Sociology Questions

Chapter 2 from "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" Author(s): Paolo Freire and Myra Bergman Ramos Source: Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, Vol. 2, No. 2, Race and Secondary Education: Content, Contexts, Impacts (Spring, 2009), pp. 163-174 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595010 . Accessed: 22/02/2014 13:47

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Chapter 2 from

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Paolo Freir?

A A careful analysis of the teacher-student relation

ship at any level inside or outside the school, re

veals its fundamentally narrative character This re

lationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or

empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being nar

rated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.

The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static,

compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a

topic completely alien to the existential experience of the stu

dents. His task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration?contents which are detached from reality, discon nected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.

The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. "Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem." The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without

perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of "capital" in the affirmation "the capital of Para is Belem," that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil.

Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled"

by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.

Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.

Chapter 2 from Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freir? (translated from the Spanish by Myra Bergman Ramos). Copyright ? 1970,1993. Reprinted

with the permission of the publisher, Continuum International Publishing

Group.

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PAOLO FREIR?

Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, mem

orize, and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is

true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided sys tem. For apart from inquiry apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through in

vention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, con

tinuing, hopeful inquiry, human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift be

stowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an

absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their

necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he

justifies his own existence. The students, alienated like the slave

in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance as justifying the

teacher's existence?but, unlike the slave, they never discover

that they educate the teacher.

The raison d'etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its drive towards reconciliation. Education must begin

with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by rec

onciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simulta

neously teachers and students.

This solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking con

cept. On the contrary, banking education maintains and even

stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes

and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole:

(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;

(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;

(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

(d) the teacher talks and the students listen?meekly;

(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students

comply;

(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;

(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students

(who were not consulted) adapt to it;

(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in op position to the freedom of the students;

(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the

pupils are mere

objects.

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CHAPTER 2 FROM PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED

It is not surprising that the banking concept of education re

gards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students

work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they de

velop the critical consciousness which would result from their

intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to

the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.

The capability of banking education to minimize or annul

the students' creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have

the world revealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their "humanitarianism" to preserve a profitable situation.

Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in

education which stimulates the critical faculties and is not con

tent with a partial view of reality but always seeks out the ties

which link one point to another and one problem to another.

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in "changing the

consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which op presses them";1 for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of ed ucation in conjunction with a paternalistic social action appara tus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of "welfare recipients." They are treated as individual cases, as

marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a "good, organized, and just" society. The oppressed are re

garded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these "incompetent and lazy" folk to its own

patterns by changing their mentality. These marginals need to be "integrated," "incorporated" into the healthy society that

they have "forsaken." The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not "margin

als," are not people living "outside" society. They have always been "inside"?inside the structure which made them "beings for others." The solution is not to "integrate" them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that

they can become "beings for themselves." Such transformation, of course, would undermine the oppressors' purposes; hence their utilization of the banking concept of education to avoid the threat of student conscientizacao.

The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of

learning that on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the rab bit. 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 un

knowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank

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PAOLO FREIR?

clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to

dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves con

tain contradictions about reality. But, sooner or later, these con

tradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their

present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to be come fully human. They may perceive through their relations

with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant

transformation. If men and women are searchers and their on

tological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may

perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to

maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for

their liberation.

But the humanist, revolutionary educator cannot wait for

this possibility to materialize. From the outset, her efforts must

coincide with those of the students to engage in critical think

ing and the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be

imbued with a profound trust in people and their creative

power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in

their relations with them.

The banking concept does not admit to such partnership? and necessarily so. To resolve the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescribes domesticator, for

the role of student among students would be to undermine the

power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation.

Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a di

chotomy between human beings and the world: a person is

merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the indi

vidual is spectator, not re-creator. In this view, the person is not a conscious being (corpo consciente)) he or she is rather the pos sessor of a consciousness: an empty "mind" passively open to

the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside. For

example, my desk, my books, my coffee cup, all the objects be

fore me?as bits of the world which surround me?would be

"inside" me, exactly as I am inside my study right now. This

view makes no distinction between being accessible to con

sciousness and entering consciousness. The distinction, how

ever, is essential: the objects which surround me are simply ac

cessible to my consciousness, not located within it. I am aware

of them, but they are not inside me.

It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness

that the educator's role is to regulate the way the world "enters

into" the students. The teacher's task is to organize a process which already occurs spontaneously to "fill" the students by

making deposits of information which he or she considers to

constitute true knowledge.2 And since people "receive" the

world as passive entities, education should make them more

passive still, and adapt them to the world. The educated indi

vidual is the adapted person, because she or he is a better "fit"

for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is well

suited to the purposes of the oppressors, whose tranquility

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CHAPTER 2 FROM PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED

rests on how well people fit the world the oppressors have cre

ated, and how little they question it.

The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby de

priving them of the right to their own purposes), the more

easily the minority can continue to prescribe. The theory and

practice of banking education serve this end quite efficiently. Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements,3 the methods for

evaluating knowledge, the distance between the teacher and

the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this ready to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.

The bank-clerk educator does not realize that there is no true

security in his hypertrophied role, that one must seek to live with others in solidarity. One cannot impose oneself, nor even

merely co-exist with one's students. Solidarity requires true

communication, and the concept by which such an educator is

guided fears and proscribes communication.

Yet only through communication can human life hold mean

ing. The teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authen

ticity of the students' thinking. The teacher cannot think for her

students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic

thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take

place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by ac

tion upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.

Because banking education begins with a false understand

ing of men and women as objects, it cannot promote the devel

opment of what Fromm calls "biophily," but instead produces its opposite: "necrophily."

While life is characterized by growth in a structured, functional manner, the necrophilous person loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things.

... Mem

ory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what

counts. The necrophilous person can relate to an object?a

flower or a person?only if he possesses it; hence a threat to his

possession is a threat to himself; if he loses possession he loses contact with the world. ... He loves control, and in the act of

controlling he kills life.4

Oppression?overwhelming control?is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of ed

ucation, which serves the interests of oppression, is also

necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatial ized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiv

ing objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their cre ative power.

When their efforts to act responsibly are frustrated, when

they find themselves unable to use their faculties, people suffer.

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PAOLO FREIR?

"This suffering due to impotence is rooted in the very fact that the human equilibrium has been disturbed"5 But the inability to act which causes people's anguish also causes them to reject their impotence, by attempting

... to restore [their] capacity to act. But can [they], and how? One

way is to submit to and identify with a person or group having power By this symbolic participation in another person's life, [men have] the illusion of acting, when in reality [they] only submit to and become a part of those who act6

Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charis matic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective. The rebellion they express as they emerge in the his

torical process is motivated by that desire to act effectively. The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order, and

social peace (that is, the peace of the elites). Thus they can con

demn?logically from their point of view?"the violence of a

strike by workers and [can] call upon the state in the same

breath to use violence in putting down the strike."7 Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the

credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not per ceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the

world of oppression. This accusation is not made in the naive

hope that the dominant elites will thereby simply abandon the

practice. Its objective is to call the attention of true humanists to

the fact that they cannot use banking educational methods in

the pursuit of liberation, for they would only negate that very

pursuit. Nor may a revolutionary society inherit these methods from an oppressor society. The revolutionary society which

practices banking education is either misguided or mistrusting of people. In either event it is threatened by the specter of reac

tion.

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 "revolutionar

ies" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries"

those who would challenge this educational practice. But one

does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic libera

tion?the process of humanization?is not another deposit to

be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection

of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept nei

ther the mechanistic concept of consciousness as an empty ves

sel to be filled, nor the use of banking methods of domination

(propaganda, slogans?deposits) in the name of liberation.

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women

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CHAPTER 2 FROM PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED

and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as conscious ness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational

goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the

problems of human beings in their relations with the world.

"Problem-posing" education, responding to the essence of con

sciousness?intentionality?rejects communiques and embod ies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian "split"?conscious ness as consciousness of consciousness.

Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not trans

ferrals of information. It is a learning situation in which the

cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors?teacher on the one hand and students on the other. Accordingly the practice of problem posing education entails at the outset that the teacher-student contradiction be resolved. Dialogical relations?indispensable to the capacity of cognitive actors to cooperate in perceiving the same cognizable object?are otherwise impossible.

Indeed, problem-posing education, which breaks with the

vertical patterns characteristic of banking education, can fulfil its function as the practice of freedom only if it can overcome

the above contradiction. Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn

while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on "authority" are no longer valid; in order to function,

authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are "owned" by the teacher.

The banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize ev

erything) distinguishes two stages in the action of the educa tor. During the first he cognizes a cognizable object while he

prepares his lessons in his study or his laboratory; during the

second, he expounds to his students about that object. The stu dents are not called upon to know, but to memorize the con tents narrated by the teacher. Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object towards which that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than a medium

evoking the critical reflection of both teacher and students. Hence in the name of the "preservation of culture and knowl

edge" we have a system which achieves neither true knowl

edge nor true culture. The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the ac

tivity of the teacher-student: she is not "cognitive" at one point and "narrative" at another. She is always "cognitive," whether

preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with the students. He does not regard cognizable objects as his private property

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PAOLO FREIR?

but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In

this way the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his

reflections in the reflection of the students. The students?no

longer docile listeners?are now critical co-investigators in dia

logue with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the

students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of

the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the stu

dents, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of

the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the

logos. Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits cre

ative power, problem-posing education involves a constant un

veiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submer sion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of

consciousness and critical intervention in reality. Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems re

lating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel

increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that chal

lenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to

other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical ques tion, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly criti

cal and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the

challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understand

ings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as

committed.

Education as the practice of freedom?as opposed to educa

tion as the practice of domination?denies that man is abstract,

isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also de

nies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Au

thentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world

without people, but pea-pie in their relations with the world. In

these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: con

sciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.

La conscience et le monde sont dormes d'un m?me coup: ext?rieur par essence a la conscience, le monde est, par

essence

relatif a elle.8

In one of our culture circles in Chile, the group was dis

cussing (based on a codification9) the anthropological concept of culture. In the midst of the discussion, a peasant who by

banking standards was completely ignorant said: "Now I see

that without man there is no world." When the educator re

sponded: "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the men

on earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars. ... wouldn't all

this be a world?" "Oh no," the peasant replied emphatically. "There would be no one to say: 'This is a world'."

The peasant wished to express the idea that there would be

lacking the consciousness of the world which necessarily im

plies the world of consciousness. I cannot exist without a non-L

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CHAPTER 2 FROM PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED

In turn, the not-I depends on that existence. The world which

brings consciousness into existence becomes the world of that

consciousness. Hence, the previously cited affirmation of Sartre:

"La conscience et le mond sont dormes d'un m?me coup." As women and men, simultaneously reflecting on them

selves and on the world, increase the scope of their perception,

they begin to direct their observations towards previously in

conspicuous phenomena:

In perception properly so-called, as an

explicit awareness

[Gewahren], I am turned towards the object, to the paper, for in stance. I apprehend it as being this here and now. The appre hension is a singling out, every object having a background in

experience. Around and about the paper lie books, pencils, ink

well, and so forth, and these in a certain sense are also "per

ceived", perceptually there, in the "field of intuition"; but whilst I was turned towards the paper there was no turning in their di

rection, nor any apprehending of them, not even in a secondary

sense. They appeared and yet were not singled out, were not

posited on their own account. Every perception of a thing has such a zone of background intuitions

or background awareness,

if "intuiting" already includes the state of being turned to

wards, and this also is a "conscious experience", or more

briefly a "consciousness of" all indeed that in point of fact lies in the

co-perceived objective background.10

That which had existed objectively but had not been per ceived in its deeper implications (if indeed it was perceived at

all) begins to "stand out," assuming the character of a problem and therefore of challenge. Thus, men and women begin to

single out elements from their "background awareness" and to

reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of their con

sideration, and, as such, objects of their action and cognition. In problem-posing education, people develop their power to

perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and

in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in process, in transformation. Al

though the dialectical relations of women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the form of action they adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, the teacher student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously on

themselves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish an authentic form of thought and action.

Once again, the two educational concepts and practices un

der analysis come into conflict. Banking education (for obvious

reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; prob lem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education

regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which

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PAOLO FREIR?

unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of

assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical think ers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (al

though it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of con

sciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of be

coming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases it

self on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon

reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative

transformation. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immo

bilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and prac tice take the people's historicity as their starting point.

Problem-posing education affirms men and women as be

ings in the process of becoming?as unfinished, uncompleted

beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in con

trast to other animals who are unfinished, but not historical,

people know themselves to be unfinished; they are aware of

their incompletion. In this incompletion and this awareness lie

the very roots of education as an exclusively human manifesta

tion. The unfinished character of human beings and the trans

formational character of reality necessitate that education be an

ongoing activity. Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order

to be, it must become. Its "duration" (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of the opposites perma nence and change. The banking method emphasizes permanence and becomes reactionary; problem-posing education?which

accepts neither a "well-behaved" present nor a predetermined fixture?roots itself in the dynamic present and becomes revo

lutionary. Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity. Hence it

is prophetic (and, as such, hopeful). Hence, it corresponds to

the historical nature of humankind. Hence, it affirms women

and men as beings who transcend themselves, who move for

ward and look ahead, for whom immobility represents a fatal

threat, for whom looking at the past must only be a means of

understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the fixture. Hence, it identifies with the

movement which engages people as beings aware of their in

completion?an historical movement which has its point of de

parture, its Subjects and its objective. The point of departure of the movement lies in the people

themselves. But since people do not exist apart from the world,

apart from reality the movement must begin with the human

world relationship. Accordingly, the point of departure must al

ways be with men and women in the "here and now," which

constitutes the situation within which they are submerged, from

which they emerge, and in which they intervene. Only by start

ing from this situation?which determines their perception of

it?can they begin to move. To do this authentically they must

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CHAPTER 2 FROM PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED

perceive their state not as fated and unalterable, but merely as

limiting?and therefore challenging. Whereas the banking method directly or indirectly rein

forces men's fatalistic perception of their situation, the problem

posing method presents this very situation to them as a prob lem. As the situation becomes the object of their cognition, the

naive or magical perception which produced their fatalism

gives way to perception which is able to perceive itself even as

it perceives reality, and can thus be critically objective about that reality.

A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to

apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives way to the drive for transfor

mation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves to be in

control, if people, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not control that

movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity. Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from

engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.

This movement of inquiry must be directed towards human ization?the people's historical vocation. The pursuit of full hu

manity however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individu

alism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and op

pressed. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so. Attempting to be more human, individual

istically, leads to having more, egotistically a form of dehuman ization. Not that it is not fundamental to have in order to be hu

man. Precisely because it is necessary, some men's having must not be allowed to constitute an obstacle to others having, must not consolidate the power of the former to crush the latter.

Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to dom ination must fight for their emancipation. To that end, it enables teachers and students to become Subjects of the educational pro cess by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellec

tualism; it also enables people to overcome their false perception of reality. The world?no longer something to be described with

deceptive words?becomes the object of that transforming ac tion by men and women which results in their humanization.

Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the in terests of the oppressor. No oppressive order could permit the

oppressed to begin to question: Why? While only a revolution

ary society can carry out this education in systematic terms, the

revolutionary leaders need not take full power before they can

employ the method. In the revolutionary process, the leaders cannot utilize the banking method as an interim measure, justi fied on grounds of expediency with the intention of later behav

ing in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must be revolu

tionary?that is to say dialogical?from the outset.

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PAOLO FREIR?

Endnotes

1. Simone de Beauvoir; La Pensee de Droite, Aujord'hui (Paris); ST, El Pensamiento politico de la Derecha (Buenos Aires, 1963), p. 34.

2. This concept corresponds to what Sartre calls the "digestive" or "nu

tritive" concept of education, in which knowledge is fed" by the teacher to the students to "fill them out." See Jean-Paul Sartre, "Une idee fundamen

tale de la ph?nom?nologie de Husserl: L'intentionalite," Situations 1 (Paris, 1947).

3. For example, some professors specify in their reading lists that a

book should be read from pages 10 to 15?and do this to "help" their stu dents!

4. Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man (New York, 1966), p. 41.

5.Ibid.,p.31.

6. Ibid.

7. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York, 1960), p.130.

8. Sartre, op. cit., p. 32.

9. Excerpt from Chapter 3?It is with the apprehension of the complex of contradictions that the second stage of the investigation begins. Always

acting as a team, the investigators will select some of these contradictions

to develop the codifications to be used in the thematic investigation. Since

the codifications (sketches or photographs) are the objects which mediate the decoders in their critical analysis, the preparation of these codifications

must be guided by certain principles other than the usual ones for making visual aids.

The first requirement is that these codifications must necessarily repre sent situations familiar to the individuals whose thematics are being

ex

amined, so that they can

easily recognize the situations (and thus their

own relation to them). It is inadmissible (whether during the process of in

vestigation or in the following stage, when the meaningful thematics

are

presented as program content) to present pictures of reality unfamiliar to

the participants. The latter procedure (although dialectical, because indi

viduals analyzing an unfamiliar reality could compare it with their own

and discover the limitations of each) cannot precede the more basic one

dictated by the participants' state of submersion, that is, the process in

which individuals analyzing their own reality become aware of their prior,

distorted perceptions and thereby come to have a new

perception of that

reality. The codifications may also be oral. In this case they consist of

a few

words presenting an existential problem, followed by decoding. The team

of the Instituto & Desarrollo Agropecuario (Institute for Agrarian Devel

opment) in Chile has used this method successfully in thematic investiga tions.

10. Edmund Husserl, ideas -General introduction to Pure Phenomenology

(London, 1969), pp. 105-106.

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