Victor J. Vitanza UT-Arlington, Spring, '00 English 5311 Seminar on Foundations of Rhetoric and Composition

Week #13: My Lecture NO.tes used for the Seminar, Wednesday, 2000, April 12th. Previous Notes, 1-2 weeks | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th&6bth | 7th | 8th | 9th | 11th | 12th "Teaching is suffering from narration sickness [content narrated by the teacher]." (PFreire Pedagogy57) "Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education." (81) The Works (to be studied and discussed): Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.      Supplemental Readings: Berlin, James. "Freirean Pedagogy in the U.S.: A Response." JAC 12 (Fall 1992): 414-421. Berlin, James. "Into the Classroom." In Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996. 115-145. The Meaning/s of the Title, "the pedagogy of the oppressed" There is, I think, a double articulation in the title of the book, which plays to the differences between "banking" as leaching and "problem posing" as teaching. In the first of these ... There is the pedogogy of the oppressed in that 'banking,' as a pedagogy, oppresses, keeps human beings in debt, that is, oppression, keeps them from realizing their call to humanization. In the second ... There is the pedagogy that belongs to the oppressed, the pedagogy that brings about "acts of cognition" or "a praxis: the action and reflection of men [sic] upon their world in order to transform it" (66; boldface mine). We will see that PF has a great deal more, in terms of distinctions, between these two pedagogies. The Ontological Vocation calling us toward Freedom It is crucial to understand what Freire understands to be the source of the oppressed's becoming "beings for themselves" (61). He speaks of the ontological vocation toward freedom. This has two important elements to it: trust in the Logos and trust in "man" (human beings). Richard Shaull, in the foreword, writes: ... I am encouraged when a man of the stature of Paulo Freire incarnates a rediscovery of the humanizing vocation of the intellectual, and demonstrates the power of thought to negate accepted limits and open the way to a new future. Freire is able to do this because he operates on one basic assumption: that man's ontological vocation (as he calls it) is to be a Subject who acts upon and transforms his world, and in so doing moves towards ever new possibilities of fuller and richer life individually and collectively. This world to which he relates is not a static and closed order, a given reality which man must accept and to which he must adjust; rather, it is a problem to be worked on and solved. It is the material used by man to create history, a task which he performs as he overcomes that which is dehumanizing at any particular time and place and dares to create the qualitatively new.... Coupled with this is Freire's conviction ... that every human being, no matter how "ignorant" or submerged in the "culture of silence" he may be, is capable of looking critically at his world in a dialogical encounter with others. (12-13; boldface mine) Freire discusses in various places his notion of "ontological vocation" toward "humanization" (see 61-62). What does "ontological vocation" mean? It means:    Being, through logos [ontological],    calling beings to become human [vocation]. The other notion of trusting man is connected with the idea of no longer "being for others" (for a master in a banking relationship) but human beings "being for themselves." (Yes, this is all very Left Hegelian! Cf. Kojeve.) PF writes: "[T]he humanist, revolutionary educator ... must be imbuded with a profound trust in men [human beings] and their creative power. To achieve this, he must be a partner of the students in his relations with them" (62). But it is important to say it as PF says it: "The truth is ... that the oppressed are not 'marginalized,' are not men living 'outside' society. They have always been 'inside'--inside the structure which made them 'beings for others.' The solution is not to 'integrate' them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become 'beings for themselves' " (61). Special Note: Here you should see that the idea of "integration" is attacked. Why integrate a minority into a majority structure of economic (banking) slavery? Why not--it must be so--change the very structure that holds all human beings so as to realize the ontological vocation toward humanization, "beings for themselves"! Banking vs. Problem Posing, Dialogics (Polylogics), Culture Circles PFreire writes: A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness." The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration--contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity. (57) And he continues: Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the 'banking' concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.... In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance, as justifying the teacher's existence--but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher. The raison d'etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. (58-59) PF continues by establishing what amounts to the Hegelian master/slave dialectic in a series of teacher/student relationships: (a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught; (b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; (c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about; (d) the teacher talks and the students listen--meekly; (e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined; (f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply; (g) the teacher acts and the students have the illustion of acting through the action of the teacher; (h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it; (i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students; (j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. (59) In a necessary reversal, strategic negative deconstruction, the oppressed is to teach. Only the oppressed can liberate itself and the oppressor (28-29; boldface mine). In PF's own words: "No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption" (39). A backward and a forward glance: The banking concept (stages): PF writes: "The banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize everything) distinguishes two stages in the action of the educator. During the first, he congnizes a cognizable object while he prepares his lessons in his study or his laboratory; during the second, he expounds to his students about that object. The students are not called upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated by the teacher. Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than a medium evoking the critical reflection of both teacher and students. Hence in the name of the 'preservation of culture and knowledge' we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture" (67-68). The problem-posing method: "The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student: he is not 'cognitive' at one point and 'narrative' at another. He is always 'cognitive,' whether preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with the students. He does not regard cognizable objects as his private property, but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In this way, the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students--no longer docile listeners--are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers his early considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-solving educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos. Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing educaiton involves a constant unveiling or reality. The former attempts to maintain the oif consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality" (68; PF's emphasis). Note: Here again we can see PF's reliance on and faith in the logos and human beings being called by logos to their freedom. But we can also begin to see his philosophical-rhetorical bias in the split between doxa and "true knowledge, at the level of the logos. (I would have to ask you at this point to go back and relook at Plato's dialogue Sophist, as well as the Pheadrus, which we read and discussed earlier during the 4th week. I am not suggesting that PF is a platonist. I am saying, however, that PF relies heavily on species-genus-differentiae analytics. Reason and its three principles. The choice is not just between 'banking' and 'problem-posing.' There are other alternatives.) Praxis: reflection and action: "As we attempt to analyze dialogue as a human phenomenon, we discover something which is the essence of dialogue itself: the word. But the word is more than just an instrument which makes dialogue possible; accordingly, we find two dimensions, reflection and action, in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed--even in part--the other immediaely suffers. There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world. An unauthentic word, one which is unable to transform reality, results when dichotomy is imposed upon its constitutive elements. When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, reflection automatically suffers as well; and the word is changed into idle chatter, into verbalism, into an alienated and alienating 'blah.' It becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without a commitment to transform and there is no transformation without action" (75-76; boldface mine; Cf. KB in GM, "dialectics of tragedy," which is in reverse syntax from PF's dialectic: For KB, one acts, one suffers, one learns). Culture circles, Thematic universe and generative theme: Here PF begins with History (human beings make history [Marx's 18th Brummaire]) moves to Epoch (a complex of ideas) and then to Themes. He writes: "historical themes are never isolated, independent, disconnected, or static; they are always interacting dialectically with their opposites. NOr can these themes be found anywhere except in the men-word (sic) relationship. The complex of interacting themes of an epoch constitutes its 'thematic universe' " .... [T]he themes both contain and are contained in limit-situations; the tasks they imply require limit-acts (92). The themes can be seen as "generative themes." He writes: "I consider the fundamental theme of our epoch to be that of domination--which implies its opposite, the theme of liberation, as the objective to be achieved" (93). And there is "the theme of silence. The theme of silence suggests a structure of mutism in face of the overwhelming force of the limit-situations" (97). The Methodology, Semiotics at Work An Example of a problem situation and semiotic analysis (themes, culture circles, coding and decoding): PF explains: "Let us say, for example, that a group has the responsibility of coordinating a plan for adult education in a peasant area with a high percentage of illiteracy. The plan includes a lieracy campaign and a post-literacy phase. During the former stage, problem posing education seeks out and investigates the 'generative word,' in the post literacy stage, it seeks out and investigates the 'generative theme' " (101). We are moving from Situation to Themes. The first stage requires that the investigators (a) get people to agree on a meeting, (b) explain their objectives, and (c) call for volunteers. The investagators study a scene. Thereafter, the investagators begin to observe (as ethnographers). They are attempting a common, yet "critical perception of the world, which implies a correct method of approaching reality in order to unveil it. And critical perception cannot be imposed.... During their visits, the investigators set their critical 'aim' on the area under study, as if it were for them an enormous, unique, living 'code' to be deciphered. They regard the area as a totality, and visit upon visit attempt to 'split' it by analyzing the partial dimensions which impress them" (102-103). He continues, this time addressing the first part of the second stage: "During the decoding stage, the investigators observe certain moments of the life of the area--sometimes disrectly, sometimes by means of informal conversations with the inhabitants. They register everything in their notebooks, including apparently unimportant items: the way the people talk, their style of life, their behavior at church and at work. They record the idiom of the people: their expressions, their vocabulary, and their syntax (not their incorrect pronunciation, but rather the way they construct their thought). It is essential that the investigators observe the area under varying circumstances: labor in the fields, meetings of a local association (noting the behavior of the participants, the language used, and the relations between the officers and the members), the role played by women and by young people, liesure hours, games and sports, conversations with people in their homes (noting examples of husband-wife and parent-child relationships). No activity must escape the attention of the investigators during the initial survey of the area" (103-104). Eventually the investagators "draw up a brief report to be discussed by the entire team, in order to evaluate the preliminary findings of both the professional investigators and the local assistants.... The evaluation meeting represents the second [part of the second] stage in the decoding of the unique living code" (104). Reports are exchanged and then counterreports are written and exchanged, etc. Revision are central until their is a sense of uninimity. While they are looking through the reports, they are looking for contradictions. The investigators look for the inhabitants' "awareness of these contradictions." "Intrinsically, these contradictions constitute limit-situations, involve themes, and indicate tasks. If individuals are caught up in and are unable to separate themselves from these limit-situations, their theme in reference to these situations is fatalism, and the task implied by the theme is the lack of a task. Thus, although the limit-situations are objective realities which call forth needs in individuals, one must investigate with these individuals their level of awareness of these situations" (105; boldface mine). PF gives us a primary example of a Limit-Situation as a Scene: "In one of the thematic investigations carried out in Santiago, a group of tenement residents discussed a scene showing a drunken man walking on the street and three young men conversing on the corner. The group participants commented that 'the only one there who is productive and useful in his country is the souse who is returning home after working all day for low wages and who is worried about his family because he can't take care of their needs. He is the only worker. He is a decent worker and a souse like us' " (111). PF continues: "There are two important aspects to these declaration. On the one hand, they verbalize the connection between earning low wages, feeling exploited, and getting drunk--getting drunk as a flight from reality, as an attempt to overcome the frustration of inaction, as an ultimately self-destructive solution. On the other hand, they manifest the need to rate the drunkard highly. He is the 'only one useful to his country, because he works, while the others only gab.' After praising the drunkard, the participants then identify themselves with them, as workers who also drink--'decent workers' " (111-112). Contradiction! What to do...? I am going to stop at this point since time is running out prior to seminar. We will continue with a fuller discussion of Praxis (see ch. 4). NOtes15 >>>>