It's No Sin To Make A Critical

Education As The Practice Of Freedom--as Opposed To Education As The Practice Of Domination--denies That Man Is Abstract, Isolated, Independent And Unattached To The World; It Also Denies That The World Exists As Reality Apart From People. Authentic Reflection Considers Neither Abstract Man Nor The World Without People, But People In Their Relations With The World. In These Relations Consciousness And World Are Simultaneous: Consciousness Neither Precedes The World Nor Follows It.

Reading The Word And Learning How To Write The Word So One Can Later Read It Are Preceded By Learning How To Write The World, That Is Having The Experience Of Changing The World And Touching The World.

It Is In Our Incompleteness, Of Which We Are Aware, That Education As A Permanent Process Is Grounded. Women And Men Are Capable Of Being Educated Only To The Extent That They Are Capable Of Recognizing Themselves As Unfinished.

Educators Need To Know What Happens In The World Of The Children With Whom They Work. They Need To Know The Universe Of Their Dreams, The Language With Which They Skillfully Defend Themselves From The Aggressiveness Of Their World, What They Know Independently Of The School, And How They Know It.

The More Students Work At Storing The Deposits Entrusted To Them, The Less They Develop The Critical Consciousness Which Would Result From Their Intervention In The World As Transformers Of That World. The More Completely They Accept The Passive Role Impressed On Them, The More They Tend Simply To Adapt To The World As It Is And To The Fragmented View Of Reality Deposited In Them.