On Dehumanization

 

The primary occupation of children is play.  And they attack their occupation with joy and gusto.  To watch young children engage the world, it seems obvious that we human beings come predisposed to wonder and play; to explore, test, and modify our world - and find our own place in it.  

Some grown-ups find joy and meaning in their occupations too.  But most… not so much.  In the contemporary (Western) world, work is what most people do to be able to afford the things they want to do.  And then can’t find time to do the things they want to do.    Even among those privileged enough to earn more than they need, nearly half of workers in the US do not use their vacation time, time poverty is considered a virtue, and huge numbers of people acknowledge that much of their professional effort goes into obscuring the fact that the work they do is pointless.  Among people marginalized and minoritized in our society, dehumanization occurs in ways that seem more obvious (though people with privileged still manage to find ways not to see it).  Racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination of all kinds harm individual’s healthy and safety and restrict access to getting basic needs met.  These barriers are easy to identify as dehumanizing, as it is clear how they restrict the ways people can pursue their humanity.  But huge numbers of adults who do not experience those barriers also occupy their time and energy doing things that do not bring them joy or meaning.  

The change from childlike, playful learning to the instrumentalist, acquiescence of adult workers is not developmental.  Whether is is the result of overt oppression or the subtle coercions of hegemony, adults who are no longer occupied with wonder or play have ceded parts of their humanity.  Like Freire (1970), I have come to see education as both the cause and remedy of this situation.  

According to Freire, banking education teaches students to be compliant; to depend on teachers as the source of answers (and to doubt themselves); and to internalize the interests of people who make decisions on their behalf, displacing their own questions and pursuits.  Liberation begins with consciuosness-raising: the dehumanized individual coming to see their situation.  Then, the oppressed must take action to liberate themselves.   Attempts to charitably lift another person out of oppression are false generosity, because they can only make the oppressed person dependent on their supposed emancipator.  In other words, teachers cannot empower their students.  To attempt to do so is to position one’s self as the source of students power.  Even if that were possible, it creates dependency.  

Teaching for empowerment must position students to be the agents of their own liberation.  It is about creating spaces of possibility, where learners can find and claim agency.  This is easier said than done, but it begins with a teacher opening space: enacting the power to which they have access to push back barriers.  This can be enough for particularly tenacious learners, but a more equitable approach is to prepare the space to challenge and support students.  Learners deserve to accomplish hard things - not for so-called “character-building”, but because they need opportunities to show themselves what they are capable of.  But they also need a community around them that will support them when they struggle - especially when early attempts fail.  And that kind of support only emerges when the whole group takes collective responsibility for it.  

When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful. (bell hooks)

References:

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (MB Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum, 2007.

Hooks, B. (2009). Teaching critical thinking. Routledge.