An Evening with Professor Antonia Darder: Freire and Education

An Evening with Professor Antonia Darder: Freire and Education

Wednesday, January 21 at 5:30pm to 7:30pm

William H. Hannon Library, Von der Ahe Family Suite (Level 3) 1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Join us as Antonia Darder, Ph.D., Leavey Presidential Chair, LMU School of Education, discusses her recent book, Freire and Education.

One of the most influential educational philosophers of our times, Paulo Freire contributed to a revolutionary understanding of education as an empowering and democratizing force in the lives of the disenfranchised. In this deeply personal introduction to the man and his ideas, Antonia Darder reflects on how Freire’s work has illuminated her own life practices and thinking as an educator and activist. Including both personal memories and a never-before published, powerful dialogue with Freire himself, Darder offers a unique “analysis of solidarity,” in mind and spirit. A heartfelt look at the ways Freire can still inspire a critically intellectual and socially democratic life, this book is certain to open up his theories in entirely new ways, both to those already familiar with his work and those coming to him for the first time.

Food and refreshments will be served.

Copies of Freire and Education will be available for purchase and signing by Dr. Darder.

This event is brought to you by the LMU School of Education Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership for Social Justice and the William H. Hannon Library.

RSVP here.

An Evening with Professor Antonia Darder: Freire and Education

So this 10th grade drop out who just graduated UCLA just got the news that they're a Peoples College of Law student!

So this 10th grade drop out who just graduated #UCLA 2014 just got the news they're a @peoplescollolaw law student! pic.twitter.com/IJuHqsP7eR

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene)

June 27, 2014

I'm excited beyond words. I got the call that I was accepted around 8:00PM. This time last year I had no degree, and was anxious about returning to UCLA to finish up what I had started eighteen years earlier. Turned out that I'm still on top of my game academically. Now with a UCLA B.A. in Classical Civilization in hand, I'm getting ready to start at the same law school that one of my closest mentors graduated from in 1974. Peoples College of Law is a very special place, and an integral part of my community. I'm ready for this next step that will allow me to apply both my Freireian praxis and my social justice principles on a whole new level.

So this 10th grade drop out who just graduated UCLA just got the news that they're a Peoples College of Law student!

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

First published on Schools Matter on June 14, 2014

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"When teachers are told exactly what and how to teach, when they feel pressured to produce results, they in turn tend to pressure their students. That is exactly what another study found: teachers who felt controlled became more controlling, removing virtually any opportunities for students to direct their own learning." — Alfie Kohn

As always the wonderful Alfie Kohn is right on target. What's left out of his important analysis is that these conditions are exactly what our ruling class—namely, but not limited to the Gates, Broad, and Walton Family Foundations—wants. From their self-serving perspective, self-directed learning is for the scion of the 1%, not for us working class rabble. Completely control both educators and their pupils through fear (Vergara), and deployment the banking model of pedagogy (Common Core State Standards CCSS), and you control access to the one thing that could allow us to overthrow our oppressors.

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Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2000. Print.

Kohn, Alfie. The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "tougher Standards". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1999. Print.

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

@TCFKSM: Noam Chomsky, Howard Gardner, and Bruno della Chiesa on 45th anniversary of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

First published on @TCFKSM on May 31, 2013

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"I stayed with Marx in the worldliness,
looking for Christ in the transcendentality." — Paolo Freire

On May Day 2013, Harvard's Askwith Forum commemorated the 45th anniversary of the publication of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed with a discussion about the book's impact and relevance to education today. Chuck Leddy tweeted about his write up of the event entitled Subversive education, and the video posted of the entire talk.

"To achieve critical consciousness of the facts that it is necessary to be the "owners of one's own labor," that labor "constitutes part of the human person," and that "a human being can neither be sold nor can he sell himself" is to go a step beyond the deception of palliative solutions. It is to engage in authentic transformation of reality in order, by humanizing that reality, to humanize woman and men." — Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

While those of us that eat, breath, and sleep critical pedagogy would have probably selected different speakers (Macedo, Giroux, and P. L. Thomas perhaps?) to discuss the book's anniversary, it's refreshing that Harvard would even discuss it at all.

The best part of the video occurs at around the 50:00 mark when a young woman from India, who says Freire was a major component in her education there, makes a very profound statement condemning Harvard saying that "there's no space for Marxist thought..." at the university (any surprise?). Professor Bruno della Chiesa's criticisms of the PISA tests around the 56:00 mark are interesting too.

Professor Noam Chomsky's various insights make sense if you are familiar with his work, and the fact that he's always a little uncomfortable discussing ideas of Marxist scholars like Freire as opposed to those of anarcho-syndicalists. Chomsky finally hits stride around 1:06:00 where he sets up the purpose of education under class society, and several minutes later calls out "No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top, which means Every Child Left Behind and Race to the Bottom."

Freire's watershed book does far more than explain the oppressions of class society, and make the case against the banking concept of education. His framework of critical pedagogy challenges students to formulate problem posing questions in response to limit situations. That framework is as radical, and, as Chomsky mentions, dangerous, a skill as one can possess during this age of total corporate domination.

I find the best introduction to provide those unfamiliar with Freire's work is Adrienne Johnstone and Elizabeth Terzakis' "Pedagogy and Revolution: Reading Freire in Context" chapter in Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation. An excerpt of the chapter is available online. However, there's no substitute for reading Freire's canon itself.

@TCFKSM: Noam Chomsky, Howard Gardner, and Bruno della Chiesa on 45th anniversary of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Robert D. Skeels' Talk at Association of Raza Educators on December 6, 2012

LAUSD District 2 candidate Robert D. Skeels speaking, and the following roundtable discussion at the December 6, 2012 meeting of the Association of Raza Educators Los Angeles. The topic was 'Reclaiming Education is a Human Right during this era of Neoliberalism.' The talk was in preparation for the anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, celebrated on the December 10 of each year.

Robert D. Skeels' Talk at Association of Raza Educators on December 6, 2012