Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Mamre Homestead (http://www.mamre.com.au/) and see the work that goes on there. Mamre Homestead is an organisation run by the Sisters of Mercy, and it involves a wide number of inter-related activities, all aimed at some kind of empowerment. That was the main reason for my interest; I was curious about the kind of ‘education for social change’ opportunities that were available to people in Western Sydney. Of course, linked to this, I was particularly interested in the way that these programs might engage with and challenge racism and the oppression created by prejudice.

A friend of mine mentioned Mamre Homestead, so I got in touch with Sister Mary Louise, who was more than willing to explain to me what happens there. As mentioned above, there are a number of different programs. Firstly, there is the Learning Links program which runs for at risk youth from local high schools for two days every week. It’s been going for a number of years at the moment, and has about 16 students with two facilitators. The aim of this program is to empower students to be aware of their capacity to make choices in their lives, and recognize potentially poor choices. I was particularly curious to see if this project could be considered, in any way, Freirean.

My initial impression: sort of. I know that’s not particularly illuminating, but it’s not really a cut and dried situation. Firstly, let’s establish what are the features of a Freirean educational practice: Freire generally worked with adult, in an informal setting, drawing students from a marginalised group or class of society. Freire’s purpose, delivered through his literacy programs, was to encourage the development of critical consciousness – the ability to see the world for the way it is – and hence empowerment. To do this, Freire developed a model that was based on the students own experiences, motivated by the students’ own interests and centred on a problem posing approach as opposed to the ‘banking’ model that Freire believed was commonplace.

Clearly, there are points of similarity and difference between Learning Links and a Freirean model. I believe the major point of departure was the intended purpose; Freire’s model always planned on changing the participants and thus the world. In other words, the aim was to overcome oppression on a wider scale than the purely individual. However Learning Links doesn’t really seek to change society in that way; rather, the emphasis is restricted solely to the individual. He or she must learn to modify his or her behaviour.

Of course, there are other differences, too – for example, Learning Links works with young people, as opposed to adults, and is an adjunct to a formal schooling system, as opposed to an informal stand alone program. However, there are numerous similarities, too – the basis of both programs is the students’ own experiences, and there is a real emphasis on problem solving, rather than depositing content or knowledge. Certainly, it was worthwhile comparing the two programs.

There was another reason that I wanted to visit Mamre Homested. In addition to Learning Links, the volunteers there run a refugee education program. Working with recent arrivals from places like Sudan, the volunteers educate them in things like English, child care, cooking and cleaning. Although this might sound banal, I think this accurately reflects some elements of Freirean practice, too – these are the skills that will actually help the refugees become active members of society, although there was no element of activism or political education inherent in the programs.

The work that Mamre Homestead does is vital and valuable to the community. Sister Mary-Louise summed it up as providing people with the skills that allow them to become effective members of the community. In some ways, this only goes half-way. There is no ‘critical’ element to the work, by which I mean the opportunity for these people to come to a fuller consciousness about the world and the way dominant ideologies affect it.

Next, I will be talking to some people who work with homeless people in education programs, to see if that fits a Freirean perspective.

Traditionally, Freirean pedagogy and popular education and its derivatives (most notably popular theatre) have worked with adult communities in informal settings. This setting has, of course, it’s own particular advantages and disadvantages, but it is worth noting that the applications of Popular Education is not solely restricted to either the informal education domain or the adult education domain.

Indeed, a number of scholars have been exploring the implementation of Popular Educationa theory and methodology in the area of high school education, an area that might be considered to the be the polar opposite of the traditional application of Popular Education. As opposed to adult education, educators working in this domain work with children. And instead of an informal setting, teachers in this area have to work within the boundaries of a strictly formalized curricula and setting.

However, the application of Freire’s work in such an area is an appealing prospect; to me, it seems that few institutions in a state seem to contribute to the acceptance of hegemony as much as schools. After all, one need only examine the work of people like John Taylor Gotto and you quickly come to a realisation that many schools (but not, I think, all) actively seek to not only oppress their students through the rigid application of coercive power, but also condition students to further accept such oppression in their wider and later lives. As an example, one might take the New South Wales History curriculum, which seeks to privilege the contributions to Australia made by certain groups – and in certain ways – over others. Furthermore, the way this curriculum is traditionally delivered – the Banking model that Freire described – only conditions students to further accept their role as passive objects with no further power to become more fully human.

Therefore, the idea of a theory that could empower students in this setting is a tempting one. However, it is a challenging prospect for teachers for a number of reasons. I intend to explore just one, in this blog posting – that of context. Freire’s work often highlights the importance of context, and it is especially pertinent in this discussion. Moving out of adult education into school education, one must recognize that both the age and the motivations of the group have changed. In addition, there are a number of constraining factors, like the demands of government bodies for teachers to cover certain skills and content, of which raising critical consciousness might come a long way down the list.

In addition, whereas traditional popular education works exclusively in the realm of marginalized groups, it is possible that when working in the school environment (and especially in a systemic religious school, like I do) one might be working with students who might be perfectly satisfied with the status quo. In this case, popular education might become more about recognizing privilege than understanding oppression. In this case, one must ask, what is the purpose of the popular educator? Is it to encourage students to recognize this privilege? And then to encourage them to commit, as Freire describes it, class suicide? It’s a confronting thought.

Even more confronting is the research that has been done regarding how an uncritical approach to privileging student experience might lead to the actual encouragement of oppressive views. In some examples that Kathryn Choules writes about, teachers attempting to apply a Freirean methodology to students from mixed groups might only encourage those who benefit from the status quo to speak out, thus concreting marginalised groups thoughts about oppression and their place in society.

Next blog post – Making the Method Fit the Message!

Recently, I met with Dr Rick Flowers, my supervisor, for another doctoral meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to consider how my research has been getting on, and to decide what are the best ways forward regarding said research. It was a really good meeting. Once again, as I was reviewing my notes before the meeting, I was pleased with how far I had come. Then again, as soon as I’d had this meeting, I was reminded by how far there is still to travel!

Anyway, there were a few key learning points about for my research from this meeting. Firstly, Rick suggested that I needed to ground my research in a particular issue. This was of vital importance. To be honest, I think this exposes a bit of a lack of understanding on my behalf; I’d got so convinced of the idea of the importance of a completely student-negotiated curriculum that I’d kind of lost sight of the fact that this is precisely what Freire himself had done. For Freire, it was illiteracy that was the grounding for his work on empowerment.

Therefore, it is important for me to consider what kind of issue that I want to ground my work in. It is easy for me to say that I want to look at citizenship education or active citizenship – but these ideas are probably a little too broad if I’m going to be working on specifically active citizenship. In brief, the students I work – and myself, of course – need something to be active about. Fortunately, there are plenty of possibilities for just such a topic. Rick and I brainstormed a few ideas: the environment, specifically water pollution. Substance abuse. Drink Driving. Alcohol fueled violence. Refugees, racism and asylum seekers.

We did discuss one of these at length: the issue of refugees and racism. It must be stated that, considering the headlines of today, it is certainly a very topical issue, with the talk of the Pacific Solution and so on. Even more so, it is particularly appropriate for Western Sydney, which is often identified as a ‘heartland of racism’.  Originally, I had concerns about this kind of project, because, as is clear from even the most limited understanding of Freire’s work, Freire worked with those who were oppressed; he used a kind of bottom up approach. I didn’t see how it would be possible for me to do this, considering my limited access to people who were refugees; my school is pretty uniform, although there are changes taking place pretty slowly.

Secondly, although I had read quite a lot of Freire, it had been quite narrow in scope. Thus, when Rick asked me about my action research project and how it would be based on Freire’s principles, I struggled to explain how it might work. What I need to do know is read more about the ways that Freire’s work has been applied in particular contexts. Rick suggested that I explore two phenomena in particular; photovoice and popular theatre, so these two ideas will be the focus of my reading for a considerable period to come.

Thirdly, we had the opportunity to discuss what my portfolio might look like. Although we didn’t discuss this much, we did talk about the online forum. Here, Rick cautioned me to make sure that I kept this as an intellectual exercise, because it needed to be this if I was going to keep using it as part of my forum. We talked about the best ways to keep it working, and agreed that the use of social media would be a valuable tool, as well as the university mailing lists. Getting this up and running will be one of my key projects over the holidays.

However, the part of the discussion that I thought was the most important focused on what I’m contributing to the academy by my research. In short, what am I doing that is new or unique? What are the particular features of my research that are important?What is the importance of my research? What am I doing that is new or different? I think that it is important to be clear about the benefits of my work. Here are my original thoughts to answer this question:

• It’s the first time (at least, the first time that I’m aware) that educators in Australia have tried to link Freire’s pedagogy with citizenship education.
• The context of the work is vital – it’s intensely practical. It’s not simply a theoretical discussion of Freire and education, but it is using Freire’s pedagogy to challenge the oppression of Racism in Emu Plains, Sydney. Personally, I think that this makes my research vital.
• Finally, unlike may Freirean approaches to education, this particular project is looking at children and Freire. Most Freirean prjects explore adult education. This too makes it valuable to the academy.