ES 2306: THEORISING
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Pablo Freire: school, society and the repetition of exclusion
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outline,
last updated 02.11.11.
In this, the second half of the module we attend to the following questions:
§ What is an exclusionary society?
§ How does education perpetuate social exclusion?
§ How might education contribute to the creation and continuance of an inclusive community?
We turn, first, to the writings of Paulo Freire, who connects inclusion to humanisation and liberation and exclusion to dehumanisation and oppression.
What is an exclusionary society?
The unnatural contradiction
For Freire, the exclusionary society is the divided society, the society characterised by ‘the oppressor-oppressed contradiction’ (31).
Dehumanisation
The consequence of this contradiction is the dehumanisation of both the oppressed and the oppressors.
Freire connects dehumanisation to passiveness.
One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription… the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor. (28-29)
However, in this process, ‘the oppressor … is himself dehumanized because he dehumanizes others’ (29).
To exclude the other is, in other words, always and at the same time to exclude the self. Hence, Freire writes of the oppressors: ‘their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves’ (41); and, echoing Fromm, states that they, ‘no longer are; they merely have’ (original emphasis, 42).
How does education perpetuate social exclusion?
According to Freire, both the oppressed and the oppressors have false views of liberation.
The view of the oppressed: liberation to oppress
What is the aim of an education for liberation, of the pedagogy of the oppressed? Is it to liberate the many so they might be like the few? Freire writes:
[T]he oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.”... Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. (27)
Moreover, he writes of the oppressed: ‘They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized’ (30).
The view of the oppressor: an individualised view of liberation
What is required is not, according to Freire, an education that focuses on the individual – not, that is, an education which seeks to alter the disaffected, the excluded and the marginalised, but an education that tackles the causes of disaffection, exclusion and marginalisation. Thus Freire says:
For the oppressors … it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call “the oppressed” but — depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not — “those people” or “the blind and envious masses” or “savages” or “natives” or “subversives”) who are disaffected, who are “violent,” “barbaric,” “wicked,” or “ferocious” when they react to the violence of the oppressors. (38)
Here Freire suggests that a deficiency view of the oppressed acts as a smokescreen, a way of diverting attention from the dehumanising contradiction which polarises persons, and making the many the problem.
How might education contribute to the creation and continuance of an inclusive community?
Two stages of the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’:
1. The oppressed and those who work with them become critical of ruling illusions and commit to transformative action;
2. The overcoming of contradiction: ‘a pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation’ (36).
Beyond illusions: Education for humanisation
What is needed, Freire claims, is for persons to break free from illusions. Persons must come to the realisation that ‘dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order ...’ (original emphasis, Freire, 1970/1996: 26).
Freire argues that the oppressed must be liberated from what he sees as the delusion that to be free from oppression is to be free to oppress. Freire insists:
[T]he oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both. (26)
Freire’s writes:
The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization. (30)
Liberation, for Freire then, is for humanity, and not against one class of persons. Hence, Freire’s conclusion: ‘This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well’ (26).
Those who strive to undo the contradiction that separates and dehumanises persons must themselves move beyond what Freire calls the ‘false generosity’ that leads them to ‘remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates …’ (36).
How to shatter dominating illusions? Freire on praxis
Praxis is the coming together of subjectivity and objectivity. It stands in opposition to a division between the subjective, thinking will and the objectivity, acting body. It is concerned with the person in their totality. It is in ‘this interdependence’ that Freire locates ‘an authentic praxis … without which it is impossible to resolve the oppressor-oppressed contradiction’ (33-34). In other words:
§ How we act influences the way we think and the way we think influences the how we act;
§ Only when we change both our thinking and acting can we overcome oppression
Thus, Freire argues:
[T]he oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality. A mere perception of reality not followed by this critical intervention will not lead to a transformation of objective reality. (33)
Liberation as praxis: its two dimensions
Ontological |
Historical |
|
|
Critical consciousness |
Critical action |
Being |
Becoming |
To overcome the dehumanising contradiction persons must change the way they are in the world (ontological change) and the way they act in the world (change at the historical level).
Praxis is the coming together of these two dimension, it is ‘a totality of reflection and action’ (49). And, praxis is the way to liberation:
At all stages of their liberation, the oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. (47-48)
Ontological change in the oppressor:
Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were. (43)
Ontological change in the oppressed:
the oppressor whose image they have internalized. Accordingly, until they concretely “discover” their oppressor and in turn their own consciousness, they nearly always express fatalistic attitudes towards their situation. (43)
Praxis and the oppressed
Of the educative power of the oppressed to humanise the oppressors, Freire asserts:
As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression. (38)
And: ‘It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors’ (38).
Praxis and the oppressors
Freire says:
The oppressor is solitary with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor — when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. (31)
Praxis as the living of responsibility
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. (29)
Freire reaches the conclusion:
A revolutionary leadership must accordingly practice co-intentional education. Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. (51)
References
Freire, P. (1970/1996) Pedagogy of the oppressed (London, Penguin)