Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

If I am going to be perfectly honest, some of this article went over my head the first time I read it (I had to read it twice, and there still were some concepts I wasn’t fully comprehending). The coffee cup is or is not inside me? Why would I want a coffee cup inside me? I know Freire is trying to use a philosophical illustration, but it wasn't working for me.


In fact, some of this article just did not work for me. I understand why the banking concept of education should not be used. We should be guides for our students to create a learning experience where the feel like they are gaining an awareness of the world, themselves, and the people they are sitting next to in class. And, by making a student feel like we are just regurgitating information into them, will not accomplish that. We want our students to be active participants in their education, and to take more than a bunch of facts away from a lesson. It’s important that a student learn to feel, reason, think differently, etc. on their own and I absolutely agree that won’t happen if we just deposit information into their brains.


However, I do believe that something’s need to be taught in a manner that we can build a base on. Not every student in a history class is going to know the year WWII started; what’s wrong with just telling them? Is it different if another student sitting in class tells them the answer? Are we not all being oppressive, and in return, being the oppressed? I don't know how you can ever truly escape it. But I do think you can treat your students with respect, and look at them as equals rather than your inferiors. 


On my first day in Dr. Lindholdt’s American Lit class, he told us to “question our authority.” We need to be able to take what someone teaches us, and decided whether we agree with them, or even believe, what they are telling us. We need to teach our students to do the same, to be autonomous agents. I do think that there are many things that Freire discusses in this chapter that are true and need to be applied. I want my students to feel like I hear them, that I am learning beside them and I am not just this “oppressive” machine trying to feed them information. That they can disagree with the way I read and understand a text, and most importantly, that they feel like they are in a safe learning environment where they can share their differing opinions and thoughts.