Friere sat in a folding chair on a low platform at the front of the wide
multipurpose room. He spoke (into a microphone) to an audience of between 600
and 900 persons. UNI used to be the State Teacher's College and is still known
for its teacher education programs. A UNI faculty member from Brazil
occasionally supplied an English translation for a word for which Friere could
only pull up the Portugese. His talk, billed as "An Open Dialogue with Paolo
Friere," was actually a monologue. At the end, maybe 6 or 7 members of the
audience came to the microphones to ask questions. One questioner, the next to
last, asked how, given Friere's well-known criticisms of the "banking" and '"
extension and transmission" modes of teaching, he could justify his just having
given us what amounted to about an hour and a half of straight lecture.
Freire responded: "I did not extend anything, I did not transmit anything. I
spoke the truth of my beliefs. It is your responsiblity to listen, and be
critical. I did not come here to transfer. I came here to challenge you. Did
you not get tired to follow my thoughts? If you did not feel tired, you did not
follow me. I also get tired, because I have to think. I think not only of what I
have to say but of what I am saying. If you are thinking that this is a banking
experience, you must re-think my texts, and re-read my texts, to see that it is
not a banking experience. Okay. It is an experience of speech. The banking
educators do not talk like me."
The phrase "experience of speech" stuck with me. Indeed, his talk was "an
experience of speech." He spoke extemporaneously, with long pauses, which might
have been opportunities for interruptions had anyone chosen to taken them. He
looked across the gap between himself and the audience and (despite the fact
that some guy in the front row continually snapped flash photos) met the eyes of
the audience, as if to check that we were comprehending. He moved slowly into
his argument, taking up alternatives as he went along, working them through,
returning to the main point. It reminded me of nothing so much as one of
Hamlet's monologues (like the "rogue and peasant slave" monologue) done well, by
an actor who is using the monologue to let us see into Hamlet's imagination. An
actor who takes this as his assignment (there are other ways to play the
monologues) opens up the connections between thoughts, allows the thoughts of
the audience to flow through the channels created by the "experience of speech"
represented by the monologue. Friere was like a good actor in this regard.
It made me wonder about the relationship of the discipline of acting (the body
of knowledge of acting, as compared to theater) and the discipline of teaching
(not performance, here, but creating "an experience of speech"). I also
wondered if this same experience could be created any other way with the same
efficiency. Also, if one person thinks out loud in front of a group for an
extended period of time -- one hour, two hours -- when it that a "lecture" and
when is it "an experience of speech"?
Helena Worthen