Excerpts from Mentoring the Mentor: A Critical
Dialogue with Paulo Freire
Mentoring the Mentor is a collection of articles
written on Freirian theory, recreating Freirian dialogue in a printed
format. In it, sixteen scholars take part in an exchange with Paulo
Freire. Selected articles from this dialogue are summarized here,
including a response from Freire.
Donaldo Macedo|Peter
C. Murrell, Jr.|Gloria
Ladson-Billings|James
W. Fraser|William
T. Stokes| Asgedet
Stefanos|Tim
Sieber|Ron
Scapp|Freire's
Response
Donaldo Macedo
An Anti-Method Pedagogy: A Freirian
Perspective
In a conversation that Donaldo Macedo had with
Paulo Freire, Freire shared his concern that educators were importing
methodology rather than recreating, reinventing his ideas. "This
fetish for method works insidiously against adhering to Freire's
own pronouncement against the importation and exportation of methodology"(Macedo,
1997, p.3).
An example he gives is the importation of Freire's
dialogical model. Freire's model of dialogics must be rooted within
social praxis, reflection and political action working together
to break down oppression and the structures and mechanisms of
oppression. When the model is imported as a method, without the
connection to social praxis, dialogue becomes a "form of
group therapy"(p.4), where participants
can vent feelings and frustrations and the educator can feel that
they have empowered the educand. Freire has stated that dialogue
without action equal verbalism, or blah.
Another problem with this form of dialogue is
that educators take the stand that they are empowering students.
Empowerment does not come from the educator to
the educand. This is a paternalistic view which perpetuates the
oppression which Freire calls this "colonizing"--the
educator/oppressor assumes to know what the educand/oppressed
needs and provides it for him or her. But what is actually being
provided is a benevolent form of oppression.
What Macedo proposes to circumvent importation/exportation
of methodology is an anti-method pedagogy. "The anti-method
pedagogy forces us to view dialogue as a form of social praxis
so that the sharing of experiences is informed by reflection and
political action"(p.8).
Top
Peter C.
Murrell, Jr.
Digging Again the Family Wells:
A Freirian Literacy Framework as Emancipatory Pedagogy for African
American Children
Murrell asks "Can schooling for African-American
children ever be more than institutional indoctrination into a
social system and American culture that reproduces, reinforces
and fortifies the devaluation of African-American people?"(Murrell,
1997, p.23)
He believes that current educational approaches
are not able to handle the task of "imbuing the cultivation
of consciousness and identity development among black children..."(p.26)
He sees Freirian pedagogy as a way to realize the "critical
democratic subversion" needed to establish cultural praxis
that "acknowledges the particular dimensions of domination
emanating from cultural hegemony and racism as it relates to the
development of African-American people"(p.27).
Murrell turns to the Freirian theoretical framework
to suggest a framework for emancipatory education for black children.
- Freirian theory-schooling
as a societal process in which social groups both accept and
reject mediations of power and interpretations of culture.
- Emancipatory education-"Structure
and agency are brought together so that we always have access
to seeing two practices of self-determination and self-agency
by African-Americans shape and are shaped by the dominant
and dominating 'culture of school', that reflects the core
values of American society...(which) enables us to move
beyond a conception of African-American schooling as having
only two polarities--assimilation or resistance."
- Freirian theory-resistance
to oppression as an educational principle.
- Emancipatory education-This
is important because it enables us to understand resistance
and opposition in terms broader than limiting categories
of overt political action...
- Freirian theory-reading
culture as text to understand the ways that culture functions
in the interests of the dominant culture and to assume agency
for the reinvention of culture.
- Emancipatory education-This
would mean that a black emancipatory pedagogy would incorporate
the cultural texts of the social contexts of schooling in
the curriculumso that a "new common culture of radical
democracy can be formed.
- Freirian theory-critical
consciousness through critical reflection and action.
- Emancipatory education-This
provides two aspects of emancipation "(1) individual
emancipation resulting in a subjectivity where the learner
is the subject rather than the object in the education enterprise,
(2) collective emancipation resulting in African-American
children having the tools of critical dialogue, though and
action through which to transform themselves and their relationship
to larger society."
- Freirian theory-knowledge
is socially constructed through the dialectal tension of praxis.
- Emancipatory education-It
is the process by which the subjective and the objective
come together, posed in dialectical relationship that makes
possible resolutions to the oppressor-oppressed contradiction
(p.28-32).
Murrell's discussion of Freirian framework for
emanicipatory action concludes with a description of what Murrell
call "critical Africanist epistemology of schooling."
The kind of critical Africanist epistemology of schooled
that is called for is one "that engenders a project of
academic progress, development, and political agency for children
and adults. One that operates from a development perspective
and gives particular attention to moral judgment and civic
action. Because the representation of race, gender, social
class, and role in the social contexts of schooling deeply
affect how children and adults think and act, a critical epistemology
of schooling must make explicit what those representations
are and how they may need to be pedagogically reconstructed
in the school culture. It is an epistemology of schooling
that pays careful attention to the social world of children
while at the same time valuing deep critique and plain talk."(p.54-55)
Top
Gloria Ladson-Billings
I Know Why This Doesn't Feel
Empowering: A Critical Race Analysis of Critical Pedagogy
In her article, Ladson-Billings discusses why
critical theory does not meet the needs of those oppressed due
to race. "..scholars of color in a variety of fields have
begun to challenge the 'universal' applicability of critical theory
to their specific social, political, educational and economic
concerns"(Ladson-Billings, 1997, p.131).
They considered critical theory "mute in relation to race"
in that critical theory studies are race neutral or colorblind.
The relationship of critical race theory to education
lies in its recognition that contemporary education effects the
lives of African-American students through the influence of a
racist society. "Thus, a critical race perspective always
foregrounds race as an explanatory tool for the persistence of
inequality"(p.132).
Ladson-Billings suggests that one way educators
can address the need to bring race to the foreground is by making
race "problematic and open to critique"(p.134).
She concludes her article by challenging critical
theorists to consider the following questions:
- How might we enter into meaningful dialogue around the issue
of race?
- In what ways might our understandings of critical theory and
pedagogy be informed by our understandings of race?
- What are the potentials for struggling together around issues
of race that ultimately will empower us to teach and learn in
ways that are empowering, not alienating?
- What can we learn from those teachers who already have made
race problematic and who work in ways that support students'
greater understanding of the role race plays in society?(p.
137)
Top
Donaldo Macedo|Peter
C. Murrell, Jr.|Gloria
Ladson-Billings|James
W. Fraser|William
T. Stokes| Asgedet
Stefanos|Tim
Sieber|Ron
Scapp|Freire's
Response
