Paolo was here on our campus a year or so ago and his meeting
with a large group of teacher education students (over a hundred)
turned into a general two-way discussion with Ss asking him
questions, his asking them questions back, and some real intellectual
electricity and personal feeling flowing (faculty stayed out of
all this deliberately, we had our own chances to talk with him).
Both the students and Paolo continued to talk about the session
for some time afterwards.
Comparing this with some of the comments on different sorts of
talk-experiences with this master of dialogism has made me think
a bit.
Maybe our students were less awed, but they had also mostly
read _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_ and discussed it in classes
at some time or other (not just in preparation for this event).
My experience is that using P.O. in courses tends to lead students
to challenge my own dominance of the course. This sometimes leads
to good results, sometimes is just a temporary phase that relapses
to my default leadership. I also find that a good percentage of
our students (and probably a self-selected high percent of those
at his special session) identify with the oppressed. They saw
Paolo as their advocate, not as someone with a mysterious, abstruse
educational philosophy.
The free-for-all started when Paolo began turning students
questions back at them in a serious way. He was not trying to
tell them something, but to get them to enter into true dialogue
-- a dialogue with themselves as well as with him. He was not
being 'paternalistic' or patronizing, as I think frankly I often
am (and as I believe many of us are, though we're understandably
loathe to accept the label). He was not trying to be a 'teacher'
in the usual sense, as Socrates was not (at least some of the
time). He was not even quite playing the 'gadfly' or 'devils
advocate' role many of us know how to play. He really wanted to
hear the students answers to his questions. He wanted to know
what they really thought, not in order to better instruct them,
but because they were human beings in dialogue with him as
persons (not as 'students'). The way we might do in a conversation
with peers or friends.
I can well imagine, however, that this was a somewhat unusual
event _in a setting of 'talking with' over a hundred people_.
I don't think you can really talk _with_ large groups, and
Paolo really talked with a few students in that group, but
in a way that set an example for everyone else who vicariously
or indirectly participated. He also had a lot to say, especially
a lot of moral-humane and humane-philosophical and moral-political
points that were worth making. He also had a lot of wonderful
stories to tell of the 'revealing anecdote' variety.
But ultimately, whether discourse is one-person-speaking or
an audible public exchange is not the point (in the Bakhtinian
perspective as I interpret it) as to whether it is monological
or dialogical. A monologue (in form) can be dialogical (in
voicing). Does it construct a single, self-imposing viewpoint?
is it an attempt to dominate and de-humanize (in Freire's
sense)? or is it a way of respecting the Other? does it
invite re-voicing, or even allow for it? is it dialogue-friendly
or dialogue-preempting? Does it make us feel more human or
less human?
One of Paolo Freire's great contributions to the understanding
of education and dialogue is his linking of its moral dimension
to its form and function. Bakhtin also raises these issues,
somewhat less directly (his 'axiological' dimension of voicing
and heteroglossia). Freire's moral critique of our dominant
paradigm of education is a devastating one. It certainly makes
me ashamed of much of my own practice. It makes me more ashamed
of the social order I live in which makes such immoral practices
necessary for the survival of so many human beings. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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