Paulo Freire's development education methodologyby Francis Mulwa
Background on Paulo FreirePaulo Freire, one of the famous adult educators of the twentieth century; was born in Brazil in early 1920s in Recife, in the North East of Brazil. Recife, a small village in those days, was badly stricken by the poverty then prevalent in the country.Freire was brought up in poor conditions of life; he experienced the consequences of social discrimination, hunger, and lack of freedom of expression. After he struggled to be educated, he managed to enter Recife University. He specialised in Adult Education and later became professor of Adult Education in the same University. This gave him the opportunity to develop a special approach to adult education, one that made it a liberating experience. He was later appointed Chief Consultant in the Board of Adult Education in Recife. Inspired by his deep desire to liberate his people from social discrimination, economic marginalisation and what he called the "culture of silence", Freire developed his "psychosocial method" based on three major convictions:
Freire's Psychosocial Method as a Liberating ProcessFreire believed that democracy in Brazil was nothing but political propaganda. He claimed that there should be real democracy through which freedom of expression would both be cherished and practised as a virtue.Freire believed that all people can learn, and therefore education should be for all. He had observed that people at the grassroots had been deprived of this right. The illiterates especially were regarded as too ignorant to learn. Freire, however, believed that nobody is too ignorant to learn; for there is nothing like total ignorance or absolute wisdom. The ordinary grassroots people can learn as well as the elite; not only that, but each can learn from the other. All persons are important and have useful experiences which they can share with others in mutual dialogue. For the elite, however, education constituted a whole scale of values and certain standards of living associated with the educated. Hence, the elite would expect education to "domesticate" the masses into conformity with the status quo. Education should make people more obedient to their teachers, masters and leaders. Education should make people aspire to the kind of lifestyle practised by the elite: it should cultivate the spirit of competition. It should convince the masses that people were poor because they were illiterate and lazy, that the elite are educated and hardworking and therefore deserve to be rich. These are the kind of values Freire sought to challenge as he introduced what he called "Education for critical consciousness." The elite group, usually forming the government, believed that the only privilege of the grassroots was on the terms of "assistentialism". This "assistentialism" gave the impression that the Government owned all the economic resources in the country and could choose to give assistance only to those they wished. But Freire believed that the country's wealth should belong to the citizens, the people themselves because they make up the nation, and without them there would be no nation but only a "country landscape." Therefore, national wealth should be equitably distributed in the society and not concentrated in the hands of a few. Through the "psychosocial method" people are liberated out of the "culture of silence" and enabled to articulate their rights. In the psychosocial method approach people are motivated to discuss their own life situation in small "culture circles." In this process they identify their problems and plan to act in an effort to transform the situation. In Freire's philosophy life is not static: things were different in the past and they can be made better in the future. People have the responsibility to shape their life as well as the life of their family, the immediate community and the wider society. People are responsible for their own liberation and shaping their own culture, for participating in the making of history and transforming the world as opposed to being merely spectators. Freire was motivated and inspired by the day-to-day conditions of life in Recife where people were perpetually brainwashed by the elite, who had made the people believe that disease and poverty was the will of God. Freire had to develop a method, which could help the people to rediscover their lost sense of worth and dignity, a method that would awaken people to the realisation of their potential as creators of culture, people who , unlike animals, would give name and meaning to the world. For education to develop this critical faculty in a human person, it has to have the following qualities:
The Extension of the Psychosocial MethodFreire's anti-elitist views (characterised by deep respect and appreciation of the worth of the human person, regardless of social status and by the participatory approach to learning) has permeated and influenced many adult education programmes, especially in third world countries. Realising the effectiveness of this methodology among the oppressed in Brazil, Catholic and other organisations throughout North East Brazil, quickly adopted it for the purpose of combating illiteracy.However, when the military took over power, following a coup in the country in April 1964, the revolutionary government decided to do away with the now popular adult education campaigns on the grounds that it was subversive. They discontinued all Freire's projects and put him in prison for some weeks before he fled to Chile. The approach was tried in Chile and proved very successful. In fact, Chile became one of the five countries in the world to receive a UNESCO award for successfully combating illiteracy. Freire later went to work for the World Council of Churches in Geneva in the department of Adult Education. Here he served until the late 1980s when he retired back to his home country, Brazil. Since that time he dedicated his life to writing. He died in May 1997.
Freire's Psychosocial Method and LiteracyBefore Paulo Freire's philosophy and approach was introduced, adult learners involved in literacy programmes were subjected to boring, irrelevant, and often childish curricula and mechanisms of literacy learning in which they were compelled by the teacher to memorise the letters of the alphabet and to chant the consonants and the vowels the whole day. Freire developed the hypothesis that adults learning to read and write already knew the words they were learning, they only could not write them. The literacy teacher should simply develop a few words comprising the major syllables in the language. These words should also have a strong meaning in the lives of the adults. Unlike children, adults' learning is oriented to problem solving. Therefore the literacy words should define an "existential problem" in the community, they should be words relevant to their concerns, needs and aspirations. This would make the adults more committed to the programme.
The spread of Freire's Psychosocial Method in AfricaFreire's psychosocial method is more popularly known in Africa as Development Education Programme (DEP). However, each country or region has adopted its own specific name in reference to DEP as described below.In Eastern Africa Freire's psychosocial method has been known as DELTA (Development Education and Leadership Teams in Action). In Kenya DELTA training has been around for at least twenty years. This grassroots-focused movement for social awareness and action has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for participatory and transforming community development initiatives. The central focus of DELTA is to seek solidarity with the poor and to empower the weaker sections of a community. In particular, concern is focused on those who are economically deprived and those who are socially under-privileged, having minimal or no access to educational and other opportunities. Since taking roots in Kenya during the 1970s, the DELTA programme, philosophy and vision have radiated far and wide. It has been introduced in various parts of Africa under different names, reflecting its dynamism and local adaptability. With the advent of contemporary participatory methodologies, PREMESE Africa, a DELTA oriented consultancy in Kenya, has taken the initiative to reshape the DELTA training curriculum. It has attempted to incorporate the lessons gathered from the numerous programme evaluations and has come up with a new package by the name of Participatory Community Development and Leadership Skills (PACODELS). In a number of West African Countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia, Liberia and Sierra Leone), DEP has been known as DELES (Development Education and Leadership Service) whereas in Southern Africa (Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia), the DEP approach is referred to as Training for transformation. In these areas, it is most popular in church circles. Altogether, at least 18 countries in Africa are using Freire's DEP Methodology. Since 1990 these countries have come together to form a network known as ADEN (African Development Education Network) whose headquarters is in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The Impact of DEPBy its nature the impact of an awareness raising programme is difficult to measure. DEP is an educational process whose results are often intangible. Efforts have been made to develop qualitative indicators for assessing social change, but this has not been perfected as yet. Some of the observable changes that can be captured through proxy indicators for DEP are presented below. These are observations deduced from programmes such as the DEP of Machakos Catholic Diocese which has been in existence for more than 20 years.
Some Challenges from field experience with DEPThe Development Education Programmes have had to grapple with a number of challenges or dilemmas in the course of time. These are discussed below.Indispensability of DEP Animator After the initial three to five years of inception of a programme, there seemed to be a trend for the emergence of over-dependence of DEP groups and projects on the person of the DEP animator. The DEP animator, has tended to change his/ her original role of enabler, sensitiser, motivator and community organiser, to that of "foreign affairs minister" for the community. This entails roaming around all over the region making oral as well as written contacts (and in some cases overseas contacts) for fund-raising on behalf of DEP groups. Not that this should not be appreciated, nor are we doubting the importance of such a role, but what raises concern is the role assumed by the DEP animator in this case as a "patron" through whom resources are channeled from the outside world. In this way, the animators have made themselves indispensable life-lines for the groups, perpetuating the same paternalistic relationships DEP seeks to avoid. They start wielding immense power as decision-makers on behalf of the groups they represent, thus reinforcing the perpetual state of powerlessness among the target communities. Challenges of role modeling with the emergence of new elitism To be sure, DEP ideals can be most challenging and not everyone can live up to them. A DEP graduate is expected to be a role model in society through his love, his caring and moral uprightness. It calls for religious sensibility for these ideals to be maintained. Development education workers have often been accused of "preaching water but drinking wine". DEP itself challenges its advocates to reflect the same ideals and values they preach to be seen in their own lifestyles and in their day to day relationships. It therefore demands self-discipline and a process of "Easter" at personal level, whereby old persons and values die allowing the resurrected self to reflect the new values and aspirations. Not many leaders in the DEP fraternity have stood up to this test. Instead, there seems to have emerged a new elitism among the experienced DEP workers, people who see themselves as above-it-all, the custodians of a '"DEP religion." A number of experienced DEP workers in the field tend to usurp a lot of power and control in their positions of responsibility, with a tendency to over-react to negative feedback or any form of criticism. This could be explained by the fact that their background of immense experience and relative success in their professional track record has tended to blind their objectivity. They would then tend to see any criticism either as a personal attack or lack of appreciation of what they have helped to achieve. Inadequate Transparency and Accountability In the above circumstances, sometimes transparency and accountability on the part of DEP workers may tend to be less than adequate. Often DEP animators did not know that they didn't know. The DEP did not prepare them to be managers. Specifically, they did not have the necessary skills for resource management and financial accounting . "Arrival Culture" The "arrival culture" tendency manifests itself when DEP workers busy themselves more in "protecting" the methodology than keeping pace with contemporary development ideas and strategies. Development is a dynamic process and as such, DEP needs to be enriched with new strategies such as Participatory Rural Appraisal, Strategic Planning, etc. How often have experienced DEP workers gone out of their way to acquire such new skills on their own volition remains to be seen. Conflict of Loyalties Conflict of loyalties has been another challenge in DEP circles. Most DEP practitioners will either be employees of Non-Governmental Organisations, church employees or personnel from governmental development agencies. The employer organisations have their own interests to protect. This reality restricts a DEP worker as to how far he/she can go in challenging powers behind injustice and exploitation and championing human rights. In other words, restrictions are imposed by the employer regarding how far a DEP practitioner can go in the conscientisation of the public and the transformation of the status quo. Issues of social justice are part and parcel of DEP mission. However, such efforts, have often put DEP activists on a collision course with powerful blocs in the society, the agents of the status quo. Often these are the same people who form the government of the day. How is it possible, therefore, for a DEP activist to remain faithful to the vision of the methodology and at the same time maintain his/her job? The employer organisation would usually be given two choices, by the civil authorities in power, either to fire the 'radical' animators that are associated with this kind of "trouble" or to lose certain privileges, or worse, risk the withdrawal of their operational licence. What a dilemma! In such cases the DEP vision has often been compromised to ensure daily bread for the animator's family. Conflicting loyalties can also be extended to DEP commitments versus family responsibilities, DEP work obligations versus other social obligations, etc. These are dilemmas DEP personnel has had to deal with on a daily basis as DEP became a way of life. High dropout rates among DEP practitioners It has been established that not all those who attended DEP training did so simply because they wanted to. Some were coerced into it by their bosses who wanted to stand up and be counted among DEP practising organisations as the programme grew in popularity. Others attended DEP training as a chance to break out of routine work, while others were simply looking for a certificate towards a promotion or a greener pasture elsewhere. On the other hand, there are those who were genuinely interested and keen to make a contribution to social transformation. Owing to this diversity of motivation and the dilemmas discussed above, DEP training often experienced high dropout rates when it came to the application of the methodology. Research done in a district in Mwanza region of Tanzania indicated that only about 25% of DEP graduates remained active after the initial five years of operation. Others had dropped out by either choosing to be inactive (the majority) or out-rightly antagonising DEP itself (the minority). Perhaps absence of supportive structures coupled with lack of follow-ups may partly account for high dropouts. That is why the emphasis has always been put on sending trainees in organisational teams instead of as individuals. Some of the DEP protagonists happen to emerge from the middle class professionals. These people often work in difficult circumstances: in remote villages, semi-deserts, slums, etc. where social amenities and recreational facilities are scarce. They see their peers working urban areas as having all the benefits and niceties of a middle class professional in the city: electricity, decent housing, running water, adequate medical and recreational facilities, good schools, etc. This reality has forced DEP practitioners to make a deliberate choice, often leading to what has been termed class-suicide. The choice to identify with the poor and the lowly has often led to the isolation of the DEP practitioners by both their urban peers as well as by the local authorities whose powers and practises are challenged by the programme. Sometimes DEP practitioners have chosen the easy way out by withdrawing from the programme. DEP workers are under constant temptation to give up the hardship and cross the floor. After all, they have the qualification to enable them acquire secure and highly paid jobs in comfortable environments. They cannot expect significant promotions in their often small organisations practising DEP, working long and odd hours, including weekends. However, those who see DEP as their vocation in life persist. Changing roles As a result of the multi-sectoral approach of DEP as a methodology, a number of DEP workers have ended-up being general practitioners without a technical specialisation. When it was time to move on and leave behind a young crop of practitioners to carry the banner, most DEP workers found themselves at a loss. Employers were looking for practical skills and not workshop facilitators!
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