Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2013

Vol. 45, No. 1, 4962, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2012.715385

Paulo Freire and the Concept of

Education
KELVIN STEWART BECKETT
School of Graduate Education, Kaplan University

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Paulo Freires liberatory conception of education is interesting,
challenging, even transforming because central to it are important aspects of education which
other philosophers marginalise. I also argue that Freires critics are right when they claim
that he paid insufficient attention to another important aspect of education. Finally, I argue
for a conception of education which takes account of the strengths and at the same time over-
comes the limitations of Freires liberatory conception.

Keywords: Paulo Freire, liberatory education, concept of education, Richard

Peters, John Dewey, Israel Scheffler

Introduction
In his introduction to a special issue of this journal marking the 10th anniversary of
Paulo Freires death, Peter Roberts (2007) says that Freire left a legacy of practical
and theoretical work equaled by few other educationists in its scope and influence
(Roberts, p. 505). Freires influence has been felt not just in critical pedagogy and
adult education but in most areas and at all levels of education; and the secondary lit-
erature is vast (Roberts, p. 506), with more than a dozen books and numerous arti-
cles having been published since his death. One cannot help but agree with Roberts
when he concludes that clearly there is something in Freires work of ongoing interest
to a wide range of scholars and practitioners (Roberts, p. 506). Much more has been
written in the years since that special issue, but the question that Roberts introduc-
tion raises is still unanswered: what is it about Freires work that has interested so
many of us for so long?
Freires work has been influential in different areas, I think, because his underlying
conception of education is interesting, challenging, even transforming: interesting
because it is different from other conceptions; challenging because it seems both right
and wrong; and transforming because it helps us understand important aspects of
education which other conceptions neglect. Freires conception can be found, fully

2013 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

50 Kelvin Stewart Beckett

developed, in Pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire, 1970b), where his main concern was
to separate his liberatory pedagogy from older, more traditional kinds of instruction;
and it is carried through without significant change in his later books, where he
responded to critics who argued that this separation was not yet complete. But how
does Freires understanding of education differ from that of other major philosophers?
And how well does it stand up to critical scrutiny? Freires legacy is potentially as
important in this area as it is in any other, and yet a review of the literature finds sur-
prisingly little work on it. Roberts, Mayo, McClaren and others have all made impor-
tant contributions to our understanding of Freire; and here I rely almost as much on
them as I do on Freire himself. To the best of my knowledge, however, there has
been only one systematic study comparing Freires conception of education with
Deweys (Betz, 1992), and no one has yet attempted a similar study comparing the
views of Freire and Richard Peters and Israel Scheffler.
In this article, I argue that Freire made a significant contribution to our under-
standing of the concept of education. What makes his conception interesting, chal-
lenging and transforming is that central to it are important aspects of education which
other philosophers marginalized. Thus, while dialogue for Peters and Scheffler comes
at the end of the educational process (Beckett, 2011a), for Freire education is dia-
logue; and while education for Dewey begins with students views of the world, for
Freire students views constitute education. Furthermore, though I agree with critics
that Freire paid insufficient attention to a third aspect of education, I argue that by
the time of his death he not only acknowledged their point, but also showed how it
can help us resolve a long-standing conflict between teacher-centered conceptions of
education, such as Peters and Schefflers, and Deweys student-centered conception.
Thus, Freires main concern in Pedagogy of the oppressed was that students views are
problematic, while for Bowers, Weiler, Ellsworth and others teachers views are prob-
lematic as well. But Freire had never denied this; and in his responses to critics he
suggested that teachers and students must critically examine each others views, and
their intention must be to develop a new view, one they can share (Beckett, 2011a,
2011b).

Liberatory and Traditional Education

In Pedagogy of the oppressed, Freire (1970b) contrasts his liberatory conception of edu-
cation with what he calls the banking concept. Banking education is monological,
problem-solving and constituted by teachers views of the world. Liberatory educa-
tion, on the other hand, is dialogical, problem-posing and constituted by students
views of the world. In banking education, according to Freire, knowledge is seen as
the property of the teacher rather than a medium evoking the critical reflection of
both teacher and students (Freire, p. 80); and education is seen as a transaction in
which teachers deposit knowledge in their students. In liberatory education, through
dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist
and a new term emerges: teacherstudent with studentsteachers They become
jointly responsible for a process in which all grow (Freire, p. 80). Liberatory
 Paulo Freire and the Concept of Education 51

education employs a problem-posing method in which teachers and students are criti-
cal co-investigators. Working with the teacher to problematize their world, students
come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process (Freire, p.
66). Looking at the past, for example, becomes a means of understanding more
clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future (Freire,
p. 84). At the same time, as Freire would say later, the ability of the educator to
know the object is remade: dialogue is the sealing together of the teacher and the
students in the joint act of knowing and re-knowing the object of study (Shor & Fre-
ire, 1987, p. 14). Finally, the content of liberatory education is the organized, sys-
tematized and developed re-presentation to individuals of the things about which
they want to know more (Freire 1970b, p. 93). While the content is constituted and
organized by the students view of the world, however, the task of the dialogical tea-
cher is to re-present that universe to the people from whom he first received
itand re-present it not as a lecture, but as a problem (Freire, p. 109). Thus in
liberatory education, students are producing and acting upon their own ideasnot
consuming those of others (Freire, p. 108).
Banking education, as the phrase itself suggests, is a caricature of traditional educa-
tion. Traditional philosophers, the most notable being Richard Peters and Israel
Scheffler, may not have used the same trope as Freire but they made much the same
argument. Thus knowledge for them is not property, let alone property of teachers,
but holy ground which stands between teacher and taught (Peters, 1966, p. 167);
and it is to be accepted by students, if at all, in the same way teachers accept it, that
is, only after critical reflection (Scheffler, 1965). Furthermore, liberating education,
much like traditional education, involves teachers transmitting knowledge to students.
It is true that for Peters and Scheffler transmission is both logically necessary (stu-
dents must have something to reflect on before they can reflect critically) and educa-
tionally desirable (students generally are to pick up where teachers leave off and carry
on from there), while for Freire it is neither necessary (students already have, if any-
thing, too much to reflect on) nor desirable, reinforcing habits of mind and relation-
ships with superiors that liberatory education is designed to challenge. But Freire,
according to Mayo (2004), conceded that some instruction is necessary at times,
especially when students resist attempts at dialogue, perhaps misconstruing a dia-
logical approach for lack of competence on the teachers part (Mayo, p. 55). Roberts
(1996) goes further, suggesting that liberating teachers must be authoritative but not
authoritarian, at least at the beginning of the process; and he quotes Freire as insist-
ing, its impossible for me to help someone without teaching him or her something
with which they can start to do by themselves (Roberts, 1996, para. 10). Overcoming
resistance to liberating teachers and starting the process of critical reflection are
needed because, as Mayo (2007a) puts it, educator and educatee are not on an equal
footing in the educational process. Student voices are never innocent They
contain manifestations of the Oppressor consciousness that ought to be challenged
(Mayo, p. 52).
Fenstermacher and Soltis (2009), in their standard text Approaches to teaching, clas-
sify Freire and Peters as liberationists, that is, philosophers who view the teacher as
someone who frees and opens the mind of the learner (Fenstermacher & Soltis,
52 Kelvin Stewart Beckett

p. 5). They also say that Freire is perhaps the best-known early articulator of the role
of the emancipationist teacher (Fenstermacher & Soltis, p. 52), emancipatory teach-
ing being a variant of the liberationist approach, with a strong political and social ori-
entation (Fenstermacher & Soltis, p. 51). It is not that Peters does not have a
political and social orientation, however: clearly he does (see, for example, Benn &
Peters, 1965); nor is the important point that his orientation differs from Freires,
though obviously it does. The significant difference, at least for us, is that Peters starts
the process of education with a monologue in which teachers transmit their knowl-
edge to students, asking them to solve increasingly complex, set problems until they
reach a point where they can begin to address current issues in the forms of thought
and awareness (Peters, 1966, p. 31) they now share with their teachers. Freire, on
the other hand, began his literacy campaigns with research on students linguistic
universe looking for trisyllabic generative words such as FAVELA (slum) (Freire,
1970a, p. 53). He then inserted each word into a codificationhere a slide depict-
ing students existential situation in a slumwhich functioned as the knowable
object mediating between the knowing subjectsthe educator and learnersin the
act of knowing they achieve[d] in dialogue (Freire, p. 53). For Freire, teachers and
students were situated in both a concrete context, the slum reality, and a theoreti-
cal context, the discussion group (circulo de cultura) in which they engaged in
dialogue about the reason of the slum reality (emphasis in original). This dialogue
enabled the learners to transform their interpretation of reality from mere opinion
[myth] to a more critical knowledge through a process of de-codifying the reality
and re-totalizing it (Freire, p. 53). At the same time, and paralleling the dialogue,
the teacher would be showing slides that broke down the generative word into sylla-
bles (FA VE LA) and showed each syllables family (Freire, p. 54) (e.g. FA FE FI
FO FU), and would be asking the students if they could create new words with these
pieces. After a silence, the students would begin, one by one, to discover the
words of their language by putting together the syllables in a variety of combinations
(Freire, p. 54).
Central to Freires conception of education are important aspects of education
which other philosophers consign to the periphery. The most central (and I believe
the most important) is his notion of dialogue. Its not that dialogue cannot be found
in Peters, Scheffler and Dewey: it can (Beckett, 2011a). But Peters and Scheffler
focus mainly on teachers and what they are trying to transmit, while Deweys main
concern was students and what they are actually learning. Freire, on the other hand,
was focused on teachers and students more or less equally and on what they are doing
together. Students and teachers are, as he says, co-investigators of students reality.
Working together, they examine codifications which include representations of con-
crete realities about which students know more than teachers and generative words
about which teachers know more than students. Peters, Scheffler and Dewey may be
correct in assuming that educational engagements typically begin with teachers on the
one hand and learners on the other. As we have seen, Freire acknowledged as much.
But Freire was surely right when he insisted that as the work progresses teachers
become more teachersstudents, students become studentsteachers, and together
they become critical co-investigators. Measuring themselves against each other;
 Paulo Freire and the Concept of Education 53

identifying needs the other can satisfy and needs they can satisfy in the other; and
finding shared concerns they can explore together: these are all important aspects of
education the significance of which Freire, more than other philosophers, helped us
appreciate.

Liberatory and Progressive Education

Freire did not discuss the differences between his liberatory conception of education
and John Deweys progressive conception, at least not explicitly. Though Freire had
studied Dewey somewhat in graduate school (Betz, 1992, p. 109), and even refer-
enced him in his doctoral dissertation (Schugurensky, 2011), Dewey was not a major
influence on his work. Freire did say, however, that when I criticize manipulation, I
do not want to fall into a false and nonexistent nondirectivity of education, some-
thing he associated with the laissez faire position (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 22). Rob-
erts (2000) develops this point when he separates liberating education from
emerging child-centered, interactive, problem-solving, and other ostensibly
progressive approaches to education (Roberts, p. 55). According to Roberts (1996,
2000), these approaches are laissez-faire, individual, apolitical, problem-solving rather
than problem-posing, and cast the teacher in the role of a facilitator. But Freire
insisted that education is always directive, always. The question is to know towards
what and with whom is it directive (Shor & Freire, 1987, pp. 2223). Liberation, for
him, was a social act, a social process (Shor & Freire, p. 23); and the goal students
were directed towards was to help others to be free by transforming the totality of
society (Shor & Freire, p. 23). In fact, directivity, in this one instance, is a sign of
liberatory teachers, of Freires, own liberation, conducting educational campaigns
among the poor and oppressed being their way of helping transform the totality of
society. It must also have been a good way to model freedom from oppression for
their students.
In practice, Freire and Dewey could hardly have been more dissimilar. Dewey
thought of his Laboratory School in Chicago as an enriched educational environment
which gave children opportunities to experience new things, learn in new ways and
grow in new directions (see, for example, Cremin, 1969; Hanson, 2007). Freires cul-
ture circles, on the other hand, were transformative environments in which adults
were challenged to objectify, question and move beyond what they learned as chil-
dren. The difference, as Kellner (2003) points out, is that while Dewey wanted edu-
cation to produce citizens for democracy, citizens familiar with all aspects of social
life and able to communicate with all members of society, Freire sought, in the spirit
of Marxist revolutionary praxis, to develop a pedagogy of the oppressed that would
produce revolutionary subjects, empowered to overthrow oppression and to create a
more democratic and just social order (Kellner, p. 171) (see also Mayo, 2004,
2007b). In theory, however, the differences may not seem so great. For Dewey, as
Betz (1992) argues, the danger was always that our nominal democracy is not
deeply based and the checks it provides are few, so the controlling class controls in its
own interests and for its own perpetuation; and this he says is contrary to the
shared, cooperative, open spirit of both science and democracy (Betz, p. 114), the
54 Kelvin Stewart Beckett

social practices which had the most influence on Deweys conception of education.
Deweys directivity may not have been as explicit as Freires; and it is true that stu-
dents at the Dewey School were given considerable freedom to choose what to do
(see especially, Mayhew & Edwards, 1936). But because the teachers had already
made the most important decisions, decisions about the kind of environment students
would work in, the learning resources they would have access to and the limits on the
choices they would be able to make, the Deweyan educator, as Betz (1992) argues,
was even more directive than the Freirean educator.
The main difference between Dewey and Freire was that Dewey sought to
strengthen and build on cultural elements that were already firmly rooted in at least
some social practices in Progressive Era America at the turn of the twentieth century.
He did this by creating a school which acted as a kind of filter, allowing some ele-
ments of the existing social environment to pass through while at the same time
blocking others, and by asking teachers to develop activities which called forth some
of their students natural tendencies but not others. In this special environment, and
participating in these special activities, children experienced and learned some things
and grew in some ways but not others, thus acquiring, it was hoped, the shared, coop-
erative, open spirit of science and democracy and applying it in all their activities, in
school and out. Freire, on the other hand, sought to root out cultural elements that
pervaded, dominated and divided groups of people in Brazil and other countries after
World War II, elements he summed up in the term oppression. He did this by chal-
lenging the oppressed to see their world clearly, consider the possibility of a better
world and then fight to achieve it. Dewey was far from being laissez-faire, individual
or apolitical, and teachers at his school were not just facilitators. Deweys politics,
however, were different from Freires, and they necessitated a different kind of
engagement between teachers and students. The directivity was still there, but it was
always just off stage, so that what students experienced, with their teachers as well
as with other students, was the shared, cooperative, open spirit of science and
democracy.
The second important aspect of education that Freire made central to his concep-
tion of education was its problem-posing method. This in itself, however, did not
separate him from other philosophers. Dewey (1916), for example, defined education
as that reconstruction or reorganization of experience that adds to the meaning of
experience (Dewey, p. 76); and he contrasted educational activity with routine
activity, in which no new meaning is possible, and with capricious activity, in which
new meaning, though possible, is ignored or neglected (Dewey, p. 77). Progressive
teachers, according to Dewey, must challenge students to do new things and to pay
closer attention to what happens as a result. They are problem-posing in the sense
that they implicitly ask students to question what they are already doing on their own.
For Peters and Scheffler, education implies the transmission of knowledge from teach-
ers to students, and they argue that this involves students acquiring not just true
beliefs, but adequate evidence as well (Scheffler, 1965, p. 21). Thus, traditional
teachers must constantly test students learning to ensure that it is correct and that
they have good reason to believe it is correct. Teachers are problem-posing, not just
in the obvious sense that they require students to doubt whether they know
 Paulo Freire and the Concept of Education 55

something. They also implicitly ask them to question their understanding of what
counts as knowledge. Peters (1966) says, all forms of thought and awareness have
their own internal standards of appraisal; but getting on the inside of the forms and
coming to understand and care about the standards (Peters, p. 31) will inevitably
lead students to question their own, personal forms of thought and awareness.
The difference between Freire and other philosophers is not that Freire is problem-
posing and others are not: the difference lies in the problems they pose. The issue for
Freires students is not just that they have to learn something new, as it is for Deweys
students, or that what they are learning might be wrong and they do not know why,
as it is for Peters and Schefflers students. The problem is that their entire view of
the world might be wrong and the task they have before them is to develop a com-
pletely new view. Students, regardless of age, come to teachers full of truths and false-
hoods (see, for example, Souto-Mannings, 2010, work with first graders), and
correcting the latter is just as important as building on the former. It might be even
more important, because ignorance, which is what students, like the rest of us, mostly
have, is also misunderstanding, students believing, at least at first, that what does not
exist for them simply does not exist. Traditional teachers may talk about things stu-
dents do not know about, progressive teachers may even arrange for personal experi-
ence of them; and yet students may still hold back, finding other, for them more
plausible explanations for what they are hearing and seeing. Philosophers who do not
address this issue assume that students, once they know the facts, will correct them-
selves. But is this true? Is it even plausible? Is it not just as likely that students will
slowly separate their school experience from their other experiences, thinking and
doing what is expected of them in school, acting on their own beliefs outside school,
and leaving the former behind when they leave school? If Freire is correct, as I think
he is, teachers must make students views of the world as much a part of the curricu-
lum as their own views; and they must be prepared to challenge misunderstandings
students treasure as their own.

Liberatory Education and its Critics

The publication of Pedagogy of the oppressed in 1970 generated a lot of comment,
some of it critical (see for example, Berger, 1975); but perhaps the most searching
criticism came during the early 1990s from environmentalist, feminist and poststruc-
turalist scholars who picked up on and found fault with the books universalism,
rationalism and vanguardism. Jackson (2007), for example, argued that Freire did
not give sufficient attention to difference, to the conflicting needs of oppressed
groups, or to the specificity of peoples lives and experiences; and to this day she
remains critical of his apparent universalization, lack of gender analysis and con-
ception of the teacher as emancipator (Jackson, p. 210). The issue for us is
whether Freires universalism, rationalism and vanguardism, if in fact that is what
they were, were matters of emphasis at the time, called out by the students he was
working with and what they needed most from him, or whether they raise serious
questions about his underlying conception of education, a conception which, as we
have said, remained substantially unchanged in his later work, even after he had
56 Kelvin Stewart Beckett

accepted the challenge of (and clearly enjoyed) dialogue with his critics (Freire,
1997). The answer, as we will see, is, Yes and yes, but the doubts are not, or not
quite, what Freires critics had in mind.
Bowers (1993), an environmental scholar, argues that Freires pedagogy leads to a
modernizing and Westernizing mode of consciousness (Bowers, p. 34). He conducts
a thought experiment in which Freire brings his pedagogy to the Chipewyan, one of
Canadas First Nations, a people who have retained their traditional mode of con-
sciousness even though they have interacted with the English and French for over a
hundred years (Bowers, p. 38). Bowers doesnt use the term vanguardism but he
does speak of Freires moral certitude in interfering in the lives of others (Bowers,
p. 42) and of his cultural bias towards change, progress, social revolution, and the
continual problematizing and renegotiation of the rules that govern everyday life
(Bowers, p. 42). These attitudes are anathema to the Chipewyan, whose tradition is
to learn from direct experience, not secondhand from others, and learn only what
helps them maintain rather than improve their way of life. Finally, Bowers contrasts
Freires modernizing, Westernizing education with traditional Chipewyan practices.
He says that Chipewyan adults teach their children to be non-interfering by rarely
exercising control over their activities (Bowers, p. 39).
Roberts (2003a), responding to these criticisms, acknowledges the potential for
conflict between Freires commitments and his students traditions. He immediately
goes on to point out, however, that Freire is not against tradition; rather, he is
against social structures, practices and relations which force people to accept tradi-
tion, or actively discourage them from questioning it (Roberts, p. 164). McClaren
(2007) makes much the same point but even more forcefully. He argues, convincingly
I think, that Freire respected his students common-sense knowledge, opposed all
forms of cultural invasion, and specifically orients reflective thinking towards a resis-
tance to domination and exploitation (McClaren, p. 104). Roberts and McClaren
are suggesting that Bowers thought experiment is beside the point; and it is true that
just as Freire is the last teacher we could envision disrespecting his students com-
mon-sense knowledge, the Chipewyan are just about the last people we would imag-
ine having social structures that force people to accept tradition. But even if the
Chipewyan did have such structures, as many other people do, though Freire would
certainly challenge them to question the structures, he never insisted on taking his
students further than they were prepared to go on their own: though Freire believed
he had a right, in situations where he was invited to teach or to coordinate an educa-
tional program, to convey his own views, he did not force them on others or act disre-
spectively toward those who viewed the world through different cultural lenses
(Roberts, p. 166). Freires (1970b) first premise was that liberatory pedagogy must be
forged with, not for, the oppressed, and he welcomed the fact that in the struggle
for their liberation this pedagogy will be made and remade (Freire, p. 48). Even
unmade and remade. Whenever students cut his teaching short, sensing an alien and
threatening mode of consciousness behind it, as frustrating as this could be, Freire
accepted their decision, and started again from the beginning; that is, from their mode
of consciousness:
 Paulo Freire and the Concept of Education 57

I am defending the critical participation of the students in their education.

Do you see? They have a right to participate and I dont have the right to
say that because they might reject participation, then I assume the position
of totally giving them their formation. No! I must recognize that students
cannot understand their own rights because they are so ideologized into
rejecting their own freedom Then, I have to learn with them how to go
beyond these limits. (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 21, emphases in original)
Freires practice may be sound here, teachers having to accept responsibility when
they get ahead of their students and return to the point where they left them behind;
but what he says about practice does raise a question about his conception of educa-
tion. Though rarely as dramatic as a thought experiment can make them seem, con-
flicts between teachers and students views are more-or-less inevitable. When there is
conflict, however, the issue is not whether students have a right to participate in edu-
cation, as Freire would have us think. No philosopher, no scholar that I am aware of
seriously doubts that education is theirs in the sense that they have a right to make
choices about it. Neither is the issue whether students have a right not to participate,
as Bowers seems to think. Of course they do, and they exercise it every day by the
simple expedient of tuning their teachers out. The issue is whether Bowers and, more
importantly, Freire might have missed something here. Freire says it is not just stu-
dents but teachers as well who have a right not to participate; and he is a teacher who
will exercise that right if students insist on him giving them their formation. But
what if that is not what students want? What if the conflict between them is not
resolved but further exacerbated when Freire responds by trying to learn with them
how to go beyond these limits? Just because students are not asking for a liberatory
teacher doe not mean they want a traditional teacher. What they might want is a tea-
cher who is willing to learn with them how to go beyond, not just their limits, but his
or her limits as well; a teacher who is not just willing to learn from them, as we know
Freire was eager to do, but to search with them for a new set of limits which pose as
much of a challenge for the teacher as they do for the students, but which in the end
they might agree to share.
Weiler (2003/1991), writing from a feminist and a postmodernist perspective, can
be seen to take up where Bowers leaves off and go one step further. Like Bowers, she
questions Freires assumption that the teacher is on the same side as the
oppressed (Weiler, p. 220); but while Bowers doubts if teachers are always on the
same side, Weiler thinks they never are, or at least that being on the same side is never
the whole story. Though the teacher in Pedagogy of the oppressed is presented as a gen-
eric man whose interests will be with the oppressed as they mutually discover the
mechanisms of oppression, a teacher, any teacher, will be seen and heard by stu-
dents not as an abstraction, but as a particular person with a certain defined history
and relationship to the world (Weiler, p. 220). Unless we recognize more clearly the
implicit power and limitations of the position of the teacher, calls for a collective lib-
eration risk ignoring the tensions that may emerge among teachers and students as
subjects with conflicting interests and histories and with different kinds of knowledge
and power (Weiler, p. 220).
58 Kelvin Stewart Beckett

Much has been written in response to Weilers (and other feminist) criticisms, not
least by Freire himself. It seems to be generally conceded that gender is a blind spot
in Pedagogy of the oppressed and that (as sincere as the effort was) Freires later pro-
nouncements on the subject were superficial (Schugurensky, 2011, p. 137). Weilers
main point, however, is less feminist than poststructuralist. The issue for her is not so
much that Freires generic man is presented as a man but, as we have seen, that he
is presented as generic, as an abstraction. According to Roberts (2003b), Freire
acknowledged that the differences between teachers and students are important, but
where the postmodern turn of mind appears to privilege the particular over the gen-
eral, for Freire both depend on each other for their intelligibility (Roberts, p. 458).
As true as this may be, however, it also seems to miss the point. The issue here is not
difference itself, as Freire seemed to assume, but the conflicts that arise from it; and
the question Weiler raises is whether Freires conception of education distorts reality
by foregrounding the teachers role as liberator and the students role as oppressed.
Weiler (2001) would later acknowledge that in his final books Freire put forward
a more open vision of pedagogy, one which made fewer claims to revolutionary
transformation. But she also argued, correctly it seems, that he never put forward a
self-critique of his tendency to glorify the revolutionary leader (Weiler, p. 76), nor,
we might add, did he address at length the role reversal which occurs when, in resolv-
ing conflicts between them, students are able to liberate their teachers from residual
elements of oppressor (and oppressed) consciousness.
The issue here is whether revolutionary leaders should facilitate their own destruc-
tion. Given the differences between them, we know that teachers will be important
objects of study for most students. Furthermore, we know that students will accept
some things from teachers and resist others, and on occasion will respond to per-
ceived teacher violence with violence of their own (Weiler, 2003/1991). But taking
all of this into account, liberating teachers will have to ask themselves whether stu-
dents overcoming their teachers is what liberating education is all about: their first
opportunity to confront their oppressors and conquer them. This is not an aspect of
liberatory pedagogy Freire emphasized, but it is not inconsistent with it. Freire
insisted that teachers stand up for their beliefs, and he wanted students to do so as
well. But in not saying much about how conflicts should be resolved, suggesting only
that if students resist hard enough teachers should back off, did he not miss an impor-
tant part of education? After all, the differences between teachers and students are the
occasion for education. Whether we see them as differences in knowledge (as tradi-
tionalists do), experience (progressives) or degrees of freedom (liberationists), teach-
ing and learning would not be possible without them. But differences generate
conflict, at least at first; and for everything students accept from teachers after only
the briefest reflection, there will be something else which provokes active resistance
and must be addressed at length.
Finally, Ellsworth (1992) offers a postmodernist critique of Pedagogy of the oppressed
which, though I believe it is largely mistaken, also helps us better understand the con-
text in which teacherstudent conflict takes place and suggests a way it can be
resolved. Ellsworth argues that Freire gave the illusion of equality while in fact leaving
the authoritarian nature of the teacher/student relationship intact (Ellsworth, p. 98).
 Paulo Freire and the Concept of Education 59

Though he redefined the teacher as learner of the students reality and knowledge,
the only reason he gave is to enable the teacher to devise more effective strategies for
bringing the student up to the teachers level of understanding (Ellsworth, p. 98).
Freires pedagogy implied the presence of, or potential for, an emancipated teacher,
someone who knows the object of study better than do the students; but no teacher
is free of learned and internalized oppressions (Ellsworth, p. 99). Poststructuralism,
according to Ellsworth, has facilitated a devastating critique of the violence of rational-
ism against its Others (Ellsworth, p. 96), for example women and people of color.
Poststructuralist thought is bound, not to reason, but to discourse, literally narratives
about the world that are admittedly partial (Ellsworth, p. 96, emphasis added). For
Ellsworth, however, this is a condition to embrace and use as an opportunity to build
a kind of social and educational interdependency that recognizes differences as differ-
ent strengths and as forces for change (Ellsworth, p. 110).
Roberts (2003a) acknowledges the force of Ellsworths argument. He concedes that
an elitist conception of vanguardism might be regarded as anti-dialogical, and this
stands in tension with the Freirean notion of solidarity, something which demands a
genuine love of, care for, and commitment to others and to some sort of shared goal
(Roberts, p. 171). What Roberts does not concede, however, at least not explicitly, is
the possibility that Freire was elitist, nor does he address Ellsworths argument that,
despite his love for the oppressed, the only goal they appear to have shared was Fre-
ires goal of liberation. Margonis (2007), for one, believes that Ellsworths argument
has yet to be adequately addressed. He says that in opposition to Freires will to be
bonded with students, Ellsworth argues for a pedagogy based on the assumption
that differences always separate students and teachers, and that respectful student
teacher relationships involve a willingness to work with those differences (Margonis,
p. 67).
Ellsworth, I think, is superficially wrong, substantially right and fruitfully mistaken.
What she seems to overlook is that in Freires culture circles there was never just one
object of study; and Freire cheerfully admitted that students knew much more than
he did about most of them. Freires pedagogy was, after all, constituted by students
views of the world; and to help them overcome their learned oppression it was impor-
tant that they do most of the teaching (see, for example, Spring, 2008). But Ellsworth
is surely correct when she criticizes Freires failure to fully acknowledge and take into
account his own learned oppressionsand, we should add, students learned free-
doms as well. Students and teachers narratives are, as she says, different and partial.
Any comprehensive description of what goes on in education must include an account
of how teachers and students become aware of this fact and seek to construct a more
complete narrative they can share. In Pedagogy of the oppressed we learn a lot about
what students learned from Freire, a little about what he learned from them, but
almost nothing about what it all added up to. We know it must have been something,
because personal experience tells us that even in the compressed time frame of a
three- to four-month educational campaign, a new, shared understanding between
teachers and students, however limited, almost always develops. But knowing that
Freire and his students must have achieved some sort of shared goal, we are left
wondering why Freire decided not to share it with the rest of us; and the obvious
60 Kelvin Stewart Beckett

answer would seem to be that, when compared with all of the other things that were
going on, he did not think it as important.
Let me suggest, however, that Ellsworth (and Margonis) is mistaken here and that
Roberts cautious response to her criticisms is fully justified. Freire may not have
labeled it as such, but he does seem to have provided us with a comprehensive
description of what he and his students actually achieved, given the circumstances of
their educational campaigns. Assuming that teachers and students never agree on
everything, the issue is what narrative they can share; and recognizing the limited
duration of his campaigns and the fact that once completed teachers and students
had no further personal contact, the issue is whether the description Freire did pro-
vide is unduly limited. In Pedagogy of the oppressed, teachers and students share a com-
mon language, a common humanity, and not much more. But given that the
language teaching clearly engages their different strengths, teacher literacy and student
orality, the universalism and rationalism of the liberatory pedagogy should perhaps be
interpreted not as teacher strengths rather than student strengths, but as human quali-
ties which, like language, teachers and students share, but which they apply differently
in their different areas of expertise.
If Ellsworth is mistaken, however, the error is fruitful, raising a serious question not
just about Freires liberatory pedagogy but about the conception of education that lies
behind it. Freire is, as she argues, so focused on problematizing students views of the
world that he fails to take full account of student strengths and teacher weaknesses.
But this, as she also says, is a condition to embrace and an opportunity to build
social and educational interdependency. Ellsworth is suggesting, correctly I think,
that we should view education as a cooperative enterprise, one in which teachers and
students help each other overcome their respective weaknesses and build on their
respective strengths, in order to create a new and better understanding of the world,
an understanding they can share. But even if Freire had never emphasized this aspect
of education, neither had he denied it; and in response to these (and related) criti-
cisms he reminded us that in the Pedagogy it is not just students who must be assimi-
lated into the teachers discourse, teachers must assimilate themselves into students
discourse as well, because the objective of education is the development of multiple
literacies and multiple discourses (Freire, 1997, p. 305). As Freire explained, the
consciousness of incompleteness in human beings leads us to involve ourselves in a
permanent process of search (Freire, p. 312); and education, for him, was always a
mutual process of liberation (Freire, p. 306).

Conclusion
Paulo Freires liberatory conception of education focuses attention on important
aspects of education which other conceptions marginalize. When he characterized tea-
cherstudent interaction as dialogue, and teachers and students as critical co-investi-
gators, he forced those of us who learned at the feet of Peters, Scheffler and Dewey
to rethink our assumptions and to accept that education involves not just teachers
teaching and students learning, but teachers and students teaching and learning
together. And when he said that education is problem-posing, and that the problems
 Paulo Freire and the Concept of Education 61

are to be found in the students views of the world, we realized that we had been
thinking before only of its being problem-solving and only of problems out there.
Having learned so much from Freire, it is difficult to acknowledge that criticism of
his pedagogy points towards a limitation in his underlying conception of education. It
is true that for Freire teachers and students are co-investigators of reality. It is also true
that the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms her reflections in the reflections
of the students The teacher presents material to the students for their consider-
ation, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students present their own
(Freire, 1970b, pp. 8081). But in the culture circles where education took place, it
was the students understanding that was being critically examined; and while an
important part of Freires pedagogy involved teachers reflecting on the views of stu-
dents and re-examining their own beliefs as a result, students did not seem to partici-
pate in this phase of his educational campaigns (Gutek, 2005; Spring, 2008) and, as
Ellsworth (1992) suggests, the reflections were not intended, as they were for students
in the culture circles, to lead teachers to question their basic understanding of reality.
The story should not end here, however. At least one more chapter needs to be
written. How can we reconceive education to take account of the fact that in practice
it is not just students views but teachers as well that are being objectified, problema-
tized and moved beyond? One way of doing this, a way which Freire himself sug-
gested, especially in his later writings, is to think of education as a cooperative
enterprise in which teachers and students seek to develop a shared understanding of
the world. Given this purpose, participants must first communicate their current
understanding and invite criticism. They then have to agree, acknowledge disagree-
ments and try to resolve them, and, failing that, agree to differ. The exact roles indi-
vidual participants play depend on circumstances. Just as educating adults for
revolution in Brazil in the 1960s looked a lot different from educating children for
democracy in turn-of-the-twentieth century America, education today would look a
lot different from both. What they all have in common, however, is a common pur-
pose, which is to create a new understanding, one that all participants can share.

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