ES 2306:  THEORISING INCLUSIVE  EDUCATION

 

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Last updated 10.11.11.

 

Introduction

 

This session, like all sessions in this half of the modules centres on the following three 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?

 

How does education perpetuate social exclusion?

 

The banking concept of education: an exclusionary narrative

 

Freire observes: ‘Education is suffering from narration sickness’ (52), and asserts:

 

Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. (52-53)

 

What gives rises, not to communication, but rather to narration in the classroom?  Freire answers: ‘the banking concept of education’, of which he writes:

 

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. (53)

 

Freire writes:

 

The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.  The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. (54)

 

In other words, when a student excels at their studies, when they are deemed ‘successful’, they have, in fact, succeeded only in intensifying their own oppression. 

 

The contradiction in the classroom

 

For Freire, The banking concept of education is the manifestation of the contraction between the oppressed and the oppressors in the classroom.  Thus Freire writes: ‘The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors …’ (54).

 

Freire suggests that teachers in the banking concept of education are either consciously or unwittingly operatives in an oppressive of education:

 

Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. (56)

 

The banking concept of education and the individualised view of difficulties in education

 

They are treated as individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality.  These marginals need to be “integrated,” “incorporated” into the healthy society that they have “forsaken.” (55)

 

Such views of the oppressed and excluded act, according to Freire, as smokescreens – they divert attention away from the contradiction between the oppressors and the oppressed.  

 

An exclusionary ontology

 

For Freire, the primary exclusion is ontological exclusion: the denial or suppression of being in the world.  Freire writes:

 

Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator… This view makes no distinction between being accessible to consciousness and entering consciousness. (original emphasis, 57)

 

 

Freire writes: ‘It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that the educator’s role is to regulate the way the world “enters into” the students’ (57)

 

How might education contribute to the creation and continuance of an inclusive community?

 

So, how might we move beyond an oppressive, individualised view of difficulties in education?  Freire asserts:

 

They [the oppressed] have always been “inside” — inside the structure which made them “beings for others.”  The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become “beings for themselves.” (55)

 

The teacher: solidarity in education

 

Of the teacher, Freire asserts:

 

His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations with them.  (56)

 

For Freire, the teacher must become a ‘student among student’ (56).

 

Freire writes, ‘Solidarity requires true communication …’ (58), and:

 

The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking.  The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them.  Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. (original emphasis, 58)

 

In other words, the coming together of students and teachers in solidarity turns, in Freire’s view, on praxis, on persons sharing critical words which give rise to critical thoughts which, in turn, open up possibilities for further, enriching dialogue. 

 

In his clearest statement on the meaning of praxis, Freire writes: ‘Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it’ (60).  This, for Freire, is what is deepest in the human condition: the capacity to reach out, to be with, and to make a difference for the better through that being; hence Freire’s observation: ‘When their efforts to act responsibly are frustrated, when they find themselves unable to use their faculties, people suffer’ (59).

 

Beyond banking education to an education that poses problems

 

“Problem-posing” education, responding to the essence of consciousness — intentionality — … embodies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself … consciousness as consciousness of consciousness. (original emphasis, 60)

 

Inclusive knowing is not simply a way of coming to understand the world; it is, also, a way of being ever more profoundly in the world.  A critical conscious is a conscious that deepens in its knowing of itself as it comes into knowing of the world.  Consciousness includes itself with itself as it includes itself with others. 

 

Problem-posing education, for Freire, involves reaching out to the world, knowing that the world we know is not the only world that can be known:

 

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming — as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. (original emphasis, 65)

 

In Freire’s view, humanisation means ever learning what it means to be human.  Hence Freire concludes: ‘Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it must become’ (original emphasis, 65).

 

 

 

References

 

Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the oppressed (London, Penguin)