Prescribing behavior to the oppressed absolutizes ignorance and forecloses dialogue.

Evidence

Scientific revolutionary humanism cannot, in the name of revolution, treat the oppressed as objects to be analyzed and (based on that analysis) presented with prescriptions for behavior. To do this would be to fall into one of the myths of the oppressor ideology: the absolutizing of ignorance. This myth implies the existence of someone who decrees the ignorance of someone else. The one who is doing the decreeing defines himself and the class to which he belongs as those who know or were born to know; he thereby defines others as alien entities. The words of his own class come to be the “true” words, which he imposes or attempts to impose on the others: the oppressed, whose words have been stolen from them. Those who steal the words of others develop a deep doubt in the abilities of the others and consider them incompetent. Each time they say their word without hearing the word of those whom they have forbidden to speak, they grow more accustomed to power and acquire a taste for guiding, ordering, and commanding. They can no longer live without having someone to give orders to. Under these circumstances, dialogue is impossible. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 435

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism here — that decreeing the other’s ignorance feeds a taste for command that makes dialogue impossible — is dense and paradigm-shifting for how a facilitator behaves.
• XREF: Directly the trap the reader wants to contest: a problem-posing facilitator who already knows the ‘correct consciousness’ is enacting the myth of the absolute ignorance of the people. — connects to: Stupidity is socially produced and harms oppressors as much as the oppressed — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1010