People change only by producing and acting on their own ideas.

Evidence

I cannot think for others or without others, nor can others think for me. Even if the people’s thinking is superstitious or naïve, it is only as they rethink their assumptions in action that they can change. Producing and acting upon their own ideas—not consuming those of others—must constitute that process. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 313

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down the mechanism behind problem-posing: consumption of others’ ideas cannot produce change; only rethinking-in-action does. Directly usable in a redesign.
• XREF: Maps onto the banking vs. problem-posing contrast in chapter 2 and is the concrete test for any redesign: does the learner produce ideas or consume them? — connects to: Crises trigger change only through ideas already available in the culture — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 276; Ideas become performative only when institutions carry and enact them — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 539