JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XI

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation …

Finally, with the last posting, this blog introduced readers to the main ideas of the late Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator, and respected spokesperson for the critical pedagogy perspective.  He argued for education to strive for the liberation of disadvantaged students and transform the exploitive system under which they live.  Generally, he perceived that the prevailing system, set up by the elites, exploited the disadvantaged – or oppressed as he would call them.  The “haves” do that by how they arrange the social and economic conditions of the nation.

          The maintenance of such conditions relies heavily on the discourses the elites utilize.  These discourses, through their common use, effectively convince the “have-nots” that what-is is natural and inevitable.  These discourses are so successful, the oppressed not only accept it but strive to become oppressors themselves – of course, while not totally impossible, a highly unlikely occurrence.  The bottom line is that the elites can maintain, through the use of language, this systemic reality at minimal cost.

          Ironically, both the oppressed and the oppressors are dehumanized by this process.  The oppressed due to the disadvantages they experience – in many cases that would be the daunting challenges of poverty which undermines their dignity – but also for the oppressors in that they lose sight of their commonality with many of their fellow human beings.  For the haves, have-nots turn out to be merely commodities to be numbered and exploited.

          Such a national setting needs transformation, that is the common set of values, aims, goals, and beliefs needs to be changed to achieve a just system.  To begin, those who are oppressed must transform themselves and lead the transformation of others.  This is not accomplished by individuals, but through what Freire calls comradeships among the oppressed.  They must see how it is that they are being oppressed and appreciate the need for united efforts that are characterized by close kinship and a thorough understanding of their common plight.

They must shed any wish to accomplish or secure the oppressors’ lifestyles.  This is a complex goal in that their wishes come about through complex networks of mental attractions – those attractions that mirror the lifestyles of the oppressors.  While holding this counterproductive image, the oppressed develop a high and dysfunctional level of self-depreciation – convinced that they are unfit. Within such a mental state, the oppressors are seen as being magically invulnerable.

And what are the consequences of such thinking?  The main result is the debilitating disposition leads to fatalistic thinking.  The oppressed, perhaps after an effort to become successful and with the likely failure that results, accept their status as being inevitable, believed to result from forces of nature, or the like.  The recurring aftermath is one of despair and pathological behavior patterns such as excessive drinking or spousal abuse.[1]

But effective transformative change within these exploited people can bolster a sense of self-worth and the attainment of confidence while instilling a sense of responsibility for what they do.  In short, they attain a consciousness of “intentionality” or an internal sense of efficacy.  And all this can be done or assisted by schools instituting curricular changes aimed at unveiling and deconstructing the knowledge that the oppressors promulgate.  They need to reconstruct their knowledge to one of liberation.  That is, the oppressed need to opt for a liberating construct.

But in its stead, current oppressive curricula enable exploitive relationships.  And one chief means by which they accomplish this is the implementation of a “banking” instructional approach.  In this approach, teachers take the role of “depositors” of knowledge and students become “depositories” of that knowledge.  Freire describes this approach:

 

Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. [2]

 

Missing are any call for students to be creative, much less any element directed at transforming students or liberating them.

          In counter distinction, a liberating instructional approach is for students to be productive in such instructional processes that include inquiry, invention, and reinvention, i.e., liberation is realized by interactive study.  That would be when students study or work on the realities of their subjugation.  In addition, it would not create a distinctive assignation between the teacher and the student.

That is, the roles as they are generally found in the classroom establish opposing functions or assumed character distinctions between teachers and students:  teacher are informed, students are uninformed and ignorant.  In this arrangement the teacher possesses what is of worth, and students have nothing to contribute to the learning enterprise.

          A liberating education approaches the classroom scene with a different set of assumptions.  It believes both the student and teacher have interchangeable roles in the learning exercise.  That is, both function as teachers and students.  And a lesson doesn’t end when the bell rings at the end of the period.  Instead, it continues as students actively investigate their reality with targeted questions to answer – that being questions that inquire into the factors affecting their oppressed standing.  This is an on-going affair.

A revolutionary teacher is one who strikes a partnership with the student and the student is an active agent, with a role where students see themselves as being “with” the world of others, not merely being “in” that world.  This approach counts on teachers and students having active consciousnesses with different goals from those found in an oppressive arrangement:  that would be to communicate, not control, to see the world in an organic way, not in an objectified or mechanical manner.[3]

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[1] On a trip to a Central American nation to visit schools and listen to school students present project reports on civic related conditions in their communities, this blogger was stunned by the recurring reports expressing the problems of alcoholism and spousal abuse.

[2] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 1999), 52-53.

[3] But this is not the organic way David Easton wrote about in describing how the political systems approach changed in the late sixties (the addition of a feedback element to that model), but instead it is a truly humanized view that respects the nature of being human.  Afterall, as this blog has already pointed out, critical theory strives to truly humanize the learning process not only in classrooms, but in how people conduct their lives, whereas the political systems model does not shed its mechanical perspective – it’s still inputs, policy making, outputs, and feedback.

 

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, X

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation … 

Up to now, this blog has been reviewing the elements of critical theory and one fact that comes through is that that theory comes in a variety of flavors.  And as such, it is a challenge to convey to readers a singular version of the view’s positions concerning educational curriculum and instruction.  One way to convey what the view proffers is to zero in on one of its respected theorists and review his contributions.

          This blog looks to the work of the late Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, who dedicated himself to work toward reforms in that South American nation.  He was a prolific writer, but his most famous work was his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.[1]   This account will rely on this book to report on Freire’s contributions.

          His account relies heavily on the factor many critical writers highlight, that being the discourses people utilize.  He describes how language is politized by oppressors in a society, especially focusing on the work of educational decision makers.  They generally opt for a course of language from an array of political constructs,[2] but for those who think from a natural rights perspective – probably the most liberally minded option available – they speak in terms of how open the economic system is and affords people in general a multitude of opportunities. 

Within that system, natural rights view argues that anyone who works hard can achieve an economically rewarding life.  And if such believers are educational decision makers, they use and promote a language that ignores the systemic factors that keep the oppressed from advancing.  That is the case, in part, when the oppressed internalize that language and instead of directing their efforts to overturn the system, they seek to be that rare case that “proves” the oppressors’ argument to be true. 

In short, Freire claims that the oppressed, due to the ubiquitous presence of such language, internalize this view and believe the rationales that the oppressors advance.  Breaking hold of that language is daunting but not impossible and Freire offers several steps by which the oppressed, after experiencing their own transformation, need to perform in order to lead a general transformation process.

According to Freire, the central aim of the educational system should be to initially debunk this language.  Their overall effort needs to be directed at achieving authentic humanity.  How?  By assisting the liberation of those who are oppressed and, further, for them to actualize their freedom by leading this transformation through their action.

Naturally, such action begins with recognition of what is taking place.  Specifically, the oppressed need to become cognizant of the dehumanizing messaging, with its images and beliefs, being transmitted by the common language all seem to employ.  Here is what Freire shares:

 

Only as they discover themselves to be ‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they [the oppressed] live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible.[3]

 

An early step, therefore, for the oppressed is to conduct dialectic analysis.  That is, they begin by objectively determining what are the actual conditions that set up and maintain their dependence on the oppressors.  In addition, they conduct effective actions that transform that reality.

          At the same time, they need to challenge or confront those perceptions they harbor that lead to their oppressed status.  These insidious perceptions function to distort their understanding of what prevails in their social spaces and allow for those conditions that cause their suffering.  They must overcome the inability to perceive the objective truth.  They, therefore, need to engage in a dual process:  changing their consciousness and acting toward transforming their beliefs and values and that of society in general.  Summarily, all of this action is called praxis.

          Praxis is fundamental to what Freire calls upon the oppressed to do.  And before one judges these activities as only benefiting the oppressed, Freire argues that it not only seeks to gain the humanity of the oppressed but of that of the oppressor.  They do this by stopping those actions that undermine not only the humanity of the oppressed but also that of the oppressor.

          This aspect of Freire’s approach is quite ironic.  While the oppressors seem to be enjoying their liberty and “advantages,” they lose their humanity by oppressing the disadvantaged.  This state denies these advantaged people to fully see their fellow humans as humans and instead to see them as objectified creatures.  This undermines their human, empathetic nature as they see others as a set of numbers and manipulative assets or liabilities.  In effect, they, the oppressed, take non-human characteristics – i.e., they become dehumanized – in the eyes of the oppressors.

          And then there are the advantaged elites’ efforts to fix this – either of the bleeding-heart variety or of genuine concern.  By instituting either charitable projects or even governmental welfare programs, these attempts by and large are egoistic endeavors sponsored by the oppressors.  They further the dehumanizing process by being cases of false generosity spurred by a sense of paternalism.  This can also include “reform” educational programs and other “progressive” endeavors.

          Praxis not only benefits the oppressed, but all of society as it seeks to attain permanent liberation.  It helps people achieve or arrive at truthfulness by cutting through the veils of deceit.  Freire writes,

 

Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human.[4]

 

This definitional statement pertains not only to the oppressed but the oppressors as well and, as such, both are victims of this exploitive arrangement. 

And as one can intuitively guess, changing the held images and beliefs – along with their values – of the oppressors is more difficult to achieve when compared to changing the perception of the oppressed.  That consciousness of the oppressor is noted for a strongly held possessiveness of the world and of the men and women who inhabit that world.  The world, under this view, is the stage upon which people are marketable objects. 

That would be commodities to be bought and sold for profit.  With this sort of image, one can imagine that it is a short step toward sadism.  “…[T]he aim of sadism is to transform a man into a thing, something animate into inanimate…”[5]  Through the history of exploitation, this dehumanizing imagery seems to be continuously observed or noted among those who engage in such injustice.

          And aren’t there any truly concerned and worried members of the elite class that see the injustices before them and strive to reform or transform this unjust system for purely charitable reasons?  Yes, but they unfortunately carry with them the biases of their class.  They might form vanguard groups that will lead the oppressed from their misfortunes, but in truth, because they bring with them the upper-class baggage, they will not fully or, in some cases, partially trust the oppressed.

          Freire warns his readers that to effectively transform existing oppressive systems, trust is essential.  Past efforts, where trust is lacking and the oppressor class has attempted to lead such efforts, the result has not been a transformation but an transferring from one oppressive system to another. 

This is what happened in Russia with its revolution where power transferred from the Czar regime to eventually Stalinism.  Unless a true commitment – a true comradeship – emerges, a genuine transformation cannot take place.  That sort of movement can only be led by a transformed oppressed people with their mutual trust levels and armed with their knowledge derived from their life experiences.

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[1] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 1999).

[2] This includes political constructs that justify traditional, highly parochial views.  Often these reflect ideals and values that are somewhat feudalistic and rationalize social/economic arrangements where one’s birth conditions are seen as being the will of God.  This is an opinionated claim by this blogger and derived from various conversations with people from developing countries.  It turns out that the data to determine how much a given underdeveloped country lacks social mobility is lacking.  But that a concern over this deficiency exists can be noted by the various professional journal articles.  They call for more attention to this issue.  See, for example, Linden Kemkaran and Vegard Iversen, “Social Mobility in Developing Countries:  Broken Ladders,” University of Greenwich/Natural Resources Institute, accessed April 17, 2023, https://www.nri.org/latest/news/2020/social-mobility-in-developing-countries#:~:text=Social%20mobility%20refers%20to%20the,educational%20attainment%2C%20occupation%20or%20health.

[3] Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30, emphasis in the original.

[4] Ibid., 37.

[5] Ibid. 41.  This quote attributed to Eric Fromm.