The Guru of Adult Education
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18 / 12 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
The Guru of Adult Educaion.
“In the past we have thought about teachers owning information that they push to learners. Nowadays teachers risk falling behind students when it comes to using network sites such as facebook and twitter as part of the learning process.”
Those are the words of Sir David Melville. He is the chairman of Lifelong Learning U.K. and as such he deserves to be put in detention, or more aptly lifelong detention.
The adult sector of education has to answer to ministers of education and quangos like the ‘learning and skills council’ just like anyone else in education but Sir David should know that Adult Education also has an even higher calling because it has its own guru.
Some of us are a bit shaky as to the spelling of his name and few of us can identify what we do now with his seminal work with peasant villagers in Brazil but we all know that Paulo Friere (1921 – 1997) never claimed that adult teachers know it all. On the contrary, he constantly re-iterated that teaching does not involve one person acting on another but rather people working with each other.
There is his famous quote which states that ‘The educator is not he who knows but he who knows how little he knows and because of this seeks to know more together with the educate, who in turn knows that starting from his little knowledge he can come to know more.’
This kind of language seems a bit quaint now, as does another analogy which draws on religion’s crucifixion story for its inspiration. He stated that the educator must ‘die’ as the exclusive educator of the educatee in order to be born again as the educatee of the educatee.
The message at the core is that simple dialogue is what makes for good education. In short, two way dialogue.
To be fair there are other parts of Friere’s work where the language chimes precisely with today. It could almost be a quote from the department of children schools and families strategy in today’s government.
Friere was certain that dialogue, by its very nature, is a co-operative activity which involves respect. That process is important because it enhances a sense of community and also builds social capitol.
Given that his main work was called ‘a pedagogy of the oppressed’ there is little doubt that he believed that education can transform people and transform society. But above all he wanted people to use what understanding they gained through education to carry out informed action. In all probability that wouldn’t have involved posting information on facebook.
