Mention the name Paolo Freire at a gathering of educated people and you’re likely to get blank stares. Unless members of that group went to ed school, where the Brazilian theorist is nothing less than a rock star, and his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Opressed is part of the canon. In the new City Journal, Sol Stern examines the curious case of Freire and asks how his “derivative, unscholarly book about oppression, class struggle, the depredations of capitalism, and the need for revolution ever gets confused with a treatise on education that might help solve the problems of twenty-first-century American inner-city schools?” For starters, Stern says Freire’s seeds were cast upon fertile soil.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed resonated with progressive educators, already committed to a “child-centered” rather than a “teacher-directed” approach to classroom instruction. Freire’s rejection of teaching content knowledge seemed to buttress what was already the ed schools’ most popular theory of learning, which argued that students should work collaboratively in constructing their own knowledge and that the teacher should be a “guide on the side,” not a “sage on the stage.”
Freire opposed what he described as the “banking” concept of education, in which the student is a seen as a tabula rasa to be filled by the teacher. Banking, naturally, is a tool of the oppressor in which the teacher talks and the students listen, the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply, and the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined. “Freire’s strictures reinforced another cherished myth of American progressive ed,” Stern notes, “that traditional teacher-directed lessons left students passive and disengaged, leading to higher drop-out rates for minorities and the poor.”
Stern finds no evidence that Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed has gained much traction or met with much success anywhere in the Third World. “Nor have Freire’s favorite revolutionary regimes, like China and Cuba, reformed their own ‘banking’ approaches to education, in which the brightest students are controlled, disciplined, and stuffed with content knowledge for the sake of national goals—and the production of more industrial managers, engineers, and scientists,” he notes. Why, Stern finally wonders, does American education’s love affair with Freire persist?
A broad consensus is emerging among education reformers that the best chance of lifting the academic achievement of children in the nation’s inner-city schools is to raise dramatically the effectiveness of the teachers assigned to those schools. Improving teacher quality as a means of narrowing racial achievement gaps is a major focus of President Obama’s education agenda. But if the quality of teachers is now the name of the game, it defies rationality that Pedagogy of the Oppressed still occupies an exalted place in training courses for those teachers, who will surely learn nothing about becoming better instructors from its discredited Marxist platitudes.
Stern challenged me a few months ago to find a published piece critical of Friere’s work and its impact on American education. I failed.
One reason it might be difficult to find that criticism is because its impact on teaching on the ground is marginal. You could visit dozens of elementary, middle and high schools before seeing anything directly attributable to the influence of Freire.
You could argue that the opportunity cost of discussing Freire instead of, I dunno, Thorndike in philosophy of education class has done damage to our schools, but that is a pretty thin reed.
It’s kind of weird how education leaders talk obsessively about data, yet operate on assumptions (e.g. that the “banking” model of education is bankrupt) that have no evidence to support them.
The fact that Freire’s positions go unchallenged in ed school classes are a testament to the abysmal lack of meaningful critical thinking skills in the prospective teachers taking those classes –the very people who will soon be claiming that they’re teaching kids critical thinking skills. Hmm.
The whole business of “empowering” kids a la Freire, especially minority kids, seems to me to have been a disaster. It sounds good, and surely we want these kids to be empowered –ultimately. But, in practice, this impulse seems to amount to sowing suspicion of teachers (especially white teachers), a reflexive rejection of anything with European roots, and an amplification of teenagers’ natural urge to cast off discipline and feel righteous. In short, it’s made it harder to impart the solid liberal arts education that would truly empower these kids.
It seems to me that we have to disempower teens –that is, curb their mighty wayward impulses –in order to empower them. Freire and co. add fuel to the fires of teenage rebelliousness and close-mindedness.
Freire’s work really has to be considered in the context of the wide net of liberation theology and the events surrounding Brazilian politics in the 1960s. It could be easy to write that off to the historical arcane, but his work — even when flawed — is really more part of the zeitgeist of 60s and 70s anti-authoritarian culture than it is in any way fundamentally prescriptive in the Ivory Tower sense.
How that work is relayed by contemporary ed school professors is a whole other kettle of fish. I for one tend to think the wider you read and the more you discuss the better. Of course I think teachers should read Foucault as well… so go figure.
Anyway… certainly, Sol Stern’s own work from that era of the 60s is far less well considered than anything written by Mr. Freire. And, really, he should know by now that the phrase “discredited Marxist platitudes” totally dates him.
If it were a simple matter of the man and the moment, I’d agree with you, Shelly, but how do you explain Freire’s persistence in ed school courses? I was part of the NYC Teaching Fellows, and Freire was part of our preservice training. Later, when I was an adjunct at a different university working with first-year TFA corps members, there he was again. Somehow the idea that Pedagogy of the Oppressed is relevant to new teachers working in urban settings gained traction years ago, and never let up.
Do I think Freire is dangerous? Indoctrinating future teachers? No. But time spent with Freire is time better spent on dozens of other things that could better help teachers and students. If “discredited Marxist platitudes” isn’t the apt phrase, how about “irrelevant and anachronistic?”
This thread would not be complete without at least one reference to ‘Half-Nelson,’ which talks around this issue. Great film.
I’m with Tom and Shelly here–Friere has had as much influence on actual school practice as Plato, another stalwart in the canon. And isn’t exploration of varying purposes and philosophies of education part of what it means to be educated? Here’s what I remember from studying Aristotle: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
There is absolutely no evidence, Sol Stern to the contrary, that large numbers of K-12 teachers are out there fomenting social upheaval because they were inspired by Friere. In fact, if teachers were out there teaching that things will finally be different when the revolution comes–and that it might be a good idea to skip the standardized tests which will sort you, early in life, into “one of us” and “not one of us”–they’d find themselves out of work.
I think anyone entering the field of education ought to study Friere (and Foucault) as well all major thinkers, from Ivan Illitch to B.F. Skinner. Besides Thorndike, I’d argue that the person who’s had the most impact on educational thinking lately is Milton Friedman. Until a teacher understands his own beliefs, we’re stuck with repeating what teachers always did. Until we arrive at some kind of consensus around the purposes and potential of public schooling, we’re flailing.
Robert,
So the idea is: despite the fact of a person’s influence in a field — for better or worse–, if you don’t agree with her or him you should abandon teaching the person’s work in favor of teaching something you find more personally relevant.
Is this how the Core Knowledge Curriculum works?
<<< Is this how the Core Knowledge Curriculum works?
No, Shelly, that's how oversimplification works.
Sorry about the ‘anonymous’… your comment box always fools me into thinking I’m logged in.
I was actually being serious. What you are suggesting seems to be a matter of personal relevancy.
You specifically said in your response: “time spent with Freire is time better spent on dozens of other things that could better help teachers and students”. But if Freire is such a “part of the canon”, and so ubiquitous in ed schools as you suggest, yet in Stern’s opinion so “derivative and scholarly”, then shouldn’t the value of Freire’s arguments be exactly one of the things that one would think worthy of questions and discussion in an ed school?
I was being serious too, Shelly. It’s not a binary, all-or-nothing matter. One doesn’t reject (censor) those with whom one disagrees. Freire, per Sol Stern, is a bit of a curiosity. How did his book, which is of limited relevance and is a political tract more than anything else, come to occupy such an exalted place in ed schools? Why exactly do so many ed schools consider it indispensible reading? It’s a fair question to ask, and I don’t pretend to have the answer.
Freire’s ubiquity is not my opinion. It was one of David Steiner’s findings in his study of ed school reading lists. The link is in the piece above.
You mean the link that includes this gem of sub-par methodology:
“As researchers, we then faced an important choice. We could simply record which texts were used in these courses and how often they were used, or we could list the books most often required (with numbers) and indicate which books were included rarely (again with numbers) or not at all. Although identifying worthy books that were not included on syllabi would open us up to criticism (as we soon discovered), the first option would have resulted in a long inventory of no clear significance, except perhaps to those within the profession. Naming books not included enabled us to draw out the significance of the books that were included. By juxtaposing counts of the most frequently required readings with the absence or near-absence of others, we were able to provide a first portrait of what future teachers are—and are not—learning at leading schools of education…. Conspicuously absent from almost all such syllabi were works that took a very different approach to teaching, such as those by E. D. Hirsch or Diane Ravitch.”
A primary effect of Freire’s philosophy does impact the class room if a big part of what the teacher or administrator takes away is that differences in curriculum are inequitable.
Varying reading levels or math skills and profound differences in aspirations all too often in this country do not affect what is taught. Freire’s works reenforce a belief that it’s equitable to expose all students to the same material at the same pace. Unlike China or Cuba we limit what our most capable students are exposed to in the name of fairness.
r s e’s comment is an excellent example of why these discussion are completely hopeless. Freire doesn’t argue that all students should be exposed to the same material at the same pace. He doesn’t argue that at all. He doesn’t even argue the opposite, it is just off his point.
Who does argue that? Well, Broad-trained administrators. Our current business model “reformers” are all about that idea. Not Freire.
You’re quite correct about RSE’s misreading of Freire, Tom. But apropos of hopeless discussions, where pray tell, did you get the notion that Broad supports exposing “all students to the same material at the same pace?” Notwithstanding your broad brush characterization, I don’t see a lot of support for the idea that “reformers” support a single curriculum. Indeed, one of my frustrations is the silence of the “reform community” on curriculum, as if what children learn doesn’t matter. Too often, those of us who support a rigorous curriculum feel as if we’re talking to ourselves.
“Teacher quality is the most important thing!”
“Sure, it’s important that kids have great teachers. But don’t you think curriculum matters?”
“Of course, as long as it’s taught by a great teacher! Preferably in a charter school!”
“OK, but what about the curriculum?”
“Oh, that’s very important. Did I mention teacher quality?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Well good, because that’s the most important thing. And we should have merit pay, to align the teacher’s interest with the students’, just like we align executive and shareholder interests in business.”
You know it might help improve teacher quality if we had a national curriculum. Then teachers could focus on differentiating instruction and honing their craft. They could focus on how to teach instead of what to teach.”
“Now you’re getting it. You agree that teacher quality is the most important thing!”
“Well, that’s not really what I was saying…”
“The problem is we have too many teachers who really should be looking for other jobs. And they’re being protected by people who are more concerned with protecting adults than what’s best for children.”
“Be that as it may, you know there are lots of good reasons to support a national curriculum. Student mobility, for example. And background knowledge is fundamental to reading comprehension. You care about boosting reading test scores, right?
“Absolutely. And that can’t happen unless there’s a high quality teacher in every classroom.”
You’re not listening to a single word I’ve said are you? I’m trying to talk about curriculum, and you’re only talking about charters, and unions and firing bad teachers.”
“Fire bad teachers? I couldn’t agree more! Teacher quality is the most important thing!”
“Never mind.”
I used to teach in a very racially-mixed high school in which a cadre of self-styled activist teachers formed a club that fed students ideas that seemed akin to Freire’s. There was a lot of talk about instituional racism, empowering students, and making activists of them. I felt it was reinforcing natural teen anti-authority inclinations, causing students to be less receptive of the education (and occasional discipline) that their mostly-white teachers were trying to provide. I also think this activist cell on campus had a chilling effect on teachers’ self-assurance. So I don’t think that Freire and his ilk have no effect. Ideas can have huge effects.
Here, for example, Robert:
“To Broad finalists, curriculum is a layered statement of what, when, and how students will learn. The first layer organizes state standards into a sequence across each grade and from one grade to the next. These documents are often called scope and sequence or alignment documents. Districts use them for a bird’s-eye view of how students will move through each year and through the K-12 continuum. They are helpful for macro-level planning. For example, Miami-Dade provides comprehensive, competency-based curriculum guides across grade levels and subject areas that are aligned to Florida state standards. The curriculum also reaches beyond state standards to prepare students for competition in a global economy, which is one of the district’s five strategic goals. The curriculum design, for example, is heavily influenced by the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills report — a 1990 Department of Labor report that set expectations for job skills.
“The second layer of documents breaks what students must know and be able to do into more detailed chunks. These bridging documents link the more general scope and sequence to planning at the classroom level. Tools such as nine-week plans, unit plans, and pacing charts all provide principals and teachers guidance about what, when, and how to teach. For example, a review of Northside’s curriculum shows extensive documentation that flushes out the detail of what each standard means and provides strategies to be used to address specific standards. Both Miami-Dade and Broward County give schools nine-week plans with nonnegotiable expectations for what will be taught.”
Also, direct experience in Providence. This is the less-sexy style of “reform” that most of the country is getting or has already gotten. NYC is kind of an outlier in a variety of ways, as it usually is.
Freire advocates for a process that is more like consciousness-raising than instruction. I’m OK with it as long as we see it for what it is, and as long as it’s not done in a public school setting where the students are a captive audience.
I teach an intro to education course at a small university and while we do not have our students read Freire we do have them read textbooks that inevitably cover critical pedagogy and Freire is always held up as one of the main spokespeople of that genre. I have nothing wrong with covering critical pedagogy because it is so ubiquitous in the field and my students need to be versed in what their colleagues may have learned at their respective colleges. In essence, Freire is part of the “core knowledge” of education theory and in order to be “culturally literate” in the education profession you need to be familiar with his ideas. I am not opposed at all to having students read Freire, my beef is with the sorry state of the Philosophy of Education in general and its weak analytical treatment in our textbooks.
Here’s what Freire says that’s totally true. The only ones that can save the “oppressed” are the oppressed themselves. In inner city education or in Iraq.
The problem with teaching Freire’s critical pedagogy in our ed schools is that Freire and Constructivism are mutually supporting. Either one can be rationally dismissed, but when Paolo Freire teaches that instructing poor children is bad for them, and a champion of constructivism like Constance Kamii teaches that instructing children is bad for them, it’s a win-win for the death of instruction in the minds of young teachers.
“Either one can be rationally dismissed?” What’s that supposed to mean?
I don’t really no anything about Freire, but I loved Robert’s imaginary discussion with an ed-reformer on teacher quality vs. curriculum….
Becky, you’re absolutely right.
A traditional liberal-arts education delivered through direct instruction may not be the best form of education conceivable, but the ed school alternatives –student-centered, skills-oriented, project-based, etc. –are much, much WORSE than the old way.
More and more, it seems to me that the main reason we’ve ditched the traditional model is that no one has figured out how to build a career or make money by advocating for it. So we get these professors and consultants constantly concocting these plausible-sounding but ineffective approaches that do a great job advancing their careers, while wreaking havoc on the schools.
Today my lecture was called Introduction to the Age of Exploration. I had my 12 year olds assemble a packet: blue sheet, map sheet, ivory sheet. Staple. Title it. Put a timeline on the front cover with Renaissance, Reformation and Age of Exploration. Draw a globe with Europe sketched in. Draw arrows emanating from Europe. Look at me (as I stand with globe in front of me): we’re going to learn about how Europeans left their cozy little nest up here in Europe and spread out over the whole globe (I show with my hands), I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just what happened. I’m going to start telling you this story, etc… The focus was on me, the globe, my drawings, the wall map, the spices I brought in… In two classes I had to use discipline to get distractions to stop. In one class, I overheard a student say, “I hate this class.” But most of my six classes were harmonious and productive. Students took pride in their attractive, colorful, graphic-heavy notes. I had a great question from Ariana –why didn’t the Portuguese content themselves with the African gold; why did they soldier on to Asia for spices? After one class, Dahlin danced around wanting to show off to me what she’d learned. I’m quite certain that most of these kids learned more –and were more engaged –than if they’d done some complicated, more autonomous group activity –the sort of thing ed school holds up as the ideal.
I have to agree with Nancy’s comment on Aristotle. It is less about what philosophy is educationally sound or practical, and more about gleaning/weighing the substance in those outspoken minds. History also teaches us what not to do, and that alone adds enough value to the time spent on philosophy that may or may not directly change current practice.
Ben F., I am not one who rejects teachers giving information to students, so I am impressed rather than put off by the discussion of your lesson. But I have questions about what went before–how were your students prepared to begin talking about European expansion? And what will follow this lesson?
I read Freire as part of my education in education. Am I sorry I spent time reading his work? No. Did it influence me to incorporate it into my college teaching? No. With the state in which we find American education today, I’m willing to read any theory or philosophy. Unfortunately, education of the masses is not proving itself to be as positive as we once felt it would be. We’ve been reduced to playing numbers games and graduating semi-illiterate products who cannot perform on the job and in society.
I think Friere’s work has had a HUGE impact in my children’s education. We have no ability grouping until 10th grade because it is seen as elitist and inequitable. In theory our school is supposed to offer individualized instruction. In practice classes of 20-30 students are taught to the middle and kids above average are bored and unchallenged and kids below average are lost and left behind.
Susan,
Before this unit we did units on the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. I made little explicit connection to these earlier units…perhaps I should have. In yesterday’s lesson, I did allude to the Renaissance revival of classics when talking about the improved cartography (helped by reading Ptolemy), and to Italy’s domination of the Asian goods trade (we’d talked about this in the Renaissance unit). For homeework, I assigned the kids to skim the textbook section that corresponded to our lesson and to answer five questions from the textbook.
Today we focused on Spanish explorers –Columbus and Magellan –in the lecture; then I assigned three pages of reading about Cortez and Pizzaro. On Monday I ‘ll do a lecture on the conquest of the Aztecs. We’ll talk about the Columbian Exchange and economic developments after that. I’ll give fuller treatment to the native cultures –Inca, Maya, Aztec –in separate units –after we cover the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. I’m following the California State History Standards.
I’ve never taken the time to read all of Blanca Facundo’s essay on Freire (as well as the rebuttal), but what I did read is quite interesting.
This discussion of Friere is no tempest in a teapot. If you want to consider the rubber-meets-the-road classroom impact of Friere Marxist analysis, check out the National Council of Teachers of English. Try reading their March issue of the “Council Chronicle” cover to cover. There is nothing comical about their views. They are militantly anti-intellectual; I would say pre-Copernican in their refusal to engage science; and their influence on language arts education is huge. I know. I teach in Rhode Island where no dissent from the party-line is tolerated. I have no doubt that the militantly Frierian NCTE is one of the biggest obstacles in the path of instructional reform in this country. My advice to the poor and oppressed white or minority student is this: If you are approached by a nicely dressed, mild mannered, good-intentioned English teacher wearing an NCTE button, don’t hesitate! Be ruthless! Cast off your chains and steal her purse!
Bill said, “No dissent from the party line is tolerated.” This is what bugs me the most about Freire fans and their progressive-ed ilk –their ruthless exclusion of alternative perspectives on teaching. What teeny-tiny percentage of American teachers have ever heard of Core Knowledge, or ANY alternative to the fashionable dogma in ed schools? This is a testament to ed schools’ hiring only like-minded professors, and their prejudicial creation of course reading lists. At a recent conference of the California League of Middle Schools, noticing that the texts all hewed to progressive ed orthodoxy, I sought out the woman who selects the books for the conference bookstore and asked her if she’d ever considered stocking anything by E.D. Hirsch. Her eyes darkened when I said his name. I was the Enemy.
Ben, Thanks for answering my question! I appreciate getting this view into the classroom. (I wonder if the child who murmured that he hated the class was reacting to the need to take responsibility for his work. I also wondered if my resentful high school students were reacting because I placed expectations.)
Do you see your curriculum as definitive so that your students will have only the knowledge that is treated in your class?
Susan,
I’m not sure what you mean asking if I see my curriculum as “definitive”. I see it as a primer coat –setting up the schemata of various historical episodes which students can hang additional details on (or modify) as their education progresses. Do I tell them to think critically about what I’m telling them, because teachers lie and you should be suspicious of all authority, and there exist radically different perspectives on everything I’m telling you, and I’m only telling you a bare-bones version of events? No. It’s hard enough for most of them to simply “get” the narrative I give. Is it a perfect one? By no means. But if the alternative is no history in their heads, I don’t feel so bad about my imperfect version. The scary reality is that for most of my kids, especially the non-college bound, this is the ONLY course in medieval and early modern world history they will EVER get. It’s dismaying to me that, as flawed as I feel my teaching to be, I’m pretty sure that most 7th graders in California get a whole lot less history knowledge than what I provide my kids. For instance, from what I’ve heard, it’s common to lop off the Reformation, Age of Exploration, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. Most middle school principals lump history with language arts and literature, hoping that the teacher will divert some energy from history to STAR language arts/reading test prep. And now Jack O’Connell, our state superintendent, wants to water down our wonderful history standards with “21st Century Skills” –guaranteeing that even less actual history gets learned. Add to this the fact that our state’s big professional organization for social studies teachers seems steeped in progressive ed orthodoxy, and the prospects for good history teaching in this state seem bleak.
Anyone who has never been oppressed would never be able to comprehend Freire. Anyone who doesn’t understand economic oppressions would never be able to understand Freire. In a country as rich as ours, there are people who work 8 to 16 hours a day and they still cannot provide their families with basic needs. This is oppressions. Other countries/cultures are so much more conscious and aware of social inadequacies than people in the US. Teachers in NYC schools do not band together (out of justified fear of reprisal) and powerfully voice what is wrong with the system; hence failing schools continue to fail as those in power manipulate data to look good. One reason the US refuses to lift restrictions on Cuba is to keep the government in economic chains. Our government cannot have a socialistic country so close to its borders that has the highest rate of literacy in the world and a free health care system that works. Our government is giving billions of dollars to failed companies and banks and we have no say in the matter. No one protests. Someone did the math. If our government took the bailout money that it has handed out (without any restrictions or conditions) to banks and corporations, and divided the amount among every US citizen 18 years and older, then each person in our country would receive approximately $840,000. Now that would be an economic stimulus package.
I am a Principal in a bilingual school in Mexico City. Our system is constructivism which pretty much lets the students thing for themselves, investigate and the teacher is “in a way” a moderator. Children are more engaged in all the subjects, their thinking skills are great in both languages and precisely whay Freire meant. There is so banking educatio going on here. Students work in groups, they investigate and give an opinion and a response. i would invite all of you to come and visit our school (well after the influenza problem of course). We are not presured with test results, which make teachers very stressed with their “bonuses” for performance.
Donna,
Do you know if Cuban schools use traditional direct-instruction with a prescribed curriculum or something more student-centered and “progressive”?
Yes Bill, just wait ’til that radical leftist Deb Gist shoves those Trotskyite GLE’s down your throat.
I too, way over here in Australia, read Freire, and Illich and Postman and others because they emphasised that learning was the exercise of freedom. What worries me about a lot of the discussion so far is that it seems to reinforce the opposite what I take Hirsch to be emphasising: that learners are responsible for the acquisition of skills and teachers can only help them to develop the knowledge which lies at the basis of skills such as literacy. Teachers in my view, are like coaches, helping people to learn but not producing learning. Intellectual and other skills are the outcome of learning, training and practice which are the responsibilities of learners.
No, Donna, anyone who has never read history would never be able to understand Friere. If history teaches anything it is that whenever a particular group is granted exclusive rights to the truth, oppression doth follow.
Look, the syllibi of ed. school intro courses are just plain… Well, let’s say they are tired. Awefully, awefully tired. So, it might be fun here, with so many participants, suggest some new titles. How about adding The Autobiograpy of Malcom X, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, and, at least, the chaper, “Reading” from Walden? There’s a trio of minds bent on the nature of education!
Tom, What cheer, netop? Your comments are so cryptic. Debbie Gist a Red? Surely you jest. But what a story her tenure will be! Former D.C. overseer of Michelle Rhee, will she be chewed up and spat out by the establishment here? Is that faint scraping in the Rhode Island night our first cricket heralding of coming summer, or is it the sharpening of knives? If, Tom, you are not pledged to silence, pray tell. Where and when will the cloaks be dropped?
As for the GLE’s, they’ve been long since digested. A little chewy at first, but they settled well enough. My students are doing just fine with them, too. What I hope doen’t happen before I retire is another change in the menu.
Ben, Yes, that is what my question (badly posed!) meant. Thanks! I take it that you would support a common core curriculum. So would I; my first 5 years of schooling were in New Orleans, and we constantly had new kids arriving who had no idea what we had been doing.
Now I live in Northern Virginia, supposed to have some of the best schools possible. I’ve taught here, and my daughter graduated here. She says that every time they studied history, no matter what grade, they always began more or less in prehistory, and never got much beyond the Middle Ages.
At this point I’m not sure how this got into a discussion about Freire,but I’m going to try to get a bit more familiar with his work.
Donna: Anyone who has never been oppressed would never be able to comprehend Freire. Anyone who doesn’t understand economic oppressions would never be able to understand Freire.
So why should we care about him then? Why not read someone who can express themselves more clearly? A good writer is one who can explain things to other people, who can open up new worlds for other people. There are ample good writers on the planet, why waste our time on an incompetent one?