 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution
Thursday, December 01, 2005
DJ Ultraman
On Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution
by Peter McLaren
*Pseudonyms used for anonymity“Hello?”
“Mr. Chang, I’m sorry to bother you, I know you were out sick today, but I just wanted to tell you that Miguel, Prietita’s dad, died.” * I overheard these words on my cell from another parent during the fall of last year when I taught the Sensational Students of fourth grade in Chinatown. Miguel, the father of one of my students that I had looped with for three grades (first, third, fourth), had been shot six times as he fixed a friend’s car. About twenty-eight years old, he had been one of the many parents of students who were around my age, sharing many similar experiences and cultural practices. I had spoken with Miguel just two days prior to his murder about helping the Chinatown Collective with a workshop on making music. We often talked about different ways in which his kids could be supported, things he could do, and about our mutual love and respect for the hip-hop culture. At Miguel’s wake, I stood looking at his corpse standing right next to his coffin, and spoke to him for the last time. I promised him that despite all that had happened, I would always look out for his daughter, and my student, Prietita.
I wrote the previous paragraph in an effort to bring to light some of the themes that I sensed in reading Peter McLaren’s Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution, especially as they relate to my experiences and ongoing work with liberatory pedagogy and grassroots community organizing with working class, inner-city youth of color. The first theme is that a war exists in the inner-city public schools of the U.S. McLaren writes,“Both Che and Freire were able to reveal the messy underside of democracy, and to expose the crucial links between exploitation and misery in Latin American countries [where Miguel’s family came from] and the interests and practices of the U.S. capitalist class….when you examine the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in the United States, a powerful case can be made that class and race warfare is being waged by the rich against the poor and powerless in this country.” (196)
