Educating the Oppressed/ Being Oppressed?

Paolo Freire makes a compelling argument that students are too commonly treated as empty vessels whose only role is to be filled up with knowledge from a greater power. By the end of his chapter Freire has the world broken down into oppressors and oppressed. As a “student teacher” I was struggling to figure out which one I was or if perhaps I was some awful hybrid of both. I believe Freire’s challenge to educators however, is to look at students not as a means to an end, but as fellow human beings and partners in humanity and in education.

            I know far too many students suffering from what Freire calls “narration sickness.” Too many teachers feel so superior to their students that they believe talking at them for an hour a day somehow benefits society. I have yet to find anyone who this is true of. Students are put in a much tougher position that anyone can fathom. Students are told from a young age that teachers are in charge and that they must get good grades. These two things become engrained in them and by the time they arrive at 16-18 years old it is often too late for any teacher to try to change this notion. I myself have asked my students to ignore their grades and try to focus on a discussion and I am greeted with quizzical and distrustful looks. Even my brightest and most open-minded students have trouble shaking off the idea of grades. They believe that I possess some secret combination in my mind that will grant them success and most teachers do nothing to dissuade them of this idea. To change this idea of the oppressor teacher will take far longer than changing to common core, this will take the elimination of competition between students and totalitarian classrooms.

 To be honest, I don’t think it’s in our nature to not be oppressed. We will always hold on to “leaders” who are better than us and the competition for valedictorian and ivy league schools will always make grades critical. Education seems destined to be rife with oppression.