educational imperialism

Instead of imposing structural values upon any given group (in this case the participants in an educational program) Freire advocated that an educator immerses himselve in the group and learn the structural values that already exist within that group. What I mean by structural values is the associated meanings and significance the group places on objects, behaviors, places, etc, which are the “social facts” of the commune. Freire contended that by doing this the educator can observe and perceive what is important to that society. Through this understanding the strongest channels for communication (the essence of education) were harnessed. Irrespective of the prevailing partisan moral assumption underpinning the aims of the schools, their methods were simply counter-intuitive.

By taking the children out of their home environments, in the case of the boarding schools, they were severing the children’s ties to family structures, and the foundations of the associated value systems in their lives. In doing this they were deconstructing one value system in order to then impose another. The reason why this is so pedagogically inept is because we need values in order to learn. We can only learn the importance of something in relation to something else; this is what I mean when I say we need a value system in order to learn. The bit where it got really postmodern though, is when the schools start to teach things like rug weaving, pottery making, etc to the children. After having deconstructed the value system the children already had and then imposing another one, they then taught what they conceive of as traditional Indian cultural heritage to the children within the new framework. Not only is this insulting to the children, as their connection to their own culture is now reduced to its most elementary and bare features, packaged and given to them by someone who could not possibly understand it, but it is again pedagogically counterintuitive.