“The ideas that will save the world will be simple
and may come from children.”
- seamann
This is an attempt to write a clear reaction to the not-so-clear book Education for Critical Consciousness by Paulo Freire. Besides using up my allowance due to book fines, the two essays expanded and contracted some of my mental ideas, making it a great book.
What the book is
It is composed of two long essays: [Ed. for Critical Consciousness] and Extension or Communication. The first shows the theory while the second implements the theory into a specific need, namely the teaching of agronomists.
The first thing I noticed is that the book has an unusual English translation. The sentences are not structured as well as popular textbooks -- “effect and cause,” for example. In regards to the work itself, Paulo Freire writes much like the philosophers I have read in SOCSCI II -- with a lengthy and repeating style, as opposed to science works which are structured and to the point. In comparing philosophical and scientific books, I see the former as a non-stop train who throws passengers outside when they need to get off, and the latter as a bus that stops at every corner.
Paulo Freire has multiple words for just one concept. For example, I only see 2 kinds of humans based on their reaction to the world: one who “adjusts” to it and one who “changes” it. The ones who “adapt” and the ones who “do not care” also belong to the former. And who can forget the concepts of “objects and subjects,” which are basically the same things.
Much more than the lack of a scientific structure, the book lacks a scientific base. Freire tries but fails to integrate some science concepts into his ideas. I agree with him that technology must adapt to its users, but the concept is not as difficult as he thinks. The ideas science espouses may not be reality based, but all of it is human based (for there is no other choice).
Me vs Him
. . . . “if I had named a hundred other English words, words which we think of as different concepts,
even antithetical concepts. ‘Grok’ means all of these. It means ‘fear,’ it means ‘love,’ it means ‘hate’--proper
hate, for by the Martian [cognitive] ‘map’ you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly
that you merge with it and it merges with you --then you can hate. By hating yourself. But this implies that you love
it, too, and cherish it and would not have it otherwise. Then you can hate . . . . ‘Grok’ means ‘identically equal.’ The
human cliché’. ‘This hurts me worse than it does you’ has a Martian flavor. The Martians seem to know instinctively
what we learned painfully from modern physics, that observer interacts with observed through the process of observation.
‘Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed --to merge, blend,
intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and
science --and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man.”
- from the novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ by Robert A. Heinlein
The problem is cultural emancipation or the inability to control one’s destiny. Paulo Freire’s solution is critical consciousness, which is grokking!
The word grok encompasses it all, even “problematize.” Here is how I understood it:
problematize = critical consciousness = grok
true democracy + grokking = better state
praxis = grok + action
Going back, I agree that the problem is present in the world for it is historically proven that humans still have not improved, not in any institution or structure we have devised. In other words, we are still subhuman.
I disagree with Freire’s statement that the “elite contempt the proletariat.” The elite and the middle class just keep to themselves; and they do not directly stop the proletariat from rising, they just mistrust them so they do not give out opportunities. If in some cases they do, they’re using a stretched pole.
In another case, I agree that democratic rights should not be made by use of emotions; as what is happening in the Philippines today. 50% critical thought is also needed. Maybe Freire doesn’t believe in the ‘innate goodness of man’ because he doesn’t believe that emotions are as important as intellect.
As the title implies, the solution is education, for it will bring critical consciousness. Education based on democracy, discovery of knowledge (I wonder, not I do), and radical teachers who are also students. How democratic can you get?
This should not be thought as a liberal class, wherein theories are spawned and trashed every minute. As an analogy to what Freire said, this is an all out war on knowledge from all our armies. I like it.
The small chapter on teaching reading and writing to illiterate adults is a grand endeavor, even though I think this is exactly what is being done in preschool, only slowly.
What’s important for me
EDUCATION
Goal : humanization by knowing one’s self.
Means : mutual communication of old and new knowledge; bringing about critical consciousness or ‘being now and with the world.’
Skimming through ‘Extension or Communication’ produced in my head a cloud encased in lead. In the essay, I learned that the educated talk in a different language to the peasants, thinking all along that they do this for democracy. They do not teach in a democratic way. In short, our scholarship is not helping.
As for Paulo Freire, I see that his ‘word’ is transformation. Maybe he’s fed up with his ways and means, the things he sees. I see him as a man of fire and action, not a man of sea and tranquillity.
Freire sees humans as ‘critical changers.’ What if, in our world, it is not always necessary? Sometimes, I am a man of sea and tranquillity . . . .
In a sentence, Paulo Freire is ‘one true democratic teacher.’ I have to find time to re-read him.
