This was one of the hardest reads I have gone through in my young 16 years of life. And at the same time, perhaps the most rewarding. You wanta make change? You wanta be a revolutionary? Great intro to liberating yourself and those who are oppressed around you. DO NOT TRY TO COMPARE TO MARX. Though you can draw similarities, this particular work is just to different. Go read it.

So many words to say so little. This book could have been three pages long and that would have been sufficient. He goes on and on on the same topics of what its like to be oppressed and what the oppressed must do to brake free from oppression. This is all very much common sence, at least it seems so to me, having taken a college class here and there. Marx is taken far out of context and this book altogether preaches a utopian way of things thats as far fetched as communism functioning in a capitalist society.

This is one of those books that is so bad you don't forget it, because it is so misguided and pernicious. Freire thoroughly misreads Hegel and doesn't much understand Marx. It astonishes me that it is still in print: it has the dated quality of a mid-1950s Soviet textbook on Marxism-Leninism and more than a whiff of the arrogance of the messianic monsters who end up as Communist dicators. And the translation is lousy.

If you think there should be more social justice in our world and that the systems of our modern society may even prevent social justice Paulo Freire�s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is for you. This Brazilian educator and philosopher wrote in 1970 of a world, our world, where �Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality.�(Freire, 43) Freire would spend 70 some days in prison and live in exile for over 6 years for his writings and teachings particularly as they related to Brazilian peasants.
Freire wrote that we all live a dehumanized existence where a minority has conquered the majority via �injustice, exploitation, oppression, and...Violence.�(Freire, 43) Freire doesn�t apologize for having a Marxist prospective and shouldn�t. If you don�t believe all humans fit into just one of two classes the haves and the have-not�s then this book is not for you. However it should be because, in his first 5 pages Freire illustrates this reality in a stunning clarity. For Freire seeking any but a more human future leads to despair and is there fore not an option.
Freire describes the objectification process �In their unrestrained eagerness to possess, the oppressors develop the conviction that it is possible for them to transform everything into objects of their purchasing power.�(Freire, 58) Being so objectified steals everyone�s humanity thus returning us to a cast like plebe status even those who do the objectifying are in the end dehumanized by their appetite. �...their situation has reduced them to things. In order to regain their humanity they must cease to be things and fight as men and women.� Only once their reality as objectified things is revealed can men and women begin their fight for liberation.
We fear freedom because of the story we have been feed since kindergarten. Freedom or liberation from our dehumanized existence requires among other things critical dialogue and reflection. �...reflection�-true reflection�-leads to action�when the situation calls for action, that action will constitute an authentic praxis only if its consequences become the object of critical reflection.�(Freire, 68) In order for the oppressed to recognize their reality, not the myths of the oppressors, serious deliberation must be entered into before the process of liberation can begin. Freire believes that we are subject to themes, false reality if you will, which have been imposed on the oppressed. The oppressed must re-define their reality to understand their true vocation, that of liberation. Critical to this deliberation is the process of dialogue.
�Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world.�(Freire, 88) Entered into dialogue together the oppressed can peruse their reality and will come to understand in a more complete way their actuality as people in pursuit of humanizing processes. �...faith in humankind� writes Freire �faith in their power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human.�(Freire, 90) The job of the people is to remake our reality into a liberating and humanizing certainty, to escape our objectified existence. One cannot be in dialogue or think about our objectification without others entering that dialogue as well. One cannot think for another, just as another cannot think for the one, but all must enter into dialogue and reflection as a community together.
Freire describes the current education system as ��suffering from narration sickness.�(Freire, 71) that is a reality or narrative that is static and immobile, told as a positive or sure existence one which students should or must mold themselves to.
This �Narration leads students to memorize mechanically the narrated content.�(Freire, 72) Freire calls this the banking system of education where �...knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.�(Freire, 74) This is the deposit of knowledge not of thought. Freire continues, �...his ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.� (Freire, 78) Because this system of education forces the oppressed to adapt to the situation the oppressors can more easily dominate them. Students of the banking system are turned into �...receiving objects.�(Freire, 77) they are in this way further objectified and dehumanized.
Lesson are given not as a narrative or fact but rather in terms of a problem or question to be solved. The student and the teacher learn together from one another in dialogue and reflection. Instead of asking students to remember information and regurgitate it in a non-thinking robot like way students of the problem posing method would be given a challenge and would be asked to resolve it. The teacher and student become partners of investigation like a team of gumshoes solving a criminal riddle. �The students�-no longer docile listeners�are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher.�(Freire, 81) By promoting critical thinking skills, dialogue and class wide reflection the march to liberation can begin. The process must be founded in co-reflection about the world, their place, and humanity; then as false themes are revealed real problems become apparent.
No apology is necessary for the liberal use of leftist ideology including communism, Marx�s definition of class �access to the means of production� in a keystone of this study. If you disagree with this definition then this reviewer would suggest you think about what it means to be �middle� �lower� or �upper class�. And if your think you enjoy true freedom then you must ask yourself why you had to go to work yesterday and the day before. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a ray of hope and light in a world full of dehumanizing weapons polices and institutions it is a must read for all who seek freedom and a humanizing future.
Problem posing education used properly can at least, promote thoughtful reflection and dialogue as a community, if not something grander like liberation. Re-democratization of our communities must start with an education that allows people to recognize their dehumanized existence and that reveals the false narratives of our world. Via reflection and dialogue Freire�s problem posing pedagogy gives us hope for a liberating future as equals.

Freire was a brilliant thinker, and his ideas about education and society are quite relevant; the main flaw with this book however, is one glaring contradiction--Freire seems to be completely ignoring his own proposal that ideas should be more accessible to the masses. The concepts and their explanations found within Pedagogy of the Oppressed, at least in its English translation, are worded so crypticly that one cannot simply read the book. One must thoroughly analyze every single explanation before the concepts can be grasped, and as far as I am concerned, anyone who argues the contrary is absolutely wrong. And while it is true that complex, abstract explanations are often needed to convey such esoteric ways of thinking, I believe that this book could have been made much more accessible to the masses. This is not for everyone. Although the subject interests me, the book simply wasn't an exciting read.