I wanted to share a critique of Freire that I sent to Chris earlier this year. I haven't read the whole thing myself yet but I think it's always good to see both sides of the issue. I will let others who have opinions on the piece write their own thoughts!
http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/gustavo2ls3.htm. Chris mentioned that it was from a book called Rethinking Freire. Chris had a few things to say about the piece but I'll let him voice his own opinions. 
One of the writers, Gustavo Esteva, has started a place in Oaxaca, Mexico, called Universidad de la Tierra. I had the privilege to meet him and listen to his thoughts on education. He is foremost an advocate of apprenticeship and learning through doing. In his talk he quoted someone as saying "Birds fly. Fish swim. People learn." The intentions of the place are awesome, a place to connect folks with mentors in law, medicinal herbs, media and a whole wack of other skills. De facto, however, the organization seems to have become yet another NGO where a lot of good things happen but a dependence on money from grants and foreigners gives the place a slightly different swing.
Deb Barndt mentioned to me that Gustavo Esteva may be coming to give one of the courses at FES so if you're interested, you should here some of the critiques of his work as well!
Carolyn
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Critiques of Freire
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4 comments:
Hey Caroline!
Thanks for the link. Visitamos Universidad de la Tierra en Chiapas y estuvo una experiencia buenisima. I added a photo of Gustavo Esteva to beautify your post a bit. If people want more info about posting pictures and links on the blog just let me know.
Lisa
Indeed, as Carolyn mentioned, i "had a few things to say about the piece." I read the book Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis a couple of years ago and was reminded of it when Carolyn shared Esteva's co-authored piece with me. While i've read and heard numerous critiques of Freire over the years i'd never come across an entire book of critique and was eager to learn some new perspectives on Freire. I was disappointed, to say the least. And, at times, deeply annoyed at both poor scholarship, faulty reasoning and specious argument. There are definitely some legitimate critiques in the book including in Esteva's co-authored piece. But the flaws run neck-and-neck, at best, with the positives. Here's a good book review (it's a PDF) that has some good critique. Certainly Freire, for many people and movements around the world, has been elevated to the status of icon and that can have a dampening effect on criticism. (Of course, it can also provoke attacks.) I think it's crucial from a popular education point of view to discuss how we engage theory and the theorists. There are, of course, fruitful and fruitless ways to do this. Endless rounds of "no, this is what Freire really meant; I'm right, you're wrong," i would list on the fruitless side. There's a vigorous exchange going on between the anti-critical pedagogy scholar Chet Bowers and critical pedagogy theorist Peter McLaren (if you're interested i can point you to the articles). And there's an older debate, going back to 1984, around a critique published by Puerto Rican educator Blanca Facundo that you can read about here. It's fascinating to read both Blanca's piece and the responses from readers of the journal Alternativas and Australian educator Robert Mackie. Happy reading all ;-)
Thanks Chris, I was hoping you would come up with some further readings!
Carolyn
OOOPS: i thought the entire Blanca Facundo article could be found on the site i linked in my previous comment. Carolyn pointed out that it was not there. You will find it here
however.
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