Paulo Freire and Revolutionary Education Essay Example for Free

Paulo Freire and Revolutionary Education Essay In reading Paulo Freire’s inspiring and idealistic book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1970, the question arises is whether such a radically transformed educational system is even possible. According the person I interviewed, a professor with many years of teaching experience in many countries, the answer is not particularly optimistic. Paolo Freire’s radical and humanistic view of education is light year’s removed from what actually takes place in most classrooms around the world. At the lower levels, education often amounts to little more than rote memorization to prepare for standardized tests, with administrators mainly concerned that their ‘numbers’ look good. Higher education has devolved into career training for big business interests, and frankly has become a business itself. Virtually none of the creativity, humanization or liberation that Freire writes about so eloquently really exists in most educational systems around the world, which simply turn out more cogs for the machinery. There may be a few truly creative and humanistic teachers, although they usually end up frustrated, burned out and cynical because of the nature of the system itself. For Freire, the worst form of teaching is the banking concept of education, in which students are passive and alienated note takers of any information the teacher provides. This has been the normal type of education system in most of the world throughout history, mirroring the authoritarian and paternalistic socio-economic relationships in the world outside the classroom. In fact, the schools and universities are preparing students to take their place in the system without questioning it. Freire claims that teachers can either work â€Å"for the liberation of the people—their humanization—or for their domestication, their domination. † They can either create an education system in which all persons in the classroom are â€Å"simultaneously teachers and learners†, realizing that â€Å"knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impertinent, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world†, or simply uphold the status quo (Freire 72). He also insists that â€Å"the teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thoughts on them† (Freire 77). Ruling elites merely want to use the education system as part of the apparatus of â€Å"domination and repression†, to maintain order, but real education should be revolutionary and deliberately set out to â€Å"transform† the world (Freire 79-80). Are there teachers who actually believe in this radical mission for education? Is it even possible within the present system? How long does it take for teachers who were once young and idealistic to become disillusioned? The following are excerpts from an interview with ‘Dr. W. ’a university professor who has taught in various countries around the world for twenty-two years: Question: Have you ever read Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed? Dr. W: Yes, parts of it. Over the years, I’d say I’ve become fairly familiar with his general theories. Question: Do you regard the educational systems you have seen as oppressive? Dr. W: I have experienced many educational systems around the world, including a number that I would regard as extremely oppressive. For example, I’ve taught in Asian and Middle Eastern countries where primary and secondary school teachers regularly slap, punch and beat students†¦hit them with sticks and so on. For the most part, those systems are based on rote memorization as Freire described, and the students are not even allowed to question the teacher: they are strictly passive. Mainly, the students are just being prepared for standardized tests, not to develop creativity or imagination, and this becomes very clear when they reach the university level. At that point, they have become used to treating teachers like little tin gods, although I suppose it prepares them for the kind of bureaucratic and managerial salaried positions most of them will be expected to fill in society. Question: Isn’t that also the case with the American education system? Isn’t it mostly geared toward jobs in the capitalist economy? Dr. W. : Absolutely. The American education system is also a class system, and this is already the case in primary and secondary schools. My first job was as a student teacher in a high school in New York. The kids from working class backgrounds were generally tracked into ‘general† classes† that were not preparing them for higher education, while those from the middle class were. I’ll never forget the first class I ever taught, with a group of sullen, nonresponsive working class kids, stuck in a basement classroom that did not even have windows, taught by people who didn’t much care whether they learned anything or not. These kids knew it, too. They were not dumb, although the system certainly treated them that way. They knew they were being prepared for jobs as mechanics and cashiers. And this was not an inner city school, though, where the American class and caste system reveals itself at its most brutal. Question: Caste system? Dr. W. : Yes, in the United States, we have a long history of education segregated by color, with the worst schools always being reserved for minority groups. Compare any inner city public school system today with those in the white suburbs, or with expensive private schools for the upper classes, and you will see the difference in about two seconds. For the poor and minority groups in the inner cities, the teachers and facilities are much worse than in the suburbs, as is the housing, health care, nutrition and so on. Conditions in these ghettoized schools and neighborhoods are not all that much better from those in developing countries†¦the types of places Freire was talking about in his books. In those countries, the oppression is very real indeed, and the students are being prepared for lives as peasants, workers or simply part of the marginalized economy and society, like kids in America’s inner city schools. Those institutions are programmed for failure. Question: But you never taught in inner city schools like those? I mean the types of schools that are like jails, with cops on duty, metal detectors and things like that? Dr. W. : No, my career has been mostly at the university level, and the students I’ve had were relatively privileged by the standards of this world—middle class or upper class. In the Middle East, I taught students from royalty and the aristocracy who had huge allowances every month, and in Asia I once taught students who arrived in limos with their own drivers. I wouldn’t say that they were exactly the oppressed masses Freire was describing. On the other hand, I taught at a university in the former Soviet Union were about 60% of the students were on scholarships and came from fairly modest backgrounds. A lot of people had also been hit hard by the collapse of the economy when the Soviet Union ended. We even had a former brain surgeon who ended up working as a janitor at the university, earning about $150 a month. The whole medical and public education system was so far gone that she could make more money that way. Question: So you basically see the education system as being unequal, designed to keep people in their place generation after generation? Dr. W. : Yes, that’s been mostly my experience. I think it’s designed to insure that the children of the owners and the ruling class will stay at the same level as their parents, while the children of the middle class will continue to manage and administer the system for them, and the children of workers will continue to be mostly worker bees, although a few might be allowed up into the middle class. Question: So in all your years of experience, you never experienced education as being liberating in the way Freire describes? Dr. W. : Absolutely never. The system is set up to do the opposite and it will usually weed out teachers who do not conform to its requirements, unless they are protected by tenure. Most teachers just go along and get along, never rocking the boat because they are relatively powerless themselves and just need the paycheck. Moreover, parents of middle class and upper class students do not want anyone to be liberated, but expect their children to conform to the system—to insure that the family maintains its class position. Question: So given this reality, is there any way you can imagine that a truly liberating education system might be established? Dr. W. (laughs): I think to do what Freire was talking about would require a revolution. Clearly, then, Dr. W. was a case of someone who had become cynical about the education system after long years of experience. He admitted that he had once been young and idealistic and might even have believed some of Freire’s ideas, but over the years he had found that there was really no meaningful way to put them into practice under the current system. In addition, he thought that most students simply went along with this system because that was what their parents expected, especially when they were paying private schools and universities to provide certain services. They were most definitely not interested in making students more humanistic, rebellious or questioning of authority, but only to prepare them for careers and to ‘get ahead’ in life. Only in rare cases in American history, such as the 1960s during the era of the Vietnam War, counterculture and civil rights movements did students actually come to question the dominant values of society on a mass scale. That has most certainly not been the case in recent decades, at least not in the United States, nor in most other countries that Dr. W. had experienced. He had come to regard education as a business, run by bureaucrats and entrepreneurs for a profit rather than to encourage critical thinking or humanistic values among the students. Only occasionally would rebels and nonconformists challenge this system, except in very unusual historical circumstances. WORKS CITED Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy on the Oppressed. NY: Continuum, 2000. Interview with ‘Dr. W. ’ by author, February 4, 2010.

Message in a Bottle :: essays papers

Message in a Bottle Rolling waves gently brushed upon the sand and nipped softly at my toes. I gazed out into the oblivion of blue hue that lay before me. I stared hopefully at sun-filled sky, but I couldn’t help but wonder how I was going to get through the day. Honestly, I never thought in a million years that my daughter and I would be homeless. Oh, how I yearned for our house in the suburbs. A pain wrenched at my heart when I was once reminded again of my beloved husband, Peter. I missed him so much and couldn’t help but ask God why he was taken from us. Living underneath Pier 14 was no life for Emily and me. I had to get us out of here and back on our feet. My stomach moaned angrily. I needed to somehow find food for us, but how? Suddenly, something slimy brushed up against my leg and pierced my thoughts. I jumped back and brushed the residue of sand of my legs. What was that? As my eyes skimmed the water in front of me, I noticed something spinning in the foam of the waves. Curi osity got the best of me and I went over to take a closer look. The object danced in the waves and eventually was coughed out onto the beach. â€Å"Emily!† I called to my eight-year-old daughter who was, at that time, infatuated with a seashell that she found earlier that day. â€Å"Come here and see this! Mommy found something.† Although I had no idea what that something was and I definitely didn’t know it would change my life forever. â€Å"What did you find, Mommy? Is it food?† Emily came running down from the pier to see my finding. â€Å"Oh honey,† I answered, sadly acknowledging my daughter’s hunger, â€Å" I wish it was. Actually, I’m not quite sure what it is. Help me clean it off, will you?† Emily and I began scrubbing the dilapidated, seaweed covered object in the warm waves of the Atlantic. â€Å"Wow, That’s not at all I expected.† I answered as I rolled an old bottle in the water. â€Å"At least we can get some money for this at the recycling center. Not much, but if we collect enough bottles we could get some lunch!† I looked hopelessly at the bottle.

Extemporaneous speech outline and speech with Cosplay as topic Essay

Specific Speech Purpose: To share to my audience about the cosplay scene in the Philippines and answer inquiries in their minds about cosplay. Statement: Cosplay’s popularity growth is fast and there are lot of questions in the mind of people about cosplay. It’s meaning and reason varies from person to person and there are negativities to it. Introduction Attention Step: â€Å"Cosplay. I know a lot of you have in mind, what is it with cosplay? What do people get from wearing costumes like this and cosplaying? Well, congratulations because today, I give you a mini-introduction to cosplaying which involves it’s meaning, reasons why we cosplay, and the negativities to it.† Clarification Step: â€Å"The reason I chose this topic is that if I have anything to talk about which I know so much about, it’s cosplaying. It’s something that everyone knows I do and something I’ll be confident enough to talk about. Now, if you’ll ask about the credibility of what I’m going to say, I’ve been cosplaying for 5 years and if that’s not long enough to know a lot about cosplaying, I don’t know what length will. As a proof, here’s a compilation of my past cosplays since the year 2008 up to present. But before I move on, I’d like to remind everyone that everything I’m about to say is purely based on my own opinions, observations, and perspective. â€Å" Body I. The meaning of cosplay varies from person to person. â€Å" Now, cosplay. What does it mean when you say cosplay? Well, the meaning of cosplay varies from person to person. Since the latest boom of cosplay , many people have had their own notion of what cosplay means. A. The literal meaning of cosplay is costume play. â€Å"But, its literal meaning is costume play, thus the term cosplay. It is the process of acting out your character and showing to people who it is. This maybe by posing, saying a few lines, doing a catwalk, and much more. Unfortunately, to those who are newly exposed to the hobby, they define cosplay as simply as wearing a costume and that’s it. Cosplay! What they didn’t know is that there is a term for that which cosplayers call ‘costrip’. So, there are common misconceptions about the difference between  cosplaying and costripping. In cosplay, since you act out the character, you do it in an event, competition, you join a contest, promote a booth, or program with a specific purpose. While costripping, basically from the word costume + trip but not strip, you just do it because you want to. When you go to a convention, you don’t exactly have to join these competitions, you may opt to stick outside wearing a costume til some people may just want to take a picture of you.† B. Some others perceive cosplay as â€Å"cost-play†. â€Å"Basically because it can be very costly and take up much of your money. A simple costume could range around 500php and those more intricate ones like these range around 20-30 thousand. Of course, that would include the labor and materials.† C. People may do cosplay for a cause thus the term â€Å"cause-play† â€Å"Lastly, some people thinks cosplayers cosplay for a cause thus they term it causeplay. Some events would use cosplay as their main attraction and use it to raise funds, or ask for donations for those that may need it.† II. People have various reasons why they cosplay. â€Å"Now, let’s try to answer some of those questions in mind. Why do people cosplay? What do they get from it? Well, here are the following reasons† A. It is an outlet or a channel of self expression especially for otakus to show their love for an anime, game, or whatever or whoever they are trying to portray. â€Å"First, it is an outlet or a channel of self expression especially for otakus to show their love for an anime, game, or whatever or whoever they are trying to portray. As for me, my love for anime started with the influence of my brother during our childhood which I carried on until I discovered the wonderful world of cosplay. By then, through cosplaying, I show my love for anime. B. Cosplaying gives them a sense of identity which in turn boosts up confidence and self-esteem. â€Å"Second, cosplaying gives a sense of identity. Back in high school, and until now, I’m known by my classmates and friends as the only one who cosplays in our class. Somehow it gives me the identity of â€Å"hey, she’s the cosplayer girl from this block† and it becomes a sort of label to me. And sometimes, this ‘label’ boost up my confidence and self esteem because of my uniqueness in  that way, knowing I can do stuffs people don’t normally do. C. Cosplay gives fun and excitement to people, making it become a hobby for some. â€Å"The third reason for cosplaying is that it gives fun and excitement to people, and some of them make it a hobby. Back at my first exposure to a cosplay convention, I was amazed at how the characters that I was just watching at tv, are actually in front of me in real life, I’m like â€Å"Woooaaahh cool!† and so I became interested in cosplaying. Plus, when you really like, or even love something, you really enjoy what you’re doing and you’re excited about it. D. Going to cosplay conventions or events becomes a form of relaxation and â€Å"detox† for them during their free time. â€Å"The fourth reason why some people cosplay or go to conventions is that it makes them feel relaxed, especially when they’re enjoying, and this somehow becomes their detox actvity during their free time. I mean, going out of those tiring school stuffs, or even work, because cosplay is not limited to teenagers only, and rather than staying home, they unstress themselves by going to events. E. The community serves as a way to meet new people, friends, or â€Å"that special someone†. â€Å"Fifth reason, it serves as a way to meet a lot of new people or friends, and sometimes, that special someone. This here, is loki heart, she has been cosplaying over 8 years now and she met her boyfriend through an online game and cosplay convention. Now, they’re married. Who knows? Maybe you could meet your special someone through cosplaying too. F. Some people cosplay for the prize they aim or for the benefit of it like as a source of income or for promotion, and sometimes, just forced to. â€Å"As of now, I don’t really cosplay anymore as a hobby. After several years of cosplaying, events began to seem all the same and boring to me plus I became busy at school works so I don’t really find that much time to cosplay anymore. Some people see me at conventions but that’s only because it’s my part time job wherein I promote the online game Dragon Nest through cosplaying. Having rakets like this or having your costumes rented out can be a good source of income or help for my financial needs as a student. Plus  it feels fulfilling since I don’t really ask money from my parents anymore for small expenses I can handle, in turn, I help them in that way, and also, myself.† There are many negative sides to cosplaying or its community. â€Å"But, If you think cosplaying is all fun and stuff, well you’re all wrong because there are negative sides to it too. A. A lot of people get criticized or bashed, especially when they act or look weird. â€Å"The main negativity to it is that a lot of people get criticized or bashed, especially when they act or look weird. People just always have something to say about other people. Some would criticize your costume for not being accurate, that it doesn’t fit you, laugh at you because you look stupid, or just basically because they hate you. Some would bash you because you cosplay a character you don’t know anything about. And some just, thinks you’re weird because it’s all something new or different for them. I dhad this experience once back in high school when my teacher saw me and told me in the exact manner I am going to do it now, ‘adrish, ang weird mo’, then i’m like, uuhh ok is that a compliment or not?, but thank u XD† B. Issues are everywhere, especially when you’re famous. â€Å"Next negativity is that issues are everywhere, especially when you’re famous. Here are pictures of people who have one thing in common. They’re famous, and often constantly given issues maybe because others are insecure about them or just couldn’t stand their presence.† C. Parents and some others think it’s a waste of money, time, and energy. â€Å"Third, One thing about parents, they want what’s best for their children. And that is in terms of studies or things they perceive as good. Other hobbies as costly as cosplaying would look like a waste of money and time to them, thinking that children devote their time to studies rather than these. D. There are people who will try to take advantage of you. â€Å"Lastly, there are always people who will try to take advantage of you. One thing female cosplayers would always be warned about are those pervert photographers who try to get the most out of you. If you know what I mean. Or people who would try to ask to take a pic with you, just to get the opportunity to hold you on the side, sometimes at the butt, or suddenly hug  you. Of course, you just have to be mindful and alert to these, and of course, speak out when you are being harassed.† Conclusion Summary Step: â€Å"Anyone can cosplay if they want to. You just have to put in mind the reason you are cosplaying or why you want to and stick to it. †

Alcohol Abuse And Alcoholism Abuse - 1458 Words

The alcohol abuse definition is similar to alcoholism in that in both cases alcohol is causing harm to the drinker s life and those around them. The difference is that those who abuse alcohol, but are not yet alcoholics, typically can put some limitations on their drinking and they have not yet become physically addicted to alcohol. The key to the alcohol abuse definition is not in the amount of alcohol consumed but on how it affects an individual. Alcohol abuse is a psychiatric diagnosis in which there is recurring harmful use of ethanol despite its negative consequence. In 2013 it was reclassified as alcohol use disorder along with alcohol dependence. There are two types of alcohol abuse, those who have anti-social and pleasure†¦show more content†¦Get hooked on drinking to stave off withdrawal symptoms. Also, younger family members tend to mimic the alcohol use patterns of their parents, siblings, and other family members. Peers also influence drinking behavior. Som e studies shows that regardless of family history of alcoholism, a lack of parental monitoring, severe and recurrent family conflict and poor parent-child relationships can contribute to alcohol abuse in adolescents. Children with conduct skills as well as those with little connection to parents, other family members, or school may be at an increased risk for alcohol abuse. Before you seek treatment the first and most important part of the process is that of admitting that you have a problem. Once you have done so then the next step is help and support. Beating an alcohol addiction is a long and painful process. It requires much more than sheer willpower: it requires you to make changes to every aspect of your life and some of that can be more difficult to do than others. But help and support is available so you don’t need to do this on your own. Treatments for alcohol addiction are quite varied because there are multiple perspectives for the condition itself. Those who approach alcoholism as a medical condition or disease recommend differing treatments than, for instance, those who approach the condition as one of social choice. Most treatments focus on helping people discontinue their alcohol intake,