Pedagogy of Hope

Twenty years after writing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire looked back and reflected on his writing and work. How had he come to the realizations he wrote about in Pedagogy of the Oppressed? What occurred because of it? Where was he going now?

This reliving of Pedagogy of the Oppressed became Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

• What is "Pedagogy of Hope"?

  In describing the purpose of the book, Freire said:

  It (was) written in rage and love, without which there is no hope. It is meant as a defense of tolerance--not to be confused with connivance--and radicalness. It is meant as a criticism of sectarianism. It attempts to explain and defend progressive postmodernity and it ... reject(s) conservative, neoliberal postmodernity (Freire, 1998a, p. 10).

  He described hope as an ontological need that should be anchored in practice in order to become historical concreteness. Without hope, we are hopeless and cannot begin the struggle to change.

  To attempt to do without hope, which is based on the need for truth as an ethical quality of the struggle, is tantamount to denying that struggle one of its mainstays (p.8 ).

  Hope must be rooted in practice, in the struggle. If not, if there is inaction, you get hopelessness and despair.

• What does this mean for educators?

  As Freire lays out the his story, he also discusses what he sees the role of the progressive educator to be. He does this with one caution, that educators should not turn Freirian pedagogy into Freirian methodology.  His work is meant to be a framework for others, and as such, he asks that educators reinvent Freire within their context, within the context of the learners.

  The tasks for progressive educators in Freirian theory are:

  1. "...to unveil opportunities for hope, regardless of the obstacles" (p. 9).
  2. to accept the political and directive nature of education.
  3. to express respect for differences in ideas and positions.
  4. to respect the educands, never manipulating them.
  5. to be tolerant, open, forthright, and critical, teaching is not simply the "transmission of knowledge concerning the object or concerning the topic"(p. 81).
  6. to teach so that educands can learn to learn "...the reason-for, the "why" of the object or the content."
  7. to challenge educands with a regard to their certitudes so that they seek convincing arguments in defense of the why.
  8. to respect popular knowledge, cultural content...this is the point of "departure for the knowledge (that educands) create of the world.
  9. to understand that the "perception of the why of the facts...lead us to transcend the narrow horizons of the neighborhood or even the immediate geographical area, to gain (the) global view of reality..."(pp.87)

   

  Freire contended that the basic importance of education lays in the "act of cognition not only of the content, but of the why of economic, social, political, ideological, and historical facts...under which we find ourselves placed."(pp. 101)

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