The Freirean philosophy is a way of teaching people with very diverse cultures and varied ranges of literacy. It teaches people to recognize what they do know, through every day life, history of their culture and past education, and give it relevance in order to gain knowledge and influence their future.
The Freirean philosophy allows people to come together and communicate with respect in order to learn from one another.
This approach has great benefit in the study of Humanities because we all come from different places, pasts, cultures, prejudices, socioeconomic groups, etc. We have all lived through different experiences and have different ideas and valuable knowledge. All of the information contained within us can be of great benefit to others wanting to learn about the past, present and future of society. Through dialogue, peer interaction, and critical thinking, people (either as a group or as individuals) can become empowered and make a difference, either in their own family or community (on a small scale) or (to a greater degree) in the world as we currently know it, and the future. Dialogue, however, should not be one person talking to another, but people communicating and working with each other. With an open mind and dialogue we can all learn many things about the past, present and future of society.
If we learn strictly from books, and teachers, we do not broaden our minds and learn to see the “big picture”. We simply label it as somewhat useless information and stick it in the depths of our brains, never to be used again. Only by interacting and understanding how what we are learning relates to us, do we value what we learn. We need to learn to give value to our own knowledge and that of our peers. We need to recognize who and what we are and perhaps learn why we are that way. We can do this by unlocking what we know and discovering what others know. We should not be passive, but become conscious, critically transitive, and empowered by what we can accomplish through dialogue, questioning, becoming focused and taking action.
Through the Freire philosophy, not only do students learn, but they also become teachers, and in turn, the teachers not only teach, but also become students. The study of Humanities is an inexhaustible education. No one will ever know all there is about every human behavior. With this in mind, why not learn as much as we can from the most important resource we have, HUMANS.
