"If implementation of a liberating education requires political power, and the oppressed have none, how then is it possible to carry out the pedagogy of the oppressed prior to the revolution?" asks Paolo Freire (pg. 52). He then begins to divulge into just how this is possible, how this will take place in two stages, and how the first begins with awareness for the oppressed. Yet, within much of the rhetoric of this text: He leaves out one important item: The teachers. Granted, I wouldn't call myself oppressed... because I know that I"m not. However, I also wouldn't put myself in the "oppressor" group, either. I am, like my other classmates in English 345, enlightened when it comes to working with the "oppressed" students that Freire focuses on.
Unfortunately, though, I think that we are of a select few. If a teacher hasn't in somewhay studied teaching english as a second language, Freire and other ideas like his have probably never come up--at least they didn't for me. These teachers may have a few lessons on culture, maybe one on different dialects brought into the classroom, but, within their own methods courses, that's probably the only thing that is said.
So, I'd like to take this opportunity to revamp Freire a little for our own purposes as teachers. Most of us in 345 are not oppressed (at least I don't think so). Yet, we are enlightened to this oppression. So, our job--as the in-betweeners of the oppressed and the oppressors--is to enlighten more of the oppressors, those teachers who may not have had the educational backgrounds that we have garnered. While Freire continually notes that this pedagogy begins with the oppressed, I think, more so, it begins with the teachers.
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