Educators must wait for the masses’ own consciousness rather than imposing needed changes.

Evidence

10. “Our cultural workers must serve the people with great enthusiasm and devotion, and they must link themselves with the masses, not divorce themselves from the masses. In order to do so, they must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 372

Categorization

• XREF: Directly the counterweight to the vanguardism the reader fears: an explicit ‘wait patiently’ doctrine that forbids the facilitator imposing the correct consciousness. — connects to: Reformers should ignore entrenched resisters and court hesitant but recruitable teachers. — David Sobel, Place-Based Education: Connecting…, 93; Progressive beliefs do not translate into new teaching practices without a fierce will. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 268
• DEEPTHINKING: The tension between objective need and subjective readiness — that a humanist must wait even when a change is clearly needed — is a genuinely hard ethical knot worth sitting with. It also raises the deepest question about Freire’s own method: who decides when ‘through our work’ the masses have become conscious enough?