Electronic Freire:

Technologyin the Struggle for

Peace?

Introduction“Today’s permanent and increasingly accelerated revolution of technology, the mainbastion of capitalism against socialism, alters socioeconomic reality and requires anew comprehension of the facts upon which new political action must be founded.”

-- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart

Freire asEducational Technologist?

Freireon High-Technology

Information-CommunicationTechnologies asFreirean Problems

PRESENTATIONTOPICS

Freire as Educational Technologist?

• Freire is often hailed as a literacy educator, and a theorist of radical democracy and critical consciousness.

• Very little sustained work in Critical Pedagogy on Freire’s treatment of the politics of social development through technological modernization processes.

• Freire as Post-Colonial? Yes/No…

Freire as Educational Technologist?

• Freire’s guiding project was cultural action for freedom “humanization” of the oppressed.

• Culture of subjectivity Natural necessity

Human self-reflection Non-human animal Consciousness

Freire as Educational Technologist?

• In connection: What is “technology?”

• Commonly use the term as “industrial or electronic products” or “applied science” generally for “commercial objectives.”

• Originally, it means “systemization” in Greek and investigation of the root “é” reveals philosophical underpinnings of Freire’s project of cultural freedom.

Freire as Educational Technologist?

• “é” (meaning “art” or “skill”) in Plato represents a teachable “cultural competence” as opposed to instinctive ability, “,” a term also meaning “nature” or “animal.”

• To be human means to produce technologies, which unfold as cultural choices and are not “necessary” (nature).

Freire as Educational Technologist?

• In context of Oppressor vs. Oppressed:

Extension or Communication - whether the extension of modern science and technology, exported to Chile (and other countries) as part of Northern agricultural development initiatives, has served more to educate or alienate the traditionally-based farming cultures of the Third World.

Freire as Educational Technologist?

• Cultural Freedom Theory: Issue of “underdevelopment” is not one of capital accumulation but of self-empowerment.

• “Culture” from “cultus” -- to till, agricultural.

• “Educare” -- education as forced “cultivation” or “training” (vine or animals, children).“Educere” -- to develop that which is latent within (Socrates) for growth [kinder-garten].

Freire as Educational Technologist

Cultural Invasion

Ethnotechnology and Dialogical Cultural Interactionism

“The answer does not lie in the rejection of the machine but in the humanization of man”

Freire on High-Technology“The answer does not lie in the rejection of the machine but in the humanization of man.”I’m a “man of television” and “man of radio.”"It is not the media themselves which I criticize, but the way they are used."

Freire on High-Technology

Freire on High-Technology

Freire on High-Technology

Freire on High-Technology1960’s National Literacy Programme:

Buys 35,000 Polish slide projectors

In 1973, $13/unit est.In 1981, $2.50/unit est.Rate of dollar has now

increased six-fold.In 1962, Br. Real 4:1

rate of exchange.= A LOT OF MONEY!!!

1990’s Sec. of Ed for Sao Paulo:

Established Central Laboratory for Educational Informatics

Invested in “televisions, video cassettes, sound machines, slide projectors, tape recorders, and 825 micro-computers.”

= A LOT OF MONEY!!!

Freire on High-Technology• Early figure: Critical Media Literacy.• Not technological determinist, aware of myth-making power of technology.

• Worried about global extension of hi-tech as science of the powerful few.

• Political problem best dealt with strategically by democratization of technology, institutional interventions, and conscientization of the less powerful.

Information-Communication Technologies as Freirean Problems

Issues of Environmental Justice1. Exploited labor - women, children, people of

color2. Toxic - not “clean,” E-waste and heavy metals3. Coltan and fueling war and ecological

destructionPrimary engine driving globalization of

capitalist economy & culture - largest & fastest manufacturing industry.

Critiques of Esteva and Bowers1. Freire confined himself to “critical

appropriation” of technologies.2. Freire’s own theory is an ICT of Western origin

and as a result promotes pathways for colonization.