CR #3: Fully Human?
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed serves to inform people about some of the inherently wrong things in the world, especially that of the relationship of the oppressor and the oppressed. In other terms, the person (oppressor) who is unjustly treating another human (the oppressed) due to various reasons like race or power. In this piece, Freire calls out to radical humans who want to make change. He encourages, “The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it.” Freire uses the word “conscientizacao” which refers to “learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.” Freire tells people like us student service-learners to be radical. To be willing to be open, to confront, and to listen in order to make change.
One of the main ideas he talks about in the first chapter is the idea of dehumanization versus humanization. Dehumanization is a mark of someone’s humanity that has been stolen. They do not have freedom as there is someone or something that has taken away their ability to be fully human and fully alive. Friere describes humanization and dehumanization as a systematic oppression. The oppressors tend to dehumanize the oppressed in order to make themselves feel better. However, people who are dehumanized do not always see themselves as oppressed which is why they may not always actively seek freedom in fear of their oppressors.. Humanization, on the other hand, is a liberation from other people to be their authentic selves. More importantly, they have the free will to do what they want. As a result, Friere calls out people to examine any humanizing and dehumanizing practices they may be engaging in so we can learn to stop it.
In the conversation between Paulo Friere and Myles Horton, the two argue that without practice, there is no knowledge. By “practice”, they mean the way that one acts on the theories that they have. By “knowledge” these two scholars are talking about an accumulation of things that we know. To accumulate an authentic knowledge, we must be willing to obtain information in different ways and methods. We theorize, we learn by seeing, and we can learn by practicing. In using our different senses, we can do things like read or have a conversation (99) in order to gain knowledge. The knowledge we gain can thus become a theory that we may want to consider or even practice. This is where service-learning connects to this idea. Through the conversations we have in the community, the different things we say, and the theories that we learn in class, we build up our own practices. Theory goes beyond common sense, as it is an accumulation of knowledge that affects the way we make decisions and choose to engage with others. Horton says, “Your theory determines what you want to do in terms of helping people grow” (100). The history we learn and analyze in class helps us determine what patterns to look for when we are engaging in our service-learning each week. Friere also claims, “Knowledge is always becoming” (101). This means that knowledge is not always going to be the same, because knowledge inherently is alway changing. This means that we should not think stagnantly that everything that is happening is a set, permanent thing. We learn knowledge every day that may change our perspectives, which thus changes our theory.
