Theoretical Contributions
| Critical pedagogy |
|---|
| Major works |
| Pedagogy of the Oppressed |
| Theorists |
| Paulo Freire · John Dewey Henry Giroux · Peter McLaren Joe Kincheloe · Shirley Steinberg Antonia Darder |
| Pedagogy |
| Anti-oppressive education Anti-bias curriculum Anti-racist mathematics Multicultural education Curriculum studies Teaching for social justice Inclusion (education) Humanitarian education Student-centred learning Popular education Feminist composition · Ecopedagogy Queer pedagogy · Critical literacy Critical reading Critical consciousness Critical Indigenous Pedagogy • Red Pedagogy |
| Concepts |
| Praxis · Hidden curriculum Consciousness raising Poisonous pedagogy |
| Related |
| Reconstructivism · Critical theory Frankfurt School Political consciousness |
Paulo Freire contributed a philosophy of education that came not only from the more classical approaches stemming from Plato, but also from modern Marxist and anti-colonialist thinkers. In fact, in many ways his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) may be best read as an extension of, or reply to, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), which emphasized the need to provide native populations with an education which was simultaneously new and modern (rather than traditional) and anti-colonial (not simply an extension of the culture of the colonizer).
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire, reprising the Oppressors–oppressed distinction, differentiates between the two positions in an unjust society, the oppressor and the oppressed. Freire makes no direct reference to his most direct influence for the distinction, which stems back at least as far as Hegel in 1802, and has since been reprised by many authors including Engels, Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Simone Weil and others.
Freire champions that education should allow the oppressed to regain their sense of humanity, in turn overcoming their condition. Nevertheless, he also acknowledges that in order for this to occur, the oppressed individual must play a role in their liberation. As he states:
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).
Likewise, the oppressors must also be willing to rethink their way of life and to examine their own role in the oppression if true liberation is to occur; "those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly" (Freire, 1970, p. 60).
Freire believed education to be a political act that could not be divorced from pedagogy. Freire defined this as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the "politics" that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions they bring into the classroom (Kincheloe, 2008). Freire believed that "education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing — of knowing that they know and knowing that they don't" (Freire, 2004, p. 15)
Read more about this topic: Paulo Freire
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