Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed was...interesting. It was incredibly difficult to read, and I feel like I need to read it a hundred more times before I can completely understand it. Although I understand where he's coming from as far as treating students as humans and not "alienate them like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic" goes, I think this piece as a whole was really negative. It was hard to follow and at every page turn I was like..."well that bums me out."He wrote about this insane epidemic that is teachers being awful and treating their students as empty receptacles to only be filled by information the teacher chooses to fill them with. He seems every..."TEACHERS NEED TO BE STOPPED, THIS IS A CRIME!" I get it. I understand that this happens and it's not great teaching form, but I do not appreciate how Mr. Freire makes it sound like EVERY teacher in EVERY classroom has these sort of dehumanizing underpinnings to their teaching.
{Footnote #3: for example, some professors specify in their reading lists that a book should be read from pages 10 to 15 -- and do this to 'help' their students!} (pg. 4)
What is this actually about? What is with the sarcastic quotes around the word help? I don't know any scheming teacher or professor that would be like "Oh let's give them reading requirements because they must be oppressed and held back! Those fools! ha ha!" It just doesn't make sense to me. So maybe I'm not understanding his point.
"Oppression -- overwhelming control -- is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life" (pg.4)
Okay, this statement is absolutely true, but it's a little dramatic to apply it to teaching, isn't it?
I understand that he's calling for change. I agree that suppressing the creative minds of future generations is NOT the way to teach. I just didn't really like the way he went about discussing it. It was quite the interesting read.
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