Assignment 1B

Paulo Freire is a renowned educator and theorist of education who experience poverty and hunger firsthand during the 1929 Great Depression at the age of 9. He enrolled in a law school later in life but focused primarily on philosophy, specifically phenomenology, and the psychology of language. Once he graduated he did numerous teachings at universities and organizations. He once taught 300 sugarcane workers how to read and write in 45 days! I think that's amazing, I would like to have known how many words and/or phrases they learned in such a short time. It takes years for us to read and write and many of us still don't write "perfect".

"Dialogue in itself is a co-operative activity involving respect. The process is important and can be seen as enhancing community and building social capital and to leading us to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing." I agree w/this concept because I feel that dialogue enables everybody to speak and to contribute their own ideas and opinions instead of conforming to one person's ideas. By talking about a concept together, we are interacting w/each other & creating bonds as well as improving our knowledge. Someone might lead us to path never before seen. I look at it as put all the choices on the table & let someone pick for themselves which specific path they want to explore further.

Paulo believed there were two main deficiencies in the educational system: lack of schools for children and the poor teachings of public schools. He didn't believe in a curriculum, he believed in dialogue. He says "Nobody starts reading the word because before the word, what we have to read at our disposal is the World...men invented the language..centuries later, men invented the writing." To me it means, instead of sitting in a classroom reading a book about flowers, go outside and learn about the flowers by smelling them or touching them. Paulo's philosophy was being, not thinking and "a teacher that learns and a learner that teaches" because not everyone knows everything and there's always more to learn and many times our knowledge comes through experiences or dialogue with others or within ourselves.




Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSyaZAWIr1I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6bMBWvoPp8