9 Contribution of Paulo Freire to Adult Education

Asoke Bhattacharya and Pradnya Wakpainjan

Content Outline

1.    Learning objectives

2.    Introduction

3.    Biographical Outline

4.    Educational Thoughts of Paulo Freire

5.    Culture of silence

6.    Principles of pedagogy of oppressed

7.    Dialogue Method

8.    Characteristics of dialogue method

1. Learning objectives

Learner will be able to

    Ø  Ascertain the relationship between social, economic and political factors and education

Ø  Explain the pedagogy of oppressed

Ø  Discuss the concept of banking of education and its delimitations

Ø  Analyze  dialogue method and its principles

2. Introduction

Paulo Freire is known as the Rousseau of the twentieth century. He was so called because of his concept of freedom and his practice in the field of education. Rousseu, as we all know, was a great advocate of human freedom which he saw trampled everywhere. He was also a great advocate of people’s education as his treatise ‘Emile’ testifies. Paulo Freire’s work, both theoretical and practical, on the educational methods and practices of the oppressed people gave rise to a qualitative change in the concept of adult education. He philosophically understood the concept of literacy and saw it as a means to the physical and mental liberation of the people. He connected literacy with physical and mental liberation of the person, as a philosophical understanding of the concept of literacy .He also brought about revolutionary innovations in the techniques of making a person literate. This could be seen to evolve from the same philosophical grounding. In this unique method of spreading literacy, a person could be made literate within a period of thirty hours.

3. Biographical Outline

Paulo Freire was born on September 19, 1921. He was the youngest of four children .His father was an army officer and his mother was a housewife.In his childhood, Paulo learnt the alphabets under the mango tree in the garden of his house while playing with his parents. It was a very unconventional way; lively, natural, free and interactive. This kind of initiation into literacy influenced him greatly and was instrumental in his discovery of his unique method of spreading literacy.The economic crisis of 1929 greatly affected the Freire family. His father could not cope with the cost of living in Recife .He was therefore forced to shift to the nearby town of Jaboatao. There he lost his father who was the only earning member of the family. Paulo was only thirteen at that time. As a result, Paulo Freire could not afford paying school fees and dropped out. He again was once admitted to school at the age of sixteen on a free studentship granted by a school in Recife.Paulo was like a free bird at Jaboatao. Many of his playmates came from poor families. Through his acquaintance with these children, Paulo picked up their rustic language. Later he came to appreciate the beauty of this language.

On successful completion of his schoolling, Paulo was admitted to the University of Recife He was then twenty. Here he met Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira .She was five years’ senior to him. He married Elza in 1944.Elza helped Paulo to develop his unique method of literacy.

Paulo Freire joined the Social Service of Industry (SESI) in 1946.He was associated with it for eight years. It was an employers’ organization. Its aim was to assist in the worker’s children’s education. His work at SESI brought him face to face with the stark reality of the working class. While working with working class children, Paulo Freire discovered that dialogue was the best teaching method. He was then heavily immersed in studying the best writers of Brazil. This newly gathered knowledge was instrumental in his finding his unique methods of literacy.

Later he left SESI to join the cultural extension wing of the University of Recife. In 1950 he discovered his unique method of literacy. In 1959, on writing his thesis Present Day Education in Brazil, he earned his Ph. D degree.

The evolution of his theory of knowledge was closely connected with the living conditions of the poor in his home state. They were victims of the culture of silence. It was necessary to break this vicious culture.

His first large-scale experimental work took place in Angicos a place in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. Three hundred farmers learnt to read and write within a period of 45 days. Seeing this feat, Joao Goulart, the President of Brazil, and Paulo de Tarso, the Minister of Education invited Paulo Freire to take charge of the Brazilian National Literacy Mission. Paulo conceived of 20,000 cultural circles to make 2 million people literate. This and other pro-people activities of the government infuriated the ruling class. A military coup deposed Goulart and Freire was arrested. After 75 days of captivity, Freire was allowed to leave the country. He went first to Bolivia and following a coup there, he took refuge in Chile. In 1967, Paulo Freire wrote ‘Education as the Practice of Freedom’ and in 1970 his most important book ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ was published

4. Educational Thoughts of Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire’s major contribution was to provide a theoretical foundation to adult education. Adult education was previously equated with alphabetization. If a person could write his/her name, identify street names, read the bus numbers etc. it would be considered a great boon for literacy. In India most of the educated people view adult education in this light. Freire discarded all these notions. He linked literacy with liberation and culture.

According to Freire the role of the human being was not only to be in the world, but to change in relation with the world through the acts of creation and re-creation, man/woman creates a cultural reality and thereby adds to the natural world , which he /she did not make. We were certain that man’s/woman’s relation to reality, expressed as a Subject to an object, results in knowledge, which man/woman could express through language. Lets discuss some ideas given by Freire

5. Culture of silence

The social, economic and political factors of country influences education system. According to Freire the culture of silence starts with the dominance of one group on other. Poverty in the society is the major reason which comes with the illiteracy. The poverty makes people helpless and hopeless and in the process people lose their voice and do not raise questions for the situation or for self. This leads to a culture of silence. In such situation one group dominates over the other and the gap between haves and have-nots keep increasing and certainly not the development. According to Freire Education is the mean by which people can perceive, interpret, criticize and finally transform the world about them. Freire wanted to break the culture of silence and which is possible through the process of liberation. The process of liberation should not limit to individual but should be considered as social process because the dehumanization of man has been taking place as the product of an unjust and exploitative social order.

The poor do not always look at the world in the manner the elite look at it.”Self-depreciation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the opinion the oppressors hold of them. So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing, and are incapable of learning anything – that they are sick, lazy and unproductive—that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness”, says Freire.

This idea was later explained by Freire thus: In the culture of silence the masses are ‘mute ‘, that is they are prohibited from being. Even if they can occasionally read and write because they are ‘taught’ in humanitarian – not humanist – literacy campaigns, they are nevertheless alienated from the power responsible for their silence.

This culture of silence has to be broken. The liberation process begins with the awakening of the oppressed as she/he starts to know the word and the world. Therefore the struggle for liberation must be carried out by the oppressed to restore the humanity of both the oppressors and the oppressed. The oppressor class is too dehumanized to lead a liberation struggle as it has thrived on the dehumanization of the oppressed. However, in this liberation struggle that has to be carried out by the oppressed there can be a danger that the oppressed behaves like oppressor.

The oppressed at first tend to see liberation as a way of replacing oppressors, that is, to be like the oppressors. For the oppressor, to be in this world means to have and to have more. For the oppressed, to be in this world is to be under and to be like the oppressor.In other words, the oppressed internalize the image of the oppressor within themselves. Therefore the struggle for liberation by the oppressed, together with those in solidarity with them, becomes a struggle by man in the process of achieving freedom with no distinction between oppressed and oppressor.

It becomes thus an act of love as against the lovelessness and false generosity which characterizes the oppressor. Therefore freedom has to be acquired by conquest, that is, by positive action. It has to be pursued constantly and responsibly. This has to be carried out as the fight against oppression in a situation where the world and men are in interaction. Hence the need in this fight for praxis, which itself is a process of interaction between reflection and action. Thus arises a need for pedagogy of the oppressed. It means there exist a need to explain the masses of their own action. It must necessarily lead to dialogue – the revolutionary transformation of reality, which the liberation movement involves, necessitates a pedagogy with and not for the people. Therefore it has to be achieved through educational projects because the oppressors, who are the rulers, control systematic education and education is only a sub-system of the system as a whole. Therefore this pedagogy must be humanist (subjective) and not humanitarian (objective).

6. Principles of pedagogy of oppressed

Ø  Both oppressor and oppressed are involved in the process of dehumanization

Ø  Education should aware oppressed about the nature of exploitation

Ø  Education should help to raise questions and explore the reasons for exploitation, poverty and ones condition

Ø  Education should help them to believe that the situation can be changed though it is challenging.

Ø  Oppressor needs to be empathetic towards the oppressed

Ø  Education should develop consciousness by the process of conscientization. (conscientization is the process which will aware oppressed of their self and the aware about their right to live like human being)

Process of Conscientization

The oppressed is a group who is helpless and do not have resources so bound to have frustration, anxiety and is humiliated by the oppressor. On the other hand the oppressors have resources, weapons for violence, power and authority. The oppressed should be united to fight against humiliation and the system denying the right to be a human being. They should raise question and try to reason the so as to establish cause effect relationship. It is also important that one has to take action against the system of exploitation, it is not the fight between individual but against the system developed by the selfish human being who are enjoying their life at the cost of others.

The process of understanding self help to develop self identity, self existence for self and in relation to others. It makes aware about the hierarchies which violate the human rights. The adult education should focus on developing the awareness of critical social reality through reflections and actions. The social myths we acquire have a dominant tendency. The adult education should relate to the social reality and learner should decode the situation, analyze, reflect and understand it. This needs co operative efforts to take action and change social order. According to Freire the education system is responsible for the present societal structure which he explained in the concept of banking of education

Banking of education:

This concept based on the assumptions that Human behavior should be controlled. The knowledge in considered as non living thing (object)

Student who stores knowledge is away from the social reality

The student activity should be oriented by teachers. In other words it can be said that the student stores the knowledge which is deposited by the teacher.

The banking of education hampers the creativity and makes education process a mechanical activity which is absolutely dissociated from social reality and therefore Freire opposed the banking of education and advocates the adult education to be carried out in a way which is connected with the life of people and social reality that help an individual to create own knowledge. He advocated Dialogue as a method of acquiring knowledge.

7. Dialogue Method:

Androgogy is the base of adult education and dialogue method advocated by Freire can be very useful in understanding problems and overcome it thereby discussing various alternatives. Every human being is curious being and want to explore the world around. The freedom should be provided so that individual can identify self. The teacher and learner both discuss the problem freely and give ones opinion to each other. The interactions between individuals help to understand the problem from different angle. The different angles to look into a problem influences the thinking and also help in reorganizing thoughts, raise doubts and critically examine the ideas. The reasoning helps to understand the situation holistically and can find solutions to improve the situation or condition/problem.

8. Characteristics of dialogue method:

Ø  Dialogue method is based on love ,empathyand trust. No member in the learning group tries to put down other but respect the thought and idea.

Ø  This method believe in co creation, which means to solve problem collectively rather than expecting someone outsider to solve it.

Ø  There should be critical thinking, erg to change the situation and believe in capacity to change the situation

Ø  Thought is the basis of interaction so no one criticizes individual but try to find out feasibility of the solutions. In other words the group is problem focused and not a person focused.

According to Freire dialogue can change the world and in societies where we have inequalities, injustice it can be a powerful tool to bring change in order to create a humanistic society.

The adult education should make use of adialogue method as it is based on the principle of equality. The teacher and learner share the same platform and the teacher give them a situation that is experienced by them. The learner relate with the situation and reflect on it as a part of it. Later all try to find out solution to problems, discuss the feasibility of the solution and implement it.

Freire believes in democratization of education. According to him education leads towards self-learning and self-thinking and adult education is no exception. He believes that social movement and adult literacy programme are closely associated. The Arrack movement in Andhra Pradesh, India is the example of the role of the literacy programme in uprooting the problem. Arrak is alow cost liquor consumed by poor people and women are victim of this. The domestic violence they face, the financial problems they come across and the entire family is ruined.

The National Literacy Mission is launched in 1990 in Nellore.The mission mass-literacy campaigns being organized in the state; women often got together and discussed their problems. They found that all of them had a common problem at home- alcoholism.

Together, they decided to take a stand against all those who sold the liquor that ruined their families’ lives. Gradually they have risen suddenly in revolt against the local bureaucracy, police officials and the Chief Minister. They had a simple demand complete ban on selling of Arrack.

The liquor contractor were the most dominant group who opposed the demand. The officials and common men were also opposing. The lessons women got in the literacy mission campaign help them getting confidence in understanding the problem in totality. They collectively come together and fought with government. They gather courage to fight back with contractors ’lobbies, police and government in particular. They could get support of people from different sections of society and media because they were collective. The Freire’s belief in democratization of education is to bring equality in the society and the principles of equality need to be practiced in every classroom.

References

1. Moacir Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire,State University of New York, New York,1994.
2. Asoke Bhattacharya, Paulo Freire ; Rousseau of the Twentieth Century, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, Boston,Taipei,2011.
3. Paulo Freire ,Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, London,1996.
4. Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, The Continuum Publishing Company, New York, 1998.
5. Paulo Freire,Cultural Action for Freedom, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1975.