I love my work. It feels rewarding to me, in comparison to many other options. I also love my work because it forces me to put down my iced coffee on a Sunday afternoon in the stunning sunlit springtime of Northern California, and think. I sheepishly admit that I was lamenting the loss of a third weekend in a row, due to work and other professional ends, when I began reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. Not long after sitting down to complete the task, a friend of mine, Edward Wilson (a retired Yale trained anthropologist who is currently studying a syncretistic model of Mayan religious practice) joined me. “Its been ages since I read that,” remarked Edward of Freire’s work. It was then that we began discussing one of the more famous eras of oppression, when the Europeans came to North and Central America to spread Catholicism. The Spanish Inquisition stands as one of the most horrific examples of the use of violence by a dominant group to suppress indigenous pedagogy. In chapter one of Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freire states with no hesitation:

The struggle for humanization [for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons] is possible only because dehumaniza­tion, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppres­sors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.

In this quote, Freire suggests that violence and oppression are the result of not just one group’s unethical use of their tool kit for oppression, but rather the result of a belief that violence is the only solution to conflicting pedagogies. This quote also reminds us that oppression is the result of one shared pedagogy, one in which the dominant group stands to gain (either financially or politically) from the oppression of another group.

Freire’s model of oppression might be well illustrated by the events of the Spanish inquisition, when ancient knowledge or beliefs collided with the socio-political world of Christianity. The story is more complicated, however and Freire offers this window of hope, “Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.”  I have never heard a more optimistic statement in my life, as it suggests that the path to freedom (from oppression) is inherently the responsibility of the oppressed to forge. Freire continues on this idea when he says, “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift.” In the case of the Mayans, conquest was not won through violent ends, but rather through a system of subversion that has lasted for hundreds of years.

The Richness of the Pre-Columbian Mayan Pedagogy

At its height,The Mayan civilization was vast in population (they inhabited more than 40 sizeable cities across modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and northern Belize), as well as technological achievement. Mayan healers had vast knowledge of the healing powers of plants. The Mayans kept detailed records of solar, lunar and other planetary patterns in books or codices to inform much of their daily efforts in agriculture and engineering. They invented their own geometry for the purposes of art and construction of cities, as well as the concept of zero as a placeholder for calculating large amounts. Priests and shamans in the Mayan culture were functionally astronomers, mathematicians and ethnobotanists in terms of their knowledge base.

By the mid-1500’s Spanish Catholic Friars had established missionaries all over the Americas with the goal of converting indigenous peoples to Christianity. Under the leadership of Bishop de Landa,  friars attempted to speed up the process of conversion by linking images of Catholic dietes to those of pre-columbian gods and goddesses responsible for the well-being and balance of the Mayan people. Mary the Mother of Christ, also known as the Virgin de Guadalupe, was marketed as the “Goddess of Corn,” for instance and remains the most beloved and representative image of Mexican culture today.

Although nearly all of the books containing Mayan records were destroyed by the Spanish during this time, the Mayan’s were never fully converted to Catholicism (a religion that lacked practical application for the Mayans). Mayans who refused to publicly convert to Catholicism suffered public penance rituals, some as brutal as burning at the stake. Never the less, Mayans held onto their old knowledge and belief systems by practicing behind closed doors.  When a Mayan got sick, their family had a choice, go see a catholic priest or an old-world shaman who had knowledge of herbal healing and perhaps a direct connection to god. “They lived in two different worlds in terms of what they saw as important and how they organized their world,”  says Edward.

In the case of the Mayans, ancient pedagogy, passed down from practitioner to practitioner and through the codices (later destroyed) was preserved in the face of attempts to obliterate and replace it by a pedagogy that supported the political models of Rome’s vatican. Mayan’s who wished to retain their ancient beliefs and practices, subverted the violence of the Spanish by going underground, a method that has been working  to this day.

Our current models of education: Do they support or combat systems of oppression?

If you are reading this, then chances are you are aware of the failings of the modern school system. Not only is our current educational system an artifact of the industrial revolution in its treatment of children as standard units, it stands to support the kind of oppression that our current economic models need to survive. Access to higher education in our country is becoming less and less open, that is if your goal is to attend an accredited four year college. Programs that teach applied trades (such as mechanics or shop class) are disappearing in our k-12 schools due to lack of funding and a cultural attitude that thinking with your hands is less valuable than becoming a knowledge worker.  Enter the Maker Movement in education.

Making in the classroom stands as a perfect living example of one of Freire’s recommendations when he states, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” Recognizing our roles as guides, rather than “bankers,” allows the learner in everyone to have a voice about what they know and what they want to know.  Validating our students’ prior knowledge or passions by allowing students to design their curriculum is easily supported in a maker classroom.  Co-constructing a path of learning with our students models a peaceful, as well as effective method for increasing literacy in any field. This emerging “hack your education” movement is now freeing students to design their own curriculum using effective, entertaining and readily accessible digital tools. Students also have the ability to publish their work on a variety of forums from Instagram to Make Magazine to Scientific Journals for Middle and High Schoolers who are solving real world problems, adding the value of authentic assessment to their educational experience as well.

Making in Education has the potential to deliver democracy back into our educational models, in a time when the dominant pedagogy stands as an indefatigable barrier. Like the Mayans, who practice their true beliefs behind doors, making in education, and its inherent use of student driven problem based curriculum, is still marginalized in our schools in a way that does not threaten the status quo. More and more, however, we are being polarized by the child-centered promise of progressive education and education anchored by an oppressive industrial model of humanity. Will the only two possible consequences of this tention be to continue hiding behind non-threatening enrichment programs or to conduct an all out violent revolt? I don’t know, but this mestiza is sticking around to find out.

References:

1. Caballero Mariscal, David. 2012. Mayan- q´eqchi´religious Syncretism. Between transculturality and cultural preservation. Advanced Research in Scientific Areas. December, 3. – 7. 2012 University of Granada, Spain file:///Users/loaner/Downloads/Mayan-%20q%C2%B4eqchi%C2%B4religiou.pdf
2. Crawford, Mathew B. 2009. Shop Class as Soulcraft, an inquiry into the value of work. The Penguin Press http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/books/review/Fukuyama-t.html?pagewanted=all
3. Demarest,  Arthur. 2004. Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization. Cambridge University Press
4. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc. New York, NY
5. Lara-Alecio, Rafael; Irby, Beverly J.; Morales-Aldana, Leonel. 1998. A mathematics Lesson from the Mayan Civilization.Teaching Children Mathematics, Nov 98, Vol. 5 Issue 3, p154
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html
7. Wilson, Edward (Anthropologist)
8. Photo Credit: Diego de Landa burning Maya cult images and codices. Mural byFernando Castro Pacheco from Wikipedia