Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, By Paulo Freire

“An ignorant population is the blind instrument of its own destruction” -Simon Bolivar, Venezuelan liberator of Spanish rule. Educating ourselves will improve the life quality in our population through increasing equality among the people. Therefore, it will develop a stronger country.

In “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” Paulo Freire tells of the complex relationships that contrast narrative versus instructive teachers and compliant versus existentially aware students, in regards to the various methods of instructing and acquiring knowledge. Although this reading is only a particular excerpt from Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire does an exceptional job by capturing the immense reality of certain educational methods. He explains the “banking” system of teaching, which portrays the teachers as “oppressors” who enforce themselves with an authoritative, commanding position upon the “oppressed” students. By introducing scholars to this “banking” concept of education, the teacher has no regard for the student, inhibiting further questioning and analyses, which only “negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.” (Pedagogy) Freire applies negative connotations to help better demonstrate the contents in which these teachers apply towards their students, stressing that this simply is not well defined enough when the time arrives to properly educate the students.

It is a very important issue that none can just put away. It has been far too long that we’ve experienced social problems come to our faces and just accept it; not stopping it. I proposed that we should use less money on other institutions and use it towards the schools that don’t receive the funding they deserve. I highlighted specific statistics that have shown the imbalance in funding for schools and prisons. Prisons get nearly double and sometimes triple the more funding than K-12 schools get. This has to go. My second proposition is that we need to make college free. Free college would enable more people to get off the streets and start learning. They’d contribute to the society in which ever way they can. There’d be less homeless people, less people in jail, and create more politicians and scientists and inventors that would come into the society and help innovate the world. My third and final proposition would be to simply improve what these children are learning. We need to add additional curriculums that serve the purpose of teaching children how to perform everyday life skills and how to be great human

Chapter 2 of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed discusses a failed teaching method between the student and teacher. It’s a common mistake for teachers to treat the teaching process as a “banking concept”. Freire discusses how this concept takes away creativity from students by forcing them to memorize facts as the teacher “deposits” them into their minds. It’s not expected of the student to comprehend what they’re learning. It’s expected of them to take what the teacher is saying as fact without critically thinking about the meaning behind it. Freire explains,

Personally, I believe education is the key to combating racism. We must education our peers on our cultures. We must explain that “colorblindness” in society is not what’s best. Only by embracing and recognizing each other differences we will be able to break the social bubbles we live in. I’ve gained a stronger sense of racial awareness through this course. I have the ability to challenge and change other people’s ideologies and understand my own. I know because of my social position have scholarships, financial aide and the values of hard work and education instilled in me by my parents and grandparents. I’m also aware that many people are not able to gain that same access. Because of my racial awareness there is so much more I want to find out about the contributing factors that led to my family’s social position in New Orleans. It is through my racial awareness I plan to beat the system.

Today, becoming culturally aware at an early age will create more conflict in the future regarding racism. Teaching that we all are all different from one another will only do each other harm in the long run. If Americans do teach multiculturism, the minds of younger children would evolve to think it would be awesome to be a certain race and uncool to be another. It is important for students to understand that it is okay to affiliate with different cultures and learn from them. To learn from another is to grow as a person and be successful in life. According to the past, when racism was prominent in society, Americans are actually doing well in becoming more diverse. More people are learning how to work with others and respect others’ ideals.

I think a big step in the right direction would be to teach people to be nonjudgmental. Everyone is different and has their ups and downs in their life at some point. Many people see the troubled children and my judge them based on what they see or heard, without knowing the actual details about the situation. I think it would

Haig Bosmajian is the writer of The Language of Oppression. He received a PhD from Stanford University and was a professor in the Speech/Communications Department in University of Washington. This book The Language of Oppression brought Orwell Reward to him in 1983. After Bosmajian finished scholarly research on the language of oppression about Nazis Germany and especially the language used to dehumanize the Jews, he considered the same dehumanized language in other conditions, such as sexism. Therefore, in introduction of The Language of Oppression, Bosmajian argues, "While names, words, and language can be, and are, used to inspire us, to motivate us to humane acts, to liberate us, they can also be used to dehumanize human beings and to 'justify'

More specifically, I believe that spreading awareness would help the young kids see that never again should we allow anything that replicates the legacy of slavery or lynching or segregation or bigotry to ever happen again. For example, When Stevenson was a young lad he went to the Holocaust museum in Washington and went through that experience and when he finished, was motivated to say, along with those who had said it before him, never again. Although, Critics might object that violence directed at a group, to terrorize the entire group, not just a particular person, is

As early as the age of 4 or 5, parents send their children to kindergarten programs followed by elementary, middle and high school. From there they are expected to continue through college and graduate school to learn everything for their future. In Malcolm X’s autobiography, he wrote an excerpt titled, “Learning to Read” where he explains finding encouragement to educate himself on vocabulary and the history of white supremacy. After being thrown into prison he found himself in the prison’s library reading non-stop, eventually discovering the history of his ancestry like all the wrong the white man caused. Educating himself changed his life for the better, leading him to become an inspiring leader in the Civil Rights movement. Malcolm X believed that all the reading he has done will lead him to do something good in life, saying “I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life” [citation]. After educating himself with all the books in the library, he became an inspiring leader in the civil rights movement and became a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Similarly, in “The Shock of Education: How College Corrupts,” Alfred Lubrano compares the difference between the working class and those from affluent neighborhood and schools. As a child of a working-class family, coming home from an Ivy League made him realize a separation between him and his family along with the students from affluent backgrounds. Receiving a higher education than his

When Tarek gets detained by the NYPD in the subway station, and Walter tries to intervene on his behalf, Walter is told that all he can do is make a statement in the station. Walter Vale does everything in his power to help Tarek get free. Even though Walter never had any contact with the immigrant population before, he feels very connected to Tarek over the bond that they share in music, and he helps him despite his ethnicity and race. Walter hires a lawyer to try and get Tarek released, and he visits him frequently. When Walter visits Tarek, he sees how the people are discriminated against and even with all his influence, Walter feels powerless in this situation. Walter was a man of privilege living in America and he never experienced the feeling of such powerlessness in a situation before. This feeling of powerlessness makes Walter fight for what he believes in and he tries everything in his power to help Tarek and set him free.

Another strong argument from Townsend is that everyone has their own set of morals and values they believe to be true. While Townsend argues that something as small as teaching children not to throw trash on the ground or to be involved in community service could be beneficial to the community (Townsend).” She states in her article many people believe it has no use in public schools because there is party lines people do not want to

In page after page this appalling writer spews venom against anything Hindu. If one needs to find a prime example of a dysfunctional illiterate elite who replaced white colonial masters in a Third World kleptocracy, Kancha Ilaiah would certainly be hard to beat. For him Hinduism is basically spiritual

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire mentions the teacher-student contradiction. The contradiction is when students are controlled by teachers. The teachers have the authority over the students, which puts the students in a position that lacks freedom to experience their identity as humans. This contradiction exists due to the banking concept of education. Freire states that the banking concept encourages the contradiction between teachers and students. The banking concept rejects students as individuals and sees them as objects. As a result of the rejection as individuals, students are unable to speak or act upon their own

The original Social Contract tradition has had many authors, but for the purposes of this paper I will focus on John Locke’s work as one political system that might be used by a nation and the problems it entails that would have to be discussed for modern uses. Locke begins by describing a state of nature that entails equality and a state of perfect freedom for mankind to live as they want within the laws of nature (Locke 2009, 370). Locke’s work argues for his view of property, where a man has the right to the fruits of his labor but not to another man’s (Locke 2009, 372). In his view, the government is meant to prevent on man from seeking punishment that is unfit for the committed crime and that people join together for protection for themselves and their property (Locke 2009, 371-372). He argues also that no one man should be in charge and that a democracy should be used instead (Locke 2009, 371).