the water, and find beautiful.9 Such universal goals are for all humans with achievement possible only through universal human ethics and love between all humans to live peacefully with each other on Earth as our home, as citizens to all of humanity and Planet Earth. The focus of this chapter is on how the well‐ being of the rest of Earth is affected by and causes humanization or dehumanization, as we teach about the planet holistically.

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Planetary Dialogue of Humans and Earth Education must expand anthropological and anthropocentric reflections to include connections we have with the rest of nature to end human oppressions. In addition, reflection should also include the ending of oppressions beyond those endured by humans—the reading and rereading of Earth. With any hope in not being the cause of destroying Earth, which is essentially destroying ourselves, we must teach to be conscious of our connections with nature and inherent need for Earth’s well‐being beyond humans’ needs and especially wants. Humanizing education is essential for students to better understand connections between humans’ and nature’s oppressions. What is also needed is planetarian education in which dialogue on oppressions extends beyond human emancipation to include nature’s oppressions—teaching to better understand oppression including humans, but also beyond humans—the trees, the birds, the rivers, the seas: life in plenitude.10 Without understanding oppressions holistically with the rest of Earth (and planetarian citizenship, as advocated by the Paulo Freire Institutes since their creation in 1991) is to deny a true revolutionary pedagogy. As described in the first four chapters of this book, humans are the only animals that labor, dream, and have histories—both speak about stories and make history—which allow them to transcend themselves and their societies through crucially reflective action (i.e., praxis). Education must have the goal of transformational praxis, not a theory in itself or abstract, but it is continuous critical reflections for the development of theories to guide our practices,11 in both our societies and upon Earth. Countering the development of such praxis are banking pedagogies that dehumanize and alienate students by normalizing oppressions and as individuals’ and societies’ fate, as well as the fate of Earth overall. The previous chapters characterizing nonhuman animals of being acritical was not to devalue them as subhuman and their labor of the animalization12 of the world for their survival, but rather that humans’ ability to determine how to change the world through praxis is far beyond labor of survival.13 Citizen of the World and Earth It is true that being human allows for reflection that other beings do not have; however, this is not to ignore all else that affect everything else making up Earth, but rather praxis should emerge from critical reflections on humanization and planetarization. In writing this, there does exist a conundrum in that planetarization, by its very definition all‐inclusive of Earth, is inclusive of humanization. Planetarization or planetarian citizenship intrinsically does include humanization; however, for purposes of discussing specific aspects of each, this chapter, as teaching might also find necessary, uses the word humanization only in reference to oppressions upon humans. When we teach of human oppressions it is essential that discussions of ecological ills are both the cause and effect of human oppressions. This ecological teaching should not be in addition to other dialogue but must be deeply and rigorously intertwined in discussions in the same respect we teach on the politics of economics, globalization, consumption, and all else that constructs societies—the inclusion of environment issues are essential.

471

472

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

Expanding on the affirmation that for a true revolutionary transformative pedagogy to exist, teaching must be grounded in teaching to save the planet, beyond humans including other animals and inorganic environments. In the analysis of cultural action, the planet we live on, along with everything else, has our environment in partnership with our own beings, societies, and cultures.14 By defending the environment, they are defending everyone and all else that exists.15 In telling the story of the peasant’s answer to the question if there is a World without humans in Chapter Two (repeated here), clarification is needed on the analysis of (a) Earth with consciousness which makes it humanized and (b) Earth without human consciousness—without the non‐I on the individual level, as described in Chapter Two.16 …a peasant who by banking standards was completely ignorant said: “Now I see that without man there is no world.” When the educator responded: “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, ­rivers, seas, the stars…, wouldn’t all this be a world?” “Oh no,” the peasant replied emphatically. “There would be no one to say: This is a world.” (Freire, 2000, p. 82) In the peasant’s naming the World, it is human consciousness and dialogue between each other that define the World and everything else as the environment in which consciousness and dialogue is taking place within. Dialectic, problem‐ posing education is to understand the World for its transformation to end oppressions and this goal is possible because it is fluid and not fatalistically static. Banking education models are opposite of this with the goal to mythicize the World by adhering to an ideology that the World is static larger social structures as unchangeable and oppressions are natural with full blame placed upon the oppressed. Earth must be taught to be loved in the same respect of the love between students and teacher(s) that construct the paideia.17 The World is part of Earth but this aspect of transformability of the non‐World part of Earth (i.e., all that is nonhuman) brings up some differences in the essence of the World as transformative and fluidity of the World. These differences are essential to problematize in EP; however, there is not a normalized World‐Earth hierarchy but complex intersectionalities between the two. This dialogical problem‐posing centers on the issues of how we transform the non‐World Earth to meet the wants and needs of the World (humans and societies). Before critically discussing this overarching question of how to meet the needs of humanity and the rest of Earth, there are several key aspects to consider. First, as humans, we are part of Earth and the World, so our transformation and living within the non‐World Earth is our vocation, our sense of being. Indigenous cultures have always been closer to nature, understanding nature better than modernity itself, particularly Western modernity. All organisms utilize their environments; however, only humans reflect upon their actions upon Earth—the environment, other animals, and each other (i.e.,  the World). The previous chapters of Pedagogy of the Oppressed have

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

­ iscussed how education affects us within the World but this chapter focuses d on how EP must problem pose (a) between the World and Earth and (b) within the non‐World Earth. In other words, critical teaching is problem‐posing the connections between humans (i.e., the World, anthropocentric perspectives) and environmental oppressions beyond the effects upon the World (non‐ anthropocentric perspectives) but are caused by the World. We focus upon the World, because it is humans that affect Earth’s intrinsic balance that would remain largely unchanged without the World’s interference. The planetarization of education centers on problem‐posing conflicts between anthropocentric and non‐anthropocentric perspectives, to construct a holistic biocentric (i.e., Earth‐World perspectives) in the goal of ending social and environmental injustices. Planetarian education has the goal of balance between inside and outside humanization as environmental issues are problematized. Teaching outside of humanization is not ignoring human oppressions but rather problematizing what is needed for nature’s well‐being, including outside of humans’/societies’ well‐being. There are circumstances in which actions for environmental well‐being will negatively affect societies—for instance in the circumstance that technologies that preserve the environment may replace labor with its social consequences. However, the connection of environmental well‐ being with the World is almost always positive toward a planetary balance. Ecopedagogy is teaching to better understand the imbalances between the World and Earth for praxis with the goal of planetary balance. When we discuss sustainability, it must be toward this planetary balance. Development Calls for our planetary oppressive actions are most often rationalized for “development,” but the question is whose development? Development is beneficial; however, actions that oppress the Earth for the World’s benefit need problem‐ posing on who benefits from “development,” who suffers, and how this development affects planetary balance. Teaching should not only prepare students for their lives after school but rather a real education where the content is in a constant dialectical relation with the needs of their societies, as citizenships from local to global and back to local.18 It is first necessary to understand that, as humans we are the only ones who can develop the World, with Earth transforming but not developing, or as I have previously written, “while all development is transformation, not all transformation is development” (Freire, 2000, p. 161).19 Outside of human beings, actions for development occur according to stimuli and biological needs. Humans are the only beings on the planet that act in the name of development with reflection of their histories and dreams, for better or worse for other humans and the planet overall. There is great responsibility in which we, as the human race, transform the Earth in the name of “development.” In the World, transformation for authentic development needs critical reflection on progress for all societies (local to global) to be free from alienating one another and in balance with the rest of Earth. But we must also problem‐pose the effects upon Earth, widening dialectics to be inclusive of Earth, as well as the World.20 We utilize our surroundings—the

473

474

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

Earth—to develop but this needs to be authentic development. Individual authentic development for humans to become “beings for themselves,” discussed in previous chapters, is more true than ever before. We used to take the planet as the background of human action, we now need to move the background to the foreground. Teaching “development” for praxis to emerge must be diverse in discipline, knowledges, and understanding to truly determine the Earth‐World effects from our developmental actions—including our sciences, social sciences, and disciplines of the humanities.21 In Defense of Sustainability Balance is the concept of what many have named as sustainability, with the accompanying term when we discuss development, as sustainable development. With the same arguments of teaching balance, sustainability should not be taught superficially but rather with thorough problem‐posing between the World, from local to global, and all else that is Earth.22 Neoliberal globalization has constructed development for powerful global interests that are often “foreign” to the local societies’ needs and wants. Neoliberalism has shifted decision‐making from local to national voices, in which even unauthentic development is not for one’s own society(ies) but mostly for the benefit of “foreign” hegemonic ones. I have written on many global examples of this, including extensively giving examples of this in Brazil.23 Problematizing how globalization affects the World and Earth for “development” needs to be widened beyond national borders because the politics of neoliberal global practices ­systematically ignore popular voice, as well as national politics.24 It is universally unethical how globalization often far removes the context and voice of the people who work most closely with nature to dictate their livelihood, usually negatively, from great distances. As an example of Giddens’ (1990) classic definition of globalization as influences from great distances, soybean farmers very often have little knowledge of the politics from global stock exchanges upon their work and livelihood, but minimal political power over them.25 Reimagining Earth‐World connections in an increasingly globalized world must question who determines actions upon Earth for development—who has a voice and who does not in such acts. We must teach to “read the world” of its many contexts to counter fatalistic notions of oppressive neoliberal globalization that condemns the Earth,26 toward true Earth‐World sustainability and widen praxis in becoming citizens for environmental well‐being, peace, and bettering livelihood for all to live out their identities and have a voice in their societies that truly listen to their dreams of their own envisioned utopias. Imbalances between the World and Earth are largely due to many processes of globalization that have immense impacts to human civilizations and the rest of Earth. We must consciously teach by problem‐posing globalization for this end, and counter processes that are fatalistic,27 dehumanizing,28 and undermine ­planetarian citizenship. In planetary citizenship, we are a global human society that is the World that is a part of the Planet Earth. Through problem‐posing teaching for social and environmental justice, we can address how local societies are affected by globalization, effects that are inherently ignored with neoliberal

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

globalization because local oppressions are viewed as insignificant within and by global power structures. Such teaching must focus on constructing literacies of the dialectical tensions between the global and the local, including reading the effects of these tensions upon the Earth, including the World, as well as beyond the World. There are several reasons such literacies are essential. First, intensifying globalization has increasingly connected us together, so that some scholars argue we are living in a borderless world. If physical distances for social action are becoming less and less significant, this may lead to oppressions that are also increasingly connected. Second, because we are all human beings, we should also care about one another regardless of physical, cultural, religious, and other differences that need to be better understood and respected rather than causes of structural oppressions. Third, because our oppressions are most often globally connected, the solutions must also be globally constructed and our being “within” Earth. For example, air pollution’s negative effects do not stop at political borders and climate change is global. Solving problems that are global requires us to understand them globally as well as locally. Fourth, if we are all part of a larger society of human beings, we must understand and care for one another without regard to distances physically or otherwise. Being in close physical distance or having similarity to another should not be criteria for caring and fairness, with diversity as valued rather than a point of division between humans and groups of humans. Socio‐environmental connections provide endless amount of human concerns from the connections between the World’s well‐being connected to Earth’s well‐ being, which illustrates the need for environmental concerns to be linked to citizenship of the World.29 However, Earth, as a holistic being of which the World is a part, must also be considered a being. For many indigenous peoples of Latin America, the Earth is considered the Pachamama, a mythical mother of all of us. For capitalism, rather than being seen as a connection of ourselves and our planetarian home, Earth is seen as commodified products leading to economic imbalance to benefit a few and oppress many.30 Although all that makes up Earth which is not human does not have histories or the ability to be reflective, our universal ethic must include the caring for Earth in its entirety, in which I have written in my other writings, including the following: [Global neoliberal’s] tragic transgression of ethics has taken place warns us how urgent it is that we fight for more fundamental ethical principles, such as respect for the life of human beings, the life of other animals, of birds, and for the life of rivers and forests. (Freire, 2004, p. 47) When we talk about freedom of oppression and empowering citizenship it must be with the inclusion of all of Earth to read the World. As educators of holistic sustainability and justice, we must teach that an essential act of citizenship is to question and demystify the normalized international “social order,” both as a World citizen and as an Earth citizen.31 It is the critical questioning that makes good planetary citizens and citizens of the world, with teaching to help students (and teachers) progress toward this goal. In this way,

475

476

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

curiosity and restlessness questioning are praised rather than seen as “uncivil” or irrational, as it is seen in regimes that are either directly or indirectly authoritarian with banking pedagogies as tools of inquiring suppression.32 Global politics are not abstract concepts, separated from humanism within local contexts, but rather continuous, critical questioning helps in understanding how local contexts are controlled from the global sphere. In addition, teaching to change the world is teaching to become an Earth‐ World citizen—a planetarian citizen. That is, not only to understand and act against oppressive global processes and regimes, but also developing praxis for determining actions needed to reverse political influences which, often, means altering tools of globalization to counter current oppressions caused by it.33,34 Through this teaching, we begin with what is our home. At the root of the analysis, to be a citizen of one’s home locally, which allows for widening of someone’s own citizenship to the world (and to Earth), with the opposite process would be impossible, for I am a citizen of Recife first.35 Just as important, one’s citizenship and one’s history should be taken within one’s hands to make it their own36—which also is necessary for widened spheres of citizenship. We cannot transform the World without human ethics and universal human ethics as we talk about ethics of human solidarity.37,38 In the same argumentative structure, we cannot be in balance with the rest of Earth without true solidarity with Earth holistically. As we discuss citizenship and education, including all‐inclusive democracy, we must also act and teach to act to end oppressions such as hunger, ­unemployment, and health inequalities.39 Without these concerns and others, these and other survival oppressions are likely to become one’s own self‐identified nationalities, as one’s self‐fatalistic citizenship label rather than the society(ies) in which they belong, such as the discussion that I wrote upon on a women who corrected my insertion that she was “American,” but rather identified as “poor” first (Freire, 1997b, p. 102). Without possibilities to end such oppressions, one’s identity and citizenship becomes the oppression. These and other survival oppressions are connected to environmental oppressions; however, these connections are often hidden especially when it counters false ethics of the market, especially oppressive global markets. Thus, one’s citizenship is not one of Earth‐World empowerment, but rather framed within Earth‐World oppressions—social and environmental oppressions. Globalization both weakens the fights of these oppressions but also allows for new ways to fight oppressions, especially when largely coming from the globally powerful within neoliberal processes.40 Most environmental oppressions emerge either directly or indirectly, from processes and politics beyond one’s local society(ies), and often from globally oppressive processes. To teach students to become citizens of the world requires critical understanding of the global processes affecting society, creating oppressions upon other societies and upon the world holistically. It is to understand the actions within and across the world to construct possible utopias through observations, comparisons, and evaluations that end oppressions to determine how to act toward making the utopias realities.41 Another facet of this is a widened perspective of being a citizen of the World—a citizen of Earth.

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Humans as Part of Earth, Need for Holistic Balance As I have indicated, many of the World’s cultures, and particularly indigenous cultures, have very deep understandings and beliefs of humans as part of Earth and Earth within ourselves as humans.42 It is through reinventing globalization we need to teach to connect with the rest of Earth, to construct solidarities to fight against environmental oppressions inflicted upon all the World’s societies and Earth outside of the World. In this, the need of citizenship of Earth, with inclusion of all that makes up Earth, is necessary—we cannot separate the Earth from ourselves, we are part of Earth and Earth is within and is us. Our actions, our understandings, and our teaching should reflect this. The dialectics of oppressed and oppressed are not Manichean categories (Torres, 2015). Although they refer to the inner tension in our consciousness inhabited by both types, the oppressor and oppressed, there is also the dialectic of oppressor–oppressed in the way we pollute our rivers and oceans, our air and soil fields, our groundwater, or in the way our human predatory cultures affect the planet in toto. Teaching citizenship of the Earth is to better understand and construct our actions with critical reflection on how Earth is part of us as biologically, anthropologically, historically, and our ontological value—relating back to the beginning of this chapter with the concept of planetarian citizenship as reinvention of “axiological point[s] of view” in the first sentence of this book. How do we, as human, become citizens of the World and citizens of Earth is the challenge. My own self, societies I am part of, and all societies develop themselves with connection with Earth, even as we often unfortunately distance ourselves from it to be playthings of engineers, scientists, and business persons, as Ivan Illich (1983) eloquently discussed. There are inevitable contradictions between the valuing of Earth and how we utilize it as a tool for our own benefit and harms other parts of Earth, but it is the understanding, acknowledgment, and critical reflections of these actions that must emerge from problem‐posing these contradictions for the goal of balance or sustainability.43 How many times we reflect on the trees we have planted, the soil we have enriched for gardening our own vegetables, the beauty of the rivers, mountains, and oceans that encapsulate our landscapes as unyielding beauty? Earth is a complex ecosystem in which all parts depend on each other. Earth without the World, is one which is in balance with the rest of nature interacting with one another by meeting their needs. If needs aren’t met, Earth’ adaption through evolution takes place that is not always seen as peaceful as indicated by earthquakes, deadly summer heat waves, or typhoons, to name a few. But these actions are always seeking to return to balance in nature if humans will not intervene in the degradation of the environment. With the ability of reflection, humans are adaptable and can obtain beyond our needs through innovation and progress but the returning to balance is not guaranteed. As stated previously, our needs must be first met but after needs are attained, it is through reflections that we determine what we strive next to obtain. The tensions in the Western political philosophy between freedom and need cannot be ignored. Critical praxis to determine this must be a focus of revolutionary education, with rigorous analysis through reading and rereading the

477

478

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

effects upon justice and balance of both the World and Earth. Such analysis is ignored within neoliberal teaching models because injustice, imbalance, and oppressions are ignored when the success in the global market is only the goal. To be a citizen of the World within neoliberal globalization is to be inherently oppressive and to ignore Earth’s balance, viewing it as only a playground and place for financial transactions for success in the global market and power structures. We must teach to counter these neoliberal ecosystems. Problem‐posing teaching must be grounded with questions such as what are our wants, how have they become our wants, what oppressions emerge from acting to fulfill many of our wants, and how does all this affect balance? In revisiting Ivan Illich’s (1983) warnings again, we must question whether we, as humans, have become “playthings” of others by their structured distancing of Earth from us, affecting our dreams—our perceived “wants.” We must teach students to critically read how human wants are constructed and how this affects our constructions of “development” (i.e., “progress”) for ourselves and the world and the connection with Earth‐World sustainability, or lack thereof. From Gandhi to Illich and a host of many other reformers, including the original communities sponsored by Lanza del Vasto in Europe in the 1970s, or today’s homestead movement in the United States, permaculture, the adobe building movement, or organic biodynamic farming, a sense of frugality and attainment of our wants and solution to our needs without sacrificing our freedom are placed in solidarity with the known needs of the planet locally and globally, along with the humility that many of the needs are unknown. Teaching critical literacies of the World and Earth are essential in order to read how calls for “development” are actually calls for unsustainable developments. There is a model of politics that could be criticized following Marx and Engels that the best way to control a population is to have them thinking that they are benefiting from actions that in the end they will be most negatively affected by. This is particularly true for neoliberal development in which histories and dreams are excluded by fatalistic teaching that worth and value are commoditized for both the World and Earth,44 changing dreams to nightmares for the future, as Illich discussed. It is important to teach that neoliberalism is not the same as economics or development. Teaching economics should have the goal of ending the World’s and Earth’s oppressions and should focus on transforming financial structures based on economic justice and sustainability.45 This includes, but is not limited to, production that benefits the whole society, in opposition to neoliberal development that is meant only to benefit the few hegemonic global elite. 46,47 Neoliberalism is fatalistic in nature with the motto that I have noted in previous work that “nothing can be done; reality is what it is” (Freire, 2004, p. 110), in teaching that current imbalances as normal and challenging them is “abnormal.” We must teach that Earth‐World sustainability is development and progress when it is grounded on overcoming oppressive obstacles toward this goal of balance, rather than neoliberal teaching to sustain and intensify imbalances that favor a few and oppress many and the rest of Earth.48

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Learning from Sciences and Technologies In the education of global solidarity, teaching should be within universal human ethics that inherently counters neoliberal false ethics of an oppressive global market and an ethics that defends these ethics.49 When we discuss teaching sustainable development, this should be grounded in sustainability not technical advancement without considering the betterment of the World and Earth. Sciences and technologies are often blindly taken as advancements, but we must as teach to ask the question, “whose ‘progress’ and ‘development’ this is?”50 Teaching sustainable development must problem‐pose economics, ­sciences, and technologies, as well as all else that we often take view as progress as common sense. Some technical advancements, shown in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, may in the end destroy the environments, sustainability, and our human civilizations. The use of technologies and sciences is essential but as planetarian citizenship tools, rather than tools to further manipulate Earth for unbalanced neoliberal greed, with neither as the overall solution.51,52 Teaching should centralize the reflection of sciences and technologies as tools of bettering the World and Earth within and between all disciplines. It is also imperative that sciences and technologies are not the sole lens to view environmental issues or solutions. We must counter neoliberal ideologies that they are unquestionable tools to better a few while the rest of the world is increasingly oppressed and Earth continues to be destroyed.53 Teaching sciences as apolitical with the emerging advance of technologies as apolitical outputs will not lead to reflection necessary to save Earth, but directly the opposite. This apolitical‐ness makes the role of teachers as merely transmitting knowledge rather than teaching for transformational change.54 Earth‐World balance, which is next in my discussion on sustainability, requires teaching to critically understand sciences and technologies and neither to defy or demonize them but rather view them tools of true empowerment and sustainability.55 Utopic Teaching: Seeking Balance The title of this section poses one of the most existential question that we all face: how do we seek balance in our lives and the cornucopia of activities, feelings, and expectations? Balance between love and work, between leisure (otium) and business (negotium), between action and reflection, between our sins of the past and our hopes for a better world and a better us in the future. Although most of us always seek to move forward we shall realize that education in and by itself is a utopia act; why should we be surprised that in seeking teaching balance we are being utopians? The global connectivity between humans is citizenship, with the criterion of being a World citizen as seeing all humans as fellow citizens. This is the basis for a global world ethics and a culture of peace. As previously stated, globalization is not the end of teaching to fight against oppressions but rather a call for the reinvention of the fights both locally and globally, with specific focus on reading the global market’s effects on both the World and Earth.56 In the end, Earth is a complex, interconnected single being that regains equilibrium with or without humans’ part of Earth, so our understanding is of

479

480

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

little consequence to Earth’s actions, but our actions are of great consequence to the Earth’s survival as a balanced ecosystem. Our extinction as human species, will mostly likely make Earth’s balance easier so it is up to us, as reflective being to change our actions, our praxis for Earth‐World balance because the balance of Earth will ultimately happen but humans might not be there to witness it. We must teach, with utopic pedagogies, for the world to be in balance as part of the Earth, rather than separated from it so this extinction will not occur by our own hands. Teaching must focus on understanding how we affect this equilibrium and why to determine ways that we can end tipping the scale, with understandings that the World is neither static nor finished. This must be what we mean when we talk about “sustainable development” and its education. Banking systems of teaching a balance between the World and Earth will always end in imbalance. Education cannot be apolitical and therefore sustainability teaching cannot be apolitical. Without problem‐posing education of what is true “sustainability” and “development” as true progress for all, both becomes the technical tools of neoliberalism, both locally and globally. By controlling how “sustainable development” is understood and taught in banking educational models, the politics of education, and overall society, manipulates our environmental actions in the name of “balance” and “sustainability.” Throughout this book and my other work through the years, there are calls for teaching to counter fatalism of the World and of the self; however, this is an undeniable fatal ending of the World if our actions counter sustainability— counter Earth’s inherent resting position of balance. Dialectic, problem‐posing teaching is essential to end oppressions of the World and Earth with pedagogies that focus on only one without the other as nontransformative for both social or  environmental justice, both separately and together. With histories and ­reflections, humans are the only part of earth that largely affects this balance, shifting the current advance of much of the World is making toward destroying Earth. If we continue oppressing our environments and people, our civilizations had made a suicidal pact.

Notes 1 Environmental pedagogies (EP) include such pedagogies as ecopedagogy,

environmental education (EE), and education for sustainable development (ESD). Ecopedagogy is both a stand‐alone EP and the essence of EE and ESD rooted in critical theories. 2 Morrow and Torres, Chapter 13 in this volume, elicit a discussion on biophilia connecting the original ideas of Freire to the psychoanalytical model of Erich Fromm. See also Torres (1998). 3 Although social and environmental justice is separated in this sentence, there is a recognition that both social and environmental aspects are dependent on each and that humans are part of the planet’s ecosystem, such that stating one inherently implies the other (Hannigan, 2006). 4 As an additional chapter, the “book” refers to Pedagogy of the Oppressed and “chapter(s)” as those within Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

5 “Footnote #1: transformation of reality itself so that universities can be

renewed, attack old orders and established institutions in the attempt to affirm human beings as the Subjects of decision, all these movements reflect the style of our age, which is more anthropological than anthropocentric” (Freire, 2000, p. 43). 6 Reader be aware that by drawing from Freire’s written lessons, in our ­reconstruction or reinvention of his work to build chapter five, we have taken the liberty to let him speak of himself as “I.” Otherwise noted, when the sentence is saying, for instance, “as we have written in other places,” it is Freire speaking, not us. 7 Freire in conversation with Carlos Alberto Torres on being human: “one of the qualities that we develop in in the process of becoming social beings aware of our history, in becoming animal—people women and men—was the capacity to observe curiously, inquiringly, the world around us, contemplating it, frightening us, as if we were preparing ourselves so later on we would become filled with wonder before the world. In this way we would then act on the world and perceive things while acting, while observing, while contemplating” (Freire, 1993, p. 107). 8 Freire in conversation with ICAE (International Council for Adult Education): “We believe that we should advance to a more global view—not partial—of social rights and of social movements… It is important to note that, for us, since work for literacy leads to a more critical reading of reality, it constitutes an important instrument for recovering citizenship, which reinforces the citizens’ engagement in social movements that fight for better standards of living and social transformation” (Freire, 1993, p. 62). 9 “When I speak of a universal human ethic, however, I am speaking of something absolutely indispensable for human living and human social intercourse. In making this statement, I am aware of the critical voices of those who, because they do not know where I am coming from, consider me ingenuous and idealistic. In truth, I speak of a universal human ethic in the same way I speak of humanity’s ontological vocation, which calls us out of and beyond ourselves. Or as I speak of our being as something constructed socially and historically and not there simply a priori” (Freire, 1998b, p. 25). 10 “Communications and dialogue from a different culture, in which communion was not only among men and women and gods and ancestors, but also among all the other expressions of life. Now the universe of communion included the trees, the animals, the beasts, the birds, the very earth, the rivers, the seas: life in plenitude” (Freire, 1992, p. 163). In a recent private exchange with Carlos Alberto Torres, on July 10, 2007, Moacir Gadotti insisted that from a Freirean perspective, there is a mutual analytical symmetry between planetarian citizenship and global citizenship. 11 “…critical reflection on your praxis is absolutely indispensable. It should never be confused with meaningless alienating and alienated talk. While it is the source of knowledge, praxis is not, however, a theory in itself. It is only when we give ourselves constantly to critical reflection on it that praxis makes possible the development of theory, which, in its turn, illumines new practice” (Freire, 1978, p. 125).

481

482

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

12 “Whereas animals adapt themselves to the world to survive, men modify the

world in order to be more. In adapting themselves for the sake of survival, without ends to achieve and choices to make, animals cannot ‘animalize’ the world. ‘Animalization’ of the world would be intimately linked to the ‘animalization’ of animals, and this would presuppose in animals an awareness that they are incomplete, which would engage them in a permanent quest. In fact, however, while they skillfully construct their hives and ‘manufacture’ honey, bees remain bees in their contact with the world; they do not become more or less bees” (Freire, 1985, p. 70). Note that gendered writing of Freire in this quote and others is discussed in this handbook’s Chapter 21 by Lauren Ila Misiaszek, “Engaging Gender and Freire: From Discoursal Vigilance to Concrete Possibilities for Inclusion.” 13 “…human existential experience compared to other forms of life on our planet is our ability to comprehend the world upon which and in which we act” (Freire, 1998b, p. 104). 14 “I proposed to the literacy learners back in the sixties that the debate about culture, its concept, must proceed from the starting point of a more critical understanding of the worlds of nature and of culture. It was a debate about how, through working in the world of nature, we end up creating the world of culture. It presented culture, in the final analysis, as the expression of human beings’ creative effort” (Freire, 2004, pp. 79–80). 15 This sentence is a direct quote of Freire (1985, p. 194). The influence of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Freire has been documented in Torres (1978) and Leopando (2017). 16 “I cannot exist without a non‐I. In turn, the not‐I depends on that existence” (Freire, 2000, p. 82). 17 Freire in conversation with Carlos Alberto Torres (coauthor of this chapter, continued from quote presented in this chapter’s introduction): “…[a]nd when I speak of the world I am not speaking exclusively about the trees and the animals that I love very much, and the mountains and the rivers. I am not speaking exclusively of the nature of which I am a part, but I am speaking also of the social structures, politics, culture, history, of which I am also a part” (Freire, 1993, p. 103). 18 “Fundamental background necessary for the full participation of any citizen in the development of the new society will be included in Basic Instruction. We are not talking about instruction in a school that simply prepares the learners for another school, but about a real education where the content is in a constant dialectical relation with the needs of the country. In this kind of education, knowledge, resulting in practical action, itself grows out of the unity between theory and practice. For this reason, it is not possible to divorce the process of learning from its own source within the lives of the learners themselves” (Freire, 1978, p. 42). 19 “The transformation occurring in a seed which under favorable conditions germinates and sprouts, is not development. In the same way, the transformation of an animal is not development. The transformations of seeds and animals are determined by the species to which they belong; and they occur in a time which does not belong to them, for time belongs to humankind” (Freire, 2000, p. 161).

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

20 “Men [sic] who are submitted to concrete conditions of oppression in which they

become alienated ‘beings for another’ of the false ‘being for himself ’ on whom they depend, are not able to develop authentically. Deprived of their own power of decision, which is located in the oppressor, they follow the prescriptions of the latter. The oppressed only begin to develop when, surmounting the contradiction in which they are caught, they become ‘beings for themselves’” (Freire, 2000, p. 161). 21 “…the essential content in any educational program—whether on syntax, biology, physics, mathematics, or the social sciences—is that which makes possible discussions of the mutable nature of natural reality, as well as of history, and which sees men and women as beings capable, not only of adapting to the world but above all of changing in it” (Freire, 2004, pp. 78–79). 22 The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.6 cannot be separated from critical framing of global citizenship or planetary citizenship. 23 “In Brazil, the transition marked by the coup d’état sets up recapitulation to an ideology of development based on the handing over of the national economy to foreign interests, an ideology in which ‘the idea of the great international enterprise replaces the idea of the state monopoly as the basis for development’” (Cardoso, 1968 cited in Freire, 1998a). “One of the basic requirements for such an ideology is necessarily the silencing of popular sectors and their consequent removal from the sphere of decision making” (Freire, 1998a). 24 “Popular forces must, therefore, avoid the naive illusion that this transitional stage may afford ‘openings’ that will enable them to reestablish the rhythm of the previous transitional stages, whose political model corresponded to a national populist ideology of development” (Freire, 1998a). 25 “How limited is the power of those, for example, working in the soybean fields of Brazil, who can hardly imagine that the possibilities of their ­production are known with long notice at the Chicago stock exchange” (Freire, 1997b, p. 57). 26 See Freire’s quote on page 466 that begins with “I reject the notion that nothing.” 27 “…globalization is inevitable. Nothing can be done about it. It must happen because, mysteriously, that is how destiny has arranged things. So, we must accept what in essence only strengthens the control by powerful elites and fragments and pulverizes the power of the marginalized, making them even more impotent” (Freire, 1998b, p. 102). 28 “Globalization theory, which speaks of ethics, hides the fact that ethics are those for the marketplace and not the universal ethics of the human person… It is for these matters that we ought to struggle courageously if we have, in truth, made a choice for a humanized world” (Freire, 1998b, p. 118). 29 “…the ecologists emerged to defend the environment in a human and poetic language. By defending the environment, they are defending everyone” (Freire, 1985, pp. 193–194). 30 “The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time—everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal” (Freire, 2000, p. 58).

483

484

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

31 “… mystification leads to the “sacredness” of the social order untouchable,

undiscussable. Any who question the social order must be punished one way or another, and they are labeled by similar means of propaganda as “bad citizens in the service of the international demon” (Freire, 1985, p. 116). 32 “Authoritarian regimes are enemies of curiosity. They punish citizens for displaying it. Authoritarian power is prying, not curious or questioning. Dialogue, on the other hand, is full of curiosity and unrest. It is full of mutual respect between the dialoging subjects” (Freire, 1997b, p. 99). 33 “The technical mastery is just as important for students as the political understanding is for a citizen. It is not possible to separate them” (Freire, 1997b, p. 41). 34 “It is in the context of the work situation that the worker needs to engage in the process of becoming a citizen, something that does not happen as a consequence of “technical efficiency” (Freire, 1998b, p. 94). 35 “Before I could become a citizen of the world I was and am first a citizen of Recife. The more rooted I am in my location, the more I extend my‐self to other places so as to become a citizen of the world. No one becomes local from a universal location. The existential road is the reverse. I am citizen of Recife” (Freire, 1997b, p. 39). 36 “The process of writing and reading the word, which is what they were doing in the course of their understanding of discourse, emerged from, or was part of, a larger, more meaningful process‐that of the taking up of their citizenship, the taking of history into their hands” (Freire, 1992, p. 176). 37 “We can only consider ourselves to be the subjects of our decisions, our searching, our capacity to choose‐that is, as historical subjects, as people capable of transforming our world‐if we are grounded ethically. In this sense, the possibility of transgressing our ethical foundation exists and is a choice. But it is not a virtue, and we cannot accept it” (Freire, 1998b, p. 25). 38 “The place upon which a new rebellion should be built is not the ethics of the marketplace with its crass insensitivity to the voice of genuine humanity but the ethics of universal human aspiration. The ethics of human solidarity” (Freire, 1998b, p. 116). 39 “There is much talk today, not only in Brazil, about education and citizenship. There is talk about fighting for democracy, about the active involvement of the popular classes in shaping the destiny of cities. I would like to make it clear that it is not possible to make Brazilian society more and more democratic. Without starting by attacking hunger, unemployment, the health crisis, and that of education” (Freire, 1997b, p. 89). 40 “While globalization may tend to weaken the effectiveness of strikes in the struggle of workers, it does not mean the end of the fight. The end may come to a particular form of fighting, striking, but not to the fight itself. It is then up to workers to reinvent how they fight, and not to settle before a new power” (Freire, 2004, p. 75). 41 “The ability to observe, to compare, and to evaluate, in order to choose, through deciding, how one is to intervene in the life of the city and thus exercise one’s citizenship, arises then as a fundamental competency. If my presence in history is not neutral, I must accept its political nature as critically as possible. If, in

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

reality, I am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather to transform it, and if it is not possible to change the world without a’ certain dream or vision for it, I must make use of every possibility there is not only to speak about my utopia, but also to engage in practices consistent with it” (Freire, 2004, p. 7). 42 Freire, 1992. 43 “Utilizing certain basic contradictions, we must pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem which challenges them and requires a response‐not just at the intellectual level, but at the level of action” (Freire, 2000, pp. 95–96). 44 “The projects of economic development cannot exclude men and women of history in the name of any fatalism” (Freire, 1997b, p. 35). 45 “My radical posture requires of me an absolute loyalty to all men and women. An economy that is incapable of developing programs according to human needs, and that coexists indifferently with the hunger of millions of people to whom everything is denied, does not deserve my respect as an educator” (Freire, 1997b, p. 36). 46 “If production is governed by the well‐being of the total society, rather than by the capitalist, private, or state, then the accumulation of capital‐indispensable to development‐has a totally different significance and goal. The part of the accumulated capital that is not paid to the worker is not taken from him but is his quota toward the development of the collectivity” (Freire, 1978, p. 108). 47 The more people participate in the process of their own education, the more the people participate in the process of defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more the people participate in the development of their selves. The more the people become themselves, the better the democracy (Horton, Freire, Bell, Gaventa, & Peters, 1990, p. 145). 48 “By stripping education of its political nature, and reducing it to dexterity training, neoliberal ideology and politics wind up producing an educational practice that contradicts and poses obstacles to one of the fundamental requirements of technological advancement itself. It is required that critical subjects, individuals, be capable of responding readily and effectively to diverse and unexpected challenges” (Freire, 2004, p. 111). 49 See endnotes 9, 28, and 38. 50 “…the progressive educator must also emphasize to poor boys and girls, as well as to the rich, the duty we all have to permanently question ourselves about in whose favor… or in favor of what, we make science” (Freire, 2004, p. 20). 51 “Critically viewed, technology is nothing more nor less than a natural phase of the creative process that engaged man from the moment he forged his first tool and began to transform the world for its humanization” (Freire, 1998a). 52 “The advance of science or technology cannot legitimate ‘class’ and call it ‘order’ so that a minority who holds power may use and squander the fruits of the earth…” (Freire, 2004, p. 93). 53 “To the extent that we accept that the economy, or technology, or science, it doesn’t matter what, exerts inescapable power over us, there is nothing left for us to do other than renounce our ability to, to conjecture, to compare, to choose, to decide, to envision, to dream” (Freire, 2004, p. 33). 54 “The task of educator would be all too easy were it to be reducible to the imparting of content that would not even need to be treated aseptically, and

485

486

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

aseptically ‘transmitted,’ since, as the content of a neutral science, it would already be aseptic” (Freire, 1992, p. 64). 55 “…does not mean that we are to adopt a false humanist posture of denying the value of technology and science. On the contrary, it’s a posture of balance that neither deifies nor demonizes technology. A posture that is from those who consider technology from a critically curious standpoint” (Freire, 1998b, p. 38). 56 See endnote 38.

References Apple, M. W., & Au, W. (2009). Politics, theory, and reality in critical pedagogy. In R. Cowen, & A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education (pp. 991–1007). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Apple, M. W., Au, W., & Gandin, L. A. (2009). Mapping critical education. In M. W. Apple, A. Wayne, & L. A. Gandin (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of critical education (pp. 3–20). New York: Routledge. Au, W. W., & Apple, M. W. (2007). Reviewing policy: Freire, critical education, and the environmental crisis. Educational Policy, 21(3), 457–470. Burbules, N. C., & Torres, C. A. (1999). Globalization and education: Critical perspectives, Social theory, education, and cultural change. New York: Routledge. Cardoso, F. H. (1968, January). Hegemonía Burguesa e independencia económica; Raízes estruturias da crise política Brasileira. Revista Civilização Brasileira, 17. Dewey, J. (1963). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan. Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press. Freire, P. (1978). Pedagogy in process: The letters to Guinea‐Bissau. New York: Seabury Press. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1997a). Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire, Counterpoints. New York: Peter Lang. Freire, P. (1997b). Pedagogy of the heart. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1998a). Cultural action and conscientization. Harvard Educational Review, 68(4), 476–522. Freire, P. (1998b). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage, Critical perspectives series. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (2004). Pedagogy of indignation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Freire, P., & Illich, I. (1975). Diálogo: Análisis crítico de la desescolarización y concientización en la coyuntura actual del sistema educativo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Búsgueda.

Ecopedagogy: The Missing Chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Gadotti, M. (1996). Pedagogy of praxis: A dialectical philosophy of education. SUNY Series: Teacher empowerment and school reform. Albany: SUNY Press. Gadotti, M. (2000). Pedagogia da terra, Brasil cidadão. Educação. São Paulo, SP: Editora Fundação Peirópolis. Gadotti, M. (2008a). Education for sustainability: A critical contribution to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. São Paulo: University of São Paulo, Instituto Paulo Freire. Gadotti, M. (2008b). Education for sustainable development: What we need to learn to save the planet. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Gadotti, M. (2008c). What we need to learn to save the planet. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 2(1), 21–30. Gadotti, M., & Torres, C. A. (2009). Paulo Freire: Education for development. Development and Change, 40(6), 1255–1267. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467‐7660.2009.01606.x Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Gilmour, D. (2006, November 2). Surprises of the empire: Review of “Edge of empire: Lives, culture, and conquest in the East, 1750–1850” by Maya Jasanoff. The New York Review of Books, 53(17). Gutiérrez, F., & Prado, C. (1989). Ecopedagogia e cidadania planetária. (Ecopedagogy and planetarian citizenship). São Paulo: Cortez. Gutiérrez, F., & Prado, C. (2008). Ecopedagogia e cidadania planetária. San Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Hannigan, J. A. (2006). Environmental sociology (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Horton, M., Freire, P., Bell, B., Gaventa, J., & Peters, J. M. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Illich, I. (1973). Tools for conviviality. World Perspectives: Vol. 47. New York: Harper & Row. Illich, I. (1983). Deschooling society. New York: Harper Colophon. Kahn, R. (2005). Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the environmental crisis. Teachers College Record, 108(1), 66–86. Kahn, R. (2010). Critical pedagogy, ecoliteracy, and planetary crisis: The ecopedagogy movement. Counterpoints: Studies in the postmodern theory of education: Vol. 359. New York: Peter Lang. Leopando, I. (2017). A pedagogy of faith: The theological imagination of Paulo Freire. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Misiaszek, G. W. (2011). Ecopedagogy in the age of globalization: Educators’ perspectives of environmental education programs in the Americas which incorporate social justice models. PhD dissertation, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles (Publication No. AAT 3483199). Misiaszek, G. W. (2015). Ecopedagogy and citizenship in the age of globalisation: Connections between environmental and global citizenship education to save the planet. European Journal of Education, 50(3), 280–292. https://doi.org/10.1111/ ejed.12138

487

488

Greg William Misiaszek and Carlos Alberto Torres

Misiaszek, G. W. (2016). Ecopedagogy as an element of citizenship education: The dialectic of global/local spheres of citizenship and critical environmental pedagogies in the Americas. International Review of Education—Journal of Lifelong Learning (UNESCO), 62(5), 587–607. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11159‐016‐9587‐0 Misiaszek, G. W. (2018). Educating the global environmental citizen: Understanding ecopedagogy in local and global contexts. Critical global citizenship education: Globalization and the politics of equity and inclusion. New York: Routledge. Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. Continuum Library of Educational Thought. London: Continuum. Torres, C. A. (1978). La praxis educativa de Paulo Freire. Mexico: Gernika. Torres, C. A. (1998). Introduction: The political pedagogy of Paulo Freire. In P. Freire (Ed.), Politics and education (pp. 1–15). Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. Torres, C. A. (2003). Globalizations and education. Presentation at the Meeting of the Fondazione Liberal, Milan, Italy, May 15–17. Torres, C. A. (2009). Globalizations and education: Collected essays on class, race, gender, and the state. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres, C. A. (2015). Oppressor and oppressed: Logical dialectical categories? Tribute to Paulo Freire. Sinéctica, 45, 1–5. Torres, C. A. (2017a). The state of the art in comparative education and WCCES at a crossroads in the 21st century. Global Comparative Education: Journal of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), 1(1), 19–96. Torres, C. A. (2017b). Theoretical and empirical foundations of critical global citizenship education. New York: Routledge.

489

Part V Paulo Freire and the Construction of Democratic Education What Is Freire’s Currency for Educational Reform?

491

26 Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy Finding a Way Back to Hope Sonia Nieto

What would Paulo Freire, the preeminent educational visionary and critical pedagogue, make of the state of teacher preparation today as defined in the United States? What would he think of punitive teacher testing and the erosion of teacher autonomy? How would he react to the contempt with which educators are being treated, including surveillance and the curtailing of academic freedom? What would he think about the deprofessionalization of teachers and teacher educators? What would he say about the increasing calls for privatization of public education through vouchers and charter schools and the general mean‐spirited blaming of teachers, parents, and students, especially in poor rural and urban schools? We will never know the answers to these questions. When Freire died in 1997, the situation for public education in the United States had already seriously deteriorated from historically articulated noble goals—goals far from realized—by such educators as John Dewey, who saw public education as a leavening force for inequality and injustice. The father of progressive education in the United States, Dewey would probably find it hard to recognize public schools today. Despite important positive changes in such areas as access to education for a much broader segment of the population and enormous improvements in technology, public education has lost some of the connection it has had to public life and democracy. Dewey, who believed that public education was essential in a democratic society, a century ago wrote, “It is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them” (Dewey, 1916, pp. 119–120). Decades later, economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, widely known for their cogent critique of public education in a capitalist society (1976), published an article with the ironic title, “If John Dewey Calls, Tell Him Things Didn’t Work Out” (Bowles & Gintis, 1974). And though the correspondence theory they articulated—a theory establishing a direct correspondence between social class and the education young people received—was critiqued as too deterministic, their ideas helped explain the role of privilege and power in education. The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

492

Sonia Nieto

Paulo Freire is best known for his work in adult literacy, community education, and critical pedagogy, but his influence goes far beyond these concerns. In a reflection on his life and work, Rosa María Torres suggested that both his ­followers and critics reduced Freire to a caricature, “locking up his thought in a single field (generally, that of adult literacy), reducing it to a number of clichés, and even to a method and a set of related techniques” (Torres, 2007). In addition to adult literacy, Freire also influenced other arenas in education and beyond, including action research, liberation theology, and teacher education (Nieto, 2008). And though he may never have held the professional title of teacher educator, he was nevertheless an inspirational educator who influenced many teacher educators in his native country of Brazil as well as globally, leaving his imprint on the field in numerous ways (see, e.g., his letters to teachers in Freire, 1998). According to Carlos Alberto Torres (1994), during Freire’s tenure as secretary of education in the municipality of São Paulo (1989–1991), his vision of educational reform included teacher education prominently. Thus, it is clear that Freire was much more than just an advocate for universal literacy, although that alone would have cemented his legacy for generations to come. This chapter begins with a brief description of Freire’s tenure as secretary of education in São Paulo, Brazil followed by a discussion of the current state of teacher preparation in the United States today. I then describe some of Freire’s signature ideas as a teacher, writer, and philosopher, using a number of his key theoretical and conceptual contributions to frame a discussion of how they might help us reimagine teacher preparation today to incorporate relationships of caring and advocacy.

Freire’s Legacy in Teacher Education At the time of Freire’s brief tenure as secretary of education (1989–1991), São Paulo was characterized by tremendous inequality, racism, and high rates of illiteracy. The schools were beset by entrenched problems including a deteriorating infrastructure, rigid tracking, irrelevant curricula, meager professional development opportunities for teachers, and uneven disciplinary policies (Torres, 1994). With more than 600 schools, a population of over 11 million, more than 700,000 students and nearly 40,000 teachers, São Paulo was ripe for reform. Freire’s utopian vision provided a transformative way of approaching public education. In the words of Torres, “In the Freirean perspective, the objective is to link education with a historical project of social emancipation: educational practices should be related to a theory of knowledge” (Torres, 1994, pp. 198–199). Freire’s ideas and projects as São Paulo’s secretary of education are revealed through a series of interviews in his book, Pedagogy of the City (Freire, 1993; see also the review by Hiyake, n.d.) Part of Freire’s vision of reform included affording teachers regular opportunities to discuss their practices. In keeping with his philosophy of critical pedagogy, the curriculum reform project in São Paulo started with teachers learning how to listen to their students and drawing out key generative themes based on student and teacher knowledge. Another part of the reform package focused on a literacy training movement (Movimento de

Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy

Alfabetização de jovens e adultos [MOVA]‐São Paulo). Many of the teachers involved in this literacy project were 18- to 24‐year‐old university students, many of whom would later become teachers. In his role as municipal secretary of education, Freire developed the concept of permanent teacher education as a way to help teachers gain a deeper understanding of teaching and learning and also to continuously evaluate their own practice critically (Saul & Saul, 2016). For teachers, this new approach meant a drastic rethinking of their beliefs, values, roles, and responsibilities. Supplemented by lectures, courses, conferences, and cultural activities, permanent teacher education occurred through teacher collectives. Given the challenge it posed to the previous top‐down approach to curriculum, the work of teachers was now ­envisioned as both creative and counterhegemonic. And, of course, it also necessitated thinking of their learning as ongoing and permanent rather than as finished and static. In this sense, the public school and the university were both heavily invested in teacher education as an ongoing project. At the same time that he instituted permanent teacher education, Freire also incorporated thematic investigation, a process by which teachers investigated, critiqued, and transformed their own practice. According to Saul and Saul (2016), the primary goal was “the construction of a school orientated towards the social and critical development of the students, a school that was serious about the appropriation and recreation of knowledge and, at the same time, about the creation of a joyful environment, encouraging solidarity and curiosity” (p. 61). It should also be mentioned that during his time as municipal secretary of education, Freire was a tireless advocate for teachers and teacher educators, working to elevate these professions. His advocacy included not only working to raise salaries but also improving the conditions in which educators worked, while also viewing the profession as significant intellectual work. In a review and critique of Freire’s later writings, Peter Mayo makes this point eloquently mentioning what he calls “one of the finest books in English in Freire’s later output” (Mayo, 2000), his book of letters to teachers (Freire, 1998). According to Mayo, “Freire regarded teachers not as coddling figures but as people who are engaged in work that necessitates the delicate balancing between freedom and authority …” (Mayo, 2000, p. 380), a far different view of teachers than is currently the case in the United States as well as other nations that have bought into the neoliberal agenda of education reform. Freire’s role as São Paulo’s municipal secretary of education makes it clear that teacher education was indeed a crucial aspect of his vision. In fact, it can be said that Paulo Freire’s impact on teacher preparation has been transcendent and long lasting, both in his native Brazil and in many other nations around the world.

A Snapshot of Teacher Education Today Teaching has long been recognized as one of the major elements in the quality of education that students receive (Darling‐Hammond, 2006; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996). Consequently, teacher education has a

493

494

Sonia Nieto

significant role to play in preparing prospective teachers, as well as in the continuing education of practicing teachers. Teacher education, whether in Brazil or New York or Nairobi, cannot be understood in a vacuum. It is embedded in institutions that are part of the sociopolitical context in which people live and schools and universities exist. To reimagine teacher education through Freirean principles, we first need to understand the current state of the field. What follows focuses primarily on conditions in the United States but given the influence of globalization in education, it can apply more generally to contexts in other nations as well (Banks, Suarez‐Orozco, & ­Ben‐Peretz, 2016; Moon, 2013). A quarter century ago Antonia Darder lamented that teacher preparation was little more than the training of technicians. As a result of preparing teachers without the critical tools necessary to teach today’s youths, she concluded that few public school teachers are able to envision their practice outside the scope of barren classroom settings, lifeless instructional packages, bland textbooks, standardized texts, and the use of meritocratic systems for student performance evaluation. (Darder, 1991, p. 100) And this was before the most recent “reform” movement that ushered in even more of these joyless conditions. For the past several decades, the macro sociopolitical context in the United States has been characterized by the globalization of markets, populations, and life in general, leading to both losses and benefits. Globalization has resulted in a dramatic and unprecedented economic inequality, a dwindling middle class, and fewer opportunities for youths living in poverty (see Anyon, 2005; Berliner, 2009). At the same time, because of massive immigration, globalization has also led to growing diversity and cosmopolitanism, something that Michael Apple has rightly called “a very good thing, one that makes the United States a vast experiment that is worthwhile” (Apple, 2014, p. 118). Although educational reform had historically meant such constructive changes as smaller class sizes, improved professional development, more creative pedagogy, and an enriched curriculum, the neoliberal reform movement of the past 3 decades in the United States has been disappointingly different. Prompted largely by the report A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), the current educational reform movement has had a largely adverse impact on education in general and on teacher education specifically. It has brought neoliberal policies squarely into public education, including the marketization of public education, rigid accountability, a laserlike focus on high‐stakes testing, and an abandonment of public schools in poor and working‐class communities. Since 2002, policies such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2001), Race to the Top (RttT), and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have in varying ways placed constraints on teachers, administrators, and teacher educators. In higher education, and specifically in teacher preparation programs, there are now more tests and gatekeepers that exclude prospective teachers of economically disadvantaged backgrounds, including prospective

Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy

teachers of color. And even if they are admitted to university teacher education programs, many (particularly those for whom English is a second or additional language) receive little support and end up failing the teacher test at the conclusion of their programs. There is also the issue of determining what it takes to be an effective teacher, something that is becoming more inflexible with the current definition of “highly effective teacher” that highlights easily calculated, but imperfect, measures of teacher effectiveness, including the test scores of their K–12 students. Though teacher education research has improved greatly in the past several decades in illuminating effective practices for preparing teachers (Cochran‐Smith, Feiman Nemser, McIntyre, & Demers, 2008), it does not provide definitive answers to how best to do so. According to Deborah Ball and Francesca Forzani, for instance, “The fact is that we do not know the best way to train people to do this work skillfully” (Ball & Forzani, 2010, p. 8). The ever‐changing landscape of teaching means that preservice teachers need to be versed in numerous areas including content knowledge, educational theory and philosophy, and classroom practice. In addition, given the rapidly changing populations in public schools—including students of color, English language learners, and students with special needs—teacher education programs need to prepare prospective teachers in how to effectively teach all of them. But, given the pressure to have preservice teachers jump through unnecessary hoops to earn entry and, later, certification, many programs offer little more than a plethora of methods courses. Because learning should not stop when people become teachers, veteran teachers also need support throughout their careers if they are to keep abreast of newer research, pedagogies, and curricula. Yet, in general, when teachers leave their teacher preparation programs to begin their teaching careers, they have few supported opportunities to continue to learn. For example, in reviewing a broad range of studies on inservice professional development, Ruth Chung Wei and her colleagues concluded that teachers need sustained learning opportunities totaling from 49 to 100 hr but, unfortunately, most receive less than 8 hr on any given topic (Wei, Darling‐Hammond, & Adamson, 2010). Even when they receive sufficient hours of professional development, however, it is frequently unappealing. This is because teachers are seldom consulted on what they need to learn and how they want to learn it. Rather than employ engaging strategies—the kind of strategies they themselves are expected to use—teachers often end up being passive recipients of dull content that does little to energize their teaching. For example, the most often mentioned topics teachers say they need help with are working with special needs students and English language learners, yet the previously cited study found that only 42% of teachers had professional development on these topics (Wei et al., 2010). Given the current situation in teacher preparation where rigid accountability, lack of creativity, and an inability to prepare teachers for the diversity of students they are certain to encounter when they begin teaching, it is clear that the field would benefit from some of Paulo Freire’s signature ideas about education.

495

496

Sonia Nieto

Freire’s Signature Ideas as Related to Teacher Education A number of terms and expressions are inextricably bound with the work of Paulo Freire. These include, among others, banking education, critical pedagogy, dialogue, and conscientization. Freire created a new vocabulary not to provide more jargon to a field already clogged with jargon but rather to explain a decidedly different way of viewing and doing education. In what follows, I begin with his most basic idea about education, that is, that it is political. I then describe three of the terms he introduced into discussions of education—namely, banking education, dialogue, and critical pedagogy—and I suggest how teacher preparation might change if these concepts were taken to heart. The chapter concludes with a vision of teacher education as restoring relationships of caring and advocacy, as Paulo Freire might have envisioned it.

The Political Nature of Education Many years ago, Paulo Freire famously wrote that education is always political (Freire, 1970), a theme he reiterated many times over his career, including in his “talking book” with Ira Shor. In the latter, he changed “political” to “politics,” in this way demonstrating even more forcefully the nature of power and power relations in education: This is a great discovery, education is politics! After that, when a teacher discovers that he or she is a politician too, the teacher has to ask, What kind of politics am I doing in the classroom? That is, In favor of whom am I being a teacher? (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 46) In writing specifically about teacher education, Marilyn Cochran‐Smith described teaching and teacher education as political and ideological activities “in that they  inherently involve ideas, ideals, power, and access to learning and life’s opportunities” (Cochran‐Smith, 2010, p. 3). If this is the case, one must ask questions such as: Who has power in the educational arena? Who does not? And, in terms of teacher preparation specifically: What opportunities and supports are available for critical teacher learning? How can preservice and practicing teachers learn about and become advocates for their students of diverse ­backgrounds, those who are the most neglected in public schools? That education is political shatters the illusion that it is neutral and objective, ideas that are firmly entrenched in many teacher education programs. That education is political also challenges the notion that issues such as race, social class, and gender have nothing to do with the opportunities afforded to students. Accepting that education is political helps us understand that all decisions— whether they are made at the classroom, school, district, state, or national levels, and whether they are made by individuals, groups, or institutions—reflect a particular view of the world and vested interests of privilege, social class, race, and gender.

Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy

Freire also believed that education is political because, as a human endeavor, it exists within specific institutional contexts characterized by uneven power relationships. Because of this, he believed that teachers need to take a stand in favor of their students. In this sense, education is either advocacy for or against one’s students. Given the sociopolitical context of public education today, taking a stand requires courage. Yet courage is not necessarily part of the conversation in most teacher education courses.

Banking Education One of Paulo Freire’s most significant contributions to the field of education was his concept of “banking education,” something he explored at length in his most well‐known book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970, 1993). Freire condemned what he described as the “narrative character” of education, particularly as evident in relationships between students and teachers. Education, he wrote, “is suffering from narrative sickness” (Freire, 1993, p. 52) wherein teachers narrate and students listen. He went on to define the concept of banking education in this way: “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (p. 53). In this concept of education, “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (p. 53). The result of this kind of education is dehumanization wherein students become passive learners and unquestioningly accept dominant beliefs. In contrast to passive, banking or “domesticating education,” Freire insisted that learning needed to be liberatory. That is, rather than empty vessels, students should be viewed as active participants in the process of learning. Authentic learning, for Freire, is an act of creativity in which the teacher and learner explore knowledge together. In a later book, he described liberatory education as: “a ­process by which the educator invites learners to recognize and unveil reality critically” (Freire, 1985, p. 102). The domesticating process is prescriptive, whereas the liberating process is dialogical, a term I explore in the next section. Although banking education is the norm in many teacher education programs, and consequently in many K–12 classrooms, authentic dialogue can lead to ­conscientization, a very different way of viewing the purpose and outcome of education. Rather than a mere psychological well‐being or simply critical thinking, conscientization is based on dialogue and problem‐posing education; it is about developing a critical consciousness concerning learning and being in the world. As envisioned by Paulo Freire, conscientization was a radical departure from the traditional pedagogy experienced by marginalized populations. Thus, it represented what he termed a “historical commitment … a critical insertion into history in order to create it, to mold it” (Freire, 1998, p. 5). In the end, as Ernest Morrell writes, “For Paulo Freire, the pedagogy of the oppressed was, in reality, a pedagogy of individual and social transformation” (Morrell, 2008, p. 54), a transformation that could lead to praxis, that is, thoughtful reflection and action upon the world.

497

498

Sonia Nieto

How is the concept of banking education evident in teacher education today? In spite of the recognition on the part of many teacher educators that their teaching must prepare future teachers with the skills, attitudes, and values to see themselves as active participants in learning and as co‐constructors of knowledge with their students, in many cases they have instead taken on the role of depositors. This has been especially true during the so‐called “Education Reform Movement” where reform has often meant more regulation to control teachers’ lives, more testing of students rather than actual teaching, and more accountability rather than creativity. Dialogue, a key missing ingredient in helping build relationships of caring and advocacy, has been largely missing.

Dialogue The act of dialogue is central to Freire’s understanding of teaching and learning. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire defined dialogue as “an encounter among women and men who name the world” (Freire, 1993, p. 70). Dialogue was, for Freire, an act of creation and thus, “an existential necessity” (p. 69). As a result, genuine dialogue is anathema to banking education. Moreover, for dialogue to exist, Freire insisted that one must love the world because, “If I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot enter into dialogue” (Freire, 1993, p. 71). The issue of love is crucial here because it is a term almost absent in teacher education today. Instead, words emphasizing function, accountability, and consumerism are prevalent: preservice teachers are positioned as people who need to ingest particular content and specific methods in order to gain certification. They are, in fact, more often defined as “consumers” (see Dolby, 2012) than as learners. Yet the human relationships that should lie at the core of education are often missing in teacher education. According to Freire, besides love, dialogue also requires humility, faith in humankind, and hope. When all of these exist in dialogue, the result can be a deep mutual trust. And, finally, Freire wrote that authentic relationships cannot exist without dialogue because, “Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (Freire, 1993, pp.  73–74). And this is where we can imagine teacher education programs as ­different and more humanistic than is currently the case.

Critical Pedagogy A central tenet of Paulo Freire’s philosophy, one that has been taken up by educators around the world, is critical pedagogy. According to him, pedagogy is not just a technical activity but rather a confrontation with the world, a “task that should engage us in a loving search for knowledge” (Freire, 1998, p. 4). It is critical in the sense that it encourages not complacency but instead the courage to question and learn from the encounter. Hilary Janks, an internationally recognized authority on critical literacy, a corollary of critical pedagogy, explains how critical literacy is different from just “a reasoned analysis based on an examination of

Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy

evidence and argument,” arguing instead that it is “analysis that seeks to uncover the social interests at work, to ascertain what is at stake in textual and social practices” (Janks, 2010, pp. 12–13). Janks then returns to Paulo Freire’s quintessential questions, “Who benefits? Who is disadvantaged?” (pp. 12–13). In an article that addressed what it means to teach “in a time of uncertainty,” specifically after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the United States (an uncertainty that has continued to exist), Antonia Darder and Luis Mirón focus on this notion of critical pedagogy as it relates to preparing teachers. Drawing a straight line from the current insecurity to teacher education, the authors note, “There is no question that the increasing uncertainty experienced by many teachers today is oftentimes related to the irrelevant manner in which they were prepared in their teacher education programs” (Darder & Mirón, 2006, pp. 7–8). They suggest that prospective teachers could benefit instead from extensive hands‐on experiences in classrooms taught by excellent and caring teachers, a critical engagement in texts, and an ongoing dialogue with their peers and professors to help them reevaluate their attitudes, assumptions, practices, and values. At the same time, Darder and Mirón insist that marginalized students need teachers who can use the lens of critical pedagogy to help them reflect on their own lives and experiences. These issues are especially important when considering how critical pedagogy might impact young people. In an article directly addressing the practice of critical pedagogy in classrooms and schools, D’Artagnan Scorza, Nicole Mirra, and Ernest Morrell (2013) discuss what it means for teachers: Not only can critical pedagogy respond to the neoliberal discourse around high stakes testing and standards based education, but it can react to the pressures that teachers face when attempting to engage their youth through learning strategies that are relevant, empowering and academically supportive (p. 17). Considering all of these matters together, we are left with a decidedly different model of teacher education.

Conclusion: Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Advocacy and Caring In writing that the supposed goal of many teacher education programs in Brazil was “to train prospective teachers to become critical, daring, and creative,” Freire nevertheless said that the programs themselves were “a shocking contradiction between the expressed aim and the teachers’ passive behavior” (Freire, 1998, p. 9). The same, of course, could be said of teacher preparation in other nations. What it will take, then, is a radical reimagination of the preparation of teachers. For teacher education to be reimagined, it must embrace the idea that education is political and dialogical and that it should be founded on critical pedagogy. Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education, if put into practice, would irrevocably change the nature of teacher education. For one, it would mean that such

499

500

Sonia Nieto

programs would focus not just on pedagogy or “classroom management,” not just on specific content and curriculum but also on how all of these are inseparable from individual beliefs and values and from institutional policies and practices that can lead to and exacerbate ideological positions that negatively affect public education. Let us take the example of pedagogy in teacher education itself. Being a teacher educator should not presume that one has the requisite experience and expertise to teach prospective teachers. In insightful research on this question, Cati de los Ríos and Mariana Souto‐Manning (2015), used culture ­circles, one of Paulo Freire’s key pedagogical strategies in their courses. They engaged preservice and practicing teachers in critical reflection and action rather than in what they call “pretend pedagogy” that play‐acts serious engagement in critical and transformative work. The authors explain that culture circles are at the heart of what they do not only in their teacher education courses but also in the communities in which they teach. Using culture circles in teacher education, they discovered, “facilitated our attempt to conceptualize a democratic form of relational teaching and learning” (p. 286), precisely the kind of teaching and learning missing in many teacher education programs. Another way to reimagine teacher education is to acknowledge that curriculum is inseparable from issues of power. Curriculum theorist Michael Apple has written that a critical study of education includes more than just technical issues of teaching and learning, adding, “It must think critically about education’s ­relationship to economic, political, and cultural power” (Apple, 2004, p. vii). Consequently, some of the questions Apple asks regarding curriculum are “Whose knowledge is it? Who selected it? Why is it organized and taught in this way? To this particular group?” (Apple, 2004, p. 6). In terms of pedagogy, in an article of more than 20 years ago, Lilia Bartolomé articulated what she called “the methods fetish” in teacher education. She suggested that rather than focusing on courses in methods, teacher educators needed to both learn about the histories and experiences of their marginalized students and also develop “political clarity” before they would be able to teach their students successfully (Bartolomé, 1994). In a later article, she went further, proposing that teacher education curricula be infused with critical pedagogical principles in order to prepare prospective teachers to critically interrogate the ideologies, policies, and practices in schools that harm students, especially those most marginalized in society (Bartolomé, 2004). For example, teachers and prospective teachers frequently accept the idea of meritocracy as a given rather than as a goal. As a result, they tend to believe that there is a “level playing field” and that everyone in society has an equal opportunity to learn and succeed, this in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary (see, e.g., Berliner & Glass, 2014). Thus, Bartolomé proposed that teachers need to be radicalized in order to meet their responsibilities of teaching students of diverse racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. One way for this to happen is for prospective teachers to examine their own values, beliefs, and blind spots. These suggestions provide a powerful antidote to the banking education that Freire denounced. Rather than an extensive number of methods courses, what teachers need instead, according to Peter Murrell, is to learn to see themselves as “community teachers” who can “draw on a richly contextualized knowledge of culture, community,

Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy

and identity in their work with children and families in urban schools” (Murrell, 2001, p. 4). This is what it would take to promote the relationships of caring and advocacy alluded to in the title of this chapter. Antonia Darder addressed this issue in a recent book, commenting, Freire’s writings also challenged educators to truly embody our commitment to political consciousness and social transformation, within the everyday relationships we forged with those within and outside our cultural communities. (Darder, 2014, p. 5) It is these everyday relationships, including those between teacher educators and prospective and practicing teachers, and between teachers and their students, that should lie at the heart of teacher preparation. Until that happens, the field will continue to focus on function, accountability, and management rather than on love, advocacy, and freedom. Paulo Freire’s incomparable vision is sorely needed in teacher education today if we are to find our way back to hope.

References Anyon, J. (2005). Radical possibilities: public policy, urban education, and a new social movement. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd ed.). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Apple, M. W. (2014). Thinking internationally and paying our debts: Critical thoughts on diversity, globalization, and education. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 49(3), 118–120. Ball, D. L., & Forzani, F. M. (2010). What does it take to make a teacher? Phi Delta Kappan, 92, 8–12. Banks, J. A., Suarez‐Orozco, M., & Ben‐Peretz, M. (Eds.) (2016). Global migration, diversity, and civil education: Improving policy and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Bartolomé, L. I. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 64, 173–195. Bartolomé, L. I. (2004). Critical pedagogy and teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31, 97–122. Berliner, D. C. (2009). Poverty and potential: Out‐of‐school factors and school success. Boulder, CO: Education and the Public Interest Center & Educational Policy Research Unit Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/ poverty‐and‐potential Berliner, D. C., & Glass, G. V. (2014). 50 myths and lies that threaten America’s public schools: The real crisis in education. New York: Teachers College Press. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1974). If John Dewey calls, tell him things didn’t work out. Journal of Open Education, 2, 1–17. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books. Cochran‐Smith, M. (2010). Toward a theory of teacher education for social justice. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), The international handbook of educational change (2nd ed.). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

501

502

Sonia Nieto

Cochran‐Smith, M., Feiman Nemser, S., McIntyre, D. J., & Demers, K. E. (2008). Handbook of research on teacher education: Enduring questions in changing contexts (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis. Darder, A. (1991). Culture and power in the classroom: A critical foundation for bicultural cducation. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Darder, A. (2014). Freire and education. New York: Routledge. Darder, A., & Mirón, L. F. (2006). Critical pedagogy in a time of uncertainty: A call to action. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 6, 5–20. Darling‐Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass. de los Ríos, C., & Souto‐Manning, M. (2015). Teacher educators as cultural workers: Problematizing teacher education pedagogies. Studying Teacher Education, 11, 272–293. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Free Press. Dolby, N. (2012). Rethinking multicultural education for the next generation: The new empathy and social justice. New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury (1993, 20th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum). Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hiyake, Kathleen. (n.d.). Review of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the City. Retrieved from http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schug/freire/kh.html. Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. New York: Routledge. Mayo, P. (2000). Remaining on the same side of the river: A critical commentary of Paulo Freire’s later work. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 22, 369–397. Moon, B. (2013). Teacher education and the challenge of development: A global analysis. New York: Routledge. Morrell, E. (2008). Critical literacy and urban youth: Pedagogies of access, dissent, and liberation. New York: Routledge. Murrell, P. E. (2001). The community teacher: A new framework for effective urban teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for education reform. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996). What matters most: Teaching for America’s future. New York: Author. Nieto, S. (2008). Dear Paulo: Letters from those who dare teach. New York: Routledge. No Child Left Behind (NCLB). (2001). Act of 2001, 20 U.S.C.A. § 6301 et seq. West 2003. Saul, A. M., & Saul, A. (2016). Paulo Freire and the methodology of thematic investigation for permanent teacher education. International Journal of Action Research, 12, 59–83.

Reimagining Teacher Education to Promote Relationships of Caring and Advocacy

Scorza, D.’. A., Mirra, N., & Morrell, E. (2013). It should just be education: Critical pedagogy normalized as academic excellence. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 4, 15–34. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. Westport, CT: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (1994). Paulo Freire as Secretary of Education in the Municipality of São Paulo. Comparative Education Review, 38, 181–214. Torres, R. M. (2007). The million Paulo Freires. Retrieved from https://www.dvv‐ international.de/adult‐education‐and‐development/editions/aed‐692007/10th‐ anniversary‐of‐paulo‐freirersquos‐death/the‐million‐paulo‐freires. Wei, R. C., Darling‐Hammond, L., & Adamson, F. (2010). Professional development in the United States: Trends and challenges. Dallas, TX: National Staff Development Council.

503

505

27 Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education José Eustáquio Romão

Introduction If Paulo Freire became famous all over the world for creating a method of adult education (educação de adultos, EDA), especially about literacy, how to place him in relation to university and higher education? Had he devoted himself to studying subjects of this level of education, and would he also have given a contribution that would become a reference for university studies and researchers? Or would it be possible only to draw from the dispersion of his vast work about general reflections on education and from his educational interventions to apprehend what would justify the inclusion of his approach in higher education institutions (HEIs) and to the role of intellectuals? Paulo Freire himself manifested on the question of his fame as a specialist in literacy: Every time I am asked of methods it seems as if my central preoccupation for thirty‐five years had been to work on a method to make possible a quick and easy process of literacy. The question implies that I am been seen as a specialist in the techniques and methods for making possible a much easier way for illiterates to learn how to read and write. Of course, if it was like this, I am sure that I would be very happy because it would imply a certain contribution—an important contribution—that one could have given to facilitate the millions of illiterate in the world coming to  ­ literacy. The real question, nevertheless, is not this one. (Freire, 1997, p. 303)1 It is noticed in the quotation that Paulo Freire did not want to be known and recognized only for the method of adult literacy but for other formulations and interventions that relate to the human condition in the world and in the universe of production of knowledge about the world. On another occasion, on January 28, 1982, in the Church Community of Catuba Base, in Vila Alpina, in São Paulo, in a conversation with popular educators, Freire said the following about the same problem, clarifying better what was his “central concern”: The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

506

José Eustáquio Romão

But when we incarnate and live this not alone in the world, this has to do with the so‐called Paulo Freire Method. But I do not like to talk about it, it’s a very boring business. Because this, in essence, is not Method, it is nothing, this is a WORLD CONCEPTION, which is there, it is a pedagogy, not a method full of techniques. (Freire, 1982, p. 7) This chapter intends to answer, briefly, the question of the relation between Freirean thought and higher education, either by an explicit approach to this theme or implicitly by its ontological and epistemological formulations whose degree of complexity demands a reflection at the higher level. Nevertheless, it is not possible to begin the answers to these questions without an important observation that is related to the ontological principles and the epistemological foundations of the thought of Paulo Freire.2 Whenever it is the work of a great thinker, it is advisable to seek the ontological and epistemological foundations—mutually implicated—of any of his reflections in order to better understand and evaluate the specific reflection that is being examined. No theory, in any field of knowledge, develops without being explicitly or implicitly grounded in a prior conception of all that exists and more specifically about what it is “to be human,” just as how the human being knows all that exists. So, even if it is synthetically, let us see how Paulo Freire conceived the “theory of being” and, more specifically, the “theory of the human being,” and what is his concept of how the human being learns, builds, and disseminates knowledge. In addition, the recognition of Paulo Freire throughout the world as one of the five most read authors in the social sciences would practically oblige the schools of the Brazilian educational systems, especially in the universities, which are agencies that educate educators and researchers, to recognize the importance of the Freirean legacy.

Paulo Freire’s Ontology and Epistemology As already mentioned, it is not possible to apprehend all the contributions of a current of thought or of a particular thinker without the understanding of the ontological and epistemological bases that ground their contributions in a specific field of human knowledge. Thus, before advancing Freire’s formulations on higher education and the role of the intellectuals, it is necessary to develop reflections on his ontology and his epistemology. The “ontological” conception of Freire must be enclosed in quotation marks because, for him, ontology does not exist. If it is the “theory of being,” in the absence of being, it can at least be questioned in its linguistic property. In fact, in the first place, according to Freire’s conception, being as structure does not exist; second, in the same analytic perspective, what exists is “being” (gerund), that is, existence can be apprehended only as a process. Thus, it would be necessary to find a Greek word—if one wants to continue in the Eurocentric bias—to account for the expression “theory of being.” Moreover, this word would have to be ­written in the plural, because, for Freire, there is no “a” theory, but theories about “being” or about anything that exists.

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

However, the greater mismatch between the terms “ontology” and “epistemology” and what Freire sees as what exists and what we know about what exists are made explicit in the following discussion. Contrary to everything we have learned along the trajectories of Western thought,3 Freire bases his “theory of being” on three negations: everything we know as existing in the universe to date is incomplete, unfinished, and imperfect. Therefore, incompleteness, inconclusiveness, and imperfection are universal. Considering the first “ontological” dimension, everything that exists—or at least everything we know so far—is incomplete because it needs someone else. Even a stone, to be identified as a stone, needs the existence of other beings that are not stone, so that it is thus identified. If everything were stone, it would not be possible to identify the stone. That is, our entire existential singularity manifests itself, in the universe, by diversity, that is, by our difference from others. As for the second dimension, everything is inconclusive because it is in transformation. Nothing is finished, but in the process of “termination.” Everything is transformed, everything changes, nothing remains … What remains is change. Finally, considering the third “ontological” dimension, everything is unfinished in the sense of being imperfect. And such imperfection is not identified from an idealized perfection but from a tendential perfection that seems to be contained in the present state of existing things. The purest diamond contains in its structure some “defects” that could possibly be eliminated in the existential process, that is, its present state reveals an “incomplete perfection” that could be perfected more, in the face of defects and limitations found there. However, it is only at the level of higher education that a discussion can be held about ontological and epistemological questions, that is, it is only in higher courses that one can develop reflections that have “ontology” and “epistemology” as objects. If this were not enough to relate Paulo Freire’s legacy to higher education, one can add what one wants in this work: to draw attention to the appropriateness and historical opportunity of Freirean thought to enter the university so that it better can develop its three institutional missions in the contemporary world, especially with regard to the production of knowledge and teaching. We can frame Freire’s “ontological” and “epistemological” bases in what we would call “dialectic‐dialogical materialism.” And, here, a reflection on this terminology must be summarized. By its premises and foundations, there is no doubt that Freirean thought is located within the field of temporal reason. That is, everything is conceived (what exists and what is known about what exists) as process. The temporal dimension is inherent in the process, not only that of the historical sequential time (from the Greek Χρόνος—Chronos) but also that of the opportune moment (from the Greek καιρός—Kayrós), the historical opportunity.4 For Freire, it is fundamental to be attentive to the historical opportunities that potentiate social transformation, which, taken to its limits, could produce revolution. As he recorded in the famous note VII of Educação e Atualidade Brasileira in his original edition (2001 [1959], pp. 55–56), in disagreeing with the Isebians5 in the 1950s about the possibility of historical–social transformation without the performance of a subject (transindividual) leading the process, for it does not occur only with favorable contextual conditions, as naïvely believed by most of the

507

508

José Eustáquio Romão

intellectuals of the time, including some of the ISEB, whom Freire considered as their masters. And already in the first work of his tilling, he also condemned the avant‐garde: It will not be, therefore, only a result of simple promotion or alteration of the infrastructure, however large and important these changes are in explaining the process of evolution of the Brazilian man’s conscience. It will not, on the other hand, be the result “of the yearning of a few, ­concerned with shaping a national character through processes, so to speak Pareteanos, that is, by the manipulation of popular emotional residues.” (Freire, 2001 [1959], p. 57)6 It remains to clarify the adjective “dialogic.” Dialectical materialism, as it is commonly known, underlies its ontology in the opposition of opposites, which generates all movement. Therefore, it must also be framed in the temporal ratio. It was not for nothing that Karl Marx chose history as the most important science, calling the synthesis of its formulations “historical materialism.” For this current of thought, therefore, the process occurs in the opposition of the thesis and the antithesis that are destroyed in the clash of opposites, to give place to the synthesis that, in turn, becomes the thesis of a new antithesis and so on. Dialectical reasoning is also inherent in the admission that everything has its opposite. Thus, in the process of opposing the thesis and the antithesis and its consequent destruction, the dialogue between the two would also occur, allowing the construction of the synthesis. In this way, the synthesis does not result from the opposition process of opposites but from the process of approach and dialogue of opposites. In short, the syntheses would not result from the profound opposition of the opposites but from the possibility of dialogue that exists between them, as opposed (dialectic) of their opposition. For this reason, there is in Freire the potentiality of constructive dialogue among opposites and it is the one that allows the emergence of syntheses. Of course, this is also why the Freirean project carries with it the possibility of “disalienation” (awareness) and liberation also of the oppressor.

The University in the Western World This “old creature,” called the university and already almost a millennium old— having been created in the “West” in 1088 in Bologna, Italy—was born under the double inspiration of universality and the corporation. Although it has made great contributions to humankind, regrettably, with few exceptions confirming the general rule, the corporate spirit has predominated in its structure and functioning and it has, over the centuries, produced much more for its own purposes and for the realization of its own members than for society as a whole. For this reason, the university developed a series of vices, among which the following stand out: elitism, credentialism, the fragmentation of knowledge, scientism, and myopia in relation to the knowledge produced outside its walls, and, for that reason, it has been a prerogative of elites and for a minority of “avant‐gardists.”

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

Higher education maintained by the state in the “Western world” was attached to minorities, and even “powerful” theories about the inconvenience of its socialization, much less its universalization, were formulated. The myth of the absolute incompatibility between massification and qualification in higher education has been created in most countries of the capitalist world. This is the argument that supports the elitism of the university. In view of this myth, one should ask (a) Why can only a minority have access to the processes and products of what is best in the “civilizing banquet”? and (b) Why should most of humanity be condemned to heavy labor, to manual, mechanical, and repetitive activities, in short, to the most dehumanizing tasks? Only a society dominated by a theoretical perspective that has as its starting point and that exhibits in its frontispiece individualism can defend the (avant‐gardist) knowledge and the (elitist) politic of a minority group. In spite of its ambiguities and subsequent instabilities, the university was, at its birth, one of the counterproofs of the modern‐centric historiography that considered the Middle Ages as the “Long Night of a Thousand Years.” Since its creation in the eleventh century, it has demonstrated critical vitality and resistance to all forms of ignorance, obscurantism, intolerance, and physical and symbolic violence. However, from “Western modernity,” the university institution, despite its ­contributions, was progressively dominated by elitism and corporatism that had already been hinted at in its origins, committing itself more and more to oppressors, thus remaining in the “intimate under the shadow of power.” More recently, since the last quarter of the twentieth century, education has generally fallen into the arms of the neoliberal pedagogical project, and the university, although it remains in its “intimacy”—at least in the extreme, critical to this project—did very little to present alternatives against the neoliberal project to the national education systems that had been seduced by the siren song of globalization and its heralds. In the last decade of the twentieth century and in the beginning of the twenty‐ first century, neoliberalism prevailed sovereignly in Latin America’s national education systems, despite the few voices of resistance that were still heard in a few niches of national universities. With the possession of statistical data, indicators, rankings, and an empirical paraphernalia that conferred “scientific credibility,” the so‐called “entrepreneurs of education” pontificated in the educational reforms that were perpetrated in the Latin American subcontinent and in Brazil, implementing the logic of the market in the educational universe, whose most compelling imperative was (and continues to be) the linkage of remuneration and the functional progression of teachers to productivity. This relationship was implanted in all levels of education, generating what we could call “evaluative frenzy”: almost all the countries of the subcontinent (as well as in other countries of the world, even though the reasons varied) formulated and implemented national examinations, and procedural, diagnostic, and formative evaluation was relegated or even eclipsed by structural, classificatory, and meritocratic evaluations. This is one of the most diabolical strategies of any hegemonic process: to universalize the conviction that the benefits of the civilizing process are accessible only to a few and that only by individual competence can they be achieved, convincing even the failed people that “failures” must be their own fault.

509

510

José Eustáquio Romão

Guy Neave (2012) came to formulate a new concept of “state,” the “evaluative state,” which would have replaced the welfare state that was implanted in the world since World War II. In the Brazilian case, the appraiser rage has reached such a point that, even before the creation of the National Education System, a National System for the Evaluation of Higher Education was created and implemented, better known as SINAES (Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Superior) (see Trindade, 2007).7

Paulo Freire and Higher Education It may seem strange, as already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, to speak of Paulo Freire and higher education. In fact, he became known worldwide, both for his written work and for his interventions in Brazil and in other countries, as an “adult educator,” as an “educator of social movements,” and as an “educator of nonformal education.” In addition, Paulo Freire did not enter the academy, except as epigraph or name of facilities (schools, libraries, academic centers, etc.), in the sense of being studied as a thinker of education, or of being taken as a reference for the production of knowledge. Although he is sometimes recognized as an “intuitive genius,” the more advanced niches of research and the fields of knowledge of greater scholarly prestige did not incorporate his ideas as scientific. In addition, because he was not a holder of academic degrees—Freire is self‐taught in the educational field8—and, as such, he has limits, that he has not “overcome,” they say, without actually applying it.9 If previous reflections are not sufficient to demonstrate the depth and complexity of Freirean thought, which should therefore be addressed in higher education, it is not possible to ignore Paulo Freire’s reflections on the university and the role of intellectuals. Of the various debates that have taken place on this topic, we highlight only one that happened in Mexico, more precisely at the Autonomous University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM), in the first half of 1984. According to the organizers of that seminar, UNAM professors were interested in Paulo Freire’s ideas about “the three most important problems of contemporary education: power and education, curriculum and social reality and the role of the intellectuals” (Escobar, Fernández, & Guevara‐Niebla, 1994, p. xxxv). In fact, what can be seen from the transcriptions of the speeches is that Paulo Freire was placed in the middle of the circle of culture, or rather, of that true “epistemological circle”10 in which they discussed, in detail, several questions related to the three mentioned problems. And, as far as this text is concerned, the discussion on the institutional missions of the university and the role of the intellectuals emerged explicitly in Freire’s speech, responding to the various questions that a reasonable number of world‐renowned intellectuals proposed to him. Moreover, in a preliminary approach to Paulo Freire’s relationship with the university and higher education, even if he had not written anything about this institution and this degree of education, the Freire ethos, we insist, should permeate all education, whether and to what degree, because, in the Brazilian

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

case, the recent law no. 12,612, of April 13, 2012, established that Freire is the Patron of Brazilian Education and not only of literacy and adult education. If previous reflections are not enough to demonstrate the depth and complexity of Freirean thinking, which should therefore be addressed in higher education and in the university, it is not possible to ignore Freire’s explicit reflections on the university and on the role of the intellectuals. Therefore, it is not true that Paulo Freire did not reflect on higher education and on the role of intellectuals. Moreover, he made profound and thoughtful insights into the institutional missions of universities.11 Truly questioned in the Mexican seminar promoted by the UNAM, Freire dialogued with the expressive and qualified group of researchers and thinkers on his most important conceptions. It is impossible to recover all the richness of the discussions that took place there. Therefore, we highlight only two issues that emerged in Paulo Freire’s speech at the time and that seem to us fundamental for reflection on the institutional missions of universities and on the historical role of university social actors in contemporary times, especially those of higher education professors: What are the missions of universities in the process of conscientization and emancipation of the oppressed? and What is the role of intellectuals in this same process? The two questions lead to a curious doubt that emerged in the same seminar: from a given moment, would Paulo Freire have abandoned or not the concept of “conscientization”? Freire himself narrated his encounter with the word and concept: It is generally believed that I am the author of this strange word “conscientization” as this is the central concept of my ideas about education. In fact, it was created by a team of professors of the INSTITUTO SUPERIOR DE ESTUDOS BRASILEIROS around 1964. One can mention among them Álvaro Vieira Pinto12 and the professor Guerreiro.13 When I  first heard the word conscientization, I immediately understood the depth of its meaning, because I am absolutely convinced that education, as a practice of freedom, is an act of knowledge, a critical appropriation of reality. Since then, this word is part of my vocabulary. But it was D. Hélder Câmara who was responsible for spreading it and translating it into English and French. (Freire, 1979, p. 25) Incorporating the term and its denotatum, Freire gave it a depth that, perhaps, was not in its etymological origins. For him, “conscientization” cannot be confused with awareness, because the expression would correspond to the first moment of human beings approaching objective reality, but not analyzed critically. This initial approximation of reality allows the human being to experience it only superficially. It is a spontaneous approach that leads to a naive grasp of reality. Awareness is not yet conscientization, because consciousness consists in the critical development of awareness. Consciousness therefore implies that we go beyond the sphere of reality to arrive at a critical sphere in which man assumes an epistemological position. (Freire, 1979, p. 26)

511

512

José Eustáquio Romão

At the time of the Fourth International Meeting of the Paulo Freire Forum in Porto (September 2004), Professor Luiza Cortesão proposed an issue that, at first glance, would cause relative strangeness. Responding hastily to what we thought about the subject, because it had not reached the importance of the inquiry, we deny that Freire abandoned the concept. Subsequently, on the basis of the conviction that such a competent and rigorous Portuguese researcher would never raise problems in vain, especially those related to the thought of Paulo Freire, because she was a founder and coordinator of the Paulo Freire Institute of Portugal, the inquiry of Luiza Cortesão deserved a more attentive investigation, to say the least. More precisely, Luiza’s question was: Since the 1980s, has Freire abandoned the concept of “conscientization”? And if he had, what were the reasons for abandonment? Regarding the abandonment of the term “conscientization,” Paulo Freire himself thus manifested: … in the ’70s I tried to worry intensely about this issue14; at that time was very much associated with the use of the word “conscientization” and it was an incredible thing: wherever I came I found this word [associated] with projects that were largely objectively reactionary, no matter how subjectively naive or astute. What I mean is that sometimes it is objectively reactionary and, naively or shrewdly, one knows that objectively one is reactionary. So at that time I was telling myself that there are only two ways to deal with this: the first is to use the word conscientization (and you do not find the word since 1987), and this is because I participated in a seminar with Ivan Illich in Geneva, where he resumed the concept of de‐scholasticism and I took the concept of conscientization, and that’s when I spoke for the last time of this word. (Escobar et al., 1994, p. 46) It is therefore very clear that, even if he abandoned the term, Paulo Freire would never abandon his meaning, as he himself proclaimed in the previous quotation: “Of course I never gave up understanding of the process I called consciousness.” However, in the doctoral thesis of Andrea Rodrigues Barbosa Marinho (2015), of which the author of this chapter was supervisor, it was demonstrated that Freire did not abandon the term, although for a relatively short period of time he used other words or synonymous expressions to designate the phenomenon, such as decolonization of minds—which, certainly, derived from the work of Amílcar Cabral15—disalienation, historical consciousness, and so on. In fact, Freire could not give up the concept that, in our judgment, constitutes the core of his conceptions. From literacy to higher education, the overcoming of “banking education” by “liberating education” is the raison d’être of the whole enterprise of the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and the process of conscientization is the founding principle of all theoretical and political struggle for the success of this overcoming. As Freire himself put it, “conscientization does not consist in “being ahead of reality” assuming a falsely intellectual position. Conscientization cannot exist outside “praxis,” or rather, without the action‐reflection act” (Freire, 1979, p. 26).

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

Regarding the intellectuals, it is clear that in the mapping we did in all his works, Freire not only read but also gave a special highlight to Antonio Gramsci’s treatment of the theme of the role of intellectuals in society: For me, the Gramscian way is fascinating. It is in this perspective that I put myself. All in all this has to do with the role of the intellectual call, which Gramsci studies so well and so widely. For me, if the working class does not theorise its practice, it is because the bourgeoisie prevents it from doing so. Not because she is naturally incompetent. On the other hand, the role of the revolutionary intellectual is not that of depositing in the working class, which is also intellectual, the contents of revolutionary theory, but that of learning from it to teach it. At this point we return to what I have already said about the difference of the method of the reactionary educator and the revolutionary. This, in becoming a pedagogue of the revolution, and that is what Amílcar Cabral did, makes it possible for the working class to apprehend the dialectical method of interpretation of the real. (Gadotti, Freire, & Guimarães, 1995, p. 68) (emphasis in the original text) In short, what Gramsci called the “organic intellectual of the working class,” Paulo Freire called “revolutionary intellectuals,” understood as revolutionary the one who coordinates the process of recognition of the scientific theory potentialized in the practices of the workers. The “organicity” of its activity is materialized in the abandonment of intellectual arrogance and in the recognition of the culture of the oppressed, veiled by the traces of the science and culture of the oppressors, and which must be unveiled to reveal science, in order to nourish transformative praxis. The role of the intellectuals is like that of a car’s catalytic converter, which transforms the toxic and polluting gasses expelled by the burning of fuel into less harmful elements: eliminating the ideological toxicity that guards the possible conscience of the oppressed and manifesting itself in its real consciousness with the features of the conscience of the oppressors, to allow the cultural traces of the consciousness of the dominated to exhale in the social–historical environment is the role of the revolutionary intellectual. It is not for the revolutionary intellectual to put anything in the minds of the oppressed, but to extract what they have there put in order to reveal the deeper layers of the revolutionary consciousness of the dominated. Asked directly about the role of the intellectuals (professors and researchers of the university), Paulo Freire once again questioned the problem of the university’s scientific vanguardism and its agents, but at the same time rejected “basism,” which attributes to the popular classes the exclusive domain of knowledge. It can be said, referring to Carlos Alberto Torres (Torres, 1994), who wrote the introduction of the work that was published based on the seminar held at UNAM, that although “organic intellectuals” commit themselves to principles, “institutional intellectuals” commit themselves to interests. Institutional intellectuals would be the organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie, whose “principles” are confused with “profit ethics,” therefore, with the accumulation afforded by their institutional properties.

513

514

José Eustáquio Romão

In addition, it places the university in the social–historical context in which it is located, emphasizing that it should not be considered that there is a metaphysically conceived academic policy but that there are academic policies referenced in more general policies, drawn by the protagonist strata of the pacts established by social classes, hegemonized or not by any of the social classes in conflict. “There is no historicity in the academy to the extent that the academy cannot be seen outside the context of the global politics to which it belongs” (Escobar et al., 1994, p. 138). Later, in the same Mexican event, he described an interesting discussion about university autonomy and academic freedom, coming to the defense of scientific and epistemological pluralism, emphasizing that without risks it is not possible to create and the university should be the main creative agency of society.

Conclusion If he were alive, Paulo Freire would certainly be worried about writing and fighting for a university that does not subscribe to the banking model of education, which is regrettably far from the horizon of contemporaneity. What would be their reaction to the “new” higher education institutions (HEIs) and the huge expansion of vacancies in higher education, all over the world, especially in emerging countries, but at the cost of a privatizing boom? In this context, the children of the workers are being included—having totally overcome the ideological and exclusive bourgeois bourgeoisie that “the university was not made for all”—but this inclusion occurs in private HEIs, in courses of debatable quality and low academic and social prestige. Would Paulo Freire be thinking of a new meeting with the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, now in higher education? Is he “reinventing” his own legacy in the context of a university rigidly regulated by an “evaluative state” and at the same time “anemic” in Carnoy et al.’s felicitous expression (2015) to serve the interests of the majority of the population that inhabits the territory that governs? As is well known, “universities are at the same time sites of innovation, of fomenting new ideas, and internally conservative, in their attempt to preserve cultures and academic traditions rooted in the past” (Carnoy et al., 2015, p. 30). This “rooting” has everything to do with nostalgia for a “quality university” … for the elites. If he were alive, Paulo Freire would surely be very bothered by this “exclusionary inclusion” and by the “evaluative furor” that blamed his failure on comparative evaluations leading to the world rankings. On the one hand, if the “University of the Armor” and the “University of the Logo,” in the felicitous expression of the researcher Cleide Rita Silvério de Almeida (2001), continue to diverge, one can already anticipate on which side the rope will break. On the other hand, if Portuguese enthusiasm for the Bologna Agreement, with the creation of a “European Common Space of Higher Education” (Neves, 2006, p. 9), affects other countries and if we move toward a HEI model that unifies vocational training at the higher level, only the future will tell if the almost a millennium old institution has yielded to the neoliberal

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

temptation and has forgotten the tradition of resistance and innovative creativity, aspiring only to be one more logo in the world of thousands and thousands of logos that have lost their identity. It is true that, on the one hand, private HEIs have sacrificed on the altar of mercantilism the quality demanded by all; on the other hand, the state‐owned companies suffer the effects of the corporativist usurpation perpetrated by certain university segments that nestled in them. In Brazil, in addition to being late, the university followed the paths of most Latin American universities, that is, “it formed the majority of the cadres of the ruling class who led Latin America because of the disregard of the historical update …” (Ribeiro, 1971, p. 15). And, continues the former rector of the University of Brasilia: The immense majority of our students, once formed, become docile ­citizens and effective professionals in the defense of the prevailing order, with all the inequalities and injustices. [ … ] What to do in these circumstances, if so many professors are accomplices of the instituted order and agents of conservatism and if the majority of young people, fulfilling youth rebellion, also settle? (Ribeiro, 1971, p. 16)16 The task of Latin Americans in relation to the transformations of Darcy Ribeiro’s “necessary university” is not small. Many are the reforms that this institution has recently undergone, with one evidently tending to dominate, a kind of “academic capitalism.”17 However, in the face of the gigantic mercantilist wave of higher education18—in Latin America and Brazil it is one of the best deals in terms of investment— which is also true in HEIs maintained by the state, because “subordination to the demands of the market can be as dangerous as the partisanship of universities, because subservience does not allow it to survive as a critical institution” (Paiva & Warde, 1994, p. 31). Regrettably, among other problems, many young people—who are always the hope of a better future—reject social studies and are attracted to the merely technical, because of the expectations of the transnationals, who prefer the “technological experts.” In doing so, they demoralize the courses of the humanities, avoid the most critical graduates, and employ youth talented in relation to mere execution but unable to exercise critical analysis of the context, because critical talent is obscured by the lure of high salaries (see Segrera, 2001). Paulo Freire, more than ever, can point out some alternatives to this “age of perplexities,” as Segrera calls it (2001, p. 30). If he were alive, it would certainly involve looking for ways to qualify the HEIs maintained by the private initiative and by the lack of corporatization of the state, so that both could recover their public spirit, that is, to work for the construction of public science (for the benefit of all) and for omnilateral cognitive democracy (incorporating the knowledge that comes from outside its walls). Thus, unlike Franco Cambi (1999, p. 620), who confuses Freire’s conceptions with the descholasticization of society proposed by Ivan Illich, surely the author

515

516

José Eustáquio Romão

of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, if he were living, would not be preaching the closure of universities but their profound transformation into an institution at the service of majorities, both in the sense of democratization of what it produces and in the democratic inclusion of knowledge produced outside it in its curricula. For Freire, the scientific consistency of his discoveries, disconnected from the respective social relevance, in the sense of attending to the needs of the majorities, is no more than the individualistic fruition of speculation or the bizarreness of unoccupied intellectuals, and the university would be no more than academic “sinecura” as Edmundo Campos Coelho (1988) characterized it so well. In conclusion, the university, especially the Brazilian, cannot stand reforms it needs a real revolution, as defended by our major sociologist, Florestan Fernandes (1975).

Notes 1 Translation by José Eustáquio Romão. 2 In the Brazilian case, it should not be forgotten either that, by Law no. 12,612,

of April 13, 2012, Paulo Freire was proclaimed Patron of Brazilian Education and, therefore, the Freirean legacy must permeate all degrees of Brazilian educational systems. Because all public service providers have the obligation of the public munus—including the little corner bar that sells only “cachaça”—for the impacts they can cause in the community, education must still be characterized by ethos, now Freirean, in all degrees and teaching methods. In other words, just as the little corner bar mentioned cannot fail to meet the hygiene conditions in the glasses used by cachaça (public munus), schools of all grades cannot ignore what Paulo Freire proposes for identity of national education (public ethos). 3 It is clear that the expressions “Western Culture” or “Western Civilization” suffer from undesirable reductionism, because many cultural formations and multiple currents of thought have developed in the improperly called “West” and here we are abstracted from what has been developed in the societies that have been silenced by Eurocentrism, from the expansion of the European colonial enterprise in the so‐called “modernity” and of what it is necessary to investigate more deeply in Eastern thought. 4 For those who want to emphasize Freire’s spiritualistic character, kayros could also be read as “God’s time” (eternity), as opposed to chronological, existential, historical time. 5 The Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB) was an initiative of Brazilian intellectuals in the 1950s, who set out to study and formulate projects for Brazilian development. Later, they were absorbed by the state apparatus and worked, for example, in the formulation of the Goals Plan of the Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira government (1955–1960). For more details on the origins and evolution of the ISEB, see Toledo (1997). 6 The original spelling was retained. The quotation in Paulo Freire’s citation is by Guerreiro Ramos (1957, p. 19).

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

7 In fact, the SINAES is limited to the evaluation of undergraduate courses,

because postgraduate studies continued to be subject to the “rage of productivist evaluation” of the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). 8 Here the role of Elza Freire, his wife, who was an educator and first interlocutor on everything he wrote about education, should be highlighted. More recent research has highlighted the role of Elza in the intellectual formation of Paulo Freire (see Spingolon, 2016). 9 On other occasions I have already shown that Paulo Freire did not enter the university as a thinker, for a much deeper reason, usually hidden in benevolent and paternalistic, not to say hypocritical, references to him as a “great educator.” His thinking and his political work represent a double threat to the “intimate in the shadow of power” intellectuals: first, he argues that there are epistemological advantages in the knowledge of the oppressed, and second, he also argues radically that knowledge gains legitimacy only within a concrete practice, either in its origin (epistemological legitimacy) or in its destination (political legitimacy). 10 We call the “epistemological circle” the transformation of the “circle of culture”—this one formulated by Paulo Freire as an intervention tool for the adult education process—in a research instrument (see Romão et al., 2006, pp.173–195). 11 In one of the most provocative reflections on the university institutional mission called “Extension” in Brazil, Paulo Freire (1992) produced the work Extensão ou comunicação? (Extension or communication?), in which he develops a theory of discourse and knowledge of undeniable actuality. 12 Álvaro Vieira Pinto (1909–1987), physician and philosopher, was considered by Paulo Freire as the “Brazilian Master.” He was head of the Department of Philosophy and, later, in 1962, assumed the executive direction of the ISEB. He left several important works, in which he always defended the autonomous Brazilian development. Among them stand out Conscience and national reality (1960) and The concept of technology (2005), both in two volumes. Among the various concepts that Paulo Freire inspired in his work are those of “naive conscience” and “critical conscience,” to which Vieira Pinto consecrates, respectively, the first and second volumes of the first mentioned work. 13 Freire refers to Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (1915–1982), a Brazilian sociologist and politician of great influence in the national social sciences. He participated in the ISEB, of whose Department of Sociology he was director. 14 Paulo Freire is referring to the misuse of terms that, in his conceptions, have a specific political sense and committed to emancipatory education. 15 A revolutionary leader of the independence of Cape Verde and Guinea‐Bissau, Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973), assassinated by the Portuguese colonial forces, was one of the most important thinkers of contemporary Africa. For more details on the convergences of the thinking of Paulo Freire and Amílcar Cabral, see Romão & Gadotti, 2012. 16 Translation by J. E. Romão. 17 The term is used with a positive connotation by Pablo González Casanova, quoting Sheila Slaughter and Larrie L. Leslie of the University of Arizona (in

517

518

José Eustáquio Romão

Gentili, 2001, p. 1818), although he acknowledges that universities are increasingly becoming, in profitable companies, with the transformation of their services into merchandize, in short, with their submission to the laws of the market. 18 See Carnoy et al. (2015), especially chapter 2 (pp. 40–85).

References Cambi, F. (1999). Historia da pedagogia (Álvaro Lorencini, Trans.). São Paulo: FEU. Carnoy, M., et al. (2015). Expansão das universidades em uma economia global em mudança: Um triunfo dos BRICS?. Brasília: Capes. Coelho, E. C. (1988). A sinecura acadêmica: A ética universitária em questão. São Paulo: Vértice. de Almeida, C. R. S. (2001). O brasão e o logotipo: Um estudo das novas universidades na cidade de São Paulo. Petrópolis (RJ): Vozes. dos Neves, F., S. (2006). Adimplenda est Bolonia! – É preciso cumprir Bolonha! –: A “Declaração de Bolonha” e o Ensino Superior em Portugal. Lisboa: Editora U. Lusófona. Escobar‐Guerrero, M., Fernández, A. L., & Guevara‐Niebla, G. (1994). Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico. New York: SUNY Press. Fernandes, F. (1975). Universidade brasileira: Reforma ou revolução?. São Paulo: Alfa‐Ômega. Freire, P. (1979). Conscientização: Teoria e prática da libertação – uma introdução ao pensamento de Paulo Freire (Kátia de Mello e Silva, Trans.). São Paulo: Cortez e Moraes. Freire, P. (1982). Como trabalhar com o povo?. São Paulo: Centro de Capacitação Cristã. Freire, P. (1992). Extensão ou comunicação? (10th ed.). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1997). Pedagogia da autonomia. Rio da Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (2001 [1959]). Educação e atualidade brasileira. São Paulo: Cortez; Instituto Paulo Freire. Freire, P., et al. (1997). Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire. New York: Peter Lang. Gadotti, M., Freire, P., & Guimarães, S. (1995). Pedagogia, diálogo e conflito (4th ed.). São Paulo: Cortez. Gentili, P. (Ed.) (2001). Universidades na penumbra: Neoliberalismo e reestruturação universitária. São Paulo: Cortez. Marinho, Andrea Rodrigues Barbosa. (2015). Paulo Freire e a conscientização. Doctoral dissertation, Universidade Nove de Julho, São Paulo. Neave, G. (2012). The evaluative state, institutional autonomy and re‐engineering higher education in Western Europe: The prince and his pleasure. London: Palgrave Macmilan. Paiva, V., & Warde, M. J. (1994). Dilemas do ensino superior na América Latina. Campinas (SP): Papirus. Pinto, Á. V. (1960). Consciência e realidade nacional. Rio de Janeiro: ISEB. Pinto, Á. V. (2005). O conceito de tecnologia. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto.

Paulo Freire and Globalized Higher Education

Ramos, A. G. (1957). Condições sociais do poder nacional. Rio de Janeiro: MEC/ ISEB. Ribeiro, D. (1971). La universidad latinoamericana. Caracas: Ed. Universidad Central de Venezuela. Romão, J. E., & Gadotti, M. (2012). Paulo Freire e Amílcar Cabral: A descolonização das mentes. São Paulo: Editora e Livraria. Romão, J. E., et al. (2006). Círculo Epistemológico: Círculo de cultura como metodologia de pesquisa. Educação & Linguagem, 9(13), São Paulo: Editora Universidade Metodista de São Paulo. Segrera, F. L. (2001). Globalización y educación superior en América Latina y el Caribe. Caracas: UNESCO/IESALC. Spingolon, N. I. (2016). Pedagogia da convivência: Elza Freire – Uma vida que faz educação. Jundiaí, Brazil: Paco. Toledo, C. N. d. (1997). ISEB: Fábrica de ideologias (2nd ed.). Campinas: Editora UNICAMP. Torres, C. (1994). Introduction. In M. Escobar‐Guerrero, A. L. Fernández, & G. Guevara‐Niebla (Eds.), Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico. New York: SUNY Press. Trindade, H. (2007). Desafios, institucionalização e imagem pública da CONAES. Brasília: UNESC/MEC.

519

521

28 Thesis Supervision A Freirean Approach Peter Roberts

As a teacher, Paulo Freire is best known for his adult literacy work with impoverished urban and rural communities in Brazil in the 1950s and early 1960s. Freire developed an innovative and highly effective approach to the teaching of reading and writing, enabling adults to attain basic literacy skills in as little as 40 hr. In linking the reading of the word with the reading of the world, Freire provided an opportunity for participants to reflect critically on their circumstances and ­experiences (Bee, 1980; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Lankshear, 1993; Taylor, 1993). The ongoing development of Freire’s literacy program was interrupted by the military coup in Brazil in 1964, and Freire was forced into exile. Within a few short years, however, and particularly following the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972a), the principles that had informed his teaching would attract international attention. Freire’s emphasis on dialogue, the posing of problems, and the development of critical consciousness in teaching and learning generated much discussion and influenced countless educators in the decades that followed. Freire would go on to deepen and extend many of the key ideas that formed the heart of his early books (Freire, 1972a, 1972b, 1976), his dialogical collaborations with other intellectuals proving particularly fruitful in this process (Escobar, Fernandez, Guevara‐Niebla, & Freire, 1994; Freire & Faundez, 1989; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Freire & Shor, 1987; Horton & Freire, 1990). Near the end of his life, teaching remained a key focus of his work, as is evident from the content of several posthumously published texts (e.g., Freire, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 2004, 2007). One aspect of Freire’s work on teaching that is sometimes somewhat neglected is his interest in higher education. Freire held university posts in Brazil following his return to his home country in 1980, and he also took up a number of short‐ term appointments as an academic visitor in other parts of the world. Among his corpus of published works is one specifically devoted to higher education (Escobar et al., 1994), but there are also references to teaching and learning in university settings in a number of his other books. In A Pedagogy for Liberation

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

522

Peter Roberts

(Freire & Shor, 1987), for example, Freire considers what, how, and why students in higher education should read, and in Politics and Education (Freire, 1998c) there is an essay on the tasks of the Catholic university. Freire has much to offer in considering the nature and purpose of the university and, more broadly, the role of the critical intellectual in society (Roberts, 2010; Torres, 1994). This chapter concentrates on one specific form of university teaching, namely, thesis supervision (or “advising” as Freire refers to it).1 There has been comparatively little attention paid to supervision by Freirean commentators. It is true that Freire did not address this topic at length, but there is an important, and seldom mentioned, chapter on the role of thesis and dissertation advisors in Letters to Cristina (Freire, 1996), and this provides the initial focus for discussion here. Freire, it is argued, offers a distinctive approach to supervision as a transformative teaching and learning process—an orientation that places him at odds with prevailing trends in higher education. Freire’s comments on supervision provide an avenue for elucidating and exploring other pivotal dimensions of his philosophy and pedagogy, and thus warrant closer scrutiny.

Freire on the Role of Thesis Advisors Freire published his book, Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work, in 1996. In its careful, systematic development of ideas, and in its blending of pedagogical theory with reflections on personal experience, it is among the best of his later works. It is perhaps the richest account we have of the formative part played by Freire’s earlier years in the development of his educational theory and practice. The title of the work comes from a request Freire received from his niece, Cristina: “I would like … for you to write me letters about your life, your childhood and, little by little, about the trajectory that led you to become the educator you are now” (Freire, 1996, p. 11). Consistent with this request, the book is structured in the form of 18 letters, each of which takes up a given theme or topic. The 16th letter addresses questions relating to thesis supervision. It conveys some clear, practical points of advice for supervisors and thesis students while also inviting deeper reflection on key themes in Freire’s educational theory. The letter thus lends itself well to multiple readings. It might be taken up by those who are relatively new to the supervision process and read as a realistic account of what they can or should expect of themselves and the candidates with whom they work. Or, it might serve as a prompt for a wider discussion of the ontological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions of educational experience. Or, it could provide an entry point for comparing Freire’s approach to teaching and learning with other competing views. Freire argues that the role of the advisor should not be one of “programming the candidate’s intellectual life or establishing rules about what the latter may or may not write about” (Freire, 1996, p. 167); instead, the assistance that is provided should enable candidates to help themselves. Candidates need to listen carefully to their supervisors, but the reverse is also true. Supervisors should communicate in an “open and friendly manner” with students, both supporting them and challenging them (p. 167). The supervisor–student relationship is,

Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach

Freire maintains, “more than a strictly intellectual one and must be warm, respectful, and capable of creating a climate of mutual trust rather than curbing the advisee’s production” (p. 167). Providing helpful answers to questions and making useful suggestions for reading are important, but these forms of assistance should also encourage the candidate to ask further questions. The “comfort” furnished by the attitude of the supervisor toward the student should not be too comfortable; students must also feel slightly restless. This, as Freire sees it, is a fundamental part of the process of learning through life: “Quietude cannot be a permanent state. Only within a relationship that is agitated can quietude make sense. Life is a constant search that cannot, even when writing theses and dissertations, be immobilized” (p. 167). The advisor’s role, Freire counsels, is “to discuss—as many times as may be necessary within the limits of the advisor’s time—the development of the advisee’s research and ideas; the depth of the advisee’s language; the difficulties the advisee faces with the topic, the bibliography, or the very act of reading and studying; and the loyalty with which the advisee writes about topics or people” (Freire, 1996, pp. 167–168). Supervisors can, Freire notes, also point candidates to lesser known sources and assist them in meeting other intellectuals in their field of study. Advisors have a right—indeed, a duty—to explain how and why they disagree with candidates when points of difference arise, but they do not have a right to impose their views on those with whom they work (p. 168). In keeping with his wider educational theory, Freire argues against both authoritarianism (the imposing of one’s will on another, with the intent to impede questioning and debate) and permissiveness (where an “anything goes” attitude prevails). Good supervisors undertake their work with humility, recognizing that they both teach and learn from the students with whom they work (p. 169). They motivate and inspire thesis candidates, enabling them to draw the best from themselves. But this takes effort and commitment on the part of the candidate, and where this is lacking, the supervisor also has a responsibility to comment on this (p. 168). The seriousness of the task must be emphasized; work on a doctoral or master’s thesis is a major undertaking, requiring long hours, concentration, and persistence in the face of difficulties. Freire encourages those completing theses to engage regularly and extensively in both reading and writing (1996, p. 169). These activities stimulate and inform each other. Forming the habit of writing daily, even if it is not always on a topic directly relevant to the thesis, is important. Similarly, if a scholar is to write well, reading widely and well is crucial. Freire values clarity and elegance in written expression; there is, he says, “no conflict between writing with rigor and writing beautifully” (p. 170). Beauty can be found not just in the world of art but in academic work, and those who engage in the latter can gain a great deal from reading not just the canonical texts in their field but also the writings of novelists, poets, and biographers (p. 170). There should, in Freire’s view, be little difference between a good book and a good thesis; both, it might be said, should have a certain aesthetic appeal, each in a manner appropriate to the task at hand. Freire acknowledges that writing is not easy, but if we are prepared to put in sufficient effort, over a sustained period of time, it is possible to experience genuine joy through the act of writing (p. 172).

523

524

Peter Roberts

Having opportunities to share thesis ideas with others, including both other students and other advisors, can also be of great value in sharpening one’s thinking, improving one’s writing, and better understanding what one is reading. Freire recalls a process he established with a colleague at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sāo Paulo that involved meeting with graduate students to discuss their theses. The meetings were 3 hr long, with a brief break for coffee, and involved several related steps. Students would first speak about how they came into the program of study and would comment on their evolving topic areas. These verbal reports would then be debated, with questions and suggestions from others. Freire suggests that discussing one’s work in this way contributes directly to the writing of the thesis: “Talking about what one intends to write and what one has already written about helps one to better write what one has not written and rewrite what has not been finished” (p. 171). The process Freire and his colleague instituted had other benefits as well. It fostered curiosity among participants in the discussions, and it allowed students to see things in their work that hadn’t been visible without the feedback provided by others. These encounters encouraged candidates to consider new perspectives and to build on their existing views. Even where key ideas were retained, the reasons for doing so could become clearer (pp. 171–172). The supervisor’s role is not limited to providing academic advice; there is also a strong element of pastoral care built into the process, when examined from a Freirean perspective. Good supervisors come to care deeply for the students with whom they work. Occasionally, the relationship between a supervisor and a student may become strained. Compatibility between supervisors and candidates is vital, and when this breaks down, action to address the situation must be taken. Freire is adamant that both parties should have the right, at any time, to choose to discontinue their working relationship (p. 168). Supervision is demanding for both the advisor and the advisee. Advisees must be realistic about what they know and do not know (p. 172) and sometimes they are unable to see this without the guidance of a good supervisor. Equally, it might be inferred from Freire’s comments, supervisors are not always able to see some of their own weaknesses until they begin the process of working with a student. In the end, both the supervisor and the candidate need to recognize and value the ethical character of the relationship into which they enter, acknowledging each other’s humanity. The advisee, like the advisor, is a being who “feels, suffers, dreams, knows, and can know more” (p. 172). For the supervision process to work well, for both supervisors and students, dedication and commitment must be combined with courtesy, respect, and a willingness to listen and learn.

Supervision in Contemporary University Environments Freire’s advice to supervisors and students in this piece relies upon a construct of the human being, that is, in many respects, out of kilter with the spirit of our times. In most countries of the Western world, for more than three decades, the ideology of neoliberalism, in all its permutations, has played a dominant role in structuring economic and social change (Flew, 2014; Harvey, 2005; Torres, 2009).

Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach

Neoliberals construe human beings as essentially self‐centered, self‐interested individual choosers and consumers (Roberts & Peters, 2008). When applied in university contexts, this way of thinking suggests that decisions about what and how to study will be made principally on economic grounds. Students will seek to secure an advantage for themselves in competing for jobs and salaries in a competitive world. They will in most cases want to complete their studies as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. Their relationship with a supervisor is based on a business model: the student pays fees to the university and expects services to be provided in return for this investment. The institutional expression of neoliberal ideas in the university can be seen in the philosophy and practices of managerialism. There is an emphasis on performance, efficiency, and revenue generation, with clear, hierarchical divisions between “management” and other academics in the university. Institutions compete vigorously with each other for students, reputational advancement, and sources of income. Knowledge is viewed as a commodity; as something to be traded, with “sellers” and “buyers.” The buyers can include students (local, national, and international), the government, policy bodies, foundations, or corporations. Large sums of money are devoted to marketing in order to create distinctive institutional brands. Supervisors are important in this model to the extent that they allow the institution to meet its “key performance indicators” (KPIs), and they are expected to minimize the wastage of time in their efforts. They are encouraged to take on top students who will create few “complications” and finish on time. Full‐time candidates are strongly preferred over part‐timers. “Performance” is measured and monitored via a bureaucratic process that involves the completion of forms, the calculation of workloads (often based largely on student numbers and/or dollars generated), and completion rates. Full fee‐paying international students, often sponsored by their governments or employers, are favored, provided such candidates do not end up creating other demands on time and resources (e.g., in developing the required abilities in the language of instruction). In some contexts, thesis students become sources of revenue in other ways. They generate funds for institutions not just in the fees they pay (and in any government subsidy that accompanies these fees) but also in performance‐based research funding schemes. New Zealand’s performance‐based research fund (PBRF), for example, provides the main mechanism for distributing government funds for research in universities and other tertiary education organizations (see further, Roberts, 2013). Funding is determined on the basis of performance in three areas. First, individual academics are required to submit “Evidence Portfolios” (EPs) and these are evaluated by panels of their peers. Second, institutions and organizations are rewarded for the amount of external research income they generate. The third element of the funding framework is research degree completions. This third component is the one that is most obviously linked with the work of thesis students and their supervisors but not exclusively so. In medicine, engineering and the sciences, research is often conducted in teams, with projects that are sustained by significant external funding. Thesis students may be “attached” to these projects, and their topics may even be determined for them by other more senior researchers in the project team. In the EPs completed

525

526

Peter Roberts

by individual academics too, thesis students may play a role in boosting ratings and income. Academics are sometimes strongly encouraged to demand the right to be listed as coauthors on any thesis‐related publications completed by the students they supervise. This practice increases the number of research “outputs” in an academic EP and, other things being equal, gives it a better chance of achieving a higher rating. Freire regarded neoliberal ideas, policies, and practices as deeply problematic (see Freire, 1994, 1997a, 1998a, 2004, 2007). The ontology underpinning Freirean pedagogy, including the process of supervision, differs markedly from the concept of the individual that lies at the heart of neoliberalism. For Freire, although we may sometimes be driven self‐interest, this need not always be the case; we can, and do, seek to serve the interests of others rather than simply satisfying our own wants. Supervision is a prime example of a relationship structured by an ethos of service to others. The supervisor needs to be humble, committed, caring, and attentive. Love is a key element of the supervision process, as it is for Freirean education more generally (Darder, 2002; Fraser, 1997). Freire speaks of love for the students with whom teachers work, as well as love for both the object and task of studying. For supervisors, the focus is on doing everything that is necessary, within the constraints of a given institutional environment, to enable the student to flourish, both intellectually and as an ethical human being. This entails careful observation of changes in the student’s demeanor, study habits, written work, and verbal contributions to thesis discussions. Subtle shifts can be important. Often the significance of a remark or a gesture or a sentence will become clear only following several days of reflection. The work of a thesis supervisor, in this sense, never goes away; it continues beyond the hours for which the supervisor is paid and it cannot be neatly contained within rigid workload models. Supervision requires a form of sacrifice on the part of the supervisor, not just in terms of placing the needs of the student ahead of his or her own career advancement, but also in the emotional energy that must be committed to the process. Freire (1985) stresses the demanding nature of study but he would also be quick to admit that supervision can be physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. Supervisors must walk a fine line between giving too much and giving too little. They want to assist students in every way possible, through all the highs and lows associated with the writing of a thesis, but must also stay sufficiently healthy to be able to continue to provide such assistance in the future. Under managerialism, the relationship between a supervisor and a student is regarded as a form of contract; for Freire, it is much more complicated than that. Through supervision, both students and their supervisors can learn to better appreciate the connectedness between different elements of educational experience. From a Freirean point of view, we can understand ourselves adequately as individuals only when see ourselves as part of a wider context, where the roles played by others are pivotal in shaping our thoughts, feelings, and actions. We are social beings rather than isolated individuals, conditioned (though never fully determined: Freire, 1997a) by the circumstances in which we live, work and communicate. Neoliberalism has played a dominant role in shaping tastes, wants, and patterns of consumption, but one of the aims of education at the master’s or doctoral level should be to encourage the interrogation of everyday experience.

Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach

Freire was concerned with the formation of critical subjects, not merely consuming subjects. He wanted students, and their supervisors, to seek to know and not merely to perform. Supervision is a profoundly important intervention in the life of another person; when the relationship works as Freire believes it should, neither the supervisor nor the student will ever be quite the same again. Often students will stay in touch with their supervisors for years or decades after their theses have been completed. But even where this is not the case, the influence of the supervisor on the life of the student will continue to be felt, in the way the student approaches problems, deals with ethical dilemmas, and relates to others. If the primary motivation of the supervisor is to help the student, advice and guidance in publishing from the thesis can be given freely and fully with no expectation of coauthorship. Freire’s position, it will be recalled, is that advisors should be trying to help advisees to help themselves. Supervisors can assist students by reading and reviewing their draft papers, suggesting possible journals, and helping them to understand and negotiate the rigors of peer review. They can draw on their knowledge, experience, and standing with peers in supporting and guiding candidates as they seek to present their work at conferences and publish their thesis work in book form. They can advise on the preparation of proposals and recommend the student’s work to colleagues who serve as series editors for international academic book publishers. These forms of assistance can be seen as part of the ethical commitment the advisor makes to the advisee in taking on the task of supervision. The “reward” for the supervisor is the sense of quiet satisfaction that comes from seeing the student succeed, not just in his or her publishing endeavors but also in his or her development as a scholar and as a person. A supervisor committed to Freirean principles will want to value and promote the intellectual independence and integrity of the student, and the guidance provided after a thesis has been completed will often be as important in reinforcing this goal as the advice given during the period of enrolment. Underpinning Freire’s advice to supervisors and students is his ideal of humanization. Humanization as Freire understands it is a process of praxical transformation: a critical, dialogical synthesis of reflection and action (Freire, 1972a). The task of completing a thesis, in the manner described by Freire in Letters to Cristina, has the potential to be transformative in exactly this way. Freire did not intend humanization to be conceived in linear or mechanical terms. Humanization is a dynamic, often unpredictable, always changing, moment by moment process. Its constituent elements are not “steps” to be taken in a fixed order or requirements that can be “ticked off ” in a kind of performance review. The connections between reflection and action are much more dynamic and fluid than that. The defining features of humanization may be universal—in his later writings, Freire spoke of a “universal human ethic” (Freire, 1998a) —but they manifest themselves in distinct ways in different contexts. Good supervisors encourage students to reflect deeply at all stages in their thesis journey, whether this is in conceiving of a problem and developing research questions, reviewing the literature, gathering data, or developing an argument. But this reflection must be intertwined with the active disciplines of writing and speaking. Both the reflective and the active elements of humanization are evident in the critical, purposeful dialogue Freire sees as essential to education. Dialogue for Freire is not aimless,

527

528

Peter Roberts

casual conversation; rather, it has a sense of structure and direction (Freire & Shor, 1987; Roberts, 2000). In a supervision relationship, then, moments for ­dialogue—whether in formally scheduled meetings, or in e‐mail exchanges, or at conferences, or in informal discussions—must be regarded as of the utmost importance for the overall progress of the thesis project. The need for structure, rigor, and direction in Freirean dialogue does not mean thesis conversations have to adhere to rigid rules or procedures, nor should it become formulaic or predictable. Among the virtues Freire espoused was openness, and this has particular relevance in the realm of supervision. One of Freire’s principal objections to neoliberalism was its excessive certainties (Roberts, 2003a, 2010). Neoliberals may look favorably on the idea of open markets but there is, Freire felt, also a profound sense of closure in neoliberal discourses. There is a certainty that neoliberal global capitalism is the only legitimate mode of production, the only reasonable form of social and economic organization, and that any talk of alternatives is not to be taken seriously. Freire was open in declaring his support for democratic socialism, but was aware that reference to socialist ideals would be dismissed as old fashioned, utopian (in a pejorative sense), and unhelpful in our current age (cf. Freire, 1998a, 2004, 2007; Liu, 2014; Roberts & Freeman‐Moir, 2013). As Freire saw it, neoliberalism was characterized by a certain smugness and fatalism. Neoliberals lacked both an appreciation for history and a willingness to question the ideas implicit in their ways of thinking and acting. Such attitudes, he argued, have no place in education. In completing a thesis, openness is necessary if a spirit of investigation is to be brought to life. Dialogue between supervisors and students can play a vital role in nurturing this approach to inquiry. Openness, like freedom, is always exercised within ­limits—some of which are generated by supervisors and students themselves, others of which are externally imposed. A supervision meeting may have an “agenda” (imparting a sense of structure and purpose), but neither the supervisor nor the student can know quite where their discussion will take them. There must be sufficient freedom within a dialogical situation for surprises to arise, with differing viewpoints being given adequate space to interact with each other. There is no “perfect” or “pure” space for dialogue, and the forms of authority that structure a thesis discussion must be acknowledged and considered (cf. Freire & Shor, 1987). Students and supervisors must share enough in common to be able to communicate, to empathize, to understand (in some fashion) but it is their differences that provide the motor for dialogue (cf. Freire, 1997a, 1997b; Freire & Macedo, 1993, 1995; Roberts, 2003b; Rozas Gomez, 2007). The same point applies to the works the student reads and reflects upon in completing a thesis. Without some critical points of difference, there is no basis for an active, productive “conversation” with other authors, past and present; nor can the student make the original contribution to knowledge that is expected for a doctoral thesis. For Freire, uncertainty, although sometimes debilitating, can also be a source of hope, and this can sustain rather than impede a student who is genuinely open to allowing the process of investigation to do its work in forming him or her as a scholar. Thus, although Freire stresses the need for preparation and planning on the part of the student (and the supervisor), this is not in order to close off the possibility of a thesis dialogue

Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach

developing in a new, unanticipated direction; rather, this prior work is necessary if both the student and the supervisor are to be ready to make the most of such moments when they arise. In contemporary universities, pressure is frequently exerted to get students through their studies as quickly and painlessly as possible. Freire understood that part of the value of studying seriously, and of supervising students who are doing so, lies in the difficulties posed by thesis work. Completing a thesis, Freire would have said, is not meant to be easy; it should demand something extraordinary of both the student and the supervisor. Pain and suffering are thus not necessarily to be avoided at all costs; they may have something worthwhile to contribute to the learning process and to the quality of the scholarship (cf. Chen, 2016; Roberts, 2016). Struggling with an idea, wrestling with it, can be a process that takes hours, days, weeks, or even years, but despite the discomfort created by this process, it can sometimes prove to be crucial in seeing a thesis through to completion. It is not at all uncommon for a student to experience a “breakthrough” in thinking near the very end of his or her studies, realizing at last what he or she had been grappling with, had been trying to say, all along. What is not always recognized when such moments occur is that they have become possible only because of countless smaller moments of persistent, patient, seemingly fruitless effort. The supervisor cannot simply “plant” the ideas into the student and expect him or her to emerge with the same sense of clarity, understanding, and fulfillment that emerges from long hours of disciplined, but open‐minded, reading, writing, and dialogue. Freire’s ideas on advising form but a small part of his overall educational philosophy. It is important not to forget where Freire came from, the challenges he had to face as a teacher and social activist, and the situations of oppression with which he was dealing. Freire’s overt linking of education with politics is one of the distinguishing features of his pedagogy (Kirylo, 2011; Mayo, 1999, 2004; McLaren, 1999; Morrow & Torres, 2002; Roberts, 2000; Rossatto, 2005; Schugurensky, 2011; Torres, 1993, 1998). Supervising a thesis in the comfort of a university office might seem to be a world away from the streets of a Brazilian favela. Freire’s work must be read holistically and it must be contextualized. For Freire, however, there was no intellectual or political divide between his adult literacy work and his advice for supervisors and thesis students. For Freire, the realm of “politics” isn’t confined to the actions of politicians, or to social movements that seek to overthrown oppressive regimes, or to struggles between groups with opposing views on the economy or the environment. It is present in everything we do as educationists (Freire & Shor, 1987; Roberts, 2010; Shor, 1993). The political nature of a supervision process will be evident in how supervisors and students understand themselves as human beings, how they interact with each other, and what they hope to gain from the process. It is there in the smallest moments of discussion, investigation, joy, and despair. Both students and supervisors feel the weight of institutional politics in the bureaucratic demands placed upon them and in the implicit messages they receive about the comparative value of different forms of knowledge. Supervision agreements and university rules now frequently have clauses about “intellectual property,” reinforcing the view that knowledge is a commodity subject

529

530

Peter Roberts

to the same laws that govern commerce outside the walls of the academy. The idea that a university can “own” the knowledge created through a thesis investigation would have been repugnant to Freire. In marketized, managerial university environments, there is an increasing separation of “knowers” from “knowledge,” as if the latter can exist without the former. “Knowledge” ends up being reduced to nothing more than information or skills. In this form, it is can be more readily quantified, measured and sold. The value of knowledge becomes nothing more than the price of knowledge—whether this is the cost of enrolling in a doctoral degree, or of supporting the students who do so, or of buying and selling what is produced through the thesis process. Freire’s work makes is plain that it is the immeasurable benefits of knowledge and knowing that are often of most value. Completing a thesis not only creates new knowledge; it also creates new knowers. “Knowing” for Freire is not merely a matter of comprehending or transmitting or trading information. It is not a “method” (cf. Macedo, 1997; Roberts, 2000). It is a mode of being. Seeking to know through the in‐depth investigative work of a thesis transforms our view of ourselves as knowers. This effect can be experienced and observed but to attempt to quantify it, or to measure it or sell it, is to devalue the knowledge created and dehumanize the knowers involved in this creative act. Freire’s approach to thesis supervision suggests a necessary, and potentially liberating, tension between creativity and discipline. Neither thesis supervisors nor the students with whom they work should be too tightly wedded to traditional forms of scholarly inquiry and research. One of the essential tasks of the university is to challenge accepted wisdom and to foster what we might refer to as intellectual bravery. It takes courage to push against received views, and a thesis, especially at the doctoral level, provides an opportunity to forge new ground, theoretically, methodologically, educationally, and politically. Undertaking serious study is always a risky process. In some cases, where the ideas being developed provide a direct and demonstrable challenge or threat to those who occupy powerful positions in a society, the risks may even be life threatening. But even where the risks are not of this kind, ethical and existential dilemmas and difficulties must be negotiated. As students probe every more deeply, think ever more critically about themselves and the world, they open themselves up to the possibility of new forms of life where what had hitherto been enjoyed or loathed or ignored may have to be renegotiated. Creativity and courage can also be fostered in the way material is presented in a thesis or defended in an examination. But in these contexts, as in other educational situations, discipline is also necessary. Discipline needs to come from both the supervisor and the student. Discipline is needed in moderating passion with reason, in completing tasks despite myriad other demands, and in realizing that the desire to say and do something “new” also requires a respectful acknowledgement of what has gone before.

Conclusion Freire’s 16th chapter in his Letters to Cristina is deceptively simple in its structure, style, and substance. On the surface, it might appear as if Freire is merely offering straightforward practical advice, with little reference to matters of theory or politics.

Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach

It might be claimed that although there are some valuable “tips” in the letter for new supervisors and their students, those already familiar with the ­process of supervision will learn nothing new. Such a response would arguably fail to heed the advice that is apparently so well known. The clean, concise, uncluttered prose adopted in the piece is itself an illustration of exemplary writing, and in that sense can teach those who read it. And even if much of the guidance Freire provides is accepted implicitly by experienced academics, this knowledge is not always articulated explicitly; nor is it always organized so coherently and cohesively. In the academic world, it is easy to mistake obscurantism, ambiguity, and confusion for sophistication and depth in understanding, and to be too quickly dismissive of work that seems to “state the obvious.” Freire is an example of an intellectual who strived to convey ideas in a manner that was simple but not simplistic. Working to reach this standard in written communication is a worthy goal for all academics, whatever their level or experience in the university system. If time is taken to meditate carefully on Freire’s letter, it becomes evident that behind it stands a complex ontological, epistemological, and ethical framework. Supervision can form part of the wider process of humanization, for both advisors and advisees. It can play an important role in allowing both supervisors and students to develop a deeper, more critical understanding of themselves and the social world in which they live. Thesis work can push the boundaries of knowledge and encourage a closer examination of what had previously been taken for granted. Supervision never exists in a vacuum; it always takes place in a context shaped by dominant structures, policies, and ideas. At the time at which Freire was composing his letters to Cristina, neoliberalism provided the dominant policy narrative, and its influence was already being felt in universities. In the succeeding two decades, this influence has, if anything, become even more marked. Younger academics and thesis students in many contexts will never have experienced anything else: the logic and languages of marketization and competition, accountability and performance, measurement and management, are the only forms of institutional life they have known. Freire’s approach to supervision provides a clear alternative to this way of thinking about the nature and purpose of university life. That such an alternative exists is grounds for ongoing investigation, dialogue, and hope.

Note 1 In this chapter, the terms “supervisor” and “advisor” are used interchangeably.

The terms “student,” “candidate,” and “advisee” are also treated as equivalents.

References Bee, B. (1980). The politics of literacy. In R. Mackie (Ed.), Literacy and revolution: The pedagogy of Paulo Freire (pp. 39–56). London: Pluto Press. Chen, R. H. (2016). Freire and a pedagogy of suffering: A moral ontology. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Singapore: Springer.

531

532

Peter Roberts

Darder, A. (2002). Reinventing Paulo Freire: A pedagogy of love. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Escobar, M., Fernandez, A. L., Guevara‐Niebla, G. with Freire, P. (1994). Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Flew, T. (2014). Six theories of neoliberalism. Thesis Eleven, 122(1), 49–71. Fraser, J. W. (1997). Love and history in the work of Paulo Freire. In P. Freire, J. W. Fraser, D. Macedo, T. McKinnon, & W. T. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 175–199). New York: Peter Lang. Freire, P. (1972a). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Freire, P. (1972b). Cultural action for freedom. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Freire, P. (1976). Education: The practice of freedom. London: Writers and Readers. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education. London: Macmillan. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1996). Letters to Cristina: Reflections on my life and work. London: Routledge. Freire, P. (1997a). Pedagogy of the heart. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1997b). A response. In P. Freire, J. W. Fraser, D. Macedo, T. McKinnon, & W. T. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 303–329). New York: Peter Lang. Freire, P. (1998a). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Freire, P. (1998b). Politics and education. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. Freire, P. (1998c). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Freire, P. (2004). Pedagogy of indignation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Freire, P. (2007). Daring to dream. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Freire, P., & Faundez, A. (1989). Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. London: Routledge. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1993). A dialogue with Paulo Freire. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 169–176). London: Routledge. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1995). A dialogue: culture, language, and race. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 377–402. Freire, P., & Shor, I. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation. London: Macmillan. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kirylo, J. D. (2011). Paulo Freire: The man from Recife. New York: Peter Lang. Lankshear, C. (1993). Functional literacy from a Freirean point of view. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 90–118). London: Routledge. Liu, K. (2014). Conscientization and the cultivation of conscience. New York: Peter Lang.

Thesis Supervision: A Freirean Approach

Macedo, D. (1997). An anti‐method pedagogy: A Freirean perspective. In P. Freire, J. W. Fraser, D. Macedo, T. McKinnon, & W. T. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 1–9). New York: Peter Lang. Mayo, P. (1999). Gramsci, Freire and adult education: Possibilities for transformative action. London: Zed Books. Mayo, P. (2004). Liberating praxis: Paulo Freire’s legacy for radical education and politics. New York: Praeger. McLaren, P. (1999). A pedagogy of possibility: Reflecting upon Paulo Freire’s politics of education. Educational Researcher, 28, 49–56. Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas: Critical pedagogy and transformative social change. New York: Teachers College Press. Roberts, P. (2000). Education, literacy, and humanization: Exploring the work of Paulo Freire. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Roberts, P. (2003a). Pedagogy, neoliberalism and postmodernity: Reflections on Freire’s later work. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(4), 451–465. Roberts, P. (2003b). Epistemology, ethics and education: Addressing dilemmas of difference in the work of Paulo Freire. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22(2), 157–173. Roberts, P. (2010). Paulo Freire in the 21st century: Education, dialogue and transformation. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Roberts, P. (2013). Academic dystopia: Knowledge, performativity and tertiary education. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 35(1), 27–43. Roberts, P. (2016). Happiness, hope, and despair: Rethinking the role of education. New York: Peter Lang. Roberts, P., & Freeman‐Moir, J. (2013). Better worlds: Education, art, and utopia. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Roberts, P., & Peters, M. A. (2008). Neoliberalism, higher education and research. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Rossatto, C. (2005). Engaging Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of possibility: From blind to transformative optimism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Rozas Gomez, C. (2007). The possibility of justice: The work of Paulo Freire and difference. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 26, 561–570. Schugurensky, D. (2011). Paulo Freire. London: Continuum. Shor, I. (1993). Education is politics: Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter (pp. 25–35). London: Routledge. Taylor, P. V. (1993). The texts of Paulo Freire. Buckingham: Open University Press. Torres, C. A. (1993). From the Pedagogy of the Oppressed to A Luta Continua: The political pedagogy of Paulo Freire. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 119–144). London: Routledge. Torres, C. A. (1994). Introduction – Intellectuals and university life: Paulo Freire and higher education. In M. Escobar, A.L. Fernandez, & G. Guevara‐Niebla, with P. Freire, Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico (pp. 1–25). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Torres, C. A. (1998). Introduction: The political pedagogy of Paulo Freire. In P. Freire (Ed.), Politics and education (pp. 1–15). Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. Torres, C. A. (2009). Education and neoliberal globalization. New York: Routledge.

533

535

29 Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning1 Peter Mayo

Introduction In current educational discourse, one would be hard pressed to find a more prevalent term than lifelong learning (henceforth LL). It constitutes a key concept for policy guidelines in several countries and regions. The European Union adopted LL as its key concept in policy guidelines for its member states especially when issuing its memorandum on lifelong learning (CEC, 2000). In the memorandum’s consultation process with different stakeholders and across different “epistemic communities” in the EU’s fold (Borg & Mayo, 2005), such as “working groups,” the names of several key education thinkers were bandied about. Included are those who lend their name to EU projects, such as Jan Amos Komensky (John Amos Comenius), Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, and noblesse oblige, as far as adult education goes, Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig—indeed, all European figures and Central or Northern European ones at that. It would however come as no surprise to identify one Southern and non‐European thinker whose name would feature in these discussions—Paulo Freire.2 The question that arises is: should Paulo Freire’s name and concepts be dragged into the c­ urrent discourse on LL in Europe as promoted by the EU? As I argue in this chapter, my answer would be “No” if the version of LL is the hegemonic one reflecting the reductionist, economy‐oriented discourse focused exclusively on “employability” on neoliberal lines, anathema to a Freirean conception of education and learning.3 The answer would, on the other hand, be an unequivocal “Yes” if the notion adopted is associated with an alternative discourse eschewing strictly corporate business interpretations and that conceives of LL as an all‐embracing mobilizing force for change and revitalization of the public sphere and Planet Earth.

The Concept’s Progenitor In academic year 1979–1980, Professor Kenneth Wain introduced me, as well as many other prospective teachers at the University of Malta, to the concept of lifelong education (LE). He delivered an entire study‐unit centering on this ­subject; he had made this his area of research specialization at the time, resulting The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

536

Peter Mayo

in an acclaimed book (Wain, 1987). LE struck me as being a novel way of looking at the entire complexity of education from “cradle to the grave.” It made me appreciate the variety of other sources of learning that lie within our midst, nonformal education in particular. Because this was a teacher education course (read: school‐teacher education course), emphasis was placed on conceiving of the school as an important agency to prepare students as lifelong learners capable of taking charge of their own learning at present and in future. Little did I anticipate then that its variant, LL, was to become arguably the most widely diffused term in education and training today, acquiring the status of the key concept for educational policy formulation in many countries and regions. It was also this same professor who introduced me to the work of Paulo Freire in another study unit in the course, an area of study that I later (1986–1988) took up in greater depth at the University of Alberta, Canada, under the guidance of the current volume editor and some of his close colleagues (Mayo, 2014).

The UNESCO‐Driven Concept of LE LL derives, with a significant change in its ideological basis, from the older concept, LE. LE had been prominent for quite some time in the education literature but UNESCO certainly gave it a strong impetus in the 1970s. Indeed, it became UNESCO’s “master concept” for education at the time (Wain, 1987). A Lifelong Education Unit, directed by one of the concept’s major exponents, Ettore Gelpi, was established at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. LE was ­integral to UNESCO’s efforts to promote education worldwide, especially in low‐income countries, some of which had only recently become formally “­independent” seeking to shrug off the shackles of centuries of “direct colonialism.” The impossibility of ensuring the constructions of schools for everyone in each of these countries (recall how Tanzania, under President Julius K. Nyerere, did not provide universal primary education until 1977—Mayo, 2001) must have prompted UNESCO to foreground different forms of education including indigenous ­education (Semali, 2009) and other forms of non‐formal education, including popular education in Latin America (Kane, 2001; La Belle, 1986; Torres, 1990). UNESCO had a decidedly “Third World” orientation then and the concept of LE led to further UNESCO literature, and that produced by collaborating agencies, highlighting different forms of education in the majority world (e.g., Bhola, 1984; Lind & Johnston, 1986). This was a time of interesting developments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with Cuba’s revolution still going strong, backed by the USSR that then constituted an important force in the United Nations (UN) and UNESCO, the Grenadian and Nicaraguan revolutions and the postindependence educational projects in Tanzania under Nyerere (Mayo, 2001; Mhina & Abdi, 2009). This was a time when countries in Africa and elsewhere released themselves from Portugal’s colonial hold, also indirectly l­iberating the colonial power in the process. The events brought an end to the dictatorial regime in Portugal and served as a catalyst for the country’s transition to civilian rule—in liberating themselves, as Freire would put it, the oppressed liberated their oppressor. UNESCO played a key role in Portugal’s education during this transition period (Guimaraes, Lucio‐Villegas, & Mayo, 2017; Melo & Benavente, 1978).

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

In this context, the association between LE and Paulo Freire was a very plausible one, even though Freire himself never systematically adopted the term and did not belong to that coterie of writers, on different aspects of the concept, who gravitated around UNESCO, writers such as R.H. Dave from India, Bogdan Suchodolski from Poland, the already mentioned Ettore Gelpi from Italy, Arthur J. Cropley from Australia, and Paul Lengrand from Quebec, to name but a few. The range of political philosophical orientations was broad enough to incorporate aspects of liberal philosophy, including scientific humanism, of which UNESCO’s then Director General, Julian Huxley was an exponent, radical Marxist humanism and existential‐Marxism. In Kenneth Wain’s words, this movement “had a left‐wing, humanistic, democratic core, and concerned itself with individual growth and social development” (Wain, 2004, p. 86). The “Third World” orientation of UNESCO and use of the concept often made Freire a point of reference in some of the literature, especially the first wave of writings around LE. The key text here was Learning to Be (Faure et al., 1972). Education, in its normative sense of providing “worthwhile” knowledge, can, according to this text, enable persons to become beings in process, “incomplete” beings in the process of becoming in “an unending process of completion and learning” (Faure et al., 1972, p. 157). The evolutionary conception of moving toward a learning society, or the idea of people as being and becoming rather than as they are, must have echoed Freire’s notion, as expressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, of a person’s becoming more (ser mas) and the statement that the ontological vocation of human beings is to become “more fully human” (Freire, 1970, 1993, p. 44). The latter formulation is criticized nowadays for its inherent essentialism. The Faure Report regarded nations as having the potential to become “learning societies” (Faure et al., 1972, p. 263) conceived of as futuristic and utopian (see Faure et al., 1972, pp. 163–164). As with Freire’s notion of “becoming more fully human,” this notion of the learning society was decried for providing a very optimistic and totalizing view of a “common humanity” in which difference is subsumed under a single model, with a common destiny beckoning (Wain, 1987, p. 230). Kenneth Wain (1987, p. 230) however writes about a second wave of writers on LE. These were more pragmatic in orientation, focusing on what is rather than what ought to be. Ettore Gelpi was arguably the major representative of this second wave of writers gravitating around UNESCO. The focus was more on empirical evidence of how LE is played out in communities with their various cultures in different political and economic scenarios. Put simply, the argument goes: LE and Learning Societies already exist and the task is to identify the way LLE and Learning Societies occur in different contexts. My thinking is that lifelong education, fundamentally, belongs to the history of education of all countries; it is not therefore a new idea. It lies in the Chinese tradition, in Indian Buddhism; it lies within Greek philosophy and within the spirit of the European Renaissance. The real revolution today lies in the popular demand for lifelong education, not in the idea itself … (Gelpi, 1985a, p. 18) This leads to a more comparative approach, evident in Gelpi’s own work (Gelpi, 1985b, 2002), which spans, albeit through “armchair empiricism,” different

537

538

Peter Mayo

continents that he visited as a much traveled educationist. Latin America and its different forms of popular education feature prominently in Gelpi’s surveys. Gelpi is on record as having once asked the question: are there other Freires in the South? (Gelpi, 1999, p. 263). He obviously felt that an empirical approach to LE will foreground other thinkers and practitioners from the South to redress an imbalance in the international literature on the subject dominated by Northern writers.

Freire and UNESCO Although Freire never associated himself with the LE movement, the expansive version provided by UNESCO allowed scope for his ideas to form part of the LE discourse. His association with nonformal education, especially through his significant work among functionally illiterates in Angicos, enabling them to “read the word and the world” (Freire, 1995; Freire & Macedo, 1987), must have rendered him de rigueur for any discussion on the subject within the context of LLE. It was a different UN then to the one that has been operating since the fall of the Soviet Union; UNESCO’s policies reflected this. The UNESCO literacy award was achieved by entities responsible for some of the most left‐wing experiments in literacy education. The literacy award, sponsored by the USSR between 1970 and 1992, carried the name of Nadezhda Krupskaya Lenin, who, among other things, led the Soviet Union’s Adult Education Division and was deputy education commissar to Anatoly Lunacharsky. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, that award was no longer given. Freire himself was a recipient of a UNESCO award, although not the Krupskaya Prize: he received the 1986–1987 Peace Prize.4 Articles on or by him appeared in UNESCO publications such as Prospects, International Review of Education, and UNESCO Courier. In short, the Third World focus and expansive view of education promoted by UNESCO easily accommodated Freire’s ideas whose early Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society were published in English just 2 years ahead of Learning to Be. Both authors were major exponents of the kind of out‐of‐school‐ education (popular education and learning webs respectively) that appealed to UNESCO with its emphasis on the validation of nonformal education as part of LE for all. One dimension of learning given lip service in UNESCO’s discourse, however, is the collective. The LE literature, for the most part, underscored the idea of self‐ directed learning, projecting the notion of people capable of taking charge of their own learning. Only on rare occasions (R.H. Dave and Bogdan Suchodoloski provide the examples) has there been reference to the collective (Dave, 1976, p. 4). Yet the collective dimension of learning is an important aspect of Freire’s political–­ pedagogical approach. People liberate themselves not own their own but in concert with others, we are told in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970, 1993, pp. 85–86). Self‐directed learning has too much of an individualistic ring to it and it must have lent itself to the subsequent appropriation of the LLE discourse by entities (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [OECD] and the

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

EU), which had a much stronger influence on education policy making than UNESCO can ever have. Their stronger influence results from the structuring financial resources at their disposal—and this despite the fact that the EU is said to have, in Jackie Brine’s words (1999), a “still narrowly defined legal competency” in the area (p. 53). The EU can fund national and local projects on a large scale. As the old saying goes those “who pay the piper call the tune,” something UNESCO can never do, despite the laudable research projects and reports it commissions (e.g., Global Education Monitoring Reports, General Report on Adult Learning, and Education‐GRALE) in the hope of influencing policy at national, regional, or other levels. The OECD and EU seem to have had, at least in their original use of the concept, morphing it from LE into LL, “economic competitivity” intentions (Regmi, 2015, p. 133) rather than a broad humanistic view of education. In its July 2007 “Policy Brief,” the OECD makes no bones about its intentions, connecting LL with “human capital” (OECD, 2007). This coincided with a world scenario marked by the intensification of globalization entailing mobility of both labor and capital across different boundaries. The onset of neoliberal policies in different spheres of life led to education being conceived of mainly in vocational terms. In the EU’s case, education was meant to serve as a means of bringing nations together to pool their educational infrastructural resources for greater competitivity (Murphy, 1997, p. 363) and to develop the most powerful knowledge‐based economy (KBE) in the world. The intention was to render EU societies competitive in the face of the transnational and multinational corporations’ ability to reap the advantages of economies of scale through the expansion of international capital mobility. The first impulse to establish LL as the EU’s driving concept for learning came not from educationists or educators but from industrialists, members of the European Roundtable of Industrialists, with the publication of Education for Life: A European Strategy (Kairamo, 1989). This consisted, for the most part, of LL for the economy rather than of LL for engaging critically with it. Any link, tenuous though it might have been, between Freire and the idea of LE, is most likely to have been severed in this scenario. As far as Freire’s Latin American context goes, Rosa Maria Torres (2003) had argued that LL is very much a Westernized concept, which removes the focus from the role of adult basic education in the majority world’s development (Field, 2010, p. 91). As John Field (2010, p. 90) remarked, the connection between the modern concept of LL and the interests of the most industrially advanced countries, in the context of globalization, represents another significant shift from the old discourse of LE as promoted by UNESCO and the Faure Report, which, as I pointed out, was very much “majority world” or “Southern” influenced. Needless to say, we will occasionally note the odd reference to Freire in the contemporary LL discourse because it remains trendy to throw his name around in the latest in a long series of attempts to co‐opt his ideas, as with O Movimento Brasileiro de Alfabetização (MOBRAL, The Brazilian Literacy Movement), under the military dictatorship in Brazil that kept him away from his country in exile for 16 years, and more recently charter schools in the United States, some having the effrontery to name their schools after him. His name is used in the

539

540

Peter Mayo

same way, I would argue, that Swatch Watches and energy drinks use, and thus besmirch (by association), Che Guevara’s name—an insult to his revolutionary memory. In fact, more than anything else, Freire’s pedagogy is more in tune with attempts to provide critical progressive antidotes to the “technical‐rational/ employability fix” found in current hegemonic LL discourses. Freire’s ideas promote a view of learners as collective social actors as opposed to those who advocate the current mantra for LL based on “employability,” which, as Gelpi (2002) reminds us, does not mean employment. Freire’s ideas are also opposed to that of people reduced to two‐dimensional5 persons: producers and consumers, the latter ironically being the object of criticism by Bogdan Suchodolski (1976) in his specific use of the learning society concept: The concept of an “education‐centered society” promises to show the way out of the hopeless situation resulting from the “producing society” and the “consuming society.” Keeping the restraints and obligations imposed on society by production and consumption within rational boundaries, this new concept manifests the profound values of the human existence, thanks to an intensification of all human abilities and energies that further the development of the whole personality. (Suchodolski, 1976, p. 64) Although the emphasis, in the widespread hegemonic use of LL, is on learning for liquid life, as the recently deceased Zygmunt Bauman would put it in a critical vein (he criticized the EU’s LL discourse on these grounds—see Bauman, 2005, 2013), a life that lacks stability and is characterized by precariousness, Freire’s focus is on the broader political dimensions of learning to “read the word and the world.” This type of learning entails an engagement in critical literacy whereby, collectively with others, one helps unveil contradictions in the current society. This type of learning is an important step for people to exercise the “right to govern” in the context of sovereign citizenship, a far cry from what is regarded as hegemonic LL for “governmentality,” to adopt Foucault’s term, that is to say, people learning to be governed at a distance through self‐regulation (Olssen, 2006). Freire’s approach continues to make sense in a situation when the promises of conventional LL, regarding adequate employment, are constantly broken (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2010). Brown et al. (2010) challenge the conventional wisdom that more education will lead to greater individual and national prosperity. Drawing on a body of international research, they highlight the existing global competition for rewarding, middle‐class jobs. Arguing that there exists an auction for cut‐priced brainpower on the basis of a massive expansion in higher education worldwide, they point to emerging economies such as China and India as providing a new high‐skill, low‐wage workforce resulting in lucrative jobs being at a premium. The struggle for these jobs will leave many highly qualified people disappointed, suffering underemployment, precarious living, and possibly poverty (English & Mayo, 2012, p. 80). There is also the ideological mystification of a “jobs crisis” appearing as a “skills crisis” (Marshall, 1997). The onus is on the individual in a process of what has been termed “responsibilization” (see Leibenberg, Ungar, & Ikeda, 2015). Survival and well‐being become matters of individual rather than social responsibility,

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

hence the discursive shift from lifelong education, with education having a ­normative dimension, to lifelong learning. As Tuijnman and Boström (2002) argued, this discursive shift reduces the emphasis on structures and institutions and places the onus of responsibility onto the individual as a person at the center of the educational process who has to take charge of his/her own learning (pp. 102–103). The emphasis on “learning” suggests that it is not individuals who need to adapt to the institutions/agencies providing the teaching but it is the institutions and other agencies that must adapt to them. This change in emphasis, however, enables the concept to easily dovetail with the hegemonic view that education and social well‐being are the responsibility of the individual. This applies to other aspects of state provision, such as pensions, now becoming unsustainable. By implication, any failure in this regard is to be blamed not on the system but on the individual (Borg & Mayo, 2005, p. 207). The inference is that failure to invest in LL is an individual’s fault, which absolves the state of any responsibility in this regard—the responsibility of reneging on the “social contract” (see chapter 6 in Giroux & Searls Giroux, 2004). If the link between Freire and the old UNESCO literature would have been tenuous but plausible, any link with the later economy‐oriented and neoliberal variant of the concept, morphed into LL, is untenable. It would, in my book, be anathema to Freire or to anyone subscribing to a Freirean conception of education.

Alternative LL Freire strikes me as being most relevant to alternative democratic conceptions of LL with social justice as the goal in mind (see for instance Borg & Mayo, 2005; Martin, 2001; Wain, 2004; Williamson, 1998). In these conceptions, learning is recognized as a lifelong process, captured in Freire’s idea of persons engaged in the constant struggle to learn to come to terms with their contradictions. This is carried out with a view to generating transformative action—action intended to  enable one to confront one’s contradictions, to become less “unfinished”/ incomplete, less incoherent, as Freire put it a couple of years before he passed away. This emerges from the piece by Freire (1997) in Mentoring the Mentor but I would submit that it was always present in his work. It is implied in Freire’s exhortation, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, to recognize the presence of and to confront the “oppressor within”—the “oppressor consciousness” (the internalization of the oppressor’s image), echoing Hegel’s master–slave dialectic. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire had argued that, through a problem‐posing approach to education, human beings are conceived as persons engaged in a “process of becoming”; they are unfinished persons engaged in and with an “unfinished reality” (Freire, 1970, 1993, p. 84). Being central to his notion of “history as possibility,” the notion of “incompleteness” remains a key theme in his work and features in practically all of his later works, which include at least one essay, available in English translation, focusing on the topic (Freire, 1998, pp. 73–79). LL to counter incompleteness make sense in this context. It is LL that is broad in scope and based on a series of  ethical commitments to others. It is LL predicated on love for others, for

541

542

Peter Mayo

humanity and the rest of the cosmos, in a process whereby people see themselves rooted in, rather than apart from and ready to exploit, nature. This represents a significant departure from the anthropocentrism of his early work and images (see, for instance, the reproduced images in Freire, 1973). This approach to LL is underpinned by transformative learning on the lines of what Freire (1997) has called “unity in diversity.” He used the phrase to account for social difference and as part of a search for elements unifying the various subaltern groups in their struggle against oppression. One can build on this notion, also taken up by his followers and by Freire himself through the “thematic complexes” introduced to the “popular public schools” in São Paulo. Freire was education secretary in São Paulo’s municipal government in the late 1980s (Freire, 1993; O’Cadiz, Wong, & Torres, 1998; Torres, 1994) helping in the formulation of policies that gave rise to these schools. Ecological issues featured prominently among the generative themes, within the interdisciplinary curriculum, developed in these schools as part of the reform introduced by Freire and his associates (see O’Cadiz et al., 1998, pp. 152, 201). In light of all this, diversity would assume a broader meaning in a concept of LL marked by our connectedness to the ecosystem that sustains us, as opposed to the current state characterized by the technical‐industrial values of Western‐Eurocentric culture (O’Sullivan, 1999). One should therefore speak of the need for “unity in biodiversity” in this context (Mayo, 2004, p. 100). Freire’s collaborators and followers have taken this further through work in connection with the Earth Charter (Carta da Terra), a charter that recalls the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Instituto Paulo Freire [IPF], 2000, pp.  11–12), and sustainable development. One important work to be cited, in this context, is that by the Costa Rica‐based, Francisco Gutierrez and Cruz Prado (2000), the term Ecopedagogia being used in this case. It is also heartening to note that the Instituto Paulo Freire (IPF) in São Paulo, officially founded on September 1, 1992, has a program in ecopedagogy that contributes to the ­promotion of the construction of a planetary citizenship. All this lies in stark contrast to the soulless nature of a life centering on the vagaries and volatility of the market, where “clinical efficiency” becomes the prime concern. The notion of LL concomitant with Freire’s ideas would be one in which people are conceived as relational beings in harmony with the rest of the cosmos, as distinct from an industrially conditioned notion of LL whereby people are restricted to constantly (re)learning the skills to produce and consume without limits, actions that, needless to say, have repercussions for the survival of Planet Earth borrowed from future generations. As Gadotti (2016) argued “The World Bank and the European Union’s conception of Lifelong Education (read: LL, my insertion) points to a direction running counter to one that is conducive to a fair and sustainable manner of living. The aim of these bodies is the standardization, and not connectivity in difference, and individualism, not solidarity” (p. 9).6 The UN, in contrast, regards LL as an important vehicle for attaining its sustainable development goals. For LL to be meaningful in this urgent struggle it must be rescued from the reductionist, economic‐oriented trap in which it is currently finds itself, to be presented as broader in scope, embracing all forms of intrahuman and human–earth relations. Freire’s pedagogical politics would find a congenial

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

home in the wider conception of LL for sustainable development, certainly in tune with the writing and teaching of fellow Latin American, Pope Francis (2015). The relational aspect of LL, with its collective and “unity in diversity” dimensions, brings to mind social movements, often decried for being more focused on single specific issue politics than on a broader politics targeting the structural forces of oppression that span various differences. It is the task of confronting single issue politics with a broader politics that led Freire to use the phrase “unity in diversity” (Freire, 1997) in the first place. He was writing in response to contributors to the Mentoring the Mentor volume expressing their views from different social vantage points. The World Social Forum, emerging from his native Brazil, provided the right context for many of these movements to coalesce around an effort to confront neoliberal globalization as a powerful, all‐pervasive structuring force. Needless to say, Freire’s name and work were, and continue to be in the various social forums, constant and very apt sources of reference. Social movements appealed to Freire. Most of his books from the mid‐1980s onward attest to Freire’s recognition of the role of social movements as agents of change. His writings and interviews reveal how the emergence of the MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra—(Landless Peasant Movement) in Brazil and other movements elsewhere, including Europe, captured his imagination. He himself was part of, and indeed contributed to, a movement, the liberation theology movement, which strove for an important process of change, of radicalization, within the Catholic Church, an important institution in Latin America and beyond. He and his team at the Education Secretariat in São Paulo contributed to the emergence of a curriculum reform movement. MOVA‐SP (Stromquist, 1997) has also been described as a “federation of movements” (O’Cadiz et al., 1998, p. 57). Freire strove to bring social movements and state agencies together in São Paulo when education secretary there (see chapter 3 in O’Cadiz et al., 1998). Ironically, given Freire’s use of the phrase, O’Cadiz, Wong, and Torres quoted Moacir Gadotti as saying that “being tactically inside and strategically outside” the system was the stance adopted by social movements with respect to their relationship with the São Paulo Education Secretariat. They were wary of the state’s nature in this city, even, if in this particular case, the state was being represented by a progressive municipal administration (O’Cadiz et  al., 1998, p. 44) that however depended for its funding on a federal government under the control of the opposing party. This attitude, on the social movements’ part, did not deter the municipal government from striving to forge a collaborative partnership with them. As a founding member of the Partido Trabalhadores (PT—Workers’ Party), a party born, to a certain extent, from social movements, Freire also insisted that the party had to listen to and learn from social movements without trying to take them over. He is on record as having said: Today, if the Workers’ Party approaches the popular movements from which it was born, without trying to take them over, the party will grow; if it turns away from the popular movements, in my opinion, the party will wear down. Besides, those movements need to make their struggle politically viable. (Freire, in Escobar, Fernandez, &, Guevara‐Niebla, 1994, p. 40)

543

544

Peter Mayo

Working in the context of social movements implies an ongoing process of learning and relearning, formally, nonformally and mainly informally.7 Social movement learning provides an alternative form of LL with respect to the mainstream. This process of learning projects people not in two‐dimensional reductionist terms but primarily as social actors (Martin, 2001). It is to this type of LL that Freire appeals. This alternative concept of LL makes Freire relevant in view of the process of conscientização embedded in his approach to gaining critical distance from what people know to perceive things in a more critical light (praxis), thus seeing through the ideology of the prevalent socioeconomic system and working through the contradictions. This provides an antithetical view of LL based not on learning for the economy, with all the illusions of prosperity involved, but on engaging critically with it and society in general, understanding its underlying contradictions. Whereas the EU promotes digital and other functional literacies as its much valued new basic skills (see Message 1 of its memorandum on LL—CEC, 2000; Cedefop & Eurydice, 2001, p. 15), Freire promoted critical literacy, conspicuous by its absence in the EU discourse. This is most likely because it cannot be “measured,” certainly not according to the positivist mechanisms selected for this purpose. It is critical literacy that enables one to read and write (Taylor, 1993) the world as well as the word through the process of praxis, which enables one to stand back from the context one knows to see it in a more critical light. That this term is absent from the list of “new basic skills” promoted by the EU is revealing with regard to the transmission model inherent in this particular hegemonic notion of LL. A Freire inspired notion of LL would, to the contrary, be based on the use of skills not simply to function in the economy, important though this is, but to interpret and change it. This hearkens back to the old Socratic dictum, as reproduced by Plato in the Apologia, that an unexamined life is a life not worth living. Also not worth living is a life that does not allow people the possibility of collectively changing it and rewriting history in the process. Furthermore, this alternative Freirean process of LL is based on not simply engaging in individual solutions to anxieties deriving from current states of risk, liquidity, and precariousness, preventing people from planning long term, but on critically reading the world and identifying the social causes of such mental distress. LL includes learning to cope with emotional stress said to emerge from the brain’s chemical imbalances. What is not said, for all the talk of “get on your bike,” “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” or “invest in LL,” is that much anxiety is caused by the dysfunctional structuring capitalist forces shaping people’s lives. They generate a sense of insecurity and despair deriving from the current situation of austerity, precarious living, and short‐term arrangements (Cooper & Hardy, 2012, pp. 60, 61). Rather than LL treating symptoms, there appears to be a need for LL that provides a critical reading of the causes (see Mayo, 2017).

Transformative LL and the Politics of Hope Rather than simply antibiotics and other medicines, all part of the process of what Freire would call the “ideological accommodation” to the dysfunctional aspects of neoliberalism, what is required is social change for greater social

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

justice—the “consummation devoutly to be wished” in this regard. The kind of LL for this purpose, for which Freire’s pedagogical ideas are relevant, is one predicated on a conception of the world not as it is but as it can and should be from a social justice perspective. It is LL with a socially transformative edge that Freire helps inspire rather than the kind of neoliberal LL we encounter today with its reproductive function based on the problematic “Capitalist realism” (Fisher, 2009, p. 19) mantra that there is no alternative (TINA) to the present. To end on a positive note, reflecting a pedagogy and politics of hope (Freire, 1994), one must not regard such institutions as the EU as monolithic. Hegemonic structures contain, within their interstices, the spaces and possibilities for contestation and movement toward change. This is how hegemony works, never being complete and constantly in flux. The EU is no exception and so there are possibilities for those operating “in and against it” to bring a socially transformative edge into their LL work, worming their agendas into the programs available, being, once again, as Freire and other Brazilians would put it, “tactically inside and strategically outside” the system. What renders this even more possible in certain countries, albeit the larger European ones with their regional variations, is that there are different layers of mediation that a policy has to go through to reach the grassroots territory/site of practice: from Brussels itself, where different policy actors with different orientations are present in various EU epistemic communities, bringing their own values to bear on policy interpretation,8 to the national coordinating body, to the regional areas or territories, in Italy’s territorio sense, and to the municipalities. Lots of hybridization, transmutations, and appropriation, critical appropriation (it is hoped), can occur along the way. Much depends on the stance adopted by the gatekeepers concerned, some, in recent EU accession countries, proving more rigid than others, trying to be “holier than the Pope” (Mayo, 2017). The policy flow is, however, never straightforward. As with teachers and school leaders, who reinvent and mediate policy discourses in their specific sites of practice (Giroux, 1988), people entrusted with implementing policy can also “reinvent” them in their own specific contexts—all mediators in the process of cultural transmission. This should offer hope to those seeking to transform “in and against” a neoliberal‐driven system.

Notes 1 I draw in this chapter from the following works that I authored or coauthored:

Walters, Borg, Mayo, & Foley (2004), Mayo (2004), Borg & Mayo (2005), Mayo (2017), and Mayo & Vittoria (2017). 2 An eyewitness account. The author was a working group member for the Grundtvig project and also a member of the working group on Quality Indicators for LL. He represented his country, Malta, in both areas. 3 This was also the position that Moacir Gadotti (2016) defended at CONFINTEA BRASIL +6, held in Brasília, Brazil, April 25–28, 2016, at a conference session on “Popular Education and Lifelong Education.” 4 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001229/122930Eo.pdf.

545

546

Peter Mayo

5 One can also refer to a one‐dimensional person, in this context, as production and

consumption are both sides of the same coin in Herbert Marcuse’s (1964) terms.

6 My translation from the original in Portuguese by Moacir Gadotti. The original

reads: “A concepção de Educação ao Longo da Vida do Banco Mundial e da União Europeia aponta para uma direção oposta a um munto justo e sustentável. A aposta desses organismos é a uniformização e não a conectividade na diferença, o individualismo e não a solidariedade.” Gadotti uses “lifelong education” (Educação ao Longo da Vida) although the term used by the two institutions, especially the EU, is LL with all its ideological differences from the old UNESCO concept of LE. 7 I am here using UNESCO’s classifications (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974), regarding different types of education, which, I would argue, serve a heuristic purpose—we often come across a combination of two or more occurring inextricably in a given educational experience or project. 8 A classic case is the recent decision by the relevant body in Brussels to support the proposal for an Erasmus Mundus International Master in Adult Education for Social Change (IMAESC) with its content very much focusing around social justice and in which Freirean pedagogy plays an important part. It was accorded the largest allocation of funds from among the selected Erasmus Mundus International Master programs (http://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/ erasmusmundus/imaesc).

References Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid life. Cambridge & Oxford (UK) and Boston: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2013). Learning to walk on quicksand: Lifelong learning in liquid life. In P. Mayo (Ed.), Learning with adults. A reader (pp. 9–18). Rotterdam, Boston & Taipei: Sense Publishers. Bhola, H. S. (1984). Campaigning for literacy. Paris: UNESCO. Borg, C., & Mayo, P. (2005). The EU Memorandum on Lifelong Learning. Old wine in new bottles? Globalisation Societies and Education, 3(2), 203–225. Brine, J. (1999). Undereducating women: Globalising inequality. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Ashton, D. (2010). The global auction: The broken promises of education, jobs and incomes. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. CEC (2000). Commission staff working paper. A memorandum on lifelong learning. Brussels: European Commission. Cedefop, & Eurydice (2001). National actions to implement lifelong learning in Europe. Brussels: Eurydice. Coombs, P., & Ahmed, M. (1974). Attacking rural poverty: How non‐formal education can help. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Cooper, L., & Hardy, S. (2012). Beyond capitalism? The future of radical politics. Winchester, UK & Washington: Zero Books. Dave, R. H. (1976). Foundations of lifelong education: Some methodological aspects. In R. H. Dave (Ed.), Foundations of lifelong education (pp. 15–50). Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

English, L., & Mayo, P. (2012). Learning with adults. A critical pedagogical introduction. Rotterdam, Boston & Taipei: Sense Publishers. Escobar, M., Fernandez, A. L., & Guevara‐Niebla, G. (with Paulo Freire) (1994). Paulo Freire on higher education: A dialogue at the National University of Mexico. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Faure, E., Herrera, F., Kaddoura, A. R., Lopes, H., Petrovsky, A. V., Rahnema, M., & Ward, F. C. (1972). Learning to be. The world of education today and tomorrow. Paris: UNESCO. Field, J. (2010). Lifelong learning. In P. Peterson, R. Tierney, E. Baker, & B. McGaw (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd ed.) (pp. 89–95). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism. Is there no alternative?. Winchester, UK & Washington: Zero Books. Freire, P. (1970 [1993]). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1995). Learning to read the world. Paulo Freire in conversation with Carlos Torres. In C. A. Torres (Ed.), Education and social change in Latin America (pp. 175–181). Melbourne: James Nicholas Publishers. Freire, P. (1997). A response. In P. Freire, with J. W. Fraser, D. Macedo, T. McKinnon, & W. T. Stokes (Eds.), Mentoring the mentor: A critical dialogue with Paulo Freire (pp. 303–329). New York: Peter Lang. Freire, P. (1998). Politics and education. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Gadotti, Moacir. (2016). Educação popular e educação ao longo da vida (Popular Education and Lifelong Education). Paper presented at a conference on Popular Education and Lifelong Education, CONFINTEA BRASIL + 6, Brasília, April 25–28. Gelpi, E. (1985a). Lifelong education and participation. In K. Wain (Ed.), Lifelong education and international relations (pp. 16–29). Malta: University of Malta Press. Gelpi, E. (1985b). Lifelong education and international relations. London: Croom Helm. Gelpi, E. (1999). Review of Paolo Federighi (Ed.), “Transnational dimension of adult education,” Convergence, 30(2–3), special issue. Mediterranean Journal of Education Studies, 4(2), 262–263. Gelpi, E. (2002). Lavoro futuro. La formazione professionale come progetto politico (Future work. Vocational preparation as a political project). Milan: Edizioni Angelo Guerini e Associati SpA. Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals. Towards a critical Pedagogy of learning. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Giroux, H. A., & Giroux, S. S. (2004). Take back higher education. Race, youth, and the crisis of democracy in the post‐civil rights era. New York and Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

547

548

Peter Mayo

Guimaraes, P., Lucio‐Villegas, E., & Mayo, P. (2017). Southern‐European signposts for critical popular adult education: Italy, Portugal and Spain. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 56–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/030 57925.2017.1283584 Gutierrez, F., & Prado, C. (2000). Ècopedagogia e cittadinanza planetaria (Ecopedagogy and planetary citizenship). Bologna: E.M.I. IPF (2000). Institutional curriculum (Curriculo institucional) 2000: Project, profile and trajectory (Projeto, perfil e percurso). São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Kane, L. (2001). Popular education and social change in Latin America. London: Latin American Bureau. Kairamo, K. (1989). Education for life: A European strategy. London: Butterworths. La Belle, T. J. (1986). Non formal education in Latin America and the Caribbean— stability, reform or revolution?. New York: Praeger. Leibenberg, L., Ungar, M., & Ikeda, J. (2015). Neoliberalism and responsibilisation in the discourse of social service workers. British Journal of Social Work, 45(3), 1006–1021. Lind, A., & Johnston, A. (1986). Adult literacy in the third world. Stockholm: Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). Marcuse, H. (1964). One dimensional man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Marshall, J. (1997). Globalisation from below. The trade union connections. In S. Walters (Ed.), Globalisation, adult education and training. Impact and issues (pp. 57–68). London & New York: Zed Books. Martin, I. (2001). Reconstituting the agora: towards an alternative politics of lifelong learning. Concept, 2(1), 4–8. Mayo, P. (2001). Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) and education — a tribute. International Journal of Educational Development, 21(3), 193–202. Mayo, P. (2004). Liberating praxis. Paulo Freire’s legacy for education and radical politics. Westport, CT: Praeger. Mayo, P. (2014). Revisiting “Lifelong Learning” 13 years after the Memorandum. In J. Baldacchino, S. Galea, & D. Mercieca (Eds.), My teaching, my philosophy: Kenneth Wain and the lifelong engagement with education (pp. 25–40). New York: Peter Lang. Mayo, P. (2017). Engaging the glocal: EU mantras, national strategy & the struggle for adult education as a public good. Studies in the Education of Adults, [online] doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2017.1307924 Mayo, P., & Vittoria, P. (2017). Saggi di pedagogia critica. Oltre il neoliberismo. Analizzando educatori, movimenti e lotte sociali (Essays in critical pedagogy. Beyond neoliberalism. Analyzing educators, movements and social struggles). Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina (SEF). Melo, A., & Benavente, A. (1978). Educação popular em Portugal (1974–1976) (Popular Education in Portugal 1974–1976). Lisbon: Livros Horizonte. Mhina, C., & Abdi, A. A. (2009). Mwalimu’s mission: Julius Nyerere as (adult) educator and philosopher of community development. In A. Abdi, & D. Kapoor (Eds.), Global perspectives on adult education (pp. 53–70). New York, Houndsmill, Basingstoke & Hampshire: Palgrave‐Macmillan. Murphy, M. (1997). Capital, class and adult education: The international political economy of lifelong learning in the European Union. In P. Armstrong, N. Miller, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Crossing borders, breaking boundaries: Research in the

Paulo Freire and the Debate on Lifelong Learning

education of adults. Proceedings of the 27th Annual SCUTREA Conference (pp. 362–365). London: Birkbeck College, University of London Retrieved from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000000273.htm O’Cadiz, M., P., Wong, P. L., & Torres, C. A. (1998). Education and democracy: Paulo Freire, social movements and educational reform in São Paulo. Boulder, CO: Westview. O’Sullivan, E. (1999). Transformative learning: Education for the 21st century. London & New York: Zed Books Toronto: University of Toronto Press. OECD (2007). Lifelong Learning and Human Capital. OECD Observer (Policy Brief ). Paris: Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). Olssen, M. (2006). Understanding the mechanisms of neoliberal control: Lifelong learning, flexibility and knowledge capitalism. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(3), 213–230. Francis, P. (2015). Laudato sí. On care for our common home. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Regmi, K. D. (2015). Lifelong learning: Foundational models, underlying assumptions and critiques. International Review of Education, 61(2), 133–151. Semali, L. (2009). Cultural erspectives in African adult education: Indigenous ways of knowing in lifelong learning. In A. Abdi, & D. Kapoor (Eds.), Global perspectives on adult education (pp. 35–51). New York, Houndsmill, Basingstoke & Hampshire: Palgrave‐Macmillan. Stromquist, N. P. (1997). Literacy for citizenship: Gender and grassroots dynamics in Brazil. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Suchodolski, B. (1976). Lifelong education—some philosophical aspects. In R. H. Dave (Ed.), Foundations of lifelong education (pp. 57–96). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Taylor, P. V. (1993). The texts of Paulo Freire. Buckingham: Open University Press. Torres, C. A. (1990). The politics of nonformal education in Latin America. New York: Praeger. Torres, C. A. (1994). Paulo Freire as secretary of education in the municipality of São Paulo. Comparative Education Review, 38, 181–214. Torres, R. M. (2003). Lifelong learning: A new momentum and a new opportunity for adult basic learning and education (ABLE) in the South. Bonn: IIZ‐DVV. Tuijnman, A., & Boström, A. K. (2002). Changing notions of lifelong education and lifelong learning. International Review of Education, 48(1–2), 93–110. Wain, K. (1987). Philosophy of lifelong education. London: Croom Helm. Wain, K. (2004). The learning society in a postmodern world. The education crisis. New York: Peter Lang. Walters, S., Borg, C., Mayo, P., & Foley, G. (2004). Economics, politics and adult education. In G. Foley (Ed.), Dimensions of adult learning. Adult education and training in a global era (pp. 137–152). Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Williamson, W. (1998). Lifeworlds and learning. Essays in the theory, philosophy and practice of lifelong learning. Leicester: NIACE.

549

551

30 Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue John D. Holst

The work of the agronomist‐educator … contains a philosophical problem which can neither be ignored nor minimized. As in other cases, it is imperative to reflect philosophically. Freire (1973) Extension or Communication? (p. 100) It is no secret nor a profound revelation that we live in an increasingly polarized world. Polarization manifests itself in our politics, culture, and economics. I would argue, however, that polarization is how we experience growing contradictions in the political economy of capitalism on a global scale. Paula Allman (2001) summarized the three major contradictions in capitalism as identified by Marx in his major work Capital: the labor/capital relation, the production/circulation relation, and the forces of production/relations of production relation. She described these contradictions as dialectical contradictions. Allman (1999, 2001) drew on Marx for her understanding of dialectics but also on Paulo Freire. What Allman, like many critical adult educators, attempted was to develop a pedagogy to help advance social movements’ abilities to understand and confront the causes of polarization rooted in the contradictory nature of capitalism. Adult educators interested in challenging sociopolitical economic polarization often find inspiration in and look to Freire’s critique of mainstream education and his ideas on alternative methods to educate. When looking to Freire’s (2001) critique of what he called “banking education” and to places in his texts where he describes alternative practices, there is often an overemphasis on the educational methods aspect of Freire and a downplaying of the more difficult philosophical currents of his work; Stanley Aronowitz (1993) called this a “fetish of method” (p. 8). Moreover, I believe, the path toward a search for the Freirean method that avoids the philosophical can lead right back to mainstream practices. What I mean by this is that when one downplays, overlooks, or dismisses the strong philosophical currents in Freire’s work, one is left with a search for pedagogical recipes, and the results of these recipes, devoid of Freirean philosophy, can become merely the same reproductive practices people wish to avoid. I have certainly experienced the “Freirean‐inspired” teaching method, which consists of the teacher, who confuses preparation and banking, entering the classroom and asking something along the lines of “what would you like to learn about today?.” The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

552

John D. Holst

Or, the Freirean teacher who thinks form can substitute for content and has as his or her main pedagogical methods circular seating arrangements and discussion for discussion’s sake. Finally, and more subtly, is the cooptation of Freire with a method‐only application to contexts he never worked in or intended for his “reinvention” (Freire in Freire & Macedo, 1987) to take place. Here, I am referring to the focus on basing the content of an educational or training program on themes derived from participants, but void of an ethical consideration. So, for example, one can begin with the idea that “the point of departure of dialogue is the quest for a curriculum” (Freire, 1973, p. 158) and generate themes for a management training session from the managers themselves while overlooking the fact that the objective of the training is to counter the unionization of frontline workers. The educational method is based in the lived realities of manager/ participants tasked with maintaining a union‐free work environment; yet, from a Freirean (2001) philosophical standpoint, this process becomes “a distortion of the vocation of becoming more human” (p. 44). In emphasizing Freirean philosophy, I do not mean to imply politically charged language. In other words, Freirean pedagogy is not circular seating with dogmatic lectures on the ideology of radical revolutions. Rather, by Freirean philosophy, I am referring to, in part, and for the purposes of this chapter, the central role of dialectics in his work. I believe a pedagogy centered on an understanding of dialectics can get us beyond the nondialectical dichotomy between a pedagogy based on an overemphasis on method and a pedagogy based on an overemphasis on politicized rhetoric. Allman’s (1999, 2001) work, based in Freirean dialectics and the work of Wayne Au (2007, 2012), Moacir Gadotti (1996), and Carlos Alberto Torres (1994, 2014) are very good examples of the approach I am advocating, and their work is foundational to this chapter. The main purposes of this chapter are to provide a straightforward explanation of dialectics in the work of Paulo Freire; to show how dialectics is foundational to Freire’s ideas on dialogue; and to argue for the importance of a dialectical‐ informed dialogical pedagogy to engage and address the root causes of the growing polarization we are experiencing in our daily lives. Rather than a close textual analysis approach taken by Au (2007) with numerous quotes from Freirean texts, my method of explanation is a series of propositions, first on dialectics and then on dialogue, with occasional references to demonstrate that the propositions are based in Freire’s own ideas.

Method of Inquiry My propositions are based on a philological investigation of Freire’s major works. In conducting the philological investigation, I draw on both a Gramscian (1971) theoretical framework and the methodological guidelines for philological ­investigations he outlined in his Prison Notebooks in Notebook 16, Note 2 titled “Questions of Method” (pp. 382–386). Important to this study, then, was to read  Freire’s (1973, 1978, 1985, 1993, 1998, 2001) texts on pedagogy, his ­autobiographical texts (Freire, 1993, 1994) in which he reflects on the historical contexts of both his writing and practice, and his coauthored texts that are both

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue

autobiographical and analytical in nature (Freire & Faundez, 1989; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Horton & Freire, 1990; Shor & Freire, 1987). Moreover, given the unchronological nature of the publishing of English translations of his work, it was important to read Freire’s work in the order in which they were written in the original, rather than in the order of their English‐language publication.

Summary of the Analysis The following propositions outline the elements of Freirean dialectics and Freirean dialogue. I present them here in abbreviated form to provide an immediate and condensed version of the analysis. I follow this section with more detailed explanation of each proposition including citations from Freire to demonstrate how each proposition emerged from the philological investigation. In the last section I relate the propositions in summative form to the needs of a pedagogy capable of confronting the growing polarization facing us today. Freirean Dialectics Proposition 1  Dialectics is an epistemology and an ontology. Proposition 2  If the world is ontologically dialectical, to think critically, to have our thinking keep up with or match the nature of reality, is to think dialectically; to capture the dialectical nature of reality. Proposition 3  To consider something dialectically is to understand that it is the relational aspect of it which defines its nature. Proposition 4  Dialectical thinking is based on internal relations; dichotomous or dualistic thinking is based on external relations (Allman, 1999). Proposition 5  Dialectics, or the theory of internal relations, has very revolutionary implications; therefore, dialectics has been called the philosophy of the oppressed. Proposition 6  Dichotomous thinking does not require major social change. It is then, from a dialectical perspective, the philosophy of the oppressor or a philosophy of charity or liberalism. Freirean Dialogue Proposition 1  True dialogue, as Freire describes it, is the realization of praxis. Proposition 2  Praxis is the dialectical unity of theory and practice, it is the path to knowledge; knowledge defined as beyond information. Proposition 3  If dialogue is the realization of praxis, knowledge comes from the unity of theory and practice. Without theory, we have only thoughtless action. Without practice, we have merely information.

553

554

John D. Holst

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue Before detailing these propositions, I begin this section with a summary of major elements of dialectics as conceptualized in the Marxist tradition, the tradition from which Freire draws for his understanding of dialectics. In saying this, I am aware of the Hegelian influence on Freire’s conceptualization of dialectics (Torres, 1994), and I would argue that Freire follows the path of Marx himself and many Marxists since Marx in drawing on Hegel’s notions of dialectics. In summarizing these points on dialectics, I draw on the work of Cornforth (1961), Norman and Sayers (1980), Ollman (1976, 1993), and Peery (1993). Basic Elements of Dialectics ●● ●●

●●

●● ●●

●●

To see things relationally because reality is interconnected. To capture the nature of the movement of reality. Everything is in a constant process of becoming, of development, transformation, and eventual decay. To see and understand how internal contradictions are the driving forces of the movement of reality and of change. To understand that change can be quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative change is the incremental increase or decrease of the same quality. Qualitative change is the introduction of a new quality into the ongoing process of quantitative development (Peery, 1993).

Freirean Dialectics Proposition 1  Dialectics is an epistemology and an ontology. Given the premise that to think dialectically is to consider the interrelatedness of reality, it is hard to separate the epistemological and ontological nature of dialectics. Dialectics is an ontology to the extent that it assumes and also helps explain the dialectical nature of reality itself. Freire (2001) assumed a dialectical ontology in Pedagogy of the Oppressed when he said that “the dialectical relations of women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all)” (p. 83). The perception of these objectively dialectical relations brings us to the epistemological aspect of dialectics, which is realized through praxis, the unity of theory and practice. The dialectical nature of reality can be understood only by thinking dialectically and by considering the dialectical nature of knowledge. Knowledge, as theory, is inseparable from our active engagement in and with the world and others. Therefore, knowledge emerges from the dialectical contradiction or tension between theory and practice. To understand this, we must think dialectically; we  must, through the unity of theory and practice, come to understand the ­interrelatedness of the world and ourselves with the world. For Freire (2001), a central tenet of problem‐posing education was to create a learning environment in which people could begin to “see the world not as a static reality, but as a ­reality in process, in transformation” (p. 83). In other words, to see the world dialectically.

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue

Proposition 2  If the world is ontologically dialectical, to think critically, to have our thinking keep up with or match the nature of reality, is to think dialectically; to capture the dialectical nature of reality. Thinking dialectically is quite difficult because we generally experience dialectical relationships as dichotomies, and we are generally taught to see things in isolation. In fact, whole bodies of scientific thought are premised on the idea of seeing things in isolation, uncontaminated by other elements in order to fully understand their true nature. An example, that I mention only briefly for the moment, is how we often view, and are miseducated (Woodson, 2000) to believe, that wealth and poverty are dichotomies; they are opposites, but not dialectical opposites. A “scientific” understanding of poverty can be based on a deep and long‐ term immersion in poor neighborhoods in order to understand the nature and reality of poverty without any corresponding investigation of the dialectical relationship between poverty and wealth. Miseducation of this type, absent of a dialectical epistemology or ontology is an example of manipulation (Freire, 2001). For Freire (1973), in contrast, critical thinking—thinking that strives to and that can actually accomplish the task of matching the nature of reality itself—must be based on seeing things interrelatedly. In Education as the Practice of Freedom, Freire introduces methodological steps in educational programing to foster critical consciousness through dialogue. In doing this he draws on fellow Brazilian Álvaro Vieira Pinto, who says that critical consciousness “represents ‘things and facts as they exist empirically, in their casual and circumstantial correlation’ …. Critical consciousness is integrated with reality” (p. 44). Freire goes on to say that a dialogical method of education is required for establishing situations in which our thinking can match the dynamism of reality. “We wanted to offer the people the means by which … they could assume positions appropriate to the dynamic climate of the transition” (p. 44). He then asks the question “But how could this be done?” (p. 45). He replies to his own question: “The answer seemed to lie: a) in an active dialogical, critical and criticism‐stimulating method … Our method, then was to be based on dialogue” (p. 45). This line of thinking about dialogical education, based on a dialectical epistemology and ontology, continues in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In contrasting dialectical thinking corresponding to problem‐posing dialogue, and banking education corresponding to one‐directional monologue, Freire (2001) states that “the form of action [men and women] … adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world” (p. 83), so a dialectical understanding of the world corresponding to, necessary for, and a product of dialogical problem‐ posing allows for people’s thinking to match the dialectical nature of reality. Proposition 3  To consider something dialectically is to understand that it is the relational aspect of it which defines its nature. A good example of Freire’s use of the relational aspect of things is his justification for humanization in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In fact, Freire’s (2001) relational analysis of humanization is how he begins the book; it is foundational to his whole argument. From the first sentence of chapter one, he lays out the philosophical and ethical (axiological) justifications and premises for a pedagogy of  the oppressed. He argues that humanization has always been a concern of

555

556

John D. Holst

philosophy and an axiological issue. But that is potentially not enough. If you think that philosophers and their esoteric arguments can be irrelevant for everyday people, dialectics centers the idea and project of humanization right in the heart of reality. From a dialectical standpoint, one cannot conceive of humanization without its opposite, dehumanization. So, Freire says that notions of humanization lead to a recognition of dehumanization not just as a possibility, but as “an historical reality” (p. 43). Generally, we do not have to look too far or wide to see acts of various levels of dehumanization all around us. Hence, the skeptic of philosophical thought about humanization is confronted with the objective existence of dehumanization. Moreover, the skeptic, who may think real change away from dehumanization may not ever be possible, must confront dialectics again when Freire argues that neither dehumanization nor humanization can be denied if one recognizes either one. Therefore, both must be considered as possibilities if you admit to witnessing or experiencing one or the other. In other words, if you see a lot of dehumanization, then you must, from a dialectical standpoint consider the possibility of 1 day seeing a lot of humanization. Even the ongoing negation of humanization, from a dialectical standpoint, affirms the possibility of humanization “by that very negation” (p. 43). Freire does begin with the unproven proposition that humanization is our historical vocation. But because we are humans, it does not seem to be much of a stretch to consider our most basic and long‐standing vocation is to be more of what we are. Humanization, again thinking relationally, is only possible because of the possibility of dehumanization. The realization of humanization is a struggle to transform that which makes dehumanization “a concrete historical fact” (p. 44). Proposition 4  Dialectical thinking is based on internal relations; dichotomous or dualistic thinking is based on external relations (Allman, 1999). Recognizing opposites is not difficult; it is a common motif in children’s books to provide examples of opposites or pose the challenge of identifying opposites. Generally, however, opposites are considered not dialectically but dualistically, as dichotomies. I draw on the work of Paula Allman (1999) in explaining the difference between thinking about opposites dialectically and dichotomously. To do this, I also return to the example of rich and poor, of the actual existence of wealth and poverty and rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods. In dichotomous or dualistic thinking, rich and poor are opposites. But they are conceptualized as externally related in that they may come in contact with one another, but the oppositional nature of the two is not considered as a relation between them that defines the essence of either one. Each one is defined by its own internal nature, outside of the relation with the other. As I mentioned previously, ethnographic research can be based on long‐term immersion among the poor in order to understand the internal traits that define them. These traits can be considered as socially created, from a liberal standpoint, or genetically created from conservative or fascist standpoints. The work of Ruby Payne (2013), commonly used in schools across the United States, is based precisely on a dichotomous view of poverty. Her frameworks for understanding poverty are all about explaining the “traits” of the poor in isolation from poverty’s dialectical relation with wealth.

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue

On the other hand (a classic dichotomous phrase), the rich can be considered from the same standpoints as the poor from a dichotomous perspective. The rich are rich because of their own internal traits that can be ethnographically studied. Moreover, using a dichotomous philosophical outlook, poverty alleviation can be conducted by extensive research into the traits of the rich and then using this research to create curriculum for teaching the poor how to act like the rich. A dialectical approach to the reality of poverty and wealth begins with the idea that these opposites are internally related. In other words, neither side can exist nor be explained outside the relation with the other; they are two sides of the same pole. To the extent that either pole has internal traits, it is because of  the relation between them. The reason there are poor is because there are rich. The reason there is poverty is because there is wealth. The rich and the poor may live on opposite sides of the tracks, but there are rich neighborhoods because there are poor neighborhoods and vice versa. This is the framework within which Freire (2001) discusses the oppressed/oppressor relation. He draws on Hegel’s (1977) dialectical analysis of the master/slave relation in which it is impossible to conceive of a slave without considering the existence of a master and vice versa; without one, the other cannot exist. Moreover, the nature of either is dependent on the existence and the relation with the other. Finally, and I say more about this in the next section, the overcoming of the existence of slaves necessitates the elimination of the relation (slavery) that creates both sides. Proposition 5  Dialectics, or the theory of internal relations, has very revolutionary implications; therefore, dialectics has been called the philosophy of the oppressed. Dialectics as a theory of internal relations is revolutionary, because it explains the existence of inequality by considering the sociopolitical economic relations between unequal subjects as the source of the subjects’ unequal status. From a dialectical standpoint, the existence of the oppressed can be explained only by understanding and analyzing the existence of a relation of oppression. Moreover, from a dialectical standpoint, overcoming oppression requires a struggle to overcome the relation. So, social movement struggle is not about (mis)educating the oppressed to drop the “failed” traits that keep them oppressed and to take on the “successful” traits of the oppressor, but, rather, to fight for a new relationship in which there are no longer oppressed and oppressors. In other words, ending oppression, from a dialectical standpoint, requires fundamentally or qualitatively transforming society. It is true that a significant component of this struggle is self‐transformation of the oppressed in overcoming the relation of oppression. Freire’s (2001) concept of conscientization is a dialectical relationship between self and social transformation in social movements. It is also the case that the few oppressors who join the struggle go through a process of transformation themselves as they work alongside the oppressed in the struggle to transform the relation of oppression. It is the focus on the relation itself in dialectics that makes it revolutionary. From a dialectical standpoint, social change cannot be about merely shifting or

557

558

John D. Holst

flipping positions within an oppressive relation; it is about changing the relation itself. Oppressive relations are social relations and must be seen interrelatedly. Thus, social struggle informed by dialectics requires a multifaceted fundamental social transformation or revolution. This should not mean, however, that struggles for reform within the existing relations should be discounted. The role of the pedagogue of revolution or the revolutionary pedagogue (Freire, in Freire & Macedo, 1987) is to use struggles for reform as educational opportunities to explore with people whether the ultimate resolution lies in making changes within the existing relations, or in the overturning of these relations themselves that usually spark struggles for reform in the first place. This was the basic premise that Rosa Luxemburg (1973) argued for in her short text Reform or Revolution. One can adhere to a dialectical standpoint and fight for reforms. The injustices that generally spark rebellions or protest are generally aimed at reforming existing relations. The role of the revolutionary is to work with people to come to a critical understanding of why and against what they are rebelling. And, through study, research, and social movement action to eventually come to an understanding that the asymmetrical relations that create the very conditions against which they are protesting must be fundamentally transformed if there is to be any fundamental change in their conditions. Proposition 6  Dichotomous thinking does not require major social change. It is then, from a dialectical perspective, the philosophy of the oppressor or a philosophy of charity or liberalism. From a dichotomous perspective, one can end oppression without changing the basic relationships of society. This is so, because there is no emphasis on the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor. Each side can be and is studied in isolation from the other; both sides may be studied, but they are not studied as cocreated by and cocreating of each other, bound by a relation that unites them in a contradictory relationship. Dichotomous or dualistic thinking, then, is the philosophy of the oppressor. It is the philosophical foundation for charity and liberalism. No fundamental social transformation is necessary when we begin from a dichotomous standpoint because oppressed and oppressor are considered as only externally related; they may come into contact with each other, but they do not define one another. Paula Allman (2001) compares the educational praxis of dialectical thinking and dichotomous thinking and concludes that dichotomous thinking is the foundation for uncritical/reproductive praxis and dialectical thinking is the basis for critical/revolutionary praxis. I agree with her and I would argue that that basic tenets of critical thinking are the elements of dialectical thinking I summarized above. From a dichotomous standpoint, the relation binding and defining the oppressed and the oppressor is not considered; therefore, change can be about merely lessening the negative conditions of the oppressed through educational uplift schemes or through social redistribution schemes. Dialectics, however, by focusing on the relation itself, is the foundation for a revolutionary practice in which the oppressed must die as oppressed and the oppressor must die as oppressor in order to meet each other in a fundamentally new relation in which each is defined differently outside a relation of oppression.

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue

Freirean Dialogue Proposition 1  True dialogue, as Freire describes it, is the realization of praxis. We can relate this first proposition on dialogue to the previous proposition on dialectics as based on internal relations. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire (2001) states that objectivity and subjectivity are internally related, that “neither can exist without the other, nor can they be dichotomized” (p. 50). In this context, it is important to understand that here, Freire is using subjective to refer to people’s thinking and objective to refer to material reality. In situations of oppressors and oppressed, the oppressed can overcome the relation binding them to the oppressor only by what Freire defines as praxis: “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51). Reflecting (subjective action) upon the objective reality of oppression in the process of overcoming it, corresponds “to the dialectical relation between the subjective and the objective” (p. 51). This praxis can occur as Freire argues only by “dialoguing with the people” (p. 53). Proposition 2  Praxis is the dialectical unity of theory and practice, it is the path to knowledge; knowledge defined as beyond information. (Freire, 1996, p. 128). If we consider proposition 1 and proposition 2 together, we can say that dialogue as praxis is the dialectical unity of theory and practice and it is the path to knowledge. A praxis‐less pedagogy lacks dialogue and, therefore, cannot be a path to knowledge. In Extension or Communication?, Freire (1973) says that extension, which implies no dialogue, negates “the formation and development of real knowledge” (p. 95) because the actions implied in extension “negate … true action and reflection” (p. 95). In the same text, Freire distinguishes knowledge or logos from the mere awareness of things or doxa. Doxa is based on the failure to see and understand the world dialectically in terms of its interrelatedness. A lack of a dialectical outlook leads to an understanding of reality in terms of mere “presences of which people are aware, but which are not revealed in their own true interrelationships” (p. 102). We can equate this to the distinction that Freire makes between information and knowledge in Letters to Cristina. Here, Freire (1996) makes clear that it is dialogue or communication, which he contrasted earlier to extension, that allows people to move beyond information to knowledge. If one is merely a receiver of information in a monologue, absent of communication, one cannot move beyond information. It is only in transcending “the act of receiving” by “recreating the received communication” that information becomes knowledge. Freire makes this argument in Letters to Cristina when describing the dialogical form of educational practice in his early adult education work in Brazil. In this work, he says that they avoided dichotomies between, among other things, “doing and thinking, between practice and theory” (p. 99). Proposition 3  If dialogue is the realization of praxis, knowledge comes from the unity of theory and practice. Without theory, we have only thoughtless action. Without practice, we have merely information. Building on the first two propositions, dialogue, as the unity of theory and practice, accomplishes two important pedagogical tasks. First, it moves ­pedagogical

559

560

John D. Holst

practice beyond the dead end of theory‐less practice or what Freire (2001), in  Pedagogy of the Oppressed, disparagingly called activism. Second, it moves pedagogical practice beyond the dead end of practice‐less reflection, which Freire called verbalism. A pedagogy based on verbalism, as opposed to dialogue, which breaks the dialectical unity of theory and practice, cannot go beyond information to produce authentic knowledge. In Pedagogy in Process, Freire (1978) describes seeing dialogue as the unity of theory and practice at the Maxim Gorki Center in the rural village of Có in Guinea‐Bissau. In the teacher training work he witnessed at the center, which he described as “mutual learning,” both teachers and students were subjects in a coinvestigation of their own praxis. In other words, the act of learning as a practice itself, the work of building the center, and the productive work incorporated into the curriculum, all came under a mutual and ongoing critical reflection by all parties. In this process, Freire argued that all involved go beyond mere opinion about the facts to the critical comprehension of those same facts….Political‐pedagogical activity such as this—one that puts a dialectical theory of knowledge in practice—….[shows how]the unity between manual and intellectual work and between practice and theory becomes real. (p. 57) From a Freirean perspective, dialogue is the realization of praxis; it is beyond honest, open, friendly, or respectful conversation on a topic of interest, although all those elements should be present. It must have both elements of theory and practice to move beyond thoughtless action and the mere exchange of information. I have certainly felt as a teacher, and as a student, the frustrating feeling of emptiness after experiencing a pedagogical practice that seems to have the trappings of Freirean pedagogy, including circular seating arrangements and verbal participation from all parties, that, in the end, is merely an exchange of ideas or opinions; these experiences lack the central element of practice to move an exchange of doxa (opinion) to a coinvestigation that creates logos (knowledge). There is a direct relationship between a dialectical understanding of knowledge and a dialectical or dialogical pedagogy. In A Pedagogy of Liberation, Freire (in Shor & Freire, 1987) insists that dialogue is not a technique or a tactic, but it is ontological in that it is part of our “historical progress in becoming human beings” (p. 98). It is the form that pedagogy must take when operating from a dialectical understanding of knowledge. In Pedagogy in Process, Freire (1978) discusses the necessity of teaching within the dialectical tension of patience and impatience. He says that to move out of that tension “inevitably leads to teaching without dialogue. No matter what the intention, knowledge is presented as something finished, already concluded….The impatient educator often transfers knowledge like a package” (p. 64). Packaged knowledge is doxa and cannot be logos. In other words, the living, dynamic, changing nature of knowledge is lost outside of dialogue. Because knowledge understood dialectically is in constant motion and change, because the world in which it is embedded is as well, then pedagogy must also and always be a process of continuous coinvestigation of the world in order for our opinions to rise to the level of knowledge.

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue

Conclusion I argued in the introduction that we live in an increasingly polarized world. I made the claim that polarization is actually the way in which we experience growing contradictions within the basic relations of capitalism. If I am correct, then why do we need a dialogical pedagogy? Would it not be appropriate to just try and convince as many people as possible that capitalism is in crisis and, therefore, we need socialism or some alternative form of production and distribution of the basics of a good life? Given the dire situation of a growing sector of the world’s majority across the planet, why spend time “coinvestigating” that which we already know? It is here that we run squarely into Freire’s descriptions of radicals and sectarians he outlined in Education as the Practice of Freedom and a few years later in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For Freire, the goal of the right‐wing sectarian is to make sure that tomorrow is just like yesterday and today. In other words, the right sectarian will do anything to ensure that things stay the way they are, even if this means making modest reforms to keep up with the times. The left‐wing sectarian also knows yesterday and today, does not like the reality of either, but also knows exactly how tomorrow should differ from yesterday and today. So, unlike the right sectarian, the left sectarian wants to change tomorrow, yet like the right sectarian, the left sectarian has a plan for tomorrow. The pedagogical strategy of both sectarians is banking. One uses monologues to convince people that tomorrow should be just like yesterday and today, whereas the other uses monologues to convince people that tomorrow should be totally different than yesterday and today. Both have a plan for tomorrow and have as a goal to win people to their plans. Again, however, if we already know things are bad and getting worse for the world’s majority, is it not appropriate to claim as such and argue for a better tomorrow? For Freire, arguing one’s position does not make one a sectarian; in fact, for Freire (1973), radicalization is defined by a growing commitment to one’s own beliefs. Nevertheless, a radical, according to Freire (2001), must operate dialogically and based on the dispositions of love for, humility toward, faith in, and hope for the world’s majority. Outside of these dispositions, one begins to engage in antidialogical action and becomes increasingly sectarian, increasingly divorced from the world’s majority, and increasingly interested in imposing prefabricated blueprints for tomorrow. No one alone, or in a small organization, can know or understand the reality of the world’s majority; this has to be an ongoing investigatory pedagogical project of the majority itself in an unending effort to understand and change its own reality and the reality of the minority in the process. A radical can have commitments to ideas and principles and work pedagogically as a part of or with the world’s majority, but from a Freirean perspective, because reality is in constant motion and change, knowledge of this reality must also be a process of continuous recreation in order to keep up with an ever‐changing reality. A radical, must not, as Marx and Engels (1948) argued 170 years ago, “set up any sectarian principles….based on ideas…that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would‐be universal reformer” (pp. 22–23), but, rather, must “express … actual relations springing from … a historical movement going on under our very eyes” (p. 23). To express, describe, and understand actual relations requires constant

561

562

John D. Holst

investigation, and an investigation involving various people experiencing these actual relations from multiple standpoints. To understand the actual relations at the heart of capitalism and the cause of polarization, radicals must be in constant contact with those most negatively impacted by these relations in order to understand the relations themselves and their impact on people. It was the Italian radical Antonio Gramsci (1977), who long before Freire, said that “the masses indicated the precise direction of historical development” and that, once one fails to stay in constant contact with the masses, “one becomes estranged from the historical process that is unfolding” (p. 174). Therefore, dialogical action of a Freirean nature, based on a dialectical understanding of reality and knowledge, is necessary for us to understand the world we live in, while we act in it and on it inspired by a growing commitment to social justice.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the various colleagues who worked with me in the class Paulo Freire: His Life and Pedagogy during my years at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. This chapter started out as my end‐of‐semester ­reflections in one of the offerings of the class; later, the reflections became a handout, and now they appear as this chapter.

References Allman, P. (1999). Revolutionary social transformation. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Allman, P. (2001). Critical education against global capitalism. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Aronowitz, S. (1993). Paulo Freire’s radical democratic humanism. In P. McLaren, & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire: A critical encounter (pp. 8–24). New York: Routledge. Au, W. (2007). Epistemology of the oppressed: The dialectics of Paulo Freire’s theory of knowledge. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 5(2), Retrieved from http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=100 Au, W. (2012). Critical curriculum studies: Education, consciousness, and the politics of knowing. New York: Routledge. Cornforth, M. (1961). Dialectical materialism: An introduction. Vol. 1 – Materialism and the dialectical method (rev. ed.). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1978). Pedagogy in process: The letters to Guinea‐Bissau (C. St. John Hunter, Trans.). London: Writers and Readers Cooperative. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation (Donaldo Macedo, Trans.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city (Donaldo Macedo, Trans.). New York: Continuum.

Freirean Dialectics and Dialogue

Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Robert R. Barr, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P. (1996). Letters to Cristina: Reflections on my life and work (Donaldo Macedo, Trans.). New York: Routledge. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare to teach (Donaldo Macedo, Dale Koike, & Alexandre Oliveira, Trans.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Freire, P. (2001). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Myra Bergman Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P., & Faundez, A. (1989). Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation (Tony Coates, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Gadotti, M. (1996). Pedagogy of praxis: A dialectical philosophy of education (John Milton, Trans.). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Ed. & Trans.). New York: International. Gramsci, A. (1977). Selections from political writings, 1910–1920 (Quintin Hoare & John Mathews, Ed. & Trans.). London: Lawrence & Wishart. Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of spirit (Arnold Vincent Miller, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). In B. Bell, J. Gaventa, & J. Peters (Eds.), We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Luxemburg, R. (1973). Reform or revolution (Integer, Trans.). New York: Pathfinder. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1948). The manifesto of the Communist Party (Samuel Moore, Trans.). New York: International Publishers. Norman, R., & Sayers, S. (1980). Hegel, Marx and Dialectic: A debate. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Ollman, B. (1976). Alienation: Marx’s conception of man in capitalist society (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ollman, B. (1993). Dialectical investigations. New York: Routledge. Payne, R. K. (2013). A framework for understanding poverty: A cognitive approach (5th ed.). Highlands, TX: Aha! Process. Peery, N. (1993). Entering an epoch of social revolution. Chicago: Workers Press. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy of liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Torres, C. A. (1994). Education and the archeology of consciousness: Freire and Hegel. Educational Theory, 44(4), 429–445. Torres, C. A. (2014). First Freire: Early writings in social justice education. New York: Teachers College Press. Woodson, C. G. (2000). The mis‐education of the Negro. Chicago: African American Images.

563

565

31 Fertilizing the Unusual (The Praxis of a Connective Organization) Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

In Los Angeles on April 12, 1991 in a meeting with some of his educator‐friends, Carlos Alberto Torres and Moacir Gadotti among them, Paulo Freire became enthusiastic about the idea of creating an institute—something that had already been suggested to him in Brazil by José Eustáquio Romão and Walter Esteves Garcia and, later, shared with Ângela Biz Antunes, Sônia Couto, Paulo Roberto Padilha, Carlos Rodrigues Brandão, and Celso de Rui Beisiegel. In Costa Rica, Francisco Gutiérrez had already spoken with Moacir Gadotti about the same idea. Paulo Freire’s desire was to find a way to bring together people and institu­ tions throughout the world motivated by the same utopia of education as the practice of freedom who could reflect, exchange experiences, and develop research and pedagogical practices in the different areas of knowledge that con­ tribute to the construction of a world with more social justice and solidarity. Out of this sprang the Paulo Freire Institute (PFI). Paulo Freire played an active role in its construction, presenting candidates for its international advisory board and participating in the discussion of its statutes and the definition of its basic role. He took part in the principal decisions and always contributed valid and revelatory thoughts about the projects being developed. It is the intention of the PFI to bring about an ample, fecund, and generous encounter of institutions, projects, dreams, and people who want, as men and women, to be subjects of their own stories and beings conditioned rather than determined by their times and social context, able to bring about urgent and necessary social change. Its motto is “Educate to transform.” The PFI is an infor­ mal network that includes people sympathetic to the Freirean cause in more than 80 countries on five continents and that keeps alive its objective of continuing and reinventing Freire. In 1998, a year after Paulo Freire’s death, the PFI created the Paulo Freire Forum, an international space for the study and actualization of his legacy, as well as the strengthening of links between people and organizations that develop

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

566

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

work and research from the perspective of Freirean philosophy. The Paulo Freire Forum meets every 2 years. Universitas Paulo Freire (UNIFREIRE), the Paulo Freire University, was founded in the 2000 Paulo Freire Forum in Bologna, Italy. UNIFREIRE is organized as a group of PFIs, centers and chairs with different programs and modalities, independent and united by the same Freirean spirit. Since the 1970s, but especially since the 1990s, many institutes, chairs, schools, centers, study and research nuclei, academic directories and centers, periodicals, and publications on every continent adopted the name of Paulo Freire. Added to this network, various knowledge spaces chose Paulo Freire as their patron as did libraries, friendship centers, study halls and meeting places, theaters and audito­ riums, streets, education awards, and housing projects. More recently, blogs, websites, and social networks blossomed on the Internet with the same purpose: reinventing Paulo Freire and continuing his legacy, in Brazil and around the world. The PFI has put itself at the disposal of many of these initiatives with no desire to intervene. The PFI has been and will continue to be the work of educators—men and women who deeply identify with Freire’s legacy and carry on the struggle for an emancipatory education. The popular educator Carlos Rodrigues Brandão, who has participated in this dream since its birth, was one of the first to perceive this dimension of the PFI. We are what we defend, what we protect. We protect the cause and the memory of a great Brazilian educator without repeating it. Carlos Rodrigues Brandão, in a letter sent from Santiago de Compostela (Spain) to Carlos Alberto Torres, Francisco Gutiérrez, and Moacir Gadotti on June 3, 1992, accepting the invitation to participate as a member of the international advisory board of the PFI, speaking of the institute’s creation, defined it as a “fertilizer of the unusual.” He put it this way: The idea could not be more adequate and the moment could not be more opportune. However, I believe that the Paulo Freire Institute ought to have a peculiarity. I believe that the Paulo Freire Institute should be an ample, fertile and generous forum of and among people, of and among ideas. It should be a fertilizer of the unusual. It should be a gathering place for people who, in the course of many years, remain united and fraternally committed to the practice and circulation, not of a unique credo or pedagogical school, but to an ample liberation project by means of the culture and of popular education. We know how to maintain this. That is, we know how to unite around a spirit. In other words, we know how to unite around a generous and fervent community dream that, unlike others, has not ended. I want to say that this does not mean pon­ dering small and specific educational practices based on Paulo Freire’s ideas, etc. This would fundamentally negate Paulo Freire himself. After all, there is nothing less Freirean than to be a follower of ideas without knowing how to be a creator of spirits. This is about creating conditions to test our ability to create in a brotherly way, to be really daring, to broaden horizons in the name of justice and of equality, to establish com­ mon points through the experience of difference and of the confrontation of opposites. (Gadotti, 1996, p. 706)

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

Radical Connectivity The PFI was born amid a context of political effervescence coincident with the planetary energy released by the events that culminated with the destruction of the Berlin wall (1989) and the end of the Soviet empire. Paulo Freire was asked by a São Paulo journal whether he believed that this marked the “end of socialism.” He responded that it was not the end of socialism but, rather, of a certain face of socialism, of authoritarian socialism, and that it was necessary to celebrate this termination, as the Berliners were doing by knocking down the Berlin wall. Paulo added that we needed to fight for a demo­ cratic socialism, a socialism that included freedom. It was in this political context that the PFI was born, a context of paradigmatic crisis. It was the moment to reaffirm and reinforce the paradigm of the oppressed that had nothing to do with the authoritarian socialist paradigm. In 1989, Paulo Freire took over as São Paulo’s municipal secretary of education and, after resigning in 1991, he had more time to dedicate to this new challenge. He took part in all the PFI’s projects until 1997. His final project, which he was unable to realize, was to help us organize a course that he was planning to initiate that year in September, in what would have been his celebrated return to Harvard. We had already selected various texts that would be included in the reading list that he would recommend to his future Harvard students. We have embraced the cause of the pedagogy of the oppressed since we began. But one chapter was missing, the Earth chapter, understood as both a living organism and one in evolution. We came to understand that the Earth was being oppressed as well. So we associated the paradigm of the oppressed and the “Earth Paradigm” (Boff, 1995) and, at the threshold of the twenty‐first century, we decided to adopt “committed to planetary citizenship” as the PFI’s slogan, under­ standing that conceiving of the Earth as a phenomenon both historical and astro­ nomical would be both continuing and reinventing Freire’s work for the twenty‐first century and, in the process, constructing a unique and diverse, just and sustainable planetary community. Paulo Freire confessed, at the last great International Congress about his ­philosophy, which took place in Vitória, Espirito Santo, Brazil in September 1996, that he had always thought of himself as a “connective boy” (Freire, 2000a, p. 281). In 2007, Jason Ferreira Mafra, the coordinator of the UNIFREIRE defended his doctoral dissertation, Radical Connectivity as Educational Principal and Practice in Paulo Freire (Mafra, 2007), at the Education Faculty of  São Paulo University on the theme of connectedness in Paulo Freire’s work. This was not just a personal characteristic of Freire’s. It was epistemo­ logical as well. He succeeded, better than any other intellectual, in linking the categories of history, politics, economics, class, gender, ethnicity, poor, and not poor. As a “connective boy,” Paulo Freire possessed two basic characteristics: curios­ ity and connectivity. Each of us, whatever her or his gender orientation, needs to increase his or her adaptability to this Freirean way of being in an increasingly fundamentalist world. The best way to be like Paulo Freire and, at the same time, to reinvent him is to be connective like he was. But this connectivity is neither

567

568

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

neutral nor indifferent. The Freirean concept of connectivity is ingrained in the epigraph of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, his 1968 masterwork: “To the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side.”

From the Popular Public School to the Citizen School Public school is the place of citizenship for the immense majority of the Brazilian population, particularly the most impoverished. It is also one of the bastions of democracy during an era that bears witness to the growing merchandising of education. There can be no citizenship without the ability to read and write. To attack the public school is to attack democracy itself. In many cases, the public school is the only public establishment to which the poorest people have access. Paulo Freire wanted to “change the face of schools” (Freire, 1991), he wanted to take the everyday language of life and the living inside so it could coexist with the erudite language of school. A popular school is not just a school that is offered to the people, but a school that has the people’s character. This depends on the kind of quality it offers the people it serves, just as it depends on the concept of the people it has. For Paulo Freire, it was the participation of the people that made a people’s school. When he took over as secretary of education of the São Paulo Municipality in 1989, he defined four main priorities in his education policies around the idea of a popular public school: 1) Democratizing access and guaranteeing permanence 2) Democratizing the administration and autonomy of schools 3) A new quality of instruction (curricular reorientation, permanent upbringing and interdisciplinarity) 4) A new public policy for Youth and Adult Education (EJA) with the creation of the Literacy Movement of Youth and Adults of the City of São Paulo (MOVA‐SP), in partnership with other popular and social movements It was because of his hands‐on experience with the São Paulo Public Schools that Paulo Freire became interested in the citizen school theme, when he left the job of secretary. The citizen school originated in the pedagogical renovation and educa­ tional experimentation movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was under­ stood, initially, as a state school in terms of budget, a community and democratic school in terms of its administration and a public school in terms of its destination. It is meant to be critical, alternative, antineoliberal, autonomous, transformative, aimed at and for the people in solidarity (Azevedo, 2007; Romão, 2000). The Citizen School Movement has gained lots of power in the intervening dec­ ades, inside and outside Brazil. Today, it is also associated with the development of integral and inclusive education (Antunes & Padilha, 2010). It is composed of a group of orienting principles (autonomy, belonging, sustainability, child/youth centrism), rather than a designer label. Thus, the citizen school is defined differ­ ently, depending on its context. It is reinvented in each context, preserving these principles. The citizen school is strongly rooted in the social and community aspects of the popular education movement that was translated as “the popular public

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

school” during the 1980s—both as a concept and a practice of education carried out in different regions of Brazil, especially in municipalities where local power had been entrusted to parties of the so‐called “popular democratic field.” In some cases, such experiences have been controversial. However, we are able to distinguish some qualities in common within these projects and reforms: 1) Lengthening the school day, both for the students and for the teachers of a particular school 2) Full‐time care for children and adolescents 3) Community participation and democratic administration Paulo Freire stood for a transformative, alternative school that would exemplify citizenship and participation, where the distance between the people and the powerful would be reduced to zero and that would produce a new political cul­ ture from a public citizen sphere. The citizen school as heir to the popular educa­ tion tradition (Brandão, 2002), born out of the struggle for a people’s school, guided by a transformative political intentionality, emancipatory, inclusive. Yes, inclusive but not in terms of what is there, inclusive in terms of what does not yet exist—it is a “school of companionship, of community, that lives in the tense experience of the democracy,” as Paulo Freire defined it on March 19, 1997 in an interview with TV Educativa in Rio de Janeiro. It’s impossible to speak of the citizen school without understanding it as a democratic, participative school, a school of struggle, a school appropriated by the population as part of the appropriation of the city to which it belongs. This appropriation is carried out through mechanisms created by the school itself, like the school council, the school assembly, faculty meetings, and so on (Antunes, 2002). The citizen education movement, although initially very focused on the democ­ ratization of the administration, on participative planning (Padilha, 2001), and on dialogical evaluation (Romão, 1998) gradually broadened its concerns to include the construction of a new curriculum (interdisciplinary, transdiscipli­ nary, intercultural, and intertranscultural) including new social, human, and intersubjective relationships, capable of confronting the serious problems cre­ ated by the expansion of violence and the deterioration of the quality of life in the cities and the countryside. This movement demonstrates that the civil society is reacting to the official neoliberal tendency to internationalize the education agenda based on “recipes” contained in the “recommendations” of international organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

From Ecopedagogy to Planetary Citizenship Since the 1990s, particularly in the wake of ECO‐92, the United Nations Con­ ference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the theme of Ecopedagogy has become part of the agenda of pedagogical debates; initially, the  term represented a pedagogy for sustainable development. Consequently, environmental education was the term most often used. The concept was ­broadened to comprise a pedagogy of the sustainability of life in general, not just

569

570

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

the economy and the environment. Ecopedagogy now includes planetary stud­ ies, the education of the future, sustainability, planetary citizenship and virtual reality. Another term for this is Earth pedagogy. The intention of the alternative nomenclature is to emphasize the ruling paradigm of ecopedagogy—the Earth paradigm. Ecopedagogy is broader than the pedagogy of environmental education. It is more about a sustainable education, ecoeducation, than about environmental education. Ecopedagogy has as its central concern the construction of a culture of sustainability, in and outside of school. Sustainable education goes beyond the search for a healthy relationship with the environment. Its primary objective is to pose problems encountered in our daily lives that bring into relief the deeper meaning of what we do with our existence, with our life project, in the fraction of time we spend on planet Earth. We ended the year 2002 under the powerful impact of the activities we under­ took in the two first editions of the World Social Forum (WSF) and our progress when dealing with environmental questions. We thought about reorganizing the PFI from the perspective of the so‐called Earth paradigm while rereading the final writings of Paulo Freire. In Pedagogy of Indignation, a posthumous book, organized by his widow, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, Paulo Freire urges us to “assume the duty of fighting for the fundamental ethical principles with respect to the lives of human beings, of other animals, of the birds, of the rivers and of the forests. I cannot believe in love between women and men, between human beings, if we are not able to love the world. Ecology has come to have a fundamental importance at the end of this century. It has to be present in every radical, critical or liberating educational practice … That is why it seems to me a lamentable contradiction to give a pro­ gressive, revolutionary talk while leading a life of negative practices. The practice of polluting the sea, the waters, the fields, of devastating the forests, destroying the trees, threatening the animals and the birds” (Freire, 2000b, p. 61). Not long before his death, he said in an interview that he would like to be remembered as someone who loved life, the plants, the rivers, the earth. At this very moment, planetary citizenship is the PFI’s mission, as is evident from a bibliographic perspective: Pedagogia da Terra, Ecopedagogia, Pedagogia da Sustentabilidade, Currículo Intertranscultural were developed, respectively, by Moacir Gadotti (2001, 2009), Francisco Gutiérrez and Cruz Prado (1999), Ângela Antunes (2002), Paulo Roberto Padilha (2004, 2012), among others. That is why all PFI projects have as their basic dimension socioenvironmental inter‐ and transculturalism. What has planetary citizenship got to do with the legacy of Paulo Freire? Freire chose to ally himself with the oppressed and said that those who are oppressed cannot free themselves without freeing their oppressors as well. As long as oppressors exist, so will the oppressed. Liberation is a necessary condi­ tion, not only for the oppressed but also for their oppressors. Thus, for everyone including the planet itself which is a living being in evolution. The notion of planetary citizenship is sustained by the unifying vision of the planet. It is made manifest in diverse expressions: “our common humanity,” “unity in diversity,” “our common future,” “our common fatherland.” Planetary

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

citizenship is an adopted expression which expresses a group of principles, val­ ues, attitudes, and behaviors that demonstrate a new perception of the Earth as a unique and diverse community (Padilha, Maria Favarão, & Marine, 2011). Sustainability is a central category of a new life paradigm (Boff, 1999). It repre­ sents the dream of living well, in dynamic equilibrium with the environment and in harmony with oneself and with others, equal and different. The challenge is to change one’s route and to walk in the direction of sustain­ ability toward “another globalization” (Santos, 2000), toward an alterglobalization. Those of us at the PFI are convinced that sustainability is a powerful concept, an opportunity for education to renew its old systems, founded on competitive principles and values. To introduce a culture of sustainability, of justice and of peace in school communities is essential if they are to become less competitive and more cooperative.

Adult Education and the MOVA Methodology Paulo Freire was one of the Brazilian intellectuals who managed to understand the anxieties of oppressed people and make them into a battle flag. He possessed the intellectual ability to organize, in the 1960s, groups of workers to reflect about the situations in which they were living and to transform this into an instrument of political struggle, having as an example the Popular Culture Movement (Movimento de Cultura Popular [MCP]). This movement was cre­ ated from an initiative of university students, artists, and intellectuals from the state of Pernambuco who joined forces with the Recife Prefecture to combat widespread illiteracy and elevate the people’s level of culture, seeking also to ­connect students with the native intelligence of the people (Paiva, 1973). By coordinating the alphabetizing of previously unlettered adults, Paulo Freire found an agglutinating element for the masses, a strategy to eliminate illiteracy that helped to strengthen people to confront violence. Paulo Freire’s theoretical and methodological principles were not restricted to alphabetiza­ tion (Freire, 1963). Different Brazilian states, particularly Pernambuco, the state where he was born, is the very expression of the production of the culture of the people as reality‐transformative, especially when the Movement of Basic Education (MEB) was at the height of its articulation, as one of the components of the MCP. This Freirean tradition has continued to remain alive, today, in the dense strug­ gle of the Forums of EJA and of the Adult Alphabetization Movement (Movimento de Alfabetização de Adultos [MOVA]), which have stepped up their performance in various territories, reaching different kinds of people in the alphabetization process: the descendants of African slaves living in former runaway slave com­ munities, riverside dwellers, fishermen and their families, indigenous people, gypsies, urban street people, adherents of the Landless Peasant Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra [MST]), women’s movement, movement of those displaced by dams, hip‐hop movement, and human rights movements. In this context, the performance of the PFI in the area of adult education has been a reference, not just because of the trajectory of the battles fought by its

571

572

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

patron but also because it continues to be a challenge unequaled in the history of Brazilian education. EJA is an extremely complex modality of basic education due to the diversity of its clients. What is most meaningful to some is relatively unimportant to others. This is even more relevant when it comes to youth and adults who already have a life trajectory. It is necessary to respect their biographies (Feitosa, 1999, 2011). In adult education it is important to interconnect and harmonize the formal and the nonformal. As Paulo Freire would say: conscientization precedes alphabetiza­ tion, the reading of the world precedes the reading of the word. This does not mean limiting what’s being taught to the knowledge of the community, but recognizing the legitimacy of the people’s knowledge, of their culture, of their beliefs. We start with the local culture and the students’ knowledge, because we want to educate to transform and we cannot transform what is not already known (Brandão, 1985). The EJA curriculum must be aligned with its heterogeneity (different ethnici­ ties, age groups, geographic locations and origins, city students and country stu­ dents, prisoners, migrants, etc.) and diversity make it a challenge and, at the same time, a source of great wealth. But this diversity must not deny these men and women one of the few things they have in common: the need to possess socially constructed knowledge. From early on, Paulo Freire intuited that the primary function of an adult lit­ eracy program was not to educate people to be literate. Before anything else, they needed to have access to the right to understand more about the world in which they lived in order to lead better lives. Teaching people to read and write did not mean “schooling” them; they would learn the alphabet for existential reasons not to prove themselves as students. The most basic thing about basic education is to make someone a citizen. To teach an adult to read and write is to grant her the rights and duties of citizenship (Gadotti, 2014). Following the tradition of the popular education movement (Brandão, 1982), Paulo Freire initiated the MOVA in the city of São Paulo in 1989, with the pur­ pose of promoting a widespread literacy campaign in partnership with the civil society. Freire’s example was followed and continues to bear fruit in numerous municipalities, associating public power, social movements and the private sec­ tor. The PFI was one of the institutions that gave the most continuity to MOVA, with a very big project called MOVA‐Brazil in partnership with the Unique Federation of Oilmen (Federação Única dos Petroleiros [FUP]) and Petrobras, that alphabetized about 300,000 people and trained 13,000 literacy instructors in 12 Brazilian states (Gadotti, 2013). The MOVA‐Brazil Project contributed to a new national policy of youth and adult education, assuming a fundamental role as an example of a successful action, being both politically and pedagogically viable and coherent with the principles of the man who was declared patron of Brazilian education in 2012. Among these contributions is the development of what became known as the MOVA Methodology (Antunes & Padilha, 2011). The MOVA methodology began to be constructed starting in 1989 with the creation of MOVA‐SP and continued its development in numerous other trial runs as different MOVAs, implemented after but inspired by the first one, kept adding thoughts about their practices and perfecting this instrument of education and social transformation. The pedagogi­ cal concept of MOVA was established as part of the process of the program’s

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

development. MOVA’s partners (the entities), in constant dialogue with the municipal secretary of education (SME) of São Paulo, were determinants in this process, contributing, with their experience in adult alphabetization, to the pro­ gram’s conception, execution, and evaluation. This associative style served as a guide for MOVA’s educative concept. Everyone involved was certain that the pedagogy should not be dissociated from the method, theory, and practice. Moreover, all the actions and practices must embody the ethical–political– pedagogical principles (Brandão, Feitosa, & Amaral, 2009). MOVA cannot be separated from its methodology. That is why, today, so much importance is given to the need to maintain what we might call the “MOVA standard” at the nationwide MOVA meetings, organized by the MOVA BRASIL Network, which is currently the largest heir of MOVA’s diversity of experiences. The sole condition for participation in the MOVA BRASIL Network is the polit­ ico‐pedagogical option. The MOVA BRASIL Network is not a central committee with the power to authorize anything, or a “brand.” What is important is to value the dialogue within the network, the transparency, the permanent exchange of information among partners committed to a single cause. The MOVA‐BRASIL Project has become a point of social articulation and of mobilization. Its activities went far beyond alphabetization and popular acquisi­ tion of literate culture, including economic solidarity, family agriculture, craft­ work, reforestation, local and regional development, sustainable development, social networks and interfaces with the following themes: youth, points of cul­ ture, gender concerns, carriers of disabilities, indigenous people, Afro‐Brazilians, people who live in communities established as refuges by runaway slaves (quilombolas) and others. In its 13 years of existence, the MOVA‐BRASIL Project had been characterized by the considerable fact that the life stories and the experiences of the people that have been its participants are matrixes of the process of teaching and learning. Therefore, both the teachers and learners involved in its educational processes are what Paulo Freire would call “subjects in the process of completion.” Understanding personal and collective identities, coexisting, valuing and respect­ ing gender identities, sexuality, ethnic and racial diversity, handicapped people, as well as dialoguing with the knowledge, popular culture and traditions of peo­ ple from different collections of human beings in our society have been recurring practices in this project (Cembalista & Feitosa, 2012). These practices and categories are the mortar and the base of the Mova Methodology. Moreover, they include Reading the World, Communitary Citizen Celebration, Culture Circles, the registration, systematization and analysis of data, significant situations, generative themes and generative questions as bases for curriculum sustenance and organization, for planning and for the evaluation of the processes of teaching and learning (Gadotti, 2008).

Toward a National Policy of Popular Education In 2003, the PFI was asked to form a partnership with the federal government, among other reasons, because it was well known for the development of the methodology of its patron, having previously been a partner in the RECID

573

574

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

(Citizen Education Network) Project, inspired by Freirean popular education (Assumpção, 2009). It consisted of a social mobilization project for the effective exercise of human rights that was extended to 26 Brazilian states and the Federal District, involving around 2,000 municipalities. The PFI was closely involved with this project until 2011. The spaces for popular participation created by this project enriched and qualified representative democracy in Brazil, creating social coresponsibility. This kind of activity in an organized civil society is funda­ mental for the control, inspection, monitoring, and implementation of public policies, as well as for the exercise of dialogue and of a more routine and organic relationship between the governments and the civil society. Freirean methodology presupposes the participation of the subjects benefited by a project from its organization and implementation through its final evalua­ tion. It seeks the autonomous development of the communities in their different requests for food, housing, income, education, energy, health, environment, ­culture – creating a dialogue between technical and scientific knowledge and the knowledge of the people. This is a replicable methodology, developed through interactions with the community and one that represents an effective proposal for social transformation. It can be said that Paulo Freire was the Brazilian educator who did more to open the doors for popular education as public policy by means of his activity as educa­ tion secretary of the City of São Paulo and, especially, the Alphabetization Movement for Youth and Adults (MOVA‐SP) that he created there. He showed that popular education is a process that is constructed both inside and outside the state. The state, like society, is not a monolithic entity. It is in a constant process of transformation. Thus, Paulo Freire defended the thesis that popular education can and should inspire public education policies. He wanted popular education to be discussed in public schools and that the popular concept of education would become the hegemonic concept of education. He did not see popular education merely as nonformal education, as much as he valued informality. He wanted not only to democratize education but to guarantee that it could “be popular,” that it could incorporate into its practices the emancipatory principles of popular educa­ tion as part of a project of society. Popular education as a reassessed theoretical model can offer formal education great alternatives (Gadotti & Torres, 1994). The PFI is one of the institutions that struggled for a very long time to establish a National Policy of Popular Education. It actively participated in the creation of a Reference Mark for Popular Education in Public Policies, produced by a group of entities and organizations of the civil society and of popular education. Popular education is also transmitted in spaces of participative democracy, consecrated in the Constitution of 1988, like public policy councils whose role it is to articu­ late, formulate, and monitor policies between government and civil society.

Popular Education in Human Rights Since it began, the PFI has worked with human rights education. It is an acknowl­ edged fact that this is a transversal subject. However, this praxis wound up by generating a specific field of activity that resulted in the constitution of an area

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

that took shape in recent years in specific projects like the partnership with São Paulo’s municipal secretary of human rights and citizenship, the São Bernardo do Campo secretary of public safety, and the secretaries of social welfare in Campinas and in Franca, all São Paulo State municipalities. Human rights formation is, first and foremost, citizenship education, training for and by means of the democracy: without democracy, there can be no human rights because they include the right to a decent dwelling, the right to health care, to safety, to education, and so on. Essentially, citizenship means becoming conscious of the rights and duties embedded in the exercise of democracy. There is no citizenship without democracy and there is no democracy without human rights (Dallari, 2004). This is not only about teaching human rights but also about understanding and constructing human rights in multiple forms, in people’s daily lives, in and out of school, having a living experience of human rights, supplying instruments, strate­ gies, methodologies, so that the theme is present in the school and in the society. In 1989, Secretary Paulo Freire instituted a human rights education policy, emphasizing popular participation and dialogue, establishing terms of technical cooperation with the São Paulo Justice and Peace Commission, as a component part of rethinking the school curriculum. One of the basic axes of his curricular reorientation was the social participation of school children. He was not standing up for the standard human rights education. For Freire, human rights education was an intrinsic component of popular education, understood as a political project concerned with the construction of popular power. There is not just one concept of human rights education: there is one popular, emancipatory, integral (interdependency of rights), transformative con­ cept, and another “banking,” instructional, fragmented concept that separates political rights from social and economic rights. Popular education in human rights is focused on the transformation and not merely on the instruction of human rights. Popular citizen education, like human rights education, is not limited to formal or classroom education. Its principal emphasis and contribution is situated in the field of societal recreation, training the individual as a subject of her or his own  story by means of dialogue, of participation and of the construction of knowledge necessary for a life in society. Citizen education recognizes the neces­ sity of interconnecting educational policies and social policies with the objective of democratic radicalization and the consequent amelioration of the quality of human life (Pini & Moraes, 2011). It was with this radical understanding of human rights education that the PFI came to offer courses in popular human rights education for popular educators in social movements, forums for defending these rights, and trade union move­ ments, with the objective of promoting training in popular human rights educa­ tion so that it could be consolidated as a politico‐cultural and pedagogical practice and stimulate the formation of proposals for the promotion of social, cultural, and economic justice in the quotidian of social life. The PFI also participates actively in the promotion of its understanding of human rights education as a member of the São Paulo State Committee of Human Rights, believing that transformative, emancipatory education seeking to

575

576

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

support the training of men and women conscious of and committed to their time in history based on the epistemological theories of Paulo Freire for the con­ struction of a pedagogy of rights blooms best in confrontation with traditional educational values. Freirean rights pedagogy is based on popular education, understood as popu­ lar sovereignty, as social justice and integral respect for human rights. This vision is necessary for broadening and concretizing these rights, as well as recognizing which groups are socially excluded and, alongside them, reassuming the historic struggle for an emancipative project. In this way, popular human rights educa­ tion plays a strategic role in the battle against exclusion because of its ability to articulate and traverse all fields of social life.

Technology and Social Emancipation One of the PFI’s first projects, back in the 1990s, was the School Informatica Project (PIE), preparing youth and adult educators to employ basic technological applications, both for their personal use and to use in pedagogical activities. We were working with psychopedagogical theories that were laying the foundation for the application of information technology to education and the construction of the methodology of the software and of formatted applications in pedagogical activities. But digital culture in an era of intensive use of information technologies goes far beyond informatica. We are diffusing the need to produce open educational resources, educational materials that can be freely utilized, altered, customized, shared (Santana, Rossini, & Lucca Pretto, 2012). Free software has been one of the PFI’s principal struggles for the rights of access to education and culture. We need to understand the changes that these technologies have already intro­ duced to the world. Today it is difficult to imagine that many of us once lived without the Internet and without cellular phones. If they took these away from us today, surely our world would begin to collapse. With the rapidity of the changes, it is difficult to imagine what will be next. We must be critically open to the expo­ nential expansion of the communication and information technologies (CITs). Faced with the multiple metamorphoses provoked by the advent of cellular equipment, tablets, and so on, we may feel we need to reinvent ourselves. Starting in 2001, the PFI began to implement the Linux environment in its projects, providing an example for other NGOs and Social Movements. In 2005, the project Institutional Migration for free Software engulfed the entire institute (Alencar, 2007). We migrated from the Windows software environment to Linux’s Kubuntu operating system, with diverse applications and the BR Office package, all free software, by means of specific workshops for users of these sys­ tems and their applications. Muniz Sodré, in an excellent book, recalls the debate between Paulo Freire and the mathematician Seymour Papert, inventor of the well‐known language, LOGO: “Paulo Freire, although convinced of the importance of technology in the subject’s intellectual transformation, detected in Papert’s practico‐theoretical attitude a lack of connection between the pedagogical software and the social

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

and political reality of the student. In other words, the native source of the essen­ tial educational questions, which is culture, was missing … Paulo Freire’s peda­ gogy contains or welcomes technology but, because of his visceral commitment to social emancipation, it is not disincarnate, that is, it cannot be placed above the socio‐historical conditions for the production and transmission of knowl­ edge” (Sodré, 2012, p. 160). Paulo Freire did not confuse the new technologies with technicalization. For the initial emancipatory projects in Recife, he used slides and slide projectors, the most advanced technology of the early 1960s. Years later, he was very enthu­ siastic about fax machines and, especially, the Internet. According to him, you cannot overlook science and technology in the struggle for freedom. They must not be useful only to the rich and powerful. Nowadays, social inclusion and digi­ tal inclusion are synonymous. He insisted that the new technologies had an important role in the process of instruction and information absorption. Here is a pertinent citation from Pedagogy of Indignation (Freire, 2000b, p. 45): “it is as urgent as it is necessary to have the correct understanding of technology, neither to refuse to understand it as if it were the work of the devil, constantly threaten­ ing human beings nor to profile it as constantly at the service of their well‐being.” Our challenge is to think of the role technology should play in an emancipatory project. The new technologies mean new instruments and new training pro­ grams for teachers. It was based on such presuppositions that we created Freirean distance learning at a time when what was called in Brazil Educação a Distância (EaD) was the subject of much debate. It seemed to us that relatively few teachers wanted their work to involve that particular “educational modality.” There is a certain uneasi­ ness associated with that expression that warrants further analysis. One of our PFI founders, Francisco Gutiérrez, approached this theme at the beginning of the 1990s from a teacher’s perspective in his book Mediação pedagógica: educação a distância alternativa (Pedagogical Mediation: alternative distance education) (Gutierrez & Prieto, 1994). If it may no longer make sense to speak of distance learning, can we still speak of emancipatory distance learning? Or does this kind of educational “adjectivism” negate the very essence of peda­ gogical mediation, of dialogue, of the encounter between subjects that is the marrow of the pedagogical act? And it is not about knowing what the physical distance is between the educador (educator) and the educando (the person in the act of education), knowing whether they are 2 m, or 20 m, or 5000 m apart. It cannot be concluded that, because the educador is 2m from the educando, that they are really meeting, or dialoguing or, because they are face to face, that the education is more liberating than the education that is given 6000 m away. Distance has nothing to do with this. Distance itself does not make all the difference. Nor is it about knowing if it is or is not in person, in the moment, formal, and so on. These adjectives do not interfere do not interfere with the pedagogical act. What really does make a dif­ ference is the degree of mediation, what the educador and the educando are working on (the content) and what are the means (methods) being used. The less the educador mediates, the greater the educando’s autonomy. In order for the educando to conquer more autonomy, the more the educador has to step

577

578

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

back. (S)he is more important at the start of the process than at the end. At the beginning, (s)he needs to orient, open channels and spaces for dialogue, establish identity and cultural links with the one who learns and at the same time teaches, organize the learning, construct meanings, point the way. The objective is not for the educando to depend on the educador but to conquer full autonomy and free­ dom. The final product of education is the educando’s autonomy and freedom. These are some of the principles that have oriented our Freirean distance learning. Our Freirean version of EaD seeks to reinvent the methodology of his culture circles in virtual space. By means of information and communication technologies (ICTs), educandos and educadores teach and learn together, as co‐ subjects of the educative process that is based on dialogue and the creation and recreation of new knowledge as long as the course lasts. According to Paulo Freire (1967, p. 111), “the Culture Circles were conducted by a Debate Coordinator, instead of a teacher from the powerful ‘donor’ tradition. Instead of a discursive class, dialogue. Instead of a passive pupil, a participating member of the group.” Because Freirean distance learning instructors are inspired by “the Debate Coordinator” archetype, the virtual ambiance is organized to promote all‐inclu­ sive dialogue. This ambiance has always been and will continue to be a space for dialogue and the sharing of ideas, as well as a channel for questions about the medium and technical support. The participants will have this space at their dis­ posal for the continuity of reflections that began in a face‐to‐face locale, and it is also a place where they can publish whatever they produce during the courses, the fruit of intervention projects created there.

Articulating, Mobilizing, and Educating for Other Possible Worlds Structural changes in the society depend on many factors. Human beings are  conditioned but not determined. There is a dialectical relationship—unity and the opposition of contraries—between structure and consciousness. Consciousness is not merely the consequence of social, economic, and political structures. Moreover, consciousness alone will not transform the world. It is not enough to be conscious of the world we want, we need to organize, socially and politically, in order to change it. At the PFI, we insist on linking the individual dimension of consciousness with the social and collective dimension of organi­ zational work. For instance, it is not enough to change your individual lifestyle to make the world more sustainable. It is necessary to change the system that pro­ duces an unsustainable lifestyle; one that produces injustices and inequalities simultaneously. We learn to become organized in the participative space. In the PFI, we learn to distinguish social participation from popular participation without separating the two. Social participation occurs in the spaces and mechanisms of social con­ trol, such as conferences, councils, hearings, public audiences, and so on whereas popular participation corresponds to more independent and autonomous forms of organization and the political activities of groups from the popular and

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

working classes and occurs in social movements, associations of residents, trade union struggles, and so on. Since its inception, the PFI has been involved with many social and popular participation actions. In 2008 and 2009, we developed the People’s Dialogue project. By means of this project, the PFI was able to establish a dialogical plat­ form composed of social movements and civil society organizations from Southern Africa and from Latin America for shared analysis about globalization and the construction of a different development model, one emphasizing com­ mon assets. We held half‐yearly meetings for the member nations’ representa­ tives so that, through interregional exchange of experiences and information, the organizations and social movements could strengthen the connection between their individual struggles and expand their shared knowledge. The debates and dialogues bridged the following thematic areas: the relation between social movements and the state; the activity of transnational organizations, especially regarding agro‐combustibles, food safety, cultural identity, and ques­ tions of democracy and the integration of solidarity among the populations of the member nations. In this process of social linkage and mobilization, two areas received special  attention from the PFI militancy: the WSF and the World Education Forum (WEF). The WSF is an open space for the construction of alternatives to capitalist glo­ balization. It consists of a permanent process of the amalgamation of struggles for “another possible world.” In the year 2000, the PFI participated in the organi­ zation of the first meeting of the WSF and has been a member of the WSF International Council ever since. The PFI is also a member of the Executive Secretariat of the WEF, an open space for the construction of alternatives to neoliberal education. It is tightly linked to the WSF and has adopted its Charter of Principles. The WEF, like the WSF, is the result of a lengthy process of organizing social movements. In Latin America, popular education played an important part in this process, as a gen­ eral concept of education historically linked to popular movements. Following Paulo Freire’s path through transformative education, the PFI attempts to insert the debate about popular and emancipatory education into these and other spaces. It is in this context, that we actively participate in the National Campaign for the Right to Education, as well as playing an active part in  the National Education Conferences of 2010 and 2014, contributing to the organization of the preconferences in São Paulo State and participating in both the regional and national conferences. The PFI has worked intensely in favor of National Policy for Social Participation. It is not just about constructing correct policies. They also need to be legitima­ tized through social and popular participation. People ask for more formal chan­ nels of social control, more transparency, more information. The process of participation and legitimation of public policies is as important as the policy itself. It is a formative process. The central dispute of the Brazilian democracy today is occurring in the field of social participation and the PFI is in no way detached from this dispute, that is, at the same time, a dispute about human rights. The attempt to criminalize the

579

580

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

national policies regarding social participation in which the conservative elites are engaged today is the same attempt to criminalize human rights that they have been making for years. We need to reaffirm this policy today, with more lucidity and strength than ever, knowing that the participation of citizens is a basic human right, as well as a constitutional precept. To continue to advance it is necessary to overcome a formal democracy that proclaims rights but does not grant them. Therefore, citizen education is essential in the process of the Brazilian democracy’s qualification and in the defense of human rights. The PFI will not be subdued by this conservative wave and continues fighting for National Policys of Social Participation as clearly established by the 1988 Brazilian Constitution. To give an account of its institutional mission, the PFI develops and presents its transformative action programs and networking projects with unified inten­ tion and methodological diversity. We base our praxis on the principles of hori­ zontality and of collective work. In 26 years of existence, we have developed a certain way of doing things, with professionalism and commitment as our meth­ odological credo—it is an essentially inclusive methodology, both inter‐ and transcultural, respectful of differences, of similarities and of diversity, founded on the principles of the incentive to self‐agglutination and to self‐determination, which caused a great methodological stir at both the WSF and the WEF and are very appropriate to our mission. The institute’s teams are recognized for their practice of this methodology, for their personal and interpersonal relationships, for their practices and for a particular, compassionate PFI way of being. Our history has been woven with the yarn of solidarity. Our assessing, consulting, publications and training pro­ jects have all been guided by a socioenvironmental, inter‐ and transcultural compass. The WSF was erected with the slogan “Another world is possible” in mind. How can we educate with this “other possible world” in mind? We maintain that to educate for another possible world is to educate people to become more conscious, less alienated, less fetishistic. To educate for another possible world is to make visible what was hidden so as to oppress, it is to give voice to those who are not heard. The struggles of feminists, of those who believe in ecology, of landless tillers of the soil and many others have brought what was made invisible by centuries of oppression into the light of day (Gadotti, 2006). To educate for another possible world is to educate for the emergence of what is still to come, the still‐not, the utopia. Thus, to educate for another possible world is also to educate for rupture, for rebellion, for the resistance, for saying “no,” for screaming, for dreaming of “other possible worlds,” in front of human pluralism, denouncing and announcing. That is why an education for other possible worlds is, more than anything, education to dream, an education for hope. Educating for other possible worlds is also educating to find our place in history, in the universe. It is peace educa­ tion, human rights education, social justice and cultural diversity education, standing upright in opposition to sexism and racism. It is to educate so that hun­ ger and misery are eradicated.

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

Final Considerations In its last 26 years, the PFI did not only continue and reinvent the legacy of Paulo Freire, it also consolidated, in a multiplicity of projects, an emancipatory per­ spective on education in and outside of Brazil. Our perspectives are located in a certain field, in a certain scenario that inter­ twines past and future. The future is neither the continuity nor the annihilation of the past. Our trajectory has taught us to educate with care, sustainability, and well‐being in mind. To educate for another possible world, overcoming the classic and essentially predatory paradigms of nature and of culture. To educate for transfor­ mation: this has been our focus, our mission. The classic paradigms work more with ideologies than with utopias and are, therefore, reducers of the totality. We must prepare ourselves for the education of the future and for the future of education. What we do is important and we need to know how to value it. As his legacy, Paulo Freire left us ethical and political roots on which to base our practices, wings. He bequeathed us a theory to go beyond him, and many dreams; the utopia of a society of equals. We work toward the “creation of a world in which it will be less difficult to love,” as he told us at the end of his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire did not leave disciples; he left a spirit. He was important because he knew how to reinvent himself and to reinvent his time. To think like a Freirean is to think rebellious thoughts. We need to continue to be rebels in a world which grows more conservative by the moment. We cannot simply repeat what Freire said as if he had left a church in our care. If that were the case, we would be relin­ quishing him to the past. And to place Freire in the past would be the same as ceasing to confront current oppressions, not wanting to involve ourselves with today’s culture of violence. Just as oppression reinvents itself in the globalized world of the capitalists with a previously unimaginable reach, so must global rebellion be reborn; it too has to become global to enable that other possible world to be born. The contemporaneous world moves more and more toward pragmatism, dis­ tancing itself from the liberating vision we defend. Coherent in our mission, we seek to confront this scenario by reaffirming our dream. Scattered throughout the world, many Freireans are uniting against those who attempt to convince us that the end of history, of the dream and of utopia is near at hand. Our strength is tied to the cause in which we believe. The Freirean project, reinvented con­ stantly through dialogue and understanding, still has meaning. When doubts assail us, we look for answers in the places where the oppressed reside. They are the ones who make sense of what we do. We are passionate people and we have a cause. We love what we do and attempt to do with zeal, simplicity, sensitivity, and loving kindness. We will continue to put ourselves at the side of all those who believe that it is possible to change the unjust order of things. We are not indifferent. Looking back, we can conclude that the PFI has had a long and beautiful jour­ ney of struggle, of resistance, and of hope. However, looking forward after

581

582

Ângela Biz Antunes, Francisca Pini, Paulo Roberto Padilha, and Sonia Couto

26 years of existence, we are obliged to declare that, today, we are faced with the need to hit the road again, older and wiser perhaps, realizing that we are still in the middle of the road. English translation by Peter Lownds

References Alencar, Anderson Fernandes de. (2007). A pedagogia da migração do software proprietário para o livre: Uma perspectiva freiriana. Master’s thesis, University of São Paulo. Antunes, Â., & Padilha, P. R. (2011). Metodologia MOVA: Vol. 2. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire (Caderno MOVA‐Brasil). Antunes, Â., & Padilha, P. R. (2010). Educação cidadã, educação integral: fundamentos e práticas. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Antunes, Â. (2002). Aceita um conselho? Como organizar o colegiado escolar. São Paulo: Cortez/Instituto Paulo Freire. Assumpção, R. (Ed.) (2009). Educação popular na perspectiva freiriana. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Azevedo, J. C. (2007). Reconversão cultural da escola: mercoescola e escola cidadã. Porto Alegre: Sulina. Boff, L. (1995). Princípio‐Terra: volta à Terra como pátria comum. São Paulo: Ática. Boff, L. (1999). Saber cuidar: Ética do humano, compaixão pela terra. Petrópolis: Vozes. Brandão, C. R. (1982). Educação popular. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Brandão, C. R. (1985). A educação como cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense. Brandão, C. R. (2002). A educação popular na escola cidadã. Petrópolis: Vozes. Brandão, C. R., Feitosa, S. C. S., & Rutiléa, A. (2009). Princípios curriculares orientadores para a EJA (Notebook 2). São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Cembalista, S., & Feitosa, S. C. S. (2012). Conviver, respeitar e valorizar a diversidade. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Dallari, D. d. A. (2004). Direitos humanos e cidadania. São Paulo: Moderna. Feitosa, Sônia Couto Souza. (1999). Método Paulo Freire: Princípios e práticas de uma concepção popular de educação. Master’s thesis, University of São Paulo. Feitosa, S. C. S. (2011). Método Paulo Freire: A reinvenção de um legado. Brasília: Líber. Freire, P. (1963, April–June). Conscientização e Alfabetização: Uma nova visão do processo. In Revista de Cultura da Universidade do Recife, no. 4. Recife: Universidade do Recife. Freire, P. (1967). Educação como prática da liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Freire, P. (1991). A educação na cidade. São Paulo: Cortez. Freire, P. (2000a). Diálogo com o educador Paulo Freire. In S. Ventorim (Ed.), Paulo Freire: A práxis político‐pedagógica do educador (pp. 273–298). Vitória: Edufes. Freire, P. (2000b). Pedagogia da indignação: Cartas pedagógicas e outros escritos. São Paulo: UNESP. Gadotti, M., & Torres, C. A. (1994). Educação popular: Utopia latino‐americana. São Paulo: Cortez/Edusp.

Fertilizing the Unusual: The Praxis of a Connective Organization

Gadotti, M. (2001). Pedagogia da terra. São Paulo: Peirópolis. Gadotti, M. (2006). Educar para um outro mundo possível: O Fórum Social Mundial como espaço de aprendizagem de uma nova cultura política e como processo transformador da sociedade civil planetária. São Paulo: Publisher. Gadotti, M. (2008). MOVA: Por um Brasil alfabetizado. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Gadotti, M. (2009). Educar para a sustentabilidade. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Gadotti, M. (1996). Paulo Freire: Uma biobibliografia. São Paulo: Cortez. Gadotti, M. (2013). MOVA‐Brasil 10 anos: Movimento de alfabetização de jovens e adultos. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Gadotti, M. (2014). Alfabetizar e conscientizar: Paulo Freire, 50 anos de Angicos. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Gutiérrez, F., & Prado, C. (1999). Ecopedagogia e cidadania planetária. São Paulo: Cortez. Gutierrez, F., & Prieto, D. (1994). A mediação pedagógica: Educação a distância alternativa. Campinas: Papirus. Mafra, Jason. (2007). A conectividade radical como princípio e prática da educação em Paulo Freire. Doctoral dissertation, University of São Paulo. Padilha, P. R. (2001). Planejamento dialógico: Como construir o projeto político‐ pedagógico da escola. São Paulo: Cortez/Instituto Paulo Freire. Padilha, P. R. (2004). Currículo intertranscultural: Novos itinerários para a educação. São Paulo: Cortez e Instituto Paulo Freire. Padilha, P. R. (2012). Educar em todos os cantos: Reflexões e canções por uma educação intertranscultural. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Padilha, P., Maria Favarão, E. M., & Marine, L. (2011). Educação para a cidadania planetária: Currículo intertransdisciplinar em Osasco. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Paiva, V. (1973). Educação popular e educação de adultos. São Paulo: Loyola. Pini, F. R. d. O., & Moraes, C. V. (2011). Educação, participação política e direitos humanos. São Paulo: Instituto Paulo Freire. Romão, J. E. (1998). Avaliação dialógica. São Paulo: Cortez/Instituto Paulo Freire. Romão, J. E. (2000). Dialética da diferença: O projeto da escola cidadã frente ao projeto pedagógico neoliberal. São Paulo: Cortez. Santana, B., Rossini, C., & de Lucca Pretto, N. (2012). Recursos educacionais abertos: Práticas colaborativas, políticas públicas. Salvador: Edufba São Paulo: Casa da Cultura Digital. Santos, M. (2000). Por uma outra globalização: Do pensamento único à consciência universal. São Paulo: Record. Sodré, M. (2012). Reinventando a educação: Diversidade, descolonização e redes. Petrópolis: Vozes.

583

585

Index Page numbers in bold refer to Tables, page numbers in italics refer to Figures. active learning, 201, 202, 211, 212–214 Active School Movement, 126 Adorno, Theodor, 266 adult education, 11, 33, 40, 223, 492, 571–573, 576 Africa, 42, 153, 161, 162 Asia, 169, 174–175, 182 Chile, 99, 102–109 citizenship, 43, 45, 56, 59–60, 70 dialogue, 56, 559 Freire and Gramsci, 307 higher education, 505, 510, 511 lifelong learning, 538, 539 literacy, 13, 70, 100, 102–109, 505, 511, 521, 529 popular culture, 52, 53 reinvention, 246, 248, 454 thought in action, 338, 341 Affonso, Almino, 84 Africa, 40–42, 63, 75, 85, 100, 145, 149–165 colonialism, 136–137, 140–142, 150–151, 157–163 fake news, 292 Freire and Gramsci, 306, 315 Freire’s relevance to education, 153–155 global legacy, 114–115 influence on Freire, 335, 338, 346–347, 350 liberatory feminism, 383–384 postcolonialism, 3, 40, 83, 151, 155–159, 161, 164, 169

UNESCO and lifelong learning, 536 see also Guinea‐Bissau agrarian reform, 109–112 Al‐Ghazali, 13, 200–201, 206, 208–211 alienation, 21, 54, 91, 122, 125, 145, 232 African education, 158 ecopedagogy, 471 reinvention, 247, 249 thought in action, 342, 344 Allende, President Salvador, 105, 114, 121 Alliance for Progress, 5, 60, 101 allocortex, 329, 330, 330, 331 alphabetization, 34–36, 41, 59–61, 135, 140, 571–574 educational philosophy, 73, 77 Guinea‐Bissau, 141–142 Japan, 169 popular culture, 54, 56 teacher education, 493 alterity, 5, 381, 384 Althusser, Louis, 432, 452 Alvarado, President Juan Velasco, 113 Alves, Governor Aluísio, 34–35 Alves, Rubem, 46 Ambedkar, B. R., 280 Angelelli, Bishop Enrique, 7 Angicos, 11, 34–36, 58, 138, 157, 538 Angola, 153, 159 Anthropocene, 5, 15, 245, 253, 266–267 anthropology, 7, 34, 39–40, 47, 73, 103, 172, 383

The Wiley Handbook of Paulo Freire, First Edition. Edited by Carlos Alberto Torres. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

586

Index

anthropology (cont’d) ecopedagogy, 470–471, 477 Freire, 255–257 oppression, 248–249 see also philosophical anthropology; political anthropology anticolonialism, 338, 339, 346 apartheid, 152, 159–160, 164 Apple, Michael, 446, 453, 456, 494, 500 Aramco, 200, 205 Arendt, Hannah, 88, 90, 143, 143 Argentina, 121, 131, 452 Aristotle, 322 Aronowitz, Stanley, 164, 261–263, 311, 551 Arraes, Miguel, 339 Ataide, Tristan de, 308 aufheben, 6, 23 Australia, 204, 409, 537 Austria, 86, 127 authority and freedom, 311–315 Azevedo, Fernando, 104, 127, 340 Ball, Stephen, 454, 456–457 banking education, 79, 86, 93, 231–232, 326, 497–498, 551 Africa, 154–155, 157–158 Chile, 102, 107, 108, 112 China, 195 ecopedagogy, 465, 472, 480 Europe, 138 fake news, 291, 298 Freire and Gandhi, 282, 283 Freire and Gramsci, 311, 316 higher education, 512, 514 human rights, 575 Japan, 172, 173 Latin America, 125, 129, 131 liberatory feminism, 382 problem‐posing pedagogy, 418 religion, 254, 438–439 Saudi Arabia, 209 Taiwan, 178, 185 teacher education, 496, 497–498, 500 thought in action, 337, 340, 349 US, 222, 224–225, 231–232 Barreto, Anita Paes, 84

Bartoli, Matteo, 308 Baudrillard, Jean, 171–172, 186 Beatles, The, 8, 136 Beck, Ulrich, 455 Belgium, 85, 136, 144, 433 Bell, Derrick, 422, 423–424 Berlin wall, 567 Betto, Frei, 131, 336, 338 biophilia, 16, 20, 260, 267, 467 Bolívar, Simón, 126 Bolivia, 12, 83, 102, 128, 135, 286 Botswana, 160 Bourdieu, Pierre, 242, 361–362, 368, 374, 390 reinvention, 452, 454, 457 Bowers, Chet, 257 Bowles, Samuel, 491 brain, 322, 329, 330, 330, 331, 331 Branco, General Castelo, 135 Brandāo, Carlos Rodrigues, 12, 35, 565–566 Brazil, 4–5, 8–12, 33–37, 40–42, 121–123, 131, 150 citizen education, 43, 44 culture and identity, 67–70 educational philosophy, 70–75 eventual influence of Freire, 153 fake news, 297–298 Freire exiled, 10–11, 17, 33–36, 38, 41–43, 101, 134–135 Freire and Gandhi, 276, 279–280, 282–283, 286–287 Freire and Gramsci, 305, 308–310 Freire imprisoned, 11, 83, 101, 134–135, 153, 179, 283, 286 Freire and religion, 432–433 higher education, 509–511, 515–516 literacy, 22, 33, 36, 41, 54, 56–61, 99–109, 121, 135 military coup (1964), 11, 35–36, 38, 70, 75, 83–84, 128, 134 Pinto, 93–98 popular culture, 12, 51, 53, 84 popular education, 123 post‐Freire, 227–228 return from exile, 15, 33, 43 thought in action, 336–339, 342, 352 Brennand, Francisco, 84

Index

Bryan, William Jennings, 294 Beauvoir, Simone de, 37 Buber, Martin, 37, 61 Burawoy, Michael, 370, 372 Bush, President George W., 236 Cabral, Amílcar, 13, 41, 149, 151–152, 157, 512–513 influence on Freire, 336, 338, 347, 348, 351 Caggiano, Archbishop Antonio, 7 Câmara, Dom Hélder, 105, 438, 511 Camus, Albert, 136 capitalism, 4, 14, 63, 127, 491, 579, 581 China, 191 citizen education, 44 dialectics and dialogue, 551, 561–562 ecopedagogy, 464, 475 Freire and Habermas, 249, 258, 259 gender studies, 391 higher education, 509 lifelong learning, 544, 545 Morris, 85 popular culture, 52–53, 69 reinvention, 446, 448–451 scholar/activists, 370 thesis supervision, 528 thought in action, 339, 349–350 wild, 130–131 Cardoso, Aurenice, 36, 58 Cardoso, Fernando H., 4, 109 Carnation Revolution, 136 Carton, Michel, 223 Cassirer, Ernst, 255, 266 caste system, 275–276, 278–281, 287 Castro, Fidel, 110 Catholic Action Movement, 257 Catholicism, 6, 70, 89, 103–104, 122–123, 264, 350 Chile, 103–104, 109 Danilson Pinto, 93–95 Freire, 7, 18, 127, 257, 335, 337, 431–442 Freire and Gandhi, 276–277, 279, 282, 286 Gramsci, 309 lifelong learning, 543

Maritain, 341 Saudi Arabia, 201 Center for International Studies (CEI), 61, 63–64 Center of Intercultural Documentation of Cuernavaca (CIDOC), 127, 469 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, 103, 305 Chile, 83, 99–115 121–122, 131, 305 agrarian reform, 109–112 Freire in exile, 8, 12–13, 36–38, 83–84, 99–115, 122, 135 literacy, 41, 99–101, 102–109, 112–114 China, 191–197, 449, 540 Dewey, 294 influence of Freire, 194–197 Chomsky, Noam, 111 Christianity, 102, 127, 264, 321, 399, 431–442 Chile, 100–102, 104–105, 109, 112–113, 122, 222 existentialism, 5, 83, 340–341 Freire, 34, 61, 100, 210, 262–265, 276, 306 gender, 399, 407, 408 humanism, 34, 101–102, 339–340 Korea, 179–180, 181, 183 see also Catholicism citizen education, 12, 43–45, 57, 185, 202, 352, 575 global, 44, 467 scholar/activists, 372–373 school, 43–45, 568–569 civil rights, 111, 114–115, 418 class, 17–19, 84, 259, 359–375, 422–423, 579 African education, 158, 161 Chile, 100 citizen education, 44 conversion strategies, 359, 361–365 education and power, 365–367 educational philosophy, 70, 74, 76, 78 Freire and Gandhi, 275–276, 279, 284 Freire and Gramsci, 308–309, 311, 313 globalization and postcolonialism, 367–369 higher education, 362–363, 513–514

587

588

Index

class (cont’d) knowledge from below, 369–370 Latin America, 127, 130 liberatory feminism, 384–385, 386 literacy, 113, 360, 363 popular culture, 53 popular education, 63 problem‐posing pedagogy, 418, 421 reductionism, 245, 248, 250, 252, 452 reinvention, 450, 451, 452 religion, 433, 435, 436 scholar/activists, 370–375 teacher education, 491, 494, 496 thought in action, 337, 340–341, 343, 345, 347, 350–353 US education, 222, 234, 235–236 coding, 396–399, 400, 406 Coelho, Germano, 71, 84 Cold War, 5, 8, 35, 37 Collins, Patricia Hill, 382 Colombia, 101, 113, 126 colonialism, 4, 14, 315, 451, 536 Africa, 136–137, 140–142, 150–151, 157–163 Asia, 167, 168 Europe, 136, 139, 140, 141, 306 Fanon, 85–86 Freire and Gandhi, 275–276, 279–280, 285–296, 288 gender studies, 391 Latin America, 124–125, 126, 132 oppression, 153, 158, 160, 168, 249, 276, 280 Portugal, 136, 140, 162, 306, 536 thought in action, 346, 349 Columbus, Christopher, 125 communicative action, 15, 154, 241–242, 254, 267 communion, 18, 252, 345, 431–432, 439–441 community organizations in Korea, 181–182 community university in Taiwan, 175 compassion, 331–332 conceptual reconstruction, 248, 254 conflict theory, 136, 137 Confucius, 177, 194

conscientization, 11–12, 16, 34, 38–40, 75–79, 86, 572 adult literacy, 102 Africa, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 163–164 Chile, 99, 101–103 China, 195 class relations, 360 educational philosophy, 67, 72, 75–79 Europe, 134, 135, 140 Freire and Gandhi, 276–282, 287 Freire and Habermas, 247, 248, 250, 266 higher education, 511–512 Japan, 169–170, 172, 185 Korea, 180–182, 185 lifelong learning, 544 reinvention, 447 religion, 431 Taiwan, 174, 175 teacher education, 496, 497 thought in action, 337, 339, 341–342, 345, 347, 351–352 US education, 224, 226 consciousness domestication, 107 consciousness‐raising (CR), 18, 53, 222, 379, 381, 385 Asia, 181, 183–185 Chile, 99, 104–106, 113–115 liberatory feminism, 379, 381, 385 conservative populism, 132 Cooper, Anna Julia, 375 Copernicus, 134–135 Cortés, Hernán, 124 Cortesāo, Professor Luiza, 512 Counts, George, 365 craft education, 277, 284, 285 critical analysis, 111–112, 145–146, 337, 372–375 Guinea‐Bissau, 162 Saudi Arabia, 202 Stanford Seminars, 223 critical awareness, 276–280 critical consciousness, 39–40, 124, 128, 175–176, 307, 421 Africa, 154, 160 Chile, 100, 103, 107

Index

China, 195 education for humanity, 322, 327, 328 Japan, 169, 186 Korea, 183 Pinto, 555 popular culture, 72, 75, 78, 80 problem‐posing pedagogy, 421 Saudi Arabia, 209 Taiwan, 174, 175–176 thought in action, 339–340, 342, 352, 353 critical democracy, 370, 372 critical literacy, 248, 266, 366 class relations, 360, 363 ecopedagogy, 478 lifelong learning, 540, 544 Saudi Arabia, 199, 201–202, 209, 211–214 teacher education, 498–499 critical modernism, 5–6, 14, 242 critical pedagogy, 17, 45, 102, 105, 114, 365, 498–499 Africa, 158–159 class relations, 364–365 education for humanity, 325, 332 Freire and Gandhi, 282 Freire and Habermas, 243, 245, 246 gender studies, 393 knowledge from below, 369 scholar/activists, 359, 371, 375 teacher education, 492, 496, 498–500 Croce, Benedetto, 310 critical race theory (CRT), 18, 417–413, 423, 424–425 critical social theory, 15, 241–243 critical sociology, 370, 372, 451, 453 critical theory, 9, 15, 20, 78, 167, 279, 421 Frankfurt School, 15, 203, 455 Freire and Habermas, 241, 243, 247, 253, 255, 266 Islamic, 13, 202–203 race and racism, 18, 417–423, 423, 424–425 reinvention, 445, 448, 450, 452, 454–455

scholar/activists, 370, 371 critical thinking, 4, 9, 167, 243, 264, 327, 555 Asia, 167, 178 Chile, 111, 114 China, 195, 196 Dewey, 296 education for humanity, 327 Marx and Marxism, 243 popular culture, 79 reinvention, 446, 447 religion, 264 Saudi Arabia, 205, 211, 212, 213 teacher education, 497 US education, 232, 234 critical transitive consciousness, 181, 447, 448 Cuba, 150, 252, 449, 536 cultural action, 7, 52–54, 57, 254 Chile, 100–102, 106–108, 112 thought in action, 337, 345, 350 Cultural Action Institute (CAI), 141 Cultural Extension Service (SEC), 57–61, 73, 84 culturalism, 68, 341 culture centers, 52, 59 culture circles, 34, 54, 59, 84, 284, 578 educational philosophy, 71, 73 Taiwan, 177 teacher education, 500 thought in action, 341 culture medium, 133, 134–135, 136, 137–138 culture of silence, 179, 283–284, 434 thought in action, 339, 341 curriculum reform in China, 194, 196 Darwin, Charles, 134 Davis, Angela, 375 Davis, Mike, 369 decoding, 171–174, 186 decolonization, 13, 40, 139, 140–142, 279 Defoe, Daniel, 92 dehumanization, 15, 298, 403, 556 ecopedagogy, 470, 471, 474 Freire and Gandhi, 276, 279

589

590

Index

dehumanization (cont’d) Freire and Habermas, 247–248, 254, 258–260, 264–266 higher education, 509 religion, 435, 439–440, 442 Taiwan, 176 teacher education, 497 thesis supervision, 530 thought in action, 352 deliberative democracy, 15, 241, 243 democracy, 136, 259–260, 278, 370, 491, 575 China, 196, 197 citizen education, 43–44, 568–569 critical, 370, 372 deliberative, 15, 241, 243 ecopedagogy, 476 educational philosophy, 73 fake news, 294, 297 higher education, 515 Japan, 170 Korea, 179, 180, 184–185 Latin America, 121, 123, 125–127, 129 lifelong learning, 537, 541 literacy, 35–36, 99 Paulo Freire Institute, 574, 579–580 reinvention, 448–449, 451, 453, 457 Taiwan, 177, 184–185 thought in action, 339–340, 342–343, 350–351, 353 democratic education, 3, 12, 19–23 democratization, 243, 251–252, 340 African education, 156, 159 cultural, 52, 58–59, 62, 73 Korea, 179, 180, 183 reinvention, 448, 449, 451 dependency theory, 4, 14, 251, 450 Derrida, Jacques, 262, 424 development and ecopedagogy, 473–474, 478–480 developmentalism, 5, 71–72, 76 developmentalist nationalism, 335, 338–339, 351 DeVos, Betsy, 236 Dewey, John, 16, 46, 104, 126, 209, 284, 293–297

anthropology, 254, 256 ecopedagogy, 465 influence on Freire, 305, 335, 336, 340 influence in US, 150, 221, 293–297 not being duped, 291–297, 299–301 teacher education, 491 diagnostic concepts, 244, 246, 247, 250 dialectics, 3, 44, 58, 307 and dialogue, 21, 551–562 ecopedagogy, 472–473, 475, 476, 480 higher education, 507–508, 513 religion, 435, 436 dialogue, 36–37, 322, 327–328, 359–361, 368, 498 African education, 155–157 Asia, 184 China, 195, 196–197 citizen education, 44 and dialectics, 21, 551–562 ecopedagogy, 471, 472 Freire and Gandhi, 284 Freire and Gramsci, 311–312, 316 Freire and Habermas, 241–244, 247–248, 250–251, 253, 256, 259–261, 264 gender studies, 391 higher education, 507–508 Korea, 180, 181, 183 Latin American education, 124–125, 128–129 liberatory feminism, 382 literacy, 60 Paulo Freire Institute, 581 Paulo Freire System, 36 popular culture, 53, 54, 55, 71, 79 praxis, 155–157, 163, 164 problem‐posing pedagogy, 418, 419, 420, 425 reinvention, 445, 447, 449, 453 religion, 432, 436, 439–441 Saudi Arabia, 201–202, 209–214 Taiwan, 177–178 teacher education, 496, 497–499 thesis supervision, 521, 527–529, 531 thought in action, 337, 342, 351–353 US education, 221, 226, 232, 237 discrimination, 63, 139, 161, 390, 423, 433

Index

fake news, 294, 296, 297 Freire and Gandhi, 280, 282, 286, 287 distance learning, 577–578 diversity, 20, 389, 391–392, 542 dodiscência, 44 doxa, 308, 550, 560 DuBois, W. E. B., 375 Dussel, Enrique, 5, 242–243, 399 Economic Commission of Latin America (ECLA), 4–5 ecopedagogy, 18, 21–22, 245, 253, 266–267, 463–480, 569–571 citizen education, 44 foundations, 467 lifelong learning, 542 missing chapter, 17–18, 468–469, 470–480 Ecuador, 126 educating for other worlds, 578–580 education and agrarian reform, 109–112 educational philosophy, 33, 67–80 educational thought, 194–195 Eggert, Edla, 391 Egypt, 200 Einstein, Albert, 277 elitism, 72, 80, 115, 168, 170, 371 Freire and Gandhi, 279, 283 higher education, 313, 508–509 emancipation, 6–8, 17, 33, 37–38, 41, 44, 576–578 Africa, 150, 154, 158–159, 163–163 Asia, 169, 171, 175, 176 class, 17, 360, 363–364 conscientization, 75–76 ecopedagogy, 471 feminism, 379–380 Freire and Gramsci, 309, 314 Freire and Habermas, 242, 247, 254‐255, 259, 264, 267 higher education, 511 Latin America, 122, 131 Paulo Freire Institute, 566, 569, 574–578, 581 popular culture, 74–76 reinvention, 445, 447, 458

Saudi Arabia, 199, 208, 211 teacher education, 492 emancipatory education, 8–9, 150, 309, 363–364 Paulo Freire Institute, 566, 575, 579 empathy, 331–332, 528 empowerment, 20, 99, 155, 163, 418, 499 ecopedagogy, 475, 476, 479 education for humanity, 322, 324, 326 fake news, 298, 300 Freire and Gandhi, 276, 288 gender studies, 404–405 liberatory feminism, 379, 380, 386 Saudi Arabia, 202, 207, 211, 213 Taiwan, 174, 176–177 US education, 226, 227 Engels, Friedrich, 90, 279, 306–307, 561, 478 influence on Freire, 337, 350 Enlightenment, 19, 264, 307, 309, 367, 447–448 environmental pedagogies (EP), 464–465, 468, 472–473 see also ecopedagogy environmentalism, 463–480 epistemological diversity, 391 epochal diagnosis, 18, 246, 445–452 Erundina, Mayor Luiza, 33, 43, 314 Escolanovismo, 104 ethics, 8, 20, 34, 46, 91, 581 African education, 164 class relations, 364 dialectics and dialogue, 552, 555 ecopedagogy, 470, 474, 475, 479 Freire and Habermas, 16, 244, 248–249 gender studies, 397 Korea, 185 liberatory feminism, 382 popular culture, 67, 74 reinvention, 450, 451 Saudi Arabia, 208, 210, 211 thesis supervision, 522, 524, 526–527, 530–531 thought in action, 351, 353 universal human, 466–467, 470, 476, 479, 527 US education, 230

591

592

Index

Ethiopia, 159 Eurocentricity, 243, 252, 256, 542 Freire and Gramsci, 307, 315–316 liberatory feminism, 383–384 European Union (EU), 535, 539, 542, 544, 545 fake news, 16, 291–301 Fanon, Frantz, 6, 19, 37, 143, 249, 279 Chile, 103 colonialism, 85–86 ecopedagogy, 468 quoted by Freire, 143 reinvention, 448 Faundez, Antonio, 41, 306, 336, 338 Faure Report, 537, 539 fear of freedom, 3, 83, 281 feminism, 8, 17–18, 224, 379–386, 580 Freire and Gandhi, 287–288 gender studies, 389, 393–394, 398–399, 408–409 machismo, 248, 250 Fernandes, Florestan, 103 Fernandez, Dominique, 94–95 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 253, 254 Filho, Lourenço, 70, 127 Fiori, Ernani Maria, 109, 257, 258 Fordism, 306, 308, 313 Foucault, Michel, 110, 170, 390, 423, 454–457 governmentality, 540 reinvention, 445, 448, 452, 453–457 theory of power, 242, 452, 453, 454–457 foundational concepts, 244–248, 250 France, 136, 139, 140, 144 Francis, Pope, 291, 543 Franco, General, 137, 140 Frankfurt School, 14, 15, 203, 241, 266–267 reinvention, 448, 452, 454–455 freedom, 8, 16, 326–327, 436, 475, 514, 528 Africa, 154, 158, 159, 163 Asia, 175, 177 authority, 311–315 Chile, 101–102, 105–108, 112

education, 34, 36, 43–44, 45, 53 education for humanity, 323, 325, 326–327, 330 educational philosophy, 73, 75, 76, 79 Europe, 133, 145 fear of, 3, 83, 281 Freire and Gandhi, 275, 276–277, 281, 286, 287 Freire and Habermas, 242, 249, 253–254, 256, 258, 260, 262, 264–265 Latin America, 123, 129, 130 Paulo Freire Institute, 567, 578 reinvention, 450, 456, 457 Saudi Arabia, 202, 208, 209 scholar/activists, 370 teacher education, 21, 491, 493 thought in action, 339–341, 343, 353 see also liberation Frei, Eduardo, 122, 222 Freire, Ana (Paulo’s widow), 570 Freire, Elza (Paulo’s wife), 10–11, 56, 87 Freire, Paulo, 3–23, 51–64, 565–582 Africa, 11, 13, 40–42, 75, 83, 85, 100, 149–165 Angicos, 11, 34–36, 58, 138, 157, 538 anthropology, 255–257 Asia, 167–186 authority and freedom, 311–315 birth, 7, 33, 276, 571 Bolivia, 12, 83, 102, 135, 286 Catholicism, 7, 18, 127, 257, 335, 337, 431–442 China, 191–193, 194–197 Christianity, 34, 61, 100, 210, 262–265, 276, 306 Citizen School, 43–45, 568–569 class relations, 359–370 contingent social‐theoretical analysis, 250–253 critical race theory, 417–425 death, 8, 33 death of father, 12, 88 dialectics and dialogue, 551–562 ecopedagogy, 463–480 education and culture, 51–55 education for humanity, 321–332

Index

Europe, 23, 133–146 exile in Chile, 8, 12–13, 36–38, 83–84, 99–115, 122, 135 exiled from Brazil, 10–11, 17, 33–36, 38, 41–43, 101, 134–135 family, 33, 87–88, 91–92 feminism, 8, 17–18, 287–288, 379–386 Gandhi, 275–288 gender, 17–18, 389–411 global thinker, 45–47 Gramsci, 16, 305–316 Habermas, 15–16, 241–267 Harvard, 33, 108, 110, 138, 221–224, 252, 567 higher education, 505–516 ideology, 307–308 imprisoned, 11, 83, 101, 134–135, 153, 179, 283, 286 influence of Africa, 335, 338, 346–347, 350 intellectual and political journey, 33–47 Japan, 169–174 Korea, 179–184 Latin America, 121–132 liberatory feminism, 379–386 lifelong learning, 535–545 logic of reinvention, 445–458 Marxism, 14–15, 17, 34, 91, 143, 185–186, 201, 222, 306 Middle East, 199–214 missing chapter, 17–18, 468–469, 470–480 not being duped, 291–301 peace prize, 538 People’s University, 56–62 pilgrim of utopia, 10–14 polyphonic contextualization, 83–96 popular culture’s educational philosophy, 67–80 praxis, 310–311 problem‐posing pedagogy, 417, 418–422 Recife, 11–12, 33, 45, 56–59, 71–73, 83–84, 88–89 reinvention, 245–250, 445–458

relevance to African education, 153–155 religion, 335, 337, 339–341, 350, 431–442 Secretary of Education, 12, 43–45, 127, 310, 360, 492–493, 542–543, 567–568 self‐characterization, 257–261 Standford Seminars, 10, 14, 223–226 State Educational Council, 57 teacher education, 491–501 thesis supervision, 521–531 thought in action, 335–353 Taiwan, 174–179 tasks of scholar/activists, 370–375 UNESCO, 538–541 University of Geneva, 11, 223 UPMS, 62–64 US education, 8, 13–14, 221–224, 225, 225–237 World Council of Churches, 13, 33, 40, 108, 114, 138, 145–146, 438 Freud, Sigmund, 19, 134, 253, 267 Freyre, Gilberto, 92 Fromm, Erich, 14, 19, 103, 111, 143, 367 Freire and Habermas, 249, 253, 260, 262, 267 Latin American education, 127–128 quoted by Freire, 143 reinvention, 450, 455 Furter, Pierre, 11, 111, 223 Gadotti, Moacir, 11–12, 142, 144, 256, 336, 338 ecopedagogy, 463–464, 570 gender studies, 409 lifelong learning, 542, 543 Paulo Freire Institute, 565–66, 570 Gajardo, Marcela, 305 Gandhi, Mahatma, 16, 275–288, 478 Gandin, Luis Armando, 369–370 Gelpi, Ettore, 536, 537–538, 540 gender and gender studies, 17–19, 43, 361, 389–411 Chile, 111, 113 critical race theory, 422–423 education for humanity, 323

593

594

Index

gender and gender studies (cont’d) Freire and Gandhi, 275, 281–283, 287 Freire and Habermas, 244, 247–248, 254 liberatory feminism, 379–386 Paulo Freire Institute, 580 problem‐posing pedagogy, 417, 421 reinvention, 451, 453 Saudi Arabia, 202, 204, 212 teacher education, 496 US education, 222, 224 see also sexism Gentile, Giovanni, 313, 314 George, George S., 283 Germany, 139, 140, 144, 242 Gerratana, Valentino, 306 Geyer, Michael, 383 Giddens, Anthony, 251 Gintis, Herbert, 491 Giroux, Henry, 46, 111, 164, 243, 245–246, 446 Glass, Ronald, 251 global citizenship education (GCE), 467 Global Commons, 467 globalisms, 449 globalization, 17, 22–23, 229, 361, 367–369 citizen education, 44, 467 ecopedagogy, 466, 471, 474–479, 571 education for humanity, 322, 331 education and power, 365, 367–369 higher education, 505–516 knowledge from below, 369 Latin America, 123, 130 lifelong learning, 539, 543 Paulo Freire Institute, 579, 581 reinvention, 445, 448–450, 452–454 Saudi Arabia, 202, 203, 205 scholar/activists, 359, 371, 375 teacher education, 494 Gobetti, Ada and Piero, 309 Godard, Jean‐Luc, 136 Gokhle, Gopal Krishna, 277 Goldmann, Lucien, 37, 336, 345, 350 Goulart, President Joāo, 33, 35, 36, 84, 101, 103–104 progressive populism, 339

governmentality, 242, 445, 454–457, 458, 540 Gramsci, Antonio, 6, 9, 16, 110, 142–143, 252–253, 305–316 active consent, 363 dialectics and dialogue, 552, 562 higher education, 513 imprisoned, 311 influence on Freire, 335–336, 338, 343, 346, 348, 352 Pinto, 93 quoted by Freire, 143 reinvention, 449, 450–451, 452–453, 456 religion, 432 scholar/activists, 372, 373 Great Britain see United Kingdom (including Great Britain) Greece, 136 Grenada, 536 Guerreiro, Professor Alberto, 279, 511 Guevara, Ernesto “Che”, 5, 57, 110, 122, 252, 279, 448 misuse of name, 540 Guimarāes, Sérgio, 75, 336, 338 Guinea‐Bissau, 13, 139, 140–142, 151–153, 157, 159, 161–162 Freire and Gramsci, 306, 315 Maxim Gorki Center, 560 thought in action, 338, 346–349 US education, 223 Gutiérrez, Francisco, 577 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 150, 262 Habermas, Jürgen, 15–16, 142, 144, 241–267, 336 reinvention, 446, 447–448, 454, 457 Hale, Sondra, 395, 40 Harding, S., 383–384 Harvard, 33, 108, 110, 135, 138, 145, 221–224, 252 Saudi Arabia, 206 Paulo Freire Institute, 567 Hayek, Friedrich, 130 Hegel, Georg, 4, 23, 37, 308 dialectics and dialogue, 554, 557 Freire and Habermas, 249, 254, 257

Index

master‐slave metaphor, 15, 18, 249, 257, 259–260, 344, 346, 351, 541, 557 reinvention, 448, 450 thought in action, 335–336, 344, 346, 350–352 Heller, Agnes, 143, 143 Herder, Johann, 254 hermeneutical circle, 150, 151, 152 higher education, 21–23, 204, 236, 292, 505–516 Africa, 160, 163–164 China, 191 class relations, 362–363, 513–514 Freire and Gramsci, 311, 313–314 liberatory feminism, 382, 383, 386 oppression, 14, 508, 509, 511, 513 Saudi Arabia, 200–202, 204–205, 211–212 Taiwan, 174–175, 185 thesis supervision, 521–531 Higher Institute for Brazilian Studies (ISEB) see Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB) Hinduism, 275–277, 279, 286 historicism, 18, 242–245, 248, 252–253, 255, 266, 340 reinvention, 18, 445–446 historicization, 446, 450, 453 HIV/AIDS, 402–403 Honneth, Axel, 242, 265, 450, 457 hooks, bell, 8, 164, 375, 408–409 hope, 37, 39, 124, 129–131, 173, 229, 440 Africa, 155–157, 160–161 Dewey, 294, 297 ecopedagogy, 466 Europe, 135, 140 feminism, 380 Freire and Gandhi, 276 Freire and Gramsci, 16, 308 Freire and Sen, 326, 327 Jacob, 265 lifelong learning, 544–545 Morris, 85 popular culture, 74 religion, 434, 440

teacher education, 498, 501 thesis supervision, 528, 531 thought in action, 345, 353 Hora, Abelardo da, 71, 84 Horkheimer, Max, 266 Horton, Myles, 6, 11, 43, 111 Nicaragua, 227 human capital, 322, 328–329, 330, 331 human rights, 45, 54, 401, 447, 455, 574–576 Paulo Freire Institute, 574–576, 579–580 scholar/activists, 370, 372 Taiwan, 177 humanism, 34, 44, 47, 84, 222, 431 Africa, 155 agrarian reform, 111 Chile, 101, 102 Christianity, 34, 101–102, 339–340 conscientization, 75, 79 ecopedagogy, 476 Freire and Gandhi, 276, 279 Freire and Habermas, 252, 253, 255, 261–264, 265 Latin America, 123, 127 teacher education, 498 thought in action, 339, 342–343, 345, 347, 349 UNESCO and lifelong learning, 537, 539 humanity, 321–332 humanization, 15, 19, 39, 279 African education, 156–157, 163–164 dialectics and dialogue, 555–556 ecopedagogy, 466, 470–473 Freire and Habermas, 247, 253–254, 256, 258–260, 262, 264–266 gender studies, 391 Korea, 181, 185 reinvention, 446, 449, 458 religion, 435 Saudi Arabia, 208 Taiwan, 176 thesis supervision, 527, 531 thought in action, 351 Hume, David, 254

595

596

Index

humility, 46, 234, 235, 391, 478, 561 dialogue, 327, 498 Marxism, 91 thesis supervision, 523 Husserl, Edmund, 37 Huxley, Julian, 537 Illich, Ivan, 8, 111, 127, 512, 515 ecopedagogy, 469, 478 immigration, 236–237, 494 Europe, 8, 124, 132, 139–140, 142 Taiwan, 176 imperialism, 63 India, 275–288, 540 Industrial Revolution, 124, 245, 257, 321, 328 Industrial Social Services (SESI), 12, 56, 101, 143 workers’ language, 86, 87, 96 industrialization in Korea, 168 Institute of International and Comparative Education (IICE), 192 Instituto de Açāo Cultural (IDAC), 336, 346 Instituto de Capacitación e Investigación en Reforma Agraria (ICIBA), 101, 106, 108–111, 113 Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB), 5, 71, 100, 103–105, 507–508, 511 influence on Freire, 335, 338–340, 342, 352 integral reproduction theory, 452–454, 456–457, 458 internal colonialism, 4, 418 International Monetary Fund, 224, 569 intersubjectivity, 124, 213, 266, 340, 353 Iran, 200, 204 Islam and Muslims, 13, 237, 367 Saudi Arabia, 199–204, 206–214 Shia, 200 Sunnis, 199–200, 207 Islamic Critical Theory, 13, 202–203 Israel, 200, 292 Italy, 136, 140, 144, 291, 545

Freire and Gramsci, 306, 308, 310–311, 315–316 Jacob, François, 265 James, C. L. R., 375 Japan, 45, 167–174, 184, 185, 294 Jaspers, Karl, 103, 255, 335, 337 Jenkins, Esau, 43 Jung, Carl, 19 Kallenbach, Herman, 282 Kant, Immanuel, 69, 209, 254, 448 Kennedy, President John F., 101 Kenya, 160 Khaldun, Ibn, 201 knowledge from below, 369–370 Koestenbaum, Wayne, 392 Korea, 167–169, 179–185 Korean Christian Academy (KCA), 181, 183 Kosik, Karel, 37, 142, 143, 143 language, 123–125, 367–368, 495, 500 Africa, 141, 150, 153, 156–157 China, 192 gender studies, 391, 395–411 Guinea‐Bissau, 315 workers’, 86, 87, 96 Latin America, 4, 121–132, 179, 242–243, 251–252 China, 191–192 Lenin, Nadezhda Krupskaya, 538 Lenin, Vladimir and Leninism, 37, 61, 279, 311 Lesotho, 160 liberalism, 558 liberation, 56–57, 324–326, 342–346, 437–439 Africa, 75, 151–153, 158–159, 163–164 Asia, 168, 185 China, 195 ecopedagogy, 570 education for humanity, 322, 324–326, 327–328 Europe, 140–142 fake news, 298, 300

Index

Freire and Gandhi, 275, 276, 279, 281, 284 Freire and Habermas, 250, 254, 259, 262–263 gender studies, 391, 396, 398–399, 404 higher education, 508 Japan, 171 Korea, 181–182 lifelong learning, 538 oppression, 37, 39, 83, 88, 93, 128, 223, 230, 342–346 Paulo Freire Institute, 566, 581 popular culture, 51–53 praxis, 310 reinvention, 447, 448, 458 religion, 7, 18, 431, 436–439, 441 Taiwan, 174, 176 thought in action, 341, 342–346, 353 US education, 222, 224, 225–226, 234 see also freedom liberation philosophy, 5–6, 14, 242–243 liberation theology, 5–7, 14, 150–151, 279, 431, 437, 492 Freire and Habermas, 243, 255, 262–263 Korea, 179, 185 lifelong learning, 543 Saudi Arabia, 201 liberatory education, 20, 23, 127–128, 288, 497, 512 liberatory feminism, 379–386 liberatory pedagogy, 164, 380–381 LIBRE curriculum, 331, 331, 332 lifelong education (LE) and lifelong learning (LL), 21, 60, 321, 325, 332, 336, 535–545 Taiwan, 174 UNESCO, 536–541 life spelling (Seikatsu Thuzurikata), 170, 185 Lima, Alceu Amoroso, 104 liminalities, 393–394, 395, 399 limit situations, 78, 86, 167, 170–171, 179 Lippmann, Walter, 294, 297 literacy, 38, 84–85, 89–90, 112–113, 312, 492–493

achieved in 40 hours, 11, 114–115, 134, 135, 521 adult education, 13, 70, 100, 102–109, 505, 511, 521, 529 Africa, 41–42, 150, 153, 155, 162 agrarian reform, 109–112 Angicos, 34–36 brain, 266 Brazil, 22, 33, 36, 41, 54, 56–61, 99–109, 121, 135 Chile, 41, 99–101, 102–109, 112–114 class, 113, 360, 363 Cuba, 150 ecopedagogy, 475 education for humanity, 321, 327, 330, 331 education and power, 366–367 educational philosophy, 69–73 Europe, 134, 135, 140 Freire and Gandhi, 276, 280–283, 285–286 higher education, 505, 511–512 Korea, 181–182 Latin American education, 121, 126–127, 128, 168 lifelong learning, 538, 540, 544 Nicaragua, 226–227 oppression, 33, 84, 99–100, 224, 280, 367 Paulo Freire Institute, 568, 571–572 People’s University, 56–62 popular culture, 52, 54, 56, 69–73 problem‐posing pedagogy, 421 race, 43–44 religion, 431 Saudi Arabia, 199, 201–202, 209, 211, 214 techniques versus practice, 235 thought in action, 339, 341, 347–349, 351 training, 10, 11, 14, 112–114 UNESCO, 538 US education, 221, 224, 230–231, 233, 235 see also critical literacy logic of reinvention, 18, 445–458 Lorde, Audre, 308

597

598

Index

love, 9, 19, 46, 61–62, 86, 90, 93, 440–441 biophilia, 267 China, 197 dialogue, 327 ecopedagogy, 467, 470, 472, 479 Freire and Gandhi, 277–279, 282 gender, 401, 407 lifelong learning, 541–542 religion, 432, 434, 440–441 Saudi Arabia, 208, 209 teacher education, 498 thesis supervision, 526 thought in action, 341 Lukács, Georg (György), 37, 103, 143, 143 influence on Freire, 336, 345–346, 352 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 538 Lusophone Africa, 11, 150, 151 Lyotard, Jean‐François, 457 Macedo, Donaldo P., 140–142, 164, 312, 424 Maciel, Jarbas, 35, 58–62, 73 Mafra, Jason Ferreira, 567 Maggie, Shiro, 173–174 Malaysia, 168 Mannheim, Karl, 103 manual work, 346–350, 351 Mao Tse‐Tung and Maoism, 279, 379 Marcel, Gabriel, 262, 337 Marcuse, Herbert, 4, 37, 136, 143, 143, 432 Marcuse, Ricky Sherover, 384 Maritain, Jacques, 102, 127, 305, 335, 341 Marx, Karl and Marxism, 5, 37, 61, 235, 306, 308 Africa, 41 agrarian reform, 111 Asia, 167 Chile, 101, 102, 222 class struggle, 181 critical race theory, 424 dialectics and dialogue, 551, 554, 561 ecopedagogy, 478

educational philosophy, 71, 76, 77 Freire and Gandhi, 279, 281, 286 Freire and Gramsci, 305–307, 315 Freire and Habermas, 242–243, 247, 249, 252–254, 262 gender studies, 390 Geneva Resolution, 306 influence on Freire, 14–15, 17, 34, 91, 143, 185–186, 201, 222, 306 Japan, 170 Morris, 85–86, 90–91 rediscovery of texts, 137 reinvention, 448–451, 454–455, 456 religion, 432, 433, 435 thought in action, 335–338, 341, 343, 345–346, 350–352 UNESCO, 537 Marxism‐Leninism, 179, 247 massification, 313, 339, 342 master‐slave metaphor, 445, 449, 450 Hegel, 15, 18, 249, 257, 259–260, 344, 346, 351, 541, 557 Masuda, Shuji, 170–171, 173, 186 McLaren, Peter, 245 Memmi, Albert, 6, 37, 143, 143 Mendes, Cândido, 37 meritocrats, 130, 422, 494, 500, 509 Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice, 110 Mexico, 108, 123, 124, 127, 131 higher education, 510–511 Mignolo, Walter, 243 migrants see immigration mindfulness, 331–332 Min‐Joong education, 180, 182 Miranda, Maria Tavares, 89 Mises, Ludwig Von, 130 modernization in Asia, 168 Moltmann, Jürgen, 438 Montalva, Eduardo Frei, 105 Moon, Dong‐Hwan, 179 Morales, Evo, 128 Morris, William, 85–86, 90–91, 96 Mounier, Emmanuel, 61, 102, 127, 305 MOVA (Alphabetization Movement for Youth and Adults), 22, 493, 543 Paulo Freire Institute, 568, 571–574

Index

Movement of Basic Education (MEB), 104, 571 movements of popular culture (MPCs), 67–80 Mozambique, 41, 150, 153, 159 Muchaku, Seikyo, 170, 185 Mudimbe, Valentine, 383–384 Mugica, Carlos, 7 multiculturalism, 6, 18, 224, 383 Muslims see Islam and Muslims myths, 20, 78, 175, 293, 298 religion, 7, 18, 431, 436–437 Nai Talim (Basic Education), 281, 285, 286–287 naïve consciousness, 100, 307, 339–340, 342, 352, 421 National Education Plan, 36, 101 national reconstruction in Africa, 40, 42 nationalism, 69, 77 Latin America, 121, 127, 128, 131–132 Nelson, Maggie, 392, 410 neo‐colonialism, 5, 150, 152 neocortex, 329, 330, 330, 331, 332 neoliberalism, 22–23, 44, 46, 63, 205–206 Bowers, 257 class relations, 363–364 ecopedagogy, 466, 474–476, 478–479 education and power, 366 Freire and Gramsci, 308, 313 globalization, 367–368 higher education, 509, 514–515 Latin America, 127, 130–131 liberatory feminism, 381 lifelong learning, 535, 539, 541, 543–545 reinvention, 448–450, 452–454, 456–457 religion, 438 Saudi Arabia, 200–201, 204–206, 212 scholar/activists, 371 teacher education, 493, 494, 499 thesis supervision, 524–525, 526, 528, 531 US education, 224, 227, 228, 229

neo‐Marxism, 15, 241, 452, 453 neuroscience, 329, 330, 330, 331, 331, 332 neutrality, 10, 231, 381, 422, 434, 436–437 New Left movement, 5, 136, 137 New Zealand, 525 Nicaragua, 226–227, 228, 536 Nicol, Eduardo, 266 Niebuhr, Karl Paul Reinhold, 308 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 448 Nigeria, 160 Nogueira, Adriano, 336, 338 nondirective education, 233–234 Nyerere, President Julius, 13, 40, 157, 165, 536 Obama, President Barack, 235–236 objectivity, 203, 385, 422, 470, 559 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development), 292, 538–539 oil industry in Saudi Arabia, 203, 205 Old Left, 5 Olinda, 12, 93, 96 oppression, 14–15, 17–20, 45–46, 52, 222, 248–266, 307–308 Africa, 151, 153–161, 223 anthropology, 248–249 Asia, 167–170, 174–180, 184–185 caste, 276, 282, 287–288 Chile, 102, 104, 112, 115 class, 63, 100, 222, 226, 237, 249, 276, 287, 359–374 colonialism, 153, 158, 160, 168, 249, 276, 280 conscientization, 39, 86 dialectics and dialogue, 553, 555, 557–559 ecopedagogy, 464–466, 470–480, 567 education for humanity, 16, 324–326, 330, 332 education for not being duped, 293, 298–299 Europe, 135, 139, 140 fear of freedom, 83 feminism, 17, 380, 383–385, 580

599

600

Index

oppression (cont’d) Freire and Gandhi, 276–288 gender, 222, 248–250, 254, 287390, 410 higher education, 14, 508, 509, 511, 513 internal, 95, 541 Japan, 169–170, 185 Korea, 179–180 Latin America, 7, 124–125, 128 liberation, 37, 39, 83, 88, 93, 128, 223, 230, 342–346 lifelong learning, 536, 541–543 literacy, 33, 84, 99–100, 224, 280, 367 Middle East, 207–208 Morris, 85, 90 Paulo Freire Institute, 567–568, 570–571, 580–581 popular culture, 74, 77, 78 popular education, 124–125 race, 222, 226, 249, 276, 289, 384, 425 reinvention, 18, 445, 448–452, 456–458 religion, 7, 431–442 slavery, 249, 259–260 suspicion, 9 Taiwan, 174–178 thesis supervision, 529 Third World of the First, 13, 108, 139–140 thought in action, 337–338, 342–346, 350–353 transformation, 37, 39 US education, 222–226, 230, 234, 237 violence, 3, 15, 93, 104, 258–259, 279, 451 oppression–liberation, 15, 259–260 oppressive shadow, 342, 509 oppressor–oppressed matrix, 207 oppressor–oppressed model, 344, 445, 449–451, 456 oppressor–oppressed relations, 260, 557, 558 optimism, 9, 128, 230, 440, 449, 537 children, 171 Dewey, 294 US education, 227, 229, 230, 234

organic intellectuals, 9, 159, 306, 313, 513 Owen, Robert, 129 Papert, Seymour, 576 paralimbic system, 330, 330, 331, 332 patriarchy, 14, 287, 449, 450, 451 Paulo Freire Forum, 19, 512, 565–566 Paulo Freire Institute, 22 34, 202, 463–464, 565–582 China, 197 citizen education, 43 Portugal, 512 Taiwan, 178–179, 184 Paulo Freire Method, 12, 19, 35–36, 59, 84, 506 Chile, 101 People’s University, 60–61 thought in action, 339 Paulo Freire System, 35–36, 60–62, 73, 75 Center of International Studies (CEI), 61, 63–64 popular culture, 51–56 Paulo Freire University, 19, 566, 567 People’s University, 56–62 Peru, 113 Philippines, 168 philosophical anthropology, 244, 253–263, 267, 449–450 Phoenix Settlement, 282 Piaget, Jean, 248, 253, 335, 336 Pinar, William, 173 Pinheiro, Adāo, 89, 92 Pinto, Álvaro Vieira, 37, 38, 103, 279 critical consciousness, 555 influence on Freire, 76, 103, 336, 340, 342, 352 ISEB, 109, 511 Pinto, Danilson, 12, 93–96 planetarian citizenship, 21, 464, 471, 474–477, 479, 542 Paulo Freire Institute, 567, 569–571 planetarian education, 471, 473 Plato, 544 polarization, 267, 452, 551–553, 561 dialectics and dialogue, 551–553, 561–562

Index

political anthropology, 15–16, 244–247, 253–255, 257, 260, 263–267 ecopedagogy, 470 polyphony, 37, 83–96, 337 Ponty, M., 143, 143 popular art, 53–55, 84, 136 popular culture, 12, 51–56, 59, 62, 72, 314–315 education and power, 366 educational philosophy, 67–80 Popular Culture Movement (MCP), 70–75, 76, 84, 89, 104, 571 popular education, 8, 21, 43–45, 46, 70, 113, 573–574 Chile, 99–100, 102–104, 109 Europe, 140 Gandhi, 285 Gramsci, 316 global legacy, 114–115 human rights, 574–576 Korea, 181–184 Latin America, 121–125, 246, 248 Paulo Freire Institute, 566, 568–569, 573–576 People’s University, 57, 59 popular culture, 51, 53–56 reinvention, 452, 453 UNESCO, 536 UPMS, 63 US, 228, 229–230, 234 popular public school, 21, 43, 542, 568–569 Popular University of Social Movements (UPMS), 62–64 populism, 72, 84, 249–250, 351 conservative, 132 progressive, 339 Portugal, 122, 136, 140, 144 colonialism, 136, 140, 162, 306, 536 Revolution, 140 positionality, 391, 394, 395–396, 406, 410 postcolonialism, 5–6, 13, 17, 45, 86, 243, 359, 367–369 Africa, 13, 40, 83, 151, 155–159, 161, 164, 169 Asia, 185

education and power, 365, 366, 367–369 Freire and Gandhi, 275, 276, 287 language, 315 scholar/activists, 371, 375 post‐Kantianism, 253, 254, 255 post‐literacy training, 41 post‐Marxism, 15, 241, 243 postmodernism, 167, 229, 307, 383, 452, 454 Freire and Habermas, 242, 245, 252 reactionary, 364 postsecular humanism, 261–264 poststructuralism, 156, 167, 393, 454, 456 powerful knowledge, 314–315 Prague Spring (1968), 5, 37, 136 praxis, 3, 10, 12–13, 16, 281–282, 310–311, 359–361 African education, 150, 152, 155–157, 159–160, 163–164 Asia, 168, 185, 186 class relations, 362 consciousness, 38–39 critical race theory, 423, 425 Danilson Pinto, 93 dialectics and dialogue, 553, 554, 558–560 dialogue, 155–157, 163, 164 ecopedagogy, 464–466, 471, 474, 477 education for humanity, 327 Freire and Gandhi, 276–277, 281–282 Freire and Habermas, 242, 263 gender studies, 409 higher education, 512–513 Japan, 170 lifelong learning, 544 liberatory feminism, 379, 385 Nicaragua, 227 Paulo Freire Institute, 565–582 popular culture, 77 reinvention, 446, 447 Saudi Arabia, 210 teacher education, 497 thesis supervision, 527 thought in action, 336, 345, 350, 351 US, 233

601

602

Index

praxis‐oriented pedagogy, 244–247 Prebisch, Raúl, 5 problem‐posing pedagogy, 114, 176–177, 208, 554–555 critical race theory, 417, 418–422, 425 ecopedagogy, 465–466, 472–480 education for humanity, 328 fake news, 291, 298 lifelong learning, 541 teacher education, 497 thought in action, 337 US education, 231, 232 proenlightenment, 68–69 professional development for teachers, 492–495 Taiwan, 174 progressive education, 58, 288, 340, 353 progressive populism, 339 proromanticism, 68 Prussia, 321, 326 Qatar, 292 race and racism, 5, 14, 17–19, 250, 361, 492, 580 African education, 159 Chile, 111, 113 citizen education, 43–44 critical theory, 18, 417–423, 423, 424–425 ecopedagogy, 466 Freire and Gandhi, 276, 282, 287 gender studies 389, 394, 396–397, 402, 404–407 liberatory feminism, 379–386 oppression, 222, 226, 249, 276, 289, 384, 425 reinvention, 451, 453 religion, 433 South Africa, 282 Taiwan, 176 teacher education, 494–496, 500 US education, 222, 224, 226, 228, 234–237 Rajchandra, Sri, 277 Ramos, Alberto Guerreire, 76, 103, 104 Rank, Otto, 86

Rawls, John, 254 Reagan, President Ronald, 224, 226, 236 Recife, 11–12, 33, 45, 56–59, 71–73, 83–84, 88–89 ecopedagogy, 476 educational philosophy, 71, 72, 73, 76 Freire’s doctorate, 283 gender studies, 405–406 People’s University, 61 Pinto, 93–94 poverty, 122 religion, 103, 432 reconstruction in Africa, 151 reflection–action–reflection, 232–233, 326–327 reflexivity, 392, 394–395, 410 reification, 171–173, 186, 249 reinvention, 18, 445–458 religion, 5–7, 17–19, 70, 431–442 Chile, 100, 101, 102–109 education for humanity, 321, 325 Freire and Gandhi, 276–279, 282, 284–286 Freire and Gramsci, 306, 308, 309, 432 Freire and Habermas, 243, 257, 262–265 gender studies, 399, 404, 407–408 Hinduism, 275–277, 279, 286 influence on Freire, 335, 337, 339–341, 350, 431–442 Latin American education, 122, 123, 127 Saudi Arabia, 201, 210 see also Catholicism; Christianity; Islam and Muslims revolutionary practice in Japan, 170 Ribeiro, Darcy, 36, 103, 104, 515 Ricoeur, Paul, 244, 468 Rivera, Diego, 124 Rodríguez, Simón, 126, 131 romanticism, 68, 69, 88, 95–96 Romāo, José Eustáquio, 44, 565 Rorty, Richard, 256 Rosa, Guimarāes, 37 Rosas, Paulo, 71, 89

Index

Rousseau, Jean‐Jacques, 88, 90–91, 96, 254, 312 Ruskin, John, 277–278, 279 Rwanda, 159 Sahagún, Friar Bernardino de, 124, 125 Said, Edward, 446 Salazar, President António de Oliveira, 140 Sandinista Revolution, 226, 228 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 62–63 Sāo Tomé et Principe, 41, 141, 142, 312, 347 Sarmiento, President Domingo Faustino, 8 Sartre, Jean‐Paul, 37, 136, 143, 143, 164 satyagraha, 16, 275, 277–280, 282 Saudi Arabia (SA), 199–200, 203–214 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 102 Scheler, Max, 255 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 438 Schleicher, Andreas, 292 scholar/activists, 17, 363, 365, 370–375 School Information Project (PIE), 576 Schultz, Alfred, 173 Scocuglia, Afonso Celso, 41, 70, 76 sectarianism, 234 secular theology, 261–264 Segundo, Juan Luis, 149–152 self‐directed learning, 538 self‐disclosure, 381, 385 seminars in China, 194 Sen, Amartya K., 16–17, 322, 323, 325, 327, 331 Senegal, 159 sexism, 19, 91, 287, 385, 399, 422, 580 reinvention, 452, 453 sexuality, 17–18, 389–390, 398–399, 401–405, 451 liberatory feminism, 380, 385, 386 Shakespeare, William, 92–93 Shanghai, 191–193 Shaull, Richard, 222 Shor, Ira, 111, 336, 338, 496 Sierra Leone, 160 Silva, Luis Inasio Lula da, 128, 252

Singapore, 168 slavery, 85, 92–93, 445, 449, 450 Hegel’s metaphor, 15, 18, 249, 257, 259–260, 344, 346, 351, 541, 557 social action, 51, 55, 58–59, 229, 232–233, 246 Korea, 180 social justice, 15, 19–21, 36, 46, 562, 575–576 Africa, 150, 153, 164 citizen education, 44 critical race theory, 425 ecopedagogy, 470 gender studies, 390, 393, 411 Korea, 168 Latin America, 115 lifelong learning, 541, 544–545 reinvention, 449, 453 scholar/activists, 370 US education, 228, 236 socialism, 5, 8, 247, 252, 306, 561, 567 Africa, 153, 161, 346–347, 350 Chile, 105, 112, 113 China, 191 Morris, 90–91 Tanzania, 42 thesis supervision, 528 thought in action, 346–347, 349–352 sociocritical thinking, 447–449, 458 Socrates, 277, 322, 544 South Africa, 159–160, 163–164 Gandhi, 276, 278, 281, 282, 286 Southern theory, 15, 242–243 Souza, Joāo Francisco de, 84, 94, 96 Soviet Union, 15, 241, 538, 567 China, 191 Spain, 122–125, 136–137, 140, 144 special needs students, 402, 495 Stanford Seminar, 10, 14, 223–224, 225, 225–226 Stoney, George, 95, 99 Strauss, Leo, 254 structural adjustment programs (SAPs), 164–165 student–teacher relationship see teacher–student relationship

603

604

Index

subjectivity, 195, 288, 353, 363, 470, 559 Asia, 170, 175–176 conscientization, 86 transformation, 34 Suchodolski, Bogdan, 110, 537, 538, 540 supervisor‐student relationship, 522–528 suspicion, 9–10, 362 Dewey, 293, 294, 300 sustainability, 542–543, 578 ecopedagogy, 474–476, 477–480, 570–571 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 321 Switzerland, 83, 89, 138–142, 144, 145 symbolic exchange, 170–171 Tagore, Rabindranath, 284, 285 Taiwan, 167–169, 174–179, 184 Tanzania 13, 40–42, 95, 141, 157, 159, 160 Freire’s relevance to African education, 153 Nyerere, 13, 40, 157, 165, 536 revolutionary process, 347 teacher education, 21, 491–501, 560, 536 China, 194 teacher–student relationship, 107, 114, 298, 343, 499–501 education for humanity, 325, 328 liberatory feminism, 380–382 Taiwan, 174, 177–178 teaching reform in China, 194, 196–197 technology, 576–578 Teixeira, Anísio, 70, 103–104, 127, 305 influence on Freire, 336, 340 thematic investigation, 299, 300, 493 theory of being, 506–507 theory of power, 445, 449–452, 453, 454–457 Foucault, 242, 452, 453, 454–457 theory of recognition, 242, 450 theory of unequal exchange, 5 thesis supervision, 21, 521–531 “Third World of the First”, 13, 108, 139–140

Thompson, E. P., 85, 86, 90–91, 375 Tillich, Paul, 263 Tolstoy, Leo, 278 Tomasello, Michael, 265–266 Torres, Carlos Alberto, 33–34, 42, 46, 185, 513 conscientization, 342 educational philosophy, 79 Freire in Africa, 152, 153, 162 Freire as Secretary of Education, 492 gender studies, 396, 406 integral reproduction theory, 452, 454, 456–457 Latin America, 122 Marxism, 222 Paulo Freire Institute, 197, 565, 566 Saudi Arabia, 211 US education, 222–224, 228 Torres, Rosa María, 250, 492, 539 transformation, 4, 5, 11–12, 42, 418 Asia, 169, 179–181, 183 class relations 359, 361–365 dialectics and dialogue, 554, 557–558 ecopedagogy, 465–466, 469, 471–473, 479 education for humanity, 327 fake news, 293, 297, 298, 301 Freire and Gandhi, 281–282 Freire and Gramsci, 310–311 gender studies, 405 globalization and postcolonialism, 367, 369 higher education, 507, 513, 516 knowledge from below, 369–370 Latin America, 4, 5, 100, 113 liberatory feminism, 385 lifelong learning, 541–542, 544–545 Marxism, 34 Middle East, 203 Paulo Freire Institute, 565, 569, 572, 574–575, 579, 582 reinvention, 445–446, 449, 452–453, 457 religion, 433, 434, 437 scholar/activists, 372–373 teacher education, 500–501 thesis supervision, 522, 527

Index

thought in action, 341–342, 345, 346–350, 352 Truffaut, François, 136 Trump, President Donald and Trumpism, 14, 221, 235–237 UNESCO, 11, 21, 60, 336, 536–541 agrarian reform, 109 Chile, 102, 108 unfinishedness, 230, 235, 237, 308, 541 ecopedagogy, 468, 470 United Arab Emirates, 292 United Kingdom (including Great Britain), 123, 136, 144, 309 Saudi Arabia, 203, 204 United Nations, 4, 60, 95, 185, 536, 538 lifelong learning, 542 United States of America (US), 8, 13–14, 83, 100 Alliance for Progress, 60 citizen school, 43 Dewey, 150, 221, 293–297 education, 221–224, 225, 225–237 education and power, 365, 367 fake news, 291–297 Freire and Gramsci, 306 Freire at Harvard, 33, 108, 110, 138, 221–224, 252, 567 Korea, 180 Latin American education, 124, 126 Latin American unity, 123 Mexicans and critical race theory, 417–425 New Left, 136 Saudi Arabia, 200, 202, 204 teacher education, 21, 491–501 unity in diversity, 542–543 universal human ethic, 466–467, 470, 476, 479, 527 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), 21, 192, 510–511, 513 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 202, 396, 417, 421, 424 Paulo Freire Institute, 179, 184, 197, 202, 463–464 University of Geneva, 11, 223, 512

untested feasibility, 78 untouchability, 275–276, 278–280, 287–288 utopia, 4, 7–9, 23, 83, 129, 581 ecopedagogy, 467, 479–480 Freire as pilgrim, 10–14, 34, 39, 44, 46–47 Freire as Secretary of Education, 492 Morris, 90–91 Pinto, 95, 96 songs by The Beatles, 8 The Tempest, 92 thought in action, 345 UNESCO and lifelong learning, 537 Varda, Agnès, 136 Vargas, Getúlio, 69–70, 127, 339 Venezuela, 126, 131 verbalism, 161, 232, 340, 348, 560 Vision 2030, 13, 199–200, 204–214 vocation and calling, 56–57, 63, 122, 176, 431, 435–437, 556 human, 15, 77, 260, 327 ontological, 19, 39, 86, 208–209, 258–261, 324, 435, 439, 537 training, 204, 282, 284–285, 287, 514 Volksgeist, 4, 468 Voltaire, 69, 367 Vygotsky, Lev, 6, 146, 186 Wain, Kenneth, 535, 537 Weber, Chico, 84 Weber, Max, 10, 263, 448, 455 Weiler, Kathleen, 408–409 Weill, Simone, 143, 143 Williams, Raymond, 313, 365, 366, 375, 380 Wilson, President Woodrow, 293 Woodson, Carter, 375 World Bank, 224, 542, 569 World Council of Churches (WCC), 84, 89, 108, 138, 145–146, 286 Africa, 40, 151–153 Freire, 13, 33, 40, 108, 114, 138, 145–146, 438 Geneva, 13, 33, 152, 222–223, 252, 438

605

606

Index

World Council of Churches (WCC) (cont’d) global legacy, 114 Korea, 179 World Education Forum (WEF), 22, 579, 580 World Social Forum (WSF), 22, 229, 543, 570, 579–580 World War I, 68, 292, 293–294

Young, Iris, 325 Young, Robert, 368–369 Youth and Adult Education (EJA), 568, 571–572 Zambia, 40–41, 160 Zen, 169–170, 185 Zimbabwe, 160