Learning for Social Justice

Introduction

Paulo Freire’s idea of learning for social justice has influenced many academic disciplines and has remained an inspiration to many across the world. This Brazilian educator has been revolutionary in his ideas of education for justice and he has left a significant mark on thinking progressive practices in education. Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is one of the most quoted educational texts worldwide, through which he was able to weave together educational practices and liberation. He explained the deep theory and practice of liberatory education around the globe and relates the education to broader social movements to fight for humanity and liberation.

The purpose of education is mainly concerned with literacy so that these educated people can make their arguments by weighing different perspectives. So, literacy would help men and women to overcome their sense of powerlessness and thus develop agency. They can transform their situation relating to any problem in life by thinking critically about reality and then taking action.

Freire’s theory relates this to overcoming oppression through appropriate education and thinking critically. This oppression can be any problem associated with the social, political, and economical context of a person’s life. To become such kind of literate we have to make our education system support such transformation. According to Freire, the education system played a central role in maintaining oppression and it needs to be reformed for things to change for those thewho suffered. Teachers who want to change the world need to engage students in doing the same as it’s the co-participation of both teachers and students in the justice struggle.

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Teachers must be open with their views, but never impose them on students and give the right to students to have their ideas, but also must have mutual respect’s ideas.

Key components and strategies of learning for justice theory: these key components of learning for justice will provide insight into the whole process to improve existing teaching policies and strategies in pedagogy.

1. Banking education:

“Banking education” framework explains the existing framework for curriculum delivery, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor where the “teacher makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat”. In this type of educational system, students are listening to objects, and are not asked to think critically about the world in which they live. They are merely asked to swallow information. This banking education allows the oppressors (policymakers, curriculum designers) to maintain the system of oppression, which minimize students’ creative power and stimulates their credulity to serve the interests of the oppressors in which students do not have the opportunity to question or critically evaluate the world in which they live and thus have no opportunity to change their lives for the better. Alternative to banking education which Freire proposed as is the “liberating education” or “questioning education.” Liberating education involves a process of “humanizing” people who have been oppressed, which can be related to today’s school system to empower students to question education. It also empowers them to question their lives and their position in society. They will become “more fully human” and would know how to fight dehumanization which involves injustice, exploitation, oppression, etc.

2. Culture Cycle

Freire took the education out of the traditional (four-walls) classroom, where students and teachers together discuss themes that have significance within the context of students’ lives. These themes should be discovered through the cooperative research of educators and students. These themes are related to nature, culture, work, and relationships and can be discovered by making connections with students and knowing their backgrounds and interests. These themes are then represented in the form of visual representations then students decode these themes and recognize them as situations in which they are involved as subjects. This process will engage them in critical consciousness. For example, Gutstein enhanced the coursework with the project in which students investigated racism and used mathematics as a key analytical tool, which emphasis on relating these themes to the official curriculum by finding connections. The themes like racism, discrimination, gender, and sex, can be taught in classroom settings.

3. Generative themes and codifications

Generative (capacity to unfold further to generate many themes) themes should be interesting in students and evoke importance or concern to them so that discussion can be generated. The themes should be represented in the form of codification (either represented by a word or short phrase or a visual representation – a picture or photograph). These codifications would make students explore these themes critically by regarding them objectively rather than simply experiencing them. The system of codifications has been very successful in promoting literacy among adult students, Freire always emphasized that it should not be approached mechanically, but rather as a process of creation and awakening of consciousness with which they decode the aspects of the situation by feeling themselves in the situation and be able to reflect critically upon its various aspects. The activism can be applied by using the approach of codifications, in which students would deal with a problem by feeling themselves in that situation. For example themes like Raising social consciousness: prejudices and employment, Quality of life: consciousness and participation, Housing: urbanization and values, and Cohabitation and violence. These themes with concrete representations of ideas, hopes, outlooks, and challenges arising out of human beings’ orientations to the world will provide a certain view of viewing the world to the students. This practice is suggested to replace the traditional method where teachers choose the program content and students adapt to it.

4. Praxis

Freire’s concept of praxis in education is related to action research: a process where a group works together through cycles of action, reflection, and further action to improve a situation. Freirean praxis assumes that education is political, so the practice of education must be informed by praxis learning begins with action and is then shaped by reflection, which gives rise to further action. To transform the world, reflection and action are inseparable, you cannot act without thinking, and reflection without action will not change reality. Which is required to replace the existing policy of “teacher talks and the student listens”.