How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation.
In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue, and thought to have real effects, they must advocate the message that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
There are 45 million children in Africa who are not in school. While other children are learning, exploring, and growing in the myriad ways that children were meant to grow, these children are trapped in a life of constant struggle. Without education, how can they be expected to escape such struggle? How can their children?
Indeed, while so much in education reform can divide activists into warring camps, expanding learning time unites reformers around a shared vision of bringing excellence and breadth to our nation's most impoverished and struggling schools.
There's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.
As I've said many times, the single most oppressed class in America right now is the teenager.
An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.
While everyone's experience of oppression is different and complicated and often overlapping, I really believe that if you have privilege, you need to learn as much as you can about the world beyond yourself.
The oppressed peoples can liberate themselves only through struggle. This is a simple and clear truth confirmed by history.