Self-reflection on emancipatory education practices with the 'oppressed' in community health. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Laperrière, Hélène
• Is Part Of: Reflective practice. Volume 19:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 14
• Page End: 25
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: Popular education -- Paulo Freire -- community development -- critical thinking -- nursing -- self-reflection -- critical consciousness raising; Professions -- Periodicals; Reflection (Philosophy) -- Periodicals; Thought and thinking -- Periodicals; Self-knowledge, Theory of -- Periodicals; Career development -- Periodicals; 370.15
• DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2017.1299003
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1462-3943

Abstract

Abstract: North American community health academics encourage the use of emancipatory education for the community development with vulnerable populations. Topics such as critical consciousness-raising, social justice, and political action constitute a significant part of the curricula. They often refer to Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed. However, Freire has too often been presented as quasi-synonymous with a conception of critical education that de-emphasizes the context and ignores the history of his praxis. He has been made into a non-historical creator who invented a fully-formed point of view out of nothing. A self-reflection in Northeast Brazil revealed that Freire's ideas were rooted in a Brazilian tradition with which he was familiar and which served him as a point of reference, most notably the ideas of Alvaro Vieira Pinto, a Brazilian philosopher, as well as a number of Russian and German populists.