Leaders may hold different knowledge but must not impose it on the people.

Evidence

Scientific and humanist revolutionary leaders, on the other hand, cannot believe in the myth of the ignorance of the people. They do not have the right to doubt for a single moment that it is only a myth. They cannot believe that they, and only they, know anything—for this means to doubt the people. Although they may legitimately recognize themselves as having, due to their revolutionary consciousness, a level of revolutionary knowledge different from the level of empirical knowledge held by the people, they cannot impose themselves and their knowledge on the people. They cannot sloganize the people, but must enter into dialogue with them, so that the people’s empirical knowledge of reality, nourished by the leaders’ critical knowledge, gradually becomes transformed into knowledge of the causes of reality. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 436

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the precise boundary of legitimate leadership: holding a different level of revolutionary knowledge is allowed; imposing it is not.
• XREF: This is the exact tension the reader wants to work against — Freire here still grants leaders ‘revolutionary consciousness’ while forbidding the banking imposition. — connects to: Defending experts does not entail granting them authority over political decisions — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 270; Use of expert knowledge, not its discovery, is properly a democratic decision — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 271; Progressive beliefs do not translate into new teaching practices without a fierce will. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 268