A review by seanwatson
Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Freire's critical pedagogy has been so thoroughly cannibalised by orthodox educational theory (here in Australia, at least) that I had long meant to read this book to get a clear sense of what he actually said. And of course it's far more radical than I'd been led to believe. Freire, who argued that dialogical pedagogy (i.e. where the student actively participates in the process of their own learning) was the only true path towards revolution and the fulfilment of human potential, has essentially been defanged by education departments. Dialogical teaching is now completely uncontroversial—you would never pass a teaching course if you used what Freire calls the "banking approach" and just forced facts and figures down your students' throats. But it is by no means performed as any kind of political project. It's a method to "boost engagement" and to "manage behaviour". It's certainly not regarded as the key to emancipation.

As a book, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed a bit of a mess—very little of it is actually about pedagogy. It's certainly no handbook for resistant, critical teaching. In fact, much of it is broad, sentimental explanations of Freire's Marxist humanism, with generalised summaries of dialectics and historical materialism. All of which is fine with me, but I had hoped for something a little more targeted to the classroom.