Copyright
© 2005 José Cossa
Freire’s Pedagogia do
Opremido is a political and educational treatise that aims at presenting a
challenge to educational systems that embraced any sort of dominant
consciousness. I concur with Freire’s
argument that there is a type of education that aims at perpetuating a state of
domination of one group over another because schools are a vehicle of cultural
and ideological transfer and the methods used to ‘educate’ are reflections of
the agendas of the system of education – This we saw in colonial times and, if
we scrutinize today’s society we will soon learn that this characteristic is
still prevalent.
Freire’s argument against banking
education presents a weapon of defense for the oppressed, if liberation is
desired. I agree that adopting the
method of banking education reflects one’s attitude of superiority over another
because if one did not think of other humans as inferior then the attitude
would be that of co-learning rather than imposition on the premise of other’s
need to learn some sort of objective reality.
I could not help but think
that Freire reaction could have been an adequate response to speeches by
Antonio Salazar (1967) against the liberations and wars in the Portuguese
colonies. The loss of Brazil had become
worrisome for Portugal and Salazar was campaigning to protect the remainder of
the colonies, i.e., Mozambique and Angola; While Salazar ‘promoted banking
education’ as a means of preserving Portuguese sovereignty, Freire proposed the
contrary.
The pedagogical method proposed
by Freire, liberation education based on problem-posing methodology, is for me
an adequate model to allow universal participation in the knowledge arena;
however, this will always constitute a challenge because systems of education
carry ideologies of the dominant class, whether such a class is easily
recognizable or not. In the case of
independent states we can testify to the cyclical nature of this process where
education was once of a banking nature during colonial rule, then claimed as a
liberating force, and eventually returned to a banking nature when used to
promote ideologies of the ruling parties.
Again I must say that one’s freedom can become one’s bondage –
when the oppressed reaches the state of consciousness must be careful not to
become oppressive to others. Freire’s
pedagogy is for all humans who believe in the dignity and historicity of other
humans.
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