#Education The role of Paulo Freire regarding Critical pedagogy | English Language Topics
Critical Pedagogy has its roots in the tradition of a critical theory of Frankfurt school of thought. It is coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his work “Pedagogy of oppressed” Published in 1968. In this he highlighted the characteristics of what we call critical pedagogy. It can be defined as the process of learning, evaluating, and analyzing the knowledge through critical faculty of learners. The concept of critical started with neo-Marxism on critical theory (Stanley 1992. In this field many scholars have worked like first Paulo Freire then it was further developed by Henry Giroux. Before this concept, everyone was thinking that learning is all about storing information in our mind, but these two personalities saw things from different perspectives that learning is not cramming and memorizing all the stuff in our brain, but it has something to do with our critical thinking. The main goal of critical pedagogy is not to just storing the knowledge but to enhance the critical faculty of students. The human mind is more capable of critical thinking rather than just cramming. Critical pedagogy enables learners to think critically and develop their consciousness and change their knowledge into power. So, they can use it for rights. It enables them to understand the rules of authorities how authorities are playing due to their power. It gives student’s power to challenge authorities, if something like injustice is happening around them.
To understand the milestone contribution of Paulo Freire in critical pedagogy, we must go through the like story of Freire. So, he was born in Brazil into a very middle-class family. His work was highly affected due to hunger. Paulo has given insights on poverty as well. This is the reason that he has done huge contribution to this field. One commenting on his own social status, once he said, “I didn’t understand anything because of my hunger, I was not dumb, it was not lacking interest, but my social condition didn’t allow me to have an education”. That’s why he decided to work for other students who were facing oppression in that time and play a lead role regarding critical pedagogy. The fundamental purpose of writing about critical pedagogy is that to raise voice against the unjust and cruel treatment of society. His social status got changed when he got admission to the University of Recipe when he did his law degree. Once he was imprisoned for 70 days in 1964 for being progressive because he always investigated the rights of students against unjust authorities. It is a milestone contribution of Paulo Freire. He spoke about education and critical pedagogy. It is the narration of every child who has experienced difficulties in the educational process by highly cruel authorities because of his middle-class status. C.P’s concerns with those students whose rights have been suppressed, it is the story of each child about their journey in education. Freire examined the role of education in every child’s life. With the publication of his book pedagogy of oppressed, he similarly talked about “oppression” for him it is unjust and cruel treatment of society toward an individual. It also showed the how society shapes a person’s mind. By oppression, he meant very harmful treatment pf societal authorities towards an individual. It has got two types, covert and overt oppression. Covert is openly oppression and overt is a kind of hidden oppression. There are a lot of students who have been suppressed whose mouths have been forcedly closed for speaking for social equality.
Unlike the traditional educational system, the focus of critical pedagogy is to help students to develop their consciousness. According to Ira Shor (1992), a student can be critically conscious by thinking, reading, writing, and speaking. While going beneath the surface meaning. Moreover, critical pedagogy is an educational and social movement which advocates equal rights for every learner. It aims to build up student’s critical thinking conscious, not just cramming or storing all the knowledge in their heading. It clears student’s mind that they shouldn’t be passive learner rather should be an active learner. Its purpose is to liberate learners from oppression, so they can fight for their rights. Freire himself had experienced oppression in Brazil’s National school system which presented a Marxist view that elite children should be treated as superior, in comparison to poor children. As he never supports the national school system of Brazil, he used one metaphor as comparing the school system as a “traditional banking system” like depositing the money. He differentiates between the banking system of education, Freire proposes another system named problem -posing education which refers to learners critically consciousness that uncovers this harsh reality of the society. It makes students empowered to help them, themselves. That leads them to guide not be suppressed by any powerful cruel authorities. According to Elias (1976) agreed that a problem- posing education are relatively equal to their teacher regarding the problem under the analysis and developing the knowledge.
Conclusion: To summarize the explanation regarding the milestone role of Paulo Freire, we can say that he was first scholar who shifts attention toward the critical consciousness of students rather than storing or cramming all the information in their mind. The focus of education is not to produce puppets in the shapes of servants who can only yes to all inequalities and bias treatment of society but to produce critical thinkers who can raise their voice against the dominant cruel authorities. Thus, it can be said that Freire’s contribution in this regard cannot be ignored.
0 Comments