PRAXIS - Paulo Freire Institute

Praxis Spring/Summer 2010: Volume 3, Issue 1
see what schooling had done to me. Your discussion of banking education gave me the
language to name where my boredom of school came from. It allowed me to understand
the impact made by high school teachers who over the years yelled that I would never
amount to anything in life. Thereafter I understood why I had become ashamed of my
language, culture, family and working class identity. My thoughts became inflamed with
excitement as I struggled to understand what you meant by problem posing education,
praxis, dialogue, and critical consciousness. If this was what humanizing education felt
like, I wanted more! After finishing your book, I made a promise to devote my life to
learning more about your ideas and to share them with others.
It’s been 16 years since I made that promise. I earned a doctorate degree in education in
the Claremont Graduate School of Education where I was fortunate to work with one of
your former students, Dr. Antonia Darder. In her presence, I saw your spirit invoked. I
identified with her anger and struggle to transform schooling conditions in marginalized
communities. For the first time in my life I experienced education as a practice of
freedom. I learned to struggle with critical theory, critical pedagogy, cultural studies and
the political economy of schooling. Most importantly, I learned to develop an
educational vision of schooling that was linked to social and economic justice, human
rights, and love.
I have also found myself working in a number of different contexts in which I have
attempted to reinvent your work. I have taught at an all boys’ Catholic high school, an
after school program, college outreach programs, community college, adult education,
and a public university. I currently work for UCLA’s Teacher Education Program and I
find it to be the most challenging work to date. What makes this work so difficult is that
we are in the midst of one of the largest economic declines since the Great Depression.
Urban public schooling conditions have steadily deteriorated as a result of school districts
laying-off teachers and staff while increasing class sizes and slashing academic programs
and resources.
In the midst of these dire circumstances, I began to lose hope as my family, friends,
students and I struggled to survive economically. Overwhelmed by the financial crisis
and the reduction of social spending and investment in public education, I turned again to
your work, hoping to find some guidance out of the sea of despair. Recently I read your
book Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage and was particularly
moved by the following passage:
The world is not finished. It is always in the process of becoming.
The subjectivity with which I dialectically relate to the world, my
role in the world, is not restricted to a process of only observing
what happens but it also involves my intervention as a subject of
what happens in the world. My role in the world is not simply that
of someone who registers what occurs but of someone who has
input into what happens.
I found your words affirming and healing. Your words touched and encouraged me to
continue trying to implement your pedagogy. I realize now that no matter how bad things
are, the world is not finished. My actions and words have an impact on how the world
unfolds.
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