COUC 747 Week 6 Book Review: Pedagogy of the Oppressed Example

Book Review: Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and What It Asks of Counselor Educators

Review

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, 30th anniversary edition, Continuum, 2000 (original work published 1970)

Few books about teaching have traveled as far as Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who taught adult literacy among the rural poor and was exiled after the 1964 military coup, wrote it in Chile, and it has since been read in education, theology, social work and counseling. The thirtieth anniversary edition adds an introduction by Donaldo Macedo. For counselor educators, the book raises a question that is easy to avoid: whether the way we teach reproduces the very power imbalances we ask students to notice in counseling.

Summary

Freire begins with what he calls the vocation of every person to become more fully human, a vocation thwarted by oppression, which dehumanizes both oppressed and oppressor. Liberation cannot be handed down by benevolent elites, whose false generosity keeps the oppressed dependent; it must be pursued with the oppressed themselves (Freire, 2000). The second chapter, the most widely cited, contrasts the banking concept of education, in which teachers deposit knowledge in passive students, with problem-posing education, in which teacher and students become coinvestigators of real problems. The third chapter makes dialogue the essence of education, grounded in love, humility, faith in people and hope, and describes how educators can discover the generative themes of a community. The fourth contrasts antidialogical action, which conquers, divides, manipulates and invades a culture, with dialogical action, which builds cooperation, unity and cultural synthesis. Throughout, Freire insists on praxis, reflection and action together, and on conscientization, the awakening of critical awareness of one's situation.

Evaluation

The book's lasting strength is its account of the teacher's stance. The banking critique names something every instructor has felt: the quiet efficiency of telling students what to know, and the cost of that efficiency to their thinking. Freire's alternative is demanding but practical. Teachers can begin from learners' experience, pose problems instead of delivering answers and treat students as people who can name their own world. His list of the virtues dialogue requires, love, humility and hope among them, reads less like political theory than like a description of a good counselor.

The book's limits are also real. Its categories of oppressor and oppressed are drawn sharply, and readers in pluralistic classrooms may find that most people occupy both positions at different times. Its prose is abstract and repetitive, and its reliance on revolutionary examples dates it. Readers will notice the generic masculine language of the translation, which Freire himself later acknowledged as a limitation. These weaknesses do not cancel the argument, but they require readers to translate it into settings Freire did not have in mind. A graduate seminar in a North American university is not a peasant literacy circle, and a professor who claims to stand outside power while assigning grades deceives no one. The more honest application is to acknowledge the power a teacher holds and to use it to open dialogue rather than close it.

Relevance to Counselor Education

Counselor education already shares much of Freire's vocabulary. The multicultural and social justice counseling competencies ask counselors to develop awareness of their own privileged and marginalized statuses, to understand clients' worldviews and to act through advocacy at individual, community and systemic levels (Ratts et al., 2016). Freire suggests that such competencies cannot be taught by banking alone. A course on social justice delivered entirely by lecture and multiple-choice testing contradicts its own content. Problem-posing approaches, such as asking students to investigate barriers to care in their own communities, would fit the competencies better. A practicum seminar could begin each week with a problem a student met at the site, such as a client who cannot afford transportation, and ask the group to analyze it before anyone proposes a solution. Supervision itself can be dialogical: a supervisor who asks a supervisee what they noticed before offering an opinion practices the stance Freire describes. Freire would also ask counselor educators to listen for the generative themes of their students, the concerns that animate a cohort, rather than assuming the syllabus already knows them.

A Christian Reading

Freire was a Catholic whose work influenced liberation theology, and Christian readers will find much to affirm. His conviction that people are called to become more fully human resonates with the biblical claim that God made humankind in his own image (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Genesis 1:27), and his warning against false generosity echoes the prophets' concern for justice rather than charity alone. A Christian reader may question, however, whether oppression explains all human brokenness. Scripture locates evil in the human heart as well as in social structures, and it places hope finally in redemption rather than in human revolution. Read with that distinction in mind, the book can deepen a Christian educator's commitment to treating students with dignity.

Conclusion

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is not a manual, and its political framing will not suit every reader. Yet its central claim, that how we teach shapes whether learners become thinkers or containers, is as relevant to counselor education as to the literacy circles where Freire began. Doctoral students preparing to teach should read it, argue with it and let it unsettle their habits. It will reward a second reading after a first semester of teaching.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.; 30th anniversary ed.). Continuum. (Original work published 1970)

Ratts, M. J., Singh, A. A., Nassar-McMillan, S., Butler, S. K., & McCullough, J. R. (2016). Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies: Guidelines for the counseling profession. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44(1), 28-48. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmcd.12035