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Pedagogy of the Oppressed | |
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> | "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." | | | | |
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< | The Problem: Narration Sickness and the "Banking Concept" | >
> | - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed | | | | |
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< | Last week, in an attempt to distance myself a bit from law school, I spent some time re-reading portions of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a book by Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire. In the second chapter, Freire asserts that "education is suffering from narration sickness." Teachers, he explains, who consider themselves knowledgeable, talk "about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable" and assume that their students are ignorant receptacles to be filled with the contents of their knowledge. Freire calls this process "banking" - the teacher, as depositor, is rewarded for filling the receptacles as completely as he can, and the student, as depository, is rewarded for receiving the information as meekly as possible. The assumption that students are ignorant receptacles, Freire argues, "negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry" and creates an oppressive class system within education. Students become dependent upon and subordinated to teachers of "superior" knowledge and are forced to accept their "ignorance" as justifying their teachers' existence. The harder students work at becoming passive receptacles (which they are encouraged to do in the banking system), the less capable they become of critical thinking and the less interested they are in actively participating in and transforming the world. | | | | |
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< | The oppressors in society, who are not interested in seeing the world transformed, profit from a system of education that renders students incapable of anything more than recording and memorizing. They are not interested, therefore, in dismantling the banking system and "react almost instinctively against any experiment in education which stimulates the critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality." | >
> | Transforming Education | | | | |
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< | Is Law School Suffering From Narration Sickness? | >
> | Paulo Freire was a child in Northeast Brazil at the outset of the Great Depression. When the floor fell out from under his middle class family, Freire was exposed to the oppressive nature of Brazil's rigid class system and to its impact on access to education. Though his family's economic situation eventually improved and he was able to enroll in law school, Freire's experience with poverty fueled a continued interest in the relationship between socioeconomic status and education. In 1946, Freire began to work closely with members of the illiterate peasant class, mostly adults, and became interested in helping them develop the tools necessary to liberate themselves from their oppressors and, in the process, to liberate their oppressors as well. | | | | |
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< | When I read Pedagogy of the Oppressed for the first time in college, Freire's ideas did not resonate with me. I viewed his discussion merely as an interesting dissection of a system of education that at the time had little bearing on or relevance to my life and that I believed would never have any bearing on or relevance to my life. As a philosophy major my classes were small and functioned almost entirely without narration, my professors challenged my views and cared little about the amount of information I memorized, and my peers were interested enough in critical thought to commit to a major they knew would almost certainly lead them into career oblivion. The problems of banking education exited my consciousness almost immediately after finishing Pedagogy of the Oppressed and didn't return until the first day of this class. After spending a little over one semester in law school, I think I am finally beginning to understand the alienating force of being treated like an ignorant receptacle, capable only of memorization and unconcerned with transforming the world. Though the Socratic Method purports to stimulate critical thinking and encourage student debate, I cannot understand how a request to "recite the facts" or to "state the assignment of error" in a particular case functions as anything more than a demand for the regurgitation of information deposited by a teacher who considers him/herself to be knowledgeable and in a position of superiority. In an attempt to "get it right" so they can at some point "get a job," students hardly ever manage to communicate anything in class or on exams that might challenge the information deposited during the teacher's narration.
The first term of law
school, as I have previously mentioned, is a language-acquisition
exercise. The request to state facts, holdings, reasoning, in the
classroom is a request for the production of sentences in law-talk.
This conforms to neither Freire's paradigms of God or the Devil.
Arguments in that style have been made for or against this approach
to language instruction, and were to the process of teaching second
languages in the 1960s what the "new math" was to mathematics
instruction. In these environments, I think it is fair to say,
neither Plato nor Freire turns out to be completely right.
By three or four weeks into the second term of law school, however,
the language acquisition process for students like ours is largely
concluded for those whose learning is not impeded by severe
contingent obstacles. The process shifts towards acculturation and
the professional use of the language acquired. So the criminal law
teacher who told my students in his section one year that "This isn't
a humanities course like some of your others [meaning mine]. I don't
want to read what you think on the exam," was indeed providing an
example that could charitably be referred to as "narratively sick."
But one ugly, Hemlock-proof, narcissistic jerk isn't "law school."
The Solution: Reconciliation of the Teacher-Student Contradiction
Freire proposes an alternative to the banking system that, he claims, undermines the power of oppression. Deposit-making must be abandoned completely in favor of "problem-posing" education, a system in which cognition takes the place of narration. Students and teachers become "teacher-students" and "student-teachers," who both teach and are taught by each other. "The students -- no longer docile listeners -- are now--critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher." As teacher-students and student-teachers begin to grapple with problems relating to themselves in and with the world, they feel challenged and more obliged to respond to such challenges. Responding to challenges results in more challenges and thus more understandings. The comprehension they gain brings them closer to reality and farther from alienation. When education is a practice of freedom, not domination, Freire argues, it confirms that man is not isolated and unattached to the world.
Is it Really a Solution?
Though Freire recognizes that the oppressed must fight for emancipation from the banking system, he proposes no course of action that might enable such emancipation. He assumes, instead, the existence of "revolutionary educators" dedicated to the "quest for mutual harmonization" and willing to be the partners of their students. Though truly revolutionary educators might exist, the education system seems instead to be plagued by individuals claiming to be proponents of liberation, but who continue to employ the banking method as an expedient "interim measure." I am persuaded by Freire's argument that the banking system of education must be replaced by a system that treats teachers and students as co-investigators. I am not sure at this point what exactly that entails in the context of law school. I am hoping that what I learn in this class will help me to better understand the requirements of such a goal. I think it will take more than merely acknowledging that most law professors at most law schools have their heads up their asses. Beyond that, I feel a bit clueless. I think, perhaps, a major roadblock for most law students in attempting to transform the experience is that they (me included) treat law school as some form of hell that has to be dealt with and then disposed of as quickly as possible. The idea of attempting a revolution, the impact of which might be felt only once we've departed, on top of the daily frustrations of law school life, is daunting. Without the presence of more "revolutionary educators," what can we, as students, do?
You might begin by
wondering about the social psychology underlying the ideas you've
been handling. What is their developmental component? Is "teaching"
the same thing when done in the company of five-year-olds that it is
in a cohort of extremely privileged young adults who have already
finished university educations? Is "lifelong learning," or "adult
education" the same as the pedagogy that socializes children before
puberty while teaching them the various necessary literacies in their
societies? How is "mentoring" distinguished from "teaching"? How
does the political economy of professional services delivery affect
the instructional styles of professional preparation institutions
like law schools or medical schools? Paolo Freire, like most other
great writers on "education," is a mine full of valuable ore. The
problem is refining it and working it into practically useful tools.
The extent to which you can do nothing but throw up your hands at the
end of the essay is your confession that you left it unworked.
But do you really expect to be able to prescribe correctly what needs
to change about law school, let alone how to bring that change about,
on the basis of twenty-four weeks of experience? I have more than
fifty times as much experience as you have, have read more than you,
thought more than you, and experimented more than you in search of
wisdom on the problems you are meditating. I would not attempt to
write in 1,000 words either a specification of "the problem" tout
court, nor a solution in general terms, because all I have learned
inclines me to believe that neither the problems nor their solutions
are comprehensible on that scale.
The route to improving the piece is to make it less general, both in
the way you treat Freire and in the way you treat "law school." You
need to handle your material in a fashion that doesn't make your
relative lack of experience a fatal weakness, and Freire's material
in a way that relates basic concepts to the details of pedagogy in
the social context where you actually find it. Law professing means
acclimatizing young adults to work in an unfamiliar symbolic system
built up over 1,000 years, for the subtle and effective mastery of
which both cognitive skills—industrial strength reading,
strengthened memory, improved a-linguistic social cognition—and
expressive skills—terse analytic writing, persuasive public
speaking, effective social tactics, the nature of strategic as
opposed to tactical execution—must be taught. Individual
mentoring needs to occur, which concentrates not only on
"co-learning" but on instilling social discipline at the same time
that awareness and emotional self-equilibration must be encouraged,
and—if necessary—helped to grow by means more
"therapeutic" than "pedagogical." No doubt one can find Plato and
Freire useful in the effort, but what's really needed is something
less general and more situational.
(999 words)
-- By ElizabethSullivan - 16 Feb 2012 | | | \ No newline at end of file | |
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> | In the second chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire describes what he believes to be a crucial first step in this process of liberation - a transformation of the education system. The "banking" approach to education, in which teachers treat their students as ignorant receptacles to be filled with their "superior" knowledge, "negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry" and reinforces the oppressor-oppressed dynamic. The more dependent students become upon their teachers, the less capable they become of critical thinking and the more inclined they are to adapt to the world rather than to actively participate in and transform it. The banking approach, Freire urges, must be abandoned in favor of "problem-posing" education, a system in which cognition takes the place of narration. Students and teachers must become "teacher-students" and "student-teachers," who both teach and are taught by each other. As "critical co-investigators," beginning to grapple with problems relating to themselves in and with the world, they feel challenged and more obliged to respond to such challenges. The comprehension they gain brings them closer to reality and farther from alienation.
Are Freire's Theories Applicable to Legal Education?
To truly understand the significance of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, one cannot divorce Freire's theories from the economic and political context in which they were formed. It is necessary to acknowledge the extent to which Freire's experiences with the oppressor-oppressed dynamic in Brazil influenced his dedication to advancing a system of education that humanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed. The force of Freire's proposed education reform, however, need not be contained within the boundaries of South America and can be instrumental in effecting change in any system of education that encourages students to conform to the world rather than to engage with and transform it.
Though Columbia students come from varied socioeconomic backgrounds, not one of us is a member of the oppressed illiterate class whose liberation Freire was dedicated to facilitating. We are, rather, a "cohort of extremely privileged young adults." This privileged status diminishes the applicability of Pedagogy of the Oppressed to an extent - Columbia's adoption of problem-posing education cannot liberate us from oppression we do not suffer under - but does not eliminate it completely. The world remains in need of transformation and the banking approach to education, whether imposed on members of the dominant class or the dominated, discourages its subjects from attempting that transformation. Abandoning the banking system in favor of the problem-posing system empowers the dominated class - by enabling them to engage with the world and fight for their humanity - and the dominant class - by enabling them also to engage with the world and to acknowledge the humanity of those they have dominated. However weak a form of social control the law may be, a legal education can and should arm members of the dominant class with all available tools for change/humanization rather than encourage complacency with the status quo. To the extent that Columbia's approach to legal education encourages passivity rather than engagement with the world and cements our position of privilege, Freire's theories on education can provide some guidance.
Freire identifies the "humanist revolutionary educator" as the source of the transformation. These educators, Freire argues, cannot wait for formerly passive students to challenge the system. That argument, I think, must also flow in the opposite direction - formerly passive students cannot wait for revolutionary educators. I do not know if Columbia requires professors or career counselors to read Freire's work or to engage with any theories of education reform. If such a requirement exists, the staff and faculty I have met have either ignored that requirement or resisted its lessons in shaping their courses or formulating their advice. Though I can acknowledge the necessity of teaching "law talk" in the first semester of law school, feeling now that I learned how to do very little else, I am not satisfied that the 1L curriculum provided a chance to become co-investigators with professors in the classroom and to engage with the world. I cannot profess to know how to change law school. I know only that I can change my approach to legal education now that I am aware of what, so far, seem to be its limitations. I did little this year to offset the impact of an establishment interested primarily in providing access to Big Law jobs. I did not attempt to engage with my professors in class, as I did with my philosophy professors in college, and I failed to foster relationships with them outside of the classroom. I think this is because I am slightly introverted and slightly lazy. Despite this, I am determined now to graduate from law school with the tools necessary to define myself, not as an oppressor, but as a professional capable of engaging with the world. I think I can do this by seeking out next year what I was expecting to have handed to me this year.
(1000 words)
-- ElizabethSullivan - 24 Apr 2012 |
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