Douglas K. Zimmerman, Jr.
Paulo Freire, Genre Discourse,and Transitional Spaces:
Implications for Writing in the Disciplines
Paulo Freire begins his essay “Society in Transition” by defining terms he will use throughout many discussions concerning education. In addition to his emphasis on contacts, relationships, Subject, and object, Freire wants his readers to grasp the importance of “Integration…as distinguished from adaptation” (italics Freire’s 3-4). Readers of Freire’s work know of his involvement within the Brazilian political and educational revolutions of the 1940s and beyond helping to establish foundational education practices among peasant populations. As important as his work was to poverty stricken and politically oppressed Brazilian peasants, his work has educational implications within North American universities struggling with inter-disciplinary academic discourse. Freire’s pedagogic philosophy stretches across academic genres and writing instruction that takes place, or should take place, within classrooms among faculty and their students. A logical place to begin this exploration is to start where Freire starts, by focusing on the differences between integration and adaptation.
For Freire, integration “results from the capacity to adapt oneself to reality plus the critical capacity to make choices and to transform that reality,” which allows an oppressed object (in this case, a Brazilian peasant) the opportunity to become a free subject (4). In this context and only through the means of active critique, a human subject is thus not only a member of society but also a participant of change within society. Furthermore, Freire notes that subjects who chose to relinquish, or never had, an active participation in society become, or remain, non-integrated “adjusted” objects (4). Adjustment in this sense creates a definition of a subject who feels “incapable of changing reality,” someone who defers active participation and instead adapts and concedes to an uncritical life as object (4). The same politically influenced definitions Freire generates for Brazilian peasants may aid in a university influenced critical inquiry for American students and WAC/WID pedagogy.
Many American high school students may find themselves unaware of their adjusted object status. Because of No Child Left Behind (2002), the majority of public secondary schools regulate student advancement through repeated objective testing. This assessment method forces instructors to teach specifically for that test if they and the school system paying their wage wish to retain government funding. Instructors, therefore, must adapt their teaching methodology. Student effectiveness in test taking for No Child Left Behind requires instructors to rely on rote memorization pedagogy; they teach facts and students spit them back out as needed. Freire calls this pedagogy the “banking method” in chapter two of his most famous text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Simply stated, instructors “deposit” knowledge into a non-critically thinking student who then, much like an ATM, returns that knowledge when requested. Students in this politicized system have little impact as subjects on a specific society (school) which purports to integrate them with society at large. Teenagers reared on this method entering universities, who by necessity adjusted their cognitive process, must make a radical, critical, and instantaneous transition from adaption pedagogies to integration pedagogies.
Transitions of this sort are not easy. They require considerable conscious effort on the part of first-year students to become not only more self-aware but also more critically aware. Students must integrate themselves into a society (again, school, but a much more complete representation) using analysis they were not taught and in pedagogical situations for which they were not prepared. Pedagogical situations and perspectives of those in high schools and those in universities are different. Instructors at No Child Left Behind institutions remain the primary interlocutors of classrooms because they must – they are the locus of information and the nexus of knowledge. University instructors in many cases, however, although possessing primary classroom topic authority will not always remain the primary classroom pedagogic authority. In other words, university students have a greater political and philosophical capacity to interact critically with and help formulate their educational society than high school students. First-year university students begin an arduous process from being Freirean adapted objects to integrated subjects. Writing will always be an integral tool in which these newly integrating critical members impact society. And the writing classroom is a perfect place to begin talking about necessary pedagogic transitions.
First-year composition (FYC) classrooms, for this author, signify a focal point for student academic transitions. They are the academic equivalent to the integrating social space of dorm life. Just as first-year students must assimilate into socially cohesive wholes psychologically, they must simultaneously begin a process of acquiring university-level communication skills philosophically. In any balanced university experience, therefore, students garner communication and integration skills within two separate but interweaving discourses: Peer relationships and academia. FYC classrooms have a capability if properly administered to accommodate both discourses. This ability, however, depends in part upon the curricular structure, university educational objectives, and the recognition by university faculty of FYC potential. Furthermore, writing instructors must be vigilant with assignment choices so that neither of these crucial discourses – peer or academic – vanishes. First-year students need the support to transition from rote pedagogy into critical and analytical pedagogy; from unengaged objects to integrated subjects; from a single discourse classroom to classrooms capable of multiple discourses. FYC classrooms remain one of the best places for instructors to discuss this transition and create reading and writing assignments specific to these goals.
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