Assignment 1b

Until now I had never heard of Paulo Friere. He was a very interesting man. I admire many of his beliefs on education. Particularly how he views teachers and students as a relationship with respect.

Paulo Friere was a Brazilian Educationalist who wrote a book called "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". He was born in 1921 to a middle class family and he lived thru the deppression and became very familiar with poverty and hunger.His Book is currently one of the most quoted books. He had many theoretical innovations which has had a huge impact on the development of education.

He believes that education should be "informal" or "dialogical". He believes in "the essence of education as the practice of freedom". In other words, it is more than the teacher giving a lecture and the student learning from that. He believes that the students and teachers form a relationship and learn to respect one another in order to learn from each other. He feels that it should not involve one person acting on another. Instead, people should work with each other. Learning involves mutual respect and cooperation in order to flurish.

He also rejected the "banking" theory. This theory says that students are like an empty bank and it is the teachers job to fill their accounts. He does not agree with this. He believes that this theory dehumanizes both the teachers and the students. Instead, he believes in the "authentic" approach which is people are incomplete and must be aware of their own incompleteness. Then they may thrive to find their completeness.

Where I found my info:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed