A revolutionary education, or, reading Paulo Freire in a suburban Barnes and Noble
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I am finally reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in a suburban Barnes and Noble.
Outside, the parking lot of this decrepit mall stretches on like an endless, bereft prairie, dotted not with buffalo but with massive Yukon GMCs.
I have dropped Elena off at a science lab for a homeschool class. The science lab is new and sparkly and has received funding from major organizations, though it sits in a nondescript office building at the center of a major intersection deep in the ‘burbs. Elena is the only student there, and the teacher asks her what she wants to learn.
“Experiments?” Elena tries.
“How about chemistry?” the teacher suggests. “We can mix substances together and see how they react?”
Elena nods vigorously, thrilled as much at getting to spend time with a real live college student (wearing makeup! Friendly! Probably with a boyfriend!) as at Learning.
I leave her in this empty lab to craft potions, and head to the Barnes and Noble four minutes away.
I appreciate this about homeschool: the absurdity of it often feels akin to travel.
Just as, when traveling, it can be illuminating and delightful to find yourself at a monkey sanctuary with a gregarious septuagenarian and a trio of enigmatic Germans, so too in homeschool it can be illuminating (if maybe not “delightful”?) to find yourself in some hollowed-out relic of the nineties while your child crafts polyurethane foam with a twenty-two-year-old nearby.
It ain’t Borneo, this Barnes and Noble, but I’ll take it. Anything to get that fix of perspective, re-envisioning my reality.
I sit in an extremely uncomfortable chair by the window, which offers an expansive view of asphalt, SUVs, a Jared’s Diamonds superstore, and warm spring sky. America!
I pull out Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Since this chair is massively uncomfortable and I don’t have a surface to put my laptop on – there are tables in the actual cafe but the darkness and elevator music are simply too bleak for my delicate soul – I decide to try out voice-to-text in order to take notes.
This is how I find myself whispering lustily into my sand-encrusted iPhone 5c, “Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power – comma –, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality – period –. The former attempts to maintain the – italics – submersion – end italics – of consciousness; the latter strives for the –italics – emergence – end italics – of consciousness and – italics – critical intervention – end italics – in reality.”
The browsing boomers politely ignore me.
A man with khaki shorts, no socks, and actual leather penny loafers thumbs through auto magazines – I am not making this up, people, this universe exists and you can go find it on the side of Route 19 in the South Hills mall – as I murmur into Google Docs about revolutionary praxis.
“One of the gravest obstacles to the achievement of liberation,” writes Freire, “is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness. Functionally, oppression is domesticating.”
An elderly lady with a perfectly straight blonde bob and a perfectly ironed cardigan and tan loafers – this will make Loafer Sighting #3 in my short time here – attempts to choose between 214 different types of crosswords.
She purposefully does not look my way as I confess to my phone,
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