When marginalized people adopt the narratives and values of their oppressors, they experience “internalized oppression”: “The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom” (p. It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive… by the oppressors’ depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for examples, the myth that the oppressive order is a ‘free society’ the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish… the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem… the myth that rebellion is a sin against God the myth of private property as fundamental to personal human development (p. Freire also believes that e ducation is one of the main tools for indoctrinating the oppressed into these systems : Like the Neo-Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and later contemporary critical theorists, Freire believes that oppression is not only maintained by force, but also by ideologies that dominant groups impose on society to justify their own power: “One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness” (p. If you want to understand why and how critical theory and the ideology of Social Justice is influencing modern education, this book is a good place to start. Thus, teachers who try to turn his ideology into a mere technique are fundamentally misreading his goals. While some of Freire’s critiques of what he calls the “banking model” of education are reasonable, his work as a whole is deeply rooted in his Marxist beliefs. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire is known as the father of critical pedagogy and his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. The discipline of critical pedagogy has two aims: first, to expose how educational practices produce, justify, and reinforce systems of oppression, and second, to transform these practices to foster a “liberatory consciousness” in students.

Freire pedagogy of the oppressed