Product Review
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the English translation of Brazilian educator, Paulo Freires book. It presents the concepts like the important exploration of dialogue and the possibilities for laboratory practice, the highly influential notion of banking education, exploring education as cultural action and highlights the contrasts between education forms that treat people as objects rather than subjects.
In his books, Friere presents a general critique of education that provides an analysis which challenged the neutrality of the technological model dominant in American schools. He also provides arguments that any curriculum which ignores racism, sexism, the exploitation of workers, and other forms of oppression at the same time supports the status quo. He believes that this inhibits the expansion of consciousness and blocks creative and liberating social action for change.
In this book, Freire suggested dialogue and critical thinking as a substitute for "banking" education in which the riches of knowledge were deposited in the empty vault of a learner's mind. He suggested several pedagogical techniques based on the mass literacy campaigns that he organized in Brazil and Chile. These are campaigns that introduced broadly defined programs of revolution and social change.
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