Paulo Feire's Second Letter Analysis

Brittany Proctor
EDF3604
3/19/14

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Paulo Freire was both an educator and a philosopher who was an extremely influential individual thinker. Theorists believed that how teachers and students are taught to write critically was not something that could be easily explained. Freire’s idea was instead of teaching the lower class information of the higher or middle it would be better to start from the students’ own experiences and understandings and go from there. Freire includes his own experiences in his letters that help to understand how he came to conclude the lessons he had learned. He also believed that it was important for a teacher to love what they do. As a teacher you are not just that, everyday a teacher’s job requires
them to go above and beyond and not always get the recognition for it.
Freire makes it very clear throughout his letters that he not only wants the teacher to think critically but also the student. This would be something that neither Jefferson nor Mann would agree with. They would want the students to sit quietly and not speak out, and for the teacher to teach what they were being told. Freire wants the teachers to question everything that is put on their desk and for the students to ask critical questions. He was somewhat against the ‘bank method’ of teaching were the students were seen as mere vessels that information could just be poured into. He thought of it as more of a way for students to “eat up” the text context with the help of a teacher.
In Freire’s Second Letter he addresses fear, how to overcome it and how to not allow it to paralyze a person.
He quotes the Aurelio Dictionary on the definition of fear being, “a feeling of unrest before the notion of real or imaginary danger.” (Freire) When there is a real danger it is okay to feel fear, he wants the reader to understand that sometimes that danger is just fiction, made up in a person’s head and can be overcome. He gives three simple steps on conquering this fear. First, one must decide if they truly have reasons for their fear. Second if the reasons truly do exist, then match the fear with possibilities of overcoming it successfully. Last if the fear cannot be overcome right away to take your time and the necessary steps on overcoming them tomorrow. Every individual’s difficulty level is different; a person just needs to understand that it can be overcome. A person can go into a state of panic because of fear or a feeling that they are unable to respond to a text, Feire states, “I experience panic in a city struck by an earthquake.” (Feire) Basically to some a person’s fear can look minuscule but to them be huge. A person just has to understand that it is only fear, a feeling, and can be
overcome.
Freire describes the importance of the reader to have curiosity and to think critically when reading a text to understand it. He explains that too many students are asked to write exactly what they have read. To really test if a student’s understands the text it would be more beneficial for them to answer a question that would make them think more critically about the character such as, “What would Feire and Mann agree or disagree about the education today.” This would allow the student to take the knowledge they know about both characters and relate it to the same topic.
In the Sixth Letter he talks about the relationship between educators and leaders, in some ways teachers are leaders.
Freire says that teacher’s cannot just see themselves as teachers, “we are political militants because we are teachers.” (Freire) Every day teachers go above and beyond as he tells in his story of Carla when his daughter was teaching. Carla was a poor, dirty child and her grandmother could not pay for her education so she went to Madalena for help. Madalena agreed to waive the school fee if Carla would come to school dressed and cleaned up (there were plenty of other students whose fee was surrendered as well). Because of this Carla was able to thrive in school and no one noticed that she was poor; she looked like any of the other students. “A naïve bystander would say that the educator’s intervention had been somewhat bourgeois, elitist, alienated- after all, how can one require that a child of the slums come to school bathed?” (Freire) But, because of this there was no chaos in the classroom, no one was above another. Basically she was able to remove the distraction and teach the class. This story is relevant to progressive teaching because it is important not to have rankings in the classroom. No teacher should be above or below their students, just as no students should be seen as above or below their peers. Everything in the classroom should be equal, to an extent, so that the classroom can be best
managed.
All in all Freire’s ideas are important for any educator today. He describes the important of a leader to have their own theories and to stick to those no matter what. He tells the importance of facing your fears, and how to understand a text critically. As well as why equality in the classroom is important. There is no wonder on why Freire’s ideas are still used today; he was a very wise man.

Work Cited
Freire, Paulo. Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998. Print.
Senese, Tozer. School and Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Seventh ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.