Engaged Pedagogy

• From Paulo Freire’s work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, although I have not read it, the documentary has given me the impression that he believed in a higher power other than himself.  If this is the case, is that one of the basic elements to achieving social justice?

• Also the documentary claims the importance to label an issue, because through the labeling one can better understand the concept ultimately to be able to dismantle or deconstruct the issue.  This reminds me of ‘intersectionality’, with these multiple invisible and visible identities can we begin to deconstruct the social injustices?  Does language begin to evolve as we give labels to issues in an attempt to understand them better? 

• Also, the article mentioned that Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the teacher as the healer.  What happens when the healer needs healing?  Or the teacher is not able to practice freedom of education because of some absence of empathy or understanding of the human part of students? 

• What if the teacher’s teaching and learning philosophy  is that of the cognitive approach and therefore in tuned to the child’s nature and not how they are nurtured?

• If the practice of teaching as a form of freedom through healing and the healer must reach self-actualization that should be to help the self before helping other, the last ultimate step in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs a desire for self-fulfillment namely, the tendency for her the (the individual) to become actualized in what she potentially is, what would this look like if took it more seriously?