ASSIGNMENT #2 ON PAULO FREIRE. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS

These questions cover both chapters we are to read (some 46 pages of the Freire book).

Assignment 5B. Total value = 200 points.

The assignment is due Monday, April 17th.

Please be sure to number your replies. Also please be sure to put your name at the top the e-mail. Thanks.

1. This question is about the concept of "prescribing."
   1. What does Freire mean by the oppressors "prescribing" for the rest of us? What is this process? How does it work? Give concrete examples of your own and at least one from Freire.
      10 points
   2. What is Freire's argument against "prescribing?"
      15 points.
   3. Take a firm stand. Is Freire's argument satisfactory or not. Be clear and give rigorous reasons to support your belief.
      50 points.
2. This question is about the "plot" theory in connection with the oppressed. Do they oppress with conscious intent or not? What are the subtleties of this issue? "
   

   Freire seems to lean in two directions at once.

   In part he talks as though the use of the banking method as a tool of social control is quite consciously chosen as such by some people, but they are never identified. On the other hand, in the partial second sentence above, he makes is crystal clear that many people, including many teachers, use this method and unknowingly achieve all the evil outcomes he seems, but have no idea they are so betraying their students.

   So which is it? Is this whole "oppressor" behavior a plot theory in which some power elite sets out to control the rest of us, or is this something much more subtle, which has the IMPACT of making most of us oppressed and others oppressors (and note, some of us both oppressed and oppressors in different areas of our lives)?

   The actual question:

   After reading the two chapters in Freire, write a carefully argued position paper on this issue. On Freire's view, is this conscious plot theory or not, or what is going on in his writing in this regard. Be sure to cite your textual evidence clearly as you defend your thesis.
   75 points.

   Some actual quotes from Freire to bear in mind.
   • The "humanism" of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons -- the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human.
   • Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize),. . .
   • Later on he says: Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.
   • Even later yet: Unfortunately, those who espouse the cause of liberation are themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which generates the banking concept, and often do not perceive its true significance or its dehumanizing power. Paradoxically, then, they utilize this same instrument of alienation in what they consider an effort to liberate. Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries" those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them.

3. This is a question about humanization, or the meaning of life, or the vocation of humans.

   Through out the text of both chapters Freire asserts that "being fully human" is the true vocation of human beings (the meaning of life, if you will).

   However, he gives relatively little (actually I think NO) reasons to think this is so.

   1. Make as clear and concrete as you can the MEANING of Freire's mandate that becoming "truly human" is our life vocation
      15 points.
   2. Take a FIRM stand. Is Freire right or wrong about this, and DEFEND your claim with careful arguments.
      35 points.

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