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IS: When I was in school, I loved learning but hated school. Discipline problem. Unofficial school newspaper was banned: a real lesson in freedom of the press, unlike what we were taught. Teachers flattered my intelligence and tried to convince me to go along with things in order to succeed in life. I went straight-laced until the 60s protests. There were pedagogy experiments (alternative schools, free schools, teach-ins, informal seminars). *"I must confess I learned a lot about politics, Vietnam, racism, sexism, and capitalism but very little about pedagogy, and very little about mass culture and consciousness." *In 71, I arrived at a working class college and had some freedom to experiment. University began admitting working-class students with bad high school grades, and class conflict ensued with the influx of poor students. At first, I taught normal stuff.
PF: Lol me too. I taught portuguese syntax. It was fun.
IS: I liked grammar as a kid, it was a fun puzzle, and I was able to use it to speak the elite language and rise from my station. I thought I was going to be able to transfer those skills to my students. No such luck. I didn't understand how to "reinvent knowledge *with *them, from *their place *in society." I had "marvelous rationales", I thought I would teach grammar in such a way that everyone would love it.
PF: Lol that's how it goes. Sometimes you gotta fight *against *grammar to be free to write. My writing was ugly so long as I followed "literate patterns."
IS: I wrote "sickly" poems copying the pre-romantics. I knew nothing about "freedom in modern poetry".
PF: There are great writers in portuguese who "saved me". They weren't preoccupied with following grammar, but instead searching for an "aesthetic moment". The question was not "simply to deny the rules", but of finding freedom, the basis for creativity.
IS: Not meeting with success, I met up with other teachers in "remedial writing" and we helped each other. Group support is so crucial. "Mutual re-formation". Students tolerated my earnest bumbling. I didn't lecture them on politics, but had them study writing by writing on topics that mattered to them. I believed I was doing something important, and I think this was a good thing, because even though I didn't have the pedagogy down, I had some "political clarity" and was able to be curious about what was disempowering students. Was able to experiment a little in the chaos of the sudden change. Students are good at hiding behind "official" language, you know you're on the right track when the speak naturally.
- The "idiom of reconciliation": democratic meeting-ground of two idioms. pausing to explain expressions one to the other. /// of course, you have to get to the point where students are comfortable asking for clarification.
- A "refusal to install the language of the professor as the only valuable idiom in the classroom." ///translanguaging babeeey
- "It was not my job to convince them they were unhappy... to call them unhappy would be a gross oversimplification. They were happy and unhappy, optimistic and cynical, angry and resigned."
- "The students' lives and language were social texts which neither they nor I understood, but which presented to me patterns, motifs, themes, characters, imagery, as clues to meaning."
- IS: The feeling of a fulfilled need that they didn't know they had, it was so neglected.
- But also anger and anxiety. Some thought "I had no right to make critical demands of them."
- The liberatory classroom is challenging, not permissive.
- Some students saw the possibility but couldn't come all the way out of their shells. Distance has to be respected.
- Some students are hostile. If there's enough, you could get pushed back into traditional teaching. Remember you can't force it.
- What helped me the most was remembering that I was only a small part of their lives, and I couldn't change everything myself.
- The world conditions the classroom probably more than the classroom can condition the world.
- Each class is different. Not much can be taken for granted.
- "Situated pedagogy" -- situating learning to the real conditions of the group
- Don't fall in the trap of blaming yourself if the class isn't open to experimentation. Don't expect constant success
- PF: Lol yea, it's funny that you need a win every once in a while to convince you that you're doing the right thing
- IS: And it probably won't be the first year, either! There's no formula for it, you just have to stay with the class and keep experimenting.
- PF: Teaching as a vocation only became real to me after I started doing it for money. I noticed that students were feeling freer with me, but didn't get the politics yet. I would use students' own writing as grammar examples in addition to relevant authors. They wrote about concrete things. Readings, experiences, weekend activities. What followed was a "critical discussion on what they wrote."
- I knew I had to have dialogue, but I didn't have a theory of it. I figured I would start by just talking to them.
- Then I worked with peasants in Recife.
- My family suffered hunger in the Depression. I saw the differences between the working and middle classes in my friends. "Every time I remember it I learn something from it."
- In adolescence, I wanted to study, but hunger stopped me from doing well in class.
- I married a student i tutored (?) (she was 5 years older)
- Working with peasants, I learned that the dominated teach by example, not by lecture. We must be students of their situation, of their expectations, of their behavior.
- Workers have contact with the reality that scholars study from afar.
- PF: I was "researching a pedagogy that was not a genius invention but rather something from common experience"
- 1963: Invited by Ministry of Education to organize adult literacy. One year later, the coup d'etat forced me to leave the country.
- In Chile, I realized that the educator is also a politician.
- My travels taught me and re-taught me many things and let me reflect on the situation in Brazil
- I realized that education alone cannot transform society. But it's an OK start.
- The 60s were a time of great optimism and mass mobilization on the left. Optimism that didn't really pan out for us.
- IS: The 60s showed both education's power and its limits. The fact that it was restricted, however, tells us that it was a threat to power.
- PF: Interesting. Precisely because education *should *be the lever for transformation, it *can't *be!
- Confusing point about how "the limits would be easier to see if we just did biology"?
- You gotta understand that the school is set up by faraway policymakers. The school itself is not gonna change things.
- First things first, the teacher is learning and the students are teaching. You're both "critical agents in the act of knowing."
- "Education is a moment in which you seek to convince yourself of something and you try to convince others of something."
- ??? Is this referring to the re-affirmation of convictions?
- To convince others of something you must first convince yourself.
- "The context for translformation is not only the classroom but extends outside of it. The students and teachers will be undertaking a transformation that includes a context outside the classroom, if the process is a liberating one."
- Giving a "testimony of respect for freedom, a testimony for democracy, the virtue of living with and respecting differences... the witness of your radicalism, but never of sectarianism."
- we *challenge* the people to organize themselves to get power
- IS: Connecting to outside the class is key, but we gotta recognize the difference between in and out. On a basic level, they're physically separated, and the expectations and language and methods differ. We can't change everything all at once, certainly not as educators.
- PF: the task is not to modernize our methods, but rather to reach a "different relationship to knowledge and to technology". Critique extends beyond the school. New School and Modern School movements innovated schooling, but not its relationship to the bigger world.
- To really get critical about schooling, we have to get critical about capitalism.
- It would be very naive to ask the ruling class to impliment an education that works against its hegemony. This is the reason education is surveyed by the state.
- But our task is nonetheless to act as liberating agents within education. This is risky business and counterproductive to career ambitions.
- *"In order for education to be the tool for transformation, it would be necessary for the ruling class to commit suicide"*
- Schools will never be free places of organization and radicalization, since that is completely contradictory to the purpose they are meant to serve by the state
- /// This is interesting in light of "school choice" becoming a big thing. Government is withdrawing oversight from schooling as a cost-saving measure. Does this mean that they no longer feel like it is urgent to reproduce ideology? Is the ideology already so effectively self-perpetuating that school is no longer necessary? Or are they counting on people being so weary and disempowered that their objections will never be acted on or be a serious threat?
- /// Or perhaps schools have proven too difficult to control to the degree of paranoia that the right has risen to? That instead of the school, trust is being placed in the workplace, the prison, and the family, where surveillance and management are easier and more cost-effective (allegedly)?
- IS: despite a curriculum constructed to conserve, school cannot fully be controlled. It is *not *effectively reproducing dominant ideology. It breeds resistance, be it politically or behaviorally. But it is also not "out of control" either.
- PF: Many educators leave in despair seeing no potential for change. To overcome this, it's up to us to reach beyond the school and to understand schooling's limited but capable role.
- IS: Independently organized social movements of course have great autonomy for educators than the school system. Are classrooms a "secondary" place of education?
- PF: Sometimes, yes, but secondary places matter too. It's almost a matter of temperment where a given individual is best equipped to make change or most drawn to educate. Ultimately I think you have to do both, though obviously don't overload yourself or you'll do both poorly.
- IS: Professional training pushes teachers away from movement work.
- PF: Yes, and this should be opposed. I still respect teachers who prefer to stay in the classroom, though, because even there there are critical possibilities.
- IS: Traditional teachers might say they illuminate reality too, using their brilliant lectures. That's the banking model you've talked so much about.
- PF: Yes, but let's not be too hard on lecturers. You can have critical lectures just as much as you can have stultifying discussions. The question of lecturing is: does your approach to the topic animate curiosity? Is it dynamic? Your lecture becomes an "*oral codification of a problem, now to be decodified by the students and you."*
- Speech as a *challenge to be unveiled, *never as a *channel of knowledge transfer*
- IS: Rarely as students do we see the creative reinvention of knowledge in front of us, lectures which compel us to rethink. It takes practice, finesse, and also political courage for teachers to do this. Liberatory lectures are inspiring appeals which grow out of dialogue. The lecturer roots their language and topic within the discourse already present in the room, resisting a mere "academic performance".
- I like switching around the lecture-discussion format: discussion, THEN lecture.
- /// outlines the think-pair-share model in his own language. I think that when he says it, he's probably well and truly posing these questions without predetermined answers, whereas my habit in planning is to anticipate certain answers, look for them in discussion, and proceed with my plan to explore those, while perhaps making some gesture towards novel student-generated themes. Must work on this.
- Students "co-develop" the class, peer relations are cultivated instead of (only) authoritative ones
- Seeing students in action allows me to adapt my approach and gives me an inroad to being a teacher-researcher.
- Let's give an example. I taught a Literature and the Environment class.
- I started off asking students to write down questions that come to them wrt the environment.
- Students get in groups of three to compile their questions, then presented them to the class.
- I wrote down these verbal reports and read them back.
- We had some discussion on the issues that stood out.
- I asked each student to choose one theme/question and write on it for *20 to 30 minutes. /// wow, bold*
- Students read their essays to each other in groups of 3, chose one among them to read to the class.
- From these initial essays, two themes came up: cars, and, for some reason, the fact that children are swearing
- I was very at home talking about the former, but I had a much harder time knowing where to take the second one, but nonetheless I was committed to honoring the fact that the class has generated this theme.
- After listening to how students talked about it, I retreated from discussion and gave a lecture about "kids cursing". I put it in terms of "symbolic violence by the disempowered," a kind of rebellion against an economic situation of domination and ideological neurosis. I tried to synthesize what students talked about w/r/t television, radio, rock music, movies, older kids, and "bad parents."
- The important thing is that my lecture grew out of dialogue. They listened intently despite all the new concepts I introduced.
- Kids considered things that mattered to them in a new light and reflected on my personal interpretation. I "suggested we discuss solutions"
- /// It's difficult to imagine "suggesting" a direction the class to take and having them take you up on it. I see the alienation as too strong for them to follow up on non-mandatory educational tasks. I want to believe this is possible, though.
- My lecture was a "search to unveil a reality that students found compelling"
- The class wrote "small booklets" on cars, cursing, garbage, and the 20-hour work week.
- I brought in campaigns and political groups to talk with us
- Students gave presentations to the class which were "stunning in their seriousness"
- We have to go into this being open to our own perceptions being transformed.
- In my class, I wound up studying things I didn't expect to, and so *"the voice I offered was a searching one."*
- /// Modeling investigatory dispositions
- Coming in as the Authoritative Revolutionary Voice will generate opposition or obedience, neither of which are helpful for our task
- We can use lectures, just not on their own. Mutiple class formats; "parallel pedagogies."
- PF: Let's talk more about the "illumination" metaphor. In order to dominate a people, you have to hide the fact that you're doing it. Myths and explanations surface that frame domination in anodine terms.
- As an example, it's taken as a fact that there is a Standard English that is good and true and correct, not just a Dominant English that is enforced
- /// 100000% correct. this is so hard to get people to understand.
- To understand what's really going on here, we need "light" over what has been "obscured".
- This isn't just intellectual. It's almost spiritual. We could use "conversion" as a metaphor too.
- It's a complex phenomenon meaning more than just "convincing". It usually requires "doing" as well as talking.
- Marches, union work, and exposure to more radical kinds of education all lead to political development. This is often how teachers discover that they, too, are politicians.
- Once the political nature of education is clear, it cannot be obscured again; teachers cannot un-recognize that they are always teaching "for something" and "against something".
- So once you're illuminated, how do you put it into practice? Certainly not with the same-old-same old pegagogy.
- IS: Certainly not by teaching students implicitly that learning is boring and hierarchical.
- PF: Yes. I can't be liberal, nor can I be "spontaneist". That is, I can't just give students no direction in the interest of liberating them. That's just "laissez-faire." The teacher is *directing a process* *with *the students.
- IS: Where'd you learn to name capitalism at the root?
- PF: My life. I saw opulence and starvation side by side. I interpreted poverty first as a kind of spiritual trial, then I thought about it historically, Marxistly
- IS: Can we develop as educators without thinking about class?
- PF: Probably not. We have to take charge of our profession and help spread this awareness. In Brazil, we have very politicized teachers unions, for example. We can't content ourselves with unionist salary-bargaining, but also arrange for our own continuous formation and political action in the world. This is how we come into contact with the reality we then bring into class.
- "If you are a math teacher and you can't find a way to talk about the World Bank, I don't believe in your capability as an educator." /// lol
- If you teach biology, study the health effects of austerity, etc
- IS: Classes with huge reading lists tend to be "gnosiophagic," to coin a word. Many teachers worry that if you have a huge body of knowledge to impart, opening class to dialogue will cut down on the time-efficiency of knowledge transfer in ruinous ways.
- This makes some sense, but ultimately I think the problem is that we don't know what dialogic teaching looks like in these subjects, not that it's impossible.
- Humanities courses can have unwieldy bodies of knowledge as much as any hard science. Nonetheless, literacy *has *been the most frequent vehicle for liberatory education in the states, following your work in Brazil.
- Transfering knowledge is tiresome and unrewarding to do, which is exactly why some of us turn to more liberatory education. When teachers worry about how much more work it's going to be to depart from the script and get critical, they don't realize the burdens they will be able to shed. Dialogical teaching is work, but it's creative work, experimental work, work that might actually do something.
- PF: Although we strive for *illumination, w*e must keep in mind that we are not *the illuminators.*
- This is constituted by the teachers and the students together. The teacher and students are probably very different kinds of people, though.
- We can't afford to be cynical or fatalistic, or "mentally bureaucratized".
- Generally, the teachers who "thought of themselves as missionaries end up becoming bureaucrats."
- Liberating ducators are not missionaries, bureaucrats, technicians, or "mere teachers." "They have to become more an more militant!" I don't know if the English word captures it. Something more than an activist. A critical activist.
- IS: Someone who is always examining their own practice, who reinvents themselves as we reinvent society
- PF: Exactly!
- IS: Without this constant development, we grow fixed and weary. "Militancy means permanent re-creation."
- PF: It's part of a process that keeps hope alive. There are distorted ways to be militant, though; I'm talking about a *permanent effort to grow, "even without sleeping". "Because we don't have to sleep" [laughing]. *We have to be constantly aware.
- IS: And we're not talking about "professional development." It's self and social transformation. Learning and change joined together.
- The teacher is not waiting on the far shore. They are sailing with the students.