Thoughts on Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

                It would appear that the author disagrees with the so-called “blank-slate” model of education in which students are empty vessels that must be filled with information by a teacher. This model of education does not take into account the experiences that each student comes into the classroom with. Even if each student belongs to the same dominant culture, the experiences that each student has will have an effect on how they relate to the information being provided to them. This means that not every student will not take the information provided in a uniform way. Freire finds it illogical to require students, whom have had so many experiences, to sit and listen without actively considering the information provided. “The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means. . . .”. Providing for students a large amount of information does not equate to their learning because it does not accurately gauge their understanding of it. What assessments do in this sort of situation is simply to test memorization. Simple memorization and repetition are not learning; they can be tools to help the learning process, but they are not learning itself.

                Humans explore, question, and tinker with the world around them, and because of that, models of education which fit this idea fair far better in Freire’s mind. The students should not be patient vessels for the knowledge of a higher power, but true thinkers who interrogate and compute the information that they find around them. In short, this older though often times still used method of learning is not natural, and destroys the natural curiosity that humans possess. If the authoritative figure fades from the classroom and instead is replaced by a community dedicated to actively learning about the world, then students will be truly treated as human beings.