11 Workshop Eight: Introduction, Ch. 1, and Ch. 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed
11 Workshop Eight: Introduction, Ch. 1, and Ch. 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Created by Katia Martha, Sofia Devin, & Kristina Linder (March 2021)
(120min of small group discussion) + (25min — 5 min buffers per section) + (25 min total for breaks) + (10min+ for entire class discussion) = 180min total = 3hrs (with lots of buffer)
PART I: (60min total)
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Check in
- (10min) How was your week? How is your day going? What’s up?
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Education of Conformity vs Education for Liberation (20min)
- In the foreword, Richard Schall summarizes Friere’s argument with the claim “”Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world”
- (5 min) Do you think your experience in education aligns with education for conformity or education for liberation? Was there a mix and/or did it change over time?
- (10 min) Do you agree with Friere/Schall that education must be one or the other, do you think there is a third option? Can education ever be “neutral”?
- In the foreword, Richard Schall summarizes Friere’s argument with the claim “”Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world”
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Precision of Language is a Lie (30 min)
- In the introduction, Donaldo Macedo defends the “Marxist jargon” in Friere’s writing, arguing that Friere used the necessary terminology to discuss oppression, and that often the standard academic language “distorts reality” in favor of the oppressors by using passive phrases. Traditional jargon creates “mono-discourses” that form a barrier in academia, facilitating social reproduction by implicitly indicating who is welcome in academia and who is not.
- “It is as if [academics] have assumed that there is a mono-discourse available that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all” (22)
- “This blind and facile call for writing clarity represents a pernicious mechanism used by academic liberals who suffocate discourses different from their own. Such a call often ignores how language is being used to make social inequality invisible” (20)
- (5 min) How have mono-discourses and academic jargon influenced how you understand content? Think about concrete class experiences.
- (5 min) Other than the examples in the text, can you think of common terms where “language is being used to make social inequality invisible”?
- (15 min) How does academic mono-discourse limit who feels welcome in academia? How doe