The title of this book is so appropriate. As Mr. Freire states in the first paragraph, “Do the people have the right or not, in the process of taking their history into their hands, to develop another kind of language as a dimension of those who have the power?” This statement is one of the most powerful insights I have ever heard on the topic of education.
What struck me in the first paragraph was the simple intensity of the statement. Mr. Freire has obviously studied the dynamics of education and its outcomes. The belief that a good education requires three basic elements: love for people, respect for people's abilities to shape their own lives, and the capacity to value others' experiences. Mr. Horton expands on this theory with his idea of “starting where people are,” not where he is. What a concept. Teaching in the lower grades has become so wrote. Teachers are teaching math and they are not mathematicians, teachers are teaching music and they are not musicians. How can education be an education when each child is so individual and their learning abilities are on different levels? If education is to help with social change, especially for poorer students whose ability to learn has not been valued, the system needs to be radically changed. As each of the authors pointed out, it is not just for one child, it is for the “universal right.”
One of the questions we are to answer is: “Is there knowledge without practice?” Knowledge encompasses experience that we garner when we are educated. Acquiring knowledge involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning According to Mr. Freire no, there is no knowledge without practice. This makes perfect sense to me. If we are being taught, say math, if we do not practice it, we will not have the knowledge we need to do the problems.
The question, “how do we change ourselves in order to change the world,” strikes a chord within me. If we are tolerant, listen to other ideas, be patient with outcomes, become involved with making a difference in our communities and stay committed to these beliefs, we can change the world one step at a time.
I found the reading very informative but also hard to stay focused. I wasn’t losing my focus do to the Super Bowl but more to the style of the writing. I am not that big a fan of twelve plus pages worth of a conversation. I know it was full of ideas and other insights to take away and use in my life, but again the style was different from anything I have ever read. I felt like I should have brought in a cast of friends and had them play the parts of Paulo and Myles and I may have taken more away from this, but that idea didn’t come until the end and it was too late to try and talk my friends into that idea. My favorite part of the conversation was Paulo’s question on pg 104. It was about teaching in a neutral way, about trying to “teach Biology without discussing social conditions.” I also like Myles answer. “You have the responsibility to put whatever you’re teaching in a social context, relating it to society not just acting as if it had nothing to do with people.” I personally love it when teachers teach topics they feel strongly for whether it’s the same view as mine or the opposite. I actually hope the teacher has a different view or opinion than me because I can take more out of what they are teaching. At the same time, a history teacher needs to go over the facts of history while comparing it to current events or saying how a certain event shaped the future to what it is now. I am not sure if that is what Myles was trying to state, he did use a lot more words but I think that was the main point of it. Currently I think there is too much censoring by teachers to just teach facts. It doesn’t matter what the topic is. History teachers I had left out things because it might upset some student based on their ethnicity. I understand the want to not hurt feelings but, as a student to see and hear a teacher skip over a lot of civil rights info because it may hurt someone’s feelings is just a cop out. Even in biology teachers skip over information about Global Warming or climate change or whatever we are calling it now because it may go against someone else’s opinion. Teachers need to go against opinions of others. If we only learned one way of thinking, and taught to never question or doubt other ideas, we would become rather incompetent. To sum up everything, I think we need teachers and professors of every level to teach what they feel and let the students decide what is right or wrong in our opinions. Don’t let social norms like P.C. rule the way we do things.
ReplyDeleteI found the the reading to be facinating, but also difficult to follow. I found myself reading it a second time to get a better grasp on the text. After the second time it begin to come together. I gather that the focus on the reading is the develop a better understanding of how to seek better methods of teaching and learning for the embetterment of society as whole.
ReplyDeleteIn the reading "We Make the Road by Walking" by Myles Horton and Paulo Freier, both Freire and Horton have an ongoing conversation on bout how education and social change cannot be taught separately. Paulo goes on to say that society has this ongoing circle of knowledge that can never be broken because people do not question what else is out there in the world. “This is precisely because knowledge always is becoming. That is, if the act of knowing has historicity, then today’s knowledge about something is not necessarily that same tomorrow. Knowledge is changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes” (101). Then Myles goes on to say how we should never be neutral. For someone to be neutral that means that that they go with what the majority of the people have to say because they’re are afraid to express their own opinion. Then the people who express their opinions and try to put their beliefs upon others are doing more damage than help. People need to focus more on the structural changes rather than changing other peoples hearts. We need to bring our own sense and values and importance relying on others to make a decision for us.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though through this reading Horton and Freir want us to realize that conversations on social change cannot be separate from education. It is nearly impossible to become and educator and be neutral. We as individuals need to stand up for our rights and what we believe in just like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King did. People need to stop following what the majority of the population has to say and choose a side which express what they most believe in. Questioning everything that was ever taught to you is a way to start because in order to move forward you need to understand the past.