Literacy: Reading the Word and the World

Rating:
Summary: I've Read the Word and the Word Sucks
Review: Paulo Freire limits his impact on the field of education by restricting his discourse on pedagogy to politics and epistemology and the necessary connection between the two. His metaphysical beliefs (which also necessarily impact his politics, ethics and epistemology) are left to the reader's conjecture in this book, but his writings suggest a belief in both an objective reality and mysticism. This fusion offers nothing new and is common to both religious individuals and atheistic Marxists/realists. It is the dominant ideology of the world. People who believe in the supernatural have a god or god who can create miracles, upset the laws of nature we observe and disobey the laws of logic. Marxists may also believe in an objective reality but replace a mystic god with an equally mystic "society" that cannot be defined except by circumstance. They consistently ignore the laws of human nature by damning self-interest and inflicting civic duties.

By addressing the problems of literacy and social structure from a blended metaphysical foundation, Freire does not need to make logical inferences to support his position and can resort to faith or prescribed dogma for his rationale. Contradictions, impermissible in a logical, purely objective philosophy, are allowable in his. Why is it acceptable for Freire to impose his ethics and make it our duty to work for social justice? Why is a government's interest in one class of people wrong but in another class admirable? (p64) What exactly is a collective social conscience and how can one exist? (p48) Why is it wrong to compel students to learn their colonizer's language but permissible to teach students to read by replacing Dick and Jane with Karl and Frederick? Freire makes assertions which his philosophy permits circumventing justification. They are supposedly self-evident givens.

His discussion of the necessity of politics being a component of education (which is true but the other branches of philosophy: ethics, aesthetics, epistemology and metaphysics are as well) is absent of dialogue on whether political beliefs can be moral or immoral and the consequences of validating the propagation of immoral politics. If the political views of the dominant power are moral, regardless of whether educators are critical or astutely naïve of their practices, and individuals choose whether or not they or their children will learn these ideas, there is no oppression and no dilemma to resolve. If the politics of the dominant power are immoral and are being imposed upon individuals, as is the case in our current global situation, we need a revolution - not the political revolution Freire seeks but a lasting, metaphysical one.

Freire recognizes the danger of the dominant culture monopolizing education, but rather than proposing decentralizing the field to reduce the control and impact of those in power, he wants to transfer power from one group to another. He wants to use the public school forum for social change. The "Popular Culture Notebooks" are filled with same communist rhetoric shared by role models Freire cites in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Marx, Lenin, Castro and Mao Tse-tung. Oppression of one group will just be replaced with oppression of another. History has shown this to be exactly what happens.

Additionally, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World offers no new ideas for pedegogical practices. The dialogue in which Freire wants us to engage with our students is Lev Vygotsky's mandate for effective teachers. Vygotsky speaks to constructing an inclusionary classroom where learning disabled, gifted and those in between (including the instructor) learn from each other in an environment crafted by the teacher. The school's role then becomes helping students develop a conscious awareness of language.

Recognizing students' autonomy and respecting them as individuals was eloquently implored by Maria Montessori. Both she and Freire disapproved of authority figures imposing their ideas onto passive students. Both she and Freire worked with poverty-stricken students, but while Freire wanted educators to help the oppressed learn to define and understand his idea of the world, Montessori wanted educators to arrange an environment where students would develop the ability to self-educate. Montessori, recognized by UNESCO along with Freire, writes of how education is liberatory but on an individual level - not as a component of Freire's Marxist revolutionary agenda.

Freire also implores educators to use "their students' cultural universe as a point of departure" (p127). Disparate educational theorists John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky would concur. While Dewey fits less seamlessly with Freire, his directive that education be both active and contextual does meld with Freire's praxis. Vygotsky's constructivist model for literacy identifies the need to begin knowledge building within a student's zone of proximal development where they can actively construct meaning through inference. Vygotsky's praxis of organizing knowledge is more general than Freire's call to arms. Freire compels citizens to learn and then use what they learn as a means by which to fight for his social ideal.

Freire is right that education should be student-centered, that knowledge should begin with the contextual and that a student's culture should be validated. He is also correct that many problems we confront are political, but he is wrong to remain on a political level while waging his war. You cannot change the world through politics. It must be addressed at the more fundamental metaphysical level first - and there, Freire offers nothing to the revolution.