blocks: Thoughts from a session in the Social Education module here at Uni on PauloFreire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.
Themes
Doesn't start with a curriculum; starts with the context of the learner, helping them to understand their world.
This is political. It's about revolution - Marxist in tone.
Helping people to understand oppression - "conscientization."
Is this about changing beliefs and values in the learner so that they are encouraged to take action? Or is it about getting people active, and them learning/becoming enlightened through their actions (this is basic active learning theory).
Gwen asked something like: "Are we oppressed by our social environment, or perhaps by our personality?" To which I add: "Or by our genes?"
Pedagogy of the oppressed: working with oppressed groups. Are people only oppressed by virtue of being members of a certain group? What about oppressed individuals whose oppressionhas nothing to do with group membership, stereotyping etc.
Education is about humanisation. It enables people to become conscious of what limits their ability to be fully human. This is a politically subversive approach. It's about justice.
This is a subversion of concepts. We briefly touched on naming; re-naming something can liberate, and transfer power from the more powerful to the less powerful. There is also a political subversion, a real and practical subversion which takes place in society.
Reflections on our experience of the InformalEducation during the session
- Through our discussions, we have stretched the concepts under discussion, to make them intelligible to us and to explore how they apply to our situations and needs.
- Pooling our ignorance? Not if we are speaking from positions of knowledge and experience (and also we were a group of fairly intelligent and reflective people.)
Memetics
I never thought this would crop up! Well it didn't, but it did for me. Our discussion veered into an interesting place, touching on multiculturalism and freedom. What if someone comes from a culture where they are in some way oppressed/not fully free, but they choose to stay within that culture and accept their life within it? If you choose to be oppressed are you still oppressed? The example we discussed was a woman in an Orthodox Jewish community who is destined (? free will issues here) to be a homemaker, when she could go out and become a career woman if her community allowed her. But who are we to say which is better? Is our "Western" meme of freedom, indivdualism, self-determination, emancipation etc. intrinsically superior to other memes? Are we as a group biased against oppressive, patriarchal religious memes? But are there deeper memes or metanarratives of capitalism, or self-actualisation through achievements rather than relationships/personality, running here which equally need to be critiqued?
And this critique runs in both directions - against the men (and women) who push the meme, not just against the women who would love to transcend their "destiny" in the domestic workplace for the wider marketplace of commerce, industry and ideas.
Notes on the experience of InformalEducation
InformalEducation subverts the corpus of mainstream accepted knowledge. [PauloFreire Freire] wrote against "banking" - the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student. This corpus of knowledge is imbued with the values of the dominant culture, and this process does not easily allow the student to critique the knowledge - or the values.
We found the conversation memorable and inspiring. The process values people's experience and humanity. it's easier to listen to a multi-voice conversation (multilogue?) than to a monologue. It's just simply not as tiring for the brain at a psychological level.
We also were prompted to discuss the benefits of the process for the educator. These included having a process of SynchronousFeedback . This shapes the topic dynamically, and makes the educator also a learner. It develops professional skills for the educator as well, as they have to research the topic extra thoroughly and be able to respond flexibly. plus they can be inspired - the topic can come alive for them.
Misc
Are we able now to begin to critique the power dynamics in our caring roles? Are we able to re-vision our roles as social education roles?
How would this transform our jobs?
What extra skills would we develop, and would we see more success or progress?
To what extent do we use ReflectivePractice techniques in our work and study?
If I don't write stuff down I forget. What about those who are not literate? How can they monitor, reflect and aggregate their learning? Learning through doing. There is a continuum between formal education, through informal education and where is comes out on the other side is perhaps in learning through doing - do we call this Training, or Caring, or Therapy?
InformalEducation links in with the (subversive?) Participation agenda in youth work etc. Youth work is more into this than nursing etc.
Can you have empowerment without education? (Is this mainly semantics?) Is education always empowering? Is knowledge power? You could impart useless knowledge to somebody; that would not be empowering. Or knowledge could be imparted with no way of being used, or without giving the skills to use it. In fact you could impart disempowering knowledge to people. Lots of institutions do this. It keeps the students quiet. Is this education without empowerment? Or, if it doesn't empower, is it therefore by definition not education? Semantics.
There is a dialectic between Knowledge and Skills.
Playwork and Informal Education
Should playworkers, like youth workers, buy into Freire's pedagogic values of informal education? It's tempting to say yes. But there is a school within playwork theory which says that all agendas are inappropriate in playwork. Even the most informal, hands-off social education agenda is external to playwork. There may be restrictions or adulteration because the playworker has educational or quasi-educational agendas, or a need to achieve objectives or even evaluate and get feedback.
Of course, the playworker's process of observation and reflection on play should be asynchronous, part of the role of playworker outside the play frame.
Which agendas are acceptable in playwork? Are there any? Except the core value of prioritising play.
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summary: Thoughts from a session in the Social Education module here at Uni on Paulo Freire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.
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< Thoughts from a session in the Social Education module here at [http://www.glos.ac.uk Uni] on PauloFreire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.
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> <em>Thoughts from a session in the Social Education module here at [http://www.glos.ac.uk Uni] on PauloFreire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.</em>
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< Thoughts from a session in the Social Education module here at [http://www.glos.ac.uk Uni] on PauloFreire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.
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> <em>Thoughts from a session in the Social Education module here at [http://www.glos.ac.uk Uni] on PauloFreire and the pedagogy of the oppressed.</em>