Finally! Some light at the end of this tunnel we call education! Prior to this week I had never heard of Paulo Freire, and boy am I glad we were assigned some of his work this week. I was beginning to think that we would continually discuss what is wrong with education and fantasize about ways to fix it and then move along after the semester as if this class didn’t happen. Freire has provided us with a roadmap to success, if you will, and it is rooted in empowerment!
We can finally move away from this prepackaged culture of education into a world where we challenge our students to be true students absorbing true knowledge as opposed to being poured into by an almighty professor. I absolutely loved what the critical pedagogy in school text said, “The process of learning was inseparable from individual empowerment and social change”. I feel that we are all too quick in this twenty first century to compartmentalize our lives, which effectively removes education from anything not involving a formal lecture.
I truly believe that education should begin for all persons at birth and end only at death. We are depriving ourselves if we are not truly leading a life to gobble up as much knowledge and information as we can obtain. I feel that Freire believed this as well as he was speaking to and working with the terribly oppressed individuals in Chile and in other nations. I am excited to see what parallels my classmates from other background will be able to pull from this week’s literature.
GEDI 
Hi Zach, I can definitely relate to your “finally!” thoughts. My first reaction after being done with this week’s readings was a shiny happy “yezzz!” too. Personally, I feel the need for tangible tools to encourage the students to think critically and am not sure the tools I have are working properly.
For instance, at the beginning of this semester, for the Forum discussions for my online class, I highlighted the aim of encouraging critical thinking, included rubrics, some valuable videos and websites, offered some “tips” to improve critical thinking skills etc. Yet, so far, I am not so very happy with the results (and I don’t want to go to the “meyhhh the students are….” route). Most of the students seem to share ignorance and arrogance as being critical. Providing an alternative view seems to be almost impossible, since they think that I look for an “absolute alternative view”.
A part of me is well aware that critical thinking is a form of counter-conditioning in current banking-based education system, and it takes time to open up the minds for being creative. Yet, another part of me still thinks that there should be techniques like a hammer breaking the ice. I still look for them.. Thanks for bringing those out.
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I had never heard of Freire either, but I completely agree with some of the ideas you make here. You seem quite excited by your “finally” moment, and I also find it exciting to think of everything that could come from de-compartmentalizing our lives and recognizing the education around us rather than limiting education to a lecture.
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Thank you for your post. I totally agree with what you said. Freire not only gave us lectures about what’s going on with education and that it should be fixed, but also gave us tools that can help us make the change happen. Those are things that we should definitely never forget after this class and that we should try to apply them whenever we can.
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Love this cartoon.. I am over here cracking up!! it totally ties in everything your saying. I have never heard of Freire before now but i am also grateful for this weeks reading because now my eyes are open to a number of things and with this knowledge i believe we have tools to take to the classroom to engage students critical thinking and have then in turn be brilliant contributors to the community.
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Thank you for this post, Zach! I loved the sense of “relief” you wrote with; I also understood this week’s readings as a tool for us to propel our future professoriate careers towards change. I agree that education should start at birth and end at death. We have countless opportunities to learn and to help others learn, if we use every chance we get. I think that we can provide students with opportunities to find the relevance in learning in the classroom, and help them continue learning for life by directly applying material to the global perspective.
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