‘The Afrogogy of the Privileged: A Reassessment of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ [1]
By Biko Agozino
Sociology and Africana Studies,
Virginia Tech
The teaching philosophy of many critical thinking educators implicitly or explicitly draws from the work of Paulo Freire rather uncritically despite some debates about the suitability of the perspective for industrialized countries. In this response to Sterling, I will revisit the original formulation by Freire and indicate critical ways that the original text needs to be transcended (as Freire himself invited his readers to attempt) in order to meet the demands of the reality of the culture of learning in higher education. [2] Freire prescribed his educational philosophy mainly for those engaged in the education of people like illiterate workers and peasants in Brazil and later in Tanzania and Guinea-Bissau. His liberation pedagogy caught on around the world and was adopted in many different disciplines in almost every part of the world.
Goals and ObjectiveAfricana Studies emerged out of the revolution of the 1960s and continues to define itself as a field that privileges critical-activist scholarship that is centered on the experience of people of African descent globally. [3] It may seem paradoxical that I have chosen this field to represent what Freire would call the ‘codification’ of an alternative interpretation to the pedagogy of the oppressed with emphasis on the maturity of the students, their complete humanity despite attempts at denigration from some quarters, and their privileged location in academia despite the persistence of oppressive practices even in academia itself. However, Africana Studies from the inception of its institutionalization in predominantly white universities was never intended as a field exclusively for black students and continues to serve as a diversity content for a diverse student population.
Moreover, such black students are far from the illiterate peasants of Freire and must be recognized as among the Talented Tenth of WEB Du Bois who are privileged to receive higher learning for the purpose of serving to help and uplift the less fortunate in society. The university is not isolated from, but is reflective of, societies structured in race-class-gender dominance, and Freire warned that educators must be careful to combat the will to power that makes the former oppressed peasant aspire to become like the oppressor whenever entrusted with power. Critical scholars must recognize the extent to which we are privileged as cultural activists and avoid oppressive discourses that may contradict our praxis.
Discussions
I had been using Freire in my educational philosophy rather uncritically until I visited a historically black college in the US to give a job talk. The toughest question came from a graduate student who wanted to know how I had gone beyond Freire in the application of his methods. I had not thought about that question even though in practice I had seen beyond the language of Freire because I was standing on his gigantic shoulders. I responded by saying that I had modified Freire’s philosophy in two ways to fit the reality of higher education today.
First, given the importance that Freire gave to the use of language as a means for the exercise of power, I no longer use the word pedagogy to describe the process of learning because university students, and adult learners in general, are no longer kids to be subjected to the pediatric processes of pedagogy. I referred to the work of Alice Miller, For their Own Good, in which she argued that pedagogy as child-rearing was predominantly abusive in Western cultures, resulting in the production of amoral monsters like Adolf Hitler. Today, I would prefer the word ‘androgogy’ or ‘Afrogogy’ to the word pedagogy for what we do in higher education. However, this change of words is not adequate without a shift in assumptions given that I attended an ‘Androgogy Workshop’ in the Caribbean and was surprised to hear participants defending the behaviorist approach to teaching which assumed that students were experimental animals to be motivated with grades towards better achievement or be punished to deter bad behavior. I said that I saw my students as colleagues, not as Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the anticipation of sugar lumps. Grades are not rewards but achievements earned by students.
Secondly, the above suggestion also questions the argument by Freire that illiterate adult learners are dehumanized by oppression and exploitation and that his pedagogy of the oppressed is designed to re-humanize them or to make them more fully human. University students are far from the oppressed illiterate peasants in rural Brazil, Tanzania, or Guinea-Bissau. They are rather a privileged lot in the sense that they are far from being illiterate, they have a lot of power over their professors at least in the form of classroom assessments, some of them have family allowances that are more than professors’ annual incomes, some drive some of the most expensive cars, and some go on to become rulers of countries.
In this sense, I do not agree with Freire that students, especially adult ones, were less human than intellectuals who arrive with the knowledge of how to humanize them or to make them more fully human. I believe that they remain fully human even when there is an attempt to dehumanize them through oppression. There is no such thing as a less human human being, certainly not in the university; socialization is a better term than humanization. I am confident that Freire himself would agree with everything I have said here. Africana Studies emerged in the 1960s when Freire was formulating his philosophy of scholar activism, and this discipline embodies that philosophy more than most. It was launched by students who were protesting the Eurocentric banking concept of education and demanding critical, activist, and Africa-centered scholarship. Although entrenched interests resisted the demands of the students and tried to ridicule their preferred philosophy of education, the fact that the discipline has thrived for more than 40 years in the US is an indication of the vibrancy of the approach that Freire recommended.
When we admit that the minds of university students are not blank slates, we will be more open to input from the students to the revision of the curriculum, innovation of new fields, and discovery of new theories and perspectives. Other emerging fields like Women’s Studies benefited from this Africana approach. The problem that I would like to pose to educators today is how we tackle the question of decreasing black male participation in higher education. Is there such a thing as positive masculinity, what are the empirical ‘codifications’ of progressive masculinity, what role could education play in its reproduction or socialization? [4]
To help us to answer these questions, let us require our students to volunteer for at least 15 hours with relevant organizations in the community and write essays linking the knowledge gained through service beyond the boundaries of the classroom to issues discussed in class. During the COVID-19 lockdown, this proves even more challenging but my students have managed to learn about prisoners and about malaria by fasting for 24 hours to simulate what hunger-strikers and malaria patients go through and also to raise funds for organizations working on such issues while also learning more about themselves with technologies of the self.
[1] Based on an updated version of Biko Agozino (2010) "The Androgogy of the Privileged: A Reassessment of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed" in Peter Doolittle, ed.,
Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy Proceedings, Blacksburg, CIDER.
[2] Freire, P. (1970)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, tr. M.B. Ramos, New York. See also, Freire, 1978,
Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea-Bissau, tr. C.S.J. Hunter, New York, The Seabury Press.
[3] Africana Studies is also referred to as African American Studies, Africology, Black Studies, African and African American Studies, and Pan-African Studies.
[4] At the invitation of UNICEF Caribbean, Biko Agozino and Augustine Agu worked on a Positive Masculinity manual for possible implementation in education globally (our article “Taboos of Masculinity: Positive and Progressive Masculinities,”
Taboo: The Journal Of Culture and Education (Winter 2021).
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Dear GTN,
The theme of our March discussion is
The Pedagogy of Transition: Educating for the Future We Want. In this time of perilous change, education for the world we want has become ever more urgent. We need evolved educational philosophies, curricula, and pedagogy that cultivate integrated knowledge and new consciousness for citizens of an uncertain global future.
Please consider commenting on one or more of the following subthemes:
Educating for the World We Don’t WantAre we failing to prepare students to lead curious, well-informed, big-hearted lives? What’s wrong with contemporary curricula and teaching? What political and social factors maintain such deficient educational practices?
Class StrugglesShare your experience devising courses, modules, and programs for 21st century citizenship. What has worked, what hasn’t, and why? What proposals do you have in the works?
Educating for a Great TransitionWhat educational reforms should be prioritized in near-term strategies? What long-term vision of curricula and the learning experience should we be striving for? How can we best further a pedagogy of transition at learning levels from pre-school through graduate school?
Stephen Sterling’s
opening reflection lays out the issues in challenging the educational status quo and moving in a new direction.
In particular, I’d like to direct your attention to Class Struggles (pun intended). GTN includes many educators, and this forum invites you to share your practical, nitty-gritty experiences with innovative courses and curricula.
The discussion will go through
Wednesday, March 31. As always, we encourage both pithy and extended comments up to 1,200 words.
Over to you,
Paul
Paul Raskin
GTI Director
