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

[david]

Arlo said to Ron:
I've mentioned Freire several times over the years.  ...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.


dmb says:

Ant has a short version of Granger's work available for free: http://robertpirsig.org/Granger.htm

Here is a short but helpful review of David Granger's book, JOHN DEWEY, ROBERT PIRSIG, and the ART OF LIVING: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=eandc&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%2522david%2520granger%2522%2520dewey%2520pirsig%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CB8QFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdocs.lib.purdue.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1093%2526context%253Deandc%26ei%3DqWqoU7HiMYaGyATzuYHoCA%26usg%3DAFQjCNFIUFsG_73sGxVP_8tIQHN91Ty6Gw%26bvm%3Dbv.69411363%2Cd.aWw#search=%22david%20granger%20dewey%20pirsig%22

"I have sometimes mentioned to those who have read Pirsig that they already have insight into Dewey.  ...I now realize those who have read Dewey also have insight into Pirsig, who is a first-rate philosopher in the etymological sense. Pirsig and Dewey are friends of wisdom."

"Granger organizes his book around four questions. The first asks: “What sort of world is it that makes art as experience possible?” He devotes the first two chapters, titled “Dewey’s and Pirsig’s Metaphysics” and “Metaphysics at Work,” to his answer. Granger affirms Dewey’s claim that there “are two sorts of worlds in which esthetic experience would not occur”. A world of pure flux could never move to a consummation while an entirely finished world forbids further creative action. Dewey’s existential generic traits, especially the relatively precarious and relatively stable, pair with the “static” and “Dynamic” in Pirsig’s “Metaphysics of Quality.” Dewey assails analytic logic-chopping in favor of a textured holism that makes suitable distinctions when needed. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Main- tenance (ZMM), Pirsig complains about the “Church of Reason” whose “mythos” proclaims: “the forms of this world are real but the Quality of this world unreal . . . insane!”. Granger explores this metaphysical madness."

"Granger explores Pirsig’s and Dewey’s aesthetics by examining their similarities to the British Ro- mantics, especially Wordsworth’s natural supernaturalism. A partial list of the elements of what Dewey calls “an experience” include individualizing quality, dynamic unity (even of opposites), self-sufficiency, immediacy, ineffability, and multiple kinds of continuity. We also find these characteristics in Pirsig’s depiction of “high quality” experience.    Pirsig remarks: “The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself” (ZMM, 84). Ultimately, concepts, categories, categorical systems, and discursive thought itself are all artistic creations. The “Church of Reason” dogmatically denigrates noncognitive meanings, renders ethical meanings secondary, and elides aesthetic visions of the possible beyond the actual. It dismisses metaphors, metronomes, similes, and such as simply logical errors (e.g., category mistakes). The irony, as Granger shows, is that formal logic itself is an art form."