Paper Summary:

This paper is an analysis of one of the more radical and influential theories of education, as expressed in Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and its relationship and applicability to the proposed reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the guidelines used by public schools throughout America to determine the effectiveness and purposes of elementary and secondary school education. Freire, a Brazilian educator and theorist, was driven from his native Brazil by a military coup, an act that allowed him to bring his revolutionary approach to pedagogy directly to other educational systems. Although conceived as a response to adult illiteracy within oppressive Third World regimes, Freire's unique way of looking at education in general has strongly influenced educational philosophy in many other settings. This paper considers whether his radical approach, which argues that truly effective education can only be achieved as a participatory process, without which it perpetuates the destructive roles of oppressor and oppressed, can have any relevance within the traditional American academic process. Looking at ESEA guidelines from a Freirean perspective allows the educational scholar to reconsider the effectiveness of this traditional approach and contemplate the philosophical underpinnings that inform it.

From the Paper:

"The act goes through each of the four themes, making detailed recommendations about how each can be achieved. It is singularly lacking, however, in two critical areas. First, it does not provide for a comprehensive plan for funding these recommendations, because it does not spell out the steps necessary to reach these ambitious goals. For example, one recommendation for raising classroom standards is to support educational options, such as establishing more magnet schools, but the act gives no indication of how much these measures might cost or how those costs might be met."

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