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.