The pedagogy of the oppressed: a pedagogical rereading

Abstract

Taking into account the vast literature on the pedagogy of the oppressed, the present text sets out to carry outa reading from a dimension that is little addressed or, at least, reduced in the most available readings: preciselyits pedagogical dimension. An attempt like the one proposed here means rereading Freire’s book from the conceptual horizon of pedagogy and this implies displacing (not denying) the eminently political charactergiven to the pedagogy of the oppressed and recovering its close links with Western pedagogical thought andtradition. In particular, the rereading of Freire’s masterpiece in pedagogical terms involves a triple task: first, locating it within an ancient tradition according to the quality of politeia understood, fundamentally, as paideia; second, highlighting the process of liberation through education can only be achieved through a process of conscientization that is placed on a gnoseological or epistemic horizon: transit that the oprimido must carry out from the doxa to the logos; third, to recognize the end of liberating education is the humanization of men and, to that extent, it is a clearly an ”anthropotechnical” issue.