[iDC] Lessons to Be Learned From Paulo Freire as Education Is Being Taken Over by the Mega Rich

[sergio basbaum]

Dear Trebor and IDCs,

It is amazing to see Freire's name invoked in this list.

Freire belongs to a great generation of Brazilian intelectuals and artists,
who had courage to develop very original paths of thinking, and I count him
with names like Celso Furtado, Darci Ribeiro, Helio Oiticica, Lygia Clark
and Glauber Rocha, for example -- people who were very independent and
pointed directions for Brazil to be a fair, creative and innovative society.

Military dictatorship has dismounted this energy for sometime, and --
although the subject is quite complex --, younger generations inherited a
cultural environment with quite low self-esteem, dominated, as it was, by
(neo) liberal discourses that devoured the country's  landscape during the
80's and 90's.

It should not be counted as a coincidence that such names like Paulo Freire
may be invoked at the same time as the country breathes new perspectives
under the new visions and forces that have been animating the country in the
last years.

Education and learning are, first of all, a matter sense: people wants to
live in a world which makes sense to them, and students learn immediately
what makes sense in their lives -- anything you say in a classroom that
connects with one's effort to make sense of her/his life will be remembered
for a long time.

Freire noticed anf formalized this, while interested in helping people to be
autonomous individuals, and not just labor-force for a world order which
makes sense just for others.

In my modest opinion, one of the main challenges we have in this intense
times we're living, is to build a world which is meaningful and makes sense
in the most plural way for everybody. I doubt this is what's going on. But
antyway, education and knowledge are certainly a matter  of sense and not of
neurons.

best for all
s


On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Trebor Scholz <scholzt at newschool.edu>wrote:

> Lessons to Be Learned From Paulo Freire as Education Is Being Taken Over
> by the Mega Rich
>
> <
> http://www.truth-out.org/lessons-be-learned-from-paulo-freire-education-is-being-taken-over-mega-rich65363
> >
>
>
> Tuesday 23 November 2010
> by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
>
> “For Freire, pedagogy was central to a formative culture that makes both
> critical consciousness and social action possible. Pedagogy in this
> sense connected learning to social change; it was a project and
> provocation that challenged students to critically engage with the world
> so they could act on it.”
>
> “What Freire made clear is that pedagogy at its best is not about
> training in techniques and methods, nor does it involve coercion or
> political indoctrination. Indeed, far from a mere method or an a priori
> technique to be imposed on all students, education is a political and
> moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills and social relations
> that enable students to explore for themselves the possibilities of what
> it means to be engaged citizens, while expanding and deepening their
> participation in the promise of a substantive democracy.”
>
> “Critical pedagogy, for Freire, meant imagining literacy as not simply
> the mastering of specific skills, but also as a mode of intervention, a
> way of learning about and reading the word as a basis for intervening in
> the world.”
>
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-- 
-- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
-- Coord. Tecnologia e Mídias Digitais
-- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)



-- 
-- Prof. Dr. Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum
-- Coord. Tecnologia e Mídias Digitais
-- Pós-Graduação Tec.da Inteligência e Design Digital - TIDD (PUC-SP)
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