The American Classroom: Agent of Oppression

The Oppressive Classroom in America

A strong argument can be made that the citizens of the United States live in a societal situation that exactly illustrates Paolo Freire's paradigm of an oppressor/oppressed relationship, and that the American educational system is engineered to maintain and enhance this relationship. The oppressed-that is, the students and the adults who were once students-were not exposed to the one element of education that would enable them to recognize and rebel against their oppression: the ability to think. Freire names the most common practices that restrict students' thinking abilities: "Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, the methods for evaluating 'knowledge,' the distance between the teacher and the taught, [and] the criteria for promotion". All are ubiquitous educational models that feed facts to students rather than teaching them to acquire knowledge for themselves. Consequently, students graduate school (or, often, do not graduate) with the ability to receive knowledge but with no capacity for pursuing it on their own. Nor are they capable of seeing beyond the external layers of reality, and thus cannot perceive the extent of their own oppression, let alone figure out how to overcome it. The result is that American education perpetuates the status quo and denies a meaningful life to most of its recipients.

Standardized testing is the best-known of the educational practices that cheat students of a quality education. Such tests can only measure recall of facts and shallow levels of reasoning. Given that the entire educational system revolves around these test results, teachers have no choice but to teach to the test, using methods that are most likely to boost the recall of facts. Rote learning is the order of the day; critical thinking, logic, and reason have no place in such a system. Standardized tests supposedly prove that the student is equipped to be an educated and productive member of society, while also demonstrating a teacher's efficacy in achieving this goal. Under the model of the oppressor/oppressed relationship as described by Freire, American schools succeed brilliantly in preserving the current state of affairs. Where they fail is in allowing students to think seriously about the world in which they live, analyzing and evaluating its structure and practices.

Most Americans do not see themselves as victims of oppression. But in a society where a very few people own most of the wealth and power, those outside the privileged few are denied opportunities to fully express their humanity (as Freire would have it). Americans are constitutionally guaranteed the right to pursue self-betterment, but the reality is that such an effort is futile for most people. Adults who were never taught to think for themselves or to question the status quo are likely to remain mired in whatever circumstances they find themselves, and not to realize that the system is stacked against them. They have been conditioned from their first day of school to accept the world and their place in it, and few are given the opportunity to learn the critical thinking skills that would enable them to recognize debilitating methods of control such as propaganda, deception, and deflection of responsibility. While the American dream continues to be self-betterment, the goal is almost always to be upwardly mobile, to join the ranks of the wealthy and powerful. This ambition, programmed in from childhood, is used as an incentive for acquiring a "good" education. The ambition, whether realized or not, acts as an agent of the status quo.

Alfie Kohn supports Freire's view of oppression as perpetuated in American schools. The current political talk about education as an "investment" in America's future supports the view of students as commodities whose purpose is to support the economy of the United States (which means, in essence, to support the continuity of profits to the wealthiest citizens, who will then "create" jobs for everyone else). Like Freire, Kohn objects to definitions of a quality education that include "job skills, . . . test scores, . . . [and] memorization of a bunch o' facts". Kohn advocates an educational system that requires that students learn to explore, to think critically, and to identify and solve problems. These skills are necessary in order to grasp the reality in which one lives-in other words, to recognize when one is mired in an oppressive situation and to do something about it. Kohn may have given the most compelling reason of all for teaching young people to think critically. He relates that on September 11, 2001, people in the World Trade Center's south tower were told to "stay put" after the plane struck the building. Those who blindly did as they were told had little chance of survival. Those who thought for themselves had a greater chance to live, since many of them chose to evacuate the building. This is an extreme example of self-directed thinking, but is should make every American consider the less dramatic circumstances that call for critical, evaluative thought. Recognition of oppression, however subtle and disguised it may be, may not be a question of life or death, but it is certainly a question of quality of life. Freire and Kohn make strong cases that the school system in the United States is failing to provide students with the type of education they truly need-even as it does an excellent job of maintaining the status quo.

Works Cited

Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. 30th anniversary ed. New York: Continuum. Print.

Kohn, Alfie. What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards, Grading, and Other Follies. Boston: Beacon Press. Print.