(Paulo) Freire for the Classroom Edited by Ira Shor Boynton/Cook Publishers Portsmouth, NH 1987 |
This is a great discovery, education is politics! When a teacher discovers that he or she is a politician, too, the teacher has to ask, What kind of politics am I doing in the classroom? That is, in favor of whom am I being a teacher? The teacher works in favor of something and against something. Because of that, he or she will have another great question, How to be consistent in my teaching practice with my political choice? I cannot proclaim my liberating dream and in the next day be authoritarian in my relationship with the students. Paulo Freire A Pedagogy for Liberation
Page 7
It is astonishing that so few critics challenge the system . . . When on considers the energy, commitment and quality of so many people working in the schools, one must place the blame elsewhere. The people are better than the structure. Therefore the structure must be at fault. Theodore Sizer (1984)
[F] ar too many teachers give out directions, busywork, and fact-fact-fact lectures in ways that keep students intellectually passive, if not actually deepening their disregard for learning and schooling. The Holmes Group (1986)
Page 211
It is my basic conviction that a teacher must be fully cognizant of the political nature of his/her practice and assume responsibility for this rather than denying it.
Page 212
When the teacher is seen as a political person, then the political nature of education requires that the teacher either serve whoever is in power or present options to those in power.
A progressive position requires democratic practice where authority never becomes authoritarianism, and where authority is never so reduced that it disappears in a climate of irresponsibility and license.
Professional competence, command of a subject or discipline, is never understood by the progressive teacher as something neutral. There is no such thing as a category called “professional competence” all by itself. We must always ask ourselves: In favor of whom and of what do we use our technical competence?
At the risk of repeating myself, let me emphasize that a progressive teacher, in contrast to a reactionary one, is always endeavoring to reveal reality for her/his students, removing whatever keeps them form seeing clearly and critically. Such a teacher would never neglect course content to simply politicize students.
[Teachon: Make connection with Socratic method. Teachers interpret the world for their students or they do not. If not then they say to their students, their is little to get interested in, passionate or excited about; little to take a stand on, or think deeply about.]
Page 213
And the progressive teacher only truly teaches to the degree that he or she has also appropriated the content of what is being taught, learning it critically for herself or himself. In this way, the act of teaching is an act of reknowing an already known object. In other words, the teacher reexperiences his or her own capacity to know through the similar capacity to know that exists in the learners. To teach, then is the form that knowing takes as the teacher searches for the particular way of teaching that will challenge and call forth in students their own act of knowing. Thus, teaching is both creative and critical. It requires inventiveness and curiosity by both teacher and learner in the process.
Just as it is impossible to teach someone how to learn without teaching some content, it is also impossible to teach intellectual discipline except through a practice of knowing that enables learners to become active and critical subjects, constantly increasing their critical abilities.
Page 214
Therefore, any teacher who rigidly adheres to the routines set forth in teaching manuals is exercising authority in a way that inhibits the freedom of students, the freedom they need to exercise critical intelligence through which they appropriate the subject matter. Such a teacher is neither free nor able to help students become creative curious people.
Paulo Freire page link to Preface Pedagogy of the Heart. http://www.ppbr.com/ld/pedagheart.asp