“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” (Shaull 2005).
These words immaculately encapsulate Paulo Freire’s magnum opus Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is a powerful book for the powerless. This book opens pertinent avenues in the domain of education. It is an attack on the capitalist model of education which has commodified education to such an extent that we see the relation between teacher, pupil and system as nothing short of capital-labour relations or the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed.
The book was written at a time when Latin America was being engulfed by US-backed Military Junta regimes which were dismantling Leftist forces. Freire was made to flee from his home in Brazil to Chile because of which the text which was written in Portuguese was first published in Spanish in 1968. This book set out to be the foundational piece for Critical Pedagogy. Critical Pedagogy is the stratagem that empowers us to think critically about knowledge and its relation with power (Giroux 2011). Critical Pedagogy has a responsibility towards democratic rendezvous and towards the transformative potential of education which moves away from mere skill-based learning which moves away from capitalism’s attempt to produce more and more labour which is subjugated by it.
In this regard, Pedagogy of the Oppressed offers a liberating path by walking on which the oppressed will not just free themselves from the oppressed but also from the fear of freedom by acknowledging that education is itself a political act and the contrivance of the oppressor who use it to subjugate others. In the preface, Freire familiarises us with the idea of critical consciousness which he calls conscientização. This conscientização comes from the internalised fear of freedom. This internalisation is done by the oppressors who make the structures of the societies seem rigid and permanent, so the oppression that people undergo is somewhat naturalised by the oppressors.
Freire at the start takes inspiration from Frantz Fanon who talks about the dehumanisation of the oppressed and that the violence against the oppressors is what will rehumanise them (Fanon 2001). For Freire, humanisation is the cardinal project against historical oppression and this liberating oneself is reinstating the human identity. But Freire also notes that it is not just the oppressed who are dehumanised but also oppressors who get dehumanised when they dehumanise others. Because of the oppressive structures, the oppressed when they wage a struggle tend to turn oppressors themselves because they aspire to become the very person who subjugated them and this is something which needs to be mitigated according to Freire which can be done through self-consciousness. For this, they have to annihilate their fear of freedom and attack the traditional understandings which create hierarchical methods. There is a need to denaturalise the hierarchy by attacking the moral foundations of those. This is something similar we see in Bhagat Singh’s Why I Am an Atheist in which he talks about oppression being connected to past lives deeds and rewards in the afterlife (Singh 1931). Such notions have to be confronted to break from the shackles of oppression.
Education is one tool which can lead to change. Liberation has to be dialectical that is it should incorporate both objective as well subjective transformation. Education shouldn’t be a site of congruence but rather of rebellion, then only it can leave the hands of the oppressors who themselves need to rehumanise themselves by extending solidarity to solve their internal contradictions with the system.
Freire identifies a very pertinent model associated with the traditional education model which he calls the “banking” model of education in which the teacher acts as a depositor who is the solitary proprietor of knowledge and deposits it in students who are like passive recipients. This promotes an uniport flow of knowledge and information which hinders creativity and puts a limitation on the ability of students to develop critical consciousness and questions the oppressive structural paradigms by creating a hierarchical relation between teacher and student.
This model doesn’t involve any agency for the teacher to gain knowledge from the students’ lived experiences. There is no interest in dialogue and collaboration between teachers and students. Freire introduces his problem-posing model which is more engaging where both teachers and students have something to learn from each other and this makes the classroom porous. This will allow students to develop a critical sense of social reality and according to Freire, it is a process of “revolutionary futurity” as it is focused on overcoming oppression.
Freire in this book also brings out the concept of Dialogue which is one of the most important tools for liberation. Dialogue is an act of radical love and an act of humility which only exists if we concur with our fallibility and it is composed of reflection (theory) and action (praxis). According to Freire Pedagogy needs to be transformative which is evident when he discusses that the paradigm of the movement has to be based on reflection and action. He warns us of verbalism and activism which are reflection without action and action without reflection respectively and for the bona fide human actuality both of these have to be amalgamated. This will further allow educators to engage with the oppressed to show them the reality and to think critically about it.
In the final pages of the book, Freire calls out for cultural action which is based on transformative change. It highlights the gravity of praxis which is at the forefront of the revolutionary change. This along with the dialogical method portrays a bottom-up approach to the revolution which comes from the masses and grassroots without which revolution is a façade and hollow. He challenges ant dialogical practices such as divide and rule, cultural invasion and manipulation which are used by the oppressors to sustain their hold on power.
One criticism that people draw from their reading of Freire is that it’s not doing anything to change the economic base is too ideational and doesn’t engage in the materiality. This may reflect a reductionist understanding for there is a need to indulge in dialectics of the education system itself as an ideological apparatus that sustains dominant structures (Althusser 2006). Further, the education system itself is composed of Capital-Labour relations with the commodification of education where teachers who themselves are the labour and the oppressed produce more labour in the form of students who are skilled and will be employed by the capitalist system (Kumar and Paul 2022). This defines capitalism which has transformed education from its knowledge production property to a manufacturing plant of labour. But unlike traditional forms of labour, teachers have some degree of autonomy where they can choose to impart critical knowledge to their students and this is where Freire comes in handy when talking about this pedagogy (Kumar and Paul 2022). But this again raises a question regarding the complex relationship between the oppressive structures and the oppressed because structures are designed in such a way that it is very difficult to reform as the system tries to balance itself by mitigating any change. Drawing from lived experiences is problematic because of the high degree of subjectivity associated with such narratives. Very often, these lived experiences are themselves imbued with ideology. Thus the oppressor class often paints all questionings and movements as antithetical to the perceived good of society.
Freire introduces critical understanding through the lens of dialectical questioning (McLaren 2007). It means that to question tradition is not necessarily to reject them but to impart a deeper understanding and a way of recognizing the ideas that we are critiquing (McLaren 2007). It revitalises traditional knowledge. This for someone with a critical mindset in South Asia is problematic as it is prone to misuse. Even though Freire has a plurality of culture in his mind some forces can use his idea to provide legitimacy to ideas which are derogatory to certain sections of society. It means providing space for them to reform instead of uprooting it from its foundation. This doesn’t mean we should understand culture as something that often contains conservative ideologies but it means that we understand this plurality as a quintessential element which can be used for both maintaining and challenging the status quo (McLaren 2007).
Freire’s method is radical. It revolutionizes education as Freire seeks to detach himself from reformists in society who saw reform as a way to serve the interests of all. Freire is more pertinent today than ever as we see the vulgarised form of commodification of education around us in the form of coaching institutes for various exams. Freire’s magnum opus allows us to look beyond neoliberal schooling and seek a radical transformation of the education system. He is not just a theorist who talks about the banking model and dialogical approach but a practitioner who ensured that his ideas were incorporated in praxis. It remains a guide for all of us who seek a revolutionary change to reclaim the pedagogy.
References:
Althusser, Louis. 2006. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New Delhi: Aakar Books.
Fanon, Frantz. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). London: Penguin Classics.
Giroux, Henry. 2011. “Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times.” In On Critical Pedagogy, by Henry Giroux, 3-16. New York: Continuum.
Kumar, Ravi, and Rama Paul. 2022. “State and Private Capital.” In Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education, by Alpesh Maisuria, 644-660. Brill.
McLaren, Peter. 2007. “Peter McLaren Responds.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 119-120.
Shaull, Richard. 2005. “Foreward.” In Freire, by Paulo, 29-34. New York: Continuum.
Yadav, Harsh. 2021. Book Review: Bhagat Singh-Why I am an Atheist. October 7. Accessed September 15, 2024. https://www.midwesternmarx.com/youth-league/book-review-bhagat-singh-why-i-am-an-atheist-reviewed-by-harsh-yadav.
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Harsh Yadav is a master’s student in the Department of International Relations at South Asian University (SAU) New Delhi with keen interest in International Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy.