EDUCATION FOR LIBERATION AND PROCESS OF CONSCIENTATION

 

Education for Liberation and the Process of Conscientisation

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 Education for Liberation
The concept of liberation presupposes a social situation where the democratic principle of equality is violated. John Locke (1632-1704), as we saw earlier, stated that every human being has the natural rights to life, to liberty and to property. The violation of individuals’ rights to liberty and to property tends to occur in the contexts where the more powerful members in a community infringe upon the rights of the weaker or less powerful members in that community.

Liberation in such a context is an act of restitution to redress the injustices suffered under the violation of natural human rights. It is a process of setting the aggrieved individuals free from injustices - restoring their natural rights.

Definitions
To liberate some one is to set him free from the control of someone else, so that the liberated person is in control of his own life. It is a restoration of the natural right of liberty. Thus liberation from colonial rule or foreign occupation of political authority in a territory results in empowering people in that territory to rule themselves- restoring their right to control their own lives. It is then an act of restitution to redress grievances against natural justice.

 Education for Liberation
Paul Freire (1921-1997), an influential thinker about education in the late twentieth century was the first philosopher to concern himself with oppressed people whose natural rights to liberty and property were violated. In his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” he viewed education as an instrument for liberating oppressed people from oppressors’ unjust dealings with such oppressed people. He proposed to do this through a process of education whereby their awareness of the oppressive situation they lived in would be raised to a new awareness of that plight they were in. Their new awareness would be one of discontentment with the oppressive situation, changing their being resigned to such an unjust situation. This new awareness would also make them realise that they could change or transform the oppressive situation. Paul Freire called this process of raising the oppressed people’s awareness about the plight they were in ‘conscientisation’.

Paul Freire insisted that educational activities should be conducted under ‘lived experiences’ of the participants. Educators should discuss with the “educatees” and help them in re-labelling or generating new ideas and ways of renaming the world around them during their reflections to reach the new realisation about their oppressive conditions.

In essence this is Paul Freire’s pedagogy or methods of conducting teaching lessons in education for liberation. Paul Freire thus wove together thinking about educational policy and educational practices and related them to eudaimonia or ultimate human good, (Mark K. Smith 20002).

Education for liberation should use dialogue methods whereby the educators would discuss with the oppressed people about their living conditions. The methods involve people discussing together or conversing, rather than using written books and syllabuses in a curriculum of study. This is what Paul Freire called banking education whereby the educator deposits knowledge to the ‘educatees’ or learners. The dialogue methods also involve “praxis” a Greek expression, which means actions of putting into practice the ideas realised in the process of reflection. It is informed action linked to certain value or human good. Praxis is action the doing of which achieves human good. Dialogue is to be thus used to in changing attitudes about the participants’ living conditions. Dialogue was seen as a cooperative activity involving mutual respect between the educator and the participants and amidst themselves. Praxis should be a follow up activity to implement the decisions reached in the dialogue.

The acts of liberation were reflected in praxis involving the participants’ taking “transformative actions” against their oppressors.

 The Nature of Conscientisation
nscientisation comes from the Portuguese expression “concientizacao” which means consciousness raising. Consciousness in English means the state of being conscious or knowing what is going on around one through the use of bodily senses and mental powers. It is a state of being awake, rather than being asleep or unconscious. When one is conscious of something, one is aware of or knows about such a thing.

Conscientisation is not an English expression it coined from its Portuguese source, which may simply be defined as a process of raising an awareness of some one to reach a new level of the perception of reality. It entails making someone become conscious of the reality in which one is, in a new way.
It was Paul Freire (1970) in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed who coined term 
‘conscientisation’ from Portuguese, his native tongue. Freire defined it to denote two intertwined concepts.

1. “Making people conscious of the reality about themselves and their circumstances” including the fact that they are human beings, (or what Freire termed “their humanity”) as well as their ability to control and transform their environment and even overpower oppressive elements in the process of their own development. It should be noted that under this meaning Freire assumed that the people who were to undergo consientisation were in an oppressive situation and that they were either not aware of that fact or they were resigned to, or contented with it.
2. Conscientisation means a removal of the mystery, or to use Freire’s expression, ‘demystication’ of the perception of reality about the world around. It is a removal of a hither-to misconception that has prevailed among people. It is a removal of a perception of their oppressive plight, about which their oppressors have kept them in the dark, and against which they were incapable to fight and overcome. They had thus no alternative except to resign to the oppressive plight they were in – believing that it was their fate.

Paul Freire asserted that conscientisation is a process involving “transformative series of actions” which include the following:

(i) An awakening of consciousness that entails a change of attitudes and which enhances realistic critical awareness of one’s position in society and a drive to analyse critically the causes and outcomes of such a situation, comparing it with other situations and possibilities.

(ii) A decision and commitment to take action aimed at transforming the unhappy socioeconomic conditions associated with the oppressive plight.
Conscientisation involves learning to perceive the contradictions existing in one’s environment, including socio-economic and political contradictions, hence taking actions against such contradictions. It should be noted that by “contradictions” Friere refers to the unfair dealings or ill treatments of people by their oppressors or the exploitation of workers by their employers in Marxist expression.

Types of Consciousness or Awareness
Paul Freire distinguishes three types of states of consciousness as follows

(1) Magic Consciousness
This is a state of consciousness whereby the individual is aware of existing problems around him but cannot explain them in terms of natural phenomena, and attributes them to some supernatural or nonmaterial explanations such as fate. Paul Freire maintained that this state of consciousness produces responses, which are characterized by fatalism.

Fatalism is a belief that events are decided by fate, leading to acceptance that all that happens as inevitable. Some supernatural being is believed to have pre-determined all occurrences. A kind of god is supposed to have ordained all events in one’s life. Fatalism produces an attitude of resignation to the unpleasant situations one encounters in life.

(2) Naive Consciousness
This is a state of consciousness that seeks rational explanations of the problems one encounters in life. Such explanations are however merely academic and idealist, characterised unrealistic and naïve solutions to the problems at hand. They are abstract and detached from the material reality around. They make however one tolerate one’s plight and accept it philosophically that life is in that manner.
These rational naïve explanations therefore induce in one a2 contentment with the situation one finds oneself in.

(3) Critical consciousness
This is a state of consciousness whereby the individual tries to judge the situation realistically, leading to concrete responses of overcoming the unpleasant situation. According to Freire critical consciousness involves reflection followed by ‘praxis’. He used the term praxis to mean a follow up action to thought and decision. – Or linking thought with actual actions; that is putting thoughts into practice.

The oppressed individuals are assumed to be too immersed in false contentment with the oppressive reality around them. They do not perceive themselves capable of reacting against the world around and the possibility of actually transforming it. It is only when they are involved in combined reflection and action, i.e. praxis that they emerge into realising that they can transform or change the reality, in which they are. Praxis combines theory with action or practices in a penetrating process of knowing and doing, according to O’German (1983) “Knowing and transforming are two fundamental attributes of the conscientisation process.”
Paul Freire asserted that: “The process of men’s orientation in the world involves not just the association of sense images as for animals. It involves above all thought and language, which is the possibility of the act of knowing through man’s praxis by which he transforms reality. Orientation in the world, so understood, places the question of purpose of action at the level of critical perception of reality” (A quotation from Paul Freire article on ‘Cultural Action for Freedom:’ Harvard Educational Review Monograph Series No. 1, Cambridge Massachusetts; 1970).

Social and Political Background of Conscientisation
The of Freire’s conceptions and propositions on conscientisation are rooted in political and socio-economic situation that existed in South America at the time he wrote his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Brazil and other South and Central America countries had economies based mainly on plantation estates, such coffee and sugar plantation. They grew commercial crops on large scales and employed large numbers of labourers. It was a common practice among plantation owners to pay meagre wages to their workers, and provided little or no social amenities to their employees. The majority of them worked under very poor and miserable conditions with hardly enough income to meet most of their basic needs. Hunger and diseases were rampant. (Darylos, L.K.T. “A Philosophical Sketch of Functional Literacy: The Freirean Way”, in Adult Education and Development, 39, 1999. pp143-149).
The main concern of conscientisation was transformation of the people from status of being regarded merely as objects by their employers, the plantation owners, to being subjects whose basic right are restored and justice redressed. Such a situation can only occur through educational experiences, where the teacher and the learners discuss together and uncover the gravity of an oppressive plight and take actions to redress it. Conscientisation is that kind of education. It is aimed at making the individual use the unjust situation to his advantages. He becomes an actor to reform such an oppressive situation. As an educational process conscientisation has a liberating potential. It can set the individual free of the oppressive plight in which he has hither-to been.