Julie’s Blog

Freire’s fourth letter reminded me of Galatians 5:22.  The Apostle Paul wrote that the fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.  These attributes are referred to as fruit because they are produced.  Much like Freire’s qualities of humility, lovingness, courage, tolerance, decisiveness, security, patience/impatience and joy are acquired through practice.  It is important to recognize in both cases an element of active pursuit is essential to the development and maturity of the esteemed traits.  A teacher must be dedicated and subscribe to progressiveness to employ such qualities.  One who is not may develop some of these features, but never to the fullest potential, which would be detrimental to the teacher and his/her students.  Freire discussed each characteristic in detail in regards to student relations.  I completely understand and accept the legitimateness of each within the context of a classroom and the benefits that would coincide outside of the classroom for a given teacher and his/her students. However, I question how one would employ these qualities to deal with obstacles outside the classroom posed by, as Freire wrote, governmental contempt and the arbitrariness of antidemocratic authorities (83).  Hopefully, this will be addressed in a future letter.

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I found the four common characteristics of the students’ view of language use for home particular significant and probably more common in homes of various cultures.  Views regarding uses of language can also differ very much for boys and girls among families across cultures.  This creates a curiousity regarding social constructivism.  If that is a theory of learning, wouldn’t it be continous across cultures?  Vygotsky and Dewey were from very different cultures and times.  I wonder what constructivism looks like in a school in Asia.  How is it similar to our schools that value dialogue that involves risk taking and negotiation of meaning?

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