The Fundamentals of Freire's Critical Pedagogy and How it's Applied Today

 The main idea behind Freire's critical pedagogy is that education should aim to focus on students’ decision making skills and encourage students to be engaged in the material they’re taught, rather than just memorizing without really retaining what they’ve learned. I find myself agreeing with his philosophy since I can acknowledge that the modern way students (past classmates) have come to learn information was simply based on forced memorization and cramming reading for the sake of getting a passing grade of higher. It never seems to stick with them afterwards, and frankly it's a process that has become so repetitive that it’s hard to unwire in today’s generation of education. This is known as the term “banking system of education”, it’s a relief that in recent times there has been a collective interest from educators to change their curriculum to enforce more independent understanding of subjects taught to their students. Due to Freire's past experience of teaching illiterate adults in Brazil, he developed his critical pedagogy that prioritized the dialogical and problem-posing approach, which happens to be perfect for encouraging learners to reflect on any information they’re presented with. 

However, back in the 1980s and 1990s, Freire's critical pedagogy was not widely applied to American education from colonial times to the reform movement for a few reasons…

• American education at the time had a greater interest in individualism, competition, and conformity rather than embracing social justice, collaboration, and diversity. These themes were found more important in society’s culture at the time.  

• Education in the 1980s-1990s focused mainly on the standards that remain in our schools' handling of education today: accountability, testing, and curriculum alignment instead of taking account of an student’s inner voice, critical thinking and out-of-the-box creativity. 

• The education system was known to have been morphed and influenced by economical and political and economic interests of the state and its market.

Even with his philosophy not being widely spread in schools throughout those decades, Freire did inspire some educators and activists that ended up applying his ideas and principles to American education. Schools established by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s (otherwise known as Freedom Schools) did provide education for African American students in the South who faced segregation and discrimination. These establishments allowed students' to grow aware of their history, culture, and rights, and encouraged them to take action for social change. A group of teachers and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley started The Critical Literacy Project, which brought a critical literacy curriculum for elementary and middle school students in urban schools. It helped with students' engagement in reading and writing texts that reflected their lived experiences, interests, and concerns, and enabled them to challenge society’s collective ways. In 1984, a network of schools founded by Theodore Sizer in 1984 to promote a progressive and student-centered vision of education, known as The Coalition of Essential Schools. These schools allowed their teachers and students to touch on the themes of personalization, intellectual depth, democracy, and equity in education, get more involved in the discussion of world events.

To this day, there continues to be an effort to change our standard education practices to more beneficial ones for students’ independent growth that will better prepare them for the real world. I’ve found a great classroom example of how Freire’s Culturally Responsive Practices are being applied. https://youtu.be/mPfMExJZOIw?si=J8YTEroqJ1iiMNNF

Deep conversations between teachers and students should become the norm in the classroom, it’s the push needed to preserve our generation’s independent way of thinking.