The flight from Harlingen to Hartford Connecticut takes nine hours, though actually it’s three flights, one from Harlingen to Houston, a forty-five minute layover in the airport, then Houston to Philadelphia, a two hour layover in a little building out on the tarmac waiting for a turbo prop that will fly on Hartford. Every time the door to the building slides open, gas fumes and the stench of hot blacktop assail your nostrils.
So, when a guy, lanky, a frayed Under Armor ball cap, starched jeans, sits down in one of the orange plastic seats and asks you what you’re reading, it comes as more a break than an interruption.
“Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” you tell him.
He doesn’t say anything, but blinks a couple of times. Maybe he was expecting a Harlequin Romance.
“Some commie, huh?”
“No, though he was interested in socio-political issues. He worked among the most destitute in Brazil.”
“Brazil, huh? Isn’t that where they held the Olympics? Watched it on TV. Didn’t look that poor to me.”
How do you explain the income disparity between the wealthy and the poor in a Third World Country to a First World mind, you wonder. You didn't want to judge the guy--but his comments made you wonder if he was open to alternative views.
“So, what’s he write about?”
“Well in the chapter I’m reading right now he writes about something called ‘narration sickness.’”
“Yeah, I heard they got a vaccine for that now. Really, this Freire sounds like one of those egg heads with too much time on his hands.
So, what’s ‘narrative stickiness?’”
“Sickness, narration sickness.”
He crosses his arms, looks at you, and blinks again. Every time he blinks he reminds you of a bird, a parrot with baseball cap. That image disintegrates when he ask, “Okay, so what is that?”
TASK ONE: Your task is to explain what Freire means by the term “narration sickness.” You need to be thorough, IE you need to explain its full implications. On the other hand, you need to be clear and concise. Your listener's attention span may not be that long.
When your team thinks you’ve got a clear, concise definition, one of you should write your definition on the board.
Since games require feedback, your definitions will be rated by the class after all definitions are on the board.
[[A Meeting of Minds]]
Chuck listens intently as you explain "narration sickness" to him. (His name is Chuck. He told you this while you were thinking about how to explain "narration sickness" to him. He asked you what your name was. You didn't tell him.)
“So, this narration sickness thing, why is that a problem?"
“Well, it leads to something he refers to as the ‘banking model of education.’”
Even as you say this you know you’re going to have to explain that to him as well.
TASK TWO: Explain the “banking concept of education.” Freire is pretty elegant, even poetic, in his description. Unfortunately, you’ve got to get his idea clear enough so Under Armor Chuck can understand it. You guessed it, someone should write your definition on the board.
[[To Meet or Not to Meet]]
“Don’t we need reading and writing and arithmetic?” Chuck asks.
“How else do you teach those without, you know, tests and quizzes and lectures and such”
You know it’s going to be difficult explaining “knowledge” to Chuck, but you gamely give it a shot, wishing that turbo jet would get there soon.
TASK THREE: Define knowledge according to Freire. Since Freire doesn't talk about knowledge as much as he does some other key terms. You may need to add your own ideas to Freire's to make it clear what knowledge is. One way to do this is to contrast knowledge, or what is sometimes referred to as "true" knowledge with something else. When you do this, though, notice how the definition changes depending on what you contrast it with, for instance, how you define knowledge would be different if you contrasted it with ignorance or with information.
[[We May Never Meet Again]]
There are all sorts of things you could go into, the “teacher-student contradiction” (260), critical consciousness,” (261). Each of these terms just seem to complicate Freire's ideas, not make them simpler. Then, you make the mistake of saying something about the “oppressors” (261)
“Oppressors?” Chuck asks. “Who’s the oppressors? This guy Freire wasn’t some sort of revolutionary, was he? Like Castro or that Che guy?”
Until the moment when Chuck challenged you, you hadn’t really thought about who the oppressors were. For Freire, working among the poor of South America during the Sixties, the oppressors were obvious. The history of South America was rife with the names of oppressors. At the same time, some of those oppressors were hailed as liberators. One person's liberator might be another person's oppressor.
Another thought occurred to you, making things even more complicated, even a little depressing: were there always oppressors? Would there always be?
For Chuck, a working class guy living in America in the 21st Century, who were the oppressors? Who was trying to control him? Keep him in line? Keep him from growing? From thinking critically? And, more importantly, if he was being oppressed, why didn’t he see it?
“Well,” you tell him. “I think the oppressors might change from place to place, time to time, from situation to situation. The more important question is how we’re supposed to deal with oppression other than violence, which Freire was against. He argued that the stagnation caused by the banking model of education could only be countered by ‘problem-posing education.'”
“Problem solving?”
“No, problem-posing.”
“What’s the difference?”
TASK FOUR: Explain “problem-posing education” to Chuck. Yep, then write your explanation on the board.