Pedagogy of The Oppressed by Paulo Freire's: The Abused Person and The Education's Needs Theory

Education and Oppression

Paulo Freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” is a dedication to the oppressed individuals and uses the author’s experiences when he taught adult Brazilians. The teacher-student relationship that the author uses as an example aims at showing how colonizers treated the colonized. Freire’s ideas of teaching methods come out clearly in the book to show the author’s success and contribution in discussing the need for the theory of education and the best ways to learn as discussed below.

Freire’s idea of the ideal education helps the audience to learn the need for the theory of education. Countries and educators need the theory to transform their education systems by eliminating the oppressive structures that make teachers appear as colonizing the students. Also, the theory can help in making education, a practice of freedom. Freire suggests that education should lead to equitable relationships that help teachers and students to learn from each other. Freire discourages banking in education that involves the teachers oppressing students and controlling their thinking. Educators need the theory of education to learn the interrelation of concepts and the environment. By knowing the interrelation between students, teachers and environmental contexts, educators that understand the theory of education can use it to design pedagogies that aim at revealing reality to the learners.

Educators and policy-makers also need the theory of education to learn the best way of designing pedagogies based on the students' past experiences. Freire suggests that teachers that are conversant with the theory of education strive to refer to the past experiences of the learners when designing learning goals. He protests the use of the past pedagogies where educators used their goals to teach students and proposes that new pedagogies should be designed after the involvement of the learners to ensure that they do not feel oppressed. Freire’s idea of the theory of education is that it helps the educators in integrating unrelated content in a way that relates to the students’ experiences. The theory of education, as Freire suggests can be helpful in formulating the basis of dialogue between the students and teachers. The author asserts that dialogue should seek to re-humanize students by making teachers develop love for the students.

Concerning the best way to learn, Freire suggests that students learn well through participatory action and dialogue. The former entails finding solutions to problems by gathering data from the environment. In this case, the teacher involves students in generating ideas regarding the problems in the community. Consequently, the teacher allows the learners to collect data from their peers and the environment, then present it to class for further analysis. On the other hand, dialogue entails cultivating deeper understanding between teachers and students as a way of generating knowledge. Freire holds the view that teachers and students should relate as equals to ensure success in learning. The book discourages the idea that dialogue should involve competition of ideas and asserts that learning takes place when students and teachers discuss theories and experiences with the aim of creating knowledge that can be used to generate actions.

Therefore, Freire’s book succeeds in highlighting the importance of education theory and the best ways to learn. The author uses his experiences as a teacher to build the discussion in a way that makes the reader understand the concept of pedagogy and how it relates to the theory of education. The author builds his arguments in clear, logical and coherent manner that enables the audience to easily locate information.