Hi lovlies!
Reading week is upon me and since I want to get really good grades this year I’m reading some extra stuff that might be helpful with my essays for Christmas and spring. Speaking of Christmas; since Halloween is over like overnight Christmas has popped up EVERYWHERE! I went to Costa Coffee today and the Christmas cups are here. My cup had the biggest snowman and I was kind of surprised since I’m just not there yet. I know people say that when Halloween is over then Christmas pops up over here, but I was still a little surprised haha. Now, from the back of the book I’ve finished:
‘Knowledge emerges only through…the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in this world’.
Arguing that ‘educations is freedom’, Paulo Freire’s radical international classic contends that traditional teaching styles keep the poor powerless by treating them as passive, silent recipients of knowledge. Grounded in Freire’s own experience teaching impoverished and illiterate students in his native Brazil and the world over, this pioneering book instead suggests that through co-operation, dialogue and critical thinking, every human being can develop a sense of self and fulfil their right to be heard.
This book is super short. It only has four chapters and 156 pages. I’ve been reading this book for my Policing the State class and I found the first chapter most useful in that sense. The first chapter speaks about the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressors. This is a relationship that exists on so many different levels in society. It can be between parents and children or government and the people. It has been existing ever since man developed. I found it interesting how Freire explained it and I could relate it to other classes that I also have this year which is always useful. I think that maybe not everyone actually pays attention to how relationships like these exist in society today. They are definitely present, but maybe they are somewhat disguised as something else? I know I haven’t put too much thought into this kind of relationships, but it definitely made me think about it both in present and historical terms.
Another thing I found interesting was how Freire explained education in chapter two. From what he explained there are two versions of educating people; banking concept and the problem-posing concept. In the banking concept, the teacher basically crams the students head full of information and they just have to remember and repeat it, not thinking about it critically. The more information is crammed into the students heads the better the teacher. In the problem-posing concept teacher and students works together and think about things critically which makes the students and the teacher more equal. The teacher also learns from the students. The reason I found this interesting was something my mom said while I was still in high school. She pointed out that when she was in school it was more about learning and remembering, whilst now it seemed like we had to think more critically about things. We had to argue and discuss things in our essays and not just repeat what we were told in class. I think it is very important to think about things you learn critically and not just take everything for good information. I even had a teacher last year who said to be critical to what he said in class even though he had taught that class for several years.
Published: 1968
Genre: Education
Theme: Education, dominance, revolution, learning, teaching
– The Book Reader
TheBookReader 