[MD] Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy

[ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR]

[Ron]
Has anyone here read Paulo Freire? Has anyone linked his ideas of critical pedagogy with RMPs Work?

[Arlo]
I've mentioned Freire several times over the years. The perennial and, now, generational "educational crisis" in America, I believe, results from a societal inability to answer the fundamental question "why educate?" We talk about testing and assessment and standards but few can articulate a 'purpose' behind the structure, and those that can (and do) are those that have come to see education as a servant to capitalism; the goal of education is to meet labor demands.

This is evident in every budget cut that guts arts and the humanities in favor of math and science. It is evident every time someone comments on a class, course or degree by asking "what is the cost-benefit of taking this?" It is evident every time someone responds to "I have a degree in philosophy (or theatre, or poetry, or history)" with something amounting to "that degree was a waste of money/is useless". It is evident when the U.S. government moves to tie awarding student loans to the "income potential" of a degree. 

Many Universities actually market themselves as no-frills (i.e., no time wasted on irrelevant things like the arts and literature) vocational schools. Indeed, in the very act of "marketing themselves", many universities have become themselves more and more like corporations. 

Into all this, I think the two most important voices on education are Freire and Dewey. Obviously, Granger's work has already established a link between Dewey and Pirsig. As for Freire, here is the abstract for Graham Patterson's "A Pedagogy for Teachers and Other Educational Decision Makers": Paulo Freire advocates a problem posing approach based on dialogue which is quite different to a problem solving approach that assumes the decision maker has all the necessary knowledge and wisdom. There is rather interesting and unexpected support for Freire's problem posing approach in Pirsig's didactic novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. These two writers, Freire and Pirsig, have a similar message for teachers and administrators even though their styles and contexts are “worlds” apart.