What I've Learned from Freire
Professor Sean Wiebe
You know when problems with literacy create problems in peoples' whole lives. I fix that.
Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an important book on my reading list at #UPEI. One of Freire's main ideas is that good #thinking begins with understanding how our present reality depends on a particular construction of the past. For example, two lawyers with the same set of facts can construct two different realities of what happened and why. Once we are able to question what is "normal" or "natural" about our day-to-day lives and see the construction for what it is, we can think and act more effectively, whether we call that critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving, or something else.
There is a moment in The Matrix when Neo sees his reality for the first time as a construction of computer code. Once he becomes conscious of this, his power to think and act is amplified exponentially. Do you have an example where a limited understanding of the past was preventing effective action in the present?
Lost Sailor Seeking the Wind through Words, Rhyme, Meter, and Music
2yUnlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/