Re-Thinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Educatio)

221 Pages·2004·1.38 MB·English

by  C. A. Bowers

RETHINKING FREIRE
Globalization and the
Environmental Crisis
Sociocultural, Political, and Historical
Studies in Education
Joel Spring, Editor
Spring • The Cultural Transformation of a Native American Family
and Its Tribe 1763–1995
Peshkin • Places of Memory: Whiteman’s Schools and Native
American Communities
Nespor • Tangled Up in School: Politics, Space, Bodies, and Signs
in the Educational Process
Weinberg • Asian-American Education: Historical Background and
Current Realities
Lipka/Mohatt/The Ciulistet Group • Transforming the Culture of
Schools: Yu’pik Eskimo Examples
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Silencing of Native Voices
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Pugach • On the Border of Opportunity: Education, Community,
and Language at the U.S.-Mexico Line
Hones/Cha • Educating New Americans: Immigrant Lives and
Learning
Gabbard, Ed. • Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy:
Politics and the Rhetoric of School Reform
Glander • Origins of Mass Communications Research During the
American Cold War: Educational Effects and Contemporary
Implications
Nieto, Ed. • Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools
Benham/Cooper, Eds. • Indigenous Educational Models for
Contemporary Practice: In Our Mother’s Voice
Spring • The Universal Right to Education: Justification,
Definition, and Guidelines
Peshkin • Permissible Advantage?: The Moral Consequences of
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DeCarvalho • Rethinking Family-School Relations: A Critique of
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Borman/Stringfield/Slavin, Eds. • Title I: Compensatory
Education at the Crossroads
Roberts • Remaining and Becoming: Cultural Crosscurrents in an
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Meyer/Boyd, Eds. • Education Between State, Markets, and Civil
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South/East
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to the Green Party, Second Edition
McCarty • A Place to Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for
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Hones, Ed. • American Dreams, Global Visions: Dialogic Teacher
Research With Refugee and Immigrant Families
Benham/Stein, Eds. • The Renaissance of American Indian Higher
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Ogbu • Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study
of Academic Disengagment
Books, Eds. • Invisible Children in the Society and Its Schools,
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Hemmings • Coming of Age in U.S. High Schools: Economic,
Kinship, Religious, and Political Crosscurrents
Heck • Studying Educational and Social Policy Making:
Theoretical Concepts and Research Methods
Lakes/Carter, Eds. • Globalizing Education for Work:
Comparative Perspectives on Gender and the New Economy
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Intergovernmental Organizations, NGOs, and the Decline of the
Nation-State
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Education: Democracy and Meaning in a Globalizing World,
Third Edition
Books • Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and
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Reagan • Non-Western Educatioal Traditions: Alternative
Approaches to Educational Thought and Practice, Third Edition
Bowers, Ed. • Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the
Environmental Crisis
RETHINKING FREIRE
Globalization and the
Environmental Crisis
Edited by
C.A.Bowers

University of Oregon
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin

Smith College
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
Mahwah, New Jersy London
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
Cover photos by Naomi Silverman.
Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Re-thinking Freire: globalization and the environmental crisis/
edited by C.A.Bowers, Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-5114-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Developing countries—Economic conditions. 2. Globalization
—Economic aspects—Developing countries. 3. Environmental
degradation—Developing countries. 4. Globalization—Social
aspects—Developing countries. 5. Human ecology—Social aspects—
Developing countries. 6. Environmental education—Developing
countries. 7. Freire, Paulo, 1921– I. Bowers, C.A. II. Apffel-Marglin,
Frédérique.
HC59.72.E5418 2004
337′.09172′4–dc22 2004040936
ISBN 1-4106-1174-4 Master e-book ISBN
Contents

Preface viii
About the Editors and Contributors xvi

Introduction 1

C.A.Bowers
1 From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation From 13
Pedagogy

Gustavo Esteva, Dana L.Stuchul, and Madhu Suri
Prakash
2 Nurturance in the Andes 31

Grimaldo Rengifo Vasquez
3 Who Are the Oppressed? 48

Barbara Loyda Sanchez Bejarano
4 Vernacular Education for Cultural Regeneration: An 68
Alternative to Paulo Freire’s Vision of Emancipation
Gustavo Terán
5 From Conscientization to Interbeing: A Personal 82
Journey
Siddhartha
6 Whose Oppression Is This? The Cultivation of 99
Compassionate Action in Dissolving the Dualistic

Barrier
Phyllis Robinson
7 Cease to Do Evil, Then Learn to Do Good (A 113
Pedagogy for the Oppressor)
Derek Rasmussen
Contents vii

8 How the Ideas of Paulo Freire Contribute to the 131
Cultural Roots of the Ecological Crisis
C.A.Bowers

Afterword 149

C.A.Bowers

Author Index 190
Subject Index 193
Preface
The title of this collection of essays by Third World activists,
Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis,
highlights two major world changes overlooked by Freire and his
many followers: the Third World grassroots cultural resistance to
economic globalization and the ecological crisis. The essays by
Third World activists are important for a number of reasons. First,
their criticisms of Freire’s pedagogy are based on their attempts to
combine consciousness raising with literacy programs in such
diverse cultural settings as Bolivia, Peru, India, southern Mexico,
and Cambodia. They discovered that Freire’s pedagogy is based on
Western assumptions that undermine indigenous knowledge
systems. The field testing of Freire’s pedagogy, which was carried
out by local activists who were both personal friends of Freire and
spoke the local languages, stands in sharp contrast to how Freire’s
ideas are presented in English-speaking universities and by
professors in Third World universities who have received advanced
degrees in Western universities. That is, the Third World activists
recognized the colonizing nature of the cultural assumptions
underlying his pedagogy, whereas the Western professors with only
a reading knowledge of his writings continue to think of them as
universally valid.
A second major limitation with Freire’s ideas, reproduced in the
writings of his followers, is that he ignored until just before his
death the cultural implications of the ecological crisis. Recently,
Moacir Gadotti, the Director of the Instituo Paulo Freire in Brazil,
urged educational reformers to understand that the chapter Freire
wrote on the educational implications of the environmental crisis
(for a book he was unable to finish because of his untimely death)
establishes him as a leading theorist of an ecopedagogy. This
pedagogy of the Earth, according to Gadotti (2000), must work for
the creation of a new planetary citizenship—one that is based on a
“unifying vision of the planet and a world society” (p. 8). Achieving
this new planetary consciousness will require, as Gadotti
extrapolates from previous Freire writings, eliminating “the
Contents ix
transmission of culture from one generation to the next.” That is,
each generation is to create its own history by being critical of
every aspect of daily life. Thus, the development of planetary
citizenship will instead require educators to promote “the grand
journey of each individual into the interior of his universe and in the
universe that surrounds him.” Although Freire’s late
acknowledgment of the ecological crisis is significant, it is even
more important to understand that he did not recognize that the
Western cultural assumptions that are the basis of his classic,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, cannot be reconciled with addressing
the cultural roots of the ecological crisis. Unfortunately, Gadotti
fails to recognize the imperialistic nature of the Freirean canon in
his elaboration of a Freirean-based ecopedagogy. Thus, Freire’s
influence continues, with an educational reform agenda that is
dedicated to the elimination of the cultural/linguistic diversity that
is the basis of the world’s biodiversity and that undermines the
forms of intergenerational knowledge that are the basis of the
diverse approaches to sustaining the local commons as sites of
resistance to economic and technological globalization. The essays
by the Third World activists represented in this book highlight
Freire’s failure to understand that his emancipatory vision is based
on the same assumptions that underlie the planetary citizenship
envisioned by the neoliberals promoting the Western model of
global development. More importantly, the essays provide a
glimpse into the diversity of cultural ways of knowing and their
approaches to nurturing the commons that have been systematically
excluded from the writings of Freire and his followers. And it is
their descriptions that need to be considered in determining whether
the efforts of Western educational reformers are contributing to the
revitalization of the commons or to undermining them in ways that
further limit the prospects of current and future generations.
OVERVIEW
Introduction
C.A.Bowers
This provides the background for bringing together the Third World
activists to share their experiences in using Freirean ideas in their