Liberating educators dialogue with people rather than explain action to them

Evidence

For us, however, the requirement is seen not in terms of explaining to, but rather dialoguing with the people about their actions. In any event, no reality transforms itself, and the duty which Lukács ascribes to the revolutionary party of “explaining to the masses their own action” coincides with our affirmation of the need for the critical intervention of the people in reality through the praxis. The pedagogy of the oppressed, which is the pedagogy of people engaged in the fight for their own liberation, has its roots here. And those who recognize, or begin to recognize, themselves as oppressed must be among the developers of this pedagogy. No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 127

Categorization

• SEED: Freire corrects Lukács: ‘dialoguing with’ versus ‘explaining to’ is the pivot — an essay on how the facilitator’s own Leninism quietly re-enters via ‘the vanguard who already knows’. This is exactly the tension the reader wants to contest.
• XREF: The ‘oppressed must be among the developers’ and ‘must be their own example’ directly answers the reader’s worry about producing a new vanguard. — connects to: Learning from below requires mutual ethical responding with a compromised teacher — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2217; Educators serve students better by listening to families than prescribing to them. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1225; Some queer educators teach as co-learners rather than as identity-based role models. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1263 (+8 more)