Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Chapter 2

Freire’s work is very impressive because of the way that he constructs his thoughts of our pedagogical system to portray a deep philosophical understanding of certain themes and methods that are used in the teacher-student relationship. In this chapter, Freire shares his thoughts about the ideal way in which a teacher should approach a relationship with their students. The main idea here is that teachers should be a “student among students.” He suggests that people of power in the educational world (the oppressors) have advocated a “bank-clerk” teaching approach in which teachers have their student’s record, memorize, and repeat class content without them perceiving what that content actually means in the large scope of things. Instead, educators should be using a “problem-posing” approach in which we teach our students (the oppressed) to think critically on their own. I can think of many instances throughout high school where I was limited in my own free thinking and my understanding of a certain topic only went as far as the multiple choice questions would allow me to. I have been in classrooms where the teacher assumes that they know everything and the students know nothing. Situations like this in my own life help me understand what Freire means when he says “oppressed” in this context. Students everywhere are being taught this way so that they can be a better fit in the world, but this just creates students that do not know how to think on their own. It is troubling to think that our future generations might be taught in such a way that limits their free thinking. This chapter makes it clear that all educators need to structure their class in a way that allows students to think freely so that teachers and students can “become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”