I got a variety of things on the brain today, and I’ve found myself with a few extra hours in my day to say it. SO:

One of the first homework assignments that was given to us was an excerpt from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I found the link to it on a Marxist website, which should tell you a bit about its aspirations. To summarize, Freire believes that modern system of education in which a teacher delivers information to a student to be oppressive. The student is not gaining knowledge; they are merely learning how to be oppressed. This doesn’t match up with the way problems are posed in reality, which demands thinking and problem solving. Rather, the education system is producing a bunch of oppressed, uncompleted people ready to go be subordinate citizens.

At this point I was agreeing wholeheartedly with Freire. I volunteered as a reading coach with Latino youth this summer, and had to teach according to a national program. I got frustrated with how impersonal the system of education was, and how it hardly seemed to be addressing the problems of the individual I was working with. That’s not real knowledge.

But Freire lost me later when he started to babble about the revolution. He seems to really be trying to prove how the REVOLUTION is only a matter of time. The common class will get upset with their multiplication tables and overthrow their oppressive teachers. VIVA LA REVOLUCION DE EDUCACION!

I suppose that most Marxist philosophers go like that. You learn to throw out the revolutionary rhetoric for the valid observations about class and power. I am fairly realistic when it comes to things like this, or at least I strive to be. So I scoff at Paulo Freire (who apparently was banished for his craziness to a colony for crazy people), I scoff and say: Yeah, right. How would anyone want to fund education like that? The economy naturally wants workers and buyers to be oppressed. People need to be somewhat submissive in order to stimulate capitalism, and so why would our capitalistic system ever naturally change? I’m not talking about people wanting change, or what’s best for society. I’m saying that there is more economic incentive for things to stay the same.

One possible counter example might be of the workers unions that have risen to prominence over the course of the last century. But even now, there is a big push against these unions from those who subscribe to the powers of capitalism to always be good for its citizens.

A good article that I’ve come across is this one, which makes its case clear in the all capital lettered title that shouts ECONOMICS IS NOT A NATURAL SCIENCE. Clearly the author believes he must go to the highest building with a megaphone in order to get his point across. And it’s true. Economics is a game, not a natural system. Economics is not based on society or humanity or moral issues. Economics is a game, closer to the board game Monopoly than it is to any human issue.

So why, then, must every issue that we contemplate be regarded economically? Why am I naturally inclined to scoff at Paolo Fiere’s idea of improving our education system, simply because it would be difficult to fit his square peg idea in the sleek round holes that all ideas must subscribe to in order to be plausible.

Human history can be traced as the development and impact of ideas. A new idea, when introduced to a ready civilization, can have the power to change the course of history. Today, however, an idea will only have validity if it will make someone money. It’s no longer about human impact, but economic impact. And I’m of the opinion that what’s good for the economy is not always what’s good for individual or for the society at large. But everyone already knew that, right?

I’ll finish this off with a hopefully redemptive short poem from a favorite poet of mine, Mr Yeats. Yeats himself is one of those self educated Dublin types who loves to oogle over their childhood and the mysticism of their free youth. Maybe they’re onto something here. As for the poem, to me, Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors is about the inevitability of true education, of how much those “Unknown Instructors” can reveal about the world. Just imagine that the “they” in this poem is the world as an educator through experience, and you might be closer to understanding what’s being said.

Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
William Butler Yeats

What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.

Notice how the language connotes inevitability— that which is undertook is “brought to pass”, as in given freely. The second key here is in how the simile of “drop of dew/upon a blade of grass” is delivered— the education is not everything, it is not the world, it will only aid the student in their growth. The growth of the blade of grass is the goal, and the dew will be brought. The ability to grow is so close without even trying; it is not a revelation, but is already sitting on top of us as we strive to grow towards it.

Our growth will happen, if only we do not try so hard to manipulate the nature of it.