One of the fundamental changes that I believe can be provided by Social Technologies is in terms of education, promoting a revolutionary change in its traditional concept, a system which does not encourage critical thinking, much less a sense of community, both essential in any collective action that brings fundamental social change for developing communities.
Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and a highly influential theorist of critical pedagogy believes dialogue is the key for the development of critical thinking and sense of community that will lead to social revolution from oppressed towards oppressors.
Contributing a philosophy of education that came not only from the more classical approaches from Plato, but very close to the modern Marxist ideas and anti-colonialist thinkers, Freire's theory is essentially a philosophy of hope. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), he differentiates between the two positions in an unjust society, the oppressor and the oppressed. He advocates that education allows the oppressed to regain their humanity and overcome their condition; however, he acknowledges that in order for this to take effect, the oppressed have to play a role in their own liberation.
This approach, however, is not a pedagogy for the oppressed; it is rather a pedagogy of the oppressed. The subject should build his reality from the circumstances that give rise to the daily events of his life. The texts that the individual creates permit him to reflect upon and analyse the world in which he lives - not in an effort to adapt himself to this world, but rather as part of an effort to reform it and to make it conform to his historical demands.
According to Stanley Aronwitz (1993), Freire’s pedagogy is directed to break the cycle of psychological oppression by engaging students in confronting their lives in a dialogue. He posts the absolute necessity that the oppressed should be self-emancipated rather than ‘led’ on the basis of struggles around their immediate interests by an avant-garde of revolutionary intellectuals or external ‘help’. Freire posits the absolute necessity of the oppressed to take charge of their own liberation, including the revolutionary process which, in the first place, is educational. Freire makes a sharp distinction between political strategies that ‘use’ the movement to achieve political power and ‘fighting for an authentic popular organization’ in which the people themselves are the autonomous sources of political decisions.
Freire's proposed method implies two distinct and sequential moments: the first involves becoming conscious of the reality that the individual lives as an oppressed being subject to the decisions that the oppressors impose; the second refers to the initiative of the oppressed to fight and emancipate themselves from the oppressors. Freire does not believe that the lived situation consists only of a simple awareness of reality. Instead, he believes that the individual has a historical need to fight against the status that dwells within him. The efforts of the oppressed become focused and concrete through the type of learning that school really should give them, instead of encouraging them to adapt to their reality, as the oppressors themselves do.
In Freire the most important is ito establish a dialogue within a community. Since this implies the use of a language similar to that with which the individual is familiar, it is necessary to integrate oneself into the life of the individual - to study his language, practice and thought. Later, through the use of problematising education, these elements will come together to create knowledge, since it is not necessary to refer to other far away spaces to find opportunities and topics for study. Topics for learning can be found in the reality that surrounds the individual, it's just that they are hidden by the "limiting situations" that the oppressors create. These limits can disappear through the education that a problematising teacher, who moves from the particular to the general, encourages.
The oppressor, on the other hand, uses anti-dialogue in a variety of ways to maintain the status quo. He conquers the oppressed with an invariably unilateral dialogue, converting the communication process into an act of necrophilia. According to Freire’s view, the oppressors also seek to prevent people form uniting through dialogue. In their implicit discourse they warn that it can be dangerous to the "social peace" to speak to the oppressed about the concepts of union and organisation, amongst others. One of their principal activities is to weaken the oppressed through alienation, with the idea that this will cause internal divisions, and that in this way things will remain stable. Compared to those who opposed them, the oppressors seem to be the only ones that can create the harmony necessary for life. But this is really an effort to divide.
Similarly, anti-dialogue imposes a bourgeois model of life, which becomes among the masses a fertile ground for hidden manipulation of discourse. Organisation as an antidote to this manipulation is rare. A further characteristic of anti-dialogue is “cultural invasion”, of which the oppressed are the object. They are just this, objects, while the oppressors are the actors and authors of the process. It's a subliminal tactic that is used to dominate and that leads to the in-authenticity of individuals. The greater the level of mimicry on the part of the oppressed, the greater the tranquillity of the oppressors. What happens among the masses is a loss of values, a transformation in their form of speaking and, inexorably, support for the oppressor.
In contrast to all that has been explained above, stands collaboration as a form of community emancipation. This process does not happen through the presence of a messianic leader, but instead through the union created when a leader and the masses communicate and interact with each other to achieve their mutual goal of liberating themselves and discovering the world, instead of adapting to it. It happens when they offer each other mutual trust, so that a revolutionary praxis can be reached. Such a situation requires humility and constant dialogue on the part of all the participants, especially from outsiders such as NGOs and corporate responsibilities programmes who nowadays fail miserably in exercising any sort of dialogue, even in times where social technologies make that ever more accessible.
In addition to collaboration, union is also necessary if we are to achieve a common effort toward liberation. This implies a form of cultural action that teaches adherence to the revolutionary cause without falling into ideological hyperbole. Instead, the cause is described as it really is, as a human activity, not some exaggerated event.
The Internet is a rich source of information and a great environment for community-building and dialogue, crucial issues in Paulo Freire’s model of Education. As controversial it may seem, universal Internet access is perhaps the most important and crucial infrastructure improvement societies in development need in order to promote social change. With tools that will empower dialogue, sense of community and access to information, a community connected to the web is more likely to decide towards, and promote, other fundamental developments necessary for life-quality improvements from within the community, which also means freedom from oppressors and consequently a better life for its members.
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