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This is AEDT2150U –
Digital Technologies and Advanced Teaching Methods.
The title for this particular video clip is Freirian Pedagogy.
To the oppressed,
and those who suffer with them and fight at their side –
Paolo Freire.
In our experience as learners,
we have all been witness to some kind of injustice in education.
Whether it was the bullied kid in our grade one class,
a co-worker, or even ourselves in some situations,
we have all seen, at one point,
a form of violence in the world of education.
Maybe you felt cheated at one point
because you found out that much of what you had learned in school
was irrelevant in your life.
And when you asked the teacher, "Why are we learning this?"
The reply was, "You'll know later."
And later never came.
Paolo Freire, a Brazilian educator
who lived in political exile for six years,
wrote an enlightening book about this concept,
which he titled, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
In this video capsule,
we will analyze the problem of oppression in education,
and we will try to see what can be done about it.
The analysis questions for this particular video clip
are as follows.
What is the pedagogy of the oppressed?
Describe the two stages of the pedagogy of the oppressed.
How do self-advocacy videos
correspond to the pedagogy of liberation?
Lets start with an analysis of this statement.
We can discuss this more during the tutorial session,
but at the moment, this raises an important question.
How can the oppressed liberate themselves?
One might say that it is with a better pedagogy,
or by understanding the needs
of our weaker learners or our weaker employees,
and trying to be human with them.
But Freire claims that this is an example
of false generosity.
One might also say that it is by helping others,
helping the oppressed break the shackles of their oppression,
and rise to the world of the oppressors.
But Freire would claim
that this is the first stage of the struggle of the oppressed.
Usually it is by becoming oppressors or sub-oppressors themselves.
[page turning]
Let's analyze this quote.
"The very structure of their thought has been conditioned
by contradictions of the concrete, existential situation
by which they were shaped.
Their ideal is to be men,
but for men, to be men is to be oppressors.
This is their model of humanity.
This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed,
at a certain moment of their existential experience,
adopt an attitude of adhesion to the oppressor.
Under ther- these circumstances,
they cannot consider him sufficiently clearly
to objectivize him – to discover him outside themselves.
This does not necessarily mean
that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden.
But their perception of themselves as oppressed
is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression.
At this level, their perception of themselves
as opposites of the oppressor
does not yet signify engagement
in a struggle to overcome the contradictions.
The one pole aspires not to liberation,
but to identification of its opposite pole."
Freire claims that this is the main problem.
The oppressed come to accept that there is oppression,
and in order to stop being oppressed,
they need to become oppressors,
because that is how things are.
They do not want to be liberated,
because they are afraid of what freedom entails,
and that is the responsibility of freedom,
and fighting for that freedom.
According to Freire, there is a solution to this problem.
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings,
participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
There are a few things that can be done.
First, the oppressed must start to see
that the reality of oppression does not have to be permanent.
It can change, and it can be transformed.
And second, the oppressors need to stand
in solidarity with the oppressed,
and realize that they are people who have not been treated rightfully.
These statements look as though I am talking about history,
but in reality, it is still happening today.
I am still seeing teachers in schools
who are appointed to special education classes,
or who are working with people with various disabilities
try to be nice to them, they tolerate them,
but in reality, they would rather teach the gifted.
They are not abusing them,
or they're not dehumanizing them in their perspective,
but they are not really fighting at their side
for a cause that is theirs.
Instead, they try to chunk out the curriculum
to make it more understandable.
Or they try to adapt content to their needs,
and state that if they don't really get it all,
it doesn't really matter,
because they will never be fully functional as citizens.
In other words, these people will never live on their own,
they will never have good jobs,
or maybe they won't even have jobs at all.
They will never consume like others,
and they will never have families.
Maybe they are right, but maybe they are wrong.
Let us analyze another quote.
"The pedagogy of the oppressed,
as a humanist and libertarian pedagogy,
has two distinct stages.
In the first, the oppressed unveil the world of oppression,
and through the praxis, commit themselves to its transformation.
In the second stage,
in which the reality of the oppression has already been transformed,
this pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed,
and becomes a pedagogy of all people
in the process of permanent liberation.
In both stages,
it is always through action in depth
that the culture of domination is culturally confronted.
In the first stage, this confrontation occurs
through the change in the way the oppressed
perceive the world of oppression.
In the second stage,
through the expulsion of the myths
created and developed in the old order,
which like specters, haunts the new
emerging from the revolutionary transformation."
What does this mean in reality?
What does the pedagogy of liberation look like?
I would like to draw your attention to my research
with people living with intellectual disabilities.
I’ve been doing research
with a charitable organization named LiveWorkPlay
in Ottawa.
You can access their website by typing www.liveworkplay.ca.
I've been doing research with this organization since 2004,
and I decided one day to pay a visit
to two adults who had started living on their own
to hear their message.
Let's analyze the example of these self-advocacy videos
and see how they embody the pedagogy of liberation.
So, you can either click on the link in the course outline,
um, or you can type in your browser –
Keenan Wellar and Ann Louise Davidson –
and this should bring you to Keenan Wellar's blog.
The blog entry for that week
is "Everyday Heroes – Meet Your Neighbours."
Or again, the videos are available on my YouTube channel.
The synthesis questions for this video clip are the following.
What are the underlying principles of a pedagogy of liberation
or a pedagogy of emancipation?
What can a designer do
in order to design learning experiences
that are relevant to the learners?
And finally, how do the self-advocacy videos presented
embody the pedagogy of liberation?
How do they liberate?
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