Welcome to Litsy!

I cannot recommend this book enough - it may not be the most “fun” read because it is designed to critically teach and not entertain - but it is necessary and thus, riveting. A famed Brazilian educator who grew up in the slums of Recife, Paulo Freire believes that real, “consciousness-raising” education consists of knowing what our world is, how it came to be that way, what other and better ways we could imagine it, and how to realize those ways.

Today's reading

Revisit to one I studied in teachers‘ college (my choice!) years ago. Still relevant: students aren‘t empty vessels, there shouldn‘t be a split between “leaders” and “followers” when organizing for social justice, the political left can be just as guilty as the right for self-righteously neglecting to include everyone in work for change, space for love and creativity is needed.
#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Brazil
#Nonfiction2023 #MasterofPuppets

The essential elements of witness include consistency between words and actions; boldness, which urges the witnesses to confront issues of permanent risk; radicalization, not sectarianism; courage to love, which doesn‘t accommodate an unjust world, but transforms that world on behalf of the increasing liberation of humankind; and faith in the people. Witness which has not borne fruit under certain conditions can still bear fruit tomorrow.

In the process of oppression, the elites subsist on the living death of the oppressed, and find their authentication in the vertical relationship between themselves and the latter. In the revolutionary process, there is only one way for the emerging leaders to achieve authenticity. They must die in order to be reborn through and in communion with the oppressed….what can be more important than to live and work for the wretched of the Earth?

Revolutionary praxis cannot tolerate an absurd dichotomy in which the praxis of the people is merely following the leaders… revolutionary praxis is a unity, and the leaders cannot treat the oppressed as their possession. Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentization, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary practice, precisely because they are components of the praxis of domination/1

I read this because:
* Someone at work said of a 17 YO I admire, “PF would say the oppressed will become the oppressor.” And now I can say that work person doesn‘t know jack about what PF would say about this kid.🖕🏻
* POTO was banned at my kids‘ high school.
* I‘m working on my advocacy.

The oppressed must realize that they are not fighting merely for freedom from hunger, but for freedom to create and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine. It is not enough that men are not slaves, if social conditions further the creation of automatons, the result will be not love of life, but love of death.

“Certain members of the oppressive class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation…They almost always bring with them the marks of their origin, their prejudices and deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people‘s ability to think, to want, and to know… because of their background, they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about ‘the people,‘ but they do not trust them.”

The oppressor is in solidarity with the oppressed only when he stops seeing them as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor: when he stops making pious, sentimental, individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love in its existentiality, its practice.

"Pedagogy of the Oppressed was banned in apartheid South Africa, parts of Latin America and, in 2010 in Tucson, Arizona by right-wing policymakers who prohibited texts that ‘promote the overthrow of the US government‘. ‘Pedagogy‘ was one of the texts used on an ethno-studies programme taught to Native Americans and Chicanos, and the books ‘were seized from classrooms right in front of students‘, who learned first-hand about oppression."

"As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love."

When I began reading Friere & Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" at around the same time, I didn't have any expectation of there being a significant overlap between them, but I am finding that my reading of the one informs the other in a pleasantly surprising way ?

"To speak a true word is to transform the world."

"While the problem of humanization has always been, from an axiological* point of view, man's central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern.

* An axiological viewpoint is one which involves the ethical, aesthetic and religious."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

"Any attempt to 'soften' the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their 'generosity', the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this 'generosity', which is nourished by death, despair and poverty. ⬇️

"Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system...The paradox is that the same technology which does this to us also creates a new sensitivity to what is happening. Especially among young people, the new media together with the erosion of old concepts of authority open the way to acute awareness of this new bondage. ⬇️

Mandy B. Smith first owned my book back in September '73, and I've no idea who she is, but I'd like to imagine she was marching in the falling snow in flares and platform shoes for women's rights to bodily autonomy and equal pay ✊♀️

Although I didn't get on too well with Clarice Lispector, I'm not ready to give up on #Brazil 🇧🇷 for #ReadingTheAmericas2023, so dipping into the old TBR pile for Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Given Bolsonaro's attempt to replay Trump's armed insurrection on the seat of government, this one feels relevant despite having been published in 1968.
@Librarybelle @BarbaraBB

🌷 Thanks for the #WondrousWednesday tag @TheSpineView !
1. Tagged - read with my anti-racist teacher group
2. 👍
3. I like horror, thrillers, memoirs, historical fiction, true crime, coming-of-age, magical realism, and animal stories most. However I do read and enjoy a variety of genres especially because of my book club.

💐 I tag anyone who wants to play!

🌻 Thank you for asking @Eggs !

#SleighTheShelves Day 21: It is #Nice to have unhealthy cheetos fries and animal-style “farm” fries every now and again. Our version of animal fries here in the UAE with Wow Burger.

"Yet it is... precisely in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture of love may be found. ... As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors' power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression." (p. 56)

Even though it is short, it is also dense and completely theoretical. This is a read for someone interested in mastering it's concepts. I digested this material throughout my 6 years in graduate school and it is the foundation of my understanding of hierarchy, oppression, and critical pedagogy. There is a lot on the psychology of the oppressed and oppressor. I just think a book like this would be much more powerful if written in layman's terms.

This book was good, but hard and dense to read. Important, but I really hate reading theory. By definition, it is not fun reading. This book is ever so relevant and reminds us that change can be a long battle.

“education as the practice of freedom [...] denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent & unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from the people...in problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which & in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.”

I read slowly. I pause whenever I find a really good line. I lay down and just imagine what's going on inside my books. But boy I gobbles this thing up. Twice. Probably going to do it again. It's like eating fire after living in winter.

“The oppressed have been destroyed precisely because their situation has reduced them to things.”
I can only take this book a little at a time, but it always leaves me thinking. If the oppressed are seen as things- why would they/we be offered a livable wage? Or affordable housing? Or even clean water and health care? 🤯

Really wonderful, exactly what I needed right now. This made me feel like my job matters and can change the world. Really powerful stuff.

My MP (Crispin Blunt Reigate & Banstead) replied to my email about fossil fuels and environmental issues today, and I felt very disrespected by his reply. Comes after a few days of right wing men telling me directly and indirectly that I‘m not well read or intelligent enough to be heard, and it‘s made me feel invisible and ignored. Educating myself on politics and the environment tonight, trying to remind myself never to stop trying to speak up

“Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders- in their communion, in their praxis- can this theory be built.”. 5 out of 5 stars on GR. Required reading

A great reminder that the road to eradicating oppression is a long and difficult one. The author stresses the need for both deep self reflection and communication with those oppressed to motivate the actions we take. Also, keeping me such good company at the job.

All my reading these days is for work #everyday

.... um ya. That sucked to read. I have no clue what I just read. It was the most frustrating read if my life. #paulofreire #education

A very enlightening look at oppression and how it should be understood and managed. This is not light reading and with each reading more reveals itself. I truly believe this book should be required reading for all of humanity.

Lunch and a book on this rainy day. Tomato Soup, Grilled Cheese, and jasmine tea along with the thought provoking words of Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of The Oppressed. Not bad at all.

Starting the day with a little light reading and a nice breakfast. Nourishing body and mind.

Time for a reread. This book needs to be required reading in our high schools and colleges.

"For the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are "things."

I usually struggle with nonfiction but this is straight ???