Pedagogy of Solidarity

Paulo Freire, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, Walter de Oliveira

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315422794
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Psychology
• Categoría: Research & Methodology in Psychology

Famous Brazilian educational and social theorist Paulo Freire presents his ideas on the importance of community solidarity in moving toward social justice in schools and society. In a set of talks and interviews shortly before his death, Freire addresses issues not often highlighted in his work, such as globalization, post-modern fatalism, and the qualities of educators for the 21st century. His illuminating comments are supplemented with commentaries by other well-known scholars, such as Ana Maria Araujo Freire, Walter de Oliveira, Norman Denzin, Henry Giroux, and Donaldo Macedo.

Chapter 1

13Introduction to Pedagogy of Solidarity

Walter Ferreira de Oliveira

In opening the conference given by Paulo Freire at the University of Northern Iowa in 1996, the university’s president, Dr. Robert Koob, noted that it is a very important moment in our lives when we have an opportunity to rub shoulders with greatness. He likened his feelings to those of many years before in the 1960s when he had heard Dr. Martin Luther King speak in a nearby university hall, brilliantly discussing the most relevant issues of the day. Paulo Freire was in a similar category, recognized at the University of Northern Iowa as one of the most distinguished scholars of the twentieth century and an educator of great impact throughout the whole world. His impact transcends the specific domain of literacy and reaches to all aspects of the field of education in all parts of the planet. His philosophical teachings have helped to change our understanding, not only about education but about the human condition itself. Schools and universities would not be the same without his influence.

It is therefore not an easy task to introduce another part of the legacy of Paulo Freire, the Pedagogy of Solidarity, here enriched with commentary by renowned authors such as Henry Giroux, Donaldo Macedo, and Norman K. Denzin, paired with the contributions of Nita Freire and 14myself. Having been born in Brazil, my life has been deeply affected as a student, as a professional, and as an educator by the ideas, philosophy, and teachings of Freire. His name is synonymous with liberation, freedom, struggle against oppression, hope, and pedagogy in its ultimate meaning.

Education, which is one of the most important forms of socialization, has been fundamentally changed throughout the world due to Paulo Freire’s influence. His seminal works, such as Pedagogy of Hope, which represents a revisiting of his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Pedagogy of Autonomy, allow us to penetrate the realm of education in a particular way, and realize its inextricable links with the systems of oppression. A number of other publications since then have also emphasized that educators can, and must, be broadcasters of hope and not accomplices of despair. The institution of education begins with struggle and is kept alive by struggle, a struggle that must incorporate love, conciliation, freedom, and hope. Freire’s message is essential in a world where most people who can influence youth and communities are called upon to spread the news of globalization—that there is only one way to live, one way to do things, one manner of being a human being, and that the only way, form, and manner of educating is subjugated to the interests of the market economy. Freire is a leader in demystifying this pessimistic and fatalistic position. Freire is an inspiration to those who believe that, in spite of all propaganda, we can still become decent human beings and live meaningful lives without necessarily compromising our existence by making it a mere commodity. These principles by themselves justify our need for hearing more, reading more, and enjoying another work by Paulo Freire—one of the last pieces produced during his prodigious journey among us—with plenty of love, wisdom, and solidarity.

Chapter 2

15Pedagogy of Solidarity

Paulo Freire

I always, in circumstances like this, ask myself, what will I speak about? What could I say to you that could help you in your curiosity about education? I will try to make more or less the same speech I made some days ago in one of my recent presentations in the United States. I will try to think of education as if I were alone in my studio at home. When I do that I ask myself some questions. One of the questions, for example, and usually the first one we can ask ourselves about education is precisely, what is education or, in other words, what is it that education can be and what are the foundations of the existence of educational practice, as we understand it, as we, human beings, do it. After that, we may have other questions to ask and perhaps some answers to give.

In asking about some fundamental reasons for the existence of education we are asking about our very existence in the world. I believe that it is impossible to understand education without a certain comprehension of human beings. There is no education without the presence of human beings. And what do we have as human beings—women and men—which creates in ourselves the need and the possibility of doing education? How do we create the possibility to educate and to be educated? At this point we are grasping something that we may call the 16nature of human beings. The nature, not understood as something that simply exists, and not something that exists independently of history, a priori of history, but, on the contrary, as a creation within history. That is, as historical beings we are engaged in the constant process of creating and re-creating our own nature. Because of that we really are not, we are becoming. That is, in order for us as human beings to be, we need to become. We need not to be—if we just are, we stop being. We are precisely because we are becoming.

This process of being and not being, the process of becoming, explains our presence in history and in the world. It also explains that as human beings, historical beings, we are uncompleted beings. We are unfinished beings. But the trees are also uncompleted beings and the lions are also uncompleted beings, but they do not know that. Even if they know, they cannot discover; they are not conscious of their knowledge, as we are.

If we are uncompleted beings—the trees, the lions, and us—, why, then, speak about education and why, then, talk about us? Why can’t we talk about education and discuss the behavior of trees? The trees and the lions also communicate among themselves. We have at home a couple of German shepherds and they have a good relationship with kids. They do not educate the kids, but they do some things that, at their level, work as if they were educators, but they are not really educators.

I am sure that from a metaphysical point of view what explains the reason for the existence of education is fundamentally the fact of being an uncompleted being and having the consciousness of this uncompletedness. Education finds itself at this level. Because of that, we speak about education among us, we speak about the training of animals, we speak about cultivation of trees. But only women and men experience education and the reason for that is that being uncompleted beings and knowing that we are uncompleted beings make education an absolutely 17indispensable venture. However, when I say education I do not necessarily mean education as we do it today. The education developed by the Greeks belongs to their history, to their moment. In the history of education we have changed, from time to time, the conceptualization of how we deal with children, how we deal with students. Our understanding of childhood is historically mutable. All of these mutations have happened under the influence of the historical and social changes which we have witnessed along history.

The fact is that education is absolutely necessary according to the very nature of human beings as uncompleted beings who are conscious of that; but, precisely because human beings are historical beings, education is also a historical event. This means that education changes in time and space.

For example, it is a mistake—and when I say a mistake I am being polite—for a nation, a state, to think that it can educate other societies and other peoples. It is as if, for example, Brazil, impregnated with power (and fortunately this does not exist), decided to educate the world through Paulo Freire. Then Brazil would send Freire to Asia, Africa, North America, to teach other peoples to be like Brazilians. This would be absurd, this is absurd, and the name for this is imperialism. Besides this political dimension, we have also, a philosophical mistake in this, a cultural mistake, a misunderstanding of what is the meaning of culture. I am a Brazilian, I am my language, I am my food, I am my weather, as you are your language, your weather, your food, your feelings, your dreams. And we cannot export dreams.

Once, at the beginning of my travels around the world, I was asked, I don’t remember where, “Paulo, what can we do in order to follow you?” And I said, if you follow me, you destroy me. The best way for you to understand me is to reinvent me and not to try to become adapted to me. Experience cannot be exported, it can only be reinvented. This is 18the historical nature of education. This is why, for example, the main responsibilities for educators are for changes in education. The persons responsible for education should be entirely wet by the cultural waters of the moment, of the space.

This is why, also, I am sure that a foreigner, an American professor, or a Chilean, or French, or Indian, can go to Brazil to help us to change education in Brazil. But he or she can only do that if, firstly, he or she really knows something about Brazil; secondly, if he or she is eager to learn about Brazilian reality; and thirdly, if he or she is humble enough to re-think himself or herself. Without these conditions, it is better for all of us that this person stays at home, do not go there to try to educate us. The same rules apply to me. I am sure that I also can give a contribution to educators in this country, but I have, first of all, to respect them, respect their knowledge about their country, their culture, and their history. And then I can say “What do you think of that?” And I have to be open to learn about the local reality. Out of that, what we have is authoritarianism and disrespect for the other. And this is another aspect that makes me believe that education is developed in history, is born in history, and changes historically as we are built historically and not only genetically. Finally, we are the relationships between genetic heritage and cultural and historical heritage. We are these relationships.

After recognizing that education is a consequence of our uncompletedness, about which we are conscious, we can then try an exercise of critical reflection. We can think of an educational situation in order to try to grasp its constitutive elements. Let us do this exercise. Let us think of an educational situation, no matter if this situation happens at home, informally, between parents and kids, or formally at school, and it does not matter if the school is a primary school or a university.

First of all, when we think of this educational situation, we may think that every educational situation implies it is, historically, in the 19presence of the educator, the professor, the teacher, on the one hand, and the educatee, the student, the learner, on the other hand. They each have their specificity. And, I would like to say, because sometimes people misunderstand me and say that for me there is no difference between teacher and student, between the professor, the educator, and the learner. I never wrote that, I never said that; but, because I insist on criticizing the arrogance of teachers, because I insist on criticizing the authoritarianism of professors, some people conclude that for me teachers and students are the same and that I do not recognize any kind of authority. No, I never said that because I think that this is a mistake, this is wrong. Teachers are teachers and students are students. If the students were like the teachers, we would not need to say teachers and students because all of them would be the same. We could say just teachers or just students, because they would be all alike. Secondly, we could not understand the very process in which they are immersed. Then, it is necessary to underline the differences, the specificities of both, and their tasks, the tasks that must be accomplished by both.

When we think about any educational situation, we may discover that in every educational situation, besides the two sides, the two poles—students and teachers—there is a mediating component, an object of knowledge, to be taught by the teachers and learned by the students. This relationship is, for me, more beautiful when the teacher tries to teach the object, which we may call the contents of a program, in a democratic way. In this case, the teacher makes a sincere effort to teach an object that he or she supposedly already knows, and the students make a sincere effort to learn the object that they do not know yet. However, the fact that the teacher supposedly knows and the student supposedly does not know, does not prevent the teacher from learning during the process of teaching, and the student from teaching, in the process of learning. The beauty of the process is exactly this possibility 20of re-learning, of exchanging. This is the essence of democratic education.

Even now, while I am repeating, to a certain extent, and revisiting, and re-speaking about some knowledge that I have for lots of years, I am refreshing this knowledge. It is as if I were proving, testing, and renewing the knowledge I already have. Maybe I am knowing better what I already knew. Of course, if we decided to stay with this question, on the relationships between students and teachers and their roles, we could spend hours of thinking, of reflection. We could, for example, extend the question to examine our experience as practical teachers. For example, what am I doing as a teacher in biology, or in history, or mathematics? What am I teaching? What does teaching mean to me? And, in examining these questions, I would have to ask: Am I being consistent in my practice with the way I think of teaching? I can think democratically about teaching, but in my teaching practice I may be authoritarian, which happens a lot. It is not uncommon that our speech has nothing to do with our practices. This is very common among politicians, for example. One thing is the political candidate’s discourse, another thing is the elected politician’s practice. After being elected, the politicians have nothing to do with the candidates’ speeches. And, my struggle includes an effort for all of us educators to grasp, to live, this coherence between what we do and what we say.

The first and the second conditions of education are, thus, the presence of teachers and students and the mediation of their relationships by the objects of knowledge, which we call the contents of education. Another characteristic of the educational experience, as important as the existence and relationships between teachers and students, is the quality of the process of education, which has important implications from the technical, philosophical, structural, and political viewpoints. In analyzing qualitatively the process of education I would like to highlight 21the quality of directivity, starting from the proposal that there is no education that is not directive. Directivity of education does not necessarily mean authoritarianism. Directiveness in education, philosophically and epistemologically understood, means that education, as a process, means something that goes beyond itself. Let me try to clarify.

When one teaches, one’s moral responsibility is to realize that one cannot teach what one does not know. I have to know first, in order to teach second. But in order to teach, one needs more than knowing. Let us suppose that I teach syntax in the Portuguese language, which I taught when I was very young. I have to know syntax and Portuguese, but I must also know in favor of what, in favor of whom, in favor of what dream I am teaching syntax and Portuguese. As a consequence of thinking in favor of whom, in favor of what, in favor of what dream I am teaching, I will have to think against whom, against what, against what dream I am teaching. From my point of view it is impossible to be a teacher without asking these questions. If we consider education in its philosophical, epistemological, and historical dimensions, we cannot escape from these questions. I call this quality of education of going beyond itself—the fact that the process of education always goes beyond itself—directivity of education. Beyond means that education is always related to a dream, and the teachers must have their own dreams, their own utopia.

I feel very sad when a teacher says to me, “I teach mathematics, my dream is mathematics.” No, the dream cannot be just mathematics. I teach mathematics because I believe it is necessary for a society to have less discrimination. The main dream, the fundamental dream, is not mathematics. Mathematics is very important, but it has to be at the service of something. I want mathematics to work in favor of me, a human being.

Another thing that has also to do with the directiveness of education is when the teacher, in his or her relationships with the students, 22exaggerates his or her authority. And it becomes kind of honorable, in the view of some teachers, to castrate the students’ freedom. The opposite occurs when the teacher’s authority disappears and the freedom of the students becomes exaggerated. In this case there is no freedom, but license. I reject both of these possibilities—on the one hand the authoritarianism and the license of the teacher and on the other hand the authoritarianism of the students.

An important question, then, from which we cannot escape is the contradiction between authority and freedom. I want to say to you, and maybe this has already been understood from the readings of my papers, that I love freedom. I love freedom and I try to understand it in such a way that recently, in my last book, I wrote that authority is an invention of freedom. Freedom invented authority in order for freedom to continue to exist. Because without limits freedom cannot succeed, freedom loses itself. However, a big mistake is that in creating authority, freedom risks losing freedom. But this is one of the most beautiful things in the human experience, the risk of dying, the risk of disappearing. One important characteristic of human beings is the possibility of risking and one of the most beautiful things is to run the risks.

The trees also have risks, but don’t run the risks. The trees are here today but tomorrow an administrator may decide to cut down the trees and the trees have no way of acknowledging it. We risk dying but we run that risk. We assume the possibility of risking. Without risks there would be no possibilities for human existence. It would be something very bland, very insipid. Human existence would be like water with no salt.

I have proposed that it is very important to recognize this quality of education, this possibility of going beyond itself, which implies the right and the duty of teachers and also of students to have dreams and to struggle for their dreams. Of course we have to also be aware of 23the rights the teachers don’t have, of imposing upon the students their dreams. Teachers should not have to hide their dreams, but they have the duty to say that there are different dreams. Consider, for that matter, the university. The university that has only progressive teachers is a disaster. The university that has only reactionary teachers is another kind of disaster. What youths need is precisely the testimony of the difference and the right to discuss the difference. This is what should happen. How beautiful it is for the students who finished listening to a progressive teacher speaking about utopia, criticizing, for example, a neoliberal discourse, which is spreading now the terrible ideology of fatalism around the world, [and then] to listen, after that teacher leaves, to another teacher defending the neoliberal thought. Someone may ask, “Paulo, don’t you think that this is very confusing, that we can confuse the students?” And I say, it is fantastic that we confuse the students. They have to learn how to deal with confusion; they have to be formed in such a way as to not accept everything that the teachers say, to criticize the teachers. This is not a lack of respect, and in this aspect I am very conservative, I demand respect as a person and as an educator. You have every right to reject my knowledge and wisdom, to criticize my thinking; but, you have an obligation to respect me and I do not accept being disrespected. And, it is possible to be absolutely serious and democratic and at the same time to dema...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword Memory's Hope: In the Shadow of Paulo Freire’s Presence
• Chapter 1 Introduction to Pedagogy of Solidarity
• Chapter 2 Pedagogy of Solidarity
• Chapter 3 A Dialogue: Pedagogy of Solidarity
• Chapter 4 For a Pedagogy of Solidarity
• Chapter 5 Testimony of Difference and the Right to Discuss Difference Some Considerations on Paulo Freire's Conference
• Chapter 6 The Importance of Pedagogy of Solidarity
• Afterword Re-imaging Freire Beyond Methods
• Index
• About the Authors