The two people I chose to write about are Sierra and Frank.
From Sierra's blog, I found that she loves her family and friends very much and that she not only uses a Mac, but she is very enthusiastic about that. She's also very excited about Obama.
I found out that Frank is a native Californian. He has an impressive vocabulary. He also seems excited about Obama.
Sierra has taken a class where she studied Paulo before. She seemed to have a lot of insight into what he's all about. She had brought up how he had gone hungry during the depression and that was the impetus for his lifelong fight against hunger and poverty. I knew he had lived through the depression, but I didn't ever put two and two together. Sierra also talked about how he was really interested in languages and how languages may be misconstrued. The issue of poverty is very interesting because so much of the world does live in poverty and that is going to be the prevailing basis from which they interact with the world. In addition, the issue of language is of utmost importance. Language affects how we perceive the world. We are affected by symbolism of all kinds, language included. One example of this is in Japan. The Japanese word for husband is shujin, which means master. That term hasn't been used as much during the latter half of the twentieth century. The word that is now commonly used is a Japaneseified version of an English word, patonaa (partner). If I were a little girl growing up in Japan and I was to understand that someday I would be marrying my master, I would have a very different perception of marriage and my place in the world than if I grew up knowing that I would someday be marrying my partner. There are examples of this sort all throughout the world and as students of the humanities we have to realize that our understanding is limited by our experiences and the connotations that certain words and symbols have in our culture.
Frank talked about how he found that Pauolo was influenced by Marxist and Anti-Colonial thought. Secondly, he talked about how when he was forming his educational theories, he based it on eight basic principles. These two concepts are interlinked because the educational theories that he has ask questions about things like who is to present the material, what kind of material should be presented...etc. The colonial approach to ruling the indigenous people of the lands that took over was to lord over them, demean them, subject them to poverty and exploit their labor. The educational systems introduced by colonialists mirrored that social structure, so the students became the marginalized subjects. This is important because the remnants of this kind of rule and education are still alive and well in many developing countries and continue to reinforce a way of thinking continues to keep people impoverished.
What I learned the most from this assignment is that everyone has a little bit of information that he or she brings to the discussion and that information is going to be different from what other people got. It's going to be interesting to see how we all weave our thoughts together as the semester goes on.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Assignment 1b
Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire was first and foremost, an educator. According to the Paulo Freire Institute on their website, www.paulofreireinstituts.org, the teaching methods of Paulo Freire have been used to promote democratic change especially through improving adult literacy. His methods, which promote equality in the classroom, have been used in much of the developing world to empower the poor. According to Wikipedia, these methods were proven, “…when 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days.”
Paulo’s most famous piece of writing is Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which outlines the principals of his teaching methods. Freire’s goal in the class room was to reverse the way that education is conducted from the banking method, where information is thrown at students in order to fill up their piggy banks, to an educational ideal where the teacher is on equal standing with the students and encourages the students to not just memorize information, but to become complete humans.
Aside from the fact that literacy greatly facilitates democracy, the brilliance in Freire’s method of teaching is that the classroom itself becomes a microcosm of the society that he was encouraging the peasants to build for themselves. The traditional form of education introduced to native people of the developing world was one based on the system of European Colonialism. The traditional classroom structure is hierarchical and reinforces the idea that the students (peasants) are lower than the teacher and are not encouraged to participate in the educational process, but merely to be subservient to it.
What’s important about this today is that we live in a world where globalization runs rampant. Colonialism for the most part doesn’t exist anymore, but the remnants of these old institutions are built into the fabric of society. Developing countries no longer are colonies, but rather are domain of dictators or are driven by the policies of corporations that do dealings with their governments. According to Freire, one way for the poor and working class people (i.e. the indigenous people) to learn how to feel comfortable with self-empowerment and to give them the tools they need to be successful in their struggle for improved lives is through his educational methods.
Paulo Freire was first and foremost, an educator. According to the Paulo Freire Institute on their website, www.paulofreireinstituts.org, the teaching methods of Paulo Freire have been used to promote democratic change especially through improving adult literacy. His methods, which promote equality in the classroom, have been used in much of the developing world to empower the poor. According to Wikipedia, these methods were proven, “…when 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days.”
Paulo’s most famous piece of writing is Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which outlines the principals of his teaching methods. Freire’s goal in the class room was to reverse the way that education is conducted from the banking method, where information is thrown at students in order to fill up their piggy banks, to an educational ideal where the teacher is on equal standing with the students and encourages the students to not just memorize information, but to become complete humans.
Aside from the fact that literacy greatly facilitates democracy, the brilliance in Freire’s method of teaching is that the classroom itself becomes a microcosm of the society that he was encouraging the peasants to build for themselves. The traditional form of education introduced to native people of the developing world was one based on the system of European Colonialism. The traditional classroom structure is hierarchical and reinforces the idea that the students (peasants) are lower than the teacher and are not encouraged to participate in the educational process, but merely to be subservient to it.
What’s important about this today is that we live in a world where globalization runs rampant. Colonialism for the most part doesn’t exist anymore, but the remnants of these old institutions are built into the fabric of society. Developing countries no longer are colonies, but rather are domain of dictators or are driven by the policies of corporations that do dealings with their governments. According to Freire, one way for the poor and working class people (i.e. the indigenous people) to learn how to feel comfortable with self-empowerment and to give them the tools they need to be successful in their struggle for improved lives is through his educational methods.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
