Monday, February 7, 2011

Spotted: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Where: Q-train
Who was reading: A beautiful brown-haired man with startling pale blue eyes and a chin full of scruff.
Slightly less beautiful... for the branded swoosh on his hat. That and the fact that he spent a good 15 minutes gnawing each finger nail one by one and pausing to chew on (and swallow!) the fragments.
Maybe... fingernail fragments are high in fiber? 
A Marxist Analysis of Education: In this book, Freire likens the traditional teacher/student relationship to the interaction between a colonizing power and colonized territory/people. The student is seen as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge—an act that necessarily involves conquest and manipulation—whereas Freire advocates for an educational model based on unity and synthesis in which the student is a co-creator of knowledge.
Cool! But not according to Arizona Secretary of Education Tom Horne, who objects to the use of this book in classrooms. 
Good thinking, Tom. Keep them in the dark and they won't stir up trouble. American educators aren't doing nearly enough to propagate ignorance these days.

1 comment:

  1. This book was really important and sparked a lot of innovative educational ideas ... which are disappearing as we go back to the old filling the empty vessel theory disguised as "No child left behind".

    I'd say the reader sounds intelligent and good looking. I'd forgive him the swoosh and fingernails.

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