It Could Happen Here - Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Andrew leads a discussion on Paulo Freire's book Pedagogy of the Oppressed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh! It could happen here,

which is the podcast that this is. I'm Robert Evans. With me are other people hello other people hi hi hey hello uh so this podcast things falling apart putting back together yada yada yada today our guest well not our guest our host is uh the inimitable andrew and, hey, how's it going? What are we talking about today? What are we learning? I'm good, I'm good.

Today, hoping to tackle another book, kind of. Hell yeah. This one's not fictional like the past two, though I do hope to explore some of those in the future because I think some good conversations come out of those. This week, we're going to be talking about Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Oh. Yes.

For those who don't know, Paulo Freire is a Brazilian educator and one of the leading advocates of, well, was a Brazilian educator and leading advocate of critical pedagogy. Pedagogy is basically like the study of education philosophy of education um he was born in 1921 and his experiences kind of led him to that path because during his childhood and adolescence he was falling behind in school because he was poor his poverty and his hunger affected his ability to learn and so as he got older and he got opportunities and he was able to study and so on and he basically realized he needs to do more to uplift the lives of the poor improve the lives of the poor um in order to facilitate better educational outcomes.

As he says in one quote, I didn't understand anything because of my hunger. I wasn't dumb. It wasn't a lack of interest. My social condition just didn't allow me to have an education. Experience showed me once again, the relationship between social class and knowledge. So as he progressed in his studies and his writing and stuff, he eventually contributed to a philosophy of education,

which blended classical approaches stemming from Plato and modern Marxist and post-Marxist and anti-colonial thinkers. When I was reading the book, it really sort of struck me. I got a lot of, I got a lot of Franz Fanon vibes from his work. He died in 1997, RIP,

but his greatest contribution, to me at least, and to most people, is his book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the book, he sort of explores a detailed Marxist class analysis in the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed. And he talks about the banking model of education that traditional pedagogy espouses because it treats the student

as like this bank this empty vessel to be filled with knowledge instead he argues for a form of education of pedagogy that treats the learner as a co-creator in knowledge as far as i'm aware um and i guess it kind of is illustrated in the book itself but as far as i know fair wasn't an anarchist or libertarian socialist of any variety but he still ended up coming to some anarchic conclusions with regard to the education system and learning and stuff i mean anarchists have been writing about, you know, like youth liberation and the school system and even experimenting with new models of schooling for a long time. The Ferrer movement, for example,

experimented with implementing modern schools in the US and in Spain. Emma Goldman was very much involved in that process. And I don't think that the experiments were necessarily free of error, but I think they did a good job of trying something new, trying something a bit more liberatory in the sphere of education. Because, I mean, for the past several hundred years now,

we've kind of been going with this sort of Prussian model of education. This very strict, very regimented, very divided model of education that arose to sort of foment nationalism and division, class divisions and stuff within the populace. So I think that any experimentation in the more libertarian direction is a positive. In the preface, Freire sort of goes into why this book came about. He's talking about his experience as a teacher in Brazil, the observations he made while in political exile. And so what he realized as a teacher when he was teaching his students is that they had a sort of a fear of freedom it's not like a real fear of

freedom it's more of a fear of the risks associated with freedom because of the experiences and stuff they've had um what he considers the most vital however to the education system is sort of establishing a conscientious or a critical consciousness within students a consciousness that commits to social change and human liberation according to freer the educational model can only really be successful if people are radicalized through it if people are able to see the issues in their current society think about them, stew upon them

criticize them, compare them and look at ways to solve them and if they don't come out with that sort of critical consciousness then it's all for naught, basically. The education system is kind of spinning on top of mud. I find it especially interesting that I ended up reading this when I did, because as we've seen in the US, a lot of conversations are now attacking anything even approaching critical consciousness. With this whole debate going on about critical race theory and this sort of...

Even though critical race theory is not being taught in primary or secondary education, this attack, this full-frontal attack on anything that resembles critical thinking and critical study of history and of the present. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

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So in chapter one, Thoreau makes a case for why the pedagogy of the press is necessary. makes a case for why the pedagogy of the oppressed is necessary. He says that humankind's central problem is how we affirm our identity as human beings. Everyone is trying to reach that sort of affirmation, that sort of human identity, that sort of humanness. But oppression and systems of oppression interrupt that process. They prevent people from expressing and establishing their full humanity. Whether you're talking about racism, keeping people from reaching their full potential, or sexism, preventing people, or, you know,

cis-hetero-patriarchy with the whole limitations and such puts upon people's sexuality and gender expression and gender identification. All of these systems of oppression are put in place to restrict and confine and bound us below, you know, our full potential. and a lot of the cultivation and forging of one's awareness of the systems around them and how to operate within them takes place in the education system. And so the education system should be one of the critical junctures in which we wage our fight for oppressed people. wage our fight for oppressed people. There's a sort of dehumanization that occurs as a result of oppression, whether it be in the form of comparing people to animals, as racists often do, whether it be in the form of

animals as racists often do, whether it be in the form of degrading people to this sort of childlike status, which itself is a form of oppression because the fact that childlikeness and youth is considered to be something less than, It's just another way in which people are oppressed and another way in which people are prevented from asserting their autonomy and their humanity. Oppressors, they tend to treat people as objects, to be possessed. They see freedom as threatening.

And in turn, oppressed people end up becoming alienated from each other through oppression and begin to see the oppressors as something to strive towards. Ferrer talks about how the oppressed, their whole vision and their whole understanding of what being human is, is being like oppressors. And so a lot of people, and you see that even today, oppressors. And so a lot of people, and you see that even today, when they strive for freedom, they strive to become entrepreneurs. They strive to become business owners. They strive to become billionaires and CEOs and all these sort of images of what being human looks looks like because people are striving to be free and if the only way you can get a measure of freedom is by becoming an oppressed yourself then it makes sense a lot of oppressed people are going to try to do that of course as frere

himself says and the oppressors themselves are not fully free either because by denying the oppressed people their humanity they rob themselves of humanity the fight for liberation as fair argues must consist of two stages reflection on the nature of oppression and the concrete action needed to change it. And that sort of, reading that line, I'm paraphrasing, but it reminds me of the process of prefigurative politics, where not only are you bringing about the consciousness of people to recognize these systems of oppression and to understand how they operate. But the concrete action to change it is one that is intended to reflect the society that we wish to establish in the future.

Freire does warn that leaders and stuff must engage in dialogue with oppressed people rather than becoming like oppressors but as the book goes on i think he relies a bit too much on this concept of leaders as well he warns against them existing above the people but he still sort of upholds that distinction between the leaders and the people. As the book progresses, he begins to compare the concept of the banking model to the concept of the problem-posing model of education, as he calls it. In the banking model, quote, the teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable,

or else he expounds upon a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His 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. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity. Irony being that sentence is quite verbose, but... On the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices which mirror oppressive society as a whole.

The teacher teaches and the students are taught. The teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing. The teacher thinks and the students are thought about. The teacher talks and the students listen meekly. The teacher disciplines and the students listen, meekly. The teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined. The teacher chooses and enforces his choice and the students comply. The teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher. The teacher chooses the program content and the students, who were not consulted, adapt to it.

The teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority which they set in opposition to the freedom of the students the teacher is the subject of the learning process while the pupils are mere objects i think um frederick needed to incorporate some more gender neutral language in that so i had to kind of correct him there. But that quote, that quote in full, it really reminds me of my schooling experience. As some people may know, I was actually homeschooled for the majority of my learning experience. I actually didn't know that. Oh, well, now you know. Yeah, so I was homeschooled for, I would say, the majority of my education experience. And then after I went into college and stuff. But before then, I did make it through the school system. And even though it was a really long time ago, my memories are still crystal clear of that process. process you know um i remember seeing students being disciplined um i myself was kind of a teacher's pet but that does not surprise me

in the best possible way i'm not sure to take it but I'll take it in a good way. It is, because me too, Andrew. Not me. Oh, that also doesn't surprise me. Teachers are cops. Oh my God. Yeah, this is my pre-Anarchist days. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't jumping out the boot canal

with a black flag, you know. Yeah. Unfortunately. ACAB includes the person who tried to get me to read Catcher in the Rye. Catcher in the Rye was a good book. It was a good book. It's a perfectly fine book. I'm just being an asshole.

But, like, Andrew, what are you alluding here is that, like, stoicism is something that is weaponized in the education system? Stoicism? Stoicism? is something that is weaponized in the education system stoicism stoicism being like no emotion delivering like right right right because i was thinking the philosophy oh yeah no but like yeah yeah you're like a vessel for quote-unquote facts and knowledge to be like injected into you for you to like hold as as yeah it's we're seeing a resurgence in this type of thing all the albeit probably a little bit less eloquently stated in some of like the um anti-schooling anarchist literature that's been coming out the past few years or at least has been gaining more traction the past few years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because this, and that's kind of the funny thing about it because most people in their schooling experience can recall it being in some ways negative, even if they look at it in a positive light. We can at least, even if they don't go in that fully radical direction, most people can look at some of the elements to their schooling of their education and say that that wasn't right you know there's something messed up about that even something as simple as having to like ask you

know the teacher to go on and use the toilet it's just it's those sorts of little ways of control so like as i was saying in my schooling experience back when i was in primary school i was very adorable i'm sure you could guess but um i remember seeing these students being disciplined they had the bell had rung for um you know the end of break and you're supposed to you know file back into class but I think there was a school next door that was having some kind of event and they were playing like music and so a bunch of students in my class not me but a bunch of students in my class were you know um dancing at the side of the school enjoying the music having a good time or whatever um they heard the bell and they

didn't go because they were you know they were having a good time or whatever. They heard the bell and they didn't go because they were, you know, they were having a good time. They were like six, seven, eight. But then afterwards, the teacher, after, you know, I sit down and stuff, teacher goes and finds them and brings them in. And this is prior to, at least to my knowledge, prior to the corporal punishment being phased out of school.

So I just remember seeing them having to, you know, like lay out their hand and receive punishment for daring to have joy after hours, you know, daring to enjoy themselves when it was supposed to be class time and they're supposed to be in class i'm sure people have similar experiences here at least of a kind of punishment and control i mean this is not the same kind of punishment but i think to your point of being controlled like even just like not even being aware of it just like being forced to

stand up and say the pledge of allegiance in america for example it becomes this like repetitive culty thing every morning that you're expected to do and if you don't do it um personal experience if you refuse to do that you have to go to the principal's office and explain why and it happens over and over again and i think it's like uh you're you're questioned and you're punished even for like thinking not like differently or questioning not even thinking just questioning reality yeah yeah yeah yeah and in syria when i was i went to school in syria when i was really small and me and my sister ate really slow. And we would get hit with a ruler on our hands.

Because we didn't finish lunch fast enough. So, yeah. Yeah. Mine isn't that intense. But the school I went to when I was a little kid in Oklahoma, number one, they paddled us. That was legal. It was a public school. But my first grade teacher was obsessed with the fact

that like it was bad to be left-handed and you know she couldn't she couldn't do the shit that they used to do right they used to like fuck kids up for using their left hands but she would every single day like chide me and tell me that i should use my right hand to write and stuff that it wasn't like proper that it was like bad that i because if you if you if you're not aware if you're not left-handed when you're like do stuff with a pencil and you're left-handed you get a bunch of like yeah pencil stuff on your on the side of your hand right it's just like because of the way that unless you're using like those weird left-handed notebooks and shit which no one ever has um and she would like she gave me so much shit for being dirty because like i would

get stuff on my hand it was just like when i tell people that it's like really this was like the 90s. Yeah There's there's a few of those folks left. I think she was extremely Catholic And I know nuns to go fucking shit on that stuff. I didn't know that Catholic people cared about the left-handed thing Yeah, no Catholic Catholic schools. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah the left-handed thing yeah i don't know catholic catholic schools used to yeah yeah yeah yeah i wouldn't say that like it's i don't think there's anything in like the catechism about not being left-handed right right i mean like in some very strict muslim culture a lot of it is like phased out but for example your left hand isn't meant to be used as the primary hand because it's like a dirty hand like the one you wipe yourself with

or the one you kill yourself with. Yeah, there's a lot. But like... I didn't know you were left-handed though. Yikes. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yikes, thank you.

Thank you. You should be concerned. I have to make a number of things frustrating, like shearing sheep. Anyway, whatever. Well, everything is designed for right-handed people, for sure. Like guitars, everything. It is.

You try to keep us down, but we are the master. Okay, sorry. Speaking of hands. Speaking of hands, just out of curiosity, did you all have the hand up, hand out experience? Hand out? What's hand out? Basically, it's just sort of a tool used to just sort of a repetitive kind of

follow instructions kind of thing so like if the class is getting too rowdy it's like hands up hands out hands up hands out and the teacher does not stop saying it until everyone is quieted down and it's just like like a robot just raising and lowering their hand. It's so culty. I don't think I've experienced that. And I mean, I did, I was an assistant teacher at one point and for very, very young children, I'm talking like four to five year olds. And I understand the frustration of like, you're just trying to get something done and everyone's just kind of

wilding out. They just had snacks or and everyone's just kind of wilding out they just had snacks or whatever and everyone's kind of wilding out but i think that says more about like the methods we're using than about the children themselves you know it's more about like you have to you should adjust more to like their cycles and their needs at their stage rather than trying to force and shove them into this sort of robotic... No, totally. They're not allowed to actually develop naturally or

be themselves in a setting like that. Yeah, exactly. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. I think what happens, that kind of worries me,

is that when people have these experiences, traumatic and not as dramatic, in the education system, a lot of people, but some people, when they come out radicalized by it, and other people end up being the like most stringent most passionate advocates of it like even like this catholic school teacher you're talking about robert

like at some point she was also in the education system and it really makes me wonder like what she went through to have to come up with that kind of mindset. Yeah. I mean, I think she'd grown up in Oklahoma too. So it must've been a nightmare, like everything in that state. Yeah. Yeah. Like, why does it have a panhandle?

Anyway. I mean, there is a reason for that, and it's not fun, but okay. I'm assuming it's slavery. Any fucked up geographic thing going on in the South, the reason is generally slavery. Yeah. Right. Right, right, right. And so he spends a lot of time talking about this banking model, and we could go on and on about it.

I spend a lot of time just talking about the education system and all my problems with it. And at some point, I would like to do an episode about the Frere schools and how those sort of transpired. But what Frere proposes as an alternative is the problem posing model which is basically through dialogue the teacher and the students cease to exist the teacher of the students and the students of the teacher cease to exist so instead of there being these two separate categories they are teacher students and student teachers there's no separation anymore between the one who teaches and the one who is taught rather there's a dialogue between the two as they become part of this process where all of them can grow you know you let go of this sort of

All of them can grow. You let go of this sort of authoritarian arrangement and allow people to teach and be taught, to learn and be learned, to really draw out what it is that we have to gain from each other. Rather than being sort of docile listeners, the students and the teachers, the student teachers, teacher students, they become co-investigators in dialogue. They become critics. They become critics. They become radicals who are able to open up and demythologize the way that reality works, the way that human beings exist in the world. Banking education tends to inhibit creativity and try to domesticate our consciousness throwback to when i was talking about human domestication the other day um but in contrast you know the problem posing model tries to it really bases itself on creativity and stimulates, rather than domestication,

a sort of a full flourishing of what someone could be, unbound and unshackled. So in summary, banking theory is immobilizing, it's fixating, it doesn't acknowledge people as people, but rather as objects. Whereas the problem-posing model, it takes people's historicity, it takes people's humanity as their starting point, upon which they can grow and learn from each other. I think that's what frustrated me the most about the education system in the time that I was in it.

And even when I got back in it in college, even though it was not as bad in some ways. Because, you know, in college, they tend to emphasize dialogue a bit more in certain classes. But I find the issue is that there's this assumption in, you know, the earlier sections of schooling, secondary school and primary school,

and even preschool, that the children and the youths, they're not there to have anything to add. They're just there to regurgitate, to study and to repeat what they've studied for approval, which is something I definitely did back in the day. If what's lacking is dialogue, a dialogue that requires hope and trust and critical thinking,

then liberation would also be lacking. There can't be dialogue without love for the world and for people and for knowledge and for bringing that knowledge out to people so as frera says you know love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself on the other hand dialogue cannot exist without humility the naming of the world through which people constantly recreate that world cannot be an act of arrogance i remember encountering a lot of arrogant teachers and lecturers and stuff in my time through the education system um i remember being condescended to on multiple occasions and that's the thing

nobody likes being condescended to but condescension is kind of the default way in which we engage with young people it's just sort of there's this projected ignorance upon them as if they have nothing of value to add or to share and on the contrary you know we all have something to contribute if we are closed off and if we are closed off to the you know contributions of others we can't engage in dialogue with them if we are fearful if we are um considering people to be like inferior in some ways if we cannot embrace people as equals then how can we engage in dialogue with them i think there's a beauty in the way that he reflects on dialogue he goes on and on about

it for quite a while um at one point he says that dialogue requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and recreate, faith in their vocation to be more fully human, which is not the privilege of an elite, but the birthright of all. And so finally, when he's talking about action and how this sort of change is brought about, he divides cultural action into two kinds, dialogical action and anti-dialogical action. While oppressors use anti-dialogical action to protect their power and to separate people, radicals can use dialogical action to bring people together in the struggle for freedom. There are different methods of anti-dialogical action.

Through conquest, through divide and rule, through manipulation, through cultural invasion, oppressors were able to put the oppressed in the predicament that they're in. The oppressed wouldn't be the oppressed

if not for the oppressors oppressing them that's kind of self-explanatory um but in contrast radicals from among the oppressed using biological action using cooperation unity organization and cultural synthesis are able to rise above and to push back against this oppression and to allow education to flourish among all. And so I think that's the beauty of the text. The hope that it imbues in people to really bring about these changes

and I think it was a good read. 5 out of 5. Excellent. And it's not very long, right? It's like under 200 pages from what I read. Yeah, it's like 4 short chapters. Relatively short.

I know, back when you were talking about how people are are sectors of the right specifically are so set on attacking like anything related to like critical theory or critical race theory um i i the the book was was banned like like a decade and a like over a decade ago from the arizona schools for teaching students that they are oppressed. Well, uh, yeah,

you, that's, that's how, you know, that's to be expected. It's a good book. Yeah. Uh,

yeah. So that's anyway, just a, just a fun, fun fact there. Yeah. We can't, we can't have kids knowing that, uh,

they have shared interests as a group and that adults are mistreating them comprehensively. That's good. Yeah. God, you just reminded me of so many moments that me and teachers really got into it or the teachers that were condescending and that I hated. I have to really go through the Rolodex and try to vent this out now

after we finish recording. Well, listen, if you're a child, why are you listening to this? Rise up in rebellion. Destroy the adults. Their joints are terrible. Hit them in the knees.

They won't recover. My joints are terrible. Yeah, exactly. some fucking nine year old whacks you in the knee with like a shillelagh you're down you're out of the game no I know my knee would break embrace the ancient traditions

make shillelaghs and go for the fucking joints yeah children of the world you have nothing to lose but your bed time yeah wow that's the episode Yeah. Children of the world, you have nothing to lose but your bedtimes. Right, so. Wow.

That's the episode. Thanks, Andrew. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.