paulo freire

Another influential pedagogue:

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire, Ph.D (/ˈfrɛəri/, Portuguese: [ˈpawlu ˈfɾeiɾi]; September 19, 1921 – May 2, 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. He is best known for his influential work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which is considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement.

Banking model of education

In terms of actual pedagogy, Freire is best known for his attack on what he called the "banking" concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. He notes that "it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power". The basic critique was not new — Rousseau's conception of the child as an active learner was already a step away from tabula rasa (which is basically the same as the "banking concept"). In addition, thinkers like John Dewey were strongly critical of the transmission of mere facts as the goal of education. Dewey often described education as a mechanism for social change, explaining that "education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction". Freire's work, however, updated the concept and placed it in context with current theories and practices of education, laying the foundation for what is now called critical pedagogy.

Culture of silence

According to Freire, the system of dominant social relations creates a culture of silence that instills a negative, silenced and suppressed self-image into the oppressed. The learner must develop a critical consciousness in order to recognize that this culture of silence is created to oppress. Also, a culture of silence can cause the "dominated individuals [to] lose the means by which to critically respond to the culture that is forced on them by a dominant culture."

Social domination of race and class are interlaced into the conventional educational system, through which the "culture of silence" eliminates the "paths of thought that lead to a language of critique".

Paulo Freire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Paulo Freire - An Incredible Conversation - YouTube

See also:
Jay Doubleyou: english for academic purposes: critical thinking
Jay Doubleyou: social engineering
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