Excerpts from Mentoring the Mentor
Donaldo Macedo|Peter
C. Murrell, Jr.|Gloria
Ladson-Billings|James
W. Fraser|William
T. Stokes| Asgedet
Stefanos|Tim
Sieber|Ron
Scapp|Freire's
Response
James W. Fraser
Love and History in the Work
of Paulo Freire
"There is in Paulo Freire, in his writing,
his speaking, and his personal presence, a profound sense of love,
humility, and rootedness in life and in the present historical
moment"(Fraser, 1997 p.175), Fraser
says as he opens his article. He goes on to explore three significant
themes that run through Freire's work:
- ...his deep respect for for every person, evinced in his insistence
that the oppressed never be seen as a group to be led nor as
individuals in need of salvation by a vanguard, but rather as
creators of their own liberation.
- His call for humility on the part of all educators in light
of this need for mutual respect between teacher and learner.
- the deep rooting of his pedagogy in history, and in the flesh
and blood reality of human existence
(p. 176).
As an example of the love in Freire's writing,
Fraser examines dialogical action. He believes that the commitment
one makes to take part in dialogical action requires love and
mutual respect.
In Freire's work, this notion of loving
pedagogy demands that the teacher always begin with a deep respect
for all students, for what they can bring to the dialogue that
will make it richer for everyone (p.177).
He stresses that this means that the educator
is not focussing on his or her own agenda, but that each individual
becomes the maker of her or his own liberation.
Fraser's notes the history in Freire's work in
his emphasis on the present and concrete. By making the present
a concrete moment in history, the learner is able to shape his
or her own history. "Again and again this theme emerges,
it is essential to be an actor in history not merely a witness
of the drama"(p.194).
Paulo Freire represents an approach to education that is filled
with hope and love concretely located in action in the historical
present (p.196).
Top
William T.
Stokes
Progressive Teacher Education:
Consciousness, Identity, and Knowledge
Current teacher education focusses heavily on
conservative programmatics, placing heavy emphasis on methods
of teaching in models that are "managerial, medical, and
scientistic" in form (Stokes, 1997, p.202).
Stokes argues that this places both teachers and students as "consumers
of knowledge created by remote theorists, researchers, and experts
who design 'teacher proof' materials and procedures"(p.203).
This focus leads to what Freire called banking
education. Little or no emphasis is put upon reflection or
critique in this kind of "skills-and methods-oriented"
model that "discounts intellectual inquiry"(p.203).
Paulo Freire and Critical
Consciousness
Through critical consciousness we can begin to
understand our position in the world, but this alone is not enough.
Freire makes clear that consciousness of oppression, alone,
does not create freedom; and education, alone, does not transform
society. The means to liberation, however, require an understanding
that is 'steeped in the dialectical movement back and forth
between consciousness and world'(p.205).
Freire offers a new language. This, in
turn, provides the language needed for critical literacy and new
ways of seeing the world.
By reinventing Freire, Stokes has found a way
to reflect upon his own teaching:
- Who is the teacher?
- From what historical and cultural position does the teacher
act?
- What is the authority of the teacher?
- Does the teacher create, define, and delimit discourses?
- Does the teacher (as author) legitimate and privilege certain
meanings and interpretations over others?
- If so, then are some voices silenced or marginalized?
- How may the teacher participate in the creation of critical
dialogue within which the learner becomes a historical agent
of his or her own learning?(p.207).
Domestication of Teachers
In this section of his article, Stokes looks
at current pre-service training for teachers and the way the current
training method leads to domestication of teachers.
He criticizes this method for minimizing the
"requirement that teachers engage in serious study of the
history, philosophy, or sociology of education"(p.209).
Critical pedagogy and cultural theory find a limited place in
teacher education as well. In this way, pedagogies of hope
and possibility are obstructed.
Another way teachers are domesticated is through
the curriculum that they use. Publishers, trying to sell as many
books as possible, have established a common curriculum that is
meant to be taken as the authority of the subject. Even when there
is disagreement about methodology, each purports to be the authoritative
method. Both of these cases "...strips teachers of agency.
The expert, through the textbook publisher, is the author of meanings
and procedures that learners must accept"(p.210).This
silences not only students, but teachers as well.
Critical Thinking and Critical
Literacy
Stokes finds that too often, what is taken as
critical thinking is actually teaching of critical thinking
skills, which replaces the learner's "naturally developed
understanding of the world with the conventional construction
of reality." Teachers' discomfort with critique leads them
to "...substitute method for theory. How to teach skills
replaces serious critical examination of what is taught"(p.213).
From Children's Books to the
Supreme Court
Another form of teacher domestication comes in
the form of legalities. Stokes cites the 1988 Hazelwood School
District v. Kuhlmeier, et al as a form of legal domestication.
This Supreme Court decision ruled in favor of the school district
in its censorship of controversial articles about divorce and
teenage pregnancy that were to appear in a high school student
newspaper.
Not only are the teachers to keep their students quiet but
they are to remain silent themselves. In this manufacture consent;
debate and critique are only permitted within narrowly acceptable
limits. Students and teachers are discouraged from genuine dialogue,
inquiry, and critique...(p.216)
Teacher Education for Transformation
In his final section, Stokes looks at conditions
that must take place to create a transformation of teacher education.
- Teacher education, if it is to be consistent with a progressive,
democratic vision, must create the conditions of critical dialogue
that challenges prospective teachers to examine their cultural
identities and promotes the development of critical consciousness
of their racial, ethnic, linguistic, and class positions (p.217).
- A critical teacher education should problematize the lived
experience of children, women, and men throughout this society,
and simultaneous positions of domination and subordination--contradictory
experiences of oppression and complicity with privilege (p.217).
- A radical teacher education program must be founded on the
belief that
- the fundamental purpose of education in a democratic
society is to provide opportunities for all citizens to
participate fully in the cultural, political, and economic
life of the nation and the world;
- that the essential goals of elementary education are to
enable children to become full participants and to develop
all their talents and competencies needed to meet the social,
historical, and material challenges that they will encounter
throughout their lives;
- that the teacher's role in education, therefore, is to
guide, support, and engage all children, as active learners
and makers of meaning, in the discovery and exploration
of all aspects of the natural world and their cultural heritages
(p.218).
Stokes stresses that it is "absolutely essential
that teachers in this society be seen (and see themselves) as
intellectuals" (p.221).
Top
Asgedet Stefanos
African Women and Revolutionary
Change: A Freirian and Feminist Perspective
In Asgedet Stefanos' article, she demonstrates
how Freirian theory can be reinvented. She describes how she examined
the "relationship of gender politics and national liberation
movement politics in both Guinea Bissau and Eritrea"(Stefanos,
1997, p.268) as influenced by Freirian thinking. Aspects
that she found most helpful in her work were:
- Freirian analysis of domination and liberation, his approach
to building a humanitarian and democratic society are compatible
with and relevant to feminism.
- Freire's concepts and strategies concern interpersonal relations
and deal with people's lives in concrete ways.
- Freire's notion that the process of transformation has to
take place through social awareness, critical analysis, and
self-reliance contributes to shaping women's struggle for empowerment.
- (Freirian theory) questions all acts of domination or oppression
that keep people from becoming more fully human and over time
impair their ability to act humanely (p.269-270).
A modification she found necessary was to incorporate
feminist analyses. "A feminist analysis perceives women's
oppression as embedded in the relationship of women to men"(p.270)
As a feminist, she found it necessary to place male dominance
(patriarchy) as the focus of her analysis of why and how women
occupy inferior positions in society. She believes that Freire's
notions of class and economic oppression need to be expanded to
include gender oppression.
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
