Image of Paulo Freire is from https://aventurasnahistoria.com.br/noticias/reportagem/o-legado-de-paulo-freire-em-8-frases-impactantes.phtml
I see classical education differently from many people, and I know my perspective can be challenging to people on all sides. During my PhD, much of my work was rooted in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I first encountered his ideas while pursuing my master’s degree at NYU, where I was introduced to Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal. That experience also led me down a rabbit hole to Aristotle’s Poetics and his discussion of catharsis. I began thinking about how theatre engages our emotions, helps us express what we feel, and can move us to do something.
I connected these ideas to John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching, particularly his discussion of language shared between teacher and student. For me, these readings came together around a conviction: children are not simply receptacles into which we pour information. Teaching involves an exchange that helps free students to think, speak, feel, and act. Teaching should be a liberating work.
This is why Socratic dialogue means so much to me. Year after year, I have watched students discover the freedom to question, consider, and express their own thoughts. As they engage with texts and connect what they read to their own human experiences and understanding, I see something open up in them. I do not believe the purpose of classical education is to give students the logic to defend America. I believe its purpose is to liberate every single human being to become the person God created them to be, while inspiring them to extend that same freedom to others.
Freire has been dismissed, as Martin Luther King Jr. and others who sought freedom within oppressive societies have also been dismissed. I am not a communist. I love freedom, and I want every person to have the opportunity to achieve as much as they can in this life. I also recognize that not all of us are truly free. We can learn from people who have fought for freedom throughout history without agreeing with everything they believed. We can recognize the good they offer and allow it to deepen our understanding of what it means to teach, to learn, and to be free.
I love this video of Paulo Freire.
