THEORY OF CONSCIENTIZATION AND DIALOGUE

A. Proponents Background

PAULO FREIRE ( 1921-1997) http/digital.lib.msu.edu.

Paulo Freire was born on September 19, 1921 in Recife, a port city of
northeastern Brazil. He has said of his parents that it was they who taught him at an early
age to prize dialogue and to respect the choices of others-key elements in his
understanding of adult education. His parents were middle class but suffered financial
reverses so severe during the Great Depression that Freire learned what it is to go hungry.
It was in childhood that he determined to dedicate his life to the struggle against hunger.

After his family situation improved a bit, he was able to enter the University of
Recife where he enrolled in the Faculty of Law and also studied philosophy and the
psychology of language while working part-time as an instructor of Portuguese in a
secondary school. During this same period he was reading the works of Marx and also
Catholic intellectuals-Maritain, Bernanos, and Mounier-all of whom strongly influenced
his educational philosophy.

In 1944, Freire married Elza Maia Costa Oliveira of Recife, a grade school
teacher who eventually bore three daughters and two sons. As a parent, Paulo's interest in
theories of education began to grow, leading him to do more extensive reading in
education, philosophy, and the sociology of education than in law. In fact after passing
the bar he quickly abandoned law as a means of earning a living in order to go to work as
a welfare official and later as director of the Department of Education and Culture of the
Social Service in the State of Pernambuco.

His experiences during those years of public service brought him into direct
contact with the urban poor. The educational and organizational assignments he
undertook there led him to begin to formulate a means of communicating with the
dispossessed that would later develop into his dialogical method for adult education. His
involvement in adult education also included directing seminars and teaching courses in
the history and philosophy of education at the University of Recife, where he was
awarded a doctoral degree in 1959.

In the early 1960's Freire became the first director of the University of Recife's
Cultural Extension Service which brought literacy programs to thousands of peasants in
the northeast. Later, in March 1964, Freire's literacy teams worked throughout the entire
nation. They claimed success in interesting adult illiterates to read and write in as short a
time as thirty hours!

The secret of this success is found in the resistance of Freire and his co-workers to
merely teaching the instrumental and decontextualized skills of reading and writing, but
rather by presenting participation in the political process through knowledge of reading
and writing as a desirable and attainable goal for all Brazilians. Freire won the attention
of the poor and awakened their hope that they could start to have a say in the day-to-day
decisions that affected their lives in the Brazilian countryside. Peasant passivity and
fatalism waned as literacy became attainable and valued. Freire's methods were
incontestably politicizing and, in the eyes of the Brazilian military and land-owners
anxious to stave off land reform, outrageously radical.

Eventually, the military overthrew the reform-minded Goulart regime in Brazil in

April of 1964. All progressive movements were suppressed and Freire was thrown into
jail for his "subversive" activities. He spent a total of seventy days there where he was
repeatedly questioned and accused. In prison he began his first major educational work,
Education as the Practice of Freedom. This book, an analysis of Paulo's failure to effect
change in Brazil, had to be completed in Chile, because Freire was sent into exile.

After his expulsion from Brazil, Freire worked in Chile for five years with the
adult education programs of the Eduardo Frei government headed by Waldemar Cortes
who attracted international attention and UNESCO acknowledgment that Chile was one
of the five nations of the world which had best succeeded in overcoming illiteracy.

Toward the end of the 1960's, Freire's work brought him into contact with a new
culture that changed his thought significantly. At the invitation of Harvard University he
left Latin America to come to the United States where he taught as Visiting Professor at
Harvard's Center for Studies in Education and Development and was also Fellow at the
Center for the Study of Development and Social Change.

Those years were, of course, a period of violent unrest in the United States when
opposition to the country's involvement in Southeast Asia brought police and militias
onto university campuses. Racial unrest had, since 1965, flared into violence on the
streets of American cities. Minority spokespersons and war protesters were publishing
and teaching, and they influenced Freire profoundly. His reading of the American scene
was an awakening to him because he found that repression and exclusion of the
powerless from economic and political life was not limited to third world countries and
cultures of dependence. He extended his definition of the third world from a geographical
concern to a political concept, and the theme of violence became a greater preoccupation
in his writings from that time on.
 It is during this period that Freire wrote his more famous work, Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. Education is to be the path to permanent liberation and admits of two stages.
The first stage is that by which people become aware (conscientized) of their oppression
and through praxis transform that state. The second stage builds upon the first and is a
permanent process of liberating cultural action.

After leaving Harvard in the early 1970's, Freire served as consultant and
eventually as Assistant Secretary of Education for the World Council of Churches in
Switzerland and traveled all over the world lecturing and devoting his efforts to assisting
educational programs of newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, such as
Tanzania and Guinea Bissau. He also served as chair of the executive committee of the
Institute for Cultural Action (IDAC) which is headquartered in Geneva.

In 1979, Paulo was invited by the Brazilian government to return from exile
where he assumed a faculty position at the University of Sao Paulo. In 1988 he was also
appointed Minister of Education for the City of Sao Paulo-a position which made him
responsible for guiding school reform within two-thirds of the nation's schools.

In 1992, Paulo Freire celebrated his 70th birthday in New York with over two
hundred friends-adult educators, educational reformers, scholars and "grass-roots"
activists. Three days of festivity and workshops, sponsored by the New School for Social
Research, marked the ongoing, vital impact of the life and work of Paulo Freire.

Paulo Freire died in Rio de Janeiro on May 2, 1997, at the age of 75. He leaves
behind a legacy of commitment, love, and hope for oppressed peoples throughout the
world.

B. Major Assumptions/Hypothesis of the Theory (http//digital.lib.msu.edu.)

Literacy and Conscientization

 Freire's thesis is that social change should come from the masses and not isolated
individuals. The political nature of Freire's education benefits those who are struggling to
have a voice of their own because they live in cultures or sectors of cultures which are
totally silenced. Freire contends that people can be taught to read and write as well as
presented with a world view that is unclear and mystifying or a world view which is clear
and enables them to understand their life situation more clearly. This latter view is
attained not only by what is taught, but why and how it is taught

Freire's literacy method is founded on the notions of conscientization and

dialogue. It involves teaching adults how to read and write in relation to the awakening of
their consciousness about their social reality. Discussing Freire's texts, Taylor (1993)
explains that," Conscientization is a process of developing consciousness, but
consciousness that is understood to have the power to transform reality". And Sanders
(1968), writing on the Freire literacy method, defines conscientization as:
an 'awakening of consciousness', a change of mentality involving an accurate,
realistic awareness of one's locus in nature and society; the capacity to analyze
critically its causes and consequences, comparing it with other situations and
possibilities; and action of a logical sort aimed at transformation.
Psychologically it entails an awareness of one's dignity l. And Sanders (1968)
goes on to say that:

Even though the stimulus to conscientization derives from interpersonal dialogue

in which one discovers the meaning of humanity from encounters with other humans, an
almost inevitable consequence is political participation and the formation of interest
groups such as community organizations and labor unions.

Conscientization, therefore, leads to people organizing themselves to take action

so as to change their social realities. The concept of conscientization has attracted those
who believe in humanistic implications for the participation of the masses and in the
necessity of a rapid restructuring of society. It rests on value assumptions of equality of
all people, their right to knowledge and culture, and their right to criticise their situation
and act upon it. It also implies having a faith in the capacity of all people, including the
illiterate, to engage in critical dialogue.

Dialogue is the means of achieving conscientization. Conscientization requires

that an individual change his or her attitudes, perception or beliefs. In other words,
individuals must not accept that social reality cannot be questioned and changed (Taylor,
1993). Freire believed that once a person perceived and understood a challenge and
recognised the possibilities of a response, that person will act and the nature of his or her
action will correspond to the nature of his or her understanding. Hence, critical
understanding of situations leads to critical action (Freire, 1970, 1972 and 1974).

Freire's literacy method offered the illiterate people the means by which they
could replace their passive perception of their reality by that which was critical so that
they could do something about those situations. Freire felt that before teaching the
illiterate adult to read, he or she should be helped to overcome his or her passive
understanding and develop an increasing critical understanding of his or her reality.
Freire (1970, and 1974) proposed that such conscientization could be achieved through
an active dialogical and critical pedagogy.

He argued that to acquire literacy was more than just being mechanically
competent in reading and writing skills but also to be competent in these skills in terms of
consciousness. Hence, the educator's role is to enter into dialogue with the illiterate about
concrete situations and give him or her the means with which he or she can teach himself
or herself to read and write. This kind of teaching is not imposed from the top but takes
place in a shared investigation or in a problem-raising situation between educator and
educatee.

The emphasis is on the critical analysis and the creativity of the educatee in order
to discourage passive behaviour of the educatee or learners. As Gadotti (1994) has put it,
Freire's literacy method is founded on the dialogical and dialectical relationship between
the educator and the educatee who in this relationship should learn together.
Extension and Communication
Freire argues that the role or task of extension agents as educators should be that
of communication and not extension which domesticates people. Analyzing the concept
of communication Freire observes thus: the world of human beings is a world of
communication. As a conscious being ... the human being acts, thinks and speaks on and
about this reality, which is the mediation between him or her and other human beings
who also act, think, and speak.

A human being who is the subject does not think alone in communication. In the
act of thinking about objects, the subject thinks with the co-participation of another
subject. This coparticipation of the subjects in the act of thinking is communication.
Hence, during communication there are no passive subjects. They are involved in
dialogue which communicates. The subjects engaged in dialogue express themselves
through a system of linguistic signs. Here there must be agreement on the linguistic signs
used to express the object for there to be comprehension between the subjects or for
communication to be possible.

Comprehension and communication are inseparable and occur simultaneously.

Extension agents must be aware of this observation when working with the people. For
example, in dealing with a fact such as erosion, the extension agent should use a system
of symbols which are intelligible to the people for them to understand his or her technical
jargon. And problem-posing dialogue diminishes the difference between the sense of an
expression as given by a technician and the grasping of this expression by the people in
terms of its meaning for them. Thus the sense of expression comes to signify the same for
both. This occurs only in communication and it never occurs in extension in which there
is no dialogue between human beings.

The concept of communication is one of making people aware. And therefore the
role of the extension agent as an educator is that of communication if people are to be
reached. The extension agent-educator who is not aware of the world view of the people
cannot change their behavior.

C. Merits/Demerits of the Theory (http//www.answers.com)

Since its first enunciation, Freire's educational theory has been criticized from
various quarters. Naturally, conservatives who are opposed to the political horizon of
what is essentially a revolutionary project of emancipation have been quick to condemn
him as demagogic and utopian.

Freire has faced criticism from the left as well. Some Marxists have been
suspicious of the Christian influences in his work and have accused him of idealism in his
view of popular consciousness. Freire has also been criticized by feminists and others for
failing to take into account the radical differences between forms of oppression, as well
as their complex and contradictory instantiation in subjects.

It has been pointed out that Freire's writing suffers from sexism in its language
and from a patriarchal notion of revolution and subjecthood, as well as a lack of emphasis
on domination based on race and ethnicity. Postmodernists have pointed to the
contradiction between Freire's sense of the historicity and contingency of social
formations versus his vision of liberation as a universal human vocation.

Freire was always responsive to critics, and in his later work undertook a process
of self-criticism in regard to his own sexism. He also sought to develop a more nuanced
view of oppression and subjectivity as relational and discursively as well as materially
embedded. However, Freire was suspicious of postmodernists who felt that the Marxist
legacy of class struggle was obsolete and whose antiracist and antisexist efforts at
educational reform did little to alleviate - and often worked to exacerbate - existing
divisions of labor based on social relations of capitalist exploitation.

Freire's insights continue to be of crucial importance. In the very gesture of his

turning from the vaults of official knowledge to the open space of humanity, history, and
poetry - the potential space of dialogical problem-posing education - Freire points the
way for teachers and others who would refuse their determination by the increasingly
enveloping inhuman social order. To believe in that space when it is persistently
obscured, erased, or repudiated remains the duty of truly progressive educators. Freire's
work continues to be indispensable for liberatory education, and his insights remain of
value to all who are committed to the struggle against oppression

D. Relevant Application to Rural Development

Freire's concientization literacy could be applied in order to raise the critical

awareness of the rural illiterate people and urban workers so that they can understand
why they and their countries are poor and how they can act in order to change the
situation for themselves. The Freire literacy method seems to have the capacity to attract
the participation of many illiterate people in literacy classes since the content of literacy
learning will be related to their present social realities and therefore meaningful. To this
extent it can be argued that the literacy method founded on the notions of
conscientization and dialogue in the Philippines.

However, for the method to work in these contexts there would be need to train
teams of coordinators (or educators) who should have a new attitude on how dialogue and
critical study for conscientization should be elements of the educational process. Such
coordinators would need to achieve a sufficient change from their existing paternalistic
attitudes to the spirit of the method founded on conscientization and dialogue. At present,
these elements of dialogue and conscientization appear to be absent in the Philippine
system of education. The curriculum and methods of teaching determined by the elite still
dominate our education systems. Further, the governments in power would need to accept
the method and not regard it as subversive.

Education and Social Change

Freire's literacy method whose key concepts are conscientization and dialogue has
contributed to our understanding of the processes of education and social change. Freire's
analysis of education and social change centres on his contention that education cannot
be neutral. It can either be domesticating or liberating.

Extension and Communication

In his book Education for Critical Consciousness, Freire (1974) critically

analyses the term extension, the relationship between the concepts of extension and how
extension agents or technicians and peasants can communicate in the process of
developing a new agrarian society. The importance and relevance of Freire's criticism of
the concept of extension as cultural invasion and the proposal that extension agents
should choose communication if they genuinely want to reach people by being concrete
within their realities should be seen against the realities of rural masses. The rural
dwellers have become the objects of numerous rural development programmes.

Hence, the success of any rural development programme intended to change the
lives of rural dwellers is very much dependent on change agents' awareness of concrete
realities of the rural dwellers and a recognition that rural people are capable of
problematizing these realities and participating in the transformation of their world. So,
change agents in the Philippines should be aware of the world view of the rural masses if
they are to contribute to their development. What is required is not extension but
communication. Thus ideas on extension and communication are relevant to rural
development in the Philippines

E. References

http/digital.lib.msu.edu. Retrieved August 30, 2010

http//www.answers.con Retreived August 25, 2010
Allman, P. " Paulo Freire's Contributions to Radical Adult Education", Studies
intheEducationofAdults,Vo\. 26, No. 2, October, pp. 144-161, 1994.
Bee, B. " The Politics of Literacy ", in Robert Mackie (Editor), Literacy and Revolution.
London: Pluto Press, 1990.st
Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: The Seabury Press, 1970.
Freire, P. Cultural Action for Freedom, New York: Penguin Books, 1972.
Freire, P. Education for Critical Consciousness, London: Sheed and Ward Ltd, 1974.
Darder, Antonia. 2002. Reinventing Paulo Freire. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Freire, Paulo. 1973. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Seabury.
Freire, Paulo. 1978. Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea-Bisseau. New York:
Seabury.
Freire, Paulo. 1988. "The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom and
Education and Conscientizacao." In Perspectives on Literacy, ed. Eugene R. Kintgen,
Barry M. Kroll, and Mike Rose, pp. 398 - 409. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Freire, P. and Shor, I. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education.
London: MacMillan Education Ltd, 1987.
Gadotti, M. Reading Paulo Freire: His Life and Work, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1994.