I took a while reading and rereading this book and meditating and reflecting over a lot of what Freire says and a lot of people in my group wanted to read it (and hopefully will), but I took so long on it so sorry, but I recommend this to everyone.  I was able to reflect a lot on my religious/political/economic/social beliefs and all the cycles of poverty I have seen in Milwaukee with loan and housing discrimination and under-funded schools and in Northern Uganda with a similar discrimination and under-funded education and a war, which has all its own generational cycles.  Ahh, here are quotes from Pedagogy and some questions and thoughts of it that this program keeps bringing up.

“…the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it.  This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled” (21).

Intellects and radicals are at the forefront of these movements in the past, but today have we students lost our “radicalness”?  Has our education turned us into conformists?  Why does a radical have such a negative connotation in our society today?  Are we so satisfied with our current state that for those who want to change it they are viewed as disrupting freedom and order and harming others?

“The pedagogy of the oppressed, animated by authentic, humanist (not humanitarian) generosity, presents itself as a pedagogy of humankind.  Pedagogy which begins with the egotistic interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression” (36).

One lesson is to be mindful and differentiate between the types of generosity.  Are we not generous if we gain something from it like more knowledge and a better understanding of the culture and place or can we not help but gain those?  See an earlier discussion on socialedge.org on the goals of international youth volunteerism.  Who starts the pedagogy of humankind, can donors, can outsiders?  These are questions that the book provides guidance to, but it is ultimately one’s own motives and perception and goes beyond “doing good”.

“It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life” (37).

I have wrestled with the debate throughout my life over if those who commit crime are doing it of their own will or is it more a reason of the situation that they have grown up and/or exist in and that they lack other outlets.  Two examples that always come to mind are the thief who stole the bread for his starving family or the terrorist who kills others because he is facing an entire army and is occupied and feels this is the best/only way out/to fight.  They commit crimes and issue terror, but do they initiate it?  Are they helpless and has someone already put them in such a situation that “begets” such a person?  Either way you think, at least look from the other side.

To work with the oppressed, we engage in “not an attempt to learn about the people, but to come to know with them the reality that challenges them” (91).  Freire recommends that we “labor in the fields, meetings of a local association…the role played by women and by young people, leisure hours, games and sports, conservations with people in there homes” (92-3).

Can the work we are doing be more like this, such as with our agriculture project and with all our time here.  We probably need more time to truly gain a broad and comprehensive set of observations.  We have tried working in the field with the agricultural group whose work we are funding, I have attended the local Gulu Chapter’s Rotary meeting, and we live with families, but I do not think we want to do “observation visits” and “register everything” in our notebooks (92).  I think we want to live and work with the people, not challenge their entire society and the state of oppression that they are in.  To be honest, I don’t think I can work with the group in the field or go to much more dorky Rotary-like meetings.  Maybe the people in the Peace Corps and other long-term service trips should take such a comprehensive approach though?

“The most important thing, from the point of view of libertarian education, is for people to come and feel like masters of their thinking by discussing the thinking and views of the world explicitly or implicitly manifest in their own suggestions and those of their comrades.  Because this view of education starts with the conviction that it cannot present its own program but must search for this program dialogically with the people, it serves to introduce the pedagogy of the oppressed, in the elaboration of the oppressed must participate” (105).

This summarizes how education should be taught.  It is amazing how in every educational setting that I have been in, I have no say over the content and the way it is taught and it is too much the teacher simply lecturing.  I think that is why I like studying abroad with research components aka the situation I am in now.  My father, the Director of the Teacher's College here, and I discussed this.  How the students here never do any projects?  How the teacher says "knows everything" and there is a lack of discussion and the students don't challenge or ask the teachers critical questions.  He is reading the book now and encouraging teachers to admit when they don't know something and to learn from their students and to search with them for the answers.

“Dialogue with the people is radically necessary to every authentic revolution” (109).

Chaford is supposed to be one of our links to the community as well as our families and those we meet.  Yet, I do not know if what we are doing is the best or what the people most want, yet it is hard for us to push for an “authentic revolution” in two months, but for all my other campaigns in my life, I have to constantly be in dialogue with the people, which is why I like volunteering.  If you care about education, tutor a kid; if you care about possessions, talk to the homeless; if you care about the future, mentor a kid.  Volunteering, hopefully, involves dialogue with someone about their life and about what they think should be done and how you can help.  It is a chance to see their life through their shoes as much as that is possible.

According to the “bishops of the Third World” that Freire cites, “if the workers do not somehow come to be owners of their own labor, all structural reforms will be ineffective…they [must] be owners, not sellers, of their labor…[for] any purchase or sale of labor is a type of slavery” (164).

A lot of projects that we hear about and that we see NGOs doing deal with the issue of empowering people and ensuring that they have ownership over their work.  Freire emphasizes that the most important aspect of labor is not how high of a price people get for what they sell, but that people want to be owners of their work not sellers.  My friend Lauren on a Guatemala trip after visiting Fair Trade coffee farmers talked about our role as buyers in this process and reminding us that we need to be conscious of what we buy and the choices we make.  I feel like I have met too many NGO workers and others, including ourselves, who came in with an idea of what the people wanted instead of asking and working with them.  I think that we have adapted and that having a community-based organization helps in navigating this, but it is still a dialogue that needs to take place for some time with the people having ownership of the ideas and the work because the alternative has a lot of potential for harm and paternalism.  We lacked this dialogue when planning our agricultural trainings (though we are limited by time, language and space to the camp): Did we ask what trainings they wanted?  How was the youth leader chosen?  Is an agriculture project what they wanted?  We put a lot of trust in Chaford’s, our community organization, knowledge of these people, and I do not know if they had the dialogue with them.

“Unity and organization can enable them to change their weakness into a transforming force with which they can re-create the world and make it more human…it is indispensable for the oppressors to keep the peasants isolated from the urban workers, just as it is indispensable to keep both groups isolated from the students” (126).

            It is interesting to read about the oppressors' need to isolate workers from us, students.  People tell us we “should be studying” and that we are “irresponsible and disorderly”, while peasants and factory workers “should be working” (126).  What role can we as students serve in joining with the workers?  What services can we provide?  Will our higher institutions support us or even let us? 

“The dominant elites are so well aware of this fact that they instinctively use all means, including physical violence, to keep the people from thinking.  They have a shrewd intuition of the ability of dialogue to develop a capacity for criticism” (130).

            I have struggled with this point that the elites want the poor to keep quiet so the government under funds schools in poorer areas.  A worse education usually means less free and critical thinking, which means less criticism of the government.  We can see it hear in Northern Uganda (where the main university in Kampala used to be half from the North, and now they are only 1%) and in the US where the schools are funded by taxes, i.e. if you’re in a rich neighborhood, odds are your school is better than one in a poor neighborhood.  I want to study this when I get back at Sullivan High School, which has a huge refugee population and is also severely under funded, and then at secondary schools in Mexico City and Paris, which have high proportions of Guatemalan immigrants and Iraqi refugees, respectively. 

“Young people increasingly view parent and teacher authoritarianism as inimical to their own freedom.  For this very reason, they increasingly oppose forms of action which minimize their expressiveness and hinder their self-affirmation…This rebellion with its special dimension, however, is very recent; society continues to be authoritarian in character” (135-6).

            Is a youth rebellion legitimate?  Will our generation be different and change future ones?  Or is the oppressor legacy too great, and the kids of these oppressors will be too powerful?  Is the educational system with the lack of ownership of students in terms of content and everything too restricting and conformist?

Ok some thoughts to think about with our trip, but for now...

More Funny Stuff From Gulu:

·        Members of our Group went to visit Heifer farmers and in the spirit of Heifer’s giving “passing it on” program, where farmers share the offspring of their livestock with others, one of the farmers gave us a rooster, which Rachael took and hung from the edge of her “boda boda” (motorbike).  So last night we ate “Mr. Millet” and he was delicious as her mother made the best “smashed” potatoes ever.  And Jacob broke a glass, and Rachael’s dad broke a chair, and “our pets’ heads are falling off”!! Heifer needs any animals, but cows are the best.  go to their site at heifer.org and you can see how to buy cows and other animals as gifts for farmers in Uganda!

·        Naked Man and I now share the same name as my Dad had some elders over, including his brother, who is a priest at Pope John Paul II School and who told me that since I am the second and the last born in my “home-home” family that I should have the name Komakec, which Naked Man and the amazing little guy that teaches me volleyball at Alliance (I spike it in kids’ faces now) are both called.

·        The Priest also said I need to get Arsenal and the Chicago Fire to send balls and boots (soccer shoes) to his school so we’ll work on that.

And More from My Family:

·        Lona, my youngest sister at age six, watches Cradle to the Grave with Jet Li and DMX by herself.  Her favorite film other than Barney.

·        My Dad’s uncle was placed in a basket in the middle of a field naked for a night, and if a hyena devoured him then he was not the child of my dad’s grandfather, but if he wasn’t (which he wasn’t) devoured then he was the child of another man.

Members of our group and other teams are going to Rwanda this weekend to see genocide memorials and meet the Bishop of two members of our team who also wrote a book called Bishop to Rwanda.  So I won't be posting for a while so...

Adong maber,

Nikolai Anywar Komakec The Last/Lost Born Mr. Millet Smith