Paulo Freire

Historian/Philosopher Analysis Project

By Diane Dalenberg

EDUC 570

Fall, 2011

Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

Historian / Philosopher Analysis Project by Diane Dalenberg ABSTRACT

Banking Concept of Education Paulo Freire opposes what he names the "banking concept" of education with "problem-posing"

education (Freire, 1970). The banking concept of education suits the oppressors. In this system the students are treated as empty vessels, into which knowledge can be deposited (like deposits in a bank) by the teacher. He defined this type of education as “an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (p. 72). He argued that the extent of action allowed to the students “extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” (p. 72).

The key to banking education for Freire is the relationship between teacher and student. In banking education there is an absolute separation between the teacher and the student. The teacher always has knowledge. His knowledge is absolute and it is linked to authority. The teacher chooses what is learned. Freire describes the relationship in this way: "The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his existence" (p. 72). Problem-posing Education

In problem-posing education, which Freire contrasts with banking education, the present is not "well-behaved" and the future is not pre-determined. In problem-posing education the students are involved in reality and they inquire into it critically and then are consequently able to transform it. Educational success should not be measured by the ability to regurgitate thoughts generated by others. Once students have become critical thinkers they will be able to begin a process that could lead to their humanization, which is done through what Freire calls praxis. He defined this process as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51). This process would involve constant reflection and evaluation. Students would focus or think about something that oppresses them and then presumably flush it out in a dialogue. It is important, Freire mentions, that the people feel like “masters of their thinking by discussing the thinking and views of the world explicitly or implicitly manifest in their own suggestions and those of their comrades” (p. 124). Eventually during reflection, an action would be identified and then carried out. Freire believed that reflection and action were inseparable. He thought that reflection without action is merely “verbalism” and action without reflection is only “activism” (p. 87). In other words, you cannot act without thinking and reflection without action will not change reality. Praxis is at the heart of transforming the world and thus becoming “fully human.”

Two things are true about problem-posing education: 1) In no case will the teacher ever be guaranteed not to be able to learn from his students and 2) even in those cases where this is unlikely there is no reason why a teacher cannot still work alongside the students, as an equal, posing problems and working with them to solve them. Freire’s problem-posing education is applicable in all learning situations.

TEACHERS AS CULTURAL WORKERS: Letters from Paulo Freire to Those Who DARE to Teach

1) Reading the World / Reading the Word 2) Don’t Let the Fear of What is Difficult Paralyze You 3) I Came into the Teacher Training Program Because I Had No Other

Options 4) On the Indispensable Qualities of Progressive Teachers for Their

Better Performance 5) The First Day of School

6) On the Relationship Between Educator and the Learners 7) From Talking to Learners to Talking to Them and with Them; From

Listening to Learners to Being Heard by Them 8) Cultural Identity and Education 9) Concrete Context / Theoretical Context 10) Once More the Question of Discipline

Watch 5 minutes of Paulo Freire’s last interview on You Tube, given to the National Literacy Institute in 1996, before his death in 1997.

Figuring Out Freire

The purpose of education is to open the box and draw on the imagination of

individuals in the passion for learning and to influence and shape our societies.

Unfortunately, the reality of education today is different. Way too often education is

based on divisions between those that have and those that don’t, differences in gender

and religion, and differences of class and income. Education is about conforming and

fitting in to dominating power structures and economic realities, primarily dictated by

capitalism. Education is institutionalization, testing and certification. And for those who

do not conform, education is about rejection and failure.

Paulo Freire developed the idea of a critical pedagogy where education meant the

‘practice of freedom’, the means by which to deal critically with reality and discover how

to participate in the transformation of our world. Freire wanted to overcome the

dichotomy between the teacher and the learner. For those that believe in education as the

practice of freedom there are two challenges: to develop a discussion around the purpose

of education on a societal level and secondly to develop what Freire calls transformative

practice, as students and teachers. This is why I have chosen this topic…to open the

discussion and transform our practice.

Still Relevant

The “nucleus” of Paulo Freire’s ideas remain constant and unchanged over time.

In one of Freire’s last interviews (before his death in 1997) at the 1996 World Reading

Conference with the International Literacy Institute, Paulo said “I am almost 75 years

old. Sometimes when I am speaking like now, I am listening to Paulo Freire 40 years

ago.” If any were to wonder if his ideas were still relevant today, I would answer in the

affirmative. It is almost eerie how relevant his ideas still are. The way he conceptualizes

our education system and suggests an alternative way to transform it, is something many

of us are still striving to do today, forty-two years after he wrote Pedagogy of the

Oppressed. Many contemporary trends in education support Freire’s problem-posing

education system and/or conclude that education needs a different direction in order to be

more relevant.

Banking Concept of Education

Paulo Freire discusses banking education versus problem-posing education in the

context of Pedagogy of the Oppressed; teaching literacy to the oppressed rural poor in

Latin America and with it a social and political consciousness, in line with traditional

Marxist orthodoxy. Freire opposes what he names the "banking concept" of education

with his "problem-posing" education (Freire, 1970). The banking concept of education

suits the oppressors. In this system the students are treated as empty vessels, into which

knowledge can be deposited (like deposits in a bank) by the teacher. Freire explains what

actually goes on in the world of banking education. He writes,

This relationship [teacher-student] involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified…. His [the teacher's] task is to 'fill' the students with the contents of his narration- contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance." (Freire, 1970, p. 71)

Freire used the concept “banking education” to explain the framework for

curriculum delivery that he believed existed in schools. Freire (1970) defined this type of

education as “an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the

teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and

makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (p. 72). He

argued that the extent of action allowed to the students “extends only as far as receiving,

filing, and storing the deposits” (p. 72). This relates to Ivan Illich’s idea of the teacher as

the deliverer of educational packages to the students (Ilich, 1972). Both Illich and Freire

notice that the student in modern education is excluded from participation in getting first-

hand knowledge as it relates to them. It is usually someone else's 'knowledge' which they

are being informed about.

Freire does not think that this is an accident. In fact, he believes that banking education allows the oppressors to maintain the system of oppression. Freire's critique of

banking education is located in his class analysis. "Education as the exercise of

domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not

perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression"

(Freire, 1970, p. 78). "Banking education", though, is exactly the method favored in the

West today to teach almost everyone. It appears to encourage a compliance with an

existing system. It does this by rewarding passivity, by stifling critical thinking about

reality, by teaching submission to social authority as personified by the teacher, and by

training the student to accept packages put together by others rather than trusting his own

instinct to learn. In Freire’s view, students under this system do not have the opportunity

to question or critically evaluate the world in which they live and thus have no

opportunity to change their lives for the better.

The solution will not be found with the banking education model. In fact this model

maintains attitudes and practices that take after an oppressive society:

a) The teacher teaches and the students are taught. b) The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing. c) The teacher thinks and the students are thought about. d) The teacher talks and the students listen-meekly. e) The teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined. f) The teacher chooses and enforces this choice, and the students comply. g) The teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher. h) The teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it. i) The teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students. j) The teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. (Freire, 1970, p. 73)

The key to banking education for Freire is the relationship between teacher and

student. In banking education there is an absolute separation between the teacher and the

student. The teacher always has knowledge. His knowledge is absolute and it is linked

to authority. The teacher chooses what is learned. Freire describes the relationship in

this way: "The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by

considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his existence" (Freire, 1970, p. 72).

Problem-posing Dialogical Pedagogy

In problem-posing education, which Freire contrasts with banking education, the

present is not "well-behaved" and the future is not pre-determined. In problem-posing

education the students are involved in reality and they inquire into it critically and then

are consequently able to transform it. Educational success should not be measured by the

ability to regurgitate thoughts generated by others. Once students have become critical

thinkers they will be able to begin a process that could lead to their humanization, which

is done through what Freire calls praxis. He defined this process as “reflection and action

upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 51). This process would involve constant

reflection and evaluation. Students would focus or think about something that oppresses

them and then presumably flush it out in a dialogue. Eventually during reflection an

action would be identified and then carried out. Freire believed that reflection and action

were inseparable. He thought that reflection without action is merely “verbalism” and

action without reflection is only “activism” (p. 87). In other words, you cannot act

without thinking and reflection without action will not change reality. Praxis is at the

heart of transforming the world and thus becoming “fully human.”

Two things are true about problem-posing education: 1) In no case will the

teacher ever be guaranteed not to be able to learn from his students and 2) even in those

cases where this is unlikely there is no reason why a teacher cannot still work alongside

the students, as an equal, posing problems and working with them to solve them. The

method, if you want to call it that, of problem-posing education is applicable in all

learning situations. It is obviously ineffective to set up a situation where the teacher acts

as if he has absolute knowledge relative to the students. This is why students in schools

become disengaged from the learning process because they are being denied their right to

make a direct connection with truth. It is dehumanizing.

Problem-posing education is 'dialogical'; that is it involves a dialogue between

student-teacher and teacher-students. This approach to education requires a teacher who

can empathize with the students, who can enter into their activity of inquiry, alongside

them. It requires patience and love as Freire says. It probably can't be done very

efficiently on a large-scale and its effectiveness cannot be measured in exams, which are

just regurgitating facts.

One of the dilemmas in present day school systems is that inevitably teachers

'teach to the test'. This happens to such an extent that students by the time they reach

college may really come to confuse 'knowing' with placing the right words on paper that

will enable the examiner to give them a score. Because they never had to discover

anything for themselves, they know nothing.

Literacy: Reading the Word and the World

Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (1987), is a book in which Freire

emphasizes that in order to truly engage in literacy in the classroom students must read

the world before reading the word. What is meant by that is that students in a class must

be able to relate whatever text they are reading first to their world in order to understand

the words on the page, “the act of reading occurred in my experience: first, reading the

world, the tiny world in which I moved; afterward, reading the word, not always the

word-world in my course of schooling,” (Freire, 1987, p. 29).

This text encourages educators to, “develop pedagogies that allow them to assert

their own voices while still being able to encourage students to affirm, tell, and retell

their personal narratives by exercising their own voices,” (Freire, 1987, p. 23). Freire

believes that there has to be a balance between the teacher and student where both can

feel included in the classroom environment and subject matter. Within this, it is the hope

that teachers can start to recognize, “how they often silence students, even when they act

out of the best of intentions,” (Freire, 1987, p. 23) and take steps to change.

As an educator, these are tools that you can use to connect students to change.

This is a great book to delve into as it will truly engage you in the process of reflection

with regards to your teaching practice. In the meantime, remember that in all that you do

in your classroom, as Freire states, “reading the world always precedes reading the word,

and reading the word implies continually reading the world” (Freire, 1987, p. 35).

Teachers as Cultural Workers; Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach

Paulo Freire’s last book, Teachers as Cultural Workers; Letters to Those Who

Dare to Teach (1998), includes ten letters which focus on what Freire believes to be

crucial issues for would-be educators. As teachers, we contribute to the creation of

culture each and every day. We are indeed cultural workers.

The book begins with some "First Words" in which Freire reflects on the dynamic

relationship between reflection, action and writing, and the need to acknowledge this

relationship in order to critically approach the acts of learning and teaching. He says the

purpose of the book is to

"demonstrate that the task of the teacher, who is also a learner, is both joyful and rigorous. It demands seriousness and scientific, physical, emotional, and affective preparation. It is a task that requires that those who commit themselves to

teaching develop a certain love not only of others but also of the very process implied in teaching" (Freire, 1998, p. 3). His main themes, then, are first that teachers must dare to teach in this way,

despite the apparently negative aspects of teaching such as low salaries, low status, and

the over bureaucratization of education systems; and second, that teaching is not a

passive acceptance of these negative aspects but, to be credible, must also involve an

active political engagement in the struggle for democracy and freedom.

The first letter provides some important reflections on the nature of studying,

particularly the notion of reading as a critical struggle not only to comprehend text but to

reflect on the relationship between the text and lived experience, or as the chapter title

says "Reading the world/reading the word." Freire says "If I am really studying,

seriously reading, I cannot go past a page if I cannot grasp its significance relatively

clearly" (Freire, 1998, p. 18).

The ideas that Freire presents should enhance teacher education in a range of social

contexts. Freire's vision of a humane and democratic teaching force is inspirational and

provides would-be teachers with both practical strategies and sound philosophical

foundations for pursuing their careers in education.

Biography 1921-1997 In Leslie Bentley’s “Brief Biography of Paulo Freire,” I learned that he was born

on September 19, 1921 in Recife, Brazil. Because of the world economic crisis of the

late 1920’s, Freire was exposed to poverty early in his life. Because Freire lived among

poor rural families and laborers, he gained a deep understanding of their lives and of the

effects of socio-economics on education.

He taught in a grammar school while still in high school and went onto study law

at the University of Recife where he also studied philosophy and the psychology of

language. While on the Faculty of Law in Recife, Freire met his wife, Elza Maia Costa

de Oliveira, a primary school teacher and an important force in his life. They married in

1944 when Freire was 23 and eventually had five children, three of whom became

educators.

In 1946, Freire was appointed as the Director of the Department of Education and

Culture of the Social Service in the Brazilian State of Pernambuco where he was charged

with improving the living conditions of factory workers. This work helped in

formulating his later theories.

In 1958, Freire presented a paper entitled “Education of Adults and Marginal

Populations: the Mocambos Problem” at the Second National Conference on Adult

Education in Rio de Janeiro. In this paper, Freire stated that adult education for the

Mocambos must have a foundation in the consciousness of everyday situations lived by

the learners and that this would help in promoting democracy. During this time Freire

also participated in the Movement for Popular Culture, and supported the active exercise

of democracy in lectures and in his Ph.D. thesis, "Present-day Education in Brazil,"

written in 1959. His convictions would earn him the title of "traitor.”

Freire was made Director of the Division of Culture and Recreation for Recife’s

Department of Archives and Culture in 1961. In 1962, using his theories, 300 sugarcane

sharecroppers were taught to read in 45 days. When this experiment concluded,

President Joao Belchior Goulart invited Freire to implement a national literacy campaign

with a goal to make five million adults literate in the first year and participants in the

democratic process, as Brazilian law required that voters pass a literacy test.

Unfortunately a military coup removed Goulart in 1964 and Freire was

imprisoned in Brazil for 70 days as a traitor. He finally received asylum in Bolivia for a

brief time before moving to Chile for five years where he worked for Eduardo Frei’s

Christian Democratic Party.

In 1968, he published his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,

published in Spanish and English in 1970, but not in Brazil until 1974. He was invited to

teach at Harvard as a visiting professor in 1969. He spent a year at Harvard and then

moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1970 where he worked with the World Congress of

Churches as a special educational adviser for 10 years. During this time, Freire traveled

worldwide helping countries to implement popular education and literacy reforms.

He was able to return to Brazil in 1980, after 15 years of exile. He joined the

Workers’ Party in Sao Paulo and, from 1980 to 1986, supervised its adult literacy project.

He taught at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo and the State University of Campinas.

In 1986, Freire’s wife, Elza died. He remarried to Ana Maria Araujo Freire, who

continues with her own radical educational work.

In 1988, he was invited to take over the position of Municipal Secretary of

Education in the new Workers’ Party administration in Sao Paulo. His policy work and

innovations in literacy training as Minister continue to affect the city and Brazil to this

day. In 1991 the Paulo Freire Institute was created in Sao Paulo and maintains the Freire

archives.

Freire died of heart failure at the age of 75, on May 2, 1997.

Interview

I interviewed my principal, Maite Iturri, in her office on November 7, 2011. I

purposely began the interview with questions that would allow the interviewee to reflect

on the congruence or incongruence with her purpose and daily practice. This was an

appropriate platform to then discuss the recent studying I had been doing on Paulo Freire

and critical pedagogy because I consider the interviewee to be an expert in this area but

did not realize that Paulo Freire was the reason she became a teacher! I found myself

connecting to every word she was saying but tried to stay neutral in my reactions

although that became more difficult as we know one another personally. I am feeling like

I am moving closer and closer to developing a meaningful cognate project and this

interview helped me substantiate using Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy as the

groundwork or springboard for my cognate project around reading motivation.

Here are a few of the questions we discussed during our interview:

1) Paulo Freire talks about our system of education as a “banking concept.” Do you

believe our current system resembles a banking model where teachers “deposit”

information into students’ minds? He believes this concept suits the oppressors and

fosters passivity in students by negating the spirit of inquiry...any thoughts?

So the reason I became a teacher is because of Paolo Freire and his writings and his teachings so I'm very familiar with his work and believe that yes we are in a banking concept kind of system where teachers were taught that way so that's how they teach. We often preach that inquiry should be done and facilitating conversations when in fact that's not what happens and that's not what happens at the university level or any other educational level K-12 so people are not really given the chance because they aren’t given the examples. There are not examples of the way things could change and then when our systems and structures such as testing and funding sources are built on test scores… Testing is an oppressive model. Finding little spaces in the day to encourage conversation and thoughtfulness is a challenge with pacing and benchmarks. This system is designed to maintain the status quo. Our education system marches right in line

with that oppression. The lower rungs of the ladder get lower and lower, especially due to our current financial crisis. (Iturri, 11/7/11)

2) Freire advocates for “problem-posing” education where students are involved in

reality; they inquire into it critically and thus are able to transform it. Does this connect

with the purpose of education at your school site?

Why yes it does. My vision for the school is that we are a community-based kind of school that helps to transform the community that we live in. I have always believed that change happens when you work with the people that you encounter everyday and that’s how change happens on a more global level by starting small and starting with the community that you live in. I think there are lots of problems…we don’t give our kids enough credit to be able to help solve the problems that our community faces. Louis Moll and his work, Funds of Knowledge ..his work firmly believes that students have lots of knowledge that they bring to the classroom. We are so focused on that banking concept that we don’t take the time to find out what kids do know and to build on their knowledge and the life that they see everyday…people wanna talk about themselves and the situations they find themselves in and this type of model could help support literacy and change within our community. (Iturri, 11/7/11)

3) Freire talks about the idea of “praxis” which is the idea that thought is only authentic

when it is generated by action upon the world. Do you agree and why?

I believe that generating new knowledge and authentic interaction with your world are two critically important things to be encouraged to do so authentic action in the world can happen out of that problem posing setting for students. I always think about a couple of my professors I have had the fortune to work with who have given real life examples of kids making a difference in the communities they live in through authentic interactions between the students and what goes on in the community. So much of what goes on in the classroom is inauthentic and contrived and students don’t have a way to connect with it. I guess I would agree with the statement that your actions create authentic interactions and think that our students would become more literate because they would have a reason to be. (Iturri, 11/7/11)

Learnings

Studying Paulo Freire has reinvigorated me as a teacher and has sparked a

yearning to read even more of his work (see Appendix A). I am reminded of my purpose

in education. Paulo Freire developed the idea of critical pedagogy where education

provides the means by which to deal critically with reality and discover how to

participate in the transformation of our world. Long ago, I thought we, as educators, did

the best job we could and then we send students out into an oppressive society. Now I

believe that schools are the only place that have the power to liberate society from

oppression. Schools set the norms for society, therefore we must change the norms in

school, to in turn, transform society!

Now What? (my extra bullet point)

As the Academic Coordinator at my elementary school site, I participate in a

voluntary professional discussion group called, Practice and Purpose. The group uses a

model, developed by Dr. Viki Montera and Dr. Paul Heckmann. We use the Indigenous

Invention structure outlined in their article (2009), “School Reform: The Flatworm in a

Flat World: From Entropy to Renewal through Indigenous Invention.” The group usually

meets bimonthly and consists of any interested teachers, our principal, and a third-party

facilitator, which happens to be Dr. Montera, co-author of the Indigenous Invention

article. We simply discuss the congruence or incongruence of our purpose and our daily

practice.

The teachers that participate in this group have frequently discussed the need to

focus more on reading. We believe that the best development can happen “in-house,”

within the school site, where many experts already live. I realize when I mention my

need to learn how to teach reading better, I frequently notice others open up and confess,

“I don’t know how to teach reading, either.” I plan to facilitate a forum to begin this

productive dialogue. I would like to organize a calendar for professional development

around reading on a weekly basis in order to answer our own inquiry questions.

Paulo Freire’s work with literacy was the primary reason I was drawn to him. I

believe our Purpose and Practice group embodies critical pedagogy and much of what

Freire refers to when he describes his problem-posing model for education. This is my

next step in transforming my daily practice, and in turn the world!

Paulo Freire inspires me to believe that I can truly transform education. Critical

pedagogy allows us to develop a consciousness of freedom. It is a continuous process

that requires learning and unlearning and relearning!

For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (Freire, 1970)

References

1996 World Conference on Literacy, International Literacy Institute, Philadelphia, CA. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFWjnkFypFA

Bentley, L. (1999) A Brief Biography of Paulo Freire. Pedagogy & Theater of the Oppressed. Retrieved from http://www.ptoweb.org/freire.html

Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum Publishing

Company. Freire, Paulo. (1998). Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare

Teach (Translated by Donaldo Macedo, Dale Koike and Alexandre Oliveira). Boulder: Westview Press.

Freire, P. & Macedo, D. (1987) Literacy :reading the word & the world. Critical studies

in education series. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey Publishers.

Heckman, P., & Montera, V. (2009). School reform: The flatworm in a flat world: From entropy to renewal through indigenous invention. Teachers College Record, 111(5), 1328-1351.

Illich, I. (1972). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row.

APPENDIX A Chronological Timeline of Books Written by Paulo Freire

1970 Pedagogy of Hope - By Paulo Freire 1972 Cultural Action for Freedom - By Paulo Freire 1973 Education for Critical Consciousness - By Paulo Freire 1976 Education, the Practice of Freedom - By Paulo Freire 1980 A Day with Paulo Freire - By Paulo Freire 1985 The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation - By Paulo Freire 1987 A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education - By Ira

Shor, P. Freire

1987 Literacy: Reading the word & the world - By Paulo Freire and Danaldo Macedo

1989 Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation - By Paulo Freire and Antonio Faundez

1990 We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change – By Paulo Freire and Myles Horton

1993 Pedagogy of the city. - By Paulo Freire 1994 Pedagogy of hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the oppressed. - By Paulo Freire and

Ana Maria Araújo Freire 1996 Letters to Cristina: Reflections on my life and work. - By Paulo Freire and

Donaldo P. Macedo 1997 Pedagogy of the heart. - By Paulo Freire and Ana Maria Araújo Freire 1998 Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. - By Paulo

Freire 1998 The Paulo Freire reader. - By Paulo Freire, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, and

Donaldo P. Macedo 1998 Pedagogy of freedom : ethics, democracy, and civic courage. - By Paulo

Freire