Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Citation

Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.; 50th anniversary ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. (Original work published 1968; English translation first published 1970)

Chapter Summary

Freire's text is a short argument in four numbered chapters, first published in Portuguese in 1968 and in English in 1970. The 50th anniversary edition (about 220 pages) surrounds the translated text with new material: an introduction by Donaldo Macedo, an afterword by Ira Shor, interviews with nine contemporary scholars (Marina Aparicio Barberán, Noam Chomsky, Ramón Flecha, Gustavo Fischman, Ronald David Glass, Valerie Kinloch, Peter Mayo, Peter McLaren and Margo Okazawa-Rey) and Richard Shaull's foreword to the original English edition. The four chapters are identified by number, each with a run of topics, rather than by title.

Introduction to the 50th Anniversary Edition and Foreword

Macedo's new introduction opens the edition, and Shaull's foreword to the 1970 English edition is retained. The publisher says the edition is meant to inspire a new generation of educators, students and general readers, and stresses the continuing urgency of Freire's argument for societies in which a permanent underclass is being created.

Chapter 1

Sets out the justification for a pedagogy of the oppressed. The topics listed are the contradiction between oppressors and oppressed and how it is overcome, oppression seen from the side of the oppressors and from the side of the oppressed, and liberation understood as neither a gift nor a self-achievement but a mutual process.

Chapter 2

The chapter on two opposed conceptions of education. It treats the "banking" concept of education as an instrument of oppression, with its presuppositions and a critique, and sets against it the problem-posing concept as an instrument of liberation. The listed topics include the teacher-student contradiction and how problem-posing education moves beyond it, education as a mutual process mediated by the world, and people as uncompleted beings who are conscious of their incompletion and strive to be more fully human.

Chapter 3

Develops "dialogics" as the essence of education as the practice of freedom. The topics include dialogics and dialogue, the search for program content, the human-world relationship, "generative themes" and the program content of education, the investigation of generative themes and its methodology, the awakening of critical consciousness through that investigation, and the stages of the investigation.

Chapter 4

Contrasts antidialogics and dialogics as the matrices of opposing theories of cultural action, the first an instrument of oppression and the second of liberation. The theory of antidialogical action is characterized by conquest, divide and rule, manipulation and cultural invasion; the theory of dialogical action by cooperation, unity, organization and cultural synthesis.

Afterword and Interviews

Shor's afterword and the interviews with contemporary scholars close the 50th anniversary edition. They are commentary on the text, not part of Freire's four chapters.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1

• Oppressor-oppressed contradiction: the central relation the chapter analyzes, and the question of how it is overcome.
• Liberation as a mutual process: liberation is described as neither a gift nor something achieved alone.

Chapter 2

• "Banking" concept of education: the model of education that the chapter critiques as an instrument of oppression.
• Problem-posing education: the alternative conception, presented as an instrument of liberation.
• Teacher-student contradiction: the opposition between teacher and student that problem-posing education aims to move beyond.
• Uncompleted beings: the view of people as conscious of their incompletion and seeking to be more fully human.

Chapter 3

• Dialogics: the essence of education as the practice of freedom.
• Generative themes: the themes of the human-world relationship from which the program content of education is drawn through investigation.
• Critical consciousness: what the investigation of generative themes is meant to awaken.

Chapter 4

• Antidialogical action: characterized by conquest, divide and rule, manipulation and cultural invasion.
• Dialogical action: characterized by cooperation, unity, organization and cultural synthesis.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A compact, tightly organized argument. The catalogued topic lists show a text that moves in a clear sequence: the oppressor-oppressed relation (Chapter 1), the two conceptions of education (Chapter 2), the dialogical method and its investigation (Chapter 3) and the theory of cultural action (Chapter 4). Because the whole text is four chapters, it can be read in a few sittings.
• Terms that carry over into other work. "Banking" education, problem-posing education, dialogue and generative themes are defined within the text and are the concepts that later writing on critical pedagogy takes up, so reading the original makes that literature easier to follow.
• Context supplied in the 50th anniversary edition. The new introduction, the afterword and the interviews with scholars from several countries and traditions give a present-day orientation to a text first published in the late 1960s.

Limitations

• Dense and abstract for a first book on education. The topic lists show a text built from layered concepts and contrasts, with little in the way of classroom procedure. Readers who want techniques for teaching will need other books in the course.
• The surrounding material is commentary, not Freire. The introduction, afterword and interviews reflect their authors' readings and priorities; they are useful but should be kept apart from what the four chapters themselves argue.
• Language that dates the text. A Brazilian study of Freire's treatment of women (Roteiro, 2016) reports that Freire later accepted feminist criticism that the language of this book was sexist. Readers should be prepared for gendered wording in the translated text.
• A translation of a work from a particular moment. The book was first published in Portuguese in 1968 and reaches English readers through Myra Bergman Ramos's translation; readers applying it to another time or place need to consider how far its categories travel.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the foundations-of-education list, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the central text of critical pedagogy. Gary Thomas's Education: A Very Short Introduction is a concise orientation to the big questions about education and a good first read before Freire. Nel Noddings's Philosophy of Education surveys educational thought from the classical philosophers through Dewey, and John Dewey's Democracy and Education is the classic account of the link between democratic society and education; Dewey's How We Think concerns reflective thinking and inquiry.

Two books read most naturally alongside Freire: bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress, a critical pedagogy text arguing that classrooms can become spaces of freedom, and Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, a critique of institutional schooling that asks how learning might be organized beyond compulsory systems. Jarvis Givens's Fugitive Pedagogy is a history of Black educational thought and suits readers who want a historical case of teaching under constraint.

How to Use This Book

The book is for students of education and related fields, and for teachers and community educators interested in the philosophy behind participatory and liberatory approaches. It needs no formal prerequisite, but some prior reading in philosophy of education makes the argument easier to place.

A practical plan:

• Core: Chapter 2 first, since the banking and problem-posing contrast is the book's central pedagogical idea; then Chapter 1 for its premises, and Chapter 3 for how dialogue is turned into a method.
• Then: Chapter 4 for the theory of cultural action.
• Around the text: Read the 50th anniversary introduction after the chapters, not before, so that the argument is met before the commentary. The interviews can be sampled by interest.
• To test the ideas: Write a short account of a lesson or workshop you have taken part in, and ask whether it was closer to banking or problem-posing education, and why. Read Thomas or Noddings first if the vocabulary of educational philosophy is new, and hooks or Illich afterward for other critical positions.