Assignment 3c

Matthew McDonald's post emphasizes how important literacy was to Freire. If people could not read, they were not legally able to vote. Since many poor people could not afford to go to school, they did not know how to read or write. This kept many people, especially the poorest people, from having any power in government because they could not vote. Without the vote of the poorest and least educated, nothing came about to help them and they continued to struggle and have no power. Freire worked in other countries, where he was able to see that oppression and problems with education are all over the world, which influenced him and helped him do more.

Chris Formato's post is about Freire's theories and banking. Freire was against the idea of "banking" in education, which is the concept that students are like bank accounts that teachers are supposed to deposit knowledge into. The idea of banking means that a student is just given information and filled with it, but is not expected to do anything else. Freire believed that students need to take part in their education by having dialogue with their teachers and having respect for one another so that they could have conversations and create ideas from the learning. There are eight theories for Freire's approach to education, which are discussed in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. They are the theories of value, knowledge, human nature, learning, transmission, society, opportunity, and consensus.

Freire's ideas apply to this class because the people who he was most interested in helping, the very poor people with little access to education, are numerous in Latin America and the Caribbean. His theories could be very beneficial for both areas if they were implemented for the people. There is quite a bit of corruption and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean because many people cannot vote because of their lack of education and understanding. If all the illiterate and uneducated people were educated, like Freire did, Latin America and the Caribbean would be much better and fairer places.