In 1968, the Brazilian Paulo Freire wrote the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Within a few years, this book became the subject discussion by educators, students, policy makers, administrators, academics and community activists all over the world. It was translated into many languages. Although it was banned in a number of countries, there seemed always a way for the book to circulate clandestinely.
What is it about Pedagogy of the Oppressed that aroused so much heated discussion and that caused it to be banned by governments. First of all, this book is a critique of a certain educational method (known as the 'banking' method, which Paulo Freire acknowledged that he himself had previously unreflexively engaged in.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.
The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. "Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem." The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of "capital" in the affirmation "the capital of Para is Belem," that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil.
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teachers. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teachers she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.
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Pedagogy of the Oppressed
