Freiren Six Key Principles
Education is not neutral
Education is either designed to maintain the status quo, imposing on the people the values and culture of the dominant class or education is designed to liberate people education is designed to liberate people, helping them to become critical, creative, free and active.
Content comes from the participants
People will act on the issues on which they have strong feelings. Education that starts by identifying the issues that people speak about with excitement, hope, fear or anger will have greater success in reaching those involved.
Dialogue
No one has all the answers! Each person has different answers based on his or her own experiences. To discover valid solutions everyone needs to be both a learner and a teacher. Education must be a mutual learning process.
Problem-Posing Education
Participants are thinking, creative people with the capacity for action. A facilitator can help participants learn by providing a framework for thinking and creativity. By posing questions instead of lecturing, a facilitator engages the participants in an active way.
Reflection/Action
By continually engaging in a cycle of reflection and action, a group can celebrate their successes, analyze critically their reality, mistakes and failures-and use this information to act again. This allows a group to become more capable of effectively transforming their daily life.
Transformation
Education should work to transform the quality of each person’s life, the environment, the community, the whole society. This is not an individualistic academic exercise, but a dynamic process in which education and action are interwoven.
TAKEN FROM THE "ECONOMICS EDUCATION: BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR GLOBAL ECONOMIC JUSTICE" ©American Friends Service Committee 2001 |
