A narrative response to Lives on the Boundary

Part one: A great debt

I was the first college graduate in my family. This achievement came with a lot of pressure that was thrust on me from an early age, repeated until it became a mantra: study, do good in school, get a job with good money. My parents had the utmost best intentions in drilling this on me;  it was understandable, borne from a narrative of hardship that they both shared. My mother and father both came from poverty, both my maternal and paternal grandfathers were miners who lived hard lives barely scraping by, so the economic realities of schooling resonated more to them becoming the impetus for a college degree. It was a narrative that sometimes haunted me like a specter, looming, always watching me, berating me if I didn’t succeed in school. My mother was a constant disciplinary force, a presence that made me wary of straying from the path, whether it would be a bad test grade, an unsatisfactory comment on a report card, or missing homework. Every time I failed to meet a school standard, she would remind me of how easy I had it, how everything was at my disposal, at my feet. All the resources that I had made it inexcusable that I should be so careless with my studies. This culminated into an episode in third grade where I forgot to do a project of some kind. At my desk, I tried desperately to start the assignment but my mother was furious, yelling and physically overpowering me until something snapped inside me. I beat on the desk with my fists in response to her and broke down bawling. Realizing how far she had gone, she cradled me in her arms and apologized, telling me that she only wanted the best for me and hated to see me squandering. But what exactly was I squandering? To her it was my insufferable disregard for responsibilities; I disrespected the teacher and my parents by not completing the project in time. I had also lied to them and wasted their time. From that day on, I began to see the resources that I had as constant reminders. Symbols of something far deeper, a struggle. For all of the things I had, all of the Encarta encyclopedias, dictionaries, marble composition notebooks, and colorful folders, my mother made no secret of the painful truth that she had to struggle with growing up in poverty. For everything that I had, my mother had nothing. And now whenever I looked at the things I had, I was reminded that my mother had nothing and the room became bare.

Interview of Paulo Freire on You Tube.

Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Creating praxis by reflecting on the current state of the world

There have been upheavals all over the world, mostly by a generation of young activists (Los Indignados, OWS, The Arab Spring) that have fundamentally changed the way we perceive existing social structures whether they be political, economic or social. While each of these groups comprise sections of society that are united against corruption, income inequality and government repression and brutality, the question remains on how this revolutionary activism will translate into a future society that is truly equitable and just. Society transformation requires not only a strong wave of action/activism, but also cannot function without a revolutionary change in thought and perspective. This was clear to Paulo Freire, who  worked in the Brazilian countryside creating a literacy curriculum for Brazilian peasants, and facilitated a learning approach that would engage the students’ minds and hearts leading to a total shift in perspective. This shift is integral to the overall holistic education program, which focuses not only on achieving literacy but connecting this to a deep change in consciousness. Conscientization, requires an overhaul in the way we relate to society moving from a passive state of dependency (Objects) to an active consciousness- raising state of independence (Subjects). Freire’s goal with the literacy campaign in Brazil was to raise the consciousness of the peasants to realize that the states of oppression they experience could be changed through revolutionary consciousness. All of this might seem theoretical at first but Freire eloquently explains his philosophy and the relationship of conscientization to active citizenry. 

Much of what Freire describes in his book can be used as a framework perhaps to analyze the tumultuous political situations that we are seeing. In much of the mainstream media the spotlight has been on the massive groups of people protesting on the streets sometimes leading to violent acts of repression by the government and sometimes by unruly mobs of protestors. Yet there hasn’t been much discussion on what the possible causes of these escalations are, let alone the complex historical process that led to their particular historical situation. In an age of increasing information and social media websites displaying in rapid-fire procession via twitter, there is an increasing sectarian viewpoint that filters the information through an ideological setting. This ideology has falsely split complex issues into a black and white framework. So that in a situation like Venezuela which is rocked by protests we get a barrage of information that if not analyzed and critically looked at can become fodder for ideological warfare to ensue. Freire pointedly remarks on this and I think even predicts the schism of ideology that separates and divides people instead of uniting them. He says “If true commitment to the people, involving the transformation of the reality by which they are oppressed, requires a theory of transforming action, this theory cannot fail to assign the people a fundamental role in the transformation process. The leaders cannot treat the oppressed as mere activists to be denied the opportunity of reflection and allowed merely the illusion of acting, whereas in fact they would continue to be manipulated— and in this case by the presumed foes of manipulation (126).” Freire understood that true revolutionary action must coincided with revolutionary theory and in this synthesis where one cannot exist without the other, true transformative societal learning will take place. Freire knew that empty sloganeering and branding, which seeks to make problems cured by an an easy-to-swallow-pill will not lead to everlasting change in a society. 

This is one aspect of Freire’s theory of transformative learning that struck me as particularly relevant in today’s world of political turmoil and revolt. To go back to how closely this relates to Freire and his transformative approach to teaching we’d have to look into the political context of Brazil in the late 60s. Freire himself was ultimately arrested in the turning point of the military coup in Brazil in 1964 just as he had reached a critical point in his adult literacy programs for Brazilian peasants. The fact that the military junta found him dangerous enough to be incarcerated speaks to how much the elites feared his methods and his transformative learning approach. Therefore, it would be naive to think that the critical practices espoused by Freire is simply to teach mass literacy to populations that don’t have access to it. Freire was teaching to give the oppressed the consciousness they needed to be aware of their oppressed state. Yet, this comes with a very important detail that I think needs to be understood in order to truly appreciate what Freire was talking about. Freire knew that without radical transformative critical thinking, all activism is meaningless. This is not to undermine the importance of activism but for Freire activism is truly bankrupt without a revolutionary critical theory. Although it is tempting to imagine Freire as a kind of guerrilla pedagogy instructor bent on ending oppression through active revolt a la Che Guevara, it would be totally wrong to construe Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a kind of revolutionary handbook. There is too much at stake in our world to simply topple one ideology with another ideology no matter how populist, or popular it might seem on the surface. This is the takeaway that we should leave with when we read Pedagogy of the Oppressed and it is the one hope we have in order to truly change our world.