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Reading post on Freire second part

After reading this book, it very closely reminded me of the sociology classes I have taken. Freire’s book reminded me of Marx and his ideas on “the colonizer” and “the colonized”-i.e. “the oppressor” and the “oppressed”. This made me further think about the dynamics of separation and like in our previous class I was a bit skeptical on the idea that people can fit perfectly into this category. Talking about who fits in what category and what teaching methods work and do not work. I was curious to continue the book and see what else Friere had pushed the boundaries on.

He goes more into this idea of “limit situation” and the ideas of “human praxis”. This part in his book made me question life in its entirety and found myself a bit more confused but remembered to try and relate this back to education. When trying to apply his work into education I found a bit more connection than expected. Friere argues that to help the oppressed people, we must enter into solidarity with them and therefore join the oppressed. Like in our other class we talked deeply about false generosity. So is the only way to help the oppressed is to be the oppressed and where does this consciousness come into play. What I mean to say do those who are the oppressors have that same consciousness that those that are oppressed have? Is it possible to “educate” oppressed people living in poverty to give them an awareness of their situation? I think they may not necessarily have to be taught of their situation. This part is where I didn’t really coincide with Freire- in the sense that they may need to be educated about their situation. But I think we already know and maybe instead of educating on the situation but giving the tools in order to overcome their oppressors. But then this whole idea of the teachers giving the students tolls to overcome their oppressors may sound like false generosity or where the teachers themselves may manipulate the students into still being the oppressed. I am still struggling with these ideas.

In the last chapter Freire talks about what to use in order to free those who are oppressed or colonized through cooperation, unity, and organization in his section on “divide and rule”.  This made me think about him giving suggestions or tools on how to overcome the oppressors which is like a teacher of the classroom.  There are many dichotomies that he talks about in the book but the one that I focused more on was the student-teacher and the oppressed-oppressor dichotomy.  Over all, this book made me really think about what as future teacher some of us may have to deeply think about our classroom environments. When Feire rejects the idea of “traditional education” as it is there to oppress it made me think about what is now considered traditional and non-traditional. What does this separation do to the classroom?

Side note:

How could Freire's pedagogy for the oppressed be applied in to public school classroom, which are typically institutions of oppression? Or how could this be taught in schools?