Quote of the Day: Paulo Freire
For my business trip this week I grabbed copy of the classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. I have heard of this book, and seen various educational proposals that were purportedly based on it, but up to this point I had only read various quotations and summaries. I got interested in it again as my formation for the deaconate has gotten my thinking again about pedagogy for adult education. I was drawn by his idea that when teaching adults you must educate them as subjects and not as objects. (But this is a matter for another post.)
However, in the opening chapter I ran across the following extensive quote that I think meshes remarkably well with a Christian social analysis.
While both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives [today], only the first is man’s vocation. This vocation is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation. It is thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity…..
This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. This is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extending their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands—whether of individuals or entire peoples—need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work, and working, transform the world. (pp. 28-29, 1970 paperback edition)
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I really enjoy Paulo Freire. Over the years I have done two presentations on his educational theory, and it’s a great regret of mine that I have lost my notes for both. The advantage though is that next time, I’ll have to start from scratch, and I’ll be able to delve into his work again…
I have found Paulo Freire very challenging and helpful for my ministry with the poor in western Honduras, most of whom have less than six years of formal education.
The people are very used to people talking at them, imparting doctrine and more. But the challenge is to help the people recognize what they already know and to help them develop critical skills.
This has challenged me to develop methods of leading workshops that are much more participative than anything I did in the US. It also has led me to remind the people that we are in this endeavor together, trying to understand and live our faith in a liberating way.
I think it may help that I often tell them that they are my teachers, emphasizing that I need their help to improve my Spanish.
Freire’s challenge to the “charity” of the first world is so much needed here. 50,000 people come to Honduras each year on “mission” trips. But Honduras remains poor and the people impoverished. Why? I think because many come without any idea of the injustice rampant here and the causes.
Thanks for sharing this. As soon as I read this quote about “false generosity” and its relation to the status quo, I remembered the quote from Dom Holder Camara: “When I gave bread to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why there are so many poor, they called me a communist.”
50,000 mission visitors a year is practically an industry. In your opinion, how can they stop acting with false charity and start acting with the oppressed in search of justice?
Freire thought is deeply theological, I think. I find him and Ivan Illich to be mostly forgotten prophets who both has radical things to say about schooling, education, and how those two are not the same thing and how we might find our way forward into the vast unknown—as opposed to our modern sense of progress, where the future is always “predictable.”
Sam
http://nlu.nl.edu/academics/cas/ace/resources/JohnOhliger_Insight1.cfm?RenderForPrint=1