CR#3 Freire: The Power of Authenticity

Critical consciousness is the way in which a person is finally aware of their surroundings. As the unoppressed, it is so easy to fall into the life we know and accept without question, so when critical consciousness is introduced to us before our very eyes, it is as if we are using our eyes through a new lens. Furthermore, this lens exposes the reality of the oppressed to the unoppressed, and allows for a conversation to begin between the two in order to make a better world together. There are opposers of critical consciousness that believe that it will bring about archaism and destruction, but Paulo Freiere notes the declaration of a past factory-worker’s liberation using critical consciousness and how its effects are far from that: “…when I began this course I was naive, and when I found out how naive I was, I started to get critical. But this discovery hasn’t made me a fanatic, and I don’t feel any collapse either” (Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”). When the man understood the corruption of the system set in place that he labored for, it brought upon his ability to self-reflect and be able to understand society and its deepest flaws.

Freire defined dehumanization to readers as “the struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.” Dehumanization is not concrete; there is a constant fight against it that keeps those who are oppressed from collapsing all together. An interpretation of this struggle can be seen in the American dream; the oppressed are given hope by observing or hearing about the ability of those who were beside them to rise to the top.

Additionally, Freire touches on the ideas of practice and knowledge. Practice is a person’s way of living, while knowledge is created by practice, and spread to others regarding that practice. Freire notes in his interview with Myles Horton on practice: “I started recognizing the fantastic importance of the way people think, speak, act — — the design of it all. Then I have to understand the experience, the practice of the people. But I also know that without practice there’s no knowledge; at least it’s difficult to know without practice” (Freire and Horton, 101). Our most vital pieces of our identities are tied to our language, beliefs, and actions, and Freire is explaining that we need to extract these parts of ourselves and compare them to our own; to witness the similarities and differences of people is an enriching way to understand the diversity of life.

Finally, I understand Freire’s authentic knowledge when it is best described here: “…I would say that we have to go beyond the common sense of the people, with the people. My quest is not to go alone but to go with the people…I can go beyond the common-sense understanding of how society works — -not to stay at this level but, starting from this, to go beyond” (Freire and Horton, 105). The best way to gather authentic knowledge is to not separate myself from the people I encounter at Spahr Center. I want to be at the same human level with them mentally and absorb what I can about who they are and their kind of “practice.”