Cape Town - 170109 - Alex Tabisher has been a long time Cape Argus subscriber and used to use the paper as learning material when he was a teacher. Picture: David Ritchie
This week, I shall be guided by the ideas of the Brazilian educational philosopher, Paulo Freire, who proposed conscientisation as a pedagogic strategy for healing an ailing nation.
Do not be alarmed at the pendulous content description. It is entirely accessible and is certainly a better option than cataloguing the thuggery and unconscionable behaviours of the rulers in our beloved country.
His appeal, for me, was his agenda to eliminate, nay, eradicate illiteracy, especially from among the colonised natives. If you know your origins, you can deal better with your realities. If you know where you come from, you will certainly be better able to navigate where you are going.
The core principles of conscientisation rest in the equality of all people, their basic right to education and knowledge, the freedom to criticise and have the ability to change the conditions in which they live.
The beauty of his humanist approach was that the necessary dialogue that sensitised the conscience was an exercise for coloniser and colonised.
In education, teachers could also be taught and guided by their pupils. Teachers are no longer those who only teach, but are also able to be taught. This is a sensitive area for our country where the educational system lacks a systemic uniformity that includes all learners. There are levels of academic intensity and agency based solely on affordability.
Freire insisted on self-examination and critical engagement with oneself in order to be positioned to demand and effect change. It requires a commodity that is sadly lacking in our society – integrity. Integrity is the practice of being honest, consistent and uncompromising in one’s adherence to strong moral and ethical principles.
To bring Freire into our backyard: conscience is integral to integrity. Citizens do not conceal income, or lie about qualifications or insist on breaking that which doesn’t meet expectation.
We imagine our problem is a failed ANC. That is only a pimple on the sore. Social hegemony screams daily that healing is not only required from black malfeasance. White Afrikaner and Englishmen have a burden of irreconcilable differences. The major religions underline their flawed agenda of dominance in the arena of morality and power.
The learners are schooled by the writers of their history. If the hunter tells the tale, the lion invariably dies. What is the alternative? That the lion tells the story and the hunter dies?
My referenced source would rather ask whether anyone has to die at all? His notion of conscientisation is not a cleaning of only the self as positionality, but also for the “other” to join the exercise. This is a recipe for dialogue, a key element of Freire’s advice to the downtrodden. There are no losers or winners. There is healthy debate and mutual respect.
I read a clip of a Native American woman explaining how hard it was for her to live as an Indian in a white American city. To everybody, Indians had been exterminated, consigned to the museums. Christopher Columbus discovered the “Red Indians” in 1492.
In the interview, the woman laughingly recalls that this was what she was taught in white schools. With an endearing innocence, she retorts: “Columbus did not discover the Indians in 1492. That was the year when the Indians discovered Columbus!”
How is that for a refreshing turnaround, a friendly rejoinder that we must know who is telling, who can be trusted, what is our role in effecting changed consciousness. I have no desire to beat the idea to death. The point made about Freire is cogent for all of us.
Atomisation, social silos, offensive categorising and the other abominations of the 21st century could be replaced by a simple model from Brazil, where a soft-spoken philosopher suggested that change without violence was possible. The cure for social moral disintegration could be achieved without marginalisation or dehumanisation of “lesser” peoples.
Freire’s thoughts are not religious or ideological. It’s more about humans embracing their humanness and insisting on that right. Do yourself a favour, look him up. ’Nuff said.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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