This is where red flags might be going up for some people, and for a good reason. Human culture can vary dramatically around the globe, from the Bushman of the Kalahari to the Inuit in the Arctic to the industrialized western societies – we have all developed different subsistence strategies, political organizations, kinship patterns, religious beliefs, etc. In fact, for Freire, the ability to shape and create culture is what makes us “human” and what really makes Freire’s ideas liberatory. Instead, we humans, as participants in communities and societies are not only reproducing culture but also actively creating and shaping it.
My goal in this brief blog post is to attempt to distill what I believe are the most valuable concepts from Pedagogy of the Oppressed for Community Workers.įreire’s philosophy, at its core, is existentialist, which is the belief that the norms, values, ideas, and practices that define our culture are not fixed or preordained. His influence is widespread but I find that very few community workers understand how to apply his concepts at a practical level. Yet his work remains as relevant as ever and continues to be cited in academic books and journals. Pedagogy of the Oppressed was first published in 1968, with the English version being released just two years later. Numerous scholars and activists have pointed out how his ‘leaden philosophical prose’ tends to obfuscate the practicality of work.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is also difficult to read. By comparison, I gave the book to a friend who grew up in Ethiopia she said she couldn’t put it down and how it explained so much to her about the world.
It’s not surprising I didn’t get it on the first read, considering I’m a white male who grew up in an upper-middle-class household in the United States. It wasn’t until I reread it several years after working with Indigenous communities in North and South America that I could finally appreciate its relevance. Like most people, when I first read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I didn’t get it.
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