Oppressors use education to change the oppressed’s consciousness rather than their situation.

Evidence

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 211

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Class consciousness arises from being looked at by oppressors, not from material hardship. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1028; Classrooms either reproduce or resist systems of oppression through education. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 332; Higher education reinforces obedience to authority rather than independent thought. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 17