Pedagogy of the oppressed is a term which means to educate the oppressed people to liberate them form the oppressors. This term was first used by Paulo Freire. He was a renowned for Brazilian Philosopher and educator and best known for his one of the famous books, named “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.
The book by Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a way to deal with training and sorting out to change severe structures and make a fairer, mindful and delightful world through activity and reflection that is co-made with the individuals who have been minimized and dehumanized. Initially distributed in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was deciphered and distributed in English in 1970. The system of the late Paulo Freire has enabled innumerable devastated and uneducated individuals all through the world. Grounded as far as Freire can tell showing devastated and uneducated understudies in his local Brazil and over the world, this spearheading book rather proposes that through co-activity, exchange and basic reasoning, each individual can build up a feeling of self and satisfy their entitlement to be heard. In short, Pedagogy of the Oppressed is education as a practice of freedom, which Freire contrasts with education as a practice of domination.
In the education sector, the tradition of being oppressed is a common thing. Even from the very beginning, the whole education system follows a single rule. This rule sets the teacher as the supreme authority at the classroom, the only source of knowledge and the way of distributing knowledge is one sided or the top to bottom process. Here teachers can only share their knowledge, experience and only they can set the process educating their students.
This traditional process has some long term effects on the students. As Paulo every students is different from one another, everybody has their own point of view and every body of them has different experiences. And these experiences made their process of learning different. But in the traditional system, as the teacher sets the process of students learning, the students can’t learn to open up their mind, can’t practice to think critically, and can’t have the opportunity to learn by relating the topics with their experiences. They start to bind their area of thinking and learning in a certain limit. They don’t even know they are losing the power to think outside the box.
In most of the educational institute, teachers insists their primary level students to memorize the topics. They often try explain them the inside out of the topic, which is one of the most primary process of learning. These process can be used for kids. But when these students are being promoted to the secondary level, the only thing they change is the classroom. The learning and teaching process still remains the same. This is the step when memorizing is not a standard process of learning stuffs. This is the time when students need to take part in the knowledge distribution process. They must share their ideas, experiences, knowledge and teachers should encourage them to do so. But the real life scenario is just the opposite. Here no matter how mature the students are, they have to fall in lines and accept the process that the teachers set. They have no right to think, talk or sometimes they have no chance to share their views.
I was in Bangla medium school till class 5. I never knew that Bangla medium’s education system is so wired to the old education system where you were asked to memorize instead of learning in an interactive way, until my father threw me into English medium school to start from standard 6. It was very hard for me to understand any of the subjects I came across at first. I had trouble understanding the lectures in the class. I was also told not to speak in Bangla inside the school premises. I actually did not know how to speak in English at all as I was unfamiliar with this whole English medium educational system. As in the English medium schools of our country contains a fewer students in a class than the Bangla medium schools, the class were much more interactive and teachers can give more time and effort for each and every students. Comparing with my previous school, I came to know that only memorizing can’t be the only way to enquire proper education. For mature students only memorizing can cause the limitation for their ability to free the brain and think critically or outside the box.
Here Paulo Freire came forward and as he was an educator, he came up with several ways to liberate these oppressed students from the traditional process of oppression. For him, every students is different from one another, everybody has their own point of view and every body of them has different experiences. And the teaching process should be an interactive process. Here teachers should encourage students to give their opinions and share things with the class about the topic.
The solution which Paulo gave to upgrade the education system, is to share knowledge among the teacher and the students. In the classroom environment, this can be done by group discussion, adding interactive sessions in the class time and in some other ways. One of the most important way to liberate the oppressed students is to add the term called ‘collective intelligence’ in the learning and teaching method. According to the definition, Collective Intelligence (CI) is shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts, and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making. In this term, every individuals are the source of knowledge. And together they can share their knowledge with each other and this can be implemented by a simple step called group discussion. Here teacher and the students share their thoughts and knowledge with each other which helps them widen their knowledge by contributing collectively. Here everybody is equal instead of sharing knowledge and there is no longer a person as the only source of knowledge for the whole class. This process helps students to think more critically and free their brain as the sky is the limit.
References:
- Wikipedia – Collective Intelligence
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