Fourth and last chapter of Freire's iconic book. Key excerpts for discussion

1. Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
Excerpts for Designers
Paulo Freire
Chapter 4

2. “A person learns to swim in the water, not in a library”

3. “Scientific and humanist revolutionary leaders cannot
believe in the myth of the ignorance of the people. They
cannot believe that they, and only they, know anything.
They cannot impose themselves and their knowledge
on the people”

4. “The task of revolutionary leaders is to pose as
problems all myths used by the oppressor elites”

5. “The oppressors develop a series of methods precluding
any presentation of the world as a problem and showing
it rather as a fixed entity, as something given”

6. “Myths: that the oppressive order is a ‘free society’, that all persons are
free to work where they wish, that this order respects human rights,
that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur… the myth
of the equality of all individuals”

7. “It is in the interest of the oppressor to weaken the
oppressed, to isolate them, to create and deepen rifts
among them”

8. “The oppressors do not favour promoting the
community as a whole, but rather selected leaders”

9. “At a certain stage in their relationship, the oppressed
are attracted by the oppressor”

10. “People are fulfilled to the extent that they create
their world with their transforming labour”

11. “One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals
with the bourgeois appetite for personal success”

12. “Cultural invasion… the invaders impose their own view
of the world upon those they invade and inhibit their
creativity by curbing their expression”

13. “The parent-child relationship in the home usually
reflects the objective cultural conditions of the
surrounding social structure”

14. “Well-intentioned professionals use ‘invasion’ not as a deliberate
ideology but as the expression of their own upbringing. They (may)
eventually feel the need to renounce invasion, but patterns of
domination are so entrenched within them that this renunciation would
become a threat to their own identities”

15. “As the revolution deepens conscientização in the creative
praxis of the new society, people will begin to perceive why
mythical remnants of the old society survive in the new”

16. “There is no freedom without authority, but there is also no
authority without freedom. Authentic authority is not affirmed
as such by a mere transfer of power, but through delegation or
in sympathetic adherence”

17. “Organisation is a highly educational process in which leaders
and people together experience true authority and freedom”

18. “Investigation –the first moment of action- establishes a
climate of creativity. Such a climate does not exist in the
cultural invasion, which through alienation kills the creative
enthusiasm, leaving people hopeless and fearful of risking
experimentation, without which there is no true creativity”

19. “In cultural synthesis it is possible to resolve the contradiction
between the world view of the leaders and that of the people,
to the enrichment of both. Cultural synthesis does not deny
the differences, it is based on these differences, it affirms the
undeniable support each gives to the other”

20. “Leaders who overrule popular aspirations [that are limited]
and substitute something more far-reaching –something which
has not yet come to the forefront of the people’s attention fall
into cultural invasion. The solution lies in synthesis: the leaders
must pose the meaning of that very demand as a problem”

21. “Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders –in their
communion, in their praxis- can a theory of liberating action be built”

22. Right to
access
Right to
create
Elitist Extractive
by a minority by a majority
for a minority
for a majority

23. Right to
access
Right to
create
Elitist Extractive
by a minority by a majority
for a minority
for a majority
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