Changing Faith Experience

Changing Faith: The Experience and Resolution of Disruptive Episodes in the Faith of
Christian Emerging Adults

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i
Fashioning a Dialogical Vision for

Catholic Education through Analysis,
Critique and Contemporisation of Paulo
Freire’s Education as the Practice of
Freedom.
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
To the
Melbourne College of Divinity
By
Michéal Loughnane
2008
Word count: 95,900

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Declaration
I affirm that this thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the
award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other institution.
To the best of my knowledge, this thesis contains no material previously
published or written by another person, except where due reference is made
in the text of the thesis.
Signed:
Name in Full: Michéal Brendan Loughnane
Date: 1 August 2008

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iii
Acknowledgements
I would first like to express my profound appreciation and thanks for the help and
assistance of Dr. Maryanne Confoy rsc, whose steadfast support and critical acumen
guided me through the long and challenging task of bringing this thesis to
completion. I would never have embarked on the journey, or completed it, if it were
not for her encouragement and affirming support.
Though they had no direct part in this thesis, I would like to acknowledge the
contribution of Paddy Carberry sj and Kevin O’Rourke sj. It was their wise and
compassionate guidance that set me on the journey that eventually led to this work.
I would like also to thank the students and staff at Caroline Chisholm Catholic
College in Braybrook and at Aquinas College in Ringwood. My day-to-day
experiences in these schools gave me the motivation and impetus to persevere in my
studies. I am particularly grateful to the respective principals of those schools, Mr.
Michael Quin and Mr. Anthony J. O’Byrne, whose support also assisted me in the
completion of this work.
I am indebted also to the Melbourne College of Divinity and the Catholic Education
Office for their support. The MCD has always been encouraging and
accommodating, and I am deeply grateful for the receipt of a one-year grant on full
salary in 1999 from the CEO; that year of full-time study enabled me to build a solid
research foundation on which I could then construct the remainder of the thesis.
I would like to acknowledge the constancy of the support and friendship extended to
me by John Jordan and Stefan Ehrenkreutz; the conversations, advice and affirmation
were invaluable. I am also grateful to my colleague Michael Box for his helpful
advice and technical assistance.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Paula and children Meábh, Breda, Marth-Rose
and Liam for their understanding, patience and support. This work was completed
in the shadow of their love and trust.

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Dedication
Dedicated to
the memory of my late father John James
and my mother Veronica
for raising me with a consciousness
and experience
of a Transcendent presence in my life
and to
my wife Paula
my daughters Meábh, Breda and Marth-Rose
my son Liam
for their unconditional acceptance and affection

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v
Abstract
This thesis constitutes an exploration of the possibilities for Catholic educators to foster,
nurture and embody a vision for a liberating education in Catholic schools. It aims to
contribute to Catholic educational discourse, and promote dialogue and discussion on the
critical, complex and contentious question of how an education for integral freedom can be
fashioned in a redeemed-yet-fractured world.
Personal and communal freedom is a compelling aspiration of the Catholic Tradition. In his
Letter to the Galatians St. Paul teaches that it was “for freedom did Christ set us free” (Gal 5:
1); consequently, each human being “is called to freedom” (Gal 5:13). This thesis suggests
some ways in which this vision can move towards becoming a reality in a contemporary
educational context. Pivotal to the argument is the conviction that Catholic educators could
deepen their understanding of their mission as educators through exposure to the insights
and analysis of critical educators.
Such an approach is consistent with the spirit of dialogue that was initiated, counselled and
embodied by Vatican II, particularly as it is enunciated in Gaudium et Spes. The opening
heading of that constitution alerts the reader to “the intimate bond between the church and
[humankind]”. This thesis attempts to establish such an “intimate bond” between secular
scholars who are seeking a more just education structure, and the Church, which has at its
heart a mission of outreach to the poor and the marginalised of the earth. It is envisaged that
such a dialogical to-and-fro approach will lead to the emergence of deeper understanding of
the mission of the Catholic school.
Paulo Freire’s vision for education as the practice of freedom has been chosen as the foundation
and catalyst for the subsequent dialogues (Chapters’ Three & Four), since his vision emerged
in the wake of Vatican II and epitomises a serious and faithful engagement with the grave
structural injustices that exist in the world. By building on his dialogical, “conscientising”
methodology a vision for the liberating possibilities of Catholic education will be canvassed
and discussed.
The motif of dialogue is an orientation that is not only proposed by the thesis, it is also
modelled by the adoption of a dialogical methodology within the thesis. In other words the
method of the thesis seeks to illustrate the orientation. The entire thesis is founded on the
premise that it is through engagement with others – including those who offer critical insights
from outside the Catholic Tradition – that a contemporary Catholic education which is the
practice of freedom can be discerned.

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Epigraph
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to

facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of
the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes
‘the practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women
deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to
participate in the transformation of their world.
(Paulo Freire)

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vii
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
FREEDOM: A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE IN CONTEXT 2
THE CHOICE OF INTERLOCUTORS 11
NOTES ON SCOPE, STYLE AND STRUCTURE 20
CHAPTER SEQUENCE 24
CHAPTER ONE: DISCERNING CATHOLIC EDUCATION 28
DISCERNMENT DEFINED 28
DISCERNING FREEDOM: THE GOALS OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 34
DISCERNMENT, THE GOALS, AND THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL 42
CHAPTER TWO: SETTING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR A REVITALISED VISION FOR

EDUCATION THAT IS THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM: AN EXAMINATION OF FREIRE’S
DIALOGUE WITH THE ‘OTHER’. 45
INTRODUCTION 45
THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NON-DIALOGICAL SOCIAL AND POLITICAL WORLD 49
CONSCIENTISATION AND PEDAGOGY: FREIRE’S LIBERATING VISION 55
DIALOGICAL EDUCATION AS THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM: THE ANTIDOTE TO “BANKING” EDUCATION

68
PAULO FREIRE’S CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND PRACTICE: AN ASSESSMENT 87
CHAPTER CONCLUSION: THE UNVEILING OF A DIALOGICAL VISION FOR EDUCATION THAT IS THE
PRACTICE OF FREEDOM 95
CHAPTER THREE: UNVEILING A CRITICAL CONTEMPLATIVE VISION FOR

CATHOLIC EDUCATION: THOMAS MERTON IN DIALOGUE WITH PAULO FREIRE 98
INTRODUCTION 98

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viii
THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION 102
FREEDOM IN EDUCATION: WHAT IS FREEDOM AND HOW DO WE EDUCATE FOR IT? 112
DISCERNING CHRISTIAN POWER 117
CONTEMPLATION AND EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 134
RESISTANCE, REORIENTATION AND FREEDOM: THE “PEDAGOGY OF THE QUESTION” 140
THE LIBERATING TEACHER: A CONTEMPLATIVE AT HEART 155
REFLECTION ON DIALOGUE: CONCLUSIONS AND ORIENTATIONS 157
CHAPTER FOUR: BORDER CROSSING AS EDUCATION FOR LIFE: HENRY GIROUX IN

DIALOGUE WITH THOMAS GROOME 160
INTRODUCTION 160
UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICAL NATURE OF SCHOOLING AS A PREREQUISITE FOR FREEDOM 162
CATHOLIC AND SECULAR VISIONS OF FREEDOM: A DIALOGUE 167
FREEING THE EDUCATORS TO EDUCATE FOR FREEDOM 171
CATHOLIC CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION AND SECULAR PROGRESSIVE HUMANISM: COMMONALITIES

AND POSSIBILITIES 175
CATHOLIC SCHOOLS AND “BORDER PEDAGOGY” 181
FREEDOM TO INTEGRATE FAITH AND POLITICS 185
THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY: THE STYMIEING OF FREEDOM 191
CRITICAL PERCEPTION IS DISCERNMENT 194
ENGAGED CONVERSATION: AN AVENUE TO FREEDOM AND HOPE 197
CHAPTER CONCLUSION 203
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCERNING A CRITICAL CONTEMPLATIVE VISION FOR A

CATHOLIC EDUCATION THAT IS THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM 207
INTRODUCTION 207

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DISCERNING A CRITICAL CONTEMPLATIVE CATHOLIC EDUCATION 211
THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM: THE BORDER CROSSING POINT BETWEEN CRITICAL AND
CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATORS 213
NAMING THE POWERS: DEVELOPING A CONTEMPLATIVE CRITICAL LITERACY IN THE CATHOLIC

SCHOOL 214
DISCERNING THE FORCES THAT FORCE COMPLICITY AND CONFORMITY: AN URGENT TASK 247
CONTEMPLATIVE CRITICAL CATHOLIC EDUCATION: DISCERNING A WAY TO “SEE RIGHTLY” 260
CHAPTER CONCLUSION: DISCERNING AND RESISTING CORPORATISM – A VITAL ROLE OF THE

CATHOLIC SCHOOL 273
CHAPTER SIX: BUILDING A FUTURE FULL OF HOPE (THESIS CONCLUSION) 277
FUTURE ORIENTATIONS 279
CONCLUDING REMARKS: OPENING TO “A FUTURE FULL OF HOPE” (JER 29:11) 301
APPENDICES 303
APPENDIX 1A: EXPERIENCES WHICH FORMED FREIRE’S VISION FOR AN EDUCATION THAT IS THE
PRACTICE OF FREEDOM 303
APPENDIX 1B: FREIRE’S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION: GROUNDWORK FOR A DIALOGICAL, PROPHETIC

IMAGINATION 311
APPENDIX 2: FREIRE THE EXEMPLAR OF DIALOGUE 321
APPENDIX 3: BANKING VS PROBLEM POSING EDUCATION: THE CONTRAST 323
APPENDIX 4: A LESSON IN HUMILITY FOR THE TEACHER 325
BIBLIOGRAPHY 327
CHURCH DOCUMENTS 327
OTHER REFERENCES 328

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Introduction
This thesis seeks to contribute to a practical theology of Catholic education.

Practical theology is understood to be the point of intersection between
theology and society.1 It constitutes an extended theological reflection which
identifies the defining features of Catholic education in the context of the
Church’s mission in the contemporary world. In this sense, it seeks to
interpret “the signs of the times” for Catholic education in a contemporary
pluralist postmodern context.
While the perspective is Catholic, and therefore addressed to the community

of faith, the word Catholic is to be understood in the sense defined by Thomas
Groome, who retrieves the original etymology of the term Kata holos,
meaning, “welcoming everyone”.2 It is hoped that the questions that are
explored would also be of interest to secular educators and those from
different religious backgrounds. The welcome that is extended to non-
Catholic educators is embodied in the content and methodology of the thesis.
Many secular ideas are considered and appropriated into Catholic thought
and practice; so this thesis represents a dialogue with ideas which have been
generated from outside Catholic intellectual circles as well as from within.
This study is premised on the conviction that if a Catholic education that is the
practice of freedom is to be developed, a critique and interpretation of the role
of culture in forming consciousness and perception is essential. In this regard
the study stands in the tradition critique from within that goes right back to
1 For an expansion on the nature of practical theology see Terry A. Veling, Practical
Theology: On Earth as It Is in Heaven (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005), 3–22.
2 Thomas H. Groome, Educating for Life: A Spiritual Vision for Every Teacher and Parent
(Allen, TX: Thomas More, 1998), 12.

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2
ancient Judaism,3 and follows the guidelines set down in Vatican II

concerning the interaction between faith and culture.4 The council recognised
that, though it is sometimes difficult “to harmonise culture with Christian
teaching”, it is nonetheless vital to enter into dialogue with culture. Far from
harming the life of faith, the Council teaches that such a pursuit “can
stimulate the mind to a more accurate and penetrating grasp of the faith”.5
This thesis aims to enter into such a dialogue concerning Catholic education
that is ‘the practice of freedom’.6
The Catholic school now represents the site where the Church most closely
touches, and is touched by, contemporary culture, thus, a clear understanding
of the terrain of culture is imperative if a credible and responsible vision of
freedom is to be developed in education. In order to map the lie of this terrain
it is necessary to briefly to contextualise the ‘problem’ of freedom.
Freedom: A Catholic perspective in Context
Since the dawn of the Enlightenment there have emerged many conflicting
visions and ideologies – consequently many understandings of human
freedom have developed. This has given rise to some conflicts, the most
profound being the conflict between the Church and secularists.
Enlightenment philosophers such as Diderot, Mill, Kant, Rousseau and
Voltaire sought to promote the primacy of rationality over what they
perceived to be the irrationality and tyranny of tradition. They questioned the
3 See N.T. Wright in Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two
Visions, 1st HarperCollins pbk. ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000), 42.
4 “The faithful”, the Council teaches, “should live in very close union with [others] of
their time. Let them strive to understand perfectly their way of thinking and feeling,
as expressed in their culture”. Gaudium et spes no. 62.
5 Ibid.
6 This term will be elaborated in Chapter Two.

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3
unreasoned, self-asserting, privileged and authoritarian claims to truth that

the Church represented.7
Church Tradition, with its emphasis on doctrine and centralised teaching

authority, now came to be perceived as the enemy of critical reason,
consequently it was, from an Enlightenment perspective, the enemy of
freedom. The spiritual and cultural inheritance of tradition was perceived to
be an authoritarian burden which would have to be overthrown if people
were to direct the course of their lives in freedom utilising the power of their
own rational perception.8 This period in western history marked a rebellion –
a “disengagement from the God of Christendom”.9
The Church in turn reacted defensively, and ultramontanist documents of

Vatican I clearly reflect a desire on the Church’s part to set itself in opposition
to Enlightenment thinking. As a consequence the Church’s attitude to
modernity in the last few centuries has been characterised by “hesitation,
objections and reservations”.10 The Catholic Church makes the singular claim
7 Christopher Norris interviewed in Florence Spurling, “The Postmodern Grand

Narrative”, in Encounter, ed. Sarah Kanowski (Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
Radio National, 1999).
8 For an insightful analysis of the role and perception of the Church during this time
see, Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason 1648–1789, The Penguin
History of the Church (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1990), 193–285. For a general
analysis of the impact of the Enlightenment on tradition see Rachael Kohn, “The
Moral Architects”, in The Spirit of Things, ed. Rachael Kohn (Australia: Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, Radio National, 3, 10, 17 September 2000). John Stuart
Mill (3rd September 2000), Emmanuel Kant (10th September 2000) Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (17th September 2000).
9 Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of
Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 16.
10 Walter Kasper, Theology and Church (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 54.

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that through faith in Christ alone is freedom to be found. This puts the
institution on a collision course with contemporary secular culture, or as N.T.
Wright puts it, a situation where history is used as a weapon against faith,
and faith as an escape from history.11
Up until Vatican II, the instinct of the Church was to repeatedly assert its
claim the ‘the truth’ without taking any opposing claims seriously.12 The
resulting lack of dialogue led to the development and the defence of two
contrasting and conflicting interpretations of human freedom: the Church
defending an absolutist and authoritarian vision and the secularists defending
a reductionist rationalist vision.13
There is much evidence of this oppositional, conflictual approach in

Church/secular relations spilling down to the present day. Over time,
however, there has emerged a much more balanced and nuanced approach to
this relationship. There exists among large numbers of the faithful a more
accommodating attitude to the fruits of the Enlightenment. Many now follow
the dialogical spirit of Vatican II in being much more open to the perspective
and horizon of “the other”, and are convinced that there can be much mutual
enrichment between the secular and the sacred; that conflict is not inevitable,
and it does not have to be a case of either/or. The attitude and approach
11 N.T. Wright “Knowing Jesus: Faith and History” in Borg and Wright, The Meaning
of Jesus, 15.
12 James Hanvey, “On the Way to Life: Contemporary Culture and Theological
Development as a Framework for Catholic Education, Catechesis and Formation”,
(London: The Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, 2005), 78.
Kasper argues that Vatican II signifies “the final breakthrough of a new definition of
the relationship between the church and the modern history of freedom”. Kasper,
Theology and Church, 55.
13 See Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 1st ed. (San
Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003), 212.

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adopted by this thesis reflects that of Hanvey and colleagues when they
propose that:
wholeness is only achieved through respect for the many

differences in the variety of human life and the inherent
goodness and beauty in other religious traditions and ways of
life, and discernment of the ways in which this goodness and
beauty both coincide with and differ from that of the Catholic
vision.14
This thesis aims to take an approach to secular/religious dialogue which does

not succumb to relativism, syncretism or subjectivism but aims rather to
interweave, engage with and take seriously serious ideas about approaches to
freedom that are both secular and Catholic. It represents an attempt to
contribute to what Borg calls the “emerging paradigm”15 of openness to
plurality and diversity that has become a grassroots movement within most
mainstream religious traditions in contemporary society. The struggle for
God and the struggle to allow everyone to be a free subject are not
antithetical.16 Christian freedom (which asserts that freedom is found in
assenting to faith in Jesus Christ) and secular freedom (which emphasises
autonomy and agency) are not the same but they are not irreconcilably
opposed to each other. The aim is to avoid polarising oppositions and instead
enter into some creative discourse where a range of voices can be heard and
heeded.
It needs to be acknowledged from the very outset however, that there are
some fundamental differences between secular expressions of freedom and a
Catholic expression of freedom. These differences can ultimately enrich, but
they must be honestly acknowledged.
14 Hanvey, “On the Way to Life”, 51.

15 Borg, The Heart of Christianity, xii.
16 Kasper, Theology and Church, 56.

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The Geography of Secularisation
The change that occurred with the Enlightenment was not just a superficial
clash of ideas, but the very geography of the consciousness changed
configuration. When shifting from Christendom to modernity, not only do the
basic positions change but rather the very ground within which positions can
be constructed changes. Thus “the hermeneutical framework” is itself
fundamentally altered.17 For many of those who embraced secular rationalism
one could not be rational, autonomous and free and at the same time bound
by tradition; one had to abandon the false securities of tradition in order to be
free. A view of freedom consequently emerged which contrasted sharply with
that of Christendom. Instead of the institution being the repository of truth
that was to be consulted and obeyed in the conduct of one’s life, the locus of
authority now became the autonomous, rational self. It follows logically that
if knowing, freedom and autonomy, is to be found independently of tradition
then all ideas all “truths” become relative and arbitrary. This has been one of
the most significant consequences of Enlightenment thinking.
While modernism (which embodied Enlightenment thought) placed excessive
emphasis on the notion of self as the centre of experience, postmodernism18
promotes the notion of the ‘de-centred self’. In a sense according to
postmodern theory the human person is a Tabula Rasa; there is no “real” self
to be found within, since the self is something to be “made” in the world of
language and interaction.19 The self or ‘being’ as the self, is therefore entirely
17 Hanvey, On the Way to Life”, 81.

18 In this brief overview it is only possible to present the general characteristics of
what can be loosely called the postmodern movement. There is in fact a multiplicity
of tributary manifestations of postmodernisms.
19 Brian Johnstone, “The Self as Receiver and Giver: A Critique of the Modern and
Postmodern Self”,
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal/aejt_7/Johnstone.htm

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constructed by the individual. Consequently, Postmodernism is defined by a

celebration of the belief that there cannot be an objective truth or grand
narrative.20 It adopts what one of its leading exponents, Charles Jenks, once
called a “situational position”, in which no code or system of beliefs is
inherently better than any other.21 The “I” becomes the focus for judgement
and relativism, subjectivism and emotivism come to dominate judgment and
experience.22 Moral judgements are made on the basis of preference and
feelings not on the basis of reference to some objective good or moral norm,
such as Church dogma or teachings.
A Catholic Response to Secularisation: problem and possibility
(1) The Problem: A History of tension and conflict
Even if the approaches of Church Tradition and the main thrust of

postmodernism seem mutually opposed, postmodernism does not necessarily
require a rejection of tradition or vice versa. The Church is naturally defensive
in the face of extreme manifestations of postmodern thought; when, for
example, there are no distinctions made between truth and falsehood, beauty
and ugliness, right and wrong, and there is only an infinite array of opinions
all different but equal.23 Such “undifferentiated pluralism” has in the Church’s
view led to a widespread lack of confidence that there is in fact a truth worth
searching for.24 The irony is, however, that postmodernism, because of its
celebration of plurality, has allowed religion back in to occupy a legitimate
(Accessed 12 October 2007).

20 Gunton, The One, 69.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 102.
23 See Alain Finkielkraut, The Undoing of Thought (London: Claridge Press, 1988), 116.
24 For an extended reflection on the Church’s response to postmodern thought see
Fides et Ratio no. 5, also Spe Salvi nos. 16–23.

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place at the table of meaning in contemporary discourse.25 Furthermore as

Johnstone points out, even Jacques Derrida – the champion of postmodern
theory – with his program of “deconstruction” did not reject all tradition, but
attacked representations of if that were fixed and confined vision and
excluded the “other”.26
It is possible that both traditions have much to learn from each other. Hans-
Georg Gadamer proposes that in their enthusiasm to over-correct the
imbalance between tradition and independent rational thought, the
Enlightenment philosophers’ mistake was to presume “an exclusive antithesis
between authority and reason”. 27 The Church for its part argues that faith is
firmly rooted in reason and that the tradition that has grown out of an
appropriated faith that houses meaning. Consequently, it argues that the
excessive individualism that results from divorcing oneself from tradition is
one of the primary causes of much of the ennui, alienation and loss of
meaning that is observable in contemporary culture.28
On the other side, Catholics have much to learn from a postmodern critique,
the most relevant to the subject of this thesis being the ability to ‘deconstruct’
power and empire. Postmodernity has tried to critique the ways in which
25 Rufus Black interviewed in Spurling, “The Postmodern Grand Narrative”.

26 Brian Johnstone, “What Is Tradition? From Pre-Modern to Postmodern”,
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal (Accessed 11 September
2007).
27 Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, translation
revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. ed. (New York: Crossroad Pub
Corp, 1989), 277.
28 For an insightful reflection on this issue see Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the
Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (Melbourne: Scribe
Publications, 1999), 9–10, Groome, Educating for Life, 257, Anthony J. Gittins, Reading
the Clouds (Strathfield, NSW: St. Pauls Publications, 1999), 60ff.

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9
dominant hegemonic powers have controlled and excluded the ‘other’. This is
both a tool and perspective that can teach the Church much about itself. This
focus on critique is to be a constant motif in this thesis. Chapter Five, for
example, will be entirely dedicated to a critique of the dominating global
manifestation of empire: corporatism, and will argue that it may well be
posing a serious threat to the integrity of the Catholic school.
An attempt, therefore is to be made to chart a course that respects and draws

on tradition (primarily the Catholic Tradition) for understanding and
experience, but at the same time is attentive to the possible revelations that
emerge from a postmodern secular critique and consciousness as well. To
adopt such an approach is not to fall prey to what Pope Benedict XVI called
the “dictatorship of relativism”, a dictatorship which according to Miller
“cripples all genuine education”29, but simply to acknowledge that the secular
is infused with the sacred since it is a foundational Catholic belief that God’s
presence permeates all human reality.
This thesis proposes that not only is there much common ground, but by
being open and receptive to the secular postmodern perspective, the Catholic
educator can come to a much richer understanding of their own tradition –
and ultimately a much deeper understanding of a Catholic view of freedom.
Ironically, perhaps, the secular can ‘evangelise’ the sacred in a positive and
enriching way. 30 The converse is also the case: the Catholic perspective has
29 Michael J. Miller, “The Holy See's Teaching on Catholic Schools”, Solidarity

Association, Washington
http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/speeches/06ArchbishopMillerKeynote.htm (Accessed
13 October 2007).
30 The term is not used here in the sense of attempting to convert the other to one’s
own belief system, but in terms rather of God being revealed to the believer by those
who do not belong to their faith tradition. There are many biblical precedents for
such ‘Divine irony’. Luke alludes to this when he has Jesus tell the congregation at

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10
great riches to offer the secular.
(2) The Possibility: The Critical Contemplative Catholic School – a zone of

embrace, receptivity and inquiry
In taking up the challenge of fostering the Catholic identity of the school

within the context of a secular postmodern consciousness, the task is to avoid,
on the one hand, “a fundamentalism that fails to face up to the modern world
and, on the other, a liberalism that effectively denies the specific identity of a
Catholic school and leaves in its place an empty secular shell.”31 However,
many of the central values of postmodern consciousness such as commitment
to rational discourse, critical thought, freedom, human rights, justice and
equality, can be, and have been, absorbed without weakening or losing
Catholic identity. As Hanvey points out, the Catholic community has the
resources to critique late modernity in the light of what is revealed, and
through this to retrieve its own ‘memory’ as a new resource; thus offering
‘life’ both to the culture and to the community of the Church.32 An important
task in this retrieval of memory is, as Nolan points out, to reconnect two
trajectories of tradition that were once inseparable: the contemplative and the
prophetic justice traditions.33
The prophetic justice tradition is closely aligned with the secular critical
tradition, so if the Church can be open and receptive it can use its
“sacramental imagination”34 to discern and identify what is positive and life-
the Synagogue in Nazareth that both Elijah and Elisha were ministered to by people
who came from outside the Jewish faith (See Luke 4:24–39).
31 Hanvey, “On the Way to Life”, 79.
32 Ibid.
33 Albert Nolan, “Chaos and Promise”, Catholic Communications,
http://www.catholic.org. (Accessed 11 December 2007).
34 See Groome, Educating for Life, 132.

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giving in the secular world view and blend the fruits of that discernment with
what is best within the tradition. This thesis will propose that to have a
sacramental imagination, the secular critical tradition needs to be co-joined
with the contemplative tradition of the Church if a credible and relevant
Catholic educational theory and practice is to be developed for the twenty-
first century.
The interlocutors in this thesis have all been chosen by virtue of the fact that
they have – albeit in their own individual and unique way – entered into this
kind of dialogue and embrace.
The Choice of interlocutors
To a large extent what follows is an unsophisticated division, yet, the

distinctions do serve to delineate some of the differences between, and
reasons for, the choice of the four interlocutors. In the imagined dialogues
that follow in Chapters Three and Four, Paulo Freire (Chapter Three) and
Henry Giroux (Chapter Four) represent a largely secular approach to the
question of freedom and Thomas Merton (Chapter Three) and Thomas
Groome (Chapter Four) represent a consciousness that is more deeply rooted
in the Catholic tradition.
This is a crude division, particularly in view of the fact that Freire was a
committed Catholic with a vision of freedom that was strongly informed and
shaped by his Catholic faith. But he was also, by his own attestation, a
postmodernist, incorporating many secular ideas about human freedom –
ostensibly those with a Marxist orientation – into his liberative pedagogical
vision. Giroux is more identifiably secular, as religious conviction does not
play a role in the formation of his philosophy; in fact, it is clear from his
writings that he harbours a deep suspicion of the role of institutional religion
in society. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, there can be much mutual
enrichment between his view and the more ‘Catholic’ view expressed by his

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12
dialogical partner Thomas Groome in Chapter Four.
The vision for human liberation that is espoused by both Merton and Groome
is deeply embedded in the Roman Catholic tradition, yet, neither is
‘traditionally’ Catholic. Each, in his own unique way has embraced much of
what has been inherited from the Enlightenment, though they both
subordinate this tradition to their own Catholic tradition. In a sense the faith
perspective they have imbibed from their Catholic tradition is the lens
through which they assess and critique modernist and postmodernist thought
on the subject of human freedom. Ultimately, for each of the interlocutors, the
relationship between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ is fluid and complex and cannot
be neatly characterised in terms of oppositions. Yet, there are distinct
differences in their understanding of human freedom. The dialogues in
Chapters’ Three and Four will reveal those particularities, differences and
nuances.
These scholars were chosen, in the final analysis, for what they have in
common rather than what divides them. The spirit of openness and dialogue
is vital to all of them, and all the interlocutors believe(d) in the transformative
power of conversation; thus, they are open to being changed by the ‘other’; all
too are progressive in the sense that they are open to diverse ways of thinking
about and understanding human reality; all engage in critique of dominant
hegemonic forces and all advocate, with varying levels of emphasis, a praxis
model where what is practised and experienced is interrogated about its
ethical appropriateness; all share a burning desire to create a human
community that is just and free – a society where all people can experience the
joy of living in a human community; all are genuine visionaries, expressing
and embodying a vision of human freedom; all are passionate about
education, each apprehending the transformative possibilities of education;
finally, all are thinkers who ‘practice what they preach’ in that they model
their beliefs concerning education through the way they conduct their own
communication and research. Gaudium et spes urges all people of good will to

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13
work with others “in constructing a more human world”.35 This is precisely
what all these thinkers attempt to do.
Why Paulo Freire?
Freire can be considered an ideal candidate to set the foundations for critique
of Catholic education that intentionally seeks to fashion a liberating education
in a contemporary postmodern context. There are some who would claim that
Paulo Freire was the most significant and influential educator of the twentieth
century, with his supporters and detractors alike agreeing that his philosophy
has had a profound impact on educational theory and practice throughout
many regions of the world. 36
The evidence seems to support the assertion that “few educators have
received as much widespread acclaim and worldwide recognition as the
Brazilian educator Paulo Freire”.37 The works of this “tramp of the obvious”,38
35 Gaudium et Spes no. 57.

36 Paul V. Taylor, The Texts of Paulo Freire (Buckingham ; Philadelphia: Open
University Press, 1993), 1. Another biographer, Elias, claims he is “the best known
educator in the world today”, John Elias, Paulo Freire: Pedagogue of Liberation
(Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 1994), 1. Donaldo Macado and Ana
Maria Freire declare that he is “the most significant educator in the world in the last
half century”, Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare
Teach (Oxford: Westview Press, 1998), ix.
37 Peter McLaren & Henry Giroux in Foreword to Moacir Gadotti, Reading Paulo
Freire: His Life and Work (Albany, NY: State Universtiy of New York Press, 1994), xiii.
38 Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (London:
Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1985), 171, ———, Pedagogy of the City (New York:
Continuum, 1993), 56. “Tramp” can also be translated as “vagabond” according to
Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 149. At another juncture Freire calls himself “a pilgrim
of the obvious”, Paulo Freire, William. B. Kennedy, and Ivan Illich, “Pilgrims of the
Obvious”, Risk 11 (1975): 17.

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14
as he liked to call himself, have been translated into seventeen languages and
read by an enormously wide variety of people throughout the world.39
According to Elias, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has sold over three hundred
thousand copies in the USA.40 His controversial theories have evoked much
debate in educational institutions internationally.41 For this reason alone, he
would be an important theorist to anyone interested in educational
philosophy. But there are two specific features of Freire’s person and thought,
which are of particular importance to this thesis.
Firstly, it is clear that the primary focus of Freire’s dynamic vision for
education is the question of human liberation. “A taste for freedom [is] ...the
fundamental theme I have addressed … in all the texts I have written”, he
writes to his niece shortly before his death.42 His philosophy concerns itself
39 Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 5.

40 Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 32.
41 See for example Blanca Facundo, “Freire Inspired Programs in the United States
and Puerto Rico: A Critical Evaluation”,
http://nlu.nl.edu/aceResources/Documents/Facundo.html (Accessed 6 May 1999),
Robert Mackie, “Confusion and Despair: Blanca Facundo on Paulo Freire”,
http://nlu.nl.edu/ace/Resources/Documents/Mackie.html (Accessed 14 May
1999).
42 Paulo Freire, Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work (New York:
Routledge, 1996), 159. To demonstrate his focus on freedom it is worth noting that
many of his publications contain the word ‘freedom’ or ‘liberation’ either in the title
of subtitle. See ———, Education: The Practice of Freedom (London,: Writers and
Readers Co-operative, 1976), ———, Cultural Action for Freedom (Ringwood, Victoria,
Australia: Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1972), Freire, The Politics of Education, Paulo
Freire and Ira. Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education
(New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1987), Paulo Freire and Antonio Faundez, Learing to
Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1989), Paulo Freire,
“The Adult Literacy Process as Cultural Action for Freedom”, Harvard Educational

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15
with the ways in which the human person can become free from the
oppressive forces which conspire to enslave them. He can be considered the
originator of this form of educational theory – a theory which has come to be
known as “libratory” or “emancipatory” or more commonly today “critical”
education. This way of understanding the education process has been
adopted (and adapted) by many other educational theorists. Countless
educators were convinced of the validity and truth of his thinking and so took
up the challenge of transforming the educational system into a more humane,
just and egalitarian structure.43 This ‘critical’ pedagogy will serve as a key
methodological framework in this study. Its origins and foundations will be
presented in Chapter Two, and it will be further elucidated in the dialogues in
Chapters’ Three and Four; finally, in Chapter Five the methodological
strategies explored in the preceding chapters will be applied to the
development of a contemporary vision for Catholic education.
Secondly, Freire’s theory of conscientisation and its attendant dialogical

methodology precipitated a paradigm shift in the way many came to perceive
the practice of education.44 His aim was to elicit a transformation in teacher
and learner alike. His vision was truly educational in that it led the recipient
Review 40 (1970), ———, “Education, Liberation and the Church”, Religious Education
79 (1984).
43 Not only progressive educators such as Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, Peter McLaren,
Maxine Greene, Moacor Gadotti, Stanley Aronowitz, Michael Apple, Antonio
Faundez, bell hooks have been profoundly influenced by Freire’s thinking, others in
such diverse fields as theology, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology have
been profoundly influenced by his thought.
44 Schipani’s observations are representative of many scholars when he claims that
“Freire’s work and thought have helped to reshape pedagogical practice and to
reformulate educational philosophy on a wide international scale”. Daniel Schipani,
Conscientization and Creativity: Paulo Freire and Christian Education (Lanham:
University Press of America, 1984), 11.

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16
to the development of a new theory of life and one’s place in life.45 Freire’s
philosophy encouraged a whole generation of educators to think critically
about their thinking; to stop accepting knowledge as given, to learn to
question their own perception of reality and the part played by culture and
class in the formation of their perceptions. These insights are essential to the
line of approach in the entire thesis and serve as an important inspiration for
the ten suggested future orientations for Catholic education that will be
presented in the Conclusion of the thesis.
Finally, Freire’s philosophy is deeply imbued with Christian existential

philosophy and anthropology. Freire stands firmly in a Judaeo-Christian
tradition which perceives the liberation of humanity as the ultimate goal of
creation. Close analysis of his writings reveals a perspective which is at times
explicitly, but in the main implicitly, influenced by this religious
preoccupation. Indeed a number of scholars, such as Taylor, Elias and
Ohliger, have pointed out that Freire’s transcendental understanding of the
human person is the critical factor in understanding his philosophy.46 But the
influences are many and varied (see Appendix 1b), and it is impossible to
typecast or confine Freire to one camp – secular or Christian.
This unique mix of ingredients brought together in the person and thought of
Freire make him an essential focus for this study. It is the contention of this
thesis that Freire has a rich and fecund contribution to make to contemporary
Catholic educational philosophy. Despite aspects that might be thought
contentious from a Catholic theological perspective, he has, nonetheless,
provided all educators with a vision of what is possible in education. He has
‘opened the doors of perception’ on what could be. This insight into
45 Ibid., 19.
46 Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 70, Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 45, John F Ohliger,
“Critical Views of Paulo Freire's Work”,
http://nlu.nl.edu/ace/Resources/Documents/Ohliger (Accessed 24 May 1999).

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17
possibility is perhaps his greatest, and may prove to be his most enduring,
contribution to educational theory and practice.
Freire’s pedagogical vision constitutes the starting point for the theories
explored in this thesis, which is why an entire chapter (Chapter Two) is
devoted to a presentation of his thought. All the other interlocutors are then
introduced in order to respond, or react to his philosophy. In the act of
responding they present their own views and theories on the constituent
elements of a liberating education. Through such a dialogical engagement it is
hoped that a clearer more focused vision of what might constitute a liberating
Catholic education will emerge.
A critical question to be addressed before a thorough exploration of Freire’s

philosophy is embarked upon is the question of whether or not Freire’s
philosophy which emerged from a Brazilian context can be ‘translated’ into a
Western cultural context.
“Translating” Freire for a First World context
It is the submission of this thesis that the essentials of Freire’s philosophy of

education as the practice of freedom are not only of profound relevance to
contemporary education, but can throw a critical and penetrating light on the
dilemmas and difficulties facing contemporary educational theory and
practice. Freire’s approach can help any educator in any context to ask the
right kinds of questions about contemporary education. In other words it can
be a vehicle by which educational theories can be scrutinised and critiqued.
He has argued repeatedly, that the object of his analysis is for the oppressed
everywhere and that his concept of ‘the Third world’ is ideological and political
rather than merely geographical since the ‘First World’ has its own ‘Third
World’ and vice versa.47 When Freire visited New York in 1967, he went to see
47 Freire, The Politics of Education, 139–40.

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18
poor areas where African Americans and Puerto Ricans lived. He remarks
that he saw and heard things that were “translations” of much of what he had
witnessed in Brazil and Chile. Only what he called the “trappings” were
different.48 He commented also, that if people in the First World wanted to be
prophetic they need only go to the outskirts of their big cities, “and there they
will find sufficient stimulus to do some fresh thinking for themselves” for
they will find themselves confronted with their own Third world.49 In an
interview with Eloi Lohmann in 1989, Freire claimed that Pedagogy of the
Oppressed applies wherever oppressed people need emancipation and that all
efforts to democratise education whether one is in a poor or rich country are
met with the same resistance from those in power.50 McLaren and Giroux also
make the point that Freire’s insight into the ways in which the power of
institutionalised schooling finds its correlative in systems of thinking that
stress technocratic reasoning and an introduction to a model of citizenship
based on an individualist and consumerist ethics, is significant in every
region of the world.51 This understanding of education as a political act is
certainly a dimension of Freire’s thinking which gives it a universal
application. Politics is, for Freire, ‘the soul of education’, whether in the First
World or in the Third World. 52
Probably the most important element of Freire’s ‘universality’ is his Christian

vision. He observes that a prophetic attitude toward the world and history is
by no means exclusive to Latin America or other areas of the Third World,
48 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope (New York: Continuum, 1994), 54, Freire, The Politics
of Education, 18, Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Penguin Books
Ltd, 1972), 13.
49 Freire, The Politics of Education, 140.
50 ———, Pedagogy of the City, 65–67.
51 McLaren and Giroux in the Foreword to Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, xv.

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19
that it is a ‘calling’ of every Christian in every historical circumstance.53 As

will be evident in the dialogue with Merton in Chapter Three, Freire’s concern
is the human being in the world; how human beings are to live together in
order to realise the reign of God here on earth, and, how we are to educate to
make this social order a possibility.
Freire never tired of emphasising that his ideas should not be “transplanted”
to other cultures and contexts. He stresses that his experiences should be “re-
created and “reinvented” and “created anew”.54 Freire frequently expressed
frustration with those who did not take this approach to his work.
It is important to note from the outset that Freire’s ideas did not, and do not
today, receive universal acclaim. He encountered a good deal of resistance
throughout the world. He argued that this resistance and attempts at
discrediting his work came from those who had most to lose if his
pedagogical theories were taken seriously and practiced. “Any effort”, he
remarked,
for democratic education in favour of the under-represented

classes would meet enormous obstacles both in the sixties and
today ... Authoritarian elitism or elitist authoritarianism are
typical of the reactionary educator, they become the negation
of the progressive educator.55
With regard to the relevance of Freire’s philosophical vision to a

contemporary context, it can be concluded that, notwithstanding some
legitimate critical questions regarding his theories, Freire’s philosophy of
education is indeed relevant and applicable not only in Third World contexts
but to every cultural context in the world. Indeed, it can be argued that in the
53 Ibid., 139–40.
54 Ibid., 190. See also Donaldo Macedo and Ana Maria Araújo Freire in Foreword to
———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, xi.
55 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 66.

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20
early twenty-first century, his relevance has increased not diminished, since
the disparity between financially and culturally ‘rich’ and financially and
culturally ‘poor’ is growing wider and deeper with each passing year.
Notes on Scope, Style and Structure
A. The boundaries of the study
There are two separate but interrelated aspects to Paulo Freire’s contribution:
His literacy technique (a method he developed for teaching non-literate people
how to read and write), and his educational philosophy. Though one is
dependent on the other, this particular study will focus primarily on the latter
contribution. We will only make reference to his literacy method where it is
relevant to his libratory philosophy.
Freire has written extensively – over twenty books and countless articles – on
a wide variety of issues. We will focus on those books and articles that are
specifically related to his libratory philosophy of education.
In critiquing Freire’s work, every criticism that has been made of his work
will not be analysed and studied.56 Suffice it to say that a thorough reading of
56 As Taylor points out, when it comes to Freire, there is no shortage of critics. He has
been admonished for his “lack of clarity” his “magma of texts”, “the contorted
manner of his writing”, his “circular logic” and “confusing repetitiveness”. He is
“too mystifying”, “too abstract”, “too psychological”, “too utopian”. His method
requires a high level of social manipulation and can be used equally to domesticate
as to liberate …that his work is full of contradictions … All these criticisms and more
are regularly directed at Freire’s work. Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 2. For a
comprehensive collection of common criticisms see Robert Mackie, edit., Literacy and
Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire (New York: Continuum, 1981), Ohliger,
"Critical Views”. Also Kevin Nichols in Dermot Lane, edit., Religious Education and the
Future (Dublin: The Columba Press, 1986), 135–48.

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21
the greater part of Freire’s written output, and a review of the available
critical literature, some criticisms were found to be valid, others that had a
measure of validity, and many that were unbalanced as they were either
based on a mendacious misreading of his intentions, or presented a narrow
and limited reading of him. Only those critiques that have a direct bearing on
his vision of education as the practice of freedom will be explored.
Some details about the background and perspective of each of the other
interlocutors will be given in the introduction to Chapters’ Three and Four.
These sketches will be less developed since the interlocutors are responding
and reacting to Freire’s philosophical/theological perspective they
consequently act as foils for an analysis of Freire’s vision for Education as the
Practice of Freedom and are not intended to represent an indepth analysis or
explication of their theories and perspectives.
B. Quotations
The conversations that are imagined in Chapters’ Three and Four are fictional;
they did not actually take place. The intention was to match the texts where
the same concerns were written about by each writer. For example, where
Freire discussed the use and abuse of power, this would be set alongside
Merton’s reflections on the same topic, with the author acting as facilitator. In
this way it was intended that a sense of conversation and dialogue would
emerge. Through this strategy their own individual voice and the
individuality and nuance of their thinking can be allowed to emerge.
Wherever possible, their own actual words are used. Direct quotations are in
italics in order to establish a clear separation between what they actually have said
and what is imagined they might have said in that circumstance or on that issue. The
role of the interlocutor is to direct the course of the conversation and to offer
opinions and views which are reflective of the concerns of the thesis.

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C. Conversation, Dialogue and Discernment
One of the intentions of constructing this thesis in this unusual manner was to
model in the style and approach, the philosophy of education that was being
advanced. From the outset the intention was not to provide ‘answers’ or a
new ‘grand plan’ for the liberation of Catholic education, but to attempt to
focus attention on the key issues and questions and perhaps set some
signposts or orientations, so that the terrain to be negotiated by Catholic
educators could be better apprehended and understood. The task of planning
a way forward is a task that might best be discerned communally, since the
question of human freedom and how to educate for it – which is the central
concern of this thesis –is probably the most complex, contentious and
contested issue in contemporary educational discourse. Consequently, it can
be argued that the more diverse the input, the richer the understanding of the
possibilities will be. As already noted, since the Enlightenment there has been
a rapid differentiation of interpretations of what it means to be free – a
process which has accelerated in the modern and postmodern periods. As
noted, the Catholic and secular traditions have developed different,
sometimes conflicting, perspectives on human freedom and its attainment
through education. By choosing a non-adversarial, conversational approach
in the dialogical chapters, it is hoped that the richness and ‘truth’ of each
perspective will emerge.
To engage in this quality of dialogue is to take seriously the counsel of

Gaudium et Spes. This constitution repeatedly emphasises the interdependence
of all humanity, the need for solidarity and the centrality above all of
dialogue.57 Conversation is dialogue. It is the view of this thesis that the
57 See Gaudium et Spes nos. 25, 27, 28. The Vatican II scholar John W. O’Malley
comments that the use of the word “dialogue” and its equivalents, is emblematic of
the dialogical character and style of the council teachings. John W. O'Malley,

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conversational encounters that follow in Chapters Two and Tree represent a

continued working out of Vatican II theology and ecclesiology. In this sense a
large part of the communicative thrust of this thesis is in the method, as well
as in the conclusions that are drawn.
Transposing Gender-exclusive Language
For Thomas Groome and Henry Giroux gender exclusive language is not an
issue as their writings reveal an alert consciousness of gender inclusivity.
Thomas Merton, however, died in 1968, consequently all his work was
penned at a time when there was little or no consciousness of the importance
of inclusive language in verbal and written communication. Freire’s writings
were penned over a period of almost thirty years (1966–1996); he therefore
lived through the transformative period where a consciousness of gender
exclusive language emerged, and was gradually replaced by a gender
inclusive approach to communication. Freire’s own journey in this respect is
instructive as his development in this regard is reflective of his commitment
to the ‘practice’ of his own conscientisation. In Pedagogy of Hope Freire reveals
that after the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, many North American
women wrote to him to complain about his sexist language.58 The result of
the interaction was a recognition on Freire’s part that under the impact of his
conditioning by an authoritarian, sexist, ideology, he was guilty of the
accusation, so from that date forward, in all his communications, he referred
Tradition and Transition: Historical Perspectives on Vatican II, Theology and Life Series ;
V. 26. (Wilmington del.: Michael Glazier, 1989), 179.
58 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 67. One of those women was bell hooks. Though her work
is clearly influenced by Freire, she urged the need to “critically interrogate” his use of
sexist language in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Her version of the fruitful exchanges
concur with those of Freire. See bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the
Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), 48–49.

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24
to “woman and man”, or “human beings”.59 They had helped him to see that
the rejection of a sexist ideology was part of the dream to change the world.60
These exchanges serve to demonstrate his ability to change and grow in the
light of new knowledge and information. What can be observed is his own
theory of conscientisation at work in his own experience. What can be seen
also is the humility he so often counsels in his later writings; the ability to
admit mistakes and change in the light of new encounters and new
knowledge; personal transformation is, for Freire, the fruit of dialogue.
Some might argue that it is good to read the text as it was written as it serves
as a reminder of where we, as a culture, have been. Both Freire and Merton’s
writings are, after all, historical documents, so it might be judged that one
ought not to tamper with the original form in the light of a subsequent
development in thought and understanding. It was felt, however, that though
it may well be more authentic to leave the original gender-exclusive language
unaltered, the offence caused in constantly encountering such language might
distract attention from the substance of what is being said and thereby detract
from the analysis. Altering the terms also avoids the danger of reinforcing
antiquated mentalities and approaches to gender, that, by leaving unaltered,
might be interpreted as implying agreement or endorsement.
Chapter Sequence
This thesis has a cumulative structure; each chapter building on the one prior,
so that by the Conclusion, where some possibilities and orientations for
Catholic education will be suggested, the key questions and concerns will
already have been identified, developed, analysed and explored.
Chapter One will lay the foundation for the remainder of the thesis in that it
59 From 1975 onwards Freire has used gender inclusive language in all his writings.
60 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 67.

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25
will present supporting evidence from the tradition that upholds and affirms
both the content and the methodology employed in the thesis. It will be
proposed that the art of discernment is the most important resource available
to the Catholic tradition for determining how best to educate in the
contemporary world. It is this spiritual art that has been employed by the
tradition to determine the goals that are to be set if Catholic education is to be
true to the tradition. These goals will be presented as the lodestar for
discerning the way forward for Catholic education.
In Chapter Two, Freire’s educational theories will be presented and described.

The focus will be confined to his philosophy of education as the practice of
freedom. At the end of the chapter there will be a brief assessment of this
philosophy and an identification of some of the key issues that will need some
analysis and exploration in a Catholic educational context.
Chapter Three will take the form of a fictitious dialogue between Freire and
Merton. The purpose of this dialogue is to parallel, compare, and contrast
Freire’s vision for human liberation with that of Merton. Through this
dialogue, it is intended that the connaturality of their individual visions will
crystallise. At the same time however, some of the nuances and particularities
of each individual and unique vision for freedom will also emerge. While
both are passionately concerned with the relationship between justice and
freedom, there are important nuances that differentiate their respective
approaches: Merton is the contemplative who teaches spirituality and
theology, while Freire is the activist who teaches literacy to the poor and
inspires them to organise in order to force structural change. It is envisaged
that the cross pollination that occurs through their conversation will sharpen
an understanding of education for liberation as incorporating the political, the
spiritual and the psychological dimensions of human experience.
Chapter Four represents a natural extension of the conversation. Henry

Giroux is an appropriate heir to Freire’s liberatory vision and Thomas

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26
Groome, while not from the prophetic monastic tradition that Merton
represented, is chiefly concerned with fashioning a Catholic education that
liberates. Groome is well positioned to offer a more cogent and scholarly
Catholic view of the relationship between freedom and tradition, since he is
conversant with the work of a variety of Christian scholars who have been
writing specifically on this question since the Merton era. In their dialogue it
will become clear that Giroux’s vision epitomises a more strictly secular view
of freedom, while Groome’s is more intimately connected to tradition. As we
have already alluded to at the beginning of the introduction there is a
consequent conflict or tension in terms of the ground and nature of human
freedom; yet, as the conversation will reveal, such a tension can be very
healthy and productive if it is not allowed to veil the convergences and
common ground that can be found through openness and receptivity to the
‘other’.
The intent in Chapter Five is to develop a hermeneutic of contemporary

Catholic education. It will comprise an interpretation of Catholic education
that emerges naturally from the ‘fusion’ of visions of freedom of Paulo Freire,
Thomas Merton, Thomas Groome and Henry Giroux. It will be argued that
freedom can become a possibility through embarking on two intertwined
journeys: the search for freedom through praxis which involves active
engagement in the transformation of social and political structures coupled
with a search for freedom through self-transcendence which involves
embarking on an inner journey through relationship with the self and the
Transcendent. This fusion will be called a critical contemplative approach. It
will be the central contention of this chapter that when a critical
contemplative perception is brought to bear on contemporary education it
will be clear that the recognition of the destructive influence of corporate
ideology is the most important task facing Catholic educators in a
contemporary context.
The Conclusion to the thesis will synthesise what has been proposed for

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Catholic education into ten possible ‘orientations’ if Catholic education is to

be the vehicle for an education that is liberating and empowering – an
education that is the practice of freedom in a contemporary context.

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Chapter One: Discerning Catholic Education
This chapter will set the course for the remaining chapters by placing the search
for a liberating Catholic education within the context of discernment. The
chapter is constructed in three parts: the first will define what discernment
means as it is used in this thesis; the second will relate the discernment process
to the goals which the tradition has determined for Catholic education; and
finally, it will discuss the implications of those goals for a contemporary
discernment process in Catholic schools.
Discernment Defined
The act of discernment is a connective art; it binds the individual and the local
community to the wider, larger communion called church, thereby becoming
the means by which Catholics are empowered to orient their perception and
discover a sense of direction, purpose and meaning. It is, consequently,
appropriate to set this thesis within this tradition of discernment; it is driven by
the conviction that if Catholic education is to be true to its aims and raison d'être,
the practice and communication of the art of discernment is a non-negotiable
dimension of Catholic education.
At its most basic level the practice of discernment is an intentional effort to

divine what God’s will is for a particular action or choice one has to make in
life. It is therefore an act of faith, premised on the belief that the Creator God is
a revealing God, whose revelation continues in the unfolding of each
individual’s unique experience of existence. In a sense then, it is the art of
learning to read God’s “continuing revelation”.61 This is a highly subjective
61 Avery Dulles sums up the connection between experience, tradition, culture and
continuing revelation thus:

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experience where God communicates in a unique way with every individual,

simply because each individual is a unique creation.62 This unique and personal
encounter is not a passive experience where one simply receives instructions
from a higher power, it is primarily a relational encounter where there is a to-
and-fro conversation occurring. It is, in essence, an ongoing dialogue which
assumes a real and active relationship between the subject and God. It is a
dialogue that ends in the making of a choice on the part of the subject; it is,
paradoxically, God’s choice, accomplished in eternal freedom but “offered to us
to choose for ourselves”.63
Historically, the art of discernment has been associated with the contemplative
tradition of the Church. Contemplatives throughout history have actively
sought a mode of existence that disposes them to certain attentiveness and
attunement to God’s revealing love in their own personal existence and in the
world. This is why religious orders in particular have cultivated an
environment, or a mode of being, whereby through work, silence and
meditation on sacred texts, and focused learning, they attain a ‘recollected’ state
of being.
Revelation is to be found not so much in clear directives from the past

as in the dimension of ultimacy within our own experience. God's
revelation to our predecessors afford paradigms or guidelines for the
present; they serve to suggest and open up the depth-dimensions in the
experience of the believer today. In this sense, one may speak of
`continuing revelation'.
Avery Dulles, “The Apostolate of Theological Reflection”, The Way Supplement 20, no.
Autumn (1973): 114. See also Luke Timothy Johnson, Scripture and Discernment: What
Christians Believe and Why It Matters (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2003), i–viii.
62 Lonergan makes the important observation that while discernment is a deeply
subjective activity, “genuine objectivity” is in fact “the fruit of authentic subjectivity”.
Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1972),
265, 92.
63 Mark Allen McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 106.

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Thomas Merton is particularly representative of this tradition.64 And yet Merton

is to some extent unrepresentative in that while he lived in a monastic
environment he transformed conceptions of what it means to be a
contemplative. He believed strongly, for example, that discernment should in
fact be a normative practice for every Christian – not just for those who lived a
cloistered or monastic life. Discernment led Merton into the heart of what was
going on in the world, not away from the world. His attentiveness to the sacred
texts which mediated his experience of God led him into an engagement with
the social and political realities of his day. Merton’s reading of the ‘signs of the
times’ did not imply passivity, on the contrary, he interpreted ‘the will of God’
as communicated through the life and teaching of Jesus as an injunction to
intervene in human realities – particularly, wherever love and justice were
lacking. Discernment for him meant intelligent and detached action to
transform the world.65 According to Merton, for the person wishing to discern
God’s will in any situation one question is essential: is the movement the soul
drawing me to greater love or is it drawing me away from love? The ‘law of
love’ then, the fundamental ‘rule’ of discernment; it is “the deepest law of our
nature, not something extraneous and alien to our nature. Our nature itself
inclines us to love, and to love freely”.66 But Merton is not naïve about human
nature. At all times his discernment process is alert to the reality that because
64 Merton’s contemplative vision will be presented and discussed in Chapter Three.

65 Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, New York: Image
Books, 1968), 120. Though Merton’s charism, is very different to that of the Ignatius of
Loyola, their view of discernment and detachment is remarkably similar. Ignatius
developed his “Rules For The Discernment Of Spirits”, so that each individual could
“understand to some extent the different movements produced in the soul and for
recognising those that are good to admit them, and those that are bad, to reject them”.
Louis J Puhl, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1951), 11, 141. Merton too was convinced that each person can learn to identify the
voice of God by understanding the ‘different movements’ in the depths of one’s being.
66 Merton, Conjectures, 121.

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we are human we are therefore sinful and prone to self delusion. Consequently,
if we do not get discernment right, we can end up perpetrating acts of violence
in the name of love. Just because we imagine we are motivated by ‘goodness’ is
no guarantee that we are in fact acting according to God’s will.67 In the past
‘God’s will’ has often been used as a weapon to keep people in a state of
subjugation and oppression.68 The counsel of the Epistle of John to “test the
67 Merton offers an excellent example of this “illusion of goodness” in Conjectures of a

Guilty Bystander. He relates a telling story demonstrating the ways in which authentic
Christian thought and action can be subsumed by legalistic and formalistic thinking.
See Ibid., 109–10. Merton’s insights on this aspect of the workings of discernment are
supported by Bernard Lonergan, who argues that the person who wishes to live an
authentic life will need to learn to make intelligent and responsible judgments; each
individual needs to be aware that bias can easily creep into one’s outlook,
rationalisation into one’s morals, and ideology into one’s thought; to the extent that
“one may come to hate the truly good, and love the really evil”. Bernard J.F. Lonergan,
Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 32.
68 These insights into the workings of discernment are supported by number of
contemporary theologians. For example, Susan Hekman, Grace Jantzen, Elizabeth
Johnson, and Rosemary Radford Reuther all argue that discernment, improperly
understood, has been, and is, used as a cover for subjugation and oppression. Hekman
observes that calls to self-denial and self-abnegation, are often used as weapons to
silence the disempowered and reinforce women’s subjugation. Susan J. Hekman,
Gender and Knowledge: Elements of a Postmodern Feminism (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1990), 93ff. Jentzen argues that the disconnect between the
contemplative life and politics only came about partly to keep women in confined
domesticated roles. She warns against an understanding of the contemplative life that
becomes detached from the considerations of social justice. Such ‘discernment’, she
argues, plays directly into the hands of modern bourgeois political and gender
assumptions and keeps God (and women) safely out of politics and the public realm.
Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge Studies in Ideology
and Religion; 8. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 326, 46.
This warnings on discernment are reiterated by Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The
Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 227,

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spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1) remains a Christian
imperative.69
If love of God is genuine Merton asserts, each Christian will need to learn to
manage, and rise above, their natural instincts to receive a greater more
inclusive vision of human existence.70 Such an expansion requires not only the
humility to acknowledge that what the individual understands and perceives to
be the reality may not in fact be so, but also an embrace of their own frailty and
vulnerable humanity; in short, their sinfulness – and that of every member of
the human family past and present.71 The discerning person will also humbly
submit themselves to the mystery of their own being as well as the mystery that
is God. While they use all their human capacities to divine God’s will, in the
end they acknowledge, in spirit of awe and reverence, that God is ultimately
“an incomprehensible” presence; a presence that is to a large extent
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious
History (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2005).
69 The New Testament writers were very aware that interpreting God’s will or ‘voice’
was no easy task. Paul offers much concrete advice on this matter in his letters. See for
example Philippians (Phil 4:8).
70 Merton, Conjectures, 109–10.
71 Again, Merton’s understanding of the relationship between discernment and
embrace of personal sinfulness bears a close resemblance to Lonergan’s perception. For
Lonergan, all Christians must accept that the task of religious development is
dialectical, and that repentance and conversion is normative life-long experience for
the Christian believer. If we are to be equal to this task, feelings and responses to the
world have to be “cultivated, enlightened, strengthened, refined, criticised,” so that a
person can make “rounded moral judgments,” and rounded moral judgment “is ever
the work of a fully developed self-transcending subject or … of a virtuous [person].”
The choice for or against this quality of inner reflection is, for Lonergan, the choice
between becoming “an authentic human being or an unauthentic one” Lonergan,
Method in Theology, 31, 32, 38, 118.

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“unknowable”.72
What is clear from Merton and other contemplative writers is that discernment
is not an easy process. It is an activity which draws on the deepest faith
commitment of the individual involves and engages all the human faculties, as
well as an ability to transcend one’s own personal desires, proclivities and
prejudices in favour of transcendent virtues, values and impulses.73
This is the perspective on discernment that underpins this thesis. Each chapter
is intended to be a ‘praxis’ of discernment in that the unfolding argument is
intended to be a form of discernment process which has as its goal the
recognition of God’s will for the essential content and orientation of Catholic
education. The dialogical chapters (Three and Four) suggest a profoundly
communal discernment process where a community of interpreters work
together through dialogue, practical discourse, and judgment, to discern God’s
guiding spirit in contemporary Catholic educational practice.74
72 Harvey D. Egan suggests that for Karl Rahner, the “incomprehensibility” of God is a
constant theme throughout his theological writings. See Harvey D. Egan, Karl Rahner:
The Mystic of Everyday Life (New York: The Crossrial Publishing Company, 1998), 82–
102. Rahner’s perception is drawn from Aquinas’ thinking on “the strangeness of
God”. For a thorough examination of Aquinas’ insight see Robert E. Barron, Thomas
Aquinas : Spiritual Master, Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series (New York: Crossroad,
1996), 61–108.
73 According to Hans Urs Von Balthasar the crucial rule for the discernment of a
particular impulse is its transparency to Christ and its freedom from self-
preoccupation. Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics,
Vol.1 (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1982), 411.
74 This notion of Communal discernment is explored in Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond
Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1983).

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Discernment and the accumulated wisdom of tradition
It is clear that this practice of discernment is intimately connected with what

has already been gleaned from human experience by generations of believers
who have embarked on a faith journey. The whole body of Church teaching is a
product of communal discernment over time. If an orientation for Catholic
education is to be discerned, the starting point must be what the Church has to
say regarding Catholic education. The goals it has set for itself become the
guiding principle for designing and implementing the particularity of ‘the Way’
of the Catholic school.
Discerning Freedom: The Goals of Catholic education
Since Gravissimum Educantionis, there have been a number of documents which

identify what is distinctive about Catholic Education, and which offer a vision
its possibilities.75 These possibilities or ‘goals’ will be synthesised and
summarised under five categories, each of which will receive a brief
elaboration. They are: 1) To arouse the individual’s inner spiritual dynamism; 2)
To develop of the whole person; 3) To facilitate liberation; 4) To build a
“civilisation of love” through personal and cultural transformation; and 5) To
fashion a society where justice and peace reigns.
Goal 1: To “arouse the individual’s inner spiritual dynamism”76
Christ is, “the foundation of the whole educational enterprise in a Catholic

school”,77 and each attending student is to be “gradually introduced into a
knowledge of the mystery of salvation”, and through this encounter, their lives
75 For other major Church documents cited in this thesis see “Church Documents” in
the Bibliography.
76 The Catholic School, no.30
77 The Catholic School, no.34, On the Threshold, no. 4, Miller, “Catholic Schools”.

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will be “penetrated with the spirit of Christ”.78 This will empower them “to
conduct [their] personal life in righteousness and in the sanctity of truth”.79
This is clearly a vision of education which is transformative, as it seeks nothing

less than the goal of helping students to actually become a “new creature”
which he or she became through baptism.80 It is an “an apprenticeship in
Christian life”81 that requires “integral formation rather than mere
information”.82 The aim of the curriculum in such a context, “is not merely to
attainment of knowledge but the acquisition of values and the discovery of
truth”.83 In all that is taught, the task is fundamentally “a synthesis of culture
and faith, and a synthesis of faith and life”.84
It is clear from this goal that Catholic educational institutions are intended to
“share in the evangelising mission of the Church”,85 since they “must proclaim
the good news of salvation to all, generate new creatures in Christ through
baptism, and train them to live knowingly as children of God”.86
Thus, by “arousing the individual’s inner spiritual dynamism”,87 the Catholic

school offers a spiritual vision of education. It is motivated by the desire to lead
the individual into an awareness that all of life is permeated with God’s grace,88
and a consciousness of God’s presence “as both the backdrop and the
78 Gravissimum Educationis no. 3.

79 Ibid.
80 The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School, nos. 98, 100.
81 General Directory for Catechesis, no. 30.
82 Ibid., no. 29.
83 The Catholic School, no. 39.
84 Ibid., no. 37, The Religious Dimension, no. 8.
85 The Religious Dimension, no. 101.
87 Ibid., no. 30.
88 See M.C. Boys, Educating in Faith: Maps & Visions (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1989), 103.

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foreground of life”.89 This, essentially is a “call to Holiness”90 that is extended to

everyone in the Catholic school. This approach to education does not simply
convey information to passive students, but “aspires to teach wisdom,
habituating their students to desire learning so much that he or she will delight
in becoming a self-learner”.91
Goal 2: The Development of the Whole Person
The Second Vatican Council teaches that “the human person … is and ought to
be the principle, the subject and the end of all social institutions”,92 and states
that the specific aim of Catholic educational institutions is to promote the “full
development of the human person”.93
This goal is inextricably linked with the previous one, as according to the
Church, the movement to wholeness is predicated on faith. Since Christ “is the
model of wholeness ... He is the one who ennobles [humankind], gives meaning
to human life, and is the model which the Catholic school offers to its pupils”.94
Again this contemplative dimension of the growth towards wholeness is
emphasised; education ought to focus on “the development of [persons] from
within, freeing [them] from the conditioning which would prevent [them] from
becoming a fully integrated human being”.95
This quality of formation will always involve reflection on experience as well as

genuine dialogue. Students are to be helped to “spell out the meaning of [their]
experiences and their truths” and not merely offer “pre-cast conclusions” that
89 Groome, Educating for Life, 129.

90 Lumen Gentium, nos. 39–42, Gaudium et Spes, no. 22.
91 Hancock, “Recovering a Catholic Philosophy of Elementary Education”, p.77, quoted
in Miller, “Catholic Schools”.
92 Gaudium et Spes, no. 25, see also Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no.1881.
93 Gravissimum Educationis, no. 3.
95 Ibid.

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hinder personal development”.96 Consequently, the methodology should

engage the student in “dialogue rather than a monologue” so that the
“enrichment in the relationship is mutual”.97
The Church also emphasises the role of all the intellectual faculties in this
growth process. Catholic education should “cultivate the intellect” as it “ripens
the capacity for right judgment”.98 This means that “every student be
challenged to strive for the highest possible level of formation, both human and
Christian”.99 This in the concrete means that the school should cultivate their
intellectual, creative, and aesthetic faculties to empower them to make good
judgements, values and attitudes and relate well to students of diverse cultures
and backgrounds.100
According to this holistic vision the human and the Christian are not separate
entities, on the contrary, they are entirely dependent on each other.
Goal 3: Liberation
There is an intimate link between the goal of liberation and the previous goal,
and the Church establishes this link in its teaching. The Church believes that it
is “only in freedom can [persons] direct [themselves] toward goodness”.101
Authentic freedom is, in fact, an exceptional sign of the divine image within
and is founded on the right to choose without external pressures.102
Catholic educational institutions aim to embody this vision through the creation
96 Ibid., no. 27.

97 Miller, “Catholic Schools”.
100 Lay Catholics in Schools, no. 12, see also The Catholic School, no. 36.
101 Gaudium et Spes, nos. 17, 24.
102 Gaudium et Spes, no. 17.

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of “an atmosphere enlivened by the gospel spirit of freedom and charity”.103

This is a liberating process, not a process of indoctrination, since the initiative
always lies with the individual. “Freedom”, it teaches, “is the power, rooted in
reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform
deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility”.104
The inalienable rights of the individual flow directly from the belief that every
human person is created in the image of God. Therefore, “it is impossible for
education to be genuine without the active involvement of the one being
educated”. The whole formation process fails when students are “uninvolved
and unmoved”.105 Pedagogy is both “active and participative”, requiring a
“conscious and co-responsible”106 attentiveness to our own “lived experience”.107
So, catechetical education should “promote active participation among those to
be catechised” and encourage “dialogue and sharing” among participants.108
Likewise, every participant “must be an active subject … and not merely a
silent and passive recipient”.109 Such an education, the Holy See teaches, can
only occur if a personal relationship is established between the student and the
teacher.110
One can deduce from these statements that the Church appears to be
encouraging and affirming a critical approach to the content of what is being
learned. It explicitly states as much in a number of teachings.111 The Catholic
103 Gravissimum Educationis, no. 8, see also Lay Catholics in Schools, no. 38.
104 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1731.
105 Ibid.
107 Ibid., no. 152c.
108 Ibid., nos. 145, 159.
109 Ibid., no. 167
111 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 110, The Catholic School, no.26, The Religious
Dimension, no. 101.

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educational institution becomes “a place of integral formation by means of a

systematic and critical assimilation of culture”. It “must constantly raise
questions about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ and the ‘what’ of the surrounding
world”. Such questioning “will lead to integral human development in the
formation process”, and ultimately to the liberation of the individual.112
Goal 4: Building a Civilisation of Love through personal and cultural

transformation
Just as Christ’s mission on earth was to inaugurate the reign of God through
loving service and generous self-giving. Likewise, all those involved in Catholic
education “are called to build a civilisation of love in which justice, truth,
compassion and peace inform the society in which we live”.113 By enriching
culture through this form of citizenship they become a leaven for this world as
well as preparing themselves for the next.114
This concern and respect for the ‘other’ proceeds by way of respect for the
principle that “everyone should look upon [their] neighbour (without any
exception) as ‘another self’”.115 It is because the good of each individual is
inextricably linked to the good of the other that the Church speaks consistently
and regularly of ‘the common good’.116 ‘Common good’ is to be understood as

113 Ibid.
115 Gaudium et Spes, no. 27.
116 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1905. “In keeping with the social nature of
man”, the Catechism teaches, “the good of each individual is necessarily related to the
common good”. Ibid., no.1911. Pope John Paul II teaches that “Catholic schools
provide an incalculable service to the common good” because they strive to bring forth
“a full person” in whom “moral excellence is no less developed than are theoretical or
productive abilities”. Pope John Paul II, Address to the bishops of England’s Liverpool
Province, March 26 1992, quoted in L’Osservatore Romano, April 1, 1992, 5. See also
Gaudium et Spes, no. 26.

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“the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as
individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”.117 This
common good is best served when the human rights of all are respected and
upheld. For the Church the inherent dignity of the human person “is the
presupposition of any and all rights”.118 But to defend the dignity of the human
person, one must first know what it means to be a true human in the world. To
this end, a sound Christian anthropology needs to be nurtured; it has to be an
anthropology which builds a solid understanding of the human person, and
which fosters humanity, compassion and a sense of solidarity.119
Such a vision for Catholic education is, as Miller argues, a “supernatural vision”
for human society as it is firmly rooted in this world and the next.120 It is an
orientation which engages the faithful in “transforming culture in the light of
the Gospel”121 and so fosters a vision of society that is “animated by
communion and community”.122
For the person who experiences liberation at a personal and spiritual level, the
natural impulse is to desire that same quality of liberation and growth for
others. The gospel orients the individual towards others. The Church articulates
this connection by teaching that “values must lead to action … that is in accord
with the will of God”.123
If Catholic graduates can translate their values into action and come to
understand and receive their neighbour especially if they are disadvantaged in
117 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no.1906.

118 Avery Robert Dulles, The Splendor of Faith: The Theological Vision of Pope John Paul II,
Rev. and updated ed. (New York: Crossroad, 2003), 147.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid. See also, Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 43.

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any way, they become “the saving leaven of the human family”.124
Goal 5: Fashioning a Society of Justice and Peace
The Church then, considers the inequalities and injustices of our world to be a
scandal, and action to counteract the injustice to be a constituent part of its
mission.125 It also argues that the poor of this world should occupy the mind and
heart of every Christian. This is part of a “constant tradition”.126 The Church
urges all the faithful to embody solidarity and identification with the
marginalised. It believes that all forms of socio-economic problems “can be
resolved only with the help of all the forms of solidarity: solidarity of the poor
among themselves, between rich and poor, of workers among themselves”.127
Importantly, the Church teaches that this solidarity is not a matter of charitable
giving but a matter of justice. “The demands of justice”, it teaches, “must be
satisfied first of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a
gift of charity”.128 But the “evil mechanisms” and “structures of sin” can only be
overcome if the powerful and those with the financial and cultural capital
exercise “the Christian solidarity to which the Church calls us and which [the
Church] tirelessly promotes”.129
Thus, the education offered by Catholic institutions is to be an education for
124 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1932, The Religious Dimension, no. 100,
Gravissimum Educationis, nos. 3, 8, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 47.
125 Gaudium et Spes, no.29, On the Threshold, no. 5.
126 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2444. For a comprehensive collation of
Church’s extensive teaching on social justice see the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of
the Church. See also, Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social
Teaching (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), David J. O'Brien and Thomas A. Shannon,
Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992).
127 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1941, also Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 40.
128 Cathechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2446.
129 Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 40.

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service to others especially those who are disadvantaged in any way. This
indeed is what makes Catholic education distinctive, and counter-cultural.130
The Church’s view of power and material possessions is also informed by this
view of service: “Education is not given for the purpose of gaining power”, the
Church teaches, but as an aid towards a fuller understanding of, and
communion with others. Furthermore knowledge and power “is not to be
considered as a means of material prosperity and success, but as a call to serve
and to be responsible for others”.131 This is the particular “take” on reality that
should animate all Catholic schools according to current secretary for the
Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education.132
This too is the particular “take” of this thesis. It represents an engagement in a

discernment process to determine how these goals can be brought to life and
concretised in the contemporary Catholic school.
Discernment, the goals, and the Catholic School
It is clear from the foregoing that the Catholic Church has set very high and
challenging goals for itself. The only means of making these goals become a
reality in the Catholic school however, is for every local school community to
enter into a process of discernment. In this sense discernment and the goals
must be hand in glove; the goals always acting as a reference point in the
discernment process.
Discerning the goals into life
It follows from what has been presented that if the Catholic school is to be “the
heart of the Church”,133 then discernment will have to be the essential heart of

133 On the Threshold, no. 11.

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43
everyday decision making in the school. It acts as a vital bulwark against

misguided or illusory thought and action and enlightens the community to its
true mission in its local and global context. It is the only sure means by which
the negative potential of the delusory tendencies which are inherent in human
nature can be placed under God’s care so that the school community can
become oriented towards self-understanding and union with God.
Through such a communal commitment to an intimate encounter with God, the

school community is empowered to develop the detachment and freedom to
discern the inner principles of all material things, so that their collective
motivation coheres with that of Christ.134
The discerning school community will seek to design a formative process that
aims to produce saints. It seeks to form staff and students into mature adults
who know themselves and understand how to interrogate not only their
internal landscape, but their socio-political and cultural world as well. They will
allow themselves to be “questioned, judged, stripped naked and left speechless
by that which lies at the centre of their faith”.135 If each member of the school
community is willing to genuinely face critical questions and issues in an
informed honest and open manner, and communicate the fruit of their thinking
with kindness and integrity, then they can be confident that they are following
the guidance of the Spirit. So whatever course of action they choose to pursue
as a school community will be in conformity with the will of God.
If such a quality of discernment is to occur in the school, the cultivation and

nurture of a certain ambience or atmosphere is essential. Silence has to be a key
element of this ambience. Silence as understood here, is not an absence of
134 John of the Cross quoted in Ron Rolheiser, “On Healthy, Constructive Criticism”,
http://www.ronrolheiser.com (Accessed 22 April 2008).
135 Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New
Testament to St. John of the Cross (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications,
1991), 1.

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44
speech, but rather “an infinite dialogue beyond the opposition of speech and
silence”.136 Through this dialogue with the Transcendent, oneself and the wider
community “the living building blocks out of which the kingdom of God grows
are prepared”.137 The attentiveness and attunement that are developed through
this silent contemplation enable and facilitate learning and growth.138
Ultimately, this form of collective recollection leads the community to live the
goals of Catholic education into life; they are an experienced reality, not just a
vision.
The remaining chapters are designed to demonstrate the art of discernment in

action. It will be argued that Freire’s conscientisation method represents an
effort to discern the false illusions that underpin contemporary educational
philosophy and practice and his plan for bringing back into conformity with
spirit of truth and freedom will be unveiled. This discernment process
continues through Chapters’ Three and Four through a series of dialogical
encounters which are designed to model the experience of discernment, then,
Chapter Five will engage in a discernment process that seeks to articulate the
most pressing issues that need to be addressed by Catholic educators in the
contemporary world. Every aspect of school life, from the environment - to
school organisation - to curriculum - to pedagogical methods, will be
interrogated. All the while the goals of Catholic education, which have been
outlined here, will act as a reference point.
136 McIntosh, Mystical Theology, 111.

137 Edith Stein, ‘The Prayer of the Church’ in The Hidden Life: Hagiographic Essays,
Meditations, spiritual Texts. The collected works of Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta
of the Cross, vol. 4, Washington: ICS Publications, 1992, p. 12. Quoted in McIntosh,
Mystical Theology, 231.
138 This issue of the importance of silence in the Catholic school will be revisited in
Chapter Five.

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Chapter Two: Setting the foundations for a

revitalised vision for Education that is the Practice
of Freedom: An examination of Freire’s Dialogue
with the ‘Other’.
Introduction
Paulo Freire grew up in Brazil, a country where dire poverty was, and still is, an
all-pervasive reality. At an early age he experienced the devastating physical,
emotional and psychological effects of poverty, and it was this traumatic
experience that led him to work closely with the poor in young adulthood.
Reflection on this experience coupled with his academic research and studies
were the primary forces that fashioned his unique vision of education as the
practice of freedom.139 Freire never tired of emphasising the inextricability of theory
and practice. His vision grew out of a discerning reflection of his experiences.
His educational theory is rooted in an ongoing dialectic between his first hand
experiences and the theory that is generated by reflection on those experiences.
This intimate dialogue is a constant in all his writings.
It is vital to stress from the outset that even if Freire’s fame as an educator stems
from a single publication (Pedagogy of the Oppressed),140 the integrity of his entire
139 For a detailed presentation of his childhood experiences and the dominant
intellectual influences on Freire’s thought see Appendix 1a (personal experiences) and
Appendix 1b (intellectual influences).
140 A brief review of critical works on Freire reveals this tendency to focus almost
exclusively on his early works – in particular, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. For a

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46
corpus has to be honoured if his thought is to be properly apprehended.141

Freire's thinking on dialogical education for freedom was evolving right up to
his death. In his later writings (particularly in the 1990s), Freire demonstrates an
awareness of some of the limitations of his early works – many subtle shifts in
position, many clarifications, and many fresh perspectives on established
insights can be observed. For example, when the style, tone and content of
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1971), is compared or contrasted with that of Pedagogy
of Hope (1994), one notices a number of developments in Freire’s perspective. In
Pedagogy of Hope the binary opposition between the oppressed and oppressor is
absent. While the fundamental analysis is constant, his language is less
iconoclastic and polemical, the revolutionary rhetoric more tempered, and the
binary oppositions less pronounced.
Following a brief overview of the factors which conspired to fashion his unique
liberative vision, this chapter will present a detailed description and some
analysis of his theory of conscientisation. Conscientisation constitutes the very
foundation for his dialogical vision of education, so a detailed exposition of its
meaning will be necessary. After outlining his vision for education, some
implications for education and teaching methodology will be explored. The
chapter will then close with a brief discussion of Freire’s legacy as well as some
of the implications of his philosophy for a contemporary educational context. A
more detailed exploration of some the theological implications of his dialogical
vision as it relates to Catholic education will then be proposed and analysed in
greater detail in the dialogue with Thomas Merton in Chapter Three.
The Creative Power of Reflection on Experience
One of the striking features of all Freire’s writings is his sensitivity to the
discussion on this issue see Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 85.

141 Freire himself was critical of those who took a narrow approach to his work. See
Freire, The Politics of Education, 3. Also Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, 1, Elias,
Pedagogue of Liberation, 85.

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experience and context of the “other”, particularly those who are marginalised
and excluded. “Paulo groans with emotion and justified indignation”, his wife
recalled, “when he witnesses the way the dominant class … treats the millions of
others with contempt, condemning them to hunger, poverty, disease and
illiteracy”.142 As already alluded to, what opened his eyes and drove his passion
for justice was his own personal experience of poverty. It acted as the catalyst for
a personal transformation; a transformation in the whole way he was to perceive
the process of education. As a consequence of this transformation he made real
friends with the poor, an experience that was to have a profound impact on his
later philosophical outlook.143 The experiences he had as a child and young adult
deepened his conviction that a new way of educating was not only desirable, but
also possible if both poor and rich were to be emancipated from the oppressive
power of the existing social and political order.
From his earliest years, Freire was a person of dialogue; he was in dialogue with
his own experience, the experience of others, and his perceptions of the world
around him. This dialogue and openness led to the transformation of his
consciousness. Certainly, dialogue lies at the heart of Freire’s vision and
understanding of human learning; it comprises the core ingredient of his vision
and praxis, a process which, as will be argued later in this chapter, is essentially a
dialogue between practice (experience) and theory.
When speaking of his experience it is important to point out that Freire’s

intellectual pursuits and academic formation confirmed and expanded his
horizons. Freire’s vision for the educational process resulted from the integration
of what he learned from experience into what he learned as a scholar and vice
versa. An identification of some of the scholars who profoundly influenced his
educational theories proves instructive. In Freire one hears echoes of many
142Ana Maria Freire in Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Heart (New York: Continuum, 1997),
112.
143 Paulo Freire and Ira. Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming
Education (New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1987a), 28.

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influential thinkers who paved the way for his philosophy of education as the
practice of freedom. A comprehensive examination of Freire’s intellectual
influences is not possible within the boundaries of this study, however,
Appendix 1b presents a synthesis of his most identifiable influences. Freire’s
reading was so broad, his interests so diverse, that the task of identifying his
strongest theoretical influences is rendered immensely difficult.144 Freire himself
has acknowledged the contribution and influence of a broad range of scholars in
the formation of his philosophy. Taylor’s assessment is apt: Freire, he argues, is
“a syndicate of theories and insights”, and his particular genius lies in his ability
to construct out of many disparate ingredients a recipe that produces both a
philosophy and a practice of literacy and education.145
The one pivotal concept or idea that connects his experiences with his intellectual
formation is summed up by one word: dialogue. From his experiences and his
study of the fund of human learning he has gleaned the insight that if freedom is
to be found, each human must be given the agency to chart their own course to
freedom; such an enterprise can only be entered into in dialogue with other
human beings, with history, and with culture.
144 Elias observes that Freire was in touch with many disciplines therefore there are
many ways of classifying him: an educational philosopher, a philosopher of
knowledge, a social critic, a sociologist of knowledge, an adult educator, a theologian
of liberation, and a theorist of revolution. Elias concludes that he can be more
specifically described as a phenomenologist, and existentialist, a Christian, and a
Marxist. Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 31. For a detailed examination of those
intellectuals who have had a significant impact on Freire’s philosophy see,
“Contributions to the thought of Freire”, in Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, 93–119.
“Freire’s Eclecticism: Drinking from Many Wells”, in Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 31–
45.; “Backgrounds and Borrowings: A review of selected sources and influences” in
Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 34–51.

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The Construction of a Non-Dialogical Social and Political

World
Dialogue may be at the heart of Freire’s vision, but in Freire’s view, dialogue is
denied to large proportions of our global population. The liberation of the
individual, particularly those who are poor and oppressed – so that they can
become empowered to enter into dialogue – lies at the heart of Freire’s vision for
education. To comprehend his vision, his conception of education as the practice
of freedom needs to be contextualised through an analysis of his analysis of what
he perceived to be the non-dialogical social relations which existed in Brazil in
the nineteen sixties.
The Controlling Power of the Oppressor
“Humanisation”, Freire argues, is “the vocation” of the human person,146

However, he believes that this vocation is constantly negated and thwarted by
the “injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors”.147
The oppressor class,148 a small yet powerful elite, “oppress, exploit, and rape by
virtue of their power”.149 All structures are organised around their own “egoistic
interests”, an egoism which is “cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism ...
146 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 20. As already indicated “humanisation” is a term
Freire borrowed from Emmanuel Mounier. See ———, The Politics of Education.
(Chapter 9)
147 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 20.
148 Freire’s writings are sprinkled with copious references to the “the oppressors” and
“the oppressed.” See for example ———, The Politics of Education, 32, 50, Freire and
Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 121, Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 26–27,
Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 36, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 56-57, ———, Letters to Cristina,
41,47,97–98,180, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 95.

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and makes of the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism”.150 This, in his
view, is not genuine humanity but a myth that the oppressors create about
themselves. He calls this the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites; in fact,
what they actually do as a class is to foster selective “good deeds” while at the
same time they oppress the poor.151 Meanwhile, they get the oppressed classes to
accept the worldview of the elites and conform to it.152 They achieve this by
precluding any presentation of the world as a problem; they present the world
rather, as “a fixed entity”, something given and something to which the lower
classes, as mere spectators, must adapt.153 This, for Freire, is the most serious
feature of oppression; it removes the option of dialogue and thus the possibility
of freedom. The oppressors accomplish their non-dialogical oppressive task
through “well-organised propaganda and slogans”,154 via the mass
communication media.155 These are used as “instruments of dehumanisation” by
150 Ibid., 30. Here Freire uses the term humanitarianism in the pejorative sense intended
by Niebuhr. See Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1932), 87. Niebuhr’s definition denotes a disposition of condescension
and paternalism towards the poor.
151 For a list of the myths that are actively promoted by the oppressors see Freire,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 109–10.
152 ———, The Politics of Education, 21, ———, Letters to Cristina, 98.
153 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 109. Seeing the world “as a problem” becomes a
very important aspect of Freire’s conscientisation method. It is the reason why he sees
the need to “problematise” reality. See ‘conscientisation’ for an elaboration of
dimension of his thought.
154 Slogans, manipulation, propaganda and massification are words that appear
regularly in Freire’s writings. It is clear that he sees the manipulation of the masses as
an intentional, orchestrated effort on the part of the oppressors to keep the oppressed
in a state of ignorance and inactivity. See Ibid., 110, 16, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 187,
Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 173.
155 Freire stresses that it is not the media themselves which he criticises, “but the way
they are used”. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 110.

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the dominating forces.156 They do violence to the oppressed masses by reducing

them to the status of “things”.157 This is the essence of an anti-dialogical
approach to the human person. If the poor are not real people, then there is no
reason to enter into dialogue. If the poor are, in the oppressor’s view, “incapable,
uncultured, envious, dangerous and marginal”, they consequently cannot be
trusted with freedom.158
By stereotyping the poor in this way, the oppressor feels justified in meeting any
resistance on the part of the poor with domination, oppression and violence – all
carried out, ironically, in the name of freedom and stability. Thus, they can
condemn the violence of a strike by workers and can call upon the state in the
same breath to use violence in putting down the strike.159 Every attempt at
liberation of the poor appears to the rich as a threat, a restriction of their own
freedom.160 Oppression is always marked by an absence of dialogue and an
absence of freedom in the name of upholding freedom.
The Fate of the Oppressed: Silenced into Silence
The experience of the oppressed stands in sharp contrast to the experience of the
oppressors; the oppressed, according to Freire, tend to accept their fate in life
without question. Dialogue is a foreign concept to them. Indeed, in
predominantly Catholic Brazil, the oppressed have a tendency to accept their
state as being one that is “willed by God” – as if God were the creator of such
156 Freire quoted in Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 78–79, Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
44–45, Paulo Freire, “Conscientisation”, Cross Currents 24 (1974): 32–36.
157 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 34, 44, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 71.
158 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 36. Freire establishes the link between this perception of
the poor and Brazil’s history of colonisation – what he calls the “slavocratic” past. See
———, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 32, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 107.
159 Freire quoting Niebuhr in Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 51.
160 Freire in Alice F. Evans, Robert A. Evans, and William Bean Kennedy, Pedagogies for
the Non-Poor (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987), 219.

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disorder.161 As a result of this fatalistic acceptance, they do not question the

causes of their poverty, so they continue to be exploited in a state of docility and
resignation.162 These are people, who, according to Freire, have been prevented
from being because they do not perceive themselves as persons.163
The oppression they experience makes them angry. But instead of taking the
anger out on the oppressor they frequently take out their anger and oppression
on each other.164 In fact, often, Freire observes, the contempt for the coloniser “is
mixed with passionate attraction towards [them], and an overpowering
aspiration to be like them”.165
The oppressed internalise a deep feelings of unworthiness, or, what Freire calls
“self-depreciation”.166 Since they are treated as inferior beings they come to see
themselves as inferior beings.167 Almost never, according to Freire, do the poor
realise that they, too, “know things” they have learned in their relations with the
world and with other people.168 They see themselves, he asserts, “as less than
people”.169
The oppressed “as individuals and as a class” are also filled with a profound fear
– another barrier to dialogue. This fear “prevents them from struggling”.
Because they are vulnerable they have every reason to fear. They are dispensable
161Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 37.

162 Ibid., 40.
163 Ibid., 121.
164 Ibid., 22, 38.
165 Ibid., 38.
166 Ibid., 39.
167 Freire frequently recounts experiences where the poor put themselves down. See for
example Ibid., 104, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 45.
169 ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 57.

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and can be easily destroyed.170 It is difficult to find a dialogue partner when

people are full of fear and have no power. The oppressed become so
dehumanised they end up with what he calls “a submerged state of
consciousness”,171 and therefore belong to “a culture of silence”.172 They do not
see the world and their situation as it actually is, since they have internalised the
view the oppressors have assiduously promoted. It is in this sense that Freire
argues the oppressed “house” the oppressor’s mindset.173 It is as if the oppressors
are able to transfer their own world view to the oppressed without resistance or
question. This ensures that the oppressed are contained within a culture of
silence, and are therefore prevented from being.174 This culture of silence is the
antithesis of the culture of dialogue. The transformation of this ‘negative’
170 Ibid., 125.

171 ———, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 57.
172 Ibid. Culture of silence is a common Freirean term. For Freire, a culture of silence
predominates when the poor are reduced to silence because they are treated like non-
persons, whose “voice” or opinion simply does not matter. Their bodies carry out
orders from above, thinking is difficult, “speaking the word, forbidden”. Paulo Freire,
Cultural Action for Freedom (Ringwood, Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books Australia
Ltd, 1972), 30, 43.
173 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 98. Freire observes that even “when the colonialists
[oppressors] are driven out, when they physically leave the world of the colonised
[oppressed] people, they continue to inhabit their cultural and ideological world, they
still remain as a “shadow housed within the colonised people”. Paulo Freire and
Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation (Geneva: WCC
Publications, 1989), 95.
174 Freire, The Politics of Education, 32, 50. In his later writings Freire demonstrates that
he understands the reality to be complex and paradoxical and he recognises that the
“obedience” of the oppressed can in itself become an expression of a form of struggle.
The oppressed “can be full of rebellion amidst apparent accommodation”.
Paradoxically, they can “subvert” the oppressor’s authority by feigning assent; because
their assent ensures their survival. And if they can survive they may eventually
triumph. ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 107.

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situation was to become the bedrock of Freire's education as the practice of

freedom.
Injustice: The Inevitable Consequence of Lack of

Mutuality and Dialogue
As a consequence of contrasting formation and enculturation, the relationship

between the oppressed and the oppressor is dramatically imbalanced. Since the
oppressors “were born to know”,175 they have little consciousness of the need for
dialogue or transformation. Education in such a context is designed to
domesticate the oppressed so that they will accept “the word” of the
oppressor.176 This extensive power and freedom enjoyed by the rich elites177 “is
always in relation to the lack of liberty or freedom of the poor”,178 which is why
the approach of the elites is fundamentally “anti-dialogical”.179 It is little wonder
that Freire terms the type of education that occurs within such a structure,
"banking education".180 The only concern of banking education is to deposit a
self-serving mindset on the weaker party.
Another anti-dialogical strategy is that of “divide and rule”. The ruling class
must keep the oppressed divided in order to remain in power. Any attempt by
the oppressed to organise themselves is seen as dangerous and subversive and
pose a threat to the oppressor’s hegemony.181 Such “cultural invasion” always
serves the “necrophilic” ends of conquest – the oppressors are “the masters” and

176 Ibid., 101.
177 In Freire’s work the terms “rich elites”, “dominant elites”, “invader” and
“colonialist” can be used interchangeably with the term “oppressor”.
178 Freire in Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 219.
179 Freire in Ibid., 121.
180 For a summary of the main features of “Banking Education” see Appendix 3.
181 Freire in Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 111, 21.

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55
the poor are “the slaves”.182
There is an ironic contradiction however: since the oppressor is acting with a

certain violence, they too are dehumanised in the process.183 Paradoxically, the
only hope for the oppressor, Freire claims, lies with the oppressed: “Only the
oppressed can free the oppressor”, Freire asserts. Through the act of resistance
they offer the possibility of freedom to the oppressor.184 In adopting this view,
Freire links the fate of all human beings together. The wellbeing of the rich and
powerful is contingent upon the wellbeing of the poor. The oppressor needs to
enter into dialogue with the oppressed if they (the oppressors) are to experience
freedom.
It is against this backdrop of Freire’s social analysis that his dialogical vision for
education must be viewed. He believes that only the poor can liberate the world
from oppression; only their action can transform these fixed and dehumanising
relationships described above. As already indicated, the method by which this
transformation can take place has come to be known as conscientisation.
Conscientisation and Pedagogy: Freire’s Liberating Vision
For Freire, conscientisation185 is the method by which education is changed from

being an instrument of domination into education as an instrument of liberation.
By taking the role of agents, through the adoption of a permanent, critical
182 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 103. Freire borrows Fromm’s terminology and
analysis in describing the behaviour of the elites as “necrophilic”. See Erich Fromm,
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1977), 433–89.
183 Freire, Letters to Cristina, 180.
185 According to Freire, the term conscientisation emerged from a discussion group
within the Higher Institute of Brazilian Studies where it was popularised by Dom
Helder Camâra. See ———, “Conscientisation”, 23–24, Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation,
122.

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approach to reality, and, through struggle for their rights, the disempowered
“unveil”186 the myths that deceive them and that are the cause of the oppressive,
dehumanising structures which enslave them, they become “makers and
remakers” of their world by transforming their existential experience from one of
slavery to one of freedom.187
Conscientisation is a concept which has been widely misinterpreted. So much so

that Freire himself stopped using the term in 1974.188 It is somewhat ironic that a
method which was designed to be open and dialogical was often interpreted and
practiced in a narrow, anti-dialogical manner.189 Freire, therefore, stopped using
the term and tried to better clarify, what he intended to say of the conscientising
process, “thus diminishing the risks of an idealistic interpretation”.190
The most succinct definition of conscientisation is contained in an editor’s

footnote in Cultural Action for Freedom. Conscientisation is here defined as:
the process in which [human beings], not as recipients, but as

knowing subjects achieve a deepening awareness both of the
sociocultural reality which shapes their lives, and their capacity
to transform that reality through action upon it.191
Freire works on the premise that when marginalised people realise they are
186 See next section for a presentation of Freire’s interpretation of this term.
188 Daniel Schipani, Religious Education Encounters Liberation Theology (Birmingham, Ala:
Religious Education Press, 1988), Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 111.
189 “During the seventies” Freire claims, “people would speak or write about
conscientisation as if it were a magical pill to be applied in different doses with an eye
toward changing the world”. Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 111.
190 For a clear and detailed analysis of the misuses of the term see Schipani, Religious
Education Encounters Liberation Theology, 14. For Freire’s own analysis of the abuses of
the term see Freire, Kennedy, and Illich, “Pilgrims of the Obvious”, 13–18, Freire, The
Politics of Education, 124, 41, 70, 72.
191 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 51.

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oppressed (through entering into a serious dialogue with their culture and
context) they can become empowered to liberate themselves and so transform
their existential situation.192 In his view all human beings have the potential for
freedom and wholeness even if they are the “submerged” in a context of cultural
and political oppression.193 The oppressed become empowered to change their
situation once they can begin to reflect critically on “their own condition of
existence”.194 Only when they cease to see their situation as “a dense, enveloping
reality”, and instead see it as “an objective-problematic situation”, only then can
human beings “emerge from their submersion and acquire the ability to intervene
in reality as it is unveiled”.195 This “emergence” and “intervention” is
characteristic of conscientisation,196 which in turn is characteristic of his
dialogical vision for education as the practice of freedom.
Conscientisation, then, at its most fundamental level is a process of awakening,

whereby men and women, through cultural action, are empowered to move
beyond the constraints and limitations placed on them and affirm themselves as
conscious subjects who are capable of creating their own historical future. This
for Freire, is what constitutes true education.
192 ———, Conscientisation”, 25.

193 Ibid.: 41–42, ———, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 81, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 105, ——
—, The Politics of Education, 198.
194 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 81. Freire says, “knowledge begins with the
awareness of knowing little … and knowing that they know little, people are prepared
to know more”. Paulo Freire, Education: The Practice of Freedom (London,: Writers and
Readers Co-operative, 1976), 36,117.
196 Freire quotes a person from São Paulo who said “I want to learn to read and to write
so I can change the world”. To which Freire adds his own observation that that person
was someone “for whom to know quite correctly means to intervene in [their] reality”.
———, The Practice of Freedom, 50.

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Dialogue with Self, Community, and Social Context:

Freire’s Liberating Conscientisation
Freire, borrowing Erich Fromm’s terminology, describes his conscientising

education as “a kind of historico-cultural, political psychoanalysis”.197 This
psychoanalysis has a number of distinct elements all of which must be present in
order for the conscientisation to be authentic. When Freire speaks of literacy and
conscientisation he is referring to much more than the mechanical act of reading
and writing; literacy, is learning to read the world as well as the word. In
learning to read the world, a process of ‘unveiling’ has to take place. This
unveiling involves deepening the level of consciousness. This new consciousness
must be accompanied by a struggle for transformation; such action-oriented,
dialectical relationship between the theory and the practice is called ‘praxis’.
Praxis inevitably implies political involvement, and through this political action
in solidarity with others, society is transformed.
Each of these ideas is charged with a particular meaning and is central to

conscientisation as well as being pivotal to an accurate understanding of his
dialogical vision for education as the practice of freedom.
Unveiling the Reality of Context
There can be no conscientisation without the unveiling, the revelation, of

objective reality as the object of the cognition.198 To objectify reality the
individual has to learn to objectify their own experience, to “take distance” from
objects.199 Nevertheless, conscientisation cannot stop at the stage of revealing
197 ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 55, 105. Emphasis added.

198 Ibid., 102–03.
199 ———, Pedagogy of the City, 109, ———, The Politics of Education, 169. Similar to
Hegel, Freire, frequently asserts that human beings unlike other animals are the only

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reality. There must also be a dialectical unity with the practice of transformation
of reality.200
The Literacy of Dialogue with Context
It is clear that this approach to language development is concerned with much

more than merely learning vocabulary and grammar. For Freire reading the
word and reading the world are inextricably linked. “Starting from the reading
of the world that the learner brings to literacy programs (a social and class-
determined reading), the reading of the word sends the reader back to the
previous reading of the world, which is, in fact, a rereading”.201 Literacy in his
view is “a political, awareness-generating task”.202 It constitutes an unveiling “of
what remains hidden within us while we move about in the world” – the
unveiling of another reality.203
This is why, in his dialogical educational vision, those who wish to be

conscientised need to come to understand the class and culture they inhabit.
Everything should be understood: “words, phrases, expressions, characteristic
ways of speaking, of composing verses, of talking about the world”.204 In this
way they reveal their own world to themselves.205 As a consequence of this
creations which have the ability to objectify their own experience. See ———, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed, 96, ———, The Politics of Education, 169, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 102.
200 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 102–03. See also ———, The Politics of Education., p. 169
202 Ibid., 58–59. “One must not think”, states Freire elsewhere, “that learning to read
and write precedes conscientisation or vice-versa”. Conscientisation occurs
simultaneously with the literacy or post-literacy process”. ———, Cultural Action for
Freedom, 42. See also Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 16ff. The word and the world, he
insists, must be read “in dialectical solidarity”. Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 105.
203 Freire, The Politics of Education, 106–07.
204 Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 19. Also Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 114, ———,
Pedagogy of Hope, 106.

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approach, anyone who wishes to work with the people must first get to know
with them the reality which challenges them.206 Their lived experience and their
popular cultural knowledge is celebrated and used as a point of departure for
their learning.207 Freire is adamant that the oppressed have legitimate
knowledge. But this knowledge is delegitimised and denigrated by the
oppressors. They must discover and celebrate this knowledge, and it must
become the focus of their dialogue and their education.208
The dialogue of Praxis: Practice, Theory and Reflection
The notion of praxis is central to Freire’s conscientisation method. It is praxis that

empowers the individual to unveil the social realities and to read the world. The
terms practice, doing or performing offer the closest English translation from the
original Greek term praxis. However, these terms do not adequately
communicate a comprehensive, or indeed accurate, Freirean interpretation.
Praxis came into common usage via Aristotle who categorised it as one of the
three general patterns of specifically human activity.209 He defines praxis as
human activities or operations in which the good is intrinsic to the very
performance itself.210 Freire’s definition of praxis is firmly rooted in Aristotle’s
understanding, in that for true education to occur, there has to be a dialogue
between action and reflection. Praxis is not just a matter of technique; it is a
doing, a performing.211
206 Ibid., 82.

207 ———, Pedagogy of the City, 110.
208 Ibid.
209 He categorised the three patterns of human activity as follows: the theoretic (theoria),
the practical (praxis), and the productive (poiesis).Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
(Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980), Book VI. 5, ———, The Politics, trans. T.A.
Sinclair (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1981), Book VII. 3.
210 See Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI. 5.
211 See ———, The Politics, Book VII. 1–3.

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Freire calls attention to the Aristotelian distinction between technique and praxis
in order to indicate how, for example, cultural circles are ‘a good’ in themselves.
Sharing and learning together through dialogue is not only meant for some
means-to-an-end purpose. It is praxis. It is also education. The good is intrinsic to
the very activity itself so transformative learning arises out of dialogical
engagement within the group in the cultural circle.212 Praxis is the critical
relationship between theory and practice whereby each is dialectically
influenced and transformed by the other. This dialectical transformation entails
for Freire, as it did for Marx, a struggle to transform the social and political
structures that keep the oppressed in a submerged state.213 Praxis will lead
teachers and learners to engage in analysing the social and political realities that
contribute to their dehumanising reality. They will “denounce” the injustice of
the situation while at the same time they “announce” the transformation of
reality in the name of the liberation of human beings. For this reason praxis is an
activity that is “full of risk”.214
Freire’s Praxis: A Transformative Power
It can be concluded with certainty that according to Freire's perspective if

education is to be the practice of freedom it must lead to critical reflection which
leads to transformation of the world. This praxis is “action and language” which
defines the horizon of meanings within which further action takes place”.215 If
there is to be a shift in consciousness, then ongoing action aimed at changing the
social reality has to be integral to this process.216 Freire’s vision of praxis is not
mere activity or activism but consists in action and reflection. There is “a unity
between practice and theory in which both are constructed, shaped, and
212 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 127–28.

213 For a succinct presentation of Marx’s understanding of praxis see Clodovis Boff,
Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), 6.
214 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 40–41.
215 Ibid., 9.
216 Paulo Freire, “Converstion with Paulo Freire”, Religious Education 79 (1984): 514.

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reshaped in constant movement from practice to theory, then back to a new

practice”.217 Freire declares that “reflection is only real when it sends us back to
the given situation within which we act”.218 Freire’s praxis is ultimately a form of
internal dialogue that leads to Transformation of the world.219 Freire sees this
action for transformation, as being the “ontological vocation” of persons; that is,
the very being or essential function of the human person is to be an active
participant in the world, not merely a passive object.220
For this reason praxis is essential to his dialogical vision for education as the
practice of freedom. If “one cannot change consciousness outside of praxis” 221 then
praxis becomes essential to the education process. It is praxis that leads to critical
approach to growth and learning, one which “problematises” 222 all reality and
questions what is taken as ‘given’. Through this dialogical questioning process
students become shapers of history as opposed to being victims of history. Praxis
is not only the aim of Freire’s dialogical theory of education as the practice of
freedom, it is its very foundation.
Moving Through Levels of Consciousness: An Internal Dialogue
Praxis brings about a deepening of consciousness; it changes one’s perception of

the facts through a critical analysis of them.223 An oppressed person may be
217 Freire, The Politics of Education, 124. This kind of critical reflection involves the
coming together of theory and practice to produce something different from each. See
———, Letters to Cristina, 108, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 94.
218Freire, The Politics of Education, 124.
219 ———, “Conscientisation”, 25. Also ———, The Politics of Education, 106–07, 69.
220 Freire, Kennedy, and Illich, “Pilgrims of the Obvious”, 15.
222 This is another favourite Freirean term. When an individual “problematises” a
situation they do not accept it as a “given”. They pose questions about it and can
perceive alternatives. ———, Cultural Action for Freedom, 9.
223 ———, Letters to Cristina, 182.

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conscious that they are poor and hungry, but it is only through critical reflection
on their own existential situation, which results from conscientisation that the
oppressed person becomes aware that he/she is, in fact, oppressed. Thus
conscientisation represents a dialogue or conversation with one’s own
consciousness; freedom comes through processing the significance of what is
observed.
Freire identifies three levels, or stages of consciousness that one has to progress
through, if freedom is to be experienced. The first level of consciousness is what
Freire calls a semi-intransitive consciousness. This is typical of a closed society
where a culture of silence predominates. The people are so preoccupied with
meeting their most elementary needs they are impervious to problems and
challenges beyond their immediate existential situation. It is a mode of
consciousness which cannot problematise the social and political context.224
Those who are trapped at this level tend to be fatalistic and docile, taking the
facts of the sociocultural situation as beyond their control.
The next stage is what he calls naïve-transitive consciousness. This occurs when
“the first movements of emergence of the hitherto submerged and silent masses
begin to manifest themselves”.225 It marks the beginning of dialogue where
serious questioning of the life situation begins, albeit at a naïve and primitive
level. However, it still remains a consciousness that is easily seduced by
massification.226
The highest level of consciousness is what Freire calls critical transitivity. This
critical consciousness is marked by an intentionality in the problematisation of
reality as well as an impulse to transform reality through praxis.227 At this level
the capacity “to observe curiously, inquiringly, the world around us,
224 ———, The Politics of Education, 75, ———, Cultural Action for Freedom, 62.
225 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 64, ———, The Politics of Education, 77.
226 Freire, The Politics of Education, 79, ———, Cultural Action for Freedom, 65.

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contemplating it”, is developed.228 There is a marked increase in self-confidence

in discussion, receptiveness to other ideas, and willingness to scrutinise one’s
own thoughts and see proper causal and circumstantial correlations between
events.229
According to Freire's perception, if there is to be movement from stage one

through to stage three then, this movement would have to be planned. The
teaching of literacy was to be at the heart of this plan for conscientisation; but
literacy, as we have already highlighted, was for Freire, to be much more than
simply learning to read and write.
A Critical Consciousness from a Critical Literacy
If conscientisation is about reading the world and reading the word, then the way
in which the word is read is of critical import. Literacy was not, in Freire's view
to be looked at a “mechanistic activity” but a process of “awakening
consciousness”.230 Conscientisation and literacy go hand in hand. In order to
facilitate the movement from naïve to critical transitivity, Freire proposes the
development of an active, dialogical, critical literacy method using what he
called “generative words” and the technique of “codification”.
Generative words231
Freire insists that the words to be studied should come from the people; they
228 ———, Pedagogy of the City, 107–08.

229 See Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 127.
230 Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, edits., The Paulo Freire Reader (New York:
Continuum, 1998), 81.
231 They were termed “generative” because their syllabic elements offer, through re-
combination, the creation of new words. Paulo Freire, Education for Critical
Consciousness (London: Sheed and Ward, 1973), 49. For the full list of the seventeen
generative words and the way in which they can be discussed see Freire, Critical
Consciousness, 82–84. See also ———, Cultural Action for Freedom, 39.

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should speak their own words, and not have words imposed on them from the
outside.232 Through mastery of new generative words the learners expand both
their vocabulary and their capacity for expression by the development of their
creative imagination.233 Each generative word is associated with a nucleus of
questions which are both existential (questions about life) and political
(questions about the social factors which determined the conditions of life).234
For example, for the generative word government, the following generative
themes could be discussed: political plans, political power, the role of the
government in social organisation, the democratic participation of the people.235
The centrality of this approach to his dialogical vision for education as the practice
of freedom is clear; Freire is always concerned with the social, political and
economic implications and meanings of particular terms and concepts.
Codification and Decodification236
Codification refers to the pictorial representation of typical existential situations

of the group with which one is working. For example, the word favela – slum, is
printed with the picture of a slum in the background.237 The group will then
enter into an extended dialogue about life in the slum and the relationship
between the word favela and the reality it signifies. These codifications are not
simply aids in the teaching process, they are at the heart of Freire’s method since
they initiate and stimulate the process of critical thinking.238
232 They are to be the words which are “most weighted with existential meaning,
typical sayings”, as well as words which link to the experience of the groups. Freire,
Critical Consciousness, 49.
233 ———, Cultural Action for Freedom, 42, Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 19.
235 Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 20.
236 Freire, Critical Consciousness, 44–45.
237 See Ibid., 61ff. There all ten codifications are reproduced.
238 For a succinct yet detailed description of this process See Elias, Pedagogue of

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Decodification refers to a process of description and interpretation, whether of

printed words, pictures or other “codifications”.239 This process can be very
confronting and traumatic since it involves reaching an acknowledgement of the
harsh realities of the circumstances within which each member of the group
lives.240 Such an engagement, Freire concludes, represents “painful childbirth”,
and the person who emerges through this activity becomes “a new person”.241
The dialogical activities demand the courage to question the myths they live by;
the myths that deceive them and perpetuate the dominating structure. They have
to leave behind former perceptions; ways of seeing which they have taken for
granted as being “true”.242 Since this journey is very painful, Freire argues that it
is possible only in a context of dialogue and mutual trust and respect on the part
of the teacher or facilitator; it requires “a horizontal relationship between
persons”.243 There has to be “authentic dialogue between learners and educators
as equally knowing subjects”. It is only in this context of mutual trust and regard
that the learner can “gradually, hesitatingly and timorously place in doubt the
opinion they held of reality and replace it with a more and more critical
knowledge”.244
Liberation, 20–22.
239 Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 32. Also Paulo Freire, Pedagogy in Process: The
Letters to Guinea-Bissau (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), 93–95. For a “definition”
of codification and decodification see Reading Paulo Freire Gadotti, Reading Paulo
Freire, 165. For an extended explanation of a practical application of this process see
Freire, Pedagogy in Process, 87–95.
240 In an interview with Carlos Torres, Freire offers an example of the codification and
decodification at work. See Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 113.
242 Freire offers an excellent example of this difficulty by recounting his experiences in a
New York ghetto in Ibid., 126. See also ———, The Politics of Education, 16.
243 Freire, Critical Consciousness, 45, Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 18, Freire, Cultural
Action for Freedom, 31.

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Conscientisation: A Historico-Cultural, Political

Psychoanalytic Process
The power to intervene in one’s own history is the most distinguishing feature of
conscientisation. Human consciousness has the all important capacity to
recognise that it is conditioned, and it is this capacity, according to Freire, that
enables human beings to transform their own existence and ultimately, the
world.245 Freire believes that as each individual, including one who is
“considered ignorant and incapable of learning”, becomes conscientised the
whole of reality is transformed. Such “language of possibility” is an essential
ingredient to Freire’s conscientising praxis.246 For Freire the future is not preset
and is fashioned by the way we change the present circumstances. It is by
“changing the present that we build the future; therefore, history is possibility,
not determinism”.247 It is this hope-filled vision of the possibility of
transformation both for the individual and society which permeates and typifies
all Freire’s writings on conscientisation. However, it is dialogue that lies at the
heart of this conscientising praxis.
Conscientisation involves meaningful dialogue with history, social context and

one’s own self; praxis represents the context for this meaningful dialogue. It is
only through engagement in such a process that the individual can become
conscientised. For this reason conscientisation can correctly be called a historico-
cultural, political psychoanalysis. It is a painful coming to birth of a new
consciousness, a profound affirmation that “history does not command us”,
instead, “history is made by us”.248 This is how history is “reinvented”. The poor
245 Ibid., 54.

246 This ‘language of possibility’ and hope is, according to Henry Giroux, one of Freire’s
greatest legacies. Henry Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals (New York: Bergin & Garvey,
1988), 110.
247 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 83–84.
248 ———, The Politics of Education, 199.

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are inspired to “emerge” from their alienating existence through coming to

understand the ‘why’ of things,249 which is why his literacy method does not
confine itself to learning to read the word but focuses on reading the world as
well.
Every dimension of conscientisation is concentrated on one end –

transformation: transformation from object to subject; from exploitation to
liberation; from powerlessness to empowerment; and, from slavery to self-
determination. Conscientisation constitutes a legitimate, just and intelligible
antidote to many of the forces which conspire to enslave individuals in
contemporary culture. As Freire himself says, if the oppressed people in any
context are to free themselves they will also need a theory of action.250
Conscientisation is just such a theory.
Once a theory is developed there has to be a structure through which it can be

implemented. Freire, being an educator, saw education as the vehicle for his
vision of conscientisation. But the educational structures would have to change
dramatically if they were to realise his vision of Education as the practice of
freedom.
Dialogical Education as the Practice of Freedom: The

Antidote to “Banking” Education
Potentially, after family, the most influential institution in the shaping of

consciousness and world view is the school; for this reason the oppressors,
according to Freire, make every effort to control the structure and content of
educational institutions so that they can reproduce the societal power structures
which benefit themselves at the expense of the poor and disempowered. Freire
offers a detailed analysis of the methods by which these oppressive forces
249 Ibid.

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reproduce this power and privilege.
Banking education: The Strategy of Social and Political

Reproduction
“It would be extremely naïve”, argues Freire, “to expect the dominant classes to
develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive
social injustices critically”.251 Freire maintains that the powerful ensure that a
critical stance is not taken in educational institutions as such an approach to
content would undermine their own dominant position. So instead of a
liberating dialogical education, the powerful elites institute and maintain a
domesticating anti-dialogical one, whereby the rich educate themselves to
continue to be rich and they educate the poor to continue to be poor and to
accept their poverty as a normal and natural thing.252 In what he defines as a
“banking” educational structure, the elites define education and therefore decide
what knowledge is legitimate and what knowledge is not.253
For Freire, the most destructive aspect of this approach to education is its denial
or negation of the true aims of education, which ought to enable or empower the
individual, through dialogue, to think critically and independently. Banking
education trains the individual to think whatever the teacher tells them they
should think, thus thwarting the possibility of education, developing as a
process of inquiry, however, “apart from inquiry and apart from the praxis, the
human person cannot become truly human”.254 The more the students accept the
passive role allotted to them by banking education, “the more they tend to adapt

253 Freire outlines ten most distinctive features of this educational practice. See Freire,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 46–47. The contrast between Banking Education and
Liberating Education is summarised in table form in Appendix 3.
254 Ibid., 46.

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to the world as it is”,255 which serves the interests of the oppressors, “who care
neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed”.256 For this reason
social structures are never discussed as a problem that needs to be revealed. On
the contrary, structures are made obscure by different forms of organisation that
reinforce the learner’s “false consciousness”.257 In essence, this constitutes an
abuse of power.
Power, Politics and Education as the Practice of Unfreedom
It is impossible, in Freire’s view, “to think about education without thinking

about power”.258 Countering those who would claim that education should not
be connected with politics, Freire is adamant that education is inextricably linked
to politics and power. Education is always political, it cannot possibly be
neutral.259 This, in turn connects education with social class, as social class
structure will determine the type and quality of education that is received. In
Freire’s view the further down the social scale one goes, the more dialogue is
suppressed and the less students, parents, teachers, and grassroots movements
are allowed to participate in the discussion about curriculum design. Those at
the top, who organise and manage the system, assume the privilege of making
the judgments about the nature of knowledge, curriculum content, classroom
relationships. Their decisions invariably reflect their own values and the
interests.260
This is a pivotal Freirean insight. He argues that the content of what is taught
will determine the outcome for the student. According to his banking theory, if
255 Ibid., 47.

256 Ibid.
257 ———, The Politics of Education, 101–02.
258 Freire quoted in Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 226. Freire
quoted in Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 78.
260 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 31.

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students are indoctrinated into the belief that the knowledge they are being
given is the “correct” knowledge, the most important and valuable content, then
they will leave school believing in, and living, according to the dictates of this
body of knowledge. But this body of knowledge is, in a very real sense “flawed”
as it is always designed to defend the status quo. Those who design the
educational structure and content have the power and they superimpose their
language, their understanding of reality, their values. They make their view the
normative view.261 It can legitimately be claimed by Freire therefore, that
dominant (traditional) educational theory suppresses important questions
regarding knowledge, power, domination and social class. In essence to be
educated in powerful class circles is to learn the language of power and
domination; to be educated in the powerless class circles is to learn the language
of inferiority and subjugation.262
Freire “denounces” this exploitation and continuing submersion and oppression

of subordinate classes through authoritarian banking education and
“announces” the possibility of a new social reality which will be built on what he
calls a pedagogy of indignation.263 Freire encourages subjugated groups to abandon
apathy and conformity, and instead see themselves as the makers of culture, who,
as free human beings can struggle to recreate and reinvent political and economic
structures and thus transform the social reality so that a new vision for education
261 Freire’s analysis is fundamentally congruous with Marx who argued that “the ruling
ideas of any society [become] the ideas of the ruling class”. Karl Marx, Friedrich
Engels, and Samuel Moore, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow: Progress 1952),
40. Aronowitz offers a succinct summation of Freire’s perspective when he argues that
“ideas such as freedom and equality are far from the objectives of school authorities
who are, perhaps unwittingly clerks not only of the state, but also of the class that
dominates it”. Stanley Aronowitz and Henry A. Giroux, Education under Siege: The
Conservative, Liberal and Radical Debate over Schooling (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1985), 6.
262 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 41, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 74.

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can emerge.
It is not surprising therefore, that the most important and most valuable learning
that can be undertaken by the oppressed classes, according to Freire's conception
of education, is “to know how our society functions”,264 by learning “the
dialectical interrelations of language, ideology, social classes, and education”.265
In undertaking such learning the dominated classes would learn to struggle for
power and fight for the reinvention of power.266 Such an education is an
education which is the practice of freedom.
Dialogical Education that is The Practice of Freedom
“Traditional banking models of education enslave the individual; a liberating

model of education empowers the individual to take control of their own
destiny, leading them to freedom”.267 This statement represents both a
denunciation and an annunciation; it identifies what has gone wrong, but offers
a new possibility. In Freire’s view, our conventional educational structures
alienate teachers and students, and “one does not liberate [human beings] by
alienating them”.268
The core element in his theory of education as the practice of freedom is to make
the very content and process of education itself into a problem,269 a problem
which has to be the focus of intense dialogue, to be wrestled with and critically
examined by every human being. Freire operates on the assumption that each
person’s ontological vocation is to be a subject who acts upon and transforms
their world, and in so doing move towards the possibility of a richer life

265 Ibid.
268 Ibid., 52.
269 Ibid., 56ff.

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individually and collectively.270
Every human being can become conscious of their own perception of that reality,
and deal critically with it. It is this conscientisation process which lies at the heart
of his vision for education as the practice of freedom. If the poor are to emancipate
themselves from the situation of oppression, “they must first critically recognise
its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation –
one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity”.271 The thousand-
mile journey to freedom begins with one step; it begins the moment one adopts a
critical approach to one’s own learning – “freedom has already begun once the
struggle begins”.272
The Dialogical Path of the Praxis of Freedom: Awareness,

Problematisation and Learning to Question
Nothing about the educational context, in Freire’s view, should be accepted as

given – everything should be problematised: the teacher’s opinion, the “facts” in
a text book, the choice of content for the text book itself, all need to come under
the critical scrutiny of the learner. Studying a text, he argues, requires an analysis
of the one who wrote it. In this way it becomes a form of “reinventing, re–
creating and rewriting”.273 The important point for Freire is that underpinning
ideologies have to be named and the learner has to learn to do this through
intentional decision. The asking of key questions provides the key to naming
ideology. By asking questions the individual uncovers the ideological stance
which lies behind the ‘knowledge’ or ‘perspective’, which the individual is being
asked to accept as ‘truth’.
It is not difficult to see that if teacher and students enter into dialogue about
270 Ibid., 12.

271 Ibid., 24.

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targeted questions together, pedagogy becomes transformed into a highly

challenging political activity. In this context, the student is not the only learner;
the teacher too becomes aware that they embody certain beliefs and practices
which strongly influence how they perceive and structure educational
experiences for the students. The teacher chooses to challenge their own
thoughts and perspectives; they question the historical and social nature of their
own views and philosophies, and they realise that these views are very much
shaped by their own experience of education as well as the particular social class
they were born into.274 This active engagement on the part of student and
teacher is full of possibility in Freire’s view and can lead to transformation, not
only of the individual, but also of the community or group that engages in it.
This liberating praxis confronts prevailing notions of “how things are done” in
education. In doing so, the locus of power shifts away from the exclusive
preserve of those in control to all those involved in the learning activity. This
means that all those involved have to engage in a paradigm shift in the way they
perceive the exercise of power and authority. Freire terms this shift as a
“reinvention of power”.275 This new kind of power “does not fear to be called
into question and does not become rigid for the sake of defending the freedom
already achieved”.276 The primary characteristic of Freire’s new conception of
power is its insistence on working with and by the students instead of on behalf of
the students.277 Education like power has to be “rediscovered”.278 The method
and the means by which this new vision is to be realised can be summed up in
one word: dialogue.
274 Freire quoted in Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 225.
275 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 69, Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies
for the Non-Poor, 229.
277 Ibid.
278 Ibid., 77.

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A School Culture Permeated by Dialogue
The relationship between the educator and the learner is a subject to which
Freire returns again and again in his writings. For Freire, relationship is the key
element in his theory of liberating education. The lifeblood of this relationship, is
dialogue. Freire describes dialogue as his “methodology”.279 Dialogue in a
Freirean sense is not simply a matter of discussion and debate; neither is it
simply a congenial exchange of ideas. For Freire the ability to speak and be heard
are of fundamental importance to human dignity. Dialogue is the medium
through which the individual becomes conscientised, it is therefore a
provocative, political, transformative act. It is oriented towards change in the
individual and in social structures, so that a new way of perceiving both personal
and social reality is born.
Freire’s work constitutes an appeal to all people in all communities, to cast their
whole lives as dialogue. A dialogical approach to life is focused on “the
encounter between [human beings], mediated by the world, in order to name the
world”.280 It is an activity whereby the intrinsic dignity and humanity of each
human being is taken seriously. It is, therefore, an activity of equals,281 a
279 A succinct overview of Freire’s “Dialogic Pedagogy” can be found in Gadotti,

Reading Paulo Freire, 50ff. For Freire’s own extended reflection own reflections on
dialogue, see Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 97–115, Freire, The Politics of
Education, 54. A testimony to Freire’s own commitment to dialogue is the number of
books he has published which take the form of dialogues between Freire himself and
other emancipatory educators. See Ira Shor and Paulo Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation
(New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1987), Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, Freire,
Pedagogy of the City. In a large number of publications Freire can be found in dialogue
with a range of influential progressive educators such as Jonathan Kozol, Martin
Carnoy, Carlos Alberto Torres, Stanley Aronowitz, Michael Apple, Donaldo Macedo,
Ira Shor, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux and bell hooks.
281 The foundation for Freire’s vision is best illuminated by reference to Martin Buber’s

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“horizontal relationship”, the antithesis of a “banking relationship”. It is neither

a hostile or polemical activity but is uncompromising in its search for the truth.
Just as love is an existential necessity, so also is dialogue.282 In fact dialogue for

Freire is a creative act of love. Dialogue “cannot exist”, Freire insists, in the
absence of a profound love for the world and for other human beings.283 It is an
activity which is fundamentally relational before it is agenda-based or
programmatic; it seeks harmony, not domination.284 Since it is fundamentally
relational it encourages each individual to be truly present to the other. It
thereby fosters an awareness of interconnectedness and interdependence, which
in turn generates a sensitivity to a collective responsibility for the harmony and
unity of the whole human race. This, according to Freire, inevitably leads to
dialogue with those who are normally ignored and treated as inferiors; in
dialogue they are treated as equals and given the dignity their personhood
entitles them to. This is an act that requires humility on the part of all those who
take part in the dialogue.285 According to Freire this approach to human
relationships and communication is a profound expression of hope – as long as
people fight for their dignity, there is hope.286
In this, the link is established between conscientisation, praxis, political action

and dialogue. Dialogue presupposes a critical approach to social and political
major work I and Thou. In this work Buber drew a fundamental distinction between
two categories of relations. I-Thou relations, which are personal, and I-It relations,
which are impersonal. See Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1970).
282 For Freire, “dialogue is part of human nature. Human beings are constructed
through dialogue as they are essentially communicative”. Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire,
29.
284 Ibid.
285 Ibid., 63.
286 Ibid., 64.

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reality.287 In dialogue the group will share their critical reflections on their
present action. “Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of
generating critical thinking”, he argues, “without dialogue there is no
communication, and without communication there can be no true education”.288
There is an essential connection between dialogue and poverty, within Freire’s

conceptual framework. To put it negatively, dialogue is not occurring if the
existential experience of the poor is not listened to, or honoured, or acted upon.
Positively, the dialogical person is committed to the cause of liberation of the
poor and oppressed, since, “only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it
possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible”.289 So
dialogue is about encounter with the poor, an encounter where the “naming of
the world” becomes the focus of all activity. If the powerful classes do not grant
the poorer classes their “their primordial right to speak their word”,290 by the
way in which they perceive them and treat them, then these powerful classes
cannot claim to be behaving in a dialogical manner. According to Freire’s vision,
to be people of dialogue we have to move out of our limited horizons, undo our
prejudices and embrace the world of those in our world who have been rendered
powerless and voiceless by historical and sociocultural circumstances.291 The
dialogical person “believes in” the vocation of each person, poor as well as
privileged, to be “more fully human” and “to create and transform” their
personal and social world.292 Dialogue “disconfirms” traditional discourse which
“confirms the dominant mass culture and the inherited, official shape of
287 Ibid., 64–65.

288 Ibid., 65.
289 Ibid., 62.
290 Ibid., 61.
291 “How can I enter into a dialogue”, Freire asks, “if I always project ignorance onto
others and never perceive my own?” Ibid., 63.
292 Ibid.

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knowledge”,293 and instead institutes a new set of relationships based on

democratic values whereby “the freedom of the participants to re-make their
culture” is confirmed.294
Dialogue and Context: Nurturing an Affinity with the Particularities of

Culture
Freire passionately believed that the particular view of the world held by the
people, above all those who are poor, needs to be respected and honoured.295
Failure to do so would involve one in “cultural invasion”.296 So the starting point
“for organising the programme content of education or political action must be
the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the
people”.297 According to Freire, anyone who wishes to work with the oppressed
ought to walk in their shoes. To impose a prescribed package of knowledge on
the poor is simply “alienated and alienating rhetoric”.298 A teacher who wishes
to bring authentic liberation must “come to know with them the reality which
challenges them”.299 This is what Freire calls “situated pedagogy”.300 In concrete
and practical terms, this means taking seriously the language, syntax and
semantics of “subordinate classes”.301 He observes that all too often, the
language and hegemonic culture “smash and belittle the language and culture of
293 Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 99.

294 Ibid.
295 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 68. For an extended reflection and dialogue
concerning the notion of respect for the culture of the poor see Freire and Faundez,
Learning to Question, 87–96, Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 135.
297 Ibid.
298 Ibid.
299 Quoting Maria Edy Ferreira Ibid., 82.

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the so-called minorities”.302 Linguistic discrimination, he argues “is a

preconception of sex, race, and class”.303 According to Freire, language
represents one of the important aspects in the process of democratisation of
societies. He is adamant that the language of the subordinate classes is just as
legitimate as the language of the dominant classes.304 Not only is the language
equally valid, so also is the culture of the subordinate classes. If the teacher is to
engage in genuine dialogue they must be willing to inhabit the cultural and
linguistic worldview of the students.305
Freire is proposing a pedagogy that starts from the knowledge the learner brings
to school, so that the learning becomes meaningful and relevant.306 But teachers
often have to change their mindset if they are to be able to teach in this way,
because, even teachers motivated by the desire to help “are strongly imbued
with the authoritarian ideology”, which “overestimates scientific knowledge and
advanced technology, and under-rates popular wisdom”.307 Freire has complete
trust in the oppressed and in their ability to reason. “Whoever lacks this trust”,
he argues, “will fail to bring about or will abandon dialogue, reflection and
communication, and will fall into using slogans, communiqués, monologues and
instructions”.308
Transformation of Classroom Dynamics Through Dialogue
From what has just been said, it follows that dialogue ought to transform the
dynamics of classroom relationships.309 Old models of teacher-student
302 Ibid.
303 Ibid.
304 Ibid.
309 For an example of Freire’s method of dialogical engagement see Appendix 2.

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relationships have to be abandoned in favour of a dialogical approach to

learning. But dialogue cannot be used as a “mere technique” to achieve better
results “nor a tactic to make friends or to conquer the pupils”. Such an approach
is manipulation, not dialogue.310 Transformation will not take place in such a
context.
The fundamental premise of Freire’s thinking on the teacher-student relationship

is that freedom cannot be taught in a context of subjugation. If the student is
made to feel “inferior” to the teacher, then liberating learning cannot take place.
One cannot teach the students to perceive themselves as equal if the teacher is
hierarchically separated from the students.311 The teacher is no longer the
independent, self-sufficient, all knowing ‘expert’, since “self-sufficiency is
incompatible with dialogue”.312 Relationships are now defined by a spirit of
mutual inquiry and mutual engagement with the subject matter.313 Even if the
teacher knows more than the student they relearn with the student each time the
content is studied.314
For Freire, dialogue is intimately connected to other dimensions of learning. For

genuine dialogue to exist, these dimensions are to be interconnected and
interdependent: critical thinking, democratic activity, curriculum structure and
the creation of an atmosphere of joyful learning are all essential prerequisites if
the educational context is to be genuinely dialogical.
A Curriculum that Fosters Dialogical Critical Thinking
Transformation becomes possible only if the content being studied is subjected to

critical scrutiny. “We dream”, Freire muses, “of a school system where, in
310 Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 29. Also Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 98.
312 Ibid., 63.
314 Ibid., 100.

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teaching necessarily the content, one teaches also how to think critically”.315
Critical thinking always focuses on the “reasons behind” the social context in
which the individual is immersed.316 This process of “unveiling” and
problematising” is the essence of dialogue. If students are to receive such a
dialogical democratic education, then the design and content of the curriculum
becomes particularly important. The curriculum will have to take shape in
dialogue with the context from which the learners emerge. Imposing a set
content, in Freire’s view, simply reinforces the oppression. The experiences and
worldview of the learners will play a central role in the shaping of curriculum
content. Indeed for Freire the entire community wherever the school is situated
should be consulted in the construction of curriculum.317 Interdisciplinary
dialogue is also a prerequisite. Freire envisages the cooperation of a variety of
disciplines such as physicists, mathematicians, psychologists, sociologists
political scientists, linguists, philosophers, artists, jurists and specialists in
sexuality, so that an appropriate and relevant curriculum can be constructed with
the learners.318 This, for Freire, is an education that is generative, revitalising and
empowering; it is an education that is the practice of freedom.319
Dialogue: A Formation in Democratic Sensibilities
It follows logically from what has been said above, that for Freire, there is an
essential link between dialogue and democracy. He sees anti-dialogical
education, as being fundamentally undemocratic as it is authoritarian and
“confirms the dominant mass culture and the inherited, official shape of
knowledge.”320 Liberatory dialogue, on the other hand, “is a democratic
communication which disconfirms domination and illuminates while affirming

316 Ibid., 24, ———, The Politics of Education, 2.
318 Ibid., 33, 38.
319 ———, The Practice of Freedom, 36, 117.

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the freedom of the participants to re-make their culture”.321 Liberation is a social

and communal act; it is “a social process of illumination”.322 When Freire became
Director of Education in São Paulo it was this democratic vision that drove his
policy making. He stated:
the public school we want to build is not an extension of the

bourgeois school to all, because we know that this bourgeois
school is elitist and, therefore, it cannot be extended to all. That
is why we talk about a progressive public school ... a school for
all, with participatory and democratic management.323
For Freire the struggle for dialogue, for critical thinking, for conscientisation, is a
struggle “against all forms of authoritarianism”,324 which stifle growth and foster
social inequality and injustice; such a struggle is a struggle for democracy.
The Joy of Dialogical Learning
A democratic curriculum which is arrived at through dialogue also injects the

important element of Joy into the learning process. “We dream”, Freire muses,
of a democratic school system ... where one learns with

seriousness, but where seriousness never becomes dullness …
my serious desire is to change the face of our schools, including
Kindergarten ... into creativity centres, were one teaches and
learns with joy.325
The school of Freire’s dream is filled with a serious atmosphere where a sense of
excitement abounds. The task of liberty, he believes demands “a pedagogy of
contentment”. Human feelings of love and affection do not weaken the
seriousness of study at all; neither are these feelings and emotions “an obstacle to
political and social responsibility”.326 Traditional schooling promotes learning
321 Ibid.
322 Ibid., 109.
323 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 88–89.
324 Ibid., 133.
325 Ibid., 18–19, 28.
326 Ibid., 88, 90.

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through effort and punishment, instead he advocates charm, beauty and

integration between what they study and their real life experiences.327
Freire is careful to distance himself from “certain new pedagogies … that

exacerbate the fun (and) effectiveness, at the expense of cognition”.328
Nevertheless, without joy there is no effective learning. Implicit in Freire’s
thinking is the belief that dialogue generates joy; it generates joy because it instils
in the student a sense of self-belief and self-worth. When the student is valued
they understand and believe that their learning is important. It is important not
just for the individual student, but also for the community, for the entire culture.
The “Virtues” of the Dialogical Teacher
What kind of person ought to be given the task of educating in this way? What
attributes ought to be exhibited by an individual who wishes to become an
educator of others? Freire offers many reflective responses to these important
questions. The attributes or “virtues” of the educator flow coherently from
Freire’s educational vision. The role of a consciously progressive educator, he
asserts,
is to testify constantly to his or her students his or her

competence, love, political clarity, the coherence between what
he or she says and does, his or her tolerance, his or her ability to
live with the different, to fight against the antagonistic. It is to
stimulate doubt, criticism, curiosity, questioning, a taste for risk
taking, the adventure of creating.329
If a teacher is to instil these attributes in the students it follows that it is

necessary for the teacher to be this kind of person. In other words there has to be
coherence between discourse and practice. Freire learned from his own praxis
that an educator should take seriously, and allow themselves to be confronted
by, the knowledge and experience of those they are working with, and that they
327 Ibid., 89.

328 Ibid., 90.
329 Ibid., 50.

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should always be humble concerning the wisdom of the poor.330 He knew that all
too often, even progressive teachers repressed students because they ask the
teacher uncomfortable questions.331
It follows that the progressive educator should make every effort to become
aware of their own limitedness as a human being; particularly the limits placed
on them by their own class background. The more aware one is of one’s own
prejudices and blind spots which have been created by their own class
consciousness, the less destructive the influence they have in day-to-day
classroom interrelationships.332 The progressive teacher needs to be alert to the
possibility that they may be influenced by negative preconceptions and so take
countermeasures to prevent against impacting on the students in a destructive
way. This possibility of negative perception is compounded by the reality that
for most people in developed countries “the poor are invisible”. Therefore many
teachers know very little about the poor.333 But even those who feel they are self
aware and conscious of these prejudices within themselves, can, due to the
insidious power of authoritarian ideology, end up contradicting their own
theoretical discourse.334 For this reason the teacher needs to engage in ongoing
scrutiny of their own thoughts, feelings and thinking and make every effort to
“refuse to bureaucratise the mind”.335 They can resist this bureaucratisation only
if they think critically about their practice. In Freire’s words “We make ourselves
330 Ibid., 119.

332 Philip Scharper makes observes that many middle class people who work with the
poor fall back on comforting stereotypes they learned at home, at school, or even at
church or synagogue, such as: “The poor are poor because they are lazy and lack
motivation”, or, “the poor are really happy with their lot”, or, “The poor are
ungrateful, despite the welfare billions we squander … ”. Scharper in Evans, Evans,
and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 213.
333 Ibid., 214.
334 Ibid.

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educators, we develop ourselves as educators permanently, in the practice and

through reflecting upon the practice”.336
Freire always returns to the imperative of praxis. He encourages educators not to

“dichotomise” theory and practice, and to never perceive them as being isolated
from each other.337 There must be an ongoing critical conversation between what
the teacher experiences and observes in the concrete situation and what they
study academically. According to this conception the teacher is very much a
transformative intellectual.338 Describing Henry Giroux,339 who Freire perceives to
be a model intellectual teacher, Freire posits the following attributes:
creativity, openness to questions, doubt … uncertainty with

respect to certainties … courage to take risks … rigorous
methodological and theoretical approaches to important
themes.340
Freire uses almost evangelical language to describe the transformation that

teachers themselves have to go through, if they are to in turn, transform their
students. “Conversion to the people”, he says, “requires a profound rebirth.
Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence: they can no longer
remain as they were”.341 By “conversion to the people” he means a profound
shift in consciousness; the teacher becomes convinced that the way to their own
freedom and the freedom of their students lies in active involvement in the effort
to create new possibilities for bringing about a more just and equitable social
336 Ibid., 54, 99.

337 Ibid., 99, 105.
338 While the term transformative intellectual is a term coined by Henry Giroux, it is a
term which appositely epitomises the intellectual dimension that Freire sees as being
an essential characteristic of the progressive teacher. See also Giroux, Teachers as
Intellectuals, Aronowitz and Giroux, Education under Siege.
339 Henry Giroux will be a dialogical partner with Thomas Groome in Chapter Four.
340 Freire in “The Introduction” to Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals, xxviii.
341 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 39, ———, Pedagogy of the City, 98–99.

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order.342
This vision for the transformative educator has profound implications for the
training of teachers.343 In his capacity as director of the Board of Education in
São Paulo, Freire had the opportunity to develop a teacher training program
consistent with his philosophy of education. He expressed a wish to establish a
teacher education program that was “without ideological manipulation, but with
political clarity”.344 The “first principle” of teacher education, “must be based,
above all, on reflection about practice”; it ought to be a “hands on” form of
learning.345 This puts the onus on university educators to teach prospective
teachers clarity in thinking.346 To the teachers of teachers he advises: “you
should make it clear to your students how to study, how you approach the object
of knowledge, what is the meaning for you of the search for knowledge”.347 This
is not achieved through the teaching of content, but through dialogue.
The attributes of Freire’s ideal emancipatory educator could be summed up as

follows: they would denounce injustice; eschew a banking educational model;
question normative thinking, received wisdom and truths; take political action in
solidarity with the oppressed; enter into meaningful dialogue with themselves
and the surrounding culture; get in touch with their longing for a new
transformed society where justice and equality reigns.
342 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 57–60.

344 Ibid., 49.
345 Ibid., 20. Teacher education should, he argues, guarantee the principle of
action/reflection/action. In other words, a praxis model should be its focus. ———,
Pedagogy of the City, 163.
347 Ibid.

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The Fruits of Dialogue: A New Possibility, A New Freedom and A New

Hope
Banking education prepares the young for docility, compliance and conformity,
it therefore negates the true purpose of education which is to liberate the
individual from the forces that enslave them. This oppressive structure is
intentionally designed so as to reproduce the existing social order where a
minority maintain power and control over the majority. Freire’s vision of
education as the practice of freedom aims to liberate the majority from this
oppressive state of subjugation. By entering into meaningful dialogue with their
social and political context they become empowered to unveil the causes of the
reality they experience through the pedagogy of the question, and so, can begin
to perceive new possibilities for their lives. Praxis empowers them to act on this
new-found understanding and then engage in further thought and reflection.
This action and reflection process leads to new understanding and more focused
action. This is the core of the conscientisation process.
Dialogue is the heart of this conscientisation process. It takes seriously the

notion that all human beings have an equal humanity, therefore have an equal
right to be heard. Genuine dialogue makes the individual feel worthwhile,
therefore dialogue is empowering and transformative – it is transformative as it
returns to the individual the dignity which has been denied them by banking
education. This approach to pedagogy, in a very real existential sense, grants to
the individual a new possibility and a new hope.
Paulo Freire’s Contribution to Educational Theory and

Practice: An Assessment
Freire’s contribution, or legacy to contemporary Catholic education can be

summarised under the following three categories, all of which are contingent on
each other: 1) The legacy of his conscientising dialogical praxis; 2) The legacy of
his humanising dialogical methodology; and 3) The legacy of his passion for
justice that generates a new possibility and a new hope.

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1. Conscientising Dialogical Praxis
By developing a particular approach – an approach which can be condensed as

conscientising dialogical praxis – Freire has devised a credible method by which
those who are oppressed in any context can liberate themselves from their
oppression. His insight that for freedom to become a reality, human beings need
to learn to read the world as well as the word, has profound implications for
education. Three-and-a-half decades on from the publication of Pedagogy of the
Oppressed the social and political landscape is different. Due primarily to the
globalisation of corporatism, a small number of transnational companies
dominate world markets and media so the face of oppression can be more
difficult to discern. This context makes Freire’s conscientisation method all the
more relevant, applicable and urgent.348 In an age where many feel at a loss to
understand and interpret the implications and consequences of global
capitalism, Freire’s insight that meaning, hope and the resolution to act is
generated by coming to understand those forces which shape our consciousness,
seems not only relevant, but imperative.
One message that Freire never tired of repeating was the inextricability of theory
and practice. His theory grew out of the practice of dialogue, and his
understanding of dialogue was focused on listening and solidarity. Freire listened
attentively to the marginalised with whom he worked; it was a quality of
listening that empowered him to hear what they were not able to express in
words. But he empowered them to “speak their word” because he was willing to
enter into relationship with them.349 Through such a physical and spiritual act of
solidarity, Freire not only helped transform the lives of the marginalised with
348 Chapter Five will examine the impact of global corporatism on contemporary
Catholic education and will also suggest some ways in which Freire’s conscientising
dialogical praxis can be applied in such a context.
349 According to Gadotti, Freire’s approach focused on “learning to talk with the
working class and to understand their way of learning about the world through their
language”. Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 6.

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whom he worked, but also transformed his own perception of the world.350
Freire models what it means to learn through practice. He modelled in his own
life what it means to “always think about the practice”.351 This thinking involved not
only intense listening but also intense questioning of the normative social and
political and educational order. The one who adopts Freire’s questioning stance
can no longer be docile, passive or compliant in the face of impositions and
directives from higher educational authorities. They will put any new theories to
the test of their own practice and evaluate them in the light of what they perceive
and interpret from their own experience and learning. This activity is highly
threatening to traditional hierarchical models of educational bureaucracy,
particularly if a community of educators decide to follow this praxis model on
their own. Freire’s conscientising praxis serves as a potent antidote to the sense
of ennui and powerlessness which many commentators allude to as being a
defining feature of the modern condition. The power of large corporations to
universalise a corporatist philosophy of personal, social and political life, seems
so overwhelming that only the kind of communitarian empowerment that Freire
promotes could counteract it.352
2. Freire’s Humanising Methodology: Living a Life Cast in Dialogue
As already argued, dialogue for Freire is a way of being that is defined by an

attentive listening; it therefore affirms the intrinsic dignity of each human being.
Dialogue is also about entering into intense and meaningful conversation about
profound questions of meaning; it is about exploring together with others the
very basis of what it means to know, to perceive, to experience; it is to enter into
350 These qualities are testified to by a large number of collaborators, fellow scholars
and friends. See for example Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals, 120, Gadotti, Reading Paulo
Freire, 86, Donaldo P. Macedo, Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to
Know, Expanded ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2006), i–xxii.
352 This idea will be elaborated in Chapter Five.

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intelligent and informed conversation about the sources of knowledge and the
origins of our perceptions and understandings of life. When the teacher
acknowledges the dignity, individuality and uniqueness of each member of the
class by entering into dialogue of this quality, one invariably finds that the
classroom springs into life. With time, the student may come to accept that their
perceptions are important if they are genuinely perceived to be important by the
teacher. This in turn frees the student to listen and be open to the teacher’s
perspective and viewpoint. This, for Freire, is true education; it is transformative
and liberating for all those involved (including the teacher), even if it is at times,
confronting, painful and disturbing. It is a pedagogical style that generates the
joy that comes from the discovery of a new idea, a new way of perceiving reality,
a new way of being.
3. Freire’s Dialogue: A Dialogue that Ignites a Passion for Freedom through

Justice
This leads to the third of Freire’s most important legacies. At the heart of Freire’s
philosophy is a thirst for human freedom that emerges from justice. Freire can
see from his study and experience that political and social structures – including
education – function in an unjust manner; they function to reproduce the
privilege and power base of the privileged and exclude and disempower the less
privileged and disadvantaged social groups. Freire wished to transform this
inequality and injustice by transforming our very perception of power itself.
According to his dialogical vision, power would be exercised as service to all
people, particularly those who are in a weak position. This vision, this hope in
humanity, is highly relevant to the contemporary social and political
landscape.353 Evidence from the world’s most credible sources of research
suggest that the division between the financially, culturally and information rich
and those who are financially, culturally and information poor is growing by the
353 The relevance to a contemporary educational context will be elaborated in Chapters’

Three to Five.

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day.354 It might be suggested that prophetic figures, such as Freire, are vital if
human society is to be capable of contemplating other more humane, viable and
sustainable possibilities. This is not to suggest that Freire’s conscientising praxis
is a ‘magic pudding’ that will suddenly cure all of humanity’s ills, but it can be
claimed that it succeeds in providing a credible, intelligent, rational and realistic
hope that freedom is possible; that the human community, can make the world a
more just and fair place for all.
Ultimately, this language of possibility, that so imbues all of Freire’s writings

and which lies at the heart of all Freire’s thought, may prove to be his most
important legacy to contemporary educational theory and practice. In a context
and climate of determinism created by corporate ideology, the feeling and belief
that no other way is possible; where there appears to be no choice but to follow
an individualistic, competitive course, where the human being is objectified and
atomised, where an all-pervasive pressure to surrender to the seductive
ideologies of pragmatism, utilitarianism and managerialism is intense; within
such a context Freire’s philosophy serves as a credible alternative and an
inspiring vision. Freire convices that it is not an historical inevitability that such
destructive ideologies become normalised and accepted without question. Freire,
by combining the language of critique with the language of possibility,355 not
only demonstrates that a different way of being is possible, but he also maps the
road to be taken in order to embody this different way of being. It is this vital
hope that believes passionately that it is possible for all human beings, even the
most disadvantaged, to achieve freedom that constitutes Freire’s greatest legacy.
Freire’s Vision of Freedom: Some Disputed Questions
Freire’s defence of the dignity of each person, his promotion of human agency,
354 For a comprehensive exposition of the growing divide between rich and poor in the
contemporary world see Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, Massey Lectures:
2004 (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2004), in particular 124–32.
355 See Giroux in “The Introduction” to Freire, The Politics of Education, xii.

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defence of the weak, his advocacy for a sense of solidarity and social action all
find affirmation and support in the goals of Catholic education as well as
Catholic social teaching. However, there are a few potentially contentious issues
concerning his vision for human freedom. The scope of this study does not allow
for a comprehensive analysis of all the contentious issues relating to Freire’s
educational vision but two areas in particular, impact directly on the central
concerns of this thesis: 1) Freire’s conception of the role of tradition in devising a
liberating model of education; and 2) His focus on political engagement to the
neglect of other vital contributing aspects of human experience and
development.
Tradition
Tradition is a vital element in Catholic formation and identity. Yet, despite his
clear understanding of the role of the Church in the formation of identity and
culture, Freire downplays or even appears to ignore the importance of being
immersed in a faith tradition as a source of understanding and knowing. When
he does focus on Church, he writes only about the institutional and
organisational trajectory of tradition; he ignores other important trajectories of
tradition such as the contemplative trajectory. The Catholic Tradition is
consistent and emphatic in its claim that true freedom is realised through
prayerful immersion in the Tradition. To be fair to Freire, it is clear that he is
attempting to counterbalance the amplified influence of some of the most
negative strands of the Catholic Tradition in the prevailing educational
philosophy and practice of his time; nonetheless, his writings communicate a
sense that liberation is to be experienced through separating oneself from the
chains of not only the Catholic Tradition, but tradition in general.356 In adopting
such a position, he appears to fall prey to some extent to a “servitude of the
immediate”;357 consequently the heritage of the past, which took centuries to
356 See for example ———, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 128.

357 Kevin Nichols criticises Freire’s conscientisation theory for being “a theory in which

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gestate, is played down or forgotten.358 Tradition embodies the story of the

people and this story needs to be remembered and communicated to the next
generation. This is not to say that it ought to be imposed upon the present in an
authoritarian manner as an unchanging truth, but that it ought to be placed in a
dialectic with the present. The past, as Groome contends, “if forgotten and left
unreclaimed, it will determine and control our present”. If it is critically
appropriated, on the other hand, it can be liberating.359
Freire’s ambivalent attitude towards the role of the Catholic Tradition within
history is understandable given his context; Brazil was a colonised country, and
historically, the Church played a significant contributory role in oppressive
actions of colonisation. It is likely his view of Church is informed and coloured
by this destructive and negative historical experience. Nonetheless, this was one
aspect, or one trajectory of the Tradition, and may not warrant the complete
dismissal of the Tradition per se as a legitimate and indispensable source of
establishing identity and knowledge.360 This is an aspect of his thinking that will
be analysed in greater detail in his fictitious dialogue with Merton in the next
chapter.
dawning self-consciousness is ringed by the circumambient present”. Nichols

“Education as Liberation” in Lane, Religious Education, 144.
358 Thomas Groome, while citing Freire as one of the three greatest educators of the
twentieth century, also criticises Freire for placing undue emphasis on the present and
future, to the almost total neglect of the past. Thomas H. Groome, Christian Religious
Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision (Melbourne, Australia: Dove Communications,
1980), 176–77. For an in-depth analysis of the place of tradition in Freire’s thought see
Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 85ff.
359 Groome, Christian Religious Education, 177.
360 The role of tradition in education will be explored in greater detail in the dialogues
in Chapters Three and Four and in also in Chapter Five.

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Neglect of the contemplative way
Undoubtedly, the contemplative strand of the Catholic tradition is to some extent

at least, implicit in Freire’s philosophy of education. Many of the ingredients of a
contemplative education are to be found there. Ultimately though, Freire’s
perception of liberation confines itself too narrowly to political empowerment.
His binary oppositions limit the possibility of perceiving any good in the
oppressor and anything negative in the oppressed. There is a certain naïve
utopianism about Freire’s vision – all will be well when the oppressed come to
understand how the structures of power work to keep them in a state of
subjugation. The social context is the permanent focus of Freire’s attention; the
personal is explored only in relation to the social. The relation of the self to self
and self to the Transcendent is left largely unexplored. The consciousness of
personal, spiritual realities such as the existence of personal sin and evil remain
unexamined. The remaining chapters of this thesis will argue that if freedom is
to be integral and transformative, an individual/transcendent dialectic as well
an individual/socio-political dialectic must be operational.
In this regard, Thomas Merton represents an appropriate conversation partner

for Freire. The dialogue set up between the two in the next chapter will reveal a
certain convergence and complementarity, as Merton was as intensely political
as Freire. But Merton’s perceptions on freedom draw also on the riches of the
contemplative tradition of the Church. This dialogical encounter will seek to
explore the interplay between the personal, the social-political and the
transcendent; thus making possible a cross-fertilisation between their distinctive
visions of liberation. By combining Freire’s understanding of conscientisation with
Merton’s notions of self-transcendence we get a much clearer picture of the route a
genuinely liberatory Christian education might take.
Freire welcomed critical analysis. He encouraged those who studied him to read
his work critically – to “read critically is ‘re-writing’ what one has read”.361 It is,
361 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 30.

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as he says, “a dialogic experience. It is the author’s true dream, to be read,

discussed, critiqued, improved, and reinvented by his or her readers”.362 This is
precisely what will be done in the remaining chapters.
Chapter Conclusion: The Unveiling of a Dialogical Vision

for Education that is The Practice of Freedom
Freire not only preached dialogue, he also embodied it in his writings and in his
dealings with other educators; it constitutes the dominant theme in all his
writings, it is the heart of his conscientisation method and it is the lifeblood of
vision for education as the practice of freedom.
This chapter traced the story of Freire’s dialogical pilgrimage. It presented a

detailed exposition of his analysis of contemporary educational structures as
well as his vision for an education that is the practice of freedom. His perception
that banking education negates the true aims of education since it subjugates the
oppressed by denying them the possibility of viewing their existential context
from a critical perspective was delineated and explored. The solution that Freire
offered by his conscientisation method was canvassed as an effective means by
which the oppressed could liberate themselves from this dehumanised state, as it
would reveal to them the causes of the reality they experience. Praxis, which is in
effect, a dialogue between experience and theory, is a constituent dimension of
the conscientisation process.
Freire’s conception of conscientisation as a dialogical process was also

developed. It is dialogical as it involves entering into conversation with one’s
culture, community and socio-political system. Praxis too is dialogical as it
involves a meaningful exchange between experience and theory. Thus, his vision
for education as the practice of freedom is profoundly dialogical. It has, as its
beginning and end point, the dignity and inalienable rights of the individual. It
362 Ibid., 31.

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was established that Freire takes seriously the belief that each individual is
capable of knowing and that each individual can reach the highest level of being.
For this reason Freire saw the teacher as a transformative intellectual, and the
school as a place of discourse where the pedagogy of the question predominates,
a place above all where transformation becomes possible. It was concluded that
his most enduring legacy was threefold: his conscientising praxis; his dialogical
methodology; and his passion for freedom through justice.
To this legacy could be added his enduring hope for a new possibility: a
revitalised, more just and humane future. His vision for education was based on
a realistic-yet-hopeful vision of the possibilities that could be realised through
educational institutions, if the humanity and transcendent potential of each
human being, especially those who are poor and disadvantaged, was honoured.
Having acknowledged and affirmed the efficacy and truth of Freire’s vision for
freedom, this thesis proposed that Freire’s vision could benefit greatly from
some complementary perspectives. It was argued that Freire’s underplaying of
the value of tradition (particularly his own Catholic Tradition) limits the
possibility of the full integral freedom he so ardently sought. While his political
theology of liberation is in tune with the social justice tradition of the Church, he
downplays and ignores important aspects of a contemplative vision for human
liberation. The contemplative vein of Catholic Tradition affirms the belief that it
is through development and careful nurturing of relationship with the
Transcendent that the human person discovers authentic integral freedom.
In the following chapters, the thesis that a truly liberating Catholic education
cannot become a possibility without an appropriation of the riches that lie within
the contemplative tradition as well as the social justice tradition, will be
expanded and explored. Freire’s fundamental insight, that for liberation to occur,
one has to become conscious of the social and political forces that shape
consciousness, will be reaffirmed, and expanded upon. It will also be proposed,
that if Catholic students are to experience inner freedom, they will need to
become aware of inner psychological and spiritual forces that are at work in

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shaping their collective consciousness and behaviour. Unfortunately, these two

dimensions of integral liberation (the justice trajectory and the contemplative
trajectory) have tended to remain separate, even at times appearing to be in
conflict with each other, each sometimes presented as appealing to different
sensibilities and proclivities. It is the intention of this thesis, however, to join
these streams. It proposes that true integral liberation can only become a
possibility if these trajectories are joined as one.

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Chapter Three: Unveiling a critical contemplative

vision for Catholic education: Thomas Merton in
dialogue with Paulo Freire
Introduction
Merton’s vision for education is summed up in what he says of his own

writings in his preamble to Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: “These pages are”,
he reflects,
not a venture in self-revelation or self-discovery … They are an

implicit dialogue with other minds, a dialogue in which
questions are raised. But do not expect to find “my answers”. I
do not have clear answers to current questions. I do have
questions, and, as a matter of fact, I think a [person] is known
better by [their] questions than by [their] answers.363
This revelation of his fundamental orientation would not be out of place in the
preface to any of Freire’s books. For both Merton and Freire, dialogue is the
seamless garment that must be worn to every aspect and dimension of life:
personal and social relationships, political activity, cultural perspectives, study,
thought and imagination. For each, dialogue is empowering and
transformational, it leads to different self-understanding, a different way of
perceiving the world as well as a different quality of life. For each, a genuine
dialogical encounter is in fact a ‘re-writing’ or a reworking364 of what one
already knows. For each, a dialogical approach is fundamentally relational, as it
puts the significant ‘other’ at the very centre of one’s attention.
The conversation which follows is intended to communicate their distinctive
363 Author’s Foreword to Merton, Conjectures.


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visions for education; but the strategy of presenting their ideas as a dialogical
encounter aims also to include the reader in the dialogue; in a sense the
medium is the message. The interlocutors are engaged in a quest to find truer
and more meaningful ways of educating for liberation, the reader too is part of
that quest.
Had Merton and Freire met, they would have discovered many more common
predilections: a genuine faith in God and in humanity; a profound passion for
truth and justice; a strong aversion to racism and discrimination of any kind; a
dialogical approach to the search for truth and meaning; a suspicion of all
things institutional and ‘given’; a sensitivity to the use and abuse of power, and,
a profound appreciation of the preciousness of each human life. Most
importantly of all for the purposes of this study, both had a lifelong interest and
investment in education, specifically, the liberating potential of education.
Yet, each takes a slightly different approach to the question of human liberation.
Freire, as we have seen in Chapter Two, emphasised the political and social
dimensions of a liberating education. Merton, who was also deeply concerned
for the political dimensions of education, tends to place the political more
explicitly within the context of the personal, spiritual and inner dimensions of
human experience. Such an emphasis presents an apposite counterpoint to
Freire’s more immanent, temporal, overtly political approach.
Merton was a Trappist monk, for whom an intimate familiarity with the
language of prayer and relationship with the Transcendent was essential to any
vision of human freedom. This inner relationship – this communication with
the transcendent which is discovered through contemplation – is for Merton, a
key to holistic understanding of the meaning of one’s own existence as well as
being the key to mature and complete reading of the social and political context
within which every human being lives and breathes. From Merton’s
perspective, the journey to freedom was long and arduous, for, as Shannon puts
it, “he knew … perhaps most particularly in himself, the barriers that prevent

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freedom from being a living reality in a person’s life”.365
For Freire, any talk about the link between faith and freedom must be informed
by the memory of the oppressed. It is his passionately held view that the
suffering that is wrought through injustice is contrary to the fundamental
teachings in the Gospels, consequently, it must not be allowed to continue. In
this sense his discourse is profoundly theological in that he seeks to provide the
theoretical basis for a form of pedagogy that expresses hope, critical reflection,
and collective solidarity. Even Freire’s language is permeated with religious or
quasi-religious terminology. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, for example, is peppered
with such religiously evocative language as vocation, ontological vocation, faith,
trust, humility, hope, guilt, conversion, and original sin and he speaks consistently
of the importance of love, humility, and faith, which are fundamental Christian
virtues.
For both Merton and Freire, the journey to self-discovery is the purpose of all
learning; a journey that entails a dialectical pattern of growth involving self and
others. One must find oneself, Merton argues “in and through others”.366 They
365 William H. Shannon, edit., Witness to Freedom, Thomas Merton: Letters in Times of
Crisis (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994), viii. Shannon believes that Merton’s
understanding of what freedom meant, underwent radical change. He designates three
stages in the story of his growth to freedom: in the first half of life, freedom meant
largely the removal of restraints that prevented him from doing what he wanted to do;
the second stage was when he became a monk and found a certain freedom in the
constraints of the monastic rule; in the third stage he began to see freedom as an inner
reality, guided much more from within than from without. Freedom, according to this
later understanding revolves around encounter and this encounter leads to the
discovery of our deepest freedom. This meant ridding one’s life of the illusions and
fictions, standing on one’s own feet, making one’s own decisions of conscience. This
was the kind of freedom that Merton came to see as the only authentic way of living
the monastic life and, indeed, the Christian life. Shannon, Witness to Freedom, viii.
366 Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955),

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both aim to elicit a transformation in teacher and learner alike and both
encourage teacher and student to think critically about their thinking. They do
not see critical thinking as inimical to Christian faith, on the contrary, they both
see critical thinking as intrinsic and absolutely necessary to a mature and
authentic Catholic faith.
In their style of presentation, both writers tend to express themselves in terms

of dialectical tensions. Historically, Christian spirituality has tended to express
itself in such terms, e.g. the false self/the true self; self-awareness/self-
forgetfulness. Merton’s writings are replete with them: city versus nature;
solitude versus the crowd; nature versus technology; ancient wisdom versus
contemporary drama; detachment versus engagement; hope versus despair.367
Freire’s work reveals similar dialectical tensions: the oppressor versus the
oppressed; silencing versus unveiling; banking education versus emancipatory
education etc. Both writers are prophetic in tone, and write in a direct accessible
and engaging style.
While Merton and Freire were contemporaries, Merton died in 1968, the very
year that Freire had begun to write Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This poses a
problem for the fictitious dialogue, particularly since Freire continued
publishing until his death in 1996. The intervening forty years has seen a
dramatic change in political, economic, social, cultural and philosophical
conditions throughout the Western world. This problem has been counteracted
by assuming, or imagining, that Merton lived up to the same time as Freire. It is
hoped, that by creating this imaginary scenario, Merton’s visionary and
prophetic words will appear more potent, immediate and relevant, as it will
become clear that Merton’s central concerns as well as the wisdom of his
approach transcends time and place.
xvi.
367 “Rain and the Rhinoceros”, in Thomas Merton and Lawrence Cunningham, Thomas
Merton, Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 388.

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The aim of constructing this fictitious dialogue is to join Freire’s

conscientisation method with Merton’s ideas on self-discovery in the hope that
their co-naturality and their contrasts will be thrown in to sharp focus. By
placing the writer as interlocutor, it becomes possible to direct the course of the
dialogue as well as highlight some of nuances and differences in their
individual perspectives. The dialogue is constructed as a discernment process, a
process which aims to ‘open the doors of perception’.
The Role of Experience in Education
Author
Let us begin with the role of experience in human learning, since both of you
stress its significance. Paulo’s views on this issue have already been presented.
Why is experience so essential to your educational vision Thomas?368
Merton
When I am conducting classes on St. Bernard for novice monks at Gethsemani,

what I like to do is not to talk about St. Bernard exclusively, but to talk about us. I am
not concerned so much with his students’ understanding of the intellectual
import of St. Bernard’s writing as with their appreciation of the experience, the
resonances or echoes which his words imply. I want students to be able to
transpose St. Bernard’s words into our time and our way of looking at things. 369 I
want to validate each person’s individual response; in a sense, I am no longer
teaching anybody anything.370 I encourage each student to take active
368 Bochen argues that all Merton’s theology “is rooted in experience” and all his
insights regarding spirituality and theology were born out of his own life of prayer. See
Christine M. Bochen, “From Monastery to University: Teaching Thomas Merton to
Undergraduates”, America October 22 (1988): 282.
369 Thomas Del Prete, Thomas Merton and the Education of the Whole Person (Birmingham,
Alabama: Religious Education Press, 1990), 168.
370 “Learning to Live” in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 361.

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responsibility for their own learning.
Like Paulo, I am suspicious of prescriptive education – what he terms “banking

education”. We need to come to understand the mystery of our existence in a
wholesome and integral way, free from moralism and rigidity and a too
negative approach.371 The purpose of education is to show a person how to define
themselves authentically and spontaneously in relation to his world – not to impose a
prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of the individual
themselves.372 This is the only kind of education that can lift the believer above the
limitations dictated by nature, by race, by society.373
Author
Paulo points out that one of the dangers of education is that students can easily
end up “housing” the mindset or will of those who design the curriculum. You
also encourage your students to question authority. Many times, for example,
you point to the lessons that can be applied to all educational endeavours from
the case of Adolf Eichmann.374 Why do you focus so much on that one case?
371 Thomas Del Prete, “The Contemplative as Teacher: Learning from Thomas Merton”,
http:www.ucl.ac.uk/~uclypmp/prete.htm. (Accessed 14 March 2000).
372 “Learning to Live,” in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 358.
374 References to Eichmann can be found in a number of his writings but the original
and most incisive is to be found in “A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf
Eichmann” reprinted in Christine M. Bochen, Thomas Merton: Essential Writings
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 98–101. Merton was deeply affected by Hannah
Arendt’s writings on the Eichmann trial. Arendt proposed that great evils are not the
result of a few sociopaths but are committed by ordinary people (hence the phrase “the
banality of evil”), who accept what they are told by their government and then proceed
to normalise that attitude and behaviour. For a full exposition of this controversial
theory see Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
(London: Faber and Faber, 1963). Merton was profoundly moved by other reports of

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Merton
It teaches us about the power of ingrained prejudices which are formed by our
cultural milieu and our education. For example, in the 1930s, many Catholics in
Germany more or less seriously accepted the view that the purity of the German
race, the power of the German nation, was gravely menaced by “international Jewry”.
They simply went by the fact that everyone in their society accepted this as ‘normal’ and
‘right’ and they shrugged off responsibility by saying it was their ‘duty’ and that the
needs of the state demanded this unusual procedure. If we do not take the right
approach to education there is a danger of us Catholics, myself and all the rest,
tending to think in some such way as the Eichmanns did in Germany.375 When an
individual’s intelligence or faith is placed in an institution (whether religious or
secular), the institution, rather than the real values it is meant to embody, will
rule that individual. As a teacher of novices, I find this rigidity and
indoctrination is a great barrier to growth. Our novices are sometimes trained to
“do everything as if the abbot were watching you”. This was exactly the kind of logic
that Eichmann used in his defense. He was only carrying out what his superior had told
him to do!376 The only real antidote to this dangerous possibility is for our
educational institutions to serve the development of the individual person. It is
imperative that we focus our endeavours on the whole person; the autonomous
thinking person who is full of creativity and possibility. Learning is the creative,
articulated response to the truth that one, in openness, personally apprehends. I see the
process of learning as being a deeply reflective activity where the individual relies on
Nazi war criminal trials. He wrote an extended response, for example, to Bernd
Naumann and Robert Karl Ludwig Mulka, Auschwitz: A Report on the Proceedings
against Robert Karl Ludwig Mulka and Others before the Court at Frankfurt (London: Pall
Mall P., 1967).
375 Cold War Letter No. 90. To Brendan Nagle, c. late June or early July 1962, in
Shannon, Witness to Freedom, 57–60.
376 For an elaboration of this perspective see Merton, Conjectures, 287ff.

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their deepest intuitions in order to apprehend the truth. 377
Freire
This hope for education is the very foundation of my conscientisation method.

Its aim is to foster the kind of learning experience you are describing. It is why
education is a kind of “unveiling” where the student can learn to see reality as it is,
not as they have been formed to imagine it.
Merton
Yes, this term “unveiling” expresses well the process of uncovering what is
“false” in the search for what is “true”. In my view, finding our true selves and
finding God are one and the same. But to find our true selves we have to face our
illusions, however, we are not very good at recognising illusions, least of all the ones we
cherish about ourselves – the ones we are born with and feed the roots of sin.378
Author
Thomas, you could be interpreted as proposing that the responsibility for

oppression lies squarely on the shoulders of the subject themselves, that it is
self-imposed as it were. Paulo’s work argues that “the oppressor” is the main
culprit in disseminating illusion. “The oppressed” have the truth hidden from
them by the oppressor; therefore they “house” the illusions of the oppressor.
The words of Steve Biko express well Paulo’s perspective when he says, “the
most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor, is the mind of the
377 Ibid., 119, Del Prete, Education of the Whole Person, 116.
378 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1962). For
an in-dept analysis of the True/False dichotomy in Merton’s writings see Del Prete,
Education of the Whole Person, 35ff., “The Inner Experience” elucidates Merton’s own
understanding of terms “true” and “false” self. See Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual
Master, 294–356.

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oppressed”.379
Freire
One cannot disengage the personal experience for the socio-political cultural
forces that shape our conception of the world. The reality is that political and
social structures, including educational ones, function to reproduce the
advantage and power base of the privileged and exclude and disempower the
under-privileged, disadvantaged social groups. They function to keep the
masses locked in a state of false consciousness. My philosophy of
conscientisation expresses the belief that until the subject comes to understand
that their consciousness has been formed by manipulative forces beyond their
control, there is no hope of transformation.
Merton
I believe that “the language of critique”, as you term it, was never more
relevant. Given the history of the way your continent has been perceived and
treated, it is right and just that you would defend your dignity and rights. I, as a
North American, must confess our collective guilt for the mistreatment of your
continent. The greatest sin of “the West” is not only greed and cruelty, not only moral
dishonesty and infidelity to truth, but above all its unmitigated arrogance towards the
rest of the human race. We are guilty of a twofold disloyalty: to God and to
[humanity].380 The Christian West, for all good will of the missionaries and
colonisers, could not recognise that the races they conquered were essentially equal
to themselves and in some ways superior. Where they failed was in their inability to
encounter Christ already potentially present in the indigenous people. How could
we not see that Christ is found not in loud and pompous declarations but in humble
379 Steve Biko quoted in Donald Woods, Biko (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1978), 49.
380 This and the remainder of the discourse relating to the relationship between North
and South America is quoted from “A Letter to Pablo Antonio Cuadra concerning
Giants”, reprinted in Christine M. edit. Bochen, Thomas Merton the Courage for Truth:
Letters to Writers (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993), 151-55.

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and fraternal dialogue? Why did we not pay attention to the voices of the Maya and
the Inca, who had deep things to say? By and large their witness was merely
suppressed. If only North Americans had realised … that they were really people …
that they had a culture … not only on the level of the wealthy minority which has
absorbed more of the sophistication of Europe, but also among the desperately poor
indigenous cultures.381
Freire
It is precisely for these reasons that I wanted Brazilians, especially the

impoverished ones, to celebrate their own identity; to believe in their culture
and what they know. The poor need to realise that their knowledge is just as
legitimate as the oppressors’.
Author
Your work seems to suggest Paulo that the poor and oppressed already possess
all the knowledge and understanding they need. Yet you argue that the poor
are locked in a false consciousness by the oppressor. There appears to be some
degree of contradiction inherent in this perspective.382
Freire
As Marx believed before me, I believe that the oppressed are bearers of “pragmatic
truth”. The common people, particularly the poor, have to be approached as the
genuine source of knowing the truth. From the beginning I have asserted that
integrity of every cultural group should be respected and treated with deference. I also
assert that the particular knowledge and world view of each group is valid and should
381 Ibid., 153.

382 Freire was much criticized for making these claims. For Freire’s own considered
responses to these criticisms see Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 115–56, ———, Pedagogy of
Hope, 45, 85–86.

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not be subjected to outside interference – what I call cultural invasion. 383
Author
Due in no small measure to the influence of your ideas, those who now go to
work with oppressed groups are encouraged to become much more aware of
their own ethnocentric tendencies.384 The emphasis tends to focus less on trying
to change the people and instead attempting to get the people to articulate to
themselves their own understandings and develop and grow in the ways they
desire. So empowerment and self determination have become the watchwords
of this new approach.385
Freire
This is why I insist that the world view and cultural perspective of the
383 For Further elucidation of Freire’s idea that the poor are bearers of truth, see
Schipani, Conscientization and Creativity 57–58.
384 Gittins defines and ethnocentric attitude as one whereby one “places oneself and
one’s ideas, values and wisdom at the very centre of the universe ... to feel that one is
“right”, “better,” “rational”. Anthony J. Gittins, Gifts and Strangers: Meeting the
Challenge of Inculturation (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 2.
385 When Freire first began to write about these issues in the late 1950s he was writing
against a backdrop of a longstanding paternalistic approach to Christian mission. The
stance of the Catholic Church has changed dramatically since Vatican II. There is now a
strong impulse among most missiologists to seek to help indigenous groups to own
and celebrate their own traditions and culture. For a comprehensive and insightful
overview of contemporary progressive perspectives on missiology, see Ibid., Chapter 1,
Walbert Bühlmann, The Coming of the Third Church (Liverpool: St. Paul Publications,
1974), 215ff, ———, The Church of the Future: A Model for the Year 2001 (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1986), Chapters 9–12, David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts
in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 15–55, Larry Nemer,
“Spirituality and the Missionary Vocation”, Missiology XI, no. 4 (1983): 419–34,
Anthony Bellagamba, “A Spirituality for Missioners”, African Christian Studies 1, no. 2
(1985): 13–30.

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oppressed peoples of our world ought to comprise a central part of the

curriculum in their schools.386 This is part of my vision for the democratisation
of education.
Author
Part of the problem is, as Anthony Gittins points out, that many well-meaning
‘missionaries’ (to this one can include teachers, social workers etc.) who work
with ‘the poor’ or those of low socio-economic origin, often romanticise the
world of disadvantage. They try to avoid the charge of ethnocentrism by going
to the other extreme, acting as though the people in the other culture live in ‘the
best of all possible worlds’. That appears as wrong headed as its opposite, does
it not? There is nothing noble or romantic about disease, poverty, deprivation
and exploitation.387
Freire
I know I have been accused of being such a romantic and I have attempted to
counteract this misinterpretation in my later works. When I said that one
should start with the knowledge and experience that the poor already had, I wasn’t
suggesting that they should just stay with that knowledge only. I have always
wanted them to grow beyond that knowledge.388 I believe that all students should
in fact be taught the educated norm.389 What I have always steadfastly maintained,
and what I now reiterate is that education always involves ideological questions and
questions of power, it is therefore imperative that the mental universe or horizons of the
poor ought to be respected,390 and that schools should consider very carefully the issue of
386 For Freire’s own assessment of the importance of understanding local culture see
Freire, Letters to Cristina, 117.
387 Here the author is superimposing Gittins’ thinking on Freire’s consciousness. See
Gittins, Gifts and Strangers, 3.
388 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 70, 85.
389 ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 34.
390 Ibid., 72-73.

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language, of the syntax of the underclass.391
You will understand that in my Brazilian context mainstream schools often

stigmatise the language of the low-class children.392 I want these students to stop
feeling that their language is “ugly” or “inferior”. I want them to feel that their
identity is respected by accepting that their reading of the world is valid and
legitimate.393 In fact, such sensitivity is vital to effective pedagogy of working
class people.394 It is impossible to democratise schools without transcending the
preconceptions against the lower and subordinate classes; against their language,
their culture.395
Therein lies the paradox: I want the poor to be inducted into the educated norm
so that they can diminish their disadvantages and acquire a fundamental tool
for the fight they must wage against the injustice and discrimination targeted at
them.396 At the same time, I want them to cherish and celebrate that richness
and beauty of the culture they already possess. The elites do everything in their
power to ensure that the poor do not acquire their [the elite’s] cultural capital.397 All
over the world, not just in Brazil, powerful conservatives have a super certitude that
“we know what the students should know”. This is the certitude, always, of the
authoritarian, the dogmatist.398

392 Ibid., 141.
393 Freire is quick to emphasise, however, that this does not mean that poor children
should not learn the “standard pattern”. Ibid., 142, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers,
72-73.
394 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 106, ———, Pedagogy of the City, 37ff, ———, Teachers as
Cultural Workers, 71, ———, Letters to Cristina, 16.
395 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 124, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 71.
396 Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 74, ———, Pedagogy of the City, 41, 135.
397 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 83, ———, Teachers as Cultural Workers, 71.

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Merton
As I listen to you Paulo, I realise how poor we are at allowing God the right to
speak unpredictably and see [God’s presence] unexpectedly in the stranger and the
alien. If we do not succeed in this task, if we do not find God in the poor and the
oppressed, as you have done, we will surely lose God in our own selves. We will
end up substituting God’s living presence with an empty abstraction.
The desecration, de-sacralisation of the modern world is manifest above all by the fact
that the stranger is of no account. They constitute a threat to our complacency.399 In a
sense it can be said that there is a very concerted effort to wipe out the very
people you are trying to defend. And of course the great richness they represent
is obliterated with them.
The population of the affluent world is nourished on a steady diet of brutal mythology
and hallucination, kept at a constant pitch of high tension by a life that is intrinsically
violent in that it forces a large part of the population to submit to an existence which is
humanly intolerable. But it must be remembered that the crime that breaks out of
the ghetto is only the fruit of a greater and more pervasive injustice: the injustice which
forces people to live in the ghetto in the first place. “What are kingdoms without justice
but large bands of robbers?”.400 The problem of injustice today must be traced to
its root: to the massively organised bands of oppressors whose operations are
global. Of course injustice today is white-collar injustice, the systematically
organised bureaucratic and technological destruction of human beings.
Modern oppression is abstract, corporate, businesslike, cool, free of guilt-feelings and

therefore a thousand times more deadly and effective than the kind of repression that
399 The foregoing italicised passages in are taken from Merton, No Man Is an Island, xx-
xxiii.
400 “Toward a Theology of Resistance” in Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence (Notre
Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 10. Merton notes that Pope John
XXIII in Pacem in Terris (no.92) quoted, with approval, this famous saying of St.
Augustine.

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results from individual hate. It is this … that threatens the world with destruction,
not the violence of a few desperate teenagers in a slum. But our antiquated theology
myopically focused on individual morality alone fails to see this. On occasion it
even blesses and canonises the antiseptic violence of corporately organised violence
because it is respectable, efficient, clean, and above all profitable.401
A theology of love cannot be allowed merely to serve the interests of the rich and
powerful, justifying their wars, their violence, and their bombs, while exhorting the
poor and underprivileged to practice patience, meekness, longsuffering and to solve their
problems, if at all, non-violently.402
Freedom in Education: What is freedom and how do we

educate for it?
Author
What you are both saying is that a theology of love must lie at the core of all our
educational endeavours and that such a theology must always put the
marginalised at the heart of the enterprise. Without such a perception there can
be no freedom. But how, in the concrete reality of a social and cultural reality
where unequal access and opportunity abound, can we fashion an educational
structure where all from all backgrounds can feel they belong?
Freire
My aim has always been to empower the poor to be agents of their own
liberation. Naturally, many bourgeois elites tried to discredit me by claiming
that conscientisation itself was belittling and manipulative.403 My theory of
401 “Toward a Theology of Resistance” in Ibid., 10–12.

402 Ibid., 12.
403 For example, sociologist Peter Berger argued that Freire’s theory of conscientisation
is patronising and in fact represents a form of cultural invasion. Peter Berger, Pyramids
of Sacrifice (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 34–35, 111–32. For similar critiques see

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learning, it was said, is subordinate to social and political purposes: and that kind of
theory is open to the risks of manipulation. As if an educational practice were possible
in which professors and students could be absolutely exempt from the risk of
manipulation and its consequences! As if the existence of a distant, cold, indifferent
educational practice when it comes to “social and political purposes” were, or ever had
been, possible in any space-time!404
Author
Walter Conn argues that while Berger is correct in calling conscientisation a form
of transformation (in his words “conversion”), he is not correct when he calls it
a form of cultural imperialism.405 It might be suggested that Berger does not
appreciate the distinction between transformation as imposition of content and
transformation as liberation of critical creative intelligence. One of the
important ideas that you have consistently reiterated is that education always
has an agenda; there is therefore, always some level of manipulation involved as
someone or some group has to choose the content that is to be taught. You
highlight the structural forces that are in place to ensure that current state of
disempowerment and naïveté that the poor experience is reinforced and
maintained. This is why you argue that true education has to be a political act.
Yet, the task of fashioning an education for human freedom seems fraught with
difficulties and paradoxes. Over two centuries ago Jean Jacques Rousseau
asked: how is it possible to educate for freedom, given the need to direct the
learner along a path which otherwise he or she would never know? And, how
does one liberate the mind of someone indoctrinated by the ideas and values of
that very society which one wants to change, yet avoid reindoctrinating that
Matthew Zachariah, “Revolution through Reform” quoted in Ohliger, "Critical Views."

Also Schipani, Religious Education Encounters Liberation Theology, 23.
405 Walter E. Conn, Christian Conversion: A Developmental Interpretation of Autonomy and
Surrender (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 155, 324.

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person with a new set of ideas and values?406 Perhaps it needs to be

acknowledged, by everyone engaged in education of every kind, that it is
impossible to provide an education which does not shape the minds of students
in some way.
What you have consistently argued Paulo, is that by refusing to uncover the
political dimension of education, a very political education is being
communicated: an education that is focused on affirming and supporting the
unjust status quo. You offer another option, an alternative which is overtly
political, an approach which aims to liberate people by making them aware of
the forces that are at work in forming their collective consciousness. Thus, your
approach to education involves a rigorous scrutiny of the agendas that lie
behind the prevailing educational and political philosophies.407
Freire
Yes, in developing my theory of conscientisation, I am reacting to the arrogance,

the authoritarianism of intellectuals of Left and Right who judge themselves
proprietors of knowledge.408 The accusation that conscientisation is paternalistic,
manipulative and patronising, has no relation to conscientisation as I conceived
it. Of course it is true that a misinterpretation of the role of teacher always carries
with it the danger of a manipulation of the masses,409 but I cannot to be blamed if
406 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Other influential
educational philosophers such as A.S. Neill, Bertrand Russell and Ivan Illich, have
followed in the tradition established by Rousseau and attempted to develop
educational approaches based on the “freedom” of the individual. See A.S. Neill,
Summerhill (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1962), Bertrand Russell, On Education (London:
Unwin Books, 1969), Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (Ringwood, Melbourne: Penguin,
1971).
407 Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (South
Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1987b), 87–88.

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others misinterpret my ideas and misconstrue my intentions. What I am saying

is that knowledge and the transfer of that knowledge is never neutral. If
knowledge were neutral then the task of the teacher would be very simple; they would
simply have to “transfer knowledge”, a knowledge that would be itself neutral. But to
teach neutrally is indisputably a political practice whereby every effort is made to soften
any possible rebelliousness on the part of those to whom injustice is being done.410 A
teacher should never pretend to be neutral or that the content under study is
neutral. Provided that the teacher stimulates contrary discourse and does not adopt an
approach which forces students either explicitly or implicitly to adopt a similar stance
they should not hide their personal views.411
Author
Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that the language you used to describe

your conscientisation method (particularly in your early work) had some
overtones of Marxist rigidity and indoctrination. It would be difficult not to
interpret your early work as advocating revolution. You spoke in glowing (and
what can only be read as uncritical) terms of Mao Zedong and other
revolutionaries.412 You appeared to justify the violence of the oppressed because
it is reactive, defensive and made “out of love”. In other words, it appeared that
you viewed rebellion and revolution as acts that are consistent with Christian
and religious principles.413 For most Christians this would be unacceptable as
that ideology transgresses some of the fundamental and core beliefs of the
Christian faith and avoids contemplating the harsh, painful, violent acts
committed by both sides in any revolutionary war. Elias suggests that it is a
410 Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 34ff.

411 Ibid., 35.
412 Many of Freire’s publications are dotted with admiring references to famous
revolutionary leaders such as Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral and Mao Zedong. See
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 67,138, ———, Pedagogy of the City, 87, ———,
Pedagogy of Hope, 40, ———, The Politics of Education, 106.
413 See Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 62.

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matter for debate whether or not you are essentially a Christian thinker who
has assimilated Marxist ideas or essentially a Marxist who speaks in religious
language and categories to certain audiences.414 Which is it?415
Freire
This is a very difficult question. Let me begin by saying that my thought on this
issue has developed and become more refined over the years. A lot of things that
Marx said will have to be rethought.416 Yet, we have a lot to learn from the communist
experiments of the twentieth century. Stalinism for example, demonstrates that one of
the greatest flaws of this socialism was its authoritarian framework.417 Egalitarianism
came at the cost of repression and suppression of freedom of thought and speech. It is its
democratic frame that allows for freedom of thought and action that constitutes
the most positive aspect of capitalism. Yet capitalism also lacks humanity; to make
capitalism more human is an impossible dream to which angelic spirits or incorrigible
deceivers are devoted! I still believe that evil is the very nature of capitalism 418
I do not believe that the kind of power that is exercised by either communism
or capitalism is a positive one; each result in its own particular brand of
oppression. I long for a system which might transform our very perception of
power.419

415 The reader will note that Freire does not actually answer this question. The author
could not find any satisfactory answer in any of Freire’s writings.
418 Ibid.
419 Ibid.

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Discerning Christian Power
Merton
I applaud your efforts to find alternatives to our present conceptions of power.

We do have much to learn about human nature from the way power has been
exercised historically as well as in our present time. Hitler regarded the power of
his madness as a divine power because he felt inspired. The communists regard the
power of their collective obsession as “divine” (ultimate, or absolute) because it is not
inspired, but blessed with the infallibility of science. All power-politicians proceed on
the assumption that their power is somehow ultimate, an expression of historic, or
cosmic or divine forces, of eternal laws, ultimate principles. And they say they have no
religion? Their very religion is their “absolute corruption” by power.420
Author
It is important to discuss this connection between religion, education and

power. Contemporary New Testament scholars are virtually unanimous in their
view that the historical Jesus embodied and promoted a very different
conception of power than the dominant religious and political authorities in
first century Palestine.421 The evidence that is being gleaned from the gospels

421 For example, Luke Timothy Johnson argues that what is loosely termed ‘the Gospel
of power and prosperity’, is disconnected from the vision of faith and fulfilment that is
presented in the Gospels. He believes that a scholarly, contextual reading of the texts –
for example the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) – reveals a very different kind of power and
fulfilment than what is commonly understood by those terms in the contemporary
world; it amounts to a stark reversal of the status quo – ‘the mighty’ are cast from their
thrones, and ‘the lowly’ are raised up. See Luke Timothy Johnson interviewed in
Florence Spurling, “The Shared Table: Consumerism and the Eucharist”, in Encounter,
ed. Florence Spurling (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio National, 2006).

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and letters suggests that Jesus critiqued, through his words and deeds, the
conventional way in which power was exercised by the dominant elites of his
time. Most scholars suggest that, like you Paulo, he confronted those powers
that dehumanised and enslaved human beings and in so doing, not only
brought healing and wholeness, but also inaugurated a new way of
understanding and perceiving the very nature of power. John Dominic Crossan,
for example, argues that the Jesus we find in the Scriptures was an exemplar of
that alternative: “The Christian Bible presents”, he argues, “the radicality of a just
and nonviolent God repeatedly and relentlessly confronting the normalcy of an unjust
and violent civilization”. If that was the case back then, he deduces, it is still the
case today: the context can change, but this theology cannot be compromised or
altered.422 Thus many Christian thinkers now argue that a Christocentric
hermeneutic leads to a conception of power as something to be relinquished
and shared with a love that seeks wholeness, humanisation, and emancipation
of our neighbour.423
Freire
The tragedy is that our own Catholic Church too often fails to represent and
Also Johnson, She Who Is, Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 270–
72, James Alison, Knowing Jesus, New ed. (London: SPCK, 1998), 43–47. For an in-depth
exploration of the role of power in the Bible and in Christian experience see: Walter
Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, .
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), ———, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003), Hans Ruedi Weber, Power: Focus for a Biblical
Theology (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1989).
422 John Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now (San
Francisco: Harper Collins, 2007), 94. Italics his.
423 See also Geoffrey Robinson, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church:
Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus (Mulgrave, Vic.: John Garratt Publishing, 2007), Evans,
Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 272-73. Also Richard Rohr
interviewed in Stephen Crittenden, The Religion Report (Sydney: ABC Radio National,
15 November, 2006).

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communicate this alternative way of perceiving power and too easily succumbs
to the attraction of exercising power in an authoritarian manner. We cannot
discuss churches, education, or the role of the churches in education other than
historically. We cannot speak, either, of the neutrality of the churches, such assertions of
neutrality must be judged as coming either from those who have a totally naïve view of
the church and history or from those who shrewdly mask a realistic understanding
behind a claim of neutrality.424 We have to choose the kind of church we wish to create
and that choice will condition its whole approach to education – its concept, objectives,
methods, processes, and all its auxiliary effects; even theological education and reflection
are profoundly shaped by our choice.425
There are in my view three ‘types’ of churches; each with its attendant approach
to education. Firstly, there is the Traditionalist Church which is usually found
in closed societies that are colonialist, aligned with the ruling class and where the
culture of silence predominates.426 As a child, I knew many priests who went out to
the peasants, saying, “Be patient. This is God’s will. And anyway, it will earn heaven
for you”.427 This sort of theology is a very passive one that I cannot stomach. As if
Absolute Love could abandon human beings to constant victimisation and total
destitution.428 And even though the second type: the Modernising Church, speaks
of liberating education, it is conditioned by its vision of liberation as an individual
activity that should take place through a change of consciousness and not through the
social and historical praxis of human beings. It likes to present itself as politically
neutral but it is far from neutral as it is aligned to the status quo, which is far from
424 The quoted material in this section of Freire’s discourse is taken from Freire, The
Politics of Education, 120–40.
425 Ibid., 130.
426 Ibid., 132.
427 “The will of God” is a subject that Freire returned to frequently in his writings. See
for example ———, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 132, 37, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 46ff.
428 Freire “Conscientising as a Way of Liberation”, quoted in Elias, Pedagogue of
Liberation.

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neutral.429 When you wash your hands of the conflict between the powerless and the
powerful, you are siding with the powerful. This is a church that preaches dogoodism
but remains committed to the power elite not the oppressed. 430 This kind of church
cannot be prophetic because it lacks hope. Basically, it is a church that forbids itself the
Easter it preaches, so its members die because those who control it refuse to die. 431
Those who belong to the final type – the Prophetic church – are not afraid of
Easter. The prophetic church, like Christ, moves forward constantly, forever dying and
being reborn. This prophetic attitude is accompanied by the theology of liberation - a
prophetic, utopian theology, full of hope.432 This church is as old as Christianity itself;
it rejects dogoodism and palliative reforms, and invites its members to a new Exodus; it
does not think of itself as neutral but commits itself to the dominated social classes and
to radical social change.433 It promotes a critical understanding of faith with a
conviction of the centrality of communal and social responsibility at its heart.434 It
therefore denounces all forms of injustice and announces a new hope, a new
possibility. Those faithful Christians who take sides in solidarity with the marginal,
the poor and oppressed, and who sometimes suffer persecution or even death for
confronting the destructive power of imperialism, neo-colonialism, and local
manifestations of alienation, exploitation, and poverty are fulfilling the prophetic
mission of the church, because they see the kingdom of God as something to be created
on earth.435
The educational model that is fashioned by the Church will be consistent with
the model of church those in charge are affiliated to. In the Traditional and

430 Ibid., 128.
431 Ibid., 127, 36.
432 Ibid., 129.
433 Ibid., 137.
434 Paulo Freire, “Education, Liberation and the Church”, Religious Education 79 (1984):
544.
435 Giroux in the “Introduction” to Freire, The Politics of Education, xvii.

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Modernising Church education cannot help being paralysing, alienating, and

alienated.436 For the Prophetic Church, education must be committed not only to
the transformation of the individual but to the transformation of society as well.
Such an education will engender a “criticopolitical consciousness”.437
Author
This link between ecclesiology and education that you have established
presents a profound challenge to all Catholic educational institutions. What is
your reaction to this analysis Thomas, and how do you perceive the link
between the Church and education?
Merton
Unfortunately, we seem to be incapable of thinking of the Church’s work for the

salvation of souls except in terms of her power over souls – that is to say except in terms
of control. We are so secularised that defense of the faith means defense of certain very
worldly compromises and deals made by the hierarchy in the worldwide struggle for
power.438
I also reject the first two kinds of church that you describe Paulo. I reject the
condescension, persecution, intolerance, Papal power, clerical influence, alliance with
worldly power, love of wealth and pomp etc. This picture of the Church has become a
scandal.439 The true duty of the Church is to promote a theology of love. And a
theology of love cannot be allowed merely to serve the interests of the rich and powerful,
justifying their violence while exhorting the poor and underprivileged to practice
patience, meekness, longsuffering and to solve their problems, if at all, non-violently.
The theology of love must seek to deal realistically with the evil and injustice in the
436 Ibid., 133.

437 Schipani, Religious Education Encounters Liberation Theology, 45.
438 Letter to Leslie Dewart, between May 10 and June 28, 1963, in Shannon, Witness to
Freedom, 291.

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world, and not merely to compromise with them. Theology does not exist merely to
appease the already too untroubled conscience of the powerful and the established. A
theology of love may also conceivably turn out to be a theology of revolution. In any
case, it is a theology of resistance, a refusal of the evil that reduces a brother and sister to
homicidal desperation.440
The real test of my Catholicity comes to be not my belief in God, or in Christ and His
teachings, His Church and her Sacraments, so much as my commitment to extremely
pragmatic and often very shortsighted views – the kind of catholicity outlined in
Paulo’s ‘Traditionalist’ and ‘Modernising’ churches. I sometimes find I have to
go along with policies that … stifle the true life of the Church … The Popes have
pleaded for creative social action, for a really living apostolate, for social justice, for
international collaboration, for peace, etc., … while in the concrete everybody who tries
to do anything really serious about them is blocked, silenced, and forbidden to act.
Behind all the spurious Pentecostal wind one can hear, if one listens a little carefully,
the hideous merriment of demons.441
If the “gospel is preached to the poor”, if the Christian message is essentially a message
of hope and redemption for the poor, the oppressed the underprivileged, and those who
have no power humanly speaking, how are we to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the
power resides in the powerful nations of the earth? We must remember Marx’s
accusation that “the social principles of Christianity encourage dullness, lack of self-
respect, submissiveness, self-abasement, in short all the characteristics of the
proletariat”. We must frankly face the possibility that the non-violence of the European
or American preaching Christian meekness may conceivably be adulterated by bourgeois
feelings and by an unconscious desire to preserve the status quo against violent
upheaval.442
440 “Toward a Theology of Resistance,” in ———, Faith and Violence, 11.

441 Letter to Leslie Dewart, between May 10 and June 28,1963, in Shannon, Witness to
Freedom, 291.
442 “Blessed Are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Nonviolence” in Bochen, Essential

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Freire
For too long Catholic tradition has taught the poor to be passive and compliant.
This negative tradition is something the poor have to liberate themselves from.
Through conscientisation, the mythical remnants of the past will be superseded and
replaced by a new society; human beings will begin to perceive why mythical remnants
of the old society survive in the new and they will then be able to free themselves more
rapidly of these spectres.443 I think, like you Thomas, that Tradition has been used
by many of those in power as an excuse, or a weapon, in order to maintain their
power over the weak and the vulnerable. I think it is impossible to reconcile
Christian love with the exploitation of human beings,444 and it was the exploitation of
human beings that Marx wanted to eradicate. It was my encounter with the poor
and oppressed of Brazil, coupled with my love for Christ and hope that He is the light,
that led me to Marx. My Relationship with Marx has never suggested that I abandon
Christ.445 When I met Marx, I continued to meet Christ on the corner of the street – by
meeting the people.446
Merton
Yet it has to be acknowledged that Marx’s view of Christianity is obviously

tendentious and distorted. He didn’t really understand Christian non-violence.
Perhaps he didn’t understand the complexity of Catholic Tradition either. He
didn’t realise, as many who live the Christian Gospel do, that non-violence has a
great power of its own. It remains perhaps the only really effective way of transforming
... human society. After nearly fifty years of communist revolution, we find little
Writings, 128.
444 Freire quoted in Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals, 113.
446 Paulo Freire “When I met Marx I continued to meet Christ on the corner of the
street”, in The Age Newspaper, Melbourne, April 19, 1974, quoted in Mackie, Literacy
and Revolution, 126.

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evidence that the world is improved by violence.447
Freire
But freedom has to be fought for. Powerful elites do not surrender their power
voluntarily. They will not stop inflicting their injustice on the oppressed if they
are not forced to stop by the oppressed themselves. Frankly, as I have said, one
cannot reconcile fellowship with Christ with the exploitation of other human beings, or
reconcile a love for Christ with racial, gender, and class discrimination.448 Because I had
been born into a Christian family, I never accepted our precarious situation as an
expression of God’s wishes. On the contrary, I began to understand that something
really wrong with the world needed to be fixed.449 Conscientisation attempts to fix
this broken social reality by returning to the marginalised their own sense of
capacity and control over their own destiny. It is an affirmation of their power
to free themselves.
Author
This raises profound and vital questions about the nature of human freedom.
You elucidate so well the ways in which the oppressed individual can struggle
against the social, political and cultural forces that conspire to keep them in a
state of slavery and oppression. But isn’t there more to human freedom than
social/economic/political freedom? In Christian theology and spirituality,
don’t the spiritual and psychological dimensions have to be attended to?
I can see, for example, how revolution can be viewed as a legitimate response to
structural and institutional violence. At the core of your thinking is the ultimate
good of transforming the society for the better. But how, I wonder, does this
stance differ from the right-wing Christianised justification of political and
447 “Blessed Are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Nonviolence” in Bochen, Essential
Writings, 128.
449 Ibid., 14.

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armed repression on the part of Latin American regimes, especially United

States-supported dictatorships such as what happened in Chile for example. Is
this not the same kind of theological rationalisation as your “revolutionary
love”? It is clear that you perceive the sinfulness of the oppressor, but you do
not appear inclined to acknowledge that the oppressed also, are sinners;
Christian anthropology would want to assert that the capacity for evil is not
confined to the oppressors alone; the oppressed too are capable of evil. When
the oppressed take power, how will they deal with their own lust for power?
How will this power be exercised? What will be the tests for the truth of their
vision?450 What guarantees will there be that the new society will not become
even more repressive than the previous one? The historical evidence does
suggest that “revolutionaries not infrequently become more barbaric than the
tyrants they overthrow”.451 Are not blindness, greed and ignorance simply part
of the human condition? Arguably, to believe otherwise is utopian and
unrealistic.452 Fear of profound thought and reflection is not just the preserve of
the oppressor class; it is the curse of all human beings.453 And what about the
450 These questions have been adapted from Lonergan’s insights. See Lonergan, Method
in Theology, 31.
451 John Sendy, “The Octogenarian Revolution”, Eureka Street 7, no. 9 (1997): 43. A close
examination of Russia under Stalin and China under Mao Zedong reveals the potential
of utopian visions of equality and freedom to turn into nightmares of domination and
oppression of the most depraved kind. See Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The
Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), Stanley Karnow, Mao and
China: Inside China's Cultural Revolution (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, 1972),
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Ringwood, Australia:
Penguin Books, 1963), Jung Chang, Wild Swans (London: Flamingo, Harper Collins
1991).
452 For an elucidation of this perspective see Harold Beder, “Conscientization and
Deschooling”, Adult Education 27, no. No.4 (1976): 35.
453 This observation is adapted from the Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz who
experienced at first hand the dark side of the utopian communist vision. See Czeslaw
Milosz, The Captive Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 11.

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Christian imperative to “love your enemies” (Luke 6:27)? Isn’t it the case that
even the oppressive acts of the oppressor come in part from their own internal
cries and prejudices, which in turn lead them to meet their own needs by
abusing others? Don’t those internal cries and prejudices need to be treated
with compassion and attentiveness?454
Freire
I do not know if I have dealt adequately with some of these important questions
in my work. While I do see revolution as a necessity, I also see it as long,
organic ever-evolving process. I acknowledge that almost always, during their
initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend
themselves to become oppressors, or ‘sub-oppressors’. We must remember that their
ideal is to be full human beings; but for them, to be a ‘man’ is to be an oppressor. This is
their model of humanity.455 Once a popular revolution has come to power, the fact that
the new power has the ethical duty to repress any attempt to restore the old oppressive
power by no means signifies that the revolution is contradicting its dialogical character.
Dialogue between the former oppressors and the oppressed as antagonistic classes was
not possible before the revolution; it continues to be impossible afterwards.456
Merton
There is clearly a certain tension between some progressive thought and

traditional Catholic teaching on this issue. In this I tend towards the orthodox
Catholic position. I would like to think I am what Pope John XXIII was – a
progressive with a deep respect and love for tradition – in other words a progressive
who wants to preserve a very clear and marked continuity with the past and not make
silly and idealistic compromises with the present – yet to be completely open to the
454 This perspective on the oppressor is adapted from Mary Elizabeth Moore, Teaching
from the Heart : Theology and Educational Method (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 183.
456 Ibid., 108–09.

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modern world while retaining the clearly defined, traditionally catholic position.457
Our contemplative tradition teaches that the person who attempts to act and do
things for others or for the world, without deepening their own self-understanding,
freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. They
will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of their own obsessions, their
aggressiveness, their ego-centred ambitions, their delusions about ends and means,
their doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern
world than the misuse of power and action to which people are driven by their own
Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehension. We have more power at our disposal
today than we have ever had, and yet we are more alienated and estranged from the
inner ground of meaning and of love than we have ever been.458
Freire
I would hope that the oppressed in their journey of self-discovery and action
would be forced to embark on a journey where they would discover the inner
ground of meaning and of love that you speak of. I would hope also, that when
they would get power, they would not behave in the same oppressive manner,
by misusing their power. But we need to be mindful of the fact that the
oppressor has been enculturated into arrogance and superiority. Ironically, the
poor, who they have subjugated, are the only hope for the oppressor. They are
more humble and have a greater sense of their own need of others. This
engenders in them a certain generosity and real sense of community. In truth,
only the oppressed can free the oppressor.459

458 Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action (New York: Doubleday & Co.
Inc., 1971), 178.
459 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 97. Freire argues that the oppressor is dehumanised in
dehumanising the oppressed. By forbidding the oppressor to keep on oppressing the
oppressed person liberates the oppressor. ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 99.

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Merton
This is the paradox and the tension. The powerful are much more likely to fall
for the allures of the false self. This “false self” is full of pride, and is
preoccupied with whatever will make us “look better” in the eyes of others and
ourselves.460 This pride is a deep, insatiable need for unreality, and exorbitant demand
that others believe the lie we have made ourselves believe about ourselves … It has as a
secondary effect of concupiscence: the convergence of all passion and all sense upon the
self.461 This terrible need for self-assertion is self-destructive and destructive for
other people too. The world we live in has become an awful void, a desecrated
sanctuary, reflecting outwardly the emptiness and blindness of the hearts of those who
have gone crazy with their love for money and power and with pride in their
technology.462
While the dignity of the human person is paid its due lip service, there is little
acknowledgment of, or respect for, a sense of being. As a result people are “valued not
for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness. When a
person, is reduced to their function they are placed in a servile, alienated condition.
They exist for someone else or even worse for some thing else. Hence they cannot enjoy
460 Del Prete observes that Merton appears to use the terms “false”, “exterior”,
“external,” “empirical,” and “ego”, interchangeably. Del Prete, Education of the Whole
Person, 34. Psychologically, the false self consists in intentional or in some cases
unwitting subjection to its drives and desires, convinced, in its self-centeredness, that
they are the source of its existential reality. ———, Education of the Whole Person, 35.
For an elaboration on the “false self” in Merton’s writings see James Conner, “The
Meaning of the Contemplative Life According to Thomas Merton”,
http://www.religiousworlds.com/mystic/merton.html (Accessed 24 May 2004),
Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 296–97.
461 Thomas Merton, The New Man (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1961), 101-02.
462 Letter from Merton to Abdul Aziz, November 17, 1960 in William H. Shannon, The
Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux,
1985), 45. See also his letter to Rachel Carson, January 12, 1963 in Shannon, Witness to
Freedom, 70.

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life.463 One cannot be free while one is a slave. The basic inner moral contradiction
of our age is that, though we talk and dream about freedom (or say we dream of it) we
have in practice developed a completely servile concept of the human person.464
Freire
This is precisely why I see conscientisation as being firmly rooted in Christian

theology and spirituality. The person who has reached conscientisation and is also a
believer in God and sees God as a presence in history; but not one that makes history in
lieu of men and women’s actions. In fact, it is up to us to make history and to be made
and remade by it. It is by making history in a different way that we will put an end to
hunger.465 A faithful theology can emerge among the marginated, dominated,
dependent, voiceless, in developed nations as well as in developing nations. In those
situations of massive human suffering there is an openness and capacity to receive the
liberation Word of God.466
Author
Traditionally Catholicism has been perhaps over-concerned with the idea of sin
as being a personal or private matter. What you are advocating is the
development of an awareness of social sin.467 Gustavo Gutiérrez and many
other liberation theologians mount a similar theological argument.468 Gutiérrez

464 Ibid. See also “The Inner Experience”, in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master,
338–39.
467 For a detailed exploration of the nature and meaning of social sin see Matthew
Lamb, Solidarity with Victims: Toward a Theology of Social Transformation (New York:
Crossroad, 1982), 3–4.
468 Much of Freire’s thinking was became a central part of the world view of a number
of liberation theologians. For evidence of the relationship between Freire’s perspective
on the oppressed and that of many Latin American Liberation theologians see A. F.

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describes the struggle for liberation of the poor as a struggle against this social
sinfulness – for rights. So this struggle is located within a quest for the kingdom
of God and its justice – in other words, the struggle is part of an encounter with
the God of history. It is a collective undertaking of liberation. Through this
process the poor learn to “drink from their own well” in their struggle for
freedom.469
Merton
But for me, the question still remains: will conscientisation free the person from
the kind of inner slavery that I am concerned with? Let me illustrate my
concern by reference to Christianity. One would think that Christianity would
protect us from the falsity, utilitarianism and pragmatism that is prevalent in
our wider society. After all, the Gospels are very direct and accessible in their
teaching. Yet, Christians and atheists [are now] indistinguishable since so-called
Christians adopt many of the same utilitarian values and perspectives as those who do
not profess any belief in the transcendent.470 How will your Conscientisation
protect the poor from making illusory demands on themselves once they gain their
social and cultural freedom? Will it protect them from the pressure to conform to
some standard of human happiness that has been set by others?471 Will it protect them
from their own pride?472 Will it protect them, from the superficial freedom that is
promoted by secular society: the freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this
McGovern, Liberation Theology and Its Critics: Toward an Assessment (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1994), 1–22, A. T. Hennelly, Liberation Theologies: The Global Pursuit of
Justice (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1995), 8–46, Roger Haight, An
Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press,,
1985), 15–42.
469 Gustavo Gutiérrez and Robert R. Barr, The Power of the Poor in History: Selected
Writings (London: SCM Press, 1983), 11, 5.
471 Ibid., 98.
472 ———, The New Man, 101–02.

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or that, to make a choice of distractions (in Pascal’s sense)?473
Freire
My fervent hope would be that Conscientisation would develop this capacity.

Conscientisation is very centred on the inner development of the person. To
participate in the process they have to risk themselves in a very real way: they
have to risk persecution not only from the elites who do not want them to ask
questions or to change, but also from their own people, who fear losing the little
they have; they have to swim against the tide of history and of culture; they
have work in solidarity with each other; they have to embark on a journey of
overcoming many of the habits of mind and perception that they have hitherto
taken for granted. These challenges will require enormous inner reserves of
courage, self-sacrifice, generosity and hope; hope in the face of apparently
insurmountable odds.
Merton
Indeed the poor are much more likely to remember that they “were once a
slave” (Deut 5:15) than the oppressors are. But, at the risk of sounding
patronising and simplistic, I believe that in a very real sense those who are
oppressed are already free. God gives us the freedom to make our own lives within
whatever situation we find ourselves in. We are quite capable of being happy in the
life God has provided for us, in which we can contentedly make our own way, helped by
God’s grace.474 If I do not live happily myself how can I help anyone else to be happy, or
free, or wise? Yet to seek happiness is not to live happily. Perhaps it is more true to say
that one finds happiness by not seeking it. The wisdom that teaches us deliberately to
473 “Learning to Live” in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 358. “Pascal's
sense” in Merton’s writing refers to the way in which secular society is by its nature
committed to what Pascal called “diversion” – it has the anaesthetic effect of quieting
anguish and while pretending to exalt liberty, in actuality it alienates and objectifies
human beings.

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restrain our desire for happiness enables us to discover that we are already happy
without realising the fact.475 This is what freedom means. I agree with Bonhoeffer
when he asserts that “Only when God is our Master can we be free, for God … rules
us by liberating us from our dependence on created things outside us. We use and
dominate them, so that they exist for our sakes, and not we for theirs”.476
If we are to be free, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, will have to work to
develop within themselves the capacity for compassion and mercy. And what
are compassion and mercy, but the gifts of freedom to freedom? What are they but
deliverance from limitation, slavery, doubt, subservience to passion and to prejudice?477
This kind of freedom gives the person the ability to say one’s own “yes” and one’s own
“no” and “not merely to echo the “yes” and the “no” of state, party, corporation, army,
or system.478 This is authentic religion since it fulfils the deepest and most
fundamental needs of the human being.479
Freire
We all have to acknowledge that we are incomplete beings, and the completion of
our incompleteness is encountered in our relationships with our Creator, a relationship
which, by its very nature, can never be a relationship of domination or domestication,
but is always a relationship of liberation. Thus religion (from religare – to bind ) which
incarnates this transcendent relationship among humans should never be an
instrument of alienation.480 It is the striving for completeness that enables humans to go
beyond the limit situations in which they find themselves – to become more.481 This
475 Ibid., 95.

476 “The Inner Experience”, in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 338–39.
478 Ibid., 91.
479 Ibid.
481 This “being more” is something he speaks of a great deal, particularly in his later
writings. See for example ———, Letters to Cristina, 151, 60.

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divine will for human liberation is confirmed by the incarnation. The divine liberating
will finds a definitive expression in the person and mission of Jesus Christ. Just as the
Word became flesh in the historical Jesus, so God’s Word can be approached only
through human beings.482 Humanisation is the vocation of every human being.483
All human beings are “called” to this freedom. We have been created for this
vocation to humanisation. 484 I am arguing that it is in this struggle we discover
inner liberation. We discover who we are and who we are meant to be.
Merton
I see what you are driving at and find myself agreeing wholeheartedly. I
suppose what I am really attempting to explore is the capacity for sin that lies in
the depths of every human heart. The modern person thinks that “sin” is a use of
natural power forbidden by ethical authority, and this implies precisely that freedom
equals the power to sin. Religious and irreligious vie with one another in coming to the
same idiot conclusion, that in order to prove one’s freedom and “experience” it, one has
to “sin”: while, in order to grow in freedom one has to sin more and more … This
completely ludicrous concept, which is one of the characteristic myths of the modern
world in so far as that world is “post-Christian,485 actually destroys all possibility of
genuine and mature freedom wherever it is taken seriously.486
I am simply acknowledging that underlying much of what every human being

thinks and does is a sin of solipsism, and intellectual and moral blindness that comes
from basing all truth and all love upon one’s inner relation to oneself, and not upon
one’s relation to others. Individualism, makes this sin completely endemic in our
society.487
482 Paulo Freire, “A Letter to a Theology Student”, Catholic Mind 70 (1972).

486 Ibid., 329–30.
487 Ibid., 210.

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The only effective means of combating these tendencies is to come to know

oneself. It is only in this way that we can taste true freedom. We have to come to
know and appreciate something of the secret, the mystery in myself.488 If we can
understand something of this inner self and the inner selves of others we can
begin to share with them the work of building the foundations for spiritual unity.489
This is the reason why I believe in the freedom of the solitary life. It resides in the
awakening and the attuning of the inmost heart to the voice of God – to the inexplicable,
quiet definite inner certitude of one’s call to obey God, to hear God in the realisation
that this is the whole reason for one’s existence.490
Like you Paulo, I am convinced that every human being is capable of reaching
the highest level of consciousness and being. In a very real sense we are free
when we realise that we are already free. This is the unspeakable secret: Paradise is
all around us and we do not understand. The gate of heaven is everywhere.491
Contemplation and Education for Freedom
Author
You are speaking now of the deliberate search for God. In your writings you
consistently connect the seeking of God with a willingness to detach from the
“false self”, the addiction to solipsism and the other false promises of the world.
You also see education as being essentially a contemplative activity – a process
of ‘divine therapy’, where the mind, heart and soul are conditioned to receive
the love of God. Virtually everything you say about education seems to reflect
488 Ibid., p.95

489 Ibid., p.95
490 Thomas Merton and Naomi Burton Stone, A Vow of Conversation: Diary 1964–1965
(New York: Farrar, Straus, 1988), 188–89.

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this contemplative perspective.492
Merton
Contemplation is the fundamental reality in life. It is what makes life real and
alive; it is what makes us truly human.493 Contemplation is awakening, it is
enlightenment: that amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God’s
creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life.494 It is the perfection of love and
knowledge,495 the very mystery in which God is revealed as the very centre of our own
inmost self. Contemplation goes beyond concepts and apprehends God not as a
separate object but as the reality within our reality, the Being within our being, the life
of our life. 496 It is not something we do, but the reality we are.497 In this sense it
is the highest expression of a person’s intellectual and spiritual life.498
Until relatively recently, this kind of experience was thought to be for a

spiritual elite, for those who lived in monasteries and convents. It was not for
the masses of the people like the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the
campasino or the peasant farm worker or fisherman.499 We have forgotten that
contemplation is the work of the Holy Spirit acting on our souls through His gifts of
492 Del Prete, “The Contemplative as Teacher”.

493 Conner, “The Meaning of the Contemplative Life”. Transcript of address given at
Marshall University, Huntington, W. VA. October 23, 1993. See also Bochen, "From
Monastery to University," 283, P. Pearson, “Everyone Is Called to Contemplation:
Thomas Merton on Prayer”, Priests & People 5, no. 6 (June) 1991: 220.
494 Merton, New Seeds, 2.
495 ———, The New Man, 13.
496 Ibid., 19.
497 Bochen, "From Monastery to University," 282.
498 Merton, New Seeds, 1, 69. For an examination of the methods by which this is
achieved see Pearson, “Everyone Is Called to Contemplation”, 220, Harvey D. Egan,
Christian Mysticism (New York: Pueblo Pub., 1984), 221, Thomas Merton, The Waters of
Siloe (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949), 316.
499 See also William Johnson in Egan, Christian Mysticism, xi.

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Wisdom and Understanding with special intensity to increase and perfect our love for
Him. These gifts are part of the normal equipment of Christian sanctity. They are given
to us at Baptism, and if they are given it is presumably because God wants them to be
developed.500
In a very real sense this is where contemplation converges with

conscientisation. Contemplation aims to recover your basic natural unity, to
reintegrate your compartmentalised being into a coordinated and simple whole, and
learn to live as a unified human person.501 For this to come about an awakening of
the Inner Self must occur.502 This awareness of the inner self is not an end in
itself, however, it is simply a stepping stone to an awareness of God. It is the
Incarnation that reveals the unity between God and humankind.503
Freire
From a contemplative perspective, I can well understand your view Thomas,

but I have to ask if contemplation can really liberate the poor from their misery
or put food in their mouths. I know you are not suggesting that those things are
not important, but when I see the suffering of my people, I cannot believe that
the Jesus I have come to understand and know, could possibly stand by and tell
the poor to pray and all will then be well. You are not suggesting this, but some
who advocate traditional forms of piety play down the importance of social and
political action.
500 Thomas Merton, What Is Contemplation? (Springfield, IL.: Templegate Publishers,

1950), 8. For an elaboration of this strand of Merton’s thinking see Merton, Conjectures,
7, Conner, “The Meaning of the Contemplative Life”.
501 “The Inner Experience”, in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 295.
502 For an explanation of Merton’s understanding of “the inner self”, see Ibid., 297–98.
503 Ibid., 302, 31, Merton, New Seeds, 37-39, Del Prete, Education of the Whole Person, 33,
Conner, “The Meaning of the Contemplative Life”.

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Merton
I would be very distressed if the poor and the suffering were to interpret my
words in this way. Contemplation is not a replacement for or an alternative to
conscientisation. I see contemplation as being integral to conscientisation.
Contemplation cannot construct a new world by itself. Contemplation does not feed the
hungry; it does not clothe the naked; it does not teach the ignorant; and it does not
return the sinner to peace, truth, and union with God. But without contemplation we
cannot see what we do in our apostolate. Without contemplation we cannot understand
the significance of the world in which we must act. Without contemplation we remain
small, limited, divided, partial: we adhere to the insufficient, permanently united to our
narrow group and its interests, losing sight of justice and charity, seized by the passions
of the moment, and finally, we betray Christ. Without contemplation, without the
intimate, silent, secret pursuit of truth through life, our action loses itself in the world
and becomes dangerous. Yet, if our contemplation is fanatic or false, our action becomes
much more dangerous. We should lose ourselves to win the world; we should humble
ourselves to find Christ everywhere and to love Him in all beings; instead, we betray
Christ by not seeing Him in those whom we harm unconsciously while we “innocently”
pray for them. On this point we are in complete agreement Paulo. We are already
one in our love of truth, our passion for freedom, and our adoration of the Living God.504
My simple claim is this: that every human being is called to contemplation.

Every person is invited to simple openness to God at every moment. Each person
can be blessed with a deep realisation in the very depth of our being that God has
chosen and loved us from all eternity, that we really are God’s children and we love in
a deep personal way.505
504 “Preface to the Argentine Edition of The Complete Works of Thomas Merton”,
quoted in Robert E. edit. Daggy, "Honorable Reader": Reflections on My Work (New York:
Crossroad, 1989), 39–44.
505 ———, Thomas Merton in Alaska: The Alaskan Conferences, Journals and Letters (New
York: New Directions, 1989), 143–44.

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The right way of seeing involves, in part, developing the ability to respond to reality, to
see the value and beauty in ordinary things. But this is difficult to achieve, despite
the fact that we have a myriad of instruments, we no longer see directly what is right in
front of us.506 Consequently we lack the ability to see what is true and what is
false within ourselves.507 “Seeing” with simplicity and humility means being able to
perceive our own prejudices our disordered desires, our attachment to things and
thereby develop the power to overcome them.508
Author
Contemplation in your sense implies a transformation of consciousness. Where

we learn to see all of reality differently and consequently respond to the world
with a transformed quality of awareness. What you are really describing is a
quality of existence that is ‘out of the world’.
Merton
Though ‘out of the world’, we are in the same world as everybody else, the world of mass
media, big business, revolution, and all the rest. We take a different attitude to all these
things, for we belong to God. Yet, so does everybody else belong to God. We just happen
to be conscious of it. It is liberating and profoundly empowering to be granted the
insight that it is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race.509
506 Merton, Conjectures, 307-08.

507 As already noted, Del Prete also observes that much of Merton’s spiritual writing is
replete with references to the “false” and “true” selves. Del Prete, Education of the Whole
Person, 34.
508 Merton recounts an important epiphany in his own life where the doors of his
perception were opened so that he felt in the depths of his being the sense of total
freedom that enveloped his being. It was as if he suddenly saw “the secret beauty” in
the hearts of everyone he looked at and it filled him with an uncontainable joy. He
dates this experience on March 18, 1958. A detailed account of this transformative
experience can be found in Merton, Conjectures, 156–58.
509 Ibid., 157.

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But this transformation of perspective is impossible as long as we are afraid of our own
nothingness, as long as we are afraid of fear, afraid of poverty, afraid of boredom – as
long as we run away from ourselves.510
Despite what you have argued Paulo, my worry is, that when the oppressed
masses of Latin America gain their freedom, they will become just like us! Now
let us honestly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to
help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self that I am speaking of. We just
float along in the general noise half conscious of our alienation and resentment, resigned
and indifferent, we share semiconsciously in the mindless mind of Muzak and radio
commercials which passes for “reality”. This flight from the self is … a “flight from
God”. We desperately need the creative power and fruitfulness of silence. Not only
does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more
balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us
whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a
fragmented existence. It helps us to concentrate on a purpose that really corresponds not
only to the deeper needs of our own being but also to God’s intentions for us; this is a
really important point. When we live superficially, when we are always outside
ourselves, never quite “with” ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions
by conflicting plans and projects, we find ourselves doing many things that we do not
really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really
need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realise to be worthless and without
meaning in our lives.511
510 “The Inner Experience” in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 340–41.
511 “Creative Silence” in Naomi Burton Stone and Patrick Hart, edits., Love and Living
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979), 38–43. See also “Love and Solitude” in
Burton Stone and Hart, Love and Living., pp.20–24 And “Notes for a Philosophy of
Solitude”, in Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy,
1960).

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Author
What appears to be emerging from what you both say, is that if an individual is
to experience liberation one has to expand their own inner consciousness, their
own self-understanding and their intellectual understanding of their place in
the world, ‘the way the world works’, as it were.
It is obvious too that this form of development will not take place without a
rigorous development in a variety of disciplines – disciplines which guide us in
understanding the workings of the internal world as well as the workings of the
world around us.
Resistance, Reorientation and Freedom: The “Pedagogy of

the Question”
Freire
I think the process of internal unveiling and external unveiling have to be kept
in balance. When I reflect on my own education, I recall developing that habit that
I still carry today of occasionally surrendering myself to profound contemplation.512 But
the dramatic and challenging reality of the people took me back to Marx, who didn’t
prevent me from finding Christ in the alleys.513 Perhaps there is a tension between
what has traditionally been viewed as the contemplative life and the life
dedicated to political action and involvement, but I don’t believe there should,
or can, be a distinction. Both must go together or else it is a counterfeit form of
Christianity that is being practiced.
Merton
Few people view contemplation as an act of resistance and protest, but in a very
practical sense it is. It is a protest in that I am saying NO to all the concentration


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camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the
racial injustices, the economic tyrannies … I make … silence a protest against the lies of
politicians, propagandists, and agitators. The faith in which I believe is also invoked by
many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, believe in self-righteous and lying
forms of tyranny. My life must, then be a protest against these also.514
We, in the Church must develop a theology of resistance. A theology of Love must
seek to deal realistically with the evil and injustice in the world, and not merely to
compromise with them. Theology does not exist merely to appease the already too
untroubled conscience of the powerful and the established. A theology of love … is a
theology of resistance, a refusal of the evil that reduces a brother to homicidal
desperation.515
I’m sure you would agree Paulo that the ability to think critically about our
social, political and cultural structures and practices lies at the very heart of this
resistance. Thinking is a powerful form of resistance. By this I do not mean
‘thinking’ in the contemporary sense, for frequently the person who says I “think
for myself” is simply one who does not think at all. Because they have no fully articulate
thoughts.516 No, I mean that kind of critical thinking that enables us to see rightly
into the heart of what is happening around us; to be able to discern with our
own intelligence and not defer to others all the time for authority. As I have
already pointed out, the case of Eichmann should be food for thought for all
Christians.
Author
In much of your writing Thomas, you seem to return again and again to the
twin issues of technology and the mass media as representing areas where there
514 Introduction to the Japanese edition of The Seven Storey Mountain quoted in Del
Prete, Education of the Whole Person, 93.
515 Merton, Faith and Violence, 10.
516 ———, Conjectures, 78.

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is, in your view, a persistent and patent lack of critical thought about their
nature and function within society. These two issues impact directly on
education. If a liberating education is the desired goal, it seems imperative that
the way in which these function to shape and control how education is
perceived seems imperative. Are these forces the ‘new oppressors’ for Western
societies?
Merton
Despite their positive contributions, I think they have become oppressive forces.
Technology is manipulated to promote a form of distraction among the general
public. This emphasis has the anaesthetic function of quieting our anguish. This kind
of technology only exists for the promotion and satisfaction of the powerful and not for
the good of the public, or our students, if we are speaking of education. There is
a pretence that the students’ liberty is being exalted but in fact they are enslaved by the
technology on which they have come to depend. In such a situation the students
are alienated and become a “thing” rather than a person.517
We, in Western society, have everything we ever claim to have wanted, and yet we are
more dissatisfied than we have ever been.518 We find that the kind of life everyone
dreams of is in fact impossible. We cannot handle prosperity and feel guilty if they are
not happy in some publicly approved way.519 The central problem of the modern world,
is the complete emancipation and autonomy of the technological mind at a time when
unlimited possibilities lie open to it and all the resources seem to be at hand. It is
number-one blasphemy, the “unforgivable sin” to call this “emancipation” into
question. Science, according to this new religion can do everything, and is infallible and
517 “The Inner Experience”, in Merton and Cunningham, Spiritual Master, 338–39.
518 Merton, Conjectures, 264. Merton argues that the technological world view promotes
a lifestyle that is founded on a number of illusions: 1) That busyness equals
meaningfulness; 2) The belief that that wealth equals happiness; and 3) That
consumption leads to fulfillment. ———, Conjectures, 196.

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impeccable, it can do no wrong. As a consequence technology and science are now

responsible to no power. Indeed, technology has its own ethic of expediency and
efficiency. What can be done efficiently must be done in the most efficient way – even if
what is done happens, for example, to be cruel and oppressive.520
Freire
The only hope we have in counteracting the technocratic mindset is what I, and
other progressive educators, call the pedagogy of the question. The first question
we need to ask is: what kind of education will help to develop the capacity to
critique prevailing cultural, political and philosophical ideas? Of course such a
question is avoided by those who design the curriculum. Those who design the
curriculum have reduced the concept of liberation to liberating students from
blackboards, static classes, and textbook curricula, and offering them projectors and
other audio-visual accessories, more dynamic classes, and a new technico-professional
teaching.521 By ensuring that all the attention is focused in these peripheral
issues, the really important questions remain unaddressed.
Author
What you are both saying seems to be that emphasis on technology that
appears to be ubiquitous – in Western societies at least – is really a subconscious
attempt to avoid facing the really critical questions we should be facing in our
society and in our schools.
Merton
Yes. The fact remains that we have created for ourselves a culture, which is not yet
liveable for humankind as a whole. In spite all the great advances, never before has
there been such a distance between the abject misery of the poor (still the great majority
of humankind) and the absurd affluence of the rich. If technology is such a panacea how
is it that this situation persists, and worsens by the day? It is astonishing that the myth
520 Ibid., 75.


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that “we are now in a position to solve all our problems” still persists despite the
compelling evidence to the contrary.522 This supreme control of technology has led to the
devaluing of the human person. It is by means of technology, that the person becomes
quantified, that is, becomes part of a mass – mass humanity – whose only function is to
enter anonymously into the process of production and consumption. The effect of a
totally emancipated technology is the regression of the person to a climate of moral
infancy, in total dependence not on “mother nature” but on the pseudo nature of
technology, which has replaced nature by a closed system of mechanisms with no
purpose but that of keeping themselves going. If technology remained in the service of
… God, it might indeed fulfil some of the functions that are now mythically attributed
to it. But becoming autonomous, existing only for itself, it imposes upon humanity its
own irrational demands, and threatens to destroy us.523 Let us hope, it is not too late for
humanity to regain control.524 But, the most pitiful thing of all, is that, in the name of
God, Christians who ought to know better are busy blessing and praising the disease on
the grounds that this is a matter of “openness to the world” and “adjustment to modern
times”.525
Author
Since technology – which is driven by neo-liberal capitalism or “fast

capitalism”526 – is such a powerful force in shaping and determining, to a very
great extent, the course of our existence as a human community, it can be
argued that this issue should occupy a central place in all educational discourse.
Yet, it does not. In most schools it does not appear to be problematised, in that
normally it is only discussed in terms of its pragmatic and practical use to
“enhance” learning. It does not appear to warrant discussion at a philosophical
522 In fact, Merton asserts, this belief is so unfounded that it is itself one of our greatest
problems. Merton, Conjectures, 73.
523 Ibid., 77.
524 Ibid., 213.
525 Ibid., 222.
526 “Fast Capitalism” is defined and explained in Chapter Five.

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or theological level.
Freire
This lack of problematisation is very serious. It is incumbent on our educational

institutions to make students aware of these forces which work to shape their
consciousness. Only this kind of knowledge and awareness can give them the
power to critique, and therefore gain some measure of control over their
existence – so that they become agents rather than objects. This facility would
help them to not only critique the forces which dominate public opinion such as
the media, the scientific/technocratic world view, but it also helps the
individual perceive philosophical inconsistencies, contradictions and
limitations of those perceptual paradigms.
Author
Thomas, you see the media as playing a very destructive role in this conspiracy
of silence. If, as you argue, it has such a power to shape our consciousness and
present as the only option a “false mode of existence”, then what are the
implications for educators and educational institutions, in particular Catholic
educational institutions?
Merton
Firstly, let me say something about the media. The society that is imaged in the
mass media and in advertising, in the movies, in TV, in best-sellers, in current fads, in
all the pompous and trifling masks with which it hides callousness, sensuality,
hypocrisy, cruelty, and fear, is the same wherever you have mass being. The basic
pattern is identical all over the world … the same spiritual cretinism. We are living
in a time of profound spiritual crisis manifested largely in desperation, cynicism,
violence, conflict, self-contradiction, ambivalence, fear and hope, doubt and belief,
creation and destructiveness, progress and regression, obsessive attachments to images,
idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts
out everywhere in a still more acute and terrifying form. Everywhere we are living
under a tyranny of untruth … The basic falsehood is the lie that we are totally dedicated

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to truth.527
The media reinforces this false mode of existence. It actively promotes this kind of
existence since the more one lives in a false mode the more one wants to
anaesthetise oneself with constant and titillating distractions.528 We are, a
generation who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, because we have let ourselves
be so completely and abjectly conditioned by words, slogans, and official
pronouncements.529
Brainwashing is now ubiquitous. This is achieved by isolating a person emotionally

and spiritually, undermining their whole sense of identity, and then “rescuing” them
from this state of near-collapse by drawing them over into a new sense of community
with their persecutors who “restore” his/her identity by admitting them into their
midst as an approved and docile instrument. Henceforth they carry out the master’s
will and like it. Whatever the collectivity [sic.] does is right, infallible, perfect … All
that matters is to be part of the great, loud mass. It seems to me that the great effort of
conscience that remains for the modern person is to resist this kind of annihilating
pressure, this defection, in every possible way.530
Author
It can be deduced from what you say Thomas that it ought to be the educator’s
job to help young people develop the capacity to resist these forces that are
shaping their consciousness and determining their behaviour, thereby giving
them the power to choose to gain a measure of control over their own
perceptions and behaviour.
527 Merton, Conjectures, 48, 67–68.

528 Shannon, Witness to Freedom, ix-x.
529 “Sacred Art and the Spiritual Life,” in Disputed Questions, quoted in Del Prete,
Education of the Whole Person, 77.
530 Cold War letter 24b. Written c. January 25, 1962 in Shannon, Witness to Freedom, 6–7.

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Freire
Thomas is arguing in a Western context what I have consistently argued in the

Latin American context: like the oppressed in my region, mass society in the
West also exists in a submerged state. The educator must unveil this reality so
that students can name it, see how it works, and study its processes and
methods with the aim of empowering them to repossess their own
consciousness and agency and thus free themselves from the tyranny of this
manipulation.
Merton
But the propagandists are clever. We imagine that propaganda is always something
patently false, or at least in great part fictitious: a malicious and systematic
misrepresentation of truth ... But … the more effective propaganda contains in it a large
measure of truth, and it is effective precisely because the facts on which it is based can
be verified.531 Those who are paid vast sums of money to devise propaganda strategies
know well that the modern individual sees her/himself as “too intelligent” to be taken in
by “mere propaganda”. So they have developed a more subtle strain – one that is
“essentially irrational but not necessarily untrue.532 The real violence exerted by
propaganda is this: by means of apparent truth and apparent reason, it induces us to
surrender our freedom and self-possession. It predetermines us to certain conclusions,
and does so in such a way that we imagine that we are fully free in reaching them by
our own judgment and our own thought. We … have also reached the correct answer
without difficulty – the answer which is shown to be correct because it is the answer of
everybody. Since it is at once my answer and the answer of everybody, how should I
resist it?533

532 Merton presents an in-depth analysis of the techniques of propaganda in Ibid., 235–
38.
533 Ibid., 238.

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Author
Everything you say has profound implications for democracy. This abuse of
power through the dissemination of propaganda corrupts the essence of
democratic practice, since democracy relies for its existence on a thinking,
critical, informed populace.
Merton
Lack of thinking has profound implications for democracy. If democracies are made
up predominantly of people who do not think, what happens when thought is
needed and nobody does any thinking? If everyone assumes that someone else is
thinking, then it is clear that no one is thinking either for themselves or for anybody
else. Democracy cannot exist when people prefer ideas and opinions that are fabricated
for them.534 It is no exaggeration to say that democratic society is founded on a kind
of faith: on the conviction that each citizen is capable of, and assumes, complete political
responsibility. Democracy assumes that the citizen knows what is going on,
understands the difficulties of the situation, and has worked out for themselves an
answer that can help him or her to contribute, intelligently and constructively, to the
common work (or “liturgy”) of running their society.535
Author
It strikes me that an education which would awaken these sensibilities in the

individual would have to have at its heart an induction into, or formation in,
the art of discernment in the traditional Christian sense. Paulo’s
conscientisation, it could be argued, is a form of discernment in that it is
designed to help the person discriminate between what is true and what is
false. A ‘pedagogy of the question’, is a pedagogy of discernment. Would you
agree, Thomas, that an authentic Catholic education ought to have formation in
the art of discernment at the core of the learning experience?
534 Ibid., 100–01.

535 Ibid., 100.

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Merton
My understanding of discernment has already been presented.536
I think that the crisis of Christianity today is most acute precisely in those circles
where fundamentalist and conservative superstitions seek at all cost to defend the
shallow and subjective “good intentions” and conformity to the superficial legal
demand against all deeper understandings of one’s real hidden motivations. One must
face the fact that “good intentions” are only good as long as they are faithfully re-
examined in the light of new knowledge, and in the light of their fruits. More and more
we see how in reality the “good,” “kind,” “humane,” and “loving” intention bears fruit
in real evil, cruelty, inhumanity, and hate. The ethic of subjective “good intentions” has
been judged and found wanting. We must refocus on the objective results of our
decisions! And this is achieved through careful discernment.537 Today, we are
prisoners of every urgency. We have therefore lost our ability to see life as a whole, to
evaluate conduct as a whole; we no longer have any relevant context into which our
actions are to be fitted, and therefore all our actions become erratic, arbitrary, and
insignificant.538
The cultivation of values like solitude, inner silence, reflective communion with
natural realities, are the only effective weapons against self-delusion and false
thinking. If we are to eradicate the unconscious roots of sin then we must throw
ourselves on God’s mercy and goodness as we are incapable of finding a path to truth by
our own power alone. But we can prepare the ground for good choices by choosing life,
and the things that favour life. Discernment integrates us into the whole living
movement and development of the cosmos, it brings us into harmony with the rest of the
world and situates us in our place; it helps us fulfil our task and to participate fruitfully
in the whole world’s work and its history, as it reaches out for its ultimate meaning and
536 See Merton in Chapter One

538 Ibid., 118.

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fulfilment. 539
The art of discernment forms us to conform to objective norms of good, and learn to
distinguish these from the purely pragmatic norms current in our society. If we
are attuned and attentive to ‘the good’ we will respect every living thing, especially
human beings who are made in the image of God. Respect for the person even in their
blindness and confusion, even when they may do evil. This is what it means to be a
Christian: … to become empty of one’s self, the illusory self, fabricated by our desires
and fears … It means finally preferring silent action and interior sacrifice.540
Discernment can restore this consciousness or “memory” to us. It reveals to us who

we really are. We are freed to see that we are limited and obstructed by our mixed
motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness, and our tendency to
aggressivity and hypocrisy … We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact
that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil
predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still
be found. We must try to accept ourselves, whether individually or collectively, not only
as perfectly good or perfectly bad, but in our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good
and evil.541
Instead of hating the people I think are warmakers and oppressors, I should hate the
appetites and the disorder in my own soul, which are the causes of violence and war. If
I love peace, then I must hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things
in myself, not in another.542
Author
It seems to me that what you are saying is that the development of this quality
of self-understanding lies at the very heart of a Catholic education that seeks to
539 Ibid., 332, 113, 219.

540 Ibid., 219.
541 ———, New Seeds, 117–18.
542 Ibid., 122.

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be contemplative. It seems logical to deduce from what you are saying that it is
imperative that every Catholic student be immersed in this experience – this
formation.
Merton
If a person is to grow to understand their own existence in this contemplative

way it will require a real training of the mind … a genuine formation in those
intellectual and spiritual disciplines without which real freedom is impossible. This
means that education should be something broad and deep. It should represent a
consistent broadening and deepening process to give us not only knowledge but also
wisdom; it should be an opening up and a developing of the human capacities of each
one of us.543 This is a sapiential experience. I would want all students of life to “taste”
and “savour” wisdom. I would wish for all those undergoing education what I
wish for my students at Gethsemani. I would seek to develop the special human
capacities, which will enable each person to experience the deepest values of the
contemplative life. These values imply a certain aesthetic and intuitive awareness, a
taste and connaturality or a capacity to savour (in an experience that cannot easily be
formulated) the deepest truths of the Christian life.544
Freire
I find myself agreeing with what you say Thomas, but don’t you acknowledge
that it is precisely these human capacities are suppressed in the oppressed
people of this world. You cannot really search for wisdom if you live a life of
slavery or your children are suffering from malnutrition or dying from what
would be easily curable diseases in the West.
543 Conference Tape 306B, “On Monastic Education”, September 17, 1968 (Louisville,
Ky., Bellarmine college: Thomas Merton Studies Centre, unpublished tape), quoted in
Del Prete, Education of the Whole Person, 152.
544 Quoted in ———, "The Contemplative as Teacher."

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Merton
The injustice and suffering of our world is a scandal. What you are doing to
change it Paulo, I applaud with my whole heart. All Christians, all people who
have a care for justice must endeavour to transform the world. But in the
endeavour to bring about a more just society the person who discerns with the
eyes of Christ must not be a one-sided and aggressive activist: they must also have
depth, they must be able to be silent, to listen to the secret voice of the Spirit. They must
renounce their own will to dominate and let the Spirit act secretly in and through
them.545 They need to become aware that there is a pervasive form of contemporary
violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily
succumbs: activism and overwork. The frenzy of the activist neutralises their work for
peace. It destroys their own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of their
own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.546
The discerning person comes to understand that … the non-violent way is the only
truly Christian way. Non-violence ideally speaking, does not try to overcome the
adversary by winning over them, but to turn them from an adversary into a collaborator
by winning them over.547 Violence rests on the assumption that the enemy and I are
entirely different: the enemy is evil and I am good … But love sees things differently. It
sees that even the enemy suffers from the same sorrows and limitations that I do. That
we both have the same hopes, the same needs, the same aspiration for peaceful and
harmonious human life. And that death is the same for both of us.548 The person who
loves will not let themselves be persuaded that the adversary is totally wicked and can
545 “Rebirth of the New Man in Christianity” in Burton Stone and Hart, Love and Living,
202.
547 “Toward a Theology of Resistance”, in ———, Faith and Violence, 13.
548 Preface to the Vietnamese edition of “No Man Is an Island,” in Daggy, Honorable
Reader, 124.

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therefore never be reasonable or well-intentioned, and hence need never be listened to.549
Freire
But Thomas, is this not over-idealistic? In reality the powerful oppressor does
not want to listen to the victims of their greed and thirst for power. The only
way the poor can make themselves heard is to rise up against the forces of
oppression. The powerful do not listen to gentle requests, they do not respond
to appeals. They only give up power when they are forced to give it up. The
poor have to take the power from the oppressor.
Merton
This is true. Yet, I do not underestimate the power of Christian poverty and
self-forgetfulness. Christian non-violence and meekness imply a particular
understanding of the power of human poverty and powerlessness when they are united
with the invisible strength of Christ. This is a dynamism of patient and secret growth,
in belief that out of the smallest, weakest, and most insignificant seed the greatest tree
will come. This combat, after all, is already decided by the victory of Christ over death
and over sin. The Christian believes that the hidden power of the Gospel is demanding
to be manifested in and through their own poor person. Hence in perfect obedience to
the gospel, they will efface themselves and their own interests and even risk life in order
to testify not simply to “the truth” in a sweeping, idealistic, and purely platonic sense,
but to the truth that is incarnate in a concrete human situation, involving living
persons whose rights are denied or whose lives are threatened.550
Freire
Why is it, that it is the poor who are required to do all the sacrificing in this
world? As I have already highlighted, we have had a church that too often tells
the poor to endure the present oppressive and crushing poverty with patience and
549 “Blessed are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Non-Violence” in William H.
Shannon, edit., Passion for Peace: The Social Essays (New York: Crossroads, 1995), 254.
550 “Blessed are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Non-Violence” in Ibid., 251.

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forgiveness and in the next life you will be vindicated. This, you would agree is not
true Christian hope. Real Christian hope is nurtured and engendered by seeing
the possibilities for transformation and liberation in the here and now. This is
not a disembodied hope for a better world to come; instead, it is a hope born
from the belief that the reign of God is to be made real here and now as we live
here on earth.551 I have seen so many examples of the presence of the kingdom
of God in small poor communities all over the world from Brazil-to-Guinea
Biseau-to-El Salvador.552 The hope for our world is found in the poor.
Merton
You must understand by now that I do not entertain formally conventional notions of
the Church. I absolutely refuse to accept bourgeois notions that in the long run veil the
true mystery of Christ and make it utterly unattainable to some people.553
At the same time, all Christians rich and poor are called to become a “new being”
and a “new creation”. Dying and rising is part and parcel of our very Christian life.
This inner revolution implies complete self-transcendence and transcendence of the
norms and attitudes of any given culture, any merely human society. This is what it
means to be a contemplative. The contemplative is called to be, like Christ, a suffering
Servant. True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not
know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we
thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative
transformation. This risen life is not easy; it is also a dying life. It is by the Cross that
we enter the dynamism of resurrection and renewal, the dynamism of love.
551 Freire in Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the Non-Poor, 231, Freire,
Pedagogy of Hope, 9–10, ———, Letters to Cristina, 180, ———, The Politics of Education,
xvii.
552 Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 200. Freire refers to El Salvador as an example of the hope
made possible through popular education. See ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 239–40.
553 Letter to Dona Louisa Coomaraswamy, September 24, 1961 in Shannon, The Hidden
Ground of Love, 133.

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The Christian must have the courage to follow Christ, they must dare to follow
conscience even in unpopular causes. They must, if necessary, be able to disagree
with the majority and make decisions that they know to be according to the Gospel and
teaching of Christ, even when others do not understand why they are acting this way.
Too many Christians are not free because they submit to the domination of other
people’s ideas. They submit passively to the opinion of the crowd. They are afraid of the
aloneness, the moral nakedness, which they would feel apart from the crowd. But the
Christian in whom Christ is risen dares to think and act differently from the crowd.554
The Liberating teacher: A Contemplative at Heart
Author
It is clear from what you say Thomas, that to be an authentic Catholic teacher, or
student, requires a permanent impulse or movement towards transformation.
This impulse requires an acute attentiveness to the invitations of the spirit in
our personal lives and in the world around us. Your vision for Catholic
education is profoundly Christological in that it is very much an immersion in
the Pauline invitation to “let his mind be in you” (Phil 2:5). All reality is
mediated through the lens of the heart of Christ.
Freire
The heart of Christ reveals love. All involved in education – teachers,

administrators, and students – will have to have their consciousness
transformed so that they can develop the capacity to love in a genuine way. But
the teacher above all must be one such person. To be a real teacher requires a
certain love not only of others but also of the very process implied in teaching. It is
impossible to teach without the courage to love, without the courage to try a thousand
times before giving up.555
554 “He is Risen” in Bochen, Essential Writings, 188–89.


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Merton
If we really want to be human in the full sense of the word, we must let God’s
power really work on us, and build us into one piece. As you say Paulo, the
education of every person is the education of the heart. A Catholic education, in
particular, should be a formation of the heart to know God. To develop a heart that
knows God, not just a heart that loves God, but a heart that knows God. How does one
know God in the heart? By praying in the heart. It is their secret affirmation which God
places in my heart, a “yes” to God. My destiny in life … is to uncover this “yes” so
that my life is totally and completely a “yes” to God, a complete assent to God.556
This movement leaves one entirely docile to the “spirit” and hence a potential
instrument for unusual creativity. They accept not only their own community, their
own society, their own friends, their own culture, but all humankind. They are able to
bring perspective, liberty, spontaneity into the lives of others. The finally integrated
person is a peacemaker, and that is why there is such a desperate need for our leaders to
become such people of insight.557
This process of discernment leads one ultimately to true insight and

compassion. I cannot treat my fellow humans with humanity unless I have
compassion for them. I must have at least enough compassion to realise that when they
suffer they feel somewhat as I do when I suffer. And if for some reason I do not
spontaneously feel this kind of sympathy for others, then it is God’s will that I do what I
can to learn how. I must learn to share with others their joys, their sufferings, their
ideas, their needs, their desires. I must learn to do this not only in the cases of those who
are of the same class, the same profession, the same race, the same nation as myself, but
when those who suffer belong to other groups even to groups that are regarded as
hostile. If I do this, I obey God. If I refuse to do it, I disobey God.558
556 “The Life That Unifies” in Daggy, Alaskan Conferences, 154–55.

557 “Final Integration: Toward a Monastic Therapy”, in Merton, Contemplation, 228.
558 ———, New Seeds, 76–77.

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Reflection on dialogue: Conclusions and Orientations
It is clear from this imaginary dialogue, that in terms of their vision for
fashioning an education that liberates, there is profound empathy and
convergence of thinking between these two important Catholic thinkers,
however, it is equally clear that there are some differences and tensions in the
specifics of their respective visions.
Both Merton and Freire envision a direct connection between faith, peace and
justice. Theologically they are at one in that they seek to make believers
conscious of the reality of social sin. They believe that there can be no peace
without justice, whether it be in Catholic schools or in the wider society, and
that if one claims to be a person of faith, one must commit oneself to working
for justice – failure to do so is an expression of an inauthentic faith. Both writers
seek to “unveil” the ideologies that not only distort and hide reality, but
unwittingly or intentionally contradict the fundamental teachings of the
Gospels. The key concern for both, is not sinful individuals, but sinful
structures and sinful institutions. They eschew a privatised, individualistic form
of religious belief where the stress on Jesus as personal saviour is linked to the
status quo. Too often, as Merton highlighted, traditional forms of Christianity
legitimates the individualism of our economic system, while presenting an
interpretation of tradition that is non-political. They both want to alert
Christians to the fact that this apparently benign and neutral position has
significant negative political consequences. In an educational context they both
wish to unveil and counteract this tendency and they also wish to highlight the
propensity to normalise ways of thinking that are inimical to the foundational
teachings of the Gospel. At the heart of their approach lies a pedagogy of the
question – a pedagogy which asks the why of things and is not content with
packaged or officially sanctioned answers. Ultimately, theirs is a vision of
education as a transformative activity aimed at changing society’s structures as
well as changing consciousness, and it involves a multifaceted conversion on
the part of the entire educational community.

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For Freire this transformation comes through conscientisation, an approach to

education which is overtly and primarily political: the marginalised emerge
from their subjugated state when their consciousness is transformed. For
Merton true liberation occurs through an intentional self-appropriation of the
contemplative trajectory of tradition. It is a genuine encounter with God,
mediated through the risen Jesus that is the source of all authentic
transformation and is the ground of all human freedom. Immersion in the
contemplative life empowers the individual and the community to discern a
“true” way of being in the world so that they are impelled to act on behalf of
those who are excluded and marginalised. It is this quality of encounter with
God that is the source of all authentic learning. Self-discovery is the fruit of this
encounter.
The contemplative is able to “see” clearly into the heart of our social and
political reality but is able also to look courageously and faithfully into their
own heart and accept that sin has corrupted and distorted their own perception.
If liberation is to occur the individual person has to allow the grace of God to
touch their hearts and so transform their perception of themselves and the
‘other’. They learn to embrace all people and are particularly moved to respond
to the plight of the poor and subjugated.
But their compassion extends also to the oppressor, since they can see in
his/her disordered desires a mirror image of their own sinful heart. This gives
Merton’s interpretation a more nuanced, non-violent quality than Freire’s more
confrontational approach. If there is an “oppressor” for Merton, in a Western
context it is not embodied in particular individuals who have to be overthrown
through revolution, it is personified by the ubiquitous propagandistic influence
of the media which has resulted from the technological revolution. Merton
perceived our “heady rush” into technological mastery as leaving us without
the spiritual means to face our problems.559 A true Catholic education would
559 Shannon, Witness to Freedom, 26–27.

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have to counteract the “false self” created by the mass media by helping
students understand the mechanisms and practices of propaganda and
indoctrination which occur under the guise of freedom, and to which we serve
“as willing or unwitting instruments”.560 If we are to discover our “true selves”
we will have to come to understand and counteract these forces in the light of
revelation.
Merton’s contemplative vision for Catholic education serves as both an

elaboration and a counterpoint to Freire’s work. It could be argued that they
both arrive at the same destination through choosing different paths. The
difference between both thinkers may, in the end, be a matter of emphasis and
degree and not in terms of substance or conclusions.
In the next chapter, the ideas and orientations that may lead to an education
that is the practice of freedom that have been explored by Freire and Merton, will
receive further discussion, elaboration and contemporisation through the
presentation of a fictitious dialogue between Thomas Groome and Henry
Giroux; Groome being the natural heir to Merton’s educational vision, and
Giroux to Freire’s.
560 Noam Chomsky, Chomsky on Miseducation (New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 2000), 45.

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Chapter Four: Border Crossing as Education For Life:

Henry Giroux in Dialogue with Thomas Groome
Introduction
If the work and thought of Paulo Freire and Thomas Merton are to be applied to
a contemporary Catholic educational context, both Henry Giroux and Thomas
Groome are appropriate and natural choices.
Giroux worked with Freire and is philosophically allied to his liberative

philosophy of education. Like Freire, he is a progressive educator who
combines a ‘language of critique’ with a ‘language of possibility’.561 According
to Giroux, critical pedagogy562 is not simply a matter of classroom methodology,
it is a way of understanding human development and perception that should,
in his view, become an essential constituent in the development of an
emancipated citizenry. Freire and Giroux shared a mutual respect and
admiration for each others’ work, so it is not surprising that there are many
common concerns and perspectives. Giroux uses Freire’s ideas as a springboard
for developing his own perspective on a number of contemporary issues. His
most recent work has focused on what he calls the “militarisation of education”
as well as the effect on childhood of corporatist free-market economics. He
advocates an education structure that has a strong ethical commitment to
interrogate all practices that perpetuate inequality, exploitation and human
suffering.
Thomas Groome is a renowned Catholic educator who also stresses the
561 Henry Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education (London: Heinemann, 1983), 242.
562 Critical pedagogy is elaborated in Chapter Five

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emancipatory function of education and advocates a comparable ethical

commitment. This may, at first glance, appear to situate him firmly in the
progressive educator camp, however, the fact that he places a heavy stress on
the centrality of the role of tradition in the liberating process, makes his position
a little more nuanced and complex; Groome is, in his own words, “steeped in
the Catholic tradition”. This identity explains and illuminates the source and
orientation of his thinking. His philosophy and theology of education is firmly
rooted in Catholic history and culture. Yet, his approach to the interpretation of
his Catholic tradition is far from traditional. He adopts a progressive
hermeneutical framework and remains faithful to the goals of Catholic
education.
It is hoped that through an open and candid (albeit fictitious) conversation

between these two eminent scholars, the perspectives that were examined in the
previous chapter can be sharpened and contemporised. It will also be
demonstrated that there can be much cross-fertilization and even some ‘cross-
evangelisation’ between aspects of the secular progressive and Catholic
progressive approaches to education. The previous Chapter opened with
Merton’s views on the tranformative possibilities inherent in open and
generous dialogue. It is noteworthy that Groome expresses a similar
perspective. He reflects that conversation engages us personally; through
conversation with a person, book or phenomena of any kind,
we feel listened to and we listen ourselves, we are stimulated

by its “to-and-fro”, enriched by its “give-and-take”. We are also
risking the possible outcome. By posing certain questions, such
as, “what am I bringing to the text?” … and “What does it mean
for my/our life”?, we find ourselves transformed irrevocably.563
563 Groome, Educating for Life, 202–03. Groome, on a number of occasions, quotes Jürgen
Habermas who argues that true conversation requires at least four commitments of
participants: (1) to pursue the truth; (2) to be honest in what they share; (3) to avoid
attempts to manipulate, dominate, or control the outcome; and (4) never to force
agreement other than by genuine persuasion. See Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of

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The dialogue that follows is carried out in this spirit and with this intent.
Understanding the Political nature of schooling as a

prerequisite for Freedom
Author
The link between politics and education was extensively explored by the
interlocutors in the previous chapter. The convergence of their thought is best
summed by the contemporary Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, who argues that
those in control of our social and political institutions are not interested in truth,
but in power and the maintenance of that power. In order to maintain that
power, it is essential that the masses “live in ignorance of the truth, even the
truth of their own lives”. Consequently, what surrounds us “is a vast tapestry
of lies, upon which we feed”.564 Henry, your writings would appear to agree
with this assessment. How do you characterise the connection between politics
and liberating education?
Giroux
I think it is absolutely vital that we interrogate the political nature of public

schooling if we are to educate for genuine freedom.565 We cannot conceive of
freedom without such an interrogation. The problem is, rather than being agents of
empowering critical consciousness, schools in Western capitalist societies, are instead
powerful instruments for the reproduction of capitalist relations of production and the
legitimating ideologies of everyday life.566 Those who attend our schools are kept in
a state of subjugation by dominating forces. This domination is expressed in the
Communicative Action, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1984), 285ff.

564 Harold Pinter, “Art, Truth and Politics”, Counterpunch,
http://www.counterpunch.org/pinter12072005.html (Accessed 7 December 2005).
565 Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals, 12.
566 “Culture, Power and Transformation in the Work of Paulo Freire”, in Ibid., 111. See
also Aronowitz and Giroux, Education under Siege, 5.

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way in which power, technology, and ideology come together to produce knowledge,
social relations, and other concrete cultural forms that indirectly silence people.567 This
silencing is a form of enslavement.
Author
Is this why you use the school-as-factory metaphor, where, through prediction
and control, the students (and, perhaps, many teachers also) are reduced to the
docile function of passive consumers?568
Giroux
Due to the militarisation and corporatisation of schools a large part of the

curriculum universalises dominant norms, values and perspectives, so that it is
increasingly difficult for young people and adults to appropriate a critical
language, outside of the market that would allow them to translate private
problems into public concerns or to relate public issues to private
considerations.569 In such a context students are reduced to the act of consuming
and citizenship is mostly about forgetting, not learning.570
Author
So, if educational institutions are to be really serious about fostering freedom in

the individual, they have a responsibility to present education as a political
activity. You argue consistently that the school should be a place where
students are made aware of the political implications of the curriculum and the
whole manner in which the school as institution functions.

568 Kenneth J Saltman and David A Gabbard, Education as Enforcement: The Militarization
and Corporatization of Schools (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2003), xviii.
569 Ibid., xvi.
570 Ibid., xviii.

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Giroux
Educators and others need to reclaim a notion of politics and pedagogy that fosters
civic engagement and public intelligence. The greatest struggle we face in the world
today, is not terrorism, but a struggle on behalf of justice, freedom, and
democracy for all of the citizens of the globe, especially youth.571 Critical
pedagogy has the potential to further equality, democracy and humanity; perhaps such
an enterprise is the only hope we have if we are to avoid catastrophe. This is why I argue
that education has to break beyond the confines of schooling. I want education to be
inserted into the public sphere, this, of course, renders it intensely and inescapably
political.572
Author
The notion of the link between control and knowledge is explored by a number
of theorists particularly in the twentieth century. Prominent intellectuals such
as Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu as well as educators
such as Freire have long been concerned to highlight the politics of education.
The idea that knowledge is manufactured and packaged by power networks
has profound implications for the nature and shape of society. As a Catholic
educator, Thomas, how do you respond to this analysis, and, do you see it as
applying to the Catholic educational structures?
Groome
Education is profoundly political. We know from a wealth of scholarship that

the dominant ways of knowing in modern society are shaped by the interest of social
control or commodity production.573 This is of great concern to Catholic educators
571 Ibid.
572 Henry Giroux, Schooling for Democracy: Critical Pedagogy in the Modern Age (London:
Routledge, 1989), xvi.

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since our tradition aims to emancipate and humanise every individual.574 All our
educational endeavors have this emancipatory interest – we want each student to be set
free. To this end political action is absolutely essential; each student should be
encouraged … “to name their present praxis” so that they can understand and interpret
their own unique experience of life. If our young are to become makers of history
then political agency is imperative. It is only a person as agent-subject who can
make history. The Catholic Christian view is that the person is always an “agent-
subject” – someone who has autonomy to choose, decide, chart their own course, and
make a difference in human history.575 This kind of freedom can only be achieved
when we come to perceive and articulate our own functioning anthropology. We
need, through education to come to understand the forces that are at work in
shaping our consciousness. Making anthropology so foundational to education
highlights the profoundly political nature of it and emphasises the educator’s role as
social agent.576
Author
A good deal of the dialogue with Freire and Merton focused on the issue of
power and powerlessness. The concept of agency is directly related to the issue
of power. How do you understand the relationship between the exercise of
power and education Henry?
Giroux
Schools are sites of struggle for meaning and power. In most cases the schools
system serves to empower the already empowered in society and to maintain the
marginalisation of the disempowered. This means that any discussion about the
nature and dissemination of knowledge must be linked to the issue of power.577 At a
time when our educational institutions are being militarised and corporatised it is
574 Ibid., 297.

575 Ibid., 85.
576 Ibid., 71, 73, 120.

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imperative that we find an antidote to the degraded currency of propaganda and the
suppression of dissent that is now prevalent in our public schools.578 Powerlessness is
the dire consequence of this disease, and the only cure on offer from the controllers
of the system is a form of manufactured escapism.579
Author
But we are living in a commercial world. It is after all, capital and the
production and sale of goods which drives all economies. Is it not incumbent on
educational institutions to prepare students for this political and socio-
economic structure? This is a competitive, meritocratic system, so it might be
argued that it is in our youth’s best interest to equip them with the skills to
function effectively within this reality.
Giroux
Firstly, it is not inevitable that we should accept that this is the only possible
system, or even that it is the best one; we only have to look at the way in which
our consumer needs are destroying our environment as well as the psyches of
our young to realise that there are some dire, and perhaps, catastrophic
consequences to our prevailing system of market capitalism. But even within
the prevailing economic structure, education ought to be more than a site simply of
cultural reproduction which reinforces the existing power structures. Schools
could and should be sites of resistance, contestation, agency, cultural struggle,
challenge to a cultural hegemony which stigmatises, marginalizes, oppresses and
excludes significant portions of the population.580
Author
In practical terms, how could this become a reality?
578 Giroux in Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, x–xvii.

580 Henry Giroux, Ideology Culture & the Process of Schooling (London: Falmer, 1981), 5.

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Giroux
We begin by believing that it is possible for schools to become sites of cultural

production and transformation rather than reproduction. That they can empower and
emancipate individuals and groups within society. This can only be made possible
by introducing what I, and others, call a critical pedagogy. This entails what
Freire has called “a reinvention of power”, where schools become truly
democratic spheres where the voices of all are heard and heeded; it would
mean a serious ethical commitment to interrogate all practices that perpetuate
inequality, exploitation and human suffering; it would mean that we wouldn’t
institute just one script or grand narrative, but, rather, several scripts, several
curricula, several versions of education which need to be critically interrogated; it
would mean that we would accept that all cultural representations in curricula
ought to be regarded as discourses of power and asymmetrical relations of power; and
finally, this politics of voice and empowerment would require an affirmation of
diversity and of the rights of oppressed groups for recognition in education.581
Catholic and Secular Visions of Freedom: A Dialogue
Author
Thomas, Catholic teaching on education, as well as its social justice teaching,

would appear to affirm much of what Henry is saying about taking a critical
view of the way power functions to give excessive advantage to some and to
disempower others, thus limiting the freedom of large numbers of people. But
the Church would have some reservations with Henry’s suggestion that there
isn’t only one script or grand narrative; that there are in fact several versions of
‘the truth’, and that these diverse narratives or versions of truth ought to be
taught and celebrated in all schools as a way of empowering the disadvantaged
and disempowered. According to the Church, only it can be the repository of
581 ———, Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (London:
Routledge, 1992), 73–82.

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truth. In other words the Church embodies the only narrative that can deliver
freedom to humankind; this narrative being one that places the Risen Jesus as
the locus of all truth and freedom. Is there a way of harmonising or at least
accommodating these apparently conflicting views of the source and nature of
freedom?
Groome
Yes, there is – if one is willing to live comfortably with some tension, ambiguity
and paradox! Certainly, from a Catholic perspective, God’s grace/love, that is
made tangible and visible in Jesus, is precisely what enables human beings to be
responsible and free.582 For the Catholic, the starting point is the biblical claim
that we are created by a free creator in the image of the creator. If we are a reflection
of the free divine act and image that created us, then we must have the possibility of
freedom. Otherwise we would not be in God’s image and likeness.583 The story of the
death and resurrection of Jesus is of God intervening in Jesus to set all humankind free
– free from the power of sin and death, and free for living in right relationship with God,
self, and others, and creation.584 So, deep within the core of every person there is
implanted the longing and the right to be free and the goal of this freedom is
realised in perfect union with God.585 Human freedom is analogous to God’s …
therefore, it includes freedom from internal compulsion or external constraint but
reaches beyond to freedom for becoming most authentically who we are invited to be –
fully alive human beings to the glory of God. Such freedom is not a fait accompli but a
task to be realised within history, and it is to permeate every level and arena of human
existence – the personal, interpersonal, and sociopolitical.586 This is where Catholic
teaching converges with progressive educators.

583 Ibid., 84.
584 Ibid., 81.
585 Ibid., 84.
586 Ibid., 82.

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Author
So, we ought to take a critical view of not only the power “without”, as it were,
but also the power “within”. The oppressor might be an external force to be
reckoned with but there is also an internal force to be reckoned with. We have
seen from dialogues with Merton that these are not separate or distinct forces
but are intimately linked. Each has to be attended to if freedom is to become a
possibility. Is this a fair representation of a responsible Catholic perspective?
Groome
There is a paradoxical quality to a Christian vision of freedom. It is a “limited”

freedom – limited in that we cannot act as we please regardless of the consequences for
other people. This is the paradox: only by being limited can it be true freedom.587
To be free for union with God is to be free to enter into communion with other people in
a relationship of love and service to each other. Any discourse about Christian
freedom must be about freedom from inner compulsion as well as external
oppression. It is a freedom for becoming fully alive persons who fulfil their
responsibilities for the well-being of self and others, for the personal and common
good.588
Giroux
Yes, the structural and the personal are intimately linked. One of the important
lessons Freire taught me was that if we are to speak about self-knowledge, it
must be a self-knowledge oriented toward critical understanding and emancipation.589
I do not wish to debate the theological categories of personal sin as it is not in
my field of expertise, but I do believe there are structural causes to the lack of
freedom millions of people experience in our world. I have become suspicious
of the word “freedom”, for, in contemporary society, freedom is reduced to the
587 Ibid., 87.

588 Ibid., 101.

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imperatives of market exchange.590 Liberal culture has become synonymous with market
culture, and the celebrated freedoms of the consumer are bought at the expense of the
freedoms of citizens.591 I want our educational institutions to interrogate how
schools function to reproduce, in both the hidden and formal curricula, the cultural
beliefs and economic relationships that support the larger social order, that is, the social
order of consumerism and liberal capitalism.592 I also wish to examine how these
ideologies, prejudices and social myths are relegated to the realm of
unquestioned habits of mind and experience.593 By educating this way we can
empower those who have been bypassed. Those for whom history has exercised a cruel
and premature closure on hope can find meaning, purpose and freedom.594
Groome
This is essential to Catholic teaching and practice. Particularly since the

Industrial Revolution the Church began to realise that justice is not satisfied by
honesty in personal dealings and private charity alone. It demands as well participation
in struggles to transform sociocultural arrangements that cause people to be hungry or
homeless, oppressed or victimised in the first place.595
Author
Perhaps the thrust of the Church’s mission since the Second Vatican Council
could be summed up by the 1971 world synod of Bishops’ document which
stated that: action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the
world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel, or, in
other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its
590 Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, xix.

591 Henry Giroux, Stealing Innocence (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 2.
593 Ibid., 17.
594 Ibid., x.

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liberation from every oppressive situation.596
Groome
That was one of those statements that seems to capture the very essence of what
it means to be a Christian in the contemporary world. Christian love of neighbour
and justice cannot be separated. For love implies an absolute demand for justice –
namely, a recognition of the dignity and rights of one’s neighbour. I agree with
Henry’s analysis – that today corporatism dominates our collective cultural
consciousness. Corporatism represents a theory that makes profit the exclusive
norm and ultimate end of economic activity. This ought to be morally
unacceptable to Christians.597
His charge that, too often education is co-opted as a tool of its political context,
as an agency of socialisation that prepares persons to “fit in” as obedient
automatons of their situation – social or ecclesial – rather than preparing them
for social transformation, is, I believe, a valid one.598
Freeing the Educators to Educate for Freedom
Author
There is a need to examine what it would mean for our educational institutions,
if what progressive educators are saying about the relationship between
education and politics were to be taken seriously. Educational theorists such as
Henry, Ira Shor, Maxine Greene, Peter McLaren and Michael Apple have long
been arguing that the sidelining of their work has been part of the problem; that
596 “Justice in the World” no.6, quoted in Joseph Gremillion, edit., The Gospel of Peace
and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976), 520 and 14.
597 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2423–24.
598 Groome, Educating for Life, 390. Groome actually mentions Giroux as an example of a
progressive educator who proposes these arguments. Groome indicates that he concurs
with his conclusions. ———, Educating for Life, 392 (Endnote 18).

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in teacher training institutions – religious and secular – their views, if studied at

all, are looked upon as perhaps “crank” or “fringe” theories, rather than
theories which should be studied and explored by all prospective teachers as a
mainstream formative process. If teachers are not being trained to explore the
nexus between culture, politics and education; if they are not subjecting their
existing cultural philosophical perspectives to critical analysis, then how can
they be expected to be able to lead students to critically examine their culture
and received wisdom about how to interpret and perceive their own reality?
Giroux
This is a very great problem. It is not in the interest of the controllers of

knowledge to empower themselves or their students to ask the right questions
about the purpose and content of education. By ensuring that student teachers
confine themselves to how-to questions and to avoid questions about relationships
between knowledge and power or between culture and politics, the status quo, where
the corporate model of human existence can be handed on, uncontaminated by
awkward questions, to future generations. There is little room for considering how
ideologies, values, and power shape all aspects of the educational process.599 In such a
corporate, controlled system teachers are reduced to being mere deliverers of
information, no longer intellectuals who are capable of transforming our society
for the better. In such a context the issue of how teachers, students, and
representatives from the wider society generate meaning tends to be obscured in favour
of the issue of how people can master someone else’s meaning.600 There is an ideological
hegemony at work here,601 which is why I agree with Michael Apple when he
calls for a view of curriculum that defines it as a study in ideology.602
Underlying this ideological orientation to teacher and student education is the metaphor
599 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 3.

600 ———, Teachers as Intellectuals, 6.
601 Ibid., 77.
602 Michael W. Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1977),
3.

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of reproduction.603 It seeks to reproduce the atomisation and division of labour

and also the fragmentation of consciousness and social relationships. Within
such a structure teachers more often than not, unknowingly end up endorsing forms of
cognitive and dispositional development that strengthen rather than challenge existing
forms of institutional oppression; thereby perpetuating intellectual passivity.604
The kind of education and educational training of teachers that is proposed by

progressive educators is very different in form and content. We call for a truly
democratic education, where collectivity and social solidarity are practised. Such an
approach represents a powerful structural threat to the ethos of corporatism.
Author
How would your ideal teacher approach his or her craft?
Giroux
The most important task facing the progressive teacher is to uncover ideology’s
rules of formation.605 We do this by interrogating the nature of power,
particularly those powerful political institutions that shape all aspects of the
educational process.
By taking such an approach to their craft the teacher becomes a transformative

intellectual who becomes committed to teaching as an emancipatory practice so that
they foster public discourse linked to the democratic imperatives of equality and
social justice.606 With this approach schools could become noncommodified public
spheres in which students learn the language of ethics, civic courage, democratically
charged politics and collective empowerment.607 This teacher will treat students as
critical agents, questioning how – and whose – knowledge is produced and distributed
603 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 2.

605 ———, Stealing Innocence, 3.
606 Peter McLaren in ———, Teachers as Intellectuals, xviii.
607 Giroux in Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, x.

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in schools and in whose interests this is operating.
This approach to teaching and learning will develop in all concerned what Freire
called “the practice of thinking about practice”. Instead of the practice of silence and
complicity there is the possibility of courage, dialogue and responsibility.608 Instead
of being sites for financial investment and entrepreneurial training – a private good609,
schools can become a source of creative possibility and hope for a better, more
humane and sustainable future.
Author
Is this a vision of the role and function of the teacher you would subscribe to
Thomas?
Groome
I would affirm and support everything Henry has said regarding the critical
stance the teacher should adopt. The teacher needs to begin with the realisation
that we are all in need of development and that we can only discover ourselves in
partnership with others. We need to be mindful that every human being, whether
they be rich or poor, privileged or marginalised has inalienable freedoms, rights
and responsibilities and that each can make their own unique contribution to their
own and others’ life-long growth.610 Everyone’s capacity for goodness must be
nurtured and formed into character, their gifts and potencies fostered into realisation.
This can only be achieved through love, which is why to teach through love is
the highest human calling.611
Education is above all a relational encounter – an I/Thou relationship, intended to

influence who each other becomes; it reaches into the very souls of people to affect their
608 Ibid.
609 Ibid., xviii.
611 Ibid., 95.

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“being”. Educators walk always on “sacred ground” – people’s lives. What a hazard if
they do not tread lovingly and with deep care for their well-being and becoming!612 In
practical terms this means – as Henry points out – establishing persons as “the
subjects” of knowing, in other words they become active agents rather than passive
recipients of knowledge; mentoring learners in critical reflection so that they are able
to probe the quality, the undergirding perspectives, the biases, and the influences upon
our thinking. This inevitably involves social analysis and social analysis means
becoming aware of how our culture and history, race and ethnic background, sex and
social gender roles, religious tradition, economic conditions, and political structures all
have profound influence on our knowledge. 613 We want also to encourage relational
ways of knowing so that everyone feels welcome, this means that we scrupulously
eschew the more subtle practices of exclusion – like sexism, racism, classism. In the
end, to educate for justice is to educate justly and the heart of a liberating
education is the heart of the educator.614
The wise teacher will create a community of conversation – a “wisdom community” –

which is marked by conversation and dialogue, a wisdom community where knowledge
influences the “being” of each individual member, and where each is committed to what
is true, good and beautiful.615
Catholic Contemplative Education and Secular Progressive

Humanism: Commonalities and Possibilities
Author
In the last chapter Thomas Merton presented education as a contemplative
612 Ibid., 98.

613 Ibid., 293–94. See also Thomas H. Groome and Harold Daly Horell, edits., Horizons
& Hopes: The Future of Religious Education (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 12–13.
614 Thomas Groome, “Education for Justice by Educating Justly”, in Padraic O'Hare,
Education for Peace and Justice, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 69–82.
615 Groome, Educating for Life, 290–95.

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activity. You seem to be arguing for a similar approach. I note that both Merton
and yourself count the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain as one of your
most important influences in this regard. Maritain placed contemplation at the
very heart of his philosophy. Do you consider yourself to be the natural heir of
these two influential thinkers?
Groome
To a large extent, yes, but there are differences due to the developments since
their era. Maritain defines contemplation as “simply to see and to enjoy seeing” and
argues that the “highest achievement of education” is “to develop the contemplative
capacity of the human mind” – to gaze upon, relish give time and real attention to the
everyday realities we experience.616 It is literally “being attentive” to our
experience and the reality around us, human and natural. This vision for
education is born out of their intense engagement with the Catholic tradition.
Author
For many secular progressive thinkers the Catholic tradition would be seen to
be antithetical and inimical to human freedom rather than being a potential
avenue to emancipation. After all, tradition is about preserving ways of
thinking and being that have been received from the previous generations as
“given”, therefore rational critique represents a threat to the homogeneity and
cohesion of that belief system. The Enlightenment, which championed
rationality over received wisdom, represents the source of inspiration for
progressive educators. Where can these, apparently conflicting paradigms, meet
and co-exist harmoniously?
Giroux
Perhaps there can be a meeting point, but there is inevitably certain tension and
some degree of conflict. It is not necessary, in my view, to belong to a particular
616 Jacques Maritain, The Education of Man: Educational Philosophy (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1962), 54. quoted in Groome, Educating for Life, 295.

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tradition to achieve or experience an emancipated state. In fact it is often the

oppressive ideas and structures of tradition that individuals and communities
need to free themselves from. An emancipated citizenry would involve a rejection of
the ahistorical, transcendent notions of truth and authority, as the struggle for
recognition, rights and ‘voice’ is here and now and has to engage the lived experiences
of oppression. 617 But, as Freire has pointed out, there are many traditions within
each tradition. I affirm the usefulness and legitimacy of Freire’s “prophetic”
church that can be compared with the vision of church that is promoted by
most prominent liberation theologians. I would join with their call for
empowerment of the poor and marginalised and their insistence on standing
with them in solidarity. We share a language of critique and possibility, we also have
in common a struggle for a radical democratic society where every citizen has a place
and a voice. However, it is clear that the Church, like wider society, is deeply
divided. There are many in the Church who believe in preserving a rigid,
authoritarian structure and who want its members to passively accept the
dogmatic truths that are handed to them from ‘on high’. For these, there is a
comfortable conflation of their religious beliefs with the market, even when the
market militates against the justice and human rights teaching of the Church.618
Groome
This is a great problem for our church; we are indeed ‘a house divided’.
Without a doubt the Enlightenment is a great watershed in our history.
Modernism, the offspring of Enlightment philosophy, champions the ideal of an
autonomous self, the person as a self-determining subject who follows the dictates of
reason alone, independent of traditions and from every semblance of its “authority”.
The whole enlightenment movement had a bias against tradition, insisting that people
“think for themselves” instead.619 However, Catholic Christians, as I have already
noted, are “steeped in tradition”. It is a culture which permeates every aspect of
617 Giroux, Schooling for Democracy, 28–33.


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identity, shaping their understanding and worldview.620 Throughout history,

our ancestors have learned much wisdom and knowledge from their lives in the world,
have created an amazing bequest of things beautiful and useful. The curriculum of all
education should reflect some aspect of this legacy and give people ready access to it.
Teachers and parents have a defining responsibility to teach tradition. Tradition is like a
great conversation that has been going on across the generations of humankind ... For
educators not to teach it to rising generations would be to leave them out of the
conversation and so to live less humanly.621 I do not believe that reason and
revelation have to be enemies; they can be partners.622
So, while I would agree with Henry that one can be a contemplative teacher
without having any religious affiliation, tradition can assist in, and inform us
about the “how” of becoming a contemplative and free individual. And while
belonging to a religious tradition is no guarantee that one will be a
contemplative teacher, it has the potential to form members into what it means
to be a contemplative, emancipatory teacher.
Author
We do have to acknowledge though, that in too many instances, religious

traditions, far from educating young people into being open, inclusive, critical,
contemplative human beings, have instead formed many to become tribal,
narrow-minded, bigoted and sectarian. We may have to acknowledge what
religious traditions have done, and are doing, to stunt the potential to become
free human beings by imprisoning them in conformist, restrictive and
potentially destructive ideas and mentalities.
Groome
This, it seems to me is the great paradox of religious belief. On the one hand it
620 Ibid., 223.

621 Ibid., 231.
622 Ibid., 46.

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has the power to liberate into an embrace, at the deepest levels of one’s being,
the oneness and solidarity with all of all created reality. Conversely, it has the
power to indoctrinate members, imprisoning them in the pernicious prejudices of
sectarianism and parochialism.623 These twin curses have always presented a
major challenge to our Catholic tradition. Parochialism has nurtured a narrow-
minded, self-sufficient, and insular mentality that closes up within itself, is intolerant
to or oblivious of other perspectives, and conceited in its own, while sectarianism has
inculcated a bigoted and intolerant exaltation of one’s own group that absolutises the
true and the good in its members, encouraging prejudice against anyone who has
alternative identity – especially immediate neighbors.624 This is the dark side of our
Tradition and the only effective way it can be combated is to use the very
Tradition itself as the most potent antidote. The very essence of the Tradition,
which is enunciated in its vast body of teachings, has a positive understanding of
the human condition and urges every member to love their neighbour, and has a
this-worldly as well as other-worldly understanding of salvation which lends spiritual
motivation for trying to improve the quality of people's lives. This is why we have a
long and (mostly) proud Tradition of being deeply engaged in education, health
and human welfare in general.
Author
How can such institutions – in this case, Catholic educational institutions –

communicate and inculcate a sense of community, solidarity, obedience and
continuity, and at the same time engender a sense of openness to plurality,
independence of thought, and diversity of views, lifestyles and affiliations? Is
such an approach possible? Does the latter not undermine the former?
Groome
It doesn’t have to. My view of the role of Tradition in curriculum is closely
623 Ibid., 41.

624 Ibid., 42, 44.

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related to that of Maritain.625 If God mediates revelation through human history,

then history is the standard medium through which God converses with human
beings.626 For this reason the Catholic educator needs to be “Steeped in tradition,”
since tradition permeates identity; it shapes their self-understanding and worldview.627
The study of, and appreciation for, the cumulative wisdom amassed
throughout history becomes pivotal to my conception of a liberating education,
since, throughout history, our ancestors have learned much wisdom and knowledge
from their lives in the world, have created an amazing bequest of things beautiful and
useful.628
Education cannot exist without the Tradition, since it is by absorbing and self-
appropriating the cumulative wisdom of the past the individual learns to discriminate
the true from the false; the authentic from the counterfeit; the profound from the
superficial, so that what is true more and more fills out one’s mind, and what is false
falls away.629 Such a humanising education has its roots in the teaching that has
been nurtured by the Church through the centuries, however, many Catholic
hermeneutical scholars – such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, David Tracy and
Walter Brueggemann – advocate a critical approach to the study of history and
tradition. With them I believe, history’s legacy, must be critically appropriated and
creatively renewed instead of passively received and repeated.630
Author
Gadamer suggests that tradition is not a static entity we consent to; rather, it is a
living, dynamic activity we participate in – and through that participation,
625 Groome uses Maritain as a reference point in most of his discussions of curriculum
content.
627 Ibid., 223.
628 Ibid., 23.
629 Ibid., 44.
630 Ibid., 231.

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tradition is constantly “happening,” “occurring,” and “coming to be.631 So, what

is at stake for the Catholic educator, is not a critical distancing from tradition,
but a critical engagement with tradition.632
But this quality of intentional engagement is risky and dangerous, is it not?

When tradition is viewed with a critical eye one can begin to perceive the
prejudices that form our collective and individual consciousness. We can see
that history itself is formed by particular interest groups so that the very
content of what we understand to be history often reflects the interests of those
who in the past and present hold the reins of power. Perhaps also, members of
Christian communities, in this case, the Roman Catholic community, rely far too
heavily on their own membership to provide the content and the critique for its
own members. A truly critical approach ought to pay careful heed to what
secular critical scholars are saying about contemporary education. Such an act
of listening may lead to a reappraisal of Catholic mission in the field of
education. Ironically, it may be those outside the faith that will lead the faithful
to a deeper self-understanding.
Catholic Schools and “Border Pedagogy”
Giroux
I would like very much to see Catholic educators engage in a more serious
manner with secular progressive educators. I think liberation theology
represented such a serious engagement. That movement represented a great
631 See Terry A. Veling, Living in the Margins: Intentional Communities and the Art of
Interpretation (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), 206. For an in-
depth analysis of this perspective on interpretation see Gadamer, Truth and Method, 24–
41, 73, 299, 307–11, David. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the
Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 136, Shaun Gallagher, Hermeneutics
and Education (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), 237.
632 Veling, Living in the Margins, 207.

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hope for the Church in terms of relevance and credibility; that vision needs
revitalisation. The Church with its hierarchical structure is a very powerful
institution. It is natural, and to be expected that its educational institutions
would reflect the interests of those who have power. This has a direct effect on
the curriculum and nature of the school.
I am arguing for an approach which is closely related to Freire’s

conscientisation method; I call it border pedagogy.633 Border pedagogy is where
teachers and students interrogate and cross traditional boundaries (borders) of power,
epistemology, decision-making, cultural and social representation in curricula, where
existing curricular borders that are ‘forged in domination’ are both challenged and
redefined. In border pedagogy issues of inequality, power, silencing and oppression in
different institutional structures need to be challenged.634 I might suggest that such
an interrogative process might be very healthy for Catholic educational
institutions as it might empower subordinate groups within the tradition to reclaim
power and identity.635
Author
It is clear from what you say, that the shape and content, as well as the
approach one takes to the implementation of it, puts curriculum at the very
heart of your theories on education. As you are very well aware, over the past
half-century or so, this has been strongly – sometimes bitterly – contested
territory. I ask you Thomas, to expand a little on your view of curriculum
content and delivery, as it appears from what you have said so far, that, in some
sense, you want to have your cake and eat it! On the one hand you agree with
the progressive views of educators such as Henry while on the other, you seem
to advocate a more traditional curriculum as the best avenue to empowerment
633 Giroux, Border Crossings, 1ff.

634 Ibid., 69.
635 Ibid., 21. See also Henry A. Giroux and Peter McLaren, edits., Between Borders:
Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1994).

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and liberation. By taking the latter stance you seem to align yourself with those
who are considered conservative educational philosophers such as Jacques
Maritain, Mortimer Adler, Theodore Sizer and Harold Bloom. While each of
these scholars have their own unique perspective and approach, they all
advocate a return to a traditional curriculum, emphasising, as you do,
humanities (including philosophy, theology, history and literature), sciences (including
the natural sciences of biology, physics and chemistry, and the social sciences of
sociology, psychology and anthropology) and the Arts (including the aesthetic arts,
performing arts, applied arts, and liberal arts).636 How do you reconcile this
conservative approach to curriculum with the more progressive one advocated
by Henry, Freire and others?
Groome
I take very seriously what all these scholars say about the nature and shape of
the curriculum and I have integrated all their perspectives – even the ones that
seem to be in conflict with each other – into the fabric of my own thought. As I
have said, tradition is the great family heirloom which guides us in wisdom and
knowledge. Everyone needs access to the knowledge, art, and wisdom of the ages in
order to make and keep life human for self and others … these significant interventions
in learners’ lives are the “designated” responsibility of educators.637 The classics are
the vehicle by which this heirloom is transmitted to us.
Author
You appear to take a similar view to that of Tracy when he argues that, “classics
are those texts that bear an excess and permanence of meaning, yet always
636 Groome, Educating for Life, 221. The liberal arts he defines as “the old four R’s –
reading, ’writing, and rhetoric”. To the four R’s Groome adds Reflection – which he
defines as the ability to think for oneself, using reason, memory and imagination, to
question and probe one’s own assumptions, perspectives, and ideologies and to be able
to make balanced judgments and wise decisions. ———, Educating for Life, 251.

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resist definitive interpretation”.638 However, he also says that a classic, by

definition, will always be in need of further interpretation in view of its need
for renewed application to a particular situation.639
Groome
Yes. Educationally, the classics epitomise how the whole tradition should function –
never forcing people to repeat the past, but serving as a treasury from which people can
draw new possibilities as well as the tried and true”.640 So rather than being an
exercise in blind obedience, acknowledgment of the value of tradition is an act of
reason and freedom. In fact, to grant such “authority” to tradition may be the most
reasonable thing to do.641 But as Hans-Georg Gadamer points out, to save tradition
from authoritarianism requires that its texts be constantly reinterpreted – with critique
and creativity.642 This is where the progressive thinking impacts on tradition.
Such an approach, far from stymieing reason, invites it; far from asking blind
obedience, requires critical appropriation; far from arresting investigation, encourages
it; far from posing anything as final, offers signposts and benchmarks of achievement to
stimulate creativity and new life along the pilgrim way.643
Giroux
If this was the approach that all people took to tradition, it could be an
empowering liberating force for all people. Unfortunately, more often than not,
638 David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1987), 12.
639 ———, On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church
(MaryKnoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994), 115. For a detailed presentation of Tracy’s
perspective on the Classics see Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and
the Culture of Pluralism, 99–153.
641 Gadamer quoted in Ibid., 243–44.
642 Ibid., 244.
643 Ibid.

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the ‘traditional curriculum’ is used as a mechanism for maintaining unjust and

imbalanced power relations. Too often “classic” or “great” texts are used as a
means of maintaining these unjust and imbalanced power relations.
I want to celebrate diversity and plurality of cultures, lifestyles, traditions and social
groups. This is a view of democracy as a celebration of difference and diversity rather
than as serving the agenda of an elite, powerful minority or ideology.644 I want to
argue for a kind of democracy that involves the operation of ideology critique,
and in this respect I suggest that democracy can be equated with critical democracy.
Critical participatory democracy is designed to bring genuine equality to redress the
‘bad times’ that can be seen everywhere one looks – where poverty, despair,
hopelessness, joblessness, stigmatisation, the waste of generations of young, mediocrity
in mass culture, greed, commodification, chauvinism, sexism, racism, materialism,
dehumanisation, militaristic ideologies of nationalism, and urban colonialism abound.645
We need to acknowledge that schools curricula and pedagogical relations –

whether they be in a religious, public or private setting – are contestable; that
they are ideologically saturated, frequently serving the existing (asymmetrical) power
and relations structures in society. This, in my view needs to be exposed and held up
to the searchlight of legitimacy. We need to interrogate whose curricula are represented
and under-represented in schools, in whose interests these are operating, what the
effects of this operation of interests are in society.646
Freedom to Integrate Faith and Politics
Author
Even though you both come from different intellectual traditions, there is
clearly much common ground in your respective philosophies of education. It
644 Giroux, Border Crossings, 11.

645 ———, Schooling for Democracy, 26, ———, Border Crossings, 4.
646 Henry Giroux, Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life: Democracy's Promise and
Education's Challenge, Updated ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), xxi.

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appears to me that the critical approach you both advocate is the most obvious
common thread in your work. This impacts on the way we view culture,
democracy, gender relations, technology, the media, corporatism and religious
belief and practice – all the forces, in other words, which are instrumental in the
formation of consciousness.
I would like to propose that a critical approach to the ways in which political
philosophies and agendas impact on religious belief and practice was never
more important than at the present time. This rise in importance of religion in
the realm of international politics has been highlighted by Tariq Ali’s
observations on “the clash of fundamentalisms” that is occurring in the global
geopolitical arena.647 Within individual countries of the predominantly
Christian West, religion is playing a prominent role in local politics. Wallis, for
example, (who interestingly, comes from the evangelical tradition and considers
himself to be a religious conservative), is critical of the way in which politicians
use their belief in God to sanction their ideologies and further their own self-
serving political agendas. He decries the way in which the Religious Right has
polarised America by “mistakenly claiming that God is on their side”, and
argues that the theology of empire needs to be critically interrogated so that a
consistent ethic of life can be developed in Christian communities.648 This is a
call that appears to transcend faith and cultural traditions in the contemporary
theological discourse.649
647 Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (London:
Verso, 2002).
648 For a considered theological analysis of the ways in which politics and religion
intersect in the USA see Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the
Left Doesn't Get It (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), xxvii, 3, 31, 108–58, 209–20, 41-
69, 97–320.
649 In a progressive Jewish context in the USA, Michael Lerner’s conclusions regarding
the complex and vexed relationship between religion and politics are remarkably
similar to those of Wallis. He too rejects the conflation of imperialist political agendas

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In the Catholic Tradition, Michael Warren has offered a cogent theological

argument for this quality of interrogation. He argues for a focus of energy and
attention on exploring “what we don’t wish to know”.650 In his view, the lack of
such scrutiny has resulted in an automatic assimilation of much of the habits
and ways of proceeding of the wider culture into religious beliefs and practice.
In the words of one commentator, “…absolute faith can blind you to the
consequences of the actions you allow. It can tell you it’s okay to drop bombs
on another country, or that it’s okay to hate a group of people such as
homosexuals”.651
with religious faith and calls for the globalisation of compassion in order to counteract
what “the globalisation of selfishness”. See Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking
Back Our Country from the Religious Right, 1st ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
2006). In an Australian context Marion Maddox reaches comparable conclusions to
those of Wallis and Lerner. See Marion Maddox, God under Howard: The Rise of the
Religious Right in Australian Politics (Crows Nest NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 143, 99,
295–319. Amanda Lohrey too offers a penetrating analysis through the use of statistics
and case studies. She describes the reactionary, conformist and exclusionary tendencies
of Right Wing religious groups and their predilection for what she calls “corporate
religious-speak”. She sees this development as an attempt to usurp secular liberal
democracy and criticises the tactics used by some religious groups in their attempt to
exert political power and influence. See Amanda Lohrey, Voting for Jesus: Christianity
and Politics in Australia, Quarterly Essay ; 22. (Melbourne, Vic.: Black Inc., 2006), 12, 15,
75. While the analyses of both Maddox and Lohrey are constructed from a secular
perspective, Brennan’s perspective is unapologetically Catholic. He begins with the
question, “how can we responsibly mix law, religion and politics?” He does not
explore the role of the Religious Right but concentrates on the argument that religion
can play a positive and legitimate role in the political life of a democratic nation. See
Frank Brennan, Acting on Conscience: How Can We Responsibly Mix Law, Religion and
Politics (St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2007).
650 Michael Warren, At This Time in This Place: The Spirit Embodied in the Local Assembly
(Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 1999), 2.
651 Andrew Denton, “God on My Side”, (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting

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The danger of such a propensity has prompted Warren to argue that within the
Catholic tradition many of local churches (and schools) are being “domesticated
by culture”; that the “colonisation of the lifeworld” (Habermas) by marketeers
and technocrats has been so successful, it has reshaped our religious institutions
and our very understanding of faith and belief itself. When practices, for
example, those of consumerist greed or prejudiced attitudes are ignored, they
tend to generate their own false theory of Christian living, a theory that
supposes gospel fidelity to be unconnected to the use of money.652 In this
context the “prosperity gospel” has taken deep root in many religious
quarters.653 It may be an urgent task, both at a personal and institutional level,
to interrogate “life structures” – that is, the “real” values, attitudes and
behaviours that underpin existence, rather than the wished for or delusional
ones. To do this, according to Warren, pertinent and penetrating questions that
invite students to rethink and re-examine existing beliefs and taken-for-granted
thought patterns, need to be asked. Such a school would become “a zone of
cultural contestation”, where habits and social norms that are prevalent in the
dominant culture are called into question and problematised. This would
necessarily involve engaging in a careful examination of the role of power and
class in the shaping of collective values, world view and practices. If, as
Bourdieu argues, we do not make our repetitive, embedded thought patterns
and practice the object of intense scrutiny and discourse, nothing can change.
Change can only occur with the intentionality that is inherent in discourse. In
his words, “every power which manages to impose meanings and to impose
them as legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its
Corporation, Zapruder’s other films production, 2006). Denton’s comment is to be

found in Tim Kroenert, “Andrew Denton's Very Christian Anti-Christian Film”, Eureka
Street, 31 October 2006.
652 Warren, At This Time in This Place, 57.
653 Lohrey describes the Prosperity Gospel as “a Calvinist-derived doctrine in which
one of the visible outward signs of God’s favour is the affluence of the faithful.”
Lohrey, Voting for Jesus, 25.

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force, adds its own specifically symbolic force to those power relations.654
Such a discourse “does not come naturally or even easily” to either teachers or
students as it would involve an embrace of “the hermeneutics of dislocation”
which challenges all involved to question and critique normative habits of mind
and behaviour. This educational approach constitutes an intentional effort to
examine “not matters we ourselves control, but matters that control us”.655
Groome
The more educators become conscious that every member of the school
community has a functioning anthropology, a functioning cosmology and functioning
epistemology the better we are positioned to interrogate our own practice.
Tradition plays a vital role in this process, but of course tradition itself must be
subjected to this same analysis. Too often the tradition has adopted an absolutist,
elitist position and is frequently guilty of naïve about its own interests. Everyone in
the educational process needs to become critically conscious of their own
perspective. This approach, as you pointed out, makes the student an active
agent in their own learning, instead of passive recipients and also develops their
capacity for freedom and responsibility; it enables persons to become fully alive
human beings, and to fulfil their utmost human vocation.656 This requires the
adoption of an alternative approach to education – educators should resolutely
refuse to be agents of negative socialisation so they must be as countercultural as
necessary.657
Giroux
I agree, absolutely. Progressive pedagogy, is not a set of techniques but a
654 Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and
Culture, trans. Richard Nice (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 4.
655 Warren, At This Time in This Place, 2, 5.
657 Ibid., 110.

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questioning of received assumptions about the nature, content and purpose of schooling.
In this sense it is a form of ‘cultural politics’ as it questions whose cultures are
represented in education and how legitimate this might be. 658 It has a deliberate
purpose of making society more democratic, which moves from a critique of
society and schooling as they are, towards a view of schools as society as they
ought to be.
Paulo Freire’s fundamental thesis, that traditional forms of education function

primarily to objectify and alienate oppressed groups, is still apposite. If
students are to possess the agency to become producers of insight and
knowledge then a pedagogy of the question will have to become the focus of all
activity in schools.
Author
This seems, from what you both say, to be particularly urgent for oppressed
groups since, as bell hooks reminds us, far too often, members of a privileged
group ‘interpret’ the reality of members of a less powerful, exploited, and
oppressed group.659 Agency – social, political, psychological and spiritual – is a
key goal; everything to do with the exercise and use of power would need to be
interrogated.
Giroux
This is especially true for those messages and values that are conveyed to us silently
through the accepted norm; the messages that lie behind the language the presentation
and selection of specific forms of knowledge; the use of specific social relations, and the
defining characteristics of the school organisational structure, and the class-specific
messages that lie behind the language of objectives and school discipline. In
658 Giroux, Border Crossings, 20

659 bell hooks, Yearning: Race Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston, MA: South End Press,
1990), 55.

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mainstream schooling these issues are conveniently ignored.660
The Media and Democracy: The stymieing of Freedom
Author
Henry, it is clear from your writings that you see a critical stance as being a
necessary precondition for a healthy, functioning democracy. Like Stanley
Aronowitz, you express the belief that the absence, or decline, of an
autonomous, critical public citizenry, would threaten the future of democratic
social, cultural, and political forms.661 This link between critical thinking,
freedom and democracy is very prominent in your writings.
Giroux
Democracy is not something that happens automatically, it has to be struggled over.

That struggle over politics and democracy is inextricably linked to creating public
spheres where individuals can be educated as political agents equipped with the skills,
capacities, and knowledge they need not only to actually perform as autonomous
political agents, but also to believe that such struggles are worth taking up.662
Citizenship in a democracy ought to be a process of dialogue, a commitment to
the development of forms of solidarity that allow people to reflect and organise in order
to criticise and constrain the power of the state and to overthrow relations that inhibit
and prevent the realisation of humanity. I want to eliminate the ideological conditions
that promote various forms of subjugation, segregation, brutality and
660 Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals, 4–5.

661 Stanley Aronowitz, “Mass Culture and the Eclipse of Reason: The Implications for
Pedagogy”, Harvard Educational Review 46, no. April (1977): 768–70.
662 Giroux in Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, xxi. For an expansion on
this argument see “Schooling , Citizenship and the Struggle for Democracy” in Giroux,
Schooling and the Struggle 3–36.

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marginalisation.663
Author
In recent times you have turned your attention towards the role of the media in
cultivating and propagating the interests of big business and large corporations.
Giroux
It is time to recognize that the true tutors of our children are not schoolteachers or
university professors but filmmakers, advertising executives and pop culture purveyors.
Disney does more than Duke, Spielberg outweighs Stanford, MTV trumps MIT.664
Critical cultural pedagogy must go beyond what takes place in school to
include greater attention to cultural and media issues, including popular
culture and the impact of new technologies on society and education.665
Author
As already highlighted in discussions with Merton, this ubiquitous power and

presence of the media has profound implications for education.666 If there is to
be a theoretical discourse about the struggle for self-emancipation in schools,
then a critical analysis of the ways in which the media represents issues, values
and perspectives on life would appear to be an obligatory and constituent
element of the curriculum. Margaret Miles argues that more and more, we live in
663 Giroux, Schooling and the Struggle 6.

665 This is a perennial concern in Girioux’ writings. See Henry Giroux, Disturbing
Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture (New York ; London: Routledge, 1994), ———,
Fugitive Cultures: Violence, Race and Youth (London: Routledge, 1996), ———, The Mouse
That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1999), Giroux, Stealing Innocence, Henry Giroux, The Abandoned Generation: Democracy
Beyond the Culture of Fear, 1st ed. (New York Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
666 A more detailed analysis of the modus operandi of contemporary media will be
presented in Chapter Five.

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an entertainment culture, bent on assigning us roles as spectators or passive voyeurs

where our capacity to make intelligent and informed judgments has been slowly but
surely eroded.667 In such a culture adults encourage children to become passive
consumers and then blame them when they obediently do so. Classrooms and
staffrooms in schools seem to be splitting into two unequal groups: those who
possess agency as producers of insight and those who lack it as consumers of
the other people’s ideas.668
Giroux
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that there is a conspiracy, but the consequence of

the way in which contemporary media functions is to disempower, depoliticise
and encourage passivity. Personal and communal agency, it seems to me, is the
only viable antidote to objectification and alienation that is embodied and
communicated by contemporary mass media.669
Groome
With these perceptions, I think we can all agree. We also acknowledge the
pioneering work of Paulo Freire on the influence of our social world in the way we
generate meaning.670
We are under powerful pressures to see and think as society does and the media is
instrumental in this manipulation of our consciousness. As you point out, society
667 Margaret R Miles, Practicing Christianity: Critical Perspectives for an Embodied

Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 2.
668 Here Warren’s insights in regard to intentional religious communities is being
applied to an educational context. See Warren, At This Time in This Place, 80.
669 This is a elaborate argument in Giroux, Schooling and the Struggle Particluarly 3–36,
147–172.
670 Groome names Paulo Freire as one the three greatest educators of the twentieth
century. See Groome, Educating for Life, 170 (Footnote 35).
670 ———, Educating for Life, 163.

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has its vested interests, its blinding ideologies; thinking what our society thinks is not
necessarily thinking for ourselves – as persons. Educators nurture emotional,
intellectual and spiritual growth as they raise consciousness about the contemporary
versions of the perennial idolatries, as they help learners resist the allure of false gods
and discern where their “real treasure lies.671 Critical reflection should ever entail a
healthy suspicion toward the world. One must learn to see what is there but should not
be so – even though society may favour it. It means probing who is benefiting from the
way things are and who is suffering because of it.672
When I use the word ‘critical’ I do not intend to convey a negative activity. The
educational intent is to encourage learners to be truly discerning in how they interpret
their lives in the world, to see and make sense out of it for themselves, to remember what
should not be forgotten, to imagine what might be and act to create it. I like to use the
word with its root sense from the Greek krinein, meaning to discern or judge.
We really want our students to think for themselves and then to think about their
thinking in order to personally understand their lives and traditions; to discern what is
true and false, good and evil, beautiful and ugly; to weigh what should be done or
avoided and why; to consciously make responsible decisions.673
Critical Perception is Discernment
Author
From a Christian perspective this equation of critical literacy with discernment

seems very important. What you have just described is traditionally understood
to be discernment in the Christian tradition. This means that engagement in a
critical perspective is a form of Christian discernment, which is in turn a form of
Christian prayer.

672 Ibid., 163–64.
673 Ibid., 292.

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Groome
Yes. It is what I would see as the development of a sacramental consciousness.

A sacramental consciousness sees the world as “revelatory”, and “to reveal” literally
means “to pull back the curtains”. Critical reflection is pulling back the curtains to
enable people to see better for themselves. It is entirely in keeping with a sacramental
cosmology, a very positive outlook on life in the world.674 It is personal and
communal. It becomes an expression of our love – and freedom is love, which is
why freedom is realised only within a historical community. I believe that
Community is the primary context for “being saved” and “becoming human”. In
church and Society, the proper relationship among persons and between individual
persons and community is mutual reciprocity.675 This is why “the common good” is
pivotal to all Christian social teaching. We are what Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza
calls a communal discipleship of equals. 676 I consider the worthiest purpose of education
as that learners might become fully alive human beings who help to create a society that
serves the common good. I often summarize this personal and social purpose of
education with the pithy phrase “for life for all” – or sometimes as “a humanizing
education”.677
Giroux
It is good to experience this form of discourse from a religious intellectual and

teacher. Yet this is not the approach we are accustomed to from many religious
leaders and institutions. Particularly since 9/11 what I see as the rejection of
radical secularism and progressive thinking that lies at the heart of a substansive
democracy in favour of a religious vocabulary. It seems to me that the metaphysics of
religious discourse dispenses with the task of critically engaging and translating the
elaborate web of historical, social, and political factors that underscore and give
674 Ibid., 163.

675 Ibid., 175, 81.
676 Ibid., 178.
677 Ibid., 36.

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meaning to the broader explanations for terrorism. Instead, the complexity of politics
dissolves into the language of “crusades”, “infidels”, “goodness”, and “evil”.678 This is
traditional religious thinking, and far from assisting in the democratisation of
schooling such religious discourse affirms the status quo and resists all forms of
critical thinking and interrogation.
Author
It really depends on which trajectory of theology and ecclesiology that is

embraced and self-appropriated by the individual or local church community.
There exists a plurality of theologies and ecclesiologies in the Church today. As
a consequence, there is often profound tension between different interest
groups in the Church. Many progressive believers are very uncomfortable with
a hierarchical, authoritarian, patriarchal model of church and argue for a more
democratic, inclusive theology and ecclesiology which adopts a critico-
historical, hermeneutic that is pluralistic, personalist and dialectical in its
approach to theological and educational questions.679 Within this trajectory, a
“pedagogy of the question” becomes the natural and preferred educational
method.
Groome
Yes. In the past there was, for the vast majority, undue emphasis on the church’s
authority. It amounted to “the church has already done that thinking for you – and now
you must think as it thinks.” In fact, any kind of questioning or critical inquiry about
magisterial teachings was considered a “lack of faith”.680 Many of us think very
differently now. Secular philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists and
now theologians, have taught us that we need to uncover and probe our own
678 Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, xii–xiii.

679 For an elaboration of this theme see Neil Ormerod, Introducing Contemporary
Theologies: The What and Who of Theology Today (Alexandria NSW: E.J. Dwyer, 1997), 38–
40.

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cosmology, ecclesiology and theology – our attitude toward life in the world, where it
comes from, and what it leads to. If we do not question ourselves critically and
probe our outlook, we may settle for personal biases or social prejudices. We
now understand that such a critical approach is essential for personal freedom and
authentic choice. Our analytical memory uncovers the social and personal origins of
how things got to be the way they are and the genesis of our own perspective.681
Engaged Conversation: an avenue to Freedom and Hope
Author
It is clear that this approach would necessarily require an almost permanent

state of dialogue on the part of the individual and community, since it is
through genuine engagement with “the other” that prejudices are exposed.
Such an acknowledgment of the limits of one’s own horizons, far from being a
source of discouragement, may actually become an avenue to liberation; to be
open and receptive to the different, the unfamiliar and the foreign whether they
be people, ideas, beliefs or cultures can be very freeing.
Groome
This way of being would be – to borrow a Freirean term – a generative life, it

would also be a truly imaginative life. By generativity I mean a perduring
disposition to “choose life” for oneself and others, encouraging them to choose
likewise. Essentially, it is looking at each encounter and each new day as a gift
and then making the most of it in life-giving ways. Imagination is a key to this
generativity. It is so for at least two reasons: first, to “see” the “more” in the
midst of the ordinary; and, second, to perceive what ought to be and have
motivation to act accordingly. 682
681 Ibid., 164.

682 Ibid., 134, 32.

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Author
Perhaps what Hans-Georg Gadamer argues about a text can be applied to all
human relationships. He maintains that the most appropriate way to approach
a text of any kind is as a “conversation”.683 If this approach were to be taken to
all human experience, then each person might be able to open up to all sorts of
new possibilities and expand into new horizons.684
Groome
Conversation engages us personally. As I have already indicated, when we

converse with a person, book or phenomena of any kind, we feel listened to and
we listen ourselves, we are stimulated by its “to-and-fro,” enriched by its “give-and-
take.” We are also risking the possible outcome.685 I believe that young people learn
best through conversation some of the most important social habits and lessons of life.
We use language to express ourselves, and through the social sciences, we now
have a keen awareness of the power of language, not only to express ourselves, but to
shape our very selves as well. We make our own the world around us, taking in its
perspectives and values, as we learn its language and the patterns of it. “Language is
the house of being”.686 The language world in which we dwell shapes who we become
and how we live.687
Giroux
Unfortunately though, the language of being of significant numbers of groups

in our world is delegitimised. All over the world the voices of the poor, the
683 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 367ff.

684 “The essence of the question,” writes Gadamer, “is to open up possibilities and keep
them open”. Ibid., 299.
685 Groome, Educating for Life, 202–03.
686 Groome refers to the work of Martin Heidegger on the connection between language
and being. See Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to the Task of
Thinking (1964), 1st ed ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 213.

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unemployed, the low-paid, women’s groups and certain races are ignored or unheard
and the tendency not to listen to those voices is escalating.688 This is why
educators need to reclaim schools as democratic public spheres in which students can
engage in conversation and critique around the meaning of democratic values, the
relationship between learning and inclusive civic engagement, and the connection
between schooling, what it means to be a critical, empowered citizen, and the
responsibilities one has to the larger world.689
Author
But it could be said that to be engaged in this way one must be motivated to act.
Isn’t this precisely the problem with marginalised groups – lack of motivation
and hope in different possibilities? As Cornel West argues, the real catastrophe
that now pervades disadvantaged areas is neither oppression nor exploitation
but the loss of hope and absence of meaning. He makes the important
observation that as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of
overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is
that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no
struggle.690 West’s argument implies that if one hopes to break the bonds of
oppression, one must acquire some agency, but the very nature of oppression
engenders feelings of hopelessness, futility and alienation. How is it possible to
break this cycle of alienation and despair?
Giroux
This is a formidable challenge. Let us remember though, that already, in every

marginal community, there are those who are working tirelessly to make others
conscious of the transformative possibilities of their own communities by
building the conditions that allow its members to search for self-understanding and
meaning. They do this because they have a longing for a new society and new forms

689 Giroux in Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, xvii.
690 Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 15.

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of social relations, relations free from the pathology of racism, sexism, and class
domination.691
But what happens in schools in these communities is of vital importance if there

is to be genuine and lasting structural changes. I want to argue for a critical
pedagogy to be developed as a form of cultural politics, as it is imperative that both
teachers and students be viewed as transformative intellectuals.692 The approach to
curriculum I am advocating would abandon the ideological pretense of being value-
free. As well as having their studies linked to the study of larger society, they
would have to be connected to a notion of justice, one that is capable of articulating
how certain unjust social structures can be identified and replaced.693 This approach to
learning demands constant searching, invention, and reinvention,694 which makes
learning engaging and exciting as much of the learning would be self-directed
and would link knowledge to the personal experiences of the students. This is
the only antidote to the alienation that one finds in many schools – particularly
disadvantaged and marginalized ones. Too many adult critiques and theories
are alienating precisely because they erase any understanding of how power
relations between adults and young people work against many children. At the same
time, the discourse of hope is replaced with the rhetoric of cynicism and disdain695 and a
politics of personal responsibilities and self-interest for one that is oriented towards
the collective good.696 I want to entrench the discourse of hope in our schools,
most particularly the marginalised ones – those that Freire called “the
oppressed”. I believe with Freire, that such an approach would make despair
unconvincing and hope practical.697

692 Ibid., 100.
693 Ibid., 26–27.
694 Ibid., 63.
696 Ibid., 6.

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Author
David Trend suggests that the particular potency in your writing about
education is your moral commitment to democratic practices that are inclusive,
that engage all citizens in their own governance, however different the cultural
experiences or backgrounds of participants might be.698 You speak to all
different groups and engender hope in the possibility of a new transformed
society committed to genuine freedom and equality. In so many ways a
synchronicity and complimentarity between your ideas and the Catholic social
teaching can easily be identified.
Groome
I agree. Catholic social teaching, just as Freire and Henry’s work does, provides a
view of pedagogy and praxis that is partisan to its core; in its origins and intentions it
is for “choosing life”. This “humanitas” anthropology calls for the antithesis of
“banking education” (Freire). It demands a pedagogy that engages people as active
participants in the teaching/learning dynamic, that prompts and empowers them to
become agents of their own learning rather than treating them as dependents and telling
them what to know. A humanitas pedagogy should bring to full bloom what Maritain
called “the inner vitality” of people for knowledge and creativity.699 A humanitas
anthropology calls the educator to “cooperate” as resource person and question raiser,
as guide and coach, as companion and friend, and to see to it that learners have vital
access to the knowledge, wisdom, and aesthetic of the sciences, humanities, and arts.700
This is what it means to educate people as “agent subjects” to live in “right
relationship” with self and others, with society and creation, and with their God.701
698 Trend’s interview is recorded in ———, Border Crossings, 149.

700 Ibid., 104.
701 Ibid., 100.

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Author
The way you speak about education is reminiscent of Thomas Merton. He too
emphasised the need for critique and questioning, but also affirmed the need
for Christian pedagogy to prepare the student to live wisely and know how to
make the right judgements. You both draw on the thinking of Maritain in this
regard. He believed that education directed toward wisdom, centered on the
humanities, aiming to develop in people the capacity to think correctly and to
enjoy truth and beauty, is education for freedom, or liberal education.702 Does
this encapsulate your thinking on freedom as well Thomas?
Groome
Yes. Maritain had a rich and balanced understanding of freedom. His classic
Thomist approach is that human freedom is analogous to God’s freedom, because God
is the ground of true freedom. As such, human freedom is freedom to love, to
choose truth, to do good, to create the beautiful.703 For Maritain and Merton,
wisdom is a way of knowing.704 It is simply knowing how to “be” in the world and
this way of being flows naturally from adopting and self-appropriating a
contemplative approach to everything. This contemplative approach alerts Learners
to “The More in the Midst”. It empowers them to view reality with awe and
reverence and invites learners to look at life carefully, contemplatively, intelligently,
with curiosity and intuition, to recognise and appreciate what is beyond the obvious and
ordinary.705
It would appear that the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures recommend wisdom as the
highest purpose of education. Such wisdom is profoundly holistic, engaging the total
person – head, heart, and hands – consciously located in the world. It requires
commitment and a thorough awareness of the context of one’s responsibilities,
702 Maritain, The Education of Man, 69.

704 Ibid., 289.
705 Ibid., 156–57.

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willingness to work in partnership, and dedication to seek what is true and choose what
is good – to live the wisdom one knows. Surely, education could have no higher
“intended learning outcome” than biblical wisdom and becoming so wise.706
Chapter Conclusion
What the foregoing dialogue represents could be described as ‘Border

pedagogy’ in action. It transgresses the traditional boundary between secular
and sacred. Henry Giroux places himself within the secular tradition, while
Thomas Groome is “steeped” in the Roman Catholic tradition. If typical
stereotypes were to be maintained, their respective anthropology, philosophy,
world view and educational vision should be wildly at odds. Though they have
set out on their search from two very different starting points, sets of
assumptions and presuppostions, and travelled different paths, they
nonetheless arrive at the same destination where most of the essentials of
education are concerned. There are tensions and differences, but there is
agreement in the essentials – even the tensions and differences transpire to be
mutually enriching.
From Giroux’s perspective, there is insufficient discourse among educators on

the ways in which ideologies, values and power shape all aspects of the
educational process. He argues that it is now very difficult to appropriate a
critical language outside the market, a system of thought that reduces freedom
to the imperatives of market exchange. Giroux’s strategy is to restore hope of
transformation by naming ideology’s rules of formation. He ‘unveils’ what is
conveniently ignored and tacitly endorsed and interrogates those practices that
perpetuate inequality, exploitation and human suffering. The teacher, according
to his educational vision, should be a transformative intellectual who acts
democratically and ethically to make the school and the world more just and
egalitarian. Giroux always speaks the language of possibility; he rejects what he
706 Ibid., 280.

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calls “the rhetoric of cynicism and disdain”707 that permeates much of the
prevailing discussion about young people, and believes that this has had the
effect of suppressing the discourse of hope. Instead of hope the young are
indoctrinated with a politics of personal responsibilities and self-interest rather
than one of the collective good. Giroux wants to break the veil of silence that
has fallen over public discourse about the ways in which power, technology,
and ideology come together to produce knowledge, social relations, and other
concrete cultural forms that indirectly silence people. He wants an approach to
education that will reclaim a notion of politics and pedagogy that fosters civic
engagement and public intelligence. If this is to happen schools would have to
become sites of resistance, contestation, agency, cultural struggle; they would
challenge a cultural hegemony which stigmatises, marginalises, oppresses and
excludes significant portions of the population.
Groome, coming from a Catholic educational perspective, uses a different

language and approaches the issues from a different perspective, but is
essentially nonetheless, in agreement with Giroux’s argument. He too wishes to
dispel despair and promote hope through his “humanitas” vision and
highlights the political nature of schooling by putting anthropology at the heart
of the educational project. For Groome, teaching and learning is a sacramental
activity. In this sense it is a form of education that is deeply “steeped” in
tradition. As was the case for Merton, a truly holistic education must, for
Groome, enable the student to resist their inner compulsions as well as external
ones.
Yet it is a vision that does not hesitate to call the Tradition to account where
abuses of power and position are concerned. Groome, like Merton is aware that
religion can very easily become an ideology, and ideologies do not tend to listen
well to opposing views; typically, they become closed up in their circumscribed
707 Giroux, Stealing Innocence, 20, Henry Giroux, The Abandoned Generation: Democracy
Beyond the Culture of Fear, 1st ed. (New York Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), i–xxii.

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thinking, their theories and values. Groome advocates a dialogue and a critical
engagement with the Tradition so that it doesn’t suppress human freedom, but
instead becomes the door to liberation.
Groome’s humanising vision and Giroux’s critical vision both require a

pedagogy that engages people as active participants in the teaching/learning
dynamic; a pedagogy that will empower the young to become agents of their
own learning rather than treating them as dependents who are told what to
know. Their vision for liberating education is the antithesis of banking
education since the goal is to invite students to become agent-subjects – and
only an active agent can make history. The teacher in such a context becomes an
essential resource person and question raiser, a guide and coach, a companion
and friend. They mentor learners in critical reflection so that students are
empowered to probe the undergirding perspectives, the biases, and the
influences upon their thinking. The school that embraces this pedagogical
approach would then become “a zone of cultural contestation”, where
dominant habits and social norms are called into question and problematised.
This will inevitably involve the development of an awareness of how culture,
history, race, gender, religious tradition, economic conditions, and political
structures all have profound influence on individual and collective horizons.
This process presents the link between critical perception and discernment;
Giroux calls this activity ‘critical thinking’ and Groome calls it discernment. For
both it is a process which requires a formation in the ability to truly discern
how to interpret one’s life in the world and make intelligent sense out of it and
which leads to an unveiling of truth and reality. It is a way of thinking and
judging that has the courage to examine that which we don’t wish to know – a
process which interrogates embedded thought patterns and practices. It
embraces and celebrates the regenerative powers of the hermeneutics of
dislocation.
The next chapter constitutes an attempt to unveil ideology’s rules of formation

in a contemporary Catholic educational context. The chapter is premised on the

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belief that some of the elements of corporate ideology – particularly a

perception which reduces human freedom to the imperatives of market
exchange – may have found ways of insinuating itself into Catholic practices,
thus subverting, or perhaps even negating, the foundational raison d'être of the
Catholic school. It will propose that the most effective protection against the
cooption of destructive practices lies with embracing a discernment process
which draws on the riches of the Catholic contemplative tradition and the
secular critical tradition that were the subject of the dialogues in this and the
previous chapter.

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Chapter Five: Discerning a Critical Contemplative

vision for a Catholic Education that is The Practice
of Freedom
Introduction
A discerning Catholic education aims to bring faith, culture and life into
harmony,708 and the dialogues in the previous two chapters exemplified this
process. The conviction that underpins this entire thesis centres on the belief
that the insights gleaned from contemplative educators, when fused with the
insights of critical educators, present the most responsible reading of the ‘signs
of the times’ for Catholic educators in the contemporary world.
The fundamental communicative thrust of this chapter is focused on the

proposal that Catholic educational institutions may need to empower
themselves to unveil, understand and counteract the influence of corporatist
ideology at a macro level in the global culture, and more specifically at a micro
level within the infrastructure of the local Catholic school.
It is important to clarify from the outset that the declaration that the Catholic
tradition needs to become more attuned to the dangers of corporatism does not
constitute an assertion that corporatism has taken deep root within Catholic
educational institutions. There are at least three reasons why such an assertion
cannot be made with any certainty:
1. There is a dearth of research concerning the issue of the convergence
708 The Religious Dimension, no. 34; The Catholic School, no. 44.

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between corporatism and Catholic education. Due to the lack of

qualitative and quantitative research in the area, it is not possible to
make solid irrefutable assertions concerning the level of influence
corporatist ideology exerts on the modus operandi of the Catholic school;
2. Catholic education cannot be spoken of as a homogenous entity. The

shape and structure of Catholic educational institutions varies greatly at
an international and local level, depending on such factors as the nature
and quality of leadership and the culture of the particular school;
3. The fact that corporatist ideology can be shown to have manifested

itself in the state education sector is not an absolute guarantee that it is
affecting the Catholic sector to a comparable degree. The Catholic
structure has a particular modus operandi and has a unique raison d'être
that should, at least theoretically, act as a bulwark against corrosive
ideologies.
The methodological strategy
Notwithstanding the foregoing caveats, Catholic educational institutions exist

within wider culture and therefore tend to absorb the trends and changes
occurring in broader society into their own institutions. It would be naïve,
therefore, to believe that corporatist ideology does not affect Catholic schools in
a profound way. Every ideology demands an education system that mirrors its
intrinsic belief system and values.709 It can be responsibly argued that, in many
Western societies at least, state educational structures tend to appropriate
corporatist ideology.710
709 In the words of Kilpatrick, “each kind of world outlook demands its consistent type
of education”. William H. Kilpatrick, Philosophy of Education (New York: MacMillan,
1951), 5.
710 A large number of sources can be used to support this assertion. See for example:
Noam Chomsky, Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, Seven Stories Press

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Critical educators would suggest that one of the essential tasks of schools in
such a circumstance is to ‘unveil’ and ‘problematise’ the serious philosophical
and ethical issues presented by corporatism and would seek to empower
students and teachers to become attentive to, and to counteract, the negative
consequences of the infiltration of corporate managerial systems and corporate
values into schools.
Due to the lack of availability of quantitative and qualitative data in a Catholic

context, the methodology employed here is largely one of ‘cross-deduction’ – a
method whereby the findings of secular critical scholarship are tentatively
applied to a Catholic educational context. The working hypothesis is
constructed from the premise that: ‘if the State education system is becoming
increasingly corporatised, then such a trend or movement is likely to be
replicated – to varying degrees and levels of intensity – in the Catholic school
system’.
Breaking into new territory is always fraught and full of risk, and many of the
1st ed. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), Saltman and Gabbard, Education as
Enforcement, Henry Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics & the Promise
of Democracy (Boulder: Paradigm, 2004), Justin Whelan, “Equity Vs Entitlement:
Confronting the Vexed Question of Public Funding for Wealthy Private Schools”,
Uniting Church Studies 12, no. No.1 March (2006), Michael W. Apple, Jane Kenway, and
Michael Singh, Globalizing Education: Policies, Pedagogies, & Politics (New York: Peter
Lang, 2005), Maxine Greene, The Dialectic of Freedom (New York: Teachers College
Press, 1988), Stanley Aronowitz, Heather Gautney, and Clyde W. Barrow, Implicating
Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order (New York: Basic
Books, 2003), Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Nice, Acts of Resistance: Against the New
Myths of Our Time (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1998), Chris Bonner and Jane Caro,
The Stupid Country: How Australia Is Dismantling Its Public Education System (Sydney,
N.S.W.: University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2007), Heather-Jane Robertson, For
Cash and Future Considerations: Ontario Universities and Public-Private Partnerships
(Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2003).

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tentative assertions made here, may well be proven to be wide of the mark by
future studies. This chapter represents, more than anything, an appeal for
further dialogue and academic study on this important aspect of contemporary
educational theory and practice.
The discursive method employed is premised on Pierre Bourdieu’s assertion

that undesirable practices cannot be questioned or changed without the
intentionality that goes with discourse.711 This Chapter represents an attempt to
contribute to the discourse concerning the connection between corporatism and
contemporary Catholic education.
Structure
The argument opens with a brief synthesis of the ways in which the
methodology and perspective of critical educators coheres with that of
contemplative educators. Their common perception and approach will then be
employed to offer an explication and critique of corporatist ideology followed
by an analysis of the role of corporatist practices and procedures in
contemporary education. Three specific areas of school practice will be
examined in some detail: 1) School management practices; 2) The role of technology
in schools, and; 3) Curriculum orientation. For each, the strategy will be the same:
the analysis of critical educators and public intellectuals will be presented, then
followed by an assessment of the ways in which the insights and observations
of critical educators can be applied to Catholic educational context. Particular
attention will be given to the philosophy and design of the curriculum since
curriculum lies at the heart of the life of the school.
After presenting the possible ways in which corporatist ideology may be

affecting in Catholic schools, a strategy for counteracting the potential
damaging influences of corporatism to the integrity of Catholic education will
711 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), 87–88.

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then be canvassed. The development of a critical consciousness will be

suggested – that is, an approach that combines the best insights of critical
educators with the best insights of contemplative Catholic educators. This
approach to Catholic education will be termed a Critical Contemplative Education.
This is to be an education for freedom that empowers Catholic students to
critically examine the forces which are shaping their consciousness and bring
that consciousness into dialogue with a faith inspired consciousness – a
consciousness which draws on the contemplative depth structures of the
Catholic tradition. It will propose that the ideal graduate from the Catholic
school will be a contemplative in action who will embody and promote a
transformative, humanised vision for the present and future, where dignity,
genuine empowerment, democratic values, belonging, solidarity and
community are realised and celebrated.
Discerning a Critical Contemplative Catholic Education
From the outset, this thesis has advocated that the Catholic Tradition adopt a
dialogical approach in relation to the Tradition itself as well as to the wider
culture within which the Tradition has emerged. As an alternative to reading
the Tradition in a Church-as-monolith, “citadel of certainties”712 modality, it
was suggested that it be interpreted instead as an ongoing dialogue or an
‘argument’ about the very goods that constitute the Tradition itself.713 Within
such a horizon, a critical perspective is embedded in the Tradition. This quality
of critical engagement, it was suggested, ensures that the education experienced
in Catholic schools is neither a mere reproduction of the Tradition, nor an
712 This is a term which was coined by the Church historian Patrick O’Farrell to
describe the posture of the pre-Vatican II Church. See Patrick O'Farrell, The Catholic
Church and Community (Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1992),
406.
713 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1981), 221.

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escape from the Tradition.714 This type of education, which was modelled by
the four interlocutors, becomes a to-and-fro dialogue where all parties in the
conversation are treated as equals, and all emerge from the encounter with
changed perceptions. The essence of true dialogue is to be transformed “not
simply to transform the people we encounter”.715
This approach represents not only a reverence for, and receptivity to, the
continuing dynamism of the Creator,716 but it evinces a profound faith in the
discernment process because the one who adopts it is willing to engage with the
living tradition in both its enriching and distorting effects.717 Paradoxically, the
experience of difference, discrepancy, anomaly that is encountered –
particularly by listening to the voices from the margins – is frequently the
source of the greatest growth and development of the Tradition.718 This is, as
Sharon Welch argues, probably the most difficult but most important activity
that Christians can engage in.719 Through this relational and questioning
engagement, one learns to discard what is negative and destructive and
preserve what is true, beautiful and lifegiving.720 The purpose and intent of the
preceding chapters has been to inhabit and appraise the border crossing point
between secular critical perspective and a contemplative Catholic perspective
714 See Veling, Living in the Margins, 206–07.

715 Gittins, Reading the Clouds, 42, 44.
716 See Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of
God, 1st U.S. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 2.
717 Veling, Living in the Margins, 206. Also ———, Practical Theology, 33–37.
718 This is similar to the argument put forward by Robert Kegan. See Robert Kegan, In
over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1994), 210. See also Gadamer, Truth and Method, 260-62, Geiko
Müller-Fahrenholz, God's Spirit: Transforming a World in Crisis (Geneva: WCC, 1995).
719 See Sharon D. Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of
Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1985), 1–4.
720 See Johnstone, “What Is Tradition?”. For a comparable perspective see Lonergan,
Method in Theology, 44.

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on education.
The Practice of Freedom: The Border Crossing Point

Between Critical and Contemplative Educators
Notwithstanding the individuality of each scholar’s unique perception and

perspective, contemplative educators and critical educators both share the belief
that education is fundamentally concerned with the issue of educating for
freedom. Both also evince a profound compassion for those “who are poor in
the goods of this world”.721 In this vital area the work of critical educators
mirrors the spirit and intent of the social justice teaching of the Catholic
Church.722 Since these same groups are also the primary focus of the mission of
the post-conciliar Catholic community,723 it is vital that the work of critical
educators be studied and listened to in a Catholic educational context. Critical
educators can also assist Catholic educators in the task of unveiling the ways in
which Catholic educational structures support those same asymmetrical and
unjust power relations that are to be found in wider society within its own
structures and modus operandi.

722 This fusion has already been explored through conversations with Merton and
Freire, but it is also underscored by a large number of contemporary theologians
including Rosemary Radford Ruether, Jon Sobrino, Elizabeth Johnson, and Gustavo
Gutiérrez and Albert Nolan, as well as those who could be described as contemporary
spiritual guides and leaders such as Jean Vanier, Helen Prejean, Richard Rohr, Timothy
Radcliffe, John Dear and Joan Chittister. It is a strong sense of communion and
solidarity that leads these contemplative visionaries to those in the human community
that most suffer indignity and exclusion.
723 This mission is powerfully expressed in the opening words of Gaudium et Spes: “The
joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the [people] of our age, especially those who
are poor or afflicted in any way, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and
anxieties of the followers of Christ”. Gaudium et Spes, no. 1.

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As a consequence of what can be learned from dialogue with critical educators,

the suggestion that is canvassed and elaborated in the remainder of this chapter
is, that the Catholic educational community may need to engage in more careful
discernment concerning the ways in which the core tenets, beliefs, practices and
vision for Catholic education can be subverted, colonised and even displaced by
other less worthy educational practices.
Naming the powers: Developing a contemplative critical

literacy in the Catholic school
If an ideology is to be combated, it must first be identified and named. As John

Dominic Crossan asserts, “in order to resist empire, we must know what we are
up against”.724 The difficulty of naming corporatism however, lies with its
tendency to bypass attentiveness by insinuating itself into consciousness in a
gradual and inexorable manner, thereby establishing a sense of normalcy. As a
consequence, it has become “the world’s most dominant institution” without
much coordinated resistance.725 That said, what follows represents both a
definition (as used and understood in this study), as well as a brief analysis of
its impact on culture and popular perceptions.
Corporatism Defined
Corporatism726 is here understood to be capitalism without moral controls. It
724 Crossan, God and Empire, 36. For a similar argument see Rosemary Radford Ruether,
America, Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence (Oakville, CT Equinox Pub., 2007).
725 Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (London:
Constable & Robinson, 2004), 139.
726 The historical understandings of the term ‘Corporatism’ will not be explored. In this
thesis the contemporary use of the term is explored. ‘Corporatism’ can therefore be
used interchangeably with a number of other terms such as, neo-liberalism; economic
rationalism; market fundamentalism, the Washington consensus, or free-market
economics.

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represents what Ben Bagdikian and others identify as the pathological pursuit
of profit and power,727 and comes into effect when the economic imperative of
capital exchange dictates all decision-making processes irrespective of how
those decisions will affect individuals and communities. It is a mindset and an
ethic that promotes financial and material prosperity as the sole criteria by
which human good is to be measured, and convinces the public of the
legitimacy of this view by communicating a purposeful collection of myths
about human existence, the most compelling being that wealth, success and
prosperity brings happiness and fulfilment.728 It is a distinct conception of the
world, a horizon which embodies a particular set of values and attitudes
pertaining to meaning, identity and purpose; a worldview that exalts and
idolises individualism and in reality (despite protestations to the contrary)
values human beings only as a commodities to be used to its advantage.729
According to the late Anita Roddick the founder of The Body Shop, the
language of the corporation “is not the language of the soul or the language of
humanity”. It is, she says, “a language of indifference … of separation, of
secrecy, of hierarchy, which stops people from having a sense of empathy with
the human condition … and separates us from who we are”.730
What defines corporatism also, is a slavish adherence to the economic
727 Ben H. Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 239, Bakan,
The Corporation, 58.
728 Korten identifies five compelling and widely appropriated myths that underpin “the
money-serving prosperity story”. See David Korten, “Living Wealth: Better Than
Money”, http://www.yesmagazine.org (Accessed 14 April 2008). See also Alex
Gibney et al., Enron the Smartest Guys in the Room [Videorecording] (Los Angeles, CA:
Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2005).
729 Charles Derber, People before Profit: The New Globalization in the Age of Terror, Big
Money, and Economic Crisis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002), 5, 59, Don Watson,
Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (Milsons Point, N.S.W.: Random House
Australia, 2003), 8.
730 Roddick interviewed in Bakan, The Corporation, 56.

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imperative which dictates that a company or organisation must always

maximise profits.731 This “Global corpocracy”732 is driven by a small number of
transnational corporations who now have the means to control and manipulate
not only finance and capital, but people’s values and perspective on life as
well.733
Like the Church in the past the corporation demands “obedient constituents
who pay their dues and follow rules”.734 The organisational and perceptual
structure exerts a powerful pressure to perform, or be discarded and
intentionally cultivates an individualistic, self-promoting and self-aggrandising
ethos.
As with all ideologies, corporatism is communicated and self-appropriated

through a specific language that adherents utilise to communicate this world
view. It is a language that masks the real intent behind the words; an
appropriated language which is designed to obscure and obfuscate and has the
effect of desensitising (those who use it as well as the recipient) to the real
meaning and intent of the terms and words being used. In an Australian context
Don Watson has written extensively on what he sees as the corruption of
731 Derber, People before Profit, 5. Bakan synthesises the characteristics common to all
corporations: obsession with profits and share prices, greed, lack of concern for others,
and a penchant for breaking legal rules. It valorises self-interest and invalidates moral
concern. Bakan, The Corporation, 58.
732 Derber, People before Profit, 59.
733 Bagdikian, The New Media, 177. Both Bagdikian and Bakan argue that like the church
and the monarch in other times, corporations posture as infallible and omnipotent,
glorifying themselves in imposing buildings and elaborate displays thus projecting a
sense of complete control and domination. Bakan, The Corporation, 5.
734 John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (New York: Penguin, 1997), 19. See
also Vandana Shiva, “Free Trade and Globalisation”, The Australian Broadcasting
Corporation, http://www.abc.net.au/specials/shiva/shiva/htm (Accessed 10
September 2000).

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language by corporate interests. He offers a comprehensive analysis of

ubiquitous terminology that he variously identifies as cant, jargon, cliché and
euphemism that are designed to be meaning-less, narrow the range of thought,
curtail our liberty and undermine democracy.735 John Ralston Saul compares
corporate language to Fascist language; rhetoric such as, “efficiency”, “the level
playing field”, “common sense”, “business”, “technology” and “organisation”,
“reform”, “restructuring” were terms that constantly repeated by Mussolini and
Pétain. He comments that as was the case in Mussolini’s Italy, we hear little
about “liberty”, “equality”, or “democracy”.736
This mechanistic language fosters a psychological distancing from human

contact and relationship. This leads to a certain de-humanisation in public
discourse, and it is this devaluing of the human person that puts the basic
values of corporatism into conflict with Catholic values and principles. When
market imperatives relegate the person to a subservient status, all that is
essential about the humanity of the individual is rendered meaningless – their
personhood, their memory, creativity, uniqueness and relationships. In short,
their intrinsic value as God’s unique creation is eroded and the very things that
sustain the well-being of society are undermined.737 When human beings are
objectified in this way, much violence is done to the human heart and soul. As
Simone Weil observes, “the soul was not made to dwell in a thing: and when
forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence”.738 In a sense it can
be said that under such circumstances the human person is reduced to the
735 See Watson, Death Sentence, 1, 12-15, Don Watson, Watson's Dictionary of Weasel
Words and Other Meaningless Managerial Phrases (Milsons Point, N.S.W.: Knopf, 2004),
1ff.
736 See Ralston Saul, Unconscious Civilization, 28–30.
737 See Margaret Throsby, “John Ralston Saul”, (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting
Corporation, Classic FM, 9 March, 1999).
738 From Weil’s “The Iliad, Poem of Might” quoted in Watson, Death Sentence, 11.

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status of a slave, 739 for when an individual is treated as though they have no
intrinsic value, their sense of self and their character begins to corrode.740
This bi-product of corporatism – the reduction of large numbers of humanity to

the status of slaves – is most apparent when working and living conditions in
rich and poor nations is examined.741 It is also apparent when the conditions of
the unemployed and low-paid workers are investigated in ‘wealthy’
countries.742 Many would argue that even those who are considered ‘successful’
in Western societies are reduced to the status of a slave by corporate ideology.743
739 See Charles B. Handy, The Hungry Spirit: Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the
Modern World (London: Hutchinson, 1997), 38, 71.
740 The sociologist of work, Richard Sennett, using persuasive quantitative data and
case studies demonstrates that corporatist modus operandi “radiates indifference”
resulting in a widespread breakdown of trust and corrosion of character among large
numbers of workers throughout the world. See Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of
Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (New York: Norton,
1998), 24, 79, 118, 41, 46.
741 Derber, People before Profit, 59ff, David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (San
Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995), 29. For an extensive analysis of the
consequences of such oppression and inequality in a global context see Shiva, “Free
Trade and Globalisation”, Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy (Boston: South End Press, 1997),
Postman, Building a Bridge, 48, Naomi Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
(London: Flamingo, 2000), 405–40, ———, The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism
(London: Allen Lane, 2007), 406–22. Also Arundhati Roy in Simon Denyer, “India
'Boom' an Environmental Disaster”, Reuters, June 10 2005.
742 By way of illustration: when the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich attempted to survive
in the USA by working a number of low-paid jobs for an extended period of time she
discovered that it was virtually impossible to pay rent, utilities and food bills – even
when she worked three low-paid jobs. See Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On
(Not) Getting by in America, 1st Owl Books ed. (New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt, 2002).
743 Even “the highly educated, technocratic, specialised elites” argues Ralston Saul, “are
caught in structures which require of them courtier-like behaviour”. Ralston Saul,
Unconscious Civilization, 27. See also Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, 100.

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Due to its manipulative and seductive influence, corporatism has the power to
warp character and induce good people to behave in a reprehensible manner.744
Catholic Context
The Catholic tradition supports legitimate ethical business practices that are
oriented towards the common good; it is not anti-business. It needs to be
acknowledged also that there are hopeful signs that corporate excesses are
being resisted; there are many – academics, public intellectuals and even those
working within the corporate sector itself – who are calling for a new more just
and humanising way of doing business in a globalised world.745 Nonetheless,
the prevailing value system – particularly the tendency towards greed and the
thirst for power746 – and consequent perception of the human person implicit in
a corporatist mindset, runs directly counter to all the central tenets of Catholic
Social Teaching. Indeed, as the late Pope John Paul II has pointed out,
corporatist ideology looks a lot like another version of Marxism in that “it
totally reduces the human person to the sphere of economics and the
744 David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (San Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-
Koehler Publishers, 1995), 221. Bakan argues that corporations do not just stifle good
deeds, they nurture, and often demand, bad ones. See Bakan, The Corporation, 53. As
was highlighted in Chapter Three, Hannah Arendt and Thomas Merton made similar
observations on all-powerful institutions.
745 See for example, Derber, People before Profit, Handy, The Hungry Spirit: Beyond
Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World, John Kenneth Galbraith and
Michael Keaney, Economist with a Public Purpose : Essays in Honour of John Kenneth
Galbraith, Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy ; 32. (London ; New York:
Routledge, 2001), Anthony Giddens, The Global Third Way Debate (Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press ; Blackwell, 2001), George Monbiot, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a
New World Order (London: Flamingo, 2003).
746 The Church regularly warns of the dangers of these vices in commercial and socio-
political contexts. See for example, Populorum Progressio, no. 49, Solicitudo Rei Socialis,
no. 37.

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satisfaction of material needs”.747 Corporatism represents the antithesis of

Catholic theology since it has the effect of undermining the dignity of the
human being by eroding a sense of human agency, intrinsic value and self-
determination; it undermines community, solidarity and the common good – all
essential values in the Christian tradition. Corporatism flies in the face of the
expressed goals of Catholic education by shutting out a contemplative vision
for the formation of the human person. From a psycho-spiritual perspective it
could be seen as a refusal to accept that life is finite, and a refusal also to
acknowledge the deep connectedness that binds each individual person to the
rest of the human race.
Catholic tradition stands for a set of views and values that prioritise human
capital over financial capital;748 it seeks to promote psychological and spiritual
health, the capacity for critical thought, humanisation, connection, belonging,
solidarity and communion. In a certain sense then, Catholicism is on a collision
course with corporatism.
747 Centesimus Annus, no. 19.

748 The social teaching of the Church in relation to economic development is extensive,
but is encapsulated by two direct statements from significant Church teachings:
Gaudium et Spes teaches that,
the ultimate and basic purpose of economic production does not

consist merely in the increase of goods produced, not in profit nor
prestige; it is directed to the service of [the human community], that
is, in [their] totality, taking into account [their] material needs and the
requirements of [their] intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious life.
Gaudium et Spes, no. 64.

This same message was reiterated in Centesimus Annus: “Development”, it argues,
must not be understood solely in economic terms, but in a way that is

fully human. It is not only a question of raising all people to the level
enjoyed by the richest countries, but rather of building up a more
decent life through united labor, of concretely enhancing every
individual’s dignity and creativity, as well as [their] capacity to
respond to [their] personal vocation, and thus to God’s call.
Centesimus Annus, no. 29.

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Unveiling the Contradictions: Corporatist ideology,

undermining the foundations of the Contemporary
(Catholic?) School
Three vital areas of school life will now be examined in order to unveil some of
the ways Corporatist ideology may have insinuated itself into the horizons of
those who determine the form and content of education. The three areas of
school life are:
1. School management strategies;

2. The use and place of technology in the school;
3. The school Curriculum.
The crucial question is, whether or not the argument of critical educators –
which is directed to the education system in a general sense – can be applied in
a specific sense to the Catholic school system. The tentative suggestion of this
thesis is that it can – at least to some extent. For each aspect the pattern will be
similar: the evidence from critical educators and commentators will be offered,
then that evidence will then be adapted and applied to a Catholic educational
context. Where there is specific evidence concerning a Catholic context, it will
be presented.
Corporate School Management Strategies: Stifling the contemplative

life of the Catholic School?
There are two principal ways in which corporatism is affecting the management
of schools: 1) Corporate interests are now establishing a physical presence in
schools, in the form of sponsorship and product sales, and; 2) Corporate
management methodology and mindset is now being replicated in the
management of schools. Each of these is potentially very destructive of a critical
contemplative education, but the second could, potentially, have profoundly
destructive consequences.

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1. Corporatism and the Colonisation of schools
In 1993 Jonathan Kozol warned against the impending takeover of some public
schools by entrepreneurs in the USA.749 Analysing the current trends, he
predicted a future where “unabashed capitalism” would succeed in the delivery
of education in the US. He listed a number of schools already run by such large
corporations such as Burger King, with many others, such as IBM and Apple
contemplating opening private schools.750 Kozol’s thesis on the desire of
corporate bodies to move into offering private education in order to fashion the
minds to accept the logic of the corporate mindset is now supported by many
other progressive educators including Henry Giroux and Noam Chomsky.
Giroux claims that “a radical reprivatising of the public realm is now well
under way”.751 Chomsky argues that early on in education each person is
socialised to understand the need to support corporations.752
The real difficulty here is the conflation of the market with education. School, as
Freire pointed out, is never a neutral domain. Corporate presence in schools,
therefore, sells not only products but “an attitude, a set of values, a body of
749 Jonathan Kozol, “The Sharks Move In”, New Internationalist, October 1993, 8. For a
similar assessment see Chris Brazier and 315, “The Great Education Scandal”, The New
Internationalist, August 1999, 10, Gerald W. Bracey, What You Should Know About the
War against America's Public Schools (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003), 1.
750 Kozol, “The Sharks Move In”, 8.
751 Henry Giroux in Saltman and Gabbard, Education as Enforcement, xvii. Bakan
demonstrates that in 2001 alone, the number of education management organisations
in the United States increased by seventy percent. He estimates conservatively that ten
percent of the $800 billion education industry will be run by for-profit corporations in
ten years’ time, compared to 1 percent today. Bakan, The Corporation, 114. For evidence
of a similar trend in an Australian context see Editorial The Age, “All We Are Saying,
Is Give Public/Private Partnerships a Chance”, The Age, December 8 2007.
752 Chomsky, Miseducation, 17.

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political beliefs as well”.753 If all space in such a school becomes commodifiable,

then education itself becomes just another product to be packaged and
marketed.754 Such privatisation of a public good, many suggest, is a deeply
flawed strategy as it rests upon a distorted idea that self-interest and
materialistic desire are the essence of who we are. To base such an important
social good as the education system on these traits, it is argued, is dangerously
fundamentalist; corporations cannot serve the public good since they are legally
required always to put their own interests above everyone else’s.755
Catholic Context
It is unlikely that corporate interests would be able to colonise Catholic schools

in such an explicit manner, as Catholic schools are independent entities whose
foundational principles are opposed to such overt colonisation. However,
corporate systems can insinuate their way into the school if there isn’t sufficient
attentiveness. For example, many Catholic schools now sub-contract many
school related operations such as the running of the canteen, gymnasium,
school camps and timetable. These contractors operate along corporate lines
and their interests may conflict with goals of the Catholic school; for instance,
the canteen and vending machines may sell food and drink which the
contractors know will be popular and maximise profit, but which are
detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the students who attend the school.
Such direct conflict of interest would need to be carefully monitored and
discerned in a Catholic setting.
753 Kozol, “The Sharks Move In”, 10.

754 Susan L. Robertson, A Class Act: Changing Teachers' Work, Globalisation and the State
(New York: Falmer Press, 2000), 116.
755 For elaboration of this argument see Elliott Sclar, You Don't Always Get What You Pay
For: The Economics of Privatization (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2000),
Bracey, What You Should Know About the War against America's Public Schools.

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2. School Leaders and Administrators: Replicating Corporatism’s

Managerialism
The second way in which corporatism has filtered into the school, is the manner
in which school leaders and administrators have imbibed the language and
mindset of corporatism. Many schools are now being reorganised in the context
of “fast capitalism” and “fast schools”.756 Principals are seen “as CEOs of
medium-sized autonomous enterprises”,757 and ‘management’ of every sphere
of school life is emphasised. ‘School improvement’ is constantly promoted,
often with little discussion about what ‘improvement’ really means,758 this is
part of what Macedo sees as “a fetish for reform” that is sweeping Western
education.759 In this context of hyper-managerialism students tend to become
‘clients’ who are objectified and at one and the same time pandered to and
manipulated. Some schools are now identifying themselves as ‘leading’ schools
in order to increase their ‘market share’ and ‘competitive edge’. This language
756 These are terms used by Robertson (who carried out a major study on school
organizational methods in the USA and Australia). ‘Fast capitalism’ can be described
as “an intensification of capitalist social relations”. Robertson, A Class Act, 111.
According to Agger, this drive towards managerialism is distinguished by the way in
which the line between the world of business and the world of the school is blurred to
the point of being indistinguishable, hence making it difficult to identify the ideology
which enmeshes the life of the school. Ben Agger, A Critical Theory of Public Life:
Knowledge, Discourse, and Politics in an Age of Decline, Critical Perspectives on Literacy
and Education. (London ; New York: Falmer Press, 1991), 69.
757 Beare quoted in Anne Susskind, edit., “Education”, The Bulletin, June 26 2006, 62.
758 In Australia, Brian Caldwell’s assertion that schools of the future must be
“committed to achieving systematic, significant and sustained change that ensures
outstanding outcomes for all students” is repeated frequently and consistently in teaching
literature, in-services and conferences. Ibid. (emphasis added).
759 Macedo argues that much of what is called “reform” actually serves to “deform” the
life of the school. See Donaldo P. Macedo, Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not
Allowed to Know, Expanded ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2006), 152–64, 73.

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and the mindset it signifies has become ubiquitous in educational circles.760 But
by far the biggest and most pernicious push in the strategy to transform schools
into mini corporations, has been to transform the teaching profession itself.
The corporatisation of Teacher Work
Teacher work has changed dramatically over the past few decades. More and
more, as Chomsky asserts, teachers are being co-opted as “cultural middle
managers” to support “unquestioned truths” in order to “legitimate the
institutional role schools play in a system of control and coercion”.761
Increasingly, teachers are being forced to fit the corporate model where
deregulation, competitiveness and privatisation have become the normative
way of proceeding.762 While being persistently exposed to the language of
‘innovation’, ‘reform’ and ‘restructuring’ teachers are encouraged to compete
with each other for resources and promotions, and are considered worthy and
successful only if they display a capacity to be compliant, dependable, and
perform according to market expectations.763 Robertson argues that teachers are
now being required “to work as direct agents of corporate capital or as site
managers of business ventures”. She observes that teachers’ work in Australia,
“is increasingly shaped by entrepreneurialism, flexibility, managerialism and
competitivism”.764
Some educational leaders go as far as to argue that teachers should no longer

expect to be employed in a job long term since the role of teachers is fast
760 Listening to and interpreting the language that is being used is vital for the critical
contemplative educator since, as Postman observed, “words are not only tools to think
with but, for all practical purposes, the content of our thoughts”. Postman, Building a
Bridge, 164.
761 Donaldo Macedo quoting Chomsky in the Introduction to Chomsky, Miseducation, 2.
762 Robertson, A Class Act, 165.
763 Ibid., 147–62.
764 Ibid., 172, 44–45, 82.

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becoming superfluous – their traditional role having been superseded by

computers and other technologies.765 One can also detect a higher level of
control, directivity as well as a predilection for measurement and formal
calculation of teacher work which market-based principles demand.766 Teachers
are expected “to walk unreflectively through a labyrinth of procedures and
techniques”.767 Such commodification and control of teacher labour has the
effect of limiting the way teachers work and what they can teach; the notion of
‘teacher as intellectual’ that Giroux envisioned in the nineteen-eighties appears
as though it belongs to a bygone age.768 Traditionally, there existed a social
contract between the teacher and the state which was symbolised in the notion
of goodwill and trust. Under market-based values, goodwill and trust is
undermined by greater supervision and control as well as increased
competition among schools and between teachers.769
Catholic Context
This aspect of corporatist managerialism may represent one of the most

formidable threats to the integrity of the Catholic school. An ideology is a set of
765 Brian Caldwell envisions a system that will have one-third fewer professionally
trained teachers who will supervise and ‘manage’ the work of other paraprofessionals
and trainee teachers and teach larger classes using computers as the primary tool.
Brian Caldwell, Self-Managing Schools and Improved Learning Outcomes (Canberra: Dept.
of Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs, 1998), Brian Caldwell, John
Roskam, and Menzies Research Centre, Australia's Education Choices: A Report to the
Menzies Research Centre (Barton, A.C.T.: Menzies Research Centre, 2002).
766 Robertson supports her assertions concerning the corporatisation of teachers work
using extensive quantitative and qualitative research. See Robertson, A Class Act, 156-
62.
768 See Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals.
769 For an extended reflection in this point see Robertson, A Class Act, 161.

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ideas translated into a set of values,770 and it is the question of values and the
effect those values have on the existential state of the teacher and student is
where the greatest conflict occurs between this corporate vision and a
contemplative Catholic one. The values that are emphasised in this drive to
corporatise schools are individualism, competitivism, self-interest and
entrepreneurialism among both students and teachers.771 The values of
contemplative Catholicism are a polar opposite: communion, self-
transcendence, a commitment to the common good and solidarity among
teachers and students.
Traditionally teacher work has been viewed as a work of service to the

community. In Catholic terms it was perceived to be a vocation; an invitation
from God to do God’s work in the world.772 Thus, in Catholic circles it has
tended to be viewed as a profession where people worked in common, for the
common good. There is some evidence to suggest that this may now be
changing in Catholic schools773 with teacher self-perception being recast as
770 Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1999), 48.
771 Penny describes well the conditions created by such a philosophy. It creates, she
says an “atmosphere more like class bullying than class war, with everyone disdaining
their immediate inferiors and aspiring to become their superiors”. Laura Penny, Your
Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit (Melbourne: Scribe, 2005), 75.
772 For an elaboration on this perspective on the Catholic teacher see Groome, Educating
for Life, 440–44, Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a
Teacher's Life, 1st ed. (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 9–33, Moore, Teaching
from the Heart, 197–224, James Michael Lee, Forging a Better Religious Education in the
Third Millennium (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 2000), 243–67, Jeff
Astley, Leslie J. Francis, and Colin Crowder, Theological Perspectives on Christian
Formation : A Reader on Theology and Christian Education (Leominster: Gracewing, 1996),
106–18.
773 It is to be noted that Robertson included Catholic schools in her Australian research.
She does not appear to record any discernible difference between state schools and
Catholic schools. Her observations cohere closely with those of Bonner and Caro. See

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individualistic, entrepreneurial and competitive.774 Where traditionally the

moral dimension of Catholic teachers’ work was defined in theological terms as
‘doing well by doing good’, today, it appears to be defined in corporate terms
as ‘doing good by doing well’.775 The ‘rewards’ for teaching are also becoming
differentiated, further undermining the sense of the common good; where once,
all teachers benefited together, now they often benefit at each other’s expense.776
With these trends, power and prestige has gradually been relocated to the
individual and not the collective. The irony is, however, that the benefits to the
individual are likely to be eroded by the diminution of the power of the
collective.777 The traditional Catholic emphasis on ‘the common good’ is
perhaps the best protection of individual good.
The consequences of the abandonment of the common good would be

catastrophic for the animating spirit of the Catholic school. Like cancer
secondaries, competitivism and the selfish pursuit of greater individual
remuneration, power and status could easily infect the whole school with a
negative atmosphere and ethos that would result in the inhibition of mutuality,
relationality and a sense of community.
Given this context, it can be suggested that it is particularly important that the
leadership group in the Catholic schools be aware of the ethical implications of
contemporary global trends. A leader can only lead with the consciousness that
they possess; if they have a corporatised consciousness, then this will be the
consciousness they will lead with. If Catholic schools are to be empowered to
Chris Bonner and Jane Caro, The Stupid Country: How Australia Is Dismantling Its Public
Education System (Sydney, N.S.W.: University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2007),
Chris Bonner, “As Full as a Catholic School”, New Matilda 15 August (2007),
http://www.newmatilda.com (Accessed 16 August 2007).
774 See Robertson, A Class Act, 193–94.
775 Ibid., 193.
776 Ibid., 193–94.
777 For a detailed, research-based analysis of this development see Ibid., 194.

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carry out their mission, it is imperative that the horizons of those in leadership
positions be shaped by a discernment process that attempts to seek the
guidance of the Spirit, mediated through biblical and theological sources, in
order to lead the school in the way that God wills, and not simply follow
destructive managerialist dictates simply because that is ‘the trend’ in national
educational policy, or popular ‘best’ practice. Critical contemplative educators
would urge the need for dialogue concerning the political, social, personal and
spiritual consequences of embracing such an ideological vision. If the dignity of
members of the school community were to be undermined by unwitting
adoption of corporate managerial practices, then the very essence of the
meaning of the Catholic school is compromised – whatever the good intentions.
The adage that “no inhuman act should be used as a shortcut to a better day”
seems apposite.778
Corporatism and Enchantment of Technology
As alluded to in Chapter Three, Merton saw technology as representing the

illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement. He believed that
the consequence of “senseless idolatry” of technology has brought about the
surrender of our freedom to technology.779
Since Merton was writing, technology has become ubiquitous via the personal
computer, the internet and mobile phone. In the intervening time critical
educators have taken up the task of analysing the use of technology,
particularly as it pertains to an educational context, and their analysis is
remarkably similar to that of Merton. Technology they argue, is being perceived
as a ‘saviour’, that the ‘inspired’ machine offers a panacea to all educational
778 Quoted in Michael W. Apple, Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a

Conservative Age, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 3.
779 Merton, Conjectures, 25, 72, 75, 222, 53.

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difficulties.780
Marc Prensky is probably the most influential contemporary representative

voice of those who advocate a complete transformation of our educational
systems through technological innovation. Prensky believes that schools are
made up of two kinds of people: Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.
Digital natives are the young who are tuned in to a whole new way of
communicating and learning; they have little patience with ‘old-fashioned’
ways of learning and demand a new style of learning using computers, video
games and the Internet. They have grown up on the “twitch speed” of video
games and MTV and therefore like to “parallel process and multi-task”; they
function best when networked and “prefer games to ‘serious’ work”. Digital
Immigrants are the teachers who fear this new technology and who speak an
‘outdated’ language by teaching slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, “far
too seriously”.781 Prensky’s essential argument in all his writing centres on the
conviction that young people have changed radically; that today’s students are
no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
Consequently, if digital natives are to be “engaged not enraged” schools will
have to “repackage” themselves so as to reorient themselves towards
“edutainment” where most learning takes place through computer technology
and simulated games.782
780 See Aronowitz and Giroux, Education under Siege, 15, Jonathan Kozol, Illiterate
America (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 157, Michael W. Apple and Hank Bromley,
Education, Technology, Power : Educational Computing as a Social Practice, Suny Series,
Frontiers in Education. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 133–56.
781 Marc Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”,
http://www.marcprensky.com (Accessed 6 March 2006).
782 ———, Digital Game-Based Learning, Paragon House ed. (St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon
House, 2007). For a comparable perspective on technology see also Mark Pesce, “Brace
for a Steep Re-Learning Curve”, The Age, 2 December 2007, David Loader, Amanda
McGraw, and Mary Mason, Jousting for the New Generation: Challenges to Contemporary

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Catholic Context
It is difficult to present irrefutable, quantifiable data to support the assertion

that the thinking represented by Prensky and other like-minded educators is
taking root in Catholic circles, but there is at least some anecdotal and
circumstantial evidence that appears to indicate that this thinking is becoming
normalised at least in some Catholic schools. Two examples serve to illustrate
this trend.
Firstly, at a major conference for Catholic school leaders in Melbourne entitled,

“Contemporary Learning Contemporary Questions”, no less than ten of the
nineteen presentations were focused on technology and e-learning.783 This
conference was organised for Catholic leaders in order to enhance the way in
which technology is used in Catholic schools. There is little doubt that the
development of skills in the use of technology by the Catholic school
community is vital, but it can also be argued that educationally, it is even more
vital that the Catholic community be skilled in examining and discussing the
philosophical and theological implications of the use of technology. Not a single
workshop contained any such emphasis. The tenor of the presentations was
that Australian Catholic schools need to speed up their embrace and use of
technology in the classroom. Absent was any sense that such an embrace had
social, political and spiritual implications.784
Schooling (Camberwell, Vic.: ACER Press, 2007).

783 Melbourne Catholic Education Office, “Learning & Teaching Conference:
Contemporary Learning, Contemporary Questions”, (Victorial University Convention
Centre, Flinders Street, Melbourne (26 &27 July), 2007 ).
784 While it could be argued that such a critical analysis was not the purpose of the
conference – its intent being rather to skill Catholic leaders – the fact that a critical
component was not built into the conception and planning of the two-day conference is
in itself instructive. The presenters of three workshops that this author attended,
appeared oblivious of the ethical and philosophical difficulties associated with the

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Secondly, one of the most prominent and well-known leaders in the Catholic
schools sector in Australia, Mr. Greg Whitby was the winner of the 2007 “Smart
100: Australia’s Best and Brightest” education award. The Bulletin described
Whitby’s role in Catholic education as one where he is “widely regarded as
leading the debate about the ‘re-framing’ of schooling”. In support of his vision
for a technology-based future for education, he continuously quotes Mark
Prensky as a significant source of inspiration. Prensky’s ideas are reproduced in
his writings without any evidence of critique or assessment through the lens of
Catholic anthropology or theology. When it comes to technology, a pragmatic,
utilitarian approach appears to be uncritically adopted.785
The argument cannot be against technology per se – technology is, after all, as
Guy Consolmagno points out, not only immensely useful but can be “magical”
and intellectually stimulating786 The problem lies rather with the elevated
status it occupies in the consciousness of contemporary educational leaders.
There are legitimate concerns with the way in which a technocratic vision for
education can easily be embraced and promoted without sufficient
interrogation or analysis. The style and tone of Prensky’s futuristic vision, for
example, appears excessively deterministic and seems to lack a critical
component. From a Catholic and critical perspective, there are a number of
difficulties with such an approach:
Firstly, the apparent absence of a critical component is in itself a cause for

concern. The idea that the future of education lies in developing ever better and
more ‘efficient’ technology can too easily be presented as a fait accompli,
accepted without discussion or dialogue. In such a context it appears as though
mechanistic rationality and technological advance are accepted as ultimate
values in themselves. As Apple points out, the more the new technology
perspectives they were enthusiastically promoting.

785 See Susskind, “Education”, 63.
786 Guy Consolmagno, “The Magic Is Real”, The Tablet, 24 May 2008, 44.

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transforms the classroom into its own image, the more a technical logic could
replace critical political and ethical understanding. The result of this could be
that the discourse of the classroom ends up focusing more on technique, and
less on the substance of what is being learned.787 A critical contemplative would
argue that all members of the community need to become active agents in
deciding how radically they want technology to change their way of learning
and their way of life.
Secondly, the advocates of technology in education rarely if ever speak of

tradition. The wisdom that can be gleaned from drawing on the past does not
appear to be factored in to their futuristic visualisations. Their ‘vision’ appears
to be excessively materialist and limited, not subject to alteration by human
intervention or agency. A Catholic context would require a faith-inspired
interpretation of the role of technology that is mediated by a hermeneutical
reading of Scripture and Traditional Catholic teaching. In a concrete sense, it
would put technology ‘in its place’ – as servant of a relational community – not
master of a bureaucratised and mechanised collection of individuals.
The third difficulty emerges out of careful consideration of the previous point.
The goals of the Catholic Tradition set out a contemplative vision for the
education of the human person, and those goals focus on the person, not just the
skills and technical know-how they acquire. A contemplative Catholic school
will ask important questions about the ways in which technology affects the
human development of its students. It will not content itself with merely
instrumental, utilitarian and logistical questions. If technology is, as Garreau
argues, “realigning” our concept of what it means to be human,788 then it is
incumbent on Catholic educators to ask ethical, moral and spiritual questions
about the meaning and appropriateness of that realignment. How, in the
787 Michael W. Apple and Hank Bromley, Education, Technology, Power: Educational
Computing as a Social Practice, Suny Series, Frontiers in Education. (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998), 135ff.
788 Joel Garreau, “Let Humanity Prevail”, The Age, 11 August 2005, 12.

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concrete being of the student, does all the ‘development’ and ‘progress’ fit with
the ‘new creation’ in Christ that Catholic schools are attempting to inaugurate?
Such questions are vital but are not generally raised.
The Catholic school: driven by contemplative theology not technocracy
One can identify some of the more pressing anomalies and contradictions that
need to be confronted by leaders on Catholic schools, by examining in greater
detail some specific claims that are made by the advocates of increased use of
technology in education.
Whitby makes the claim that “digital natives” are “hardwired differently” so
that they “can have a set of headphones on with music blaring, and carry on a
conversation and work on the laptop, doing an assignment, all at the same
time”.789 His solution is that teachers should adapt to this reality by adjusting
the way they teach to accommodate this new way of being. A critical
contemplative perspective requires an interpretation of such phenomena, not
instant adaptation. A critical contemplative could argue that young people
appropriate such frenetic impulses because they are to some degree
‘programmed’ by corporate interests – whose intention is to recast their identity
as “cyborg/consumer in a knowledge/information world”.790 Rather than
reinforce these impulses, the students might perhaps be invited into a dialogue
about the value of slowing down, and conversed with about the unhealthy
consequences of living life in such a compulsive manner.791 Such dialogues may
well lead the student to see that inner stillness and silence are just as necessary
to human wellbeing as activity and busyness.792 Through such pedagogy they
789 Whitby quoted in Susskind, “Education”. For a similar perspective see Prensky,
“Digital Natives”.
790 Robertson, A Class Act, 165.
791 Here again Merton’s wisdom on the art of living simply and being content with less
seems apposite and instructive. See in particular Merton, No Man Is an Island.
792 The contrast between the a contemplative education and a technocratic education

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might come to reflect on the “why” of their actions thereby getting them to
connect their behaviour with the larger socio-economic and cultural forces at
work in shaping their habits.
Another concern for the Catholic school in regard to technology is the way in
which technology is being used as a lever to attract more students and in so
doing, gain competitive advantage over other poorly funded State schools.
Catholic schools are largely fee-paying schools and are increasingly perceived
by the middle and upper-classes as a means of accumulating cultural capital
and advantage for their children.793 Due to government funding policies
Catholic schools find themselves in the position of being far more financially
and physically resourced than most schools in the state sector. In such a context
it is tempting for Catholic leaders to use these advantages to acquire ‘high tech’
computing so that it can be used to display both an eagerness to enter the world
can be highlighted by comparing the humanising, contemplative vision of Merton

(Chapter Three) and Groome (Chapter Four) with that of Prensky and Whitby. Such
contrast is also highlighted by referring to contemporary contemplative writers. See for
example William Johnston, Mystical Theology: The Science of Love (London: Fount, 1996),
———, Silent Music: The Science of Meditation (New York: Fordham University Press,
1997), ———, Arise My Love: Mysticism for a New Era (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books,
2000).
793 Through his studies of Catholic educational structures in Australia, Michael Furtado
has highlighted some of the contradictions that are now emerging for Catholic
education. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence, he argues that the Catholic
school system is now increasingly catering for a wealthier, upwardly mobile sector of
the population than it did in the past, and that many parents are sending their children
to Catholic schools, not ostensibly for an education in faith, but to give their children
greater educational and social advantage. See Michael Furtado, ‘Towards an Australian
Educational commons’, New Matilda, 20 October 2006, <www.newmatilda.com>.
Also Furtado interviewed in Stephen Crittenden, “The Religion Report”, (Sydney: ABC
Radio National, 15 August 2007). For comparable observations see Bonner, “As Full as
a Catholic School”.

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of ‘fast capitalism’ and demonstrate their superiority and desirability over other
schools.794 In a sense it is difficult to blame Catholic leaders for using resources
that have been awarded by government policy to the best advantage of their
students. However, it could be argued that they have a larger responsibility,
and that is to the entire community, not just its Catholic constituents. A
suggestion might be, in the interest of good citizenship, solidarity and the
common good, that Catholic schools might share some of their high-tech
resources with local under-resourced state schools.
Technology: A gift to be discerned
Most would acknowledge that as a tool for accessing knowledge and

maximising efficiency, technology is a great boon to humanity, and to
education in particular. When technology becomes the handmaiden to
corporate interests however, rather than being a source of liberation it can end
up being a source of enslavement. Catholic educators and administrators can
problematise technology by refusing to be duped and enchanted by a corporate
interests and instead have the presence of mind and ethical integrity to enter
into a discernment process regarding its use. It is possible for school leaders and
administrators to choose to develop an informed consciousness that helps them
to perceive that without careful discernment, far being a panacea for
educational ills, technology could easily end up controlling its creators795 and
contribute to social and cultural disintegration in the school, and wider
community. 796
Catholic contemplative education is, at its core, a person-oriented world view.

The key to a person-oriented world view, are real lived experiences such as the
794 See Bonner and Caro, Dismantling Public Education, 141-58, Robertson, A Class Act,
180.
795 For a credible explanation of how this is an immanent possibility see Ralston Saul,
Unconscious Civilization, 54.
796 Merton, Conjectures, 76, 222.

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capacity to build relationships with others and fashioning community through

the establishment of bonds of compassion, mutuality and dialogue. Technology,
used appropriately, can facilitate this development, however, without careful
discernment it can have the opposite effect. While having the appearance of
establishing deeper communication with others, it can easily serve to distance
students from each other and desensitise them from the real experience of
intimate human relationships. There are many who would argue that new
modes of communication such as email, MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook are
providing new and more efficient means of human interaction. But those who
adopt such a view may be confusing simulations with reality. Transformative
communication requires the nuance and presence of the human voice, human
touch, face-to-face encounters and negotiations which thrash out differing
points of view and establish lasting bonds of connectedness.
Critical contemplative educators will be mindful that the embrace of the

technological world view may be coming at the expense of a more
contemplative and enduring person-oriented world view, thereby leading
ultimately to the devaluing of the human person through regression into “a
climate of moral infancy”.797 Perhaps what is actually needed in Catholic and
state schools is “a new movement for moral reawakening”798 rather than more
purchase of high-tech equipment.
The Corporate Curriculum Versus The Critical

Contemplative Curriculum
At various points in the previous chapters the increasing trend to adapt the
school curriculum to reflect and respond favourably to corporate imperatives
and values was alluded to and discussed – particularly by Freire and Giroux.
797 Ibid., 77.


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The discussion here will confine itself to the ways in which even the critique
and language of critical educators can be coopted by conventional curriculum
models in such a way that the critical intent of the critical educators is
domesticated and suppressed. The claim will be made in other words that
genuine critical thinking is often supplanted by a pretence of critical thinking.
Before proceeding however, it needs to be acknowledged that there are a

number of other important areas where there appears to be a convenient
convergence between corporatism and the school curriculum; issues, for
example, such as the connection between current push for ‘school
improvement’799 and corporatist ideology; or, the relationship between
corporatist ideology and the ubiquity of instrumental and utilitarian language
that is currently used to speak about curriculum and teaching;800 or, the ways in
799 This impulse has many positive aspects to it since it is concerned with improving
the quality of teaching and learning. However, this ‘improvement’ is seen largely in
mechanistic and technical terms, not in terms of the deep learning that the
contemplative Catholic tradition represents. The ‘school improvement’ movement is
represented by a large number of prominent contemporary educators. See for example
David Hopkins, Every School a Great School: Realizing the Potential of System Leadership
(Maidenhead; New York: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press, 2007), Caldwell, Self-
Managing Schools, Hedley Beare, Brian Caldwell, and Ross H. Millikan, Creating an
Excellent School: Some New Management Techniques, Educational Management Series.
(London: Routledge, 1989).
800 The ways in which those who are imbued with corporatist thinking use language to
obfuscate, desensitise and anaesthetise has already been highlighted. Both Furedi and
Watson record the ways in which school curriculum tends to be spoken of as a
technical matter with knowledge being valued only for its instrumental and utilitarian
applications. Such a vocational, utilitarian orientation with its attendant emphasis on
technology typifies the corporatisation of much of the contemporary discourse
concerning curriculum. For further discussion see Frank Furedi, Where Have All the
Intellectuals Gone? (London: Continuum, 2004), 2, Watson, Death Sentence, Macedo,
Literacies of Power. Some of these developments have positive qualities, however, again

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aspects of the ‘culture wars’ reflect what is essentially an argument about the
impact of corporatist thinking on shape and content of the school curriculum.801
it is a matter of emphasis; the focus is excessively oriented towards technical analysis

and solutions – the ‘how’ of learning rather than on the ‘why’ of the content of what is
learnt in school. See for example, John Bransford, How People Learn: Brain, Mind,
Experience, and School, Expanded ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press,
2000), Robert J. Marzano, The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for
Effective Instruction (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development, 2007), Robert J. Marzano and Debra Pickering, Dimensions of Learning:
Teacher's Manual, 2nd ed. (Heatherton, Vic.: Hawker Brown Education, 2006).
801 ‘The culture wars’ denotes an ideological battle that is being waged in Western
society between the political and cultural Left and political and cultural Right. In a
curriculum context, those on the Right tend to see the curriculum as having been
colonised by the interests of leftist deconstructionists who they see as having robbed
education of its search for ultimate truth and transcendence. As an antidote to this
‘corruption’ of the aims of education, they seek a return to strict discipline-based
learning where the ‘traditional’ curriculum is universally applied. In the last twenty
years this perspective has been argued by a large number of scholars. See for example,
E. D. Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett, and James S. Trefil, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), Allan David Bloom and Saul Bellow, The Closing of
the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls
of Today's Students (London: Penguin, 1987), Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The
Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994). For an Australian context
see, Kevin Donnelly, Why Our Schools Are Failing (Potts Point, N.S.W.: Duffy &
Snellgrove, 2004), ———, Dumbing Down: Outcomes-Based and Politically Correct: The
Impact of the Culture Wars on Our Schools (South Yarra, Vic.: Hardie Grant Books, 2007).
The Left, on the other hand, tend to argue that the curriculum is tailored to facilitate
the cultural reproduction of the powerful elites and consequently should be
democratised to become more inclusive of the diversity of class, gender. See for
example, Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, Apple,
Kenway, and Singh, Globalizing Education, Giroux, Schooling and the Struggle For an
Australian context see, Richard Teese and John Polesel, Undemocratic Schooling: Equity
and Quality in Mass Secondary Education in Australia (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne

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All of these areas represent important and legitimate areas of concern with
regard to the relationship between corporatism and the curriculum. However, it
is not possible to explore all these complex aspects within the confines of this
thesis.802 ‘Critical thinking’ was chosen as it exposes the ways in which even
positive ideals and visions can be manipulated by corporate interests to become
an activity that is in fact quite docile and compliant and anything but critical.
‘Critical thinking’ is very appealing slogan as it taps into a universal aspiration

for the act of teaching and learning. Most educators, as well as members of the
public, would agree that the capacity to think critically should be a core element
of all curricular activities. Yet, this high ideal can be subverted by appropriating
the language of the ideal while suppressing the means by which the ideal can
be realised. For this reason, careful discernment is required to interpret the real
meaning of commonly accepted terminology. A cautious examination of the
way the concept of ‘critical thinking’ is being interpreted in contemporary
schooling, reveals the strict limits that are, in practice, placed on the critical
dimension of thought.
A Corporatised Curriculum: A Pedagogy of Non-Questioning
Everything hinges on how the term ‘critical thinking’ is defined and

interpreted. The most common contemporary interpretation is to reduce critical
thinking to a “disembodied, autonomous, prejudice-free pure subjectivity”
which, by means of an idealised scientific method, “approaches a problem in an
University Publishing, 2003), Bonner and Caro, Dismantling Public Education, Terry
Lovat and David L. Smith, Curriculum: Action on Reflection, 4th ed. (Tuggerah, N.S.W.:
Social Science Press, 2003).
802 For a comprehensive overview and analysis of the issues which impact on the
design and shape of the curriculum in an Australian Catholic educational context see
Terry Lovat and David L. Smith, Curriculum: Action on Reflection, 4th ed. (Tuggerah,
N.S.W.: Social Science Press, 2003).

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absolutely disconnected and objective way”.803 What is manifestly absent from

such a perception of critical thinking is a focus on the real needs and being of the
individual student. As Pullman points out, when learning becomes limited to
such activities as ‘selecting’, ‘retrieving’, ‘deducing’, ‘inferring’ and ‘analysing’,
without reference to the person who is supposed to be at the heart of the
educational process, students are “turned into little twitching cells of response,
like the nerve in the leg of Galvani’s famous frog”.804 While students are said to
be thinking critically they really are not. They are still expected to come up with
‘official’ answers that cohere with what Chomsky calls “official truths”,805 and
are not afforded the independence and freedom that true critical thought
requires. This is a form of ‘critical thinking’ that is really being used for cultural
reproduction, so those who advocate it tend to use institutional mechanisms to
undermine independent thought a prerequisite for what Chomsky terms the
Orwellian “manufacture of consent” and what Macedo calls the “engineering of
consent”.806
It is unsurprising, given this context, that the conventional approach to critical

thinking in the school curriculum often reduces critical thinking to the practice
and mastery of methodologies. Instead of breaking open problems so that they
can be freely explored, the rules of engagement are often constructed so as to
avoid asking difficult and uncomfortable questions about the presumptions and
taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin phenomena; this is particularly
the case where justice issues such as class, race and equality of opportunity are
803 See Gallagher, Hermeneutics and Education, 186.

804 Philip Pullman, “Isis Lecture”, http://www.philip-pullman.com (Accessed 15
August 2005).
806 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), 1–30, Macedo, Literacies
of Power, 14.

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concerned.807 In fact, when educators talk about developing critical thinking

skill, they almost never include question-asking as one of them.808 The one
question that many advocates of critical thinking will not ask is, “whose
curriculum is this anyway?”809 Such a basic (and childlike) question is far too
confronting. The facilitation and nurture of a dialogical, questioning
atmosphere may lead to an unveiling of the more disturbing and destructive
agendas behind what counts as knowledge. One is allowed to think critically as
long as one doesn’t critically question the presuppositions behind the current
definition of critical thinking.810 What is often inculcated then, is a form of
uncritical critical thinking!811 Given that students are formed in this manner
807 A survey of prominent contemporary educators reveals a tendency to avoid

discussion of difficult social and political questions and the curriculum. ‘Critical
thinking’ does not deal with such concerns. See for example, Beare, Caldwell, and
Millikan, Creating an Excellent School, Robert J. Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane E.
Pollock, Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student
Achievement (Moorabbin, Vic.: Hawker Brownlow Education, 2004), Caldwell, Self-
Managing Schools, Hopkins, Every School a Great School, Howard Gardner, The
Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach (New York: Basic
Books, 1991), ———, Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and
Other Peoples Minds (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
808 Postman observes that this is one of the contradictory features of ‘critical thinking’
movement. Critical thinking cannot occur if question-asking is not a core element of
the process. Postman, Building a Bridge, 161.
809 See Apple, Official Knowledge, 113–36.
810 Curtis White calls this contemporary condition ‘the Middle Mind’. See Curtis White,
The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves (Camberwell, Melbourne:
Penguin, 2004), 25–60.
811 The view that genuine questioning is discouraged in schools is not only argued by
progressive critical educators such as Maxine Greene, Michael Apple, Peter McLaren,
Stanley Aronowitz, but by those who are considered ‘moderate’ and ‘conservative’
scholars as well. Theodore Sizer carried out major studies of public schools in the USA;
he makes the claim that “probing students thinking” is not a high priority in most

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through the school curriculum, it is not surprising that Merton would declare
that the contemporary person is incapable of thinking for themselves.812
The art of question-asking, as has been outlined in previous chapters, is the

foundation of the philosophy and approach of critical educators. For Freire,
“asking questions is the essence of the act of knowing”.813 In a contemporary
context this ‘pedagogy of the question’ would seek to develop in
administrators, teachers and students a consciousness that the very content of
what is taught is, in reality, prejudiced; it is not neutral or benign – it is all
contestable terrain. Some of the critical questions that Freire and Giroux
suggested needed to be posed when formulating curriculum were presented
and explored in Chapters Two to Four. Within the context of this pedagogical
approach it can now be suggested that the most effective means of countering
the incursion of corporatist values and content into the curriculum would be to
open up a dialogue about the implicit or ‘hidden’ messages that are being
communicated through the curriculum.814
American high schools, “strict orderly thinking” is what most schools value and all too
often students in the schools he visited, were “docile, compliant, and without
initiative”. See Theodore R. Sizer, Horaces's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American
High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 82, 105, 03, 55. Sizer’s
observations are supported by other educational researchers: see, Postman, Building a
Bridge, 160. Joseph Onosko and Fred Newmann “Creating more thoughtful learning
environments” in John N. Mangieri and Cathy C. Block, Creating Powerful Thinking in
Teachers and Students (Forth Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 45–46.
814 Of vital importance in this process is the bringing to consciousness of what Elliot
Eisner calls the “Null Curriculum”; that is, the process of becoming aware of those
areas that need interrogation, but rarely get acknowledged. He focuses on the
questions which are not asked by the curriculum and looks for the content which is not
included. See Elliot W Eisner, The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation

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The power of the pedagogy of the question lies in its capacity to probe and
unveil both the positive and negative aspects of our formation as persons. The
richness and life-giving qualities can be articulated and celebrated, but so also is
bias, blindness and ignorance exposed. At the base of critical questioning lies a
fundamental ‘suspicion’ of the world on the part of the individual as well as a
certain suspicion of one’s own personal opinions, perspectives, proclivities and
prejudices. This suspicion is of the healthy type, as it is ultimately constructive
not destructive, though it may be painful and confronting.815 If probing and
speculation is practiced, it is with a view to arriving at a more whole, unified
and compassionate understanding of the world and one’s place in it.
Catholic Context
A critical contemplative Catholic curriculum will define critical thinking along

the lines developed by critical educators, however, the contemplative aspect
adds something to the critical: the contemplative is ostensibly focused on the
human being as a person – a sacred being who exists in a wider social, political
and historical context and network of relationships and consequently is not to
be atomised or manipulated for an ideological purpose. This personalist
approach of the contemplative measures all things by their contribution to the
well-being of persons.816 The proposition is that ‘critical thinking’ in a critical
contemplative context should mean exactly what the words signify, and should
not become a euphemism. The student will be encouraged and empowered to
ask difficult and confronting questions – questions even about the legitimacy
of School Programs (New York: Macmillan, 1979), 74–92.

815 As Postman points out, questioning can be very confronting and is particularly
demanding on the skills and talents of the teacher, which is why many teachers want
students “to be answer-givers, not question-askers”, and to be “believers, not sceptics”.
Postman, Building a Bridge, 161–62, Neil Postman and C. Weingartner, Teaching as a
Subversive Activity (Melbourne: Penguin, 1971), 65–67.
816 For a succinct description of a personalist approach, see Thomas Massaro, Living
Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action (Oxford: Sheed & Ward, 2000), 207.

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and purpose of what they are being taught in school. The contemplative critical
educator would respect their students’ independent thought and defend their
right to challenge the social, political, familial and educational institutions that
are shaping and forming their consciousness. It is only in a context of openness
and dialogue that the circumscribed boundaries of both the student and
teacher’s understanding of education and learning can be questioned,
deconstructed and reformed so that new horizons and new possibilities can be
imagined and begin to emerge.817
A dialogue about curriculum itself would also be part of a contemplative

critical curriculum, where the values underpinning what is learned (and not
learned) are scrutinised and unveiled.818 A critical contemplative would ask
why it is that little emphasis is placed on the notion of learning for its own sake,
and why instead utilitarian learning is promoted. They might ask why the
curriculum seems more concerned with questions of the how of things than it is
with ultimate questions of the why of things.819
If a contemplative vision of education is to be implemented through the
817 The capacity to see things as they might be and to envision alternative possibilities is
not only central to Giroux’s philosophy but is also an essential focus in Maxine
Greene’s educational vision. See Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination: Essays on
Education, the Arts, and Social Change, The Jossey-Bass Education Series. (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995).
818 Maria Harris suggests a repertoire of questions that they regularly ask that have the
effect of uncovering the values that underpin what is being studied. See Maria. Harris,
Teaching and Religious Imagination: An Essay in the Theology of Teaching (San Fransisco:
Harper Collins, 1987), 175.
819 Rolheiser argues that in a contemporary context things are learned not for their own
sake but in order that the knowledge gained can be used to achieve something. See Ron
Rolheiser, “A Shrinking Horizon: The Deeper Reasons Underlying Our Struggles to
Believe in God in Western Culture”, www.ronrolheiser.com (Accessed 20 February
2008).

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curriculum, all involved in planning and implementation would need to

become attentive and attuned to the ways in which corporatist ideology skews
and biases the perspectives from which we see, thereby narrowing and skewing
the options that might be taken as well as the alternatives that might be chosen.
But herein lies a conundrum: before one can identify gaps, prejudices and
biases, one has to approach the problem with a contemplative disposition.
However, the very problem with corporatism, is that it inculcates a
deterministic consciousness which suppresses openness, dialogue and
questioning – the very attributes that are needed to unveil and name corporatist
ideology.
Naming corporatism is not something that comes naturally in a context where

there is a concerted and pervasive effort to hide its presence and impact. In a
world where the culture, iconography and ideology of the corporation is
inescapable,820 uncovering the truth is a task that requires a good deal of
determined effort, rigour and know-how. It is such an omnipotent, all-
pervasive force that its perception universe appears natural, common sense and
efficacious. Again this is where critical educators and commentators can be of
assistance to Catholic educators.
Having looked briefly at the ways in which corporatism has affected three
aspects of the contemporary school, and having argued that the pedagogy of
the question is pivotal to a critical contemplative curriculum, it is now
appropriate to look closely at what ought to be the subject of that questioning.
A critical contemplative education is founded on the conviction that if students
who attend Catholic schools are to develop holistically, in the way that the
goals of Catholic suggest, it is imperative that they be empowered to
understand, interpret and counteract the corporate interests that are
endeavouring to shape their consciousness.
820 See Bakan, The Corporation, 5.

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Discerning the Forces that Force Complicity and

Conformity: An Urgent Task
Sociologists and anthropologists have demonstrated that all interpretation of

reality is mediated through each person’s particular consciousness – in a very
real sense, context conditions consciousness.821 This interpretation or ‘reading’ of
consciousness can be achieved through a hermeneutical process. This process,
as Gadamer argued, involves coming to terms with the ‘foremeanings’ we bring
to the world. 822 Since corporations now represent the most powerful entities on
the planet,823 the dominant foremeanings of perception are shaped by their
ethic. In such a context, Freire’s conscientisation method seems not only
relevant, but absolutely imperative and urgent.
Such power allows corporate interest to disseminate their ideology, through the
world’s media, virtually without control and consequently manipulating the
public’s thought and perception.824 If young minds are to free themselves from
821 For a sociological exploration of the ways in which the individual internalises a
particular perception of reality see Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social
Construction of Reality (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1967). In particular Sections 2&3,
“Society as Objective Reality” and “Society as Subjective Reality.” 63–201. See also
“Becoming a Member of Society – Socialisation” in Peter Berger and Brigitte Berger,
Sociology: A Biographical Approach (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1977), 56–80. Also Basil
Bernstein, Class, Codes, and Control, Vol 3 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
822 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 268ff.
823 A large number of scholars and commentators point out that corporate interests
now control the world’s media. The list of those who have written and are writing on
the potential of the mass media to manipulate public opinion and taste is very long.
Among the more well known and influential in recent times are: Noam Chomsky, John
Pilger, Naomi Klein, Henry Giroux, Laura Penny, George Monbiot, Robert McChesney,
Greg Palast and Joel Bakan.
824 Gore Vidal describes the corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the
wonders of the Western world. “No First World country”, he argues, “has ever

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such powerful influences then there can be no more urgent task than to come to
understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination.825 It is particularly
urgent in a Catholic context if the beliefs, values, attitudes and way of life being
canvassed by these propagandising mediums are in conflict with a
contemplative Catholic set of beliefs, values, attitudes and way of being.
Unveiling propaganda and coercion: An essential task of

the Curriculum
Again, the analysis of critical educators and commentators will be used to

unveil the methods and means that corporate entities use to propagandise and
manipulate public consciousness. Each observation will be followed by a brief
reflection on the particular ways in which a Catholic critical contemplative
curriculum might be shaped in order to respond to their findings and
observations.
From the outset it is to be acknowledged that, as was the case with technology,
there is a certain paradox about the mass media. On the one hand it acts as a
disseminator of propaganda for corporate interests, on the other the media is a
critical line of defence against the dissemination of propaganda. The media
itself can and is being used as a weapon in the resistance against the
indoctrinating impulses of the media. In a moral sense then, the media can be
used for good or evil: at its worst it is used an instrument of moral corruption;
at its best, it can be a means of augmenting human understanding and freedom,
it can truly be ‘a window to the world’– even, perhaps, a window to the soul.
The concern of critical educators is with the way the world media is being
increasingly manipulated by corporate interests in the interest of corporatism.
managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.”
Phillip Adams, “Gore Vidal”, in Late Night Live (Sydney: ABC Radio National, 10
October, 2007).
825 Chomsky and Herman, Manufacturing Consent, 1.

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Few would argue that we are now living in the age of what McChesney calls
“corporate concentration, conglomeration and hypercommercialism”.826 Given
this context the concern of critical educators is to cultivate an interpretive
language that will give students power to ‘read the world’ – and perhaps to
some extent, ‘resist that world’ as well.
Critical educators point to three important features of contemporary media that

have a direct bearing on school curriculum: 1) that production and
dissemination of propaganda is now the largest industry in the world; 2) that an
understanding the how media functions is essential to a contemporary
conscientisation; and 3) that it is essential to engage in dialogue regarding the
potential detrimental effects of over-exposure to poor quality media.
1. Propaganda: ‘the largest industry in the world’?.827
If propaganda is, as many media commentators argue, the largest industry in

the world, then this presents a major concern for critical educators. Of even
greater concern perhaps, is the reality that control of this profoundly influential
826 Robert Waterman McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in
Dubious Times, The History of Communication. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1999), 15.
827 In 1995, according to Postman, American children were watching 5,000 hours of
television before entering the first grade, 19,000 hours by high school’s end, and by age
twenty would have seen 600,000 television commercials Postman, Building a Bridge, 49.
Other, more recent research backs his claim. Harvard Medical school expert Dr. Susan
Linn says, “the average American child sees 30,000 commercials a year on television
alone”. Furthermore, she argues that advertising has increased in subtlety and
cleverness. Linn interviewed in Bakan, The Corporation, 123. The statistics are
comparable for Australian children. A 1996 Australian Broadcasting Authority study
of almost 1,000 parents showed that children between eight and seventeen spent three
hours and 10 minutes a day on some form of electronic entertainment. Most of this
time was spent watching commercial television. See Paul Chamberlin, “What Looks
after Kids for 125 Minutes a Day?”, The Age, 1996, 1.

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industry is now becoming concentrated in fewer hands. The centralisation and

concentration of world media into six large super-companies means that the
fear for the potential of corporate interests to undermine basic freedoms
through a process of indoctrination and propagandisation is very real.828
Bagdikian makes the well-substantiated claim that these six companies – far
from openly competing with each other – actually operate as a cartel and
engage in mutual promotion. “It is not necessary”, he observes, “for a single
corporation to own everything in order to have a monopoly of power”.829
McChesney argues that the media in the USA has become an anti-democratic
force since the industry is dominated by the six large vertically integrated
corporations. He presents solid evidence to show that many media corporation
board members sit on the boards of the biggest banks and also sit on other
Fortune 500 companies’ boards.830
These inter-married super-companies plan to offer every person a kind of

complete “media bubble” – an all-in-one service that anticipates personal
preferences and gives to everyone what they want, when they want it, or, at
least, what they think they want.831 The intent, as Rupert Murdoch, the owner
of one of the big six candidly states, is to “touch consumers’ lives throughout
828 Big six of these megacompanies being AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, News
Corporation, Sony, Vivendi Universal, Viacom, and Disney. See Bagdikian, The New
Media, 3, 27, Penny, Your Call Is Important, 221. For an extensive analysis of media
ownership as well as the strategies employed by these six companies to manipulate
public opinion and taste, see Bagdikian, The New Media, 27–54, PBS Frontline,
“Merchants of Cool”, http://www.pbs.org (Accessed 11 November 2007),
McChesney, Rich Media, 1–16, Robert Waterman McChesney, The Problem of the Media:
U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 2004), 18–25.
829 Bagdikian, The New Media, 4, 8.
830 Robert Waterman McChesney, The Problem of the Media, 18–21.
831Andrew Marr, “Big Brother Is Here”, The Age 2000, p.11

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the day, in every phase of their lives”. 832 He wants to “reach people from the
moment they wake up until they fall asleep”.833 It is not difficult to understand
such an aim from a business perspective, but from an educational perspective
the potential of such power to stifle free thought and critical thinking is glaring.
What Murdoch, perhaps inadvertently revealed in stating this aim, was his
intention to gain command and control of the consciousness of everyone who
‘consumes’ his product – his ‘product’ being propaganda. Merton described
propaganda as “an interior possession of the individual by a social power,
which corresponds to [his/her] surrender of self-possession”. It is a definition
which seems particularly apt as an insightful explication of Murdoch’s stated
aims. The primary intent of all six super-companies is to achieve an interior
possession of everyone who is exposed to their advertising and PR. This interior
possession is really focused on what was in traditional Catholic terms called the
soul. 834
For critical scholars, it seems vital that educators would empower students to
decode and interpret what is being done to them by these large media
conglomerates. The task is becoming increasingly difficult since their methods
are becoming more subtle and sophisticated with each passing year.835
832 Mark Riley quoting Rupert Murdoch the owner of News Corp in Mark Riley, “What
Next?”, The Age 2000., Pp.1–2 Extra
833 Ibid.
834 Barber observes that corporate consumer culture promoted by the mass media,
represents what can be understood as a shift from the production of goods aimed at
the body, to the selling of services aimed at the soul. Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad Vs.
Mcworld, 1st Ballantine Books ed. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), p.58–59. Charles
Handy makes a similar observation. See Handy, The Hungry Spirit: Beyond Capitalism: A
Quest for Purpose in the Modern World, p.39. In stark terms, this bid for interior
possession represents an attempt to colonise the very dwelling place of God.
835 For a detailed analysis of these methods see Mark Crispin Miller, Boxed In: The
Culture of Television (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 2–20.

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Thousands of media outlets carry duplicative content,836 and the advertising is

honed by highly paid consultant psychologists and enhanced by media
technology that nobody ever thought was possible in the past. It is also
ubiquitous; young people simply cannot escape it; “it finds them in every nook
and cranny of their life”.837 As Giroux argues, instead of providing the young
with vibrant public spheres, they are offered instead a commercialised culture
in which consumerism is the primary obligation of citizenship.838
Catholic Context
It is particularly important for contemplative Catholic educators to be attentive

to this reality since the interior possession they wish to cultivate is of a very
different quality and nature.839 As the goals of Catholic education revealed in
Chapter One, the particular quality of interior possession that Catholic schools
wish to cultivate is one where the individual is possessed by the liberating love
of God. The aims of the corporate entities are not compatible with the
contemplative. Corporate media interests, though often cloaked in the language
and imagery of ‘empowerment’ represent rather a desire to attract young
people towards a voluntary surrender of their power and agency. It is this
surrender of freedom and self-possession that constitutes the biggest conflict
with the aims of contemplative Catholic education. The unveiling of this
conflict could be seen to be essential to a critical contemplative curriculum.
836 Bagdikian, The New Media, 6.

837 Harvard Medical school researcher Dr. Susan Linn interviewed in Bakan, The
Corporation, 123. See also Bagdikian, The New Media, 230–56.
838 Giroux, The Abandoned Generation, xi. For a similar argument in an Australian
context see Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza: When Too Much Is Never
Enough (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2005), v–ix.

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2. To learn the art of Media critique
Critical educators argue that it is vital to gain a clear understanding of the

modus operandi of large media organisations so that students and teachers can
learn to make discriminating judgments about the sources of their information.
A high proportion of media content, many critical analysts argue (even news) is
in reality, simply Public Relations;840 such ‘information’ is not given to inform
but, in some cases, to misinform.841 Large corporations, major political parties,
and the state, have the resources to be able to pay for a mass manipulation of
public perceptions through hype, images, spin, brands and press releases. The
aim in doing so is always the same; to shape and ‘manage’ the public’s
perception of reality.842 The other face of the propaganda Janus is advertising.
Ads are, as Penny describes them, “the happy carnival face of the business
world”843, designed to manufacture wants and are premised entirely on
840 See “One-trick pony: the origins of the PR industry and it simplifications of
democratic debate” in Stuart Ewen and 314, “On-Trick Pony”, New Internationalist, July
1999, 16-17. Also Stuart Ewen, Pr: A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books,
1996), Penny, Your Call Is Important, Bakan, The Corporation.
841 Graeme Turner interviewed in The Media Report, ABC Radio National, 16 November
2000.
842 For an exploration of the way in which corporate money has been used in Australia
to influence the shape of opinion on matters of public concern see Robert Manne, “The
Opinion Business”, The Age, 1999, 15. For an analysis of the ways in which PR works at
the highest levels in business and government, and the implications for journalism and
the public’s right to know, see David Bowman, “Playing Monopoly”, ABC Radio
National 24 Hours, May 1998, 68–69, Kenneth Davidson, “Why Let Media Barons
Produce Barren Media?”, The Age, 28 October 1999, 19, Peter Ellingsen, “In Whose
Interest, Really, Is Self-Interest?”, The Age, 12 November 1999, 15.
843 Penny, Your Call Is Important, 24. To demonstrate the extent, ubiquity and escalation
of advertising Penny records that the amount spent on ads in the USA in 1991 was $128
billion and that this had ballooned to $247 billion in 2000.

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deception.844
Catholic Context
A critical contemplative curriculum is concerned with a search for the truth.

However, one of the negative consequences of the relative anonymity, or lack of
direct contact, involved in PR and advertising, is, as Penny observes, the
“lowering the truth stakes”.845 This in turn raises the tolerance level for lies and
deception. Within such a context the critical contemplative teacher needs to
enter into dialogue with students about the consequences and implications for
their freedom when they spend a lot of time connected to various means of
communication that thrive on “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.846 Such a
dialogue offers the opportunity to open up conversations about the ways in
which consumerist ethics objectifies, diminishes and dehumanises the
consumer.847
For the critical contemplative, the human being is not for sale and does not
acquire their value from the images and material objects they consume. As a
sacred being, each student, in order to experience the freedom of true
relationship and true identity, needs to be helped to understand how much of
their perception and their values are being manipulated and used for
commercial purposes and another possibility for meaning and identity needs to
be presented and promoted. Without such intentional discourse the Catholic
844 Bakan expands on the methods of deception used by advertisers. See Bakan, The
Corporation, 134.
845 Penny, Your Call Is Important, 21.
846 Ibid., 8.
847 For an exploration of the ways in which consumerist culture is impacting on the
Australian psyche see Clive Hamilton, “Happiness and the Inner Self”, Eureka Street, 14
June 2007 , Hamilton and Denniss, Affluenza. Hamilton argues that the Church can
play a vital role in combating consumerist ethics. See Clive Hamilton, “Churches
Could Hold Key to Salvation for the Left”, Eureka Street, 31 October 2006.

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school can easily find itself becoming a microcosm of the wider commercialised
world.
3. Becoming alert to de-sensitisation
Critical educators consistently point to the detrimental effects that over-

exposure of poor quality media can have on the psychological, spiritual and
cognitive wellbeing of the children and young adults. As a consequence of
being inundated by “entertainment, information, and infotainment and
advertainment”,848 there is some evidence to suggest that students’ attention
span and ability to appreciate complex thinking is diminishing. As the quantity
of television viewing increases, the quality for most viewers is diminishing.849
In much of the Western world, the growth of the commercial broadcasting
media has tended to marginalise the public sphere and erode the quality of
848 Penny, Your Call Is Important, 221.

849 This is a highly contested argument. Journalists Lumby and Fine argue that
television is in very good shape and is in fact a very positive influence on children.
Catharine Lumby and Duncan Fine, Why Television Is Good for Kids: Raising 21st Century
Children (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2006). However, there is an overwhelming body of
evidence to suggest that though television can be used to positive effect, the influence
on many, particularly those who are most vulnerable, can be negative. Dr. Patricia
Edgar, director of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, claims that all the
best evidence suggests that children are deeply influenced and shaped by advertising,
that they are exposed to more violent media produced now than ever before. She
observes that if you add to this, unemployment, isolation, drugs, guns and lack of
social success, and we have a very volatile mix. Patricia Edgar, “It's True: The Media
Sow Seeds of Violence”, The Age 1999, 13. For comparative observations and reflections
see Barbara Biggins, "Protecting the Young from a Diet of Violence”, The Age, 17
February 1997, 12, Paul Hoffman, “A Suburban Satan”, The Tablet, 21 August 1999,
1133-34, Bryan Appleyard, “Pulp Cinema”, The Tablet, 10 December 1994, 1573, Mary
Kenny, “The Trash Culture”, The Tablet, 5 November 1994, 1404–05.

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programming.850 Since much of the information young people encounter is

ephemeral and shorn of context, with stories rarely lasting longer than a few
sentences, their ability to concentrate through complex ideas (which requires
time and attention), is eroded; this has the effect of arresting development. In
the words of Penny, when media corporations “dumb the stories down for the
kiddies, they also make sure that they will never, ever grow up”.851 Giroux now
speaks of the “the disappearance of childhood” through power of the mass
media, and of the “Disneyfication” of consciousness through the all-pervasive
capacity for myth-making of these powerful meaning-producing corporations
that ‘entertain’ and ‘inform’ the public.852
Such narrowing of horizons is of major concern, however, probably the most

disturbing development critical commentators point to is the way in which
contemporary commercial media tends to leech out of the consumer the
capacity to genuinely empathise with others. Increasingly, it nurtures a
narcissistic, individualistic and self-centred value system which feeds on
vulnerabilities and insecurities of the young in particular; 853 in doing so they
make it more difficult for the young to acquire the mental, intellectual and
emotional infrastructure that the task of reaching maturity necessitates. An
essential part of the journey to maturity is the gradual development of the sense
that the needs and dignity of “the other” are equally legitimate and equally
important to one’s own sense of value and importance. It is very difficult for a
850 Edward Herman, “Privatising public space” in Daya Kishan Thussu, Electronic
Empires: Global Media and Local Resistance (London ; New York: Arnold, 1998), 130.
851 Penny, Your Call Is Important, 241, 42.
852 See Giroux, Stealing Innocence, ———, The Mouse That Roared, ———, The Abandoned
Generation.
853 It is important to emphasise this intentionality on the part of corporations. Chris
Hooper, a highly successful television ad director, reveals candidly that the aim of his
work is to create images that “encourage very sophomoric, irresponsible, hedonistic,
egotistical, narcissistic behaviour…”. Chris Hooper interviewed in Bakan, The
Corporation, 125–26.

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child who has undergone a long formation as a “me first” consumer to develop
a sense of the importance and significance of the “other” in shaping identity.854
Catholic Context
This is of major concern to the Catholic contemplative. It becomes very difficult

to communicate a sense of the value of Catholic social ethics such as truth-
telling, solidarity, compassion and other-centredness in such a context. Yet, this
is the task, the mission of the Catholic school in the contemporary world. On
top of naming and articulating these corporate processes and strategies, the
contemplative educator would attempt to engender a much healthier and
ultimately more authentically empowering sense of self. It is a sense of self
which draws on a very different narrative to create meaning and engender self-
understanding. The contemplative educator will attempt to nurture a sense of
self that is not narcissistic, solipsistic, self-referential or commodified, but
recognises that real self-worth emerges from the capacity to build webs of
relationships, particularly with those who inhabit the margins of our
community. The critical contemplative will also concern themselves with the
search for truth – they will nurture a sense of the value and importance of truth
telling.855 Teachers, in Macedo’s words, “should become real intellectuals who
854 “The ego grows outsized”, Penny observes, when it is “overfed on a steady diet of
nothing”. It is little wonder that we can be such selfish, short-sighted beings, she
argues, “considering the extent to which we are encouraged to think no further than
our image, our comfort, our next snack. We are forever being wooed by new needs,
and bombarded by freshly minted wants…” Penny, Your Call Is Important, 17.
855 According to Timothy Radcliffe, our society is afflicted with a crisis of truth telling –
in every facet of life including the media and within the Church. He argues for a new
“spirituality of truthfulness” to retrieve the practice of truth-telling which has always
been essential to the contemplative life. See Timothy Radcliffe, "The Crisis of Truth
Telling in Our Society," Westminster Abbey, www.westminster-abbey.org (Accessed
20 February 2008). For a comparable line of argument see also Onora O'Neill, A
Question of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Also Raimond Gaita,

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have the obligation to serve and tell the truth about things that are important,
things that matter”.856
This is the vocation of the contemplative school – a vocation of service to others

in the pursuit of truth, so that the dignity of all people is defended and
promoted.
Discerning and Designing a Curriculum that interrogates

media influence
It is being suggested that it is imperative that Catholic schools become more

alert to the threat that the commodified consciousness of the corporation –
mediated by the mass media – poses to their identity and credibility. Were this
consciousness to insinuate itself into the fabric of school culture, then the
implications for the interpretation, understanding and appropriation of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ could be disastrous.
It is difficult to nurture the growth and development of the soul in a context

where a new morality that legitimates the crudest form of selfishness, economic
self-interest and self-aggrandisement are the dominating drivers of communal,
social and political relations.857 Such a way of being poses a considerable threat
Breach of Trust: Truth, Morality and Politics, Quarterly Essay; 16, (Melbourne, Vic.: Black
Inc., 2004).
856 Donaldo Macedo in the Introduction to Chomsky, Miseducation, 12.
857 See Handy, The Hungry Spirit: Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern
World., p.80, Robertson, A Class Act, 162. Kelly expresses this idea in theological terms:
“there is no way”, he argues, “of hearing the biblical command to love God with one’s
whole heart and soul and mind and strength if the heart is numbed and the soul is in
hiding” Tony Kelly, “Reflections on Spirituality and the Church”, Australian Ejournal
of Theology,
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal/aejt_3/Kelly.htm (Accessed
28 February 2007).

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to the traditional ethic of respect, care, solidarity, trust, service and loyalty that
ought to be the true spirit of the Catholic school. Informed, intelligent analysis
and prayerful discernment are deemed essential in such a context.
If the media is to “become essential for evangelisation and catechesis”,858 then

its use needs to be driven by careful and judicious discernment, where its
positive and negative potentialities are carefully weighed and judged.859 The
task of the critical contemplative educator is help students become fully
cognisant of all the facts about the mass media, in particular its relationship
corporate power and corporate interests. If the liberation of the human person
is a central concern, as is the contention of this thesis, then a concerted effort to
understand and interpret the forms of manipulation and propaganda that
virtually every person is exposed to on a daily basis, would appear to be
constitutive of the education process. The task is not simply to learn about
media but to engage in a thorough study of the meaning of media propaganda:
the strategies it employs, the way it shapes consciousness, how it influences our
world view, our values, behaviour and faith. Through such a process of
unveiling, the critical contemplative educator transmits the tools of resistance
and empowerment to the student. Such a journey of self-discovery will
inevitably involve engaging with a hermeneutic of dislocation – a sense of
rupture when the “givens” of their reality are approached with a certain
“suspicion” or scepticism. 860

859 While the emphasis here is largely negative, since television is being examined as it
relates to the promotion of corporate interests, it is important to keep in mind that
television can, and is, being used to very positive ends. As previously indicated,
Lumby and Fine tender a very compelling, well-substantiated and sustained argument
lauding the positive qualities of contemporary television. Unfortunately however, they
pay scant attention to the role corporations or corporate values and agendas play in
determining the content of television. See Lumby and Fine, Why Tv Is Good for Kids
860 See Stephen Brookfield, Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore

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Contemplative Critical Catholic Education: Discerning a

way to “see rightly”
Learning to “see rightly” was pivotal to Merton’s contemplative vision for

education and it could serve as the primary thrust of a new missiology of
Catholic education. This is particularly urgent in a contemporary context that is
marked, as Chomsky argues, by a “refusal to see”.861
In a Catholic school context this right seeing needs to involve the intentional
development of a critical lens through which socio-cultural phenomena can be
mediated. There may be a need to convince educational administrators and
teachers of the value of critical pedagogy in a twenty-first-century context. In
Catholic leadership and teacher training courses there appears to be little
emphasis placed on questioning of the assumptions and prejudices which
underpin the widely accepted prevailing dogmas relating to educational theory
and curriculum delivery. The promotion of a conscientising methodology
appears to be confined to a relatively small group of secular critical theorists
who can easily be dismissed by the larger and more vocal majority of theorists
as being ‘out-of-touch’, ‘elitist’ or ‘old ideologues’ of the Left who have failed to
‘move on’ with the times and embrace contemporary ‘best practice’..862
It is important to emphasise that the critical pedagogy that is being advocated

here is not concerned with endorsing any ideology – whether it be the Left or
Alternate Ways of Thinking and Acting (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), 5–9. Also,
Joseph Onosko and Fred Newmann “Creating more thoughtful learning
environments” in Mangieri and Block, Creating Powerful Thinking in Teachers and
Students, 45–46.
861 Chomsky, Miseducation, 66ff.
862 Penny comments wryly that in recent times the term ‘elite’ has been redefined;
“Elite”, she observes, “used to mean somebody with lots of wealth and power … now
elite means somebody who reads books and indulges in hated nuance”. Penny, Your
Call Is Important, 248.

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the Right. It is concerned with the creation of an intentional Catholic school

community where the ethic of the common good prevails. When baptised, each
Catholic is inducted into a community of believers, so an intimate bond is
established between, not just all believers, but all humanity. Consequently,
critical thinking is not just an individual activity, it is one which affects the
entire community. Critical contemplative Catholic education concerns itself
with delivering an education that is life-giving and authentically empowering
and freeing for every member of the community. Consequently, it has to be
concerned with telling the truth about our world and our place in it.
The proposition being canvassed throughout this thesis – and in particular in

this chapter – is the idea that critical educators can assist Catholic educators in
the task of articulating to themselves the concrete workings of a liberating
approach to education. The particular genius of critical educators is their ability
to interpret the strategies that dominating ideologies employ to construct and
disseminate their own versions of the truth. Catholic educators can apply what
they learn from critical educators by not only learning to recognise and unveil
dominating ideologies but also to present other ways of interpreting the world
and other ways of being that do not conform to a person-as-consumer
interpretation of meaning. Once students can begin to contemplate and
envision other alternative narratives to live by, they can become empowered,
through active engagement and dialogue, to intervene and resist corporate
interests so that it becomes possible to gain some agency and control over the
forces that are working hard to control them.
This approach to critical thinking represents a convergence with what can be

described in traditional spiritual terms as a process of “conversion”.863 This
form of critical analysis challenges the engaged person to reflect critically and
responsibly on their own inner workings; it immerses both teacher and student
863 The term “conversion” in the sense communicated by Walter Conn who links the
process of conversion with psycho-social development. See Conn, Christian Conversion.

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in a deeply affective, spiritual journey. For Merton and Groome, good

discernment led inevitably to good self-understanding, where the doors of
perception are opened and the student learns to see reality in a ‘true’ and
contemplative way.
The development of a contemplative consciousness: an

effective antidote to ideology
The focus up to now has centred primarily on the ways in which critical
educators can contribute to Catholic education. Now it is time to turn to the
ways in which Catholic educators can draw on their own rich contemplative
tradition in conjunction with the analysis of critical educators, in order to
discern how best to construct a liberating education that offers a countervailing
narrative to that of corporatism.
It is now axiomatic in Catholic scholarly circles that the Church’s social teaching
is its ‘best kept secret’.864 But perhaps it could be argued that an even better
kept secret is the contemplative tradition of the Church. It is difficult to explain
why this rich tradition, which is most powerfully embodied by such a figure as
Thomas Merton, has been neglected or suppressed in Catholic schools –
perhaps it is because the contemplative life is seen by many as an ‘adult’
activity. Whatever the reasons, it is the contention of this thesis that if Catholic
education is to be true to its goals, a thorough grounding and formation in ‘the
contemplative way’, ought to be an essential ingredient of the way of
proceeding of the Catholic school.
The goal of the Catholic education system is to “educate people as lovers”.865

This is best achieved through the cultivation of a contemplative attentiveness
864 See for example Peter J. Henriot, Edward P. DeBerri, and Michael J. Schultheis,
Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988),
Massaro, Living Justice, 13, O'Brien and Shannon, Catholic Social Thought, 5–7.

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that prioritises recollection, solidarity and community. Traditionally, the

contemplative life has tended to be perceived to belong ‘apart’ from the world,
whereas social action focused on activity focused on bringing about a more just
social order.866 More and more scholars and spiritual writers are pointing this
out as a false dichotomy; where association and relationship with the poor is
concerned, the contemplative and the liberation traditions should be, and are, in
perfect harmony.867
William McNamara argues that the predominance of action over contemplation

constitutes “the secret drain on the modern world”.868 The contemplative
knows that when it comes to love, we are all novices. But they also realise that
we cannot wait for complete inner purity before taking action to transform the
866 It needs to be pointed out that the documents of the Second Vatican Council
advocate a greater synthesis of these trajectories but it is a matter for debate whether
this teaching has actually been heeded at a grassroots level. There are many examples
of such synthesis particularly within religious orders, but it difficult to see evidence of
this inclination becoming part of the general Catholic consciousness, particularly as it
pertains to Catholic education.
867 Though it is not often expressed this way, a new contemplative spirituality of the
poor has emerged since the Second Vatican Council. This new contemplative
spirituality has sought to marry political and social action with a deep prayerfulness. It
is a spirituality which seeks to unite spirituality trajectories which historically have
tended to be kept separate, and so learn to exercise a more engaged and informed
quality of discipleship. As a consequence the contemplative and the active have now
intersected in more tangible way. As far as a Christian perspective on the poor and the
disempowered is concerned, there is in essence little difference between the message of
‘politically active’ Christians such as Paulo Freire, Gustavo Gutierrez and Jon Sobrino
(and a host of other ‘liberation’ writers) and that of Thomas Merton, Simone Weil and
Lawrence Freeman (and a host of other contemplatives); they all equate love of
neighbour with love of God.
868 William McNamara, Christian Mysticism: The Art of the Inner Way (NY: Continuum,
1981), 45.

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world.869 To know and experience the love of God, is to begin to understand in

the depths of one’s being that God extends the same passionate love to every
other human being on the planet. If everyone in the planet is a sacred creation,
then there are radical implications for the nature and quality of human
relationships. The important – and perhaps most difficult – starting point for
each student and teacher, is to come to see their own body and being as a sacred
creation. As Elizabeth Johnson points out, “you cannot celebrate the work of the
Spirit in the life of another person if you do not recognise the Spirit’s blessing in
your own life”.870 The person who experiences and savours the Spirit in their
own heart cannot respond to other’s marginalisation and pain with
indifference; the impulse of the one who has experienced the touch of God’s
love is to reach out to others to share the love they have experienced through
God’s graciousness.871 The logic of the argument leads inevitably to the
conclusion that the personal and the socio-cultural/political are inextricably
bound. The contemplative is political. If the personal ‘I’ does not wish to be the
victim of injustice or institutional violence, neither is it wished for my
neighbour. If the compassion is genuine, it will lead to action to alleviate or
remove as much as is possible the injustices which cause suffering for myself
869 For a development of this perspective see Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The
Way of Christian Contemplation (Rockport, Mass ; Shaftesbury: Element, 1992), 128–29.
870 Elizabeth A. Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints
(New York: Continuum, 2003), 308.
871 This relationship is eloquently expressed by the contemplative Simone Weil:
Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance: the
love of our neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made of
this same substance. Those who are unhappy have no need for
anything in this world but people capable of giving them their
attention. The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very
rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. ….. The
soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself
the being it is looking at, just as [they are], in all [their] truth.
Simone Weil, Waiting on God (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 58–59.

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and my neighbour.872 The contemplative way, therefore, is a political way as it

is a resistance against all that is destructive, violent, oppressive and negative in
human affairs, consequently, it is a heartfelt expression of union and solidarity
with all who suffer.873
In being transformed in this way, the student is impelled to transform the

world around them,874 as they come to understand that “to promote justice is to
transform structures which block love”.875 If it is to be true to the goals that it
has set for itself, this is the quality of active faith that should animate the
contemplative Catholic school.
Such a self-giving spirit is true liberation where the ‘other’ becomes the door to
our own personal liberation.876 It is a quality of consciousness that leads to the
872 Through the establishment of this interconnection, Catholic social teaching stresses
the dignity of every person, the imperative of solidarity, the common good,
participation, subsidiarity, individual and communal rights and responsibilities, the
dignity of work, rights of workers, peace and disarmament and an option for the poor
and vulnerable. For a succinct elaboration of each of these principles see, Massaro,
Living Justice, 115–63.
873 For an indepth reflection on the relationship between empathy and humanity see
Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader, ed. Seán Hand (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1989), 178–79, Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, Rev.ed ed. (London: Darton
Longman and Todd, 1989).
874 Boys, Educating in Faith, 103, Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 42, Thomas Keating, The Human Condition:
Contemplation and Transformation (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 42–45.
875 Justicia in Mundo, no. 34.
876 As Boys succinctly expresses it, “we not only need the other to understand the
other…we need the other to understand ourselves”. Mary C. Boys, “Educating
Christians in Order That Strangers Become Neighbours”, Journal of Religious Education
ACU Jubilee Volume 1 Sydney (2002): 1. In the Irish language there is a well known
wisdom saying that captures this vision of human community. It says, ‘ar scáth a chéile
a mhaireann na daoine’ (Human beings live in each other’s shadow).

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voluntary and joyful displacement of the self in favour of the other thus leading
to true experience of compassion.877 Ultimately the liberation proposed by
critical contemplative educators is a formative process that leads to a “liberation
from ignorance and for full consciousness, joy, integration”878 – thus fulfilling
the goal that Catholic education sets for itself of forming “whole persons”.879
To develop such wholeness is a journey, or, in traditional terms, a pilgrimage.

The critical contemplative knows their own limits and accepts that they can
never quite be all they want to be. But they attempt to become attuned to their
deepest desires and longings for wholeness. Instead of being filled up with
goods, as is the promise of corporate ideology holds out, the contemplative
desires to be filled with goodness.880 Corporatism represents the false freedom
of a quality of self-preoccupation that leads to unhappiness and
disenchantment; contemplation leads to genuine integral freedom. It is the
freedom of starting an apprenticeship for the life-long journey of learning to put
on “the mind of Christ” (Rom 15:5-6).
One might argue that such a high level of spiritual development is very difficult
to nurture in young people. It is the case that such spiritual maturation comes
about in the fullness of God’s graciousness, nonetheless, it would be erroneous
to assume that such a high level of faith can only be attained in adulthood. It is
877 Again, Weil makes an interesting distinction between compassion and ‘pity’. The
person who has pity, she argues, simply wants to help someone so as not to have to
think about them any more, while “compassion consists in paying attention to an
afflicted person and identifying oneself with them in thought and feeling”. If we have
such thought and feeling it then follows that one would feed them automatically if they
hungry, “just as one feeds oneself”. Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks (London:
Oxford University Press, 1970), 327.
878 Boys, Educating in Faith, 215. For a similar perspective see William Johnston, Arise
My Love: Mysticism for a New Era (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000), xv–xviii.
879 See Goal No.2 in Chapter One.
880 For a reflection on ‘goodness’ see Levinas, The Levinas Reader, 178.

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surely imperative that students in Catholic schools be introduced to this

dimension of Christian life and tradition if they are ever going to grow into
mature adults. If they are not invited to contemplate this way of thinking and
being at a young age, such a conception of faith may never become part of their
horizon in the future. 881 This in turn would mean that they might never
appropriate the spiritual resources required to counteract corporatist ideology –
or any other destructive ideology for that matter. If a contemplative
consciousness is part of the very essence of the school, it is likely to become part
of the essence of the students and teachers.
Such a contemplative vision for the common good, is probably the most
precious gift that can be bequeathed to students by the Catholic school; it
represents a reconnection between lived experience and wisdom so valued in
the contemplative tradition.
The Contemplative Critical Catholic School: An Advocate

for the Common Good
The common good: with this single principle, the separate visions of critical and
contemplative educators merge into one, and with this merger, the very
founding principles of corporatism are undermined. Domination, hierarchy and
control are negated in favour of compassion, sharing and mutuality, and the
dignity of the person is upheld. When people are objectified and treated as
disposable, their sense of mattering as a person, of being necessary to others is
brutally diminished. Any institution, secular or religious, which provides
human beings no deep reasons to care about one another, cannot long preserve
881 McIntosh argues that the ability to discern and formulate the meaning of
contemplative encounter “is something that must be acquired, like a skill, and that
without a culture in which such a skill is forged and fostered it may be lost”. McIntosh,
Mystical Theology, 13.

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its legitimacy.882 The lack of care for the person that corporatist ethic represents
puts it in direct conflict with many core beliefs about the human person that are
clearly undscored in Catholic social teaching.
This is precisely why many are concerned that corporations are proving very
damaging not only to the collective psyche but to the existence of democracy as
well.
Contemplative Critical Education: Preserving the Integrity of

Democracy and Faith
For the last few dacades, Noam Chomsky has been arguing that true democracy
is under attack throughout the world.883 Despite the gloomy prognosis that
corporatism represents a profound threat to democracy, there are, nonetheless,
strong signs of hope.884 There are many who are recognising the threats to the
common good and consequently seek to actively engage with counter-
hegemonic currents that seek to reclaim democracy as being truly
representative of the common good. This global impulse also seeks to break
through the complicity of media monopolies and corporations and is to some
extent managing to disseminate to the public a true picture of what
corporations are doing in the world.885
882 Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, 148.

883 See Chomsky, Miseducation, 135–72. Here he presents a well-substantiated argument
for this assertion. John Pilger has, more recently, made a similar case. See John Pilger,
The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso, 2003), ———, Freedom Next Time: Resisting
the Empire (London: Black Swan, 2007), ———, “The War on Democracy”
[Videorecording] (London: BBC, 2007).
884 For an elaboration of the link between corporatism and the undermining of
democracy see Korten, When Corporations, 93, Bagdikian, The New Media, 97–98.
885 A couple of examples will serve to illustrate the growing influence of this
counterveiling movement: 1) The success of such counter-hegemonic, anti-corporatist
writers such as John Ralston Saul, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Gore

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Active involvement by a populace that is engaged in critical and informed

thinking about the socio-political realities, appears to be the only effective
protection a democracy possesses against the power of destructive ideologies.
As Giroux observes schools are now one of the few places left where young
people can learn the skills to become engaged, critical citizens.886 For this
reason Catholic schools have a vital role to play in protecting and preserving
democracy. At the heart of the Catholic notion of the common good is the sense
that everyone in society matters and that every person is apportioned equal
dignity in the eyes of God. It also communicates a sense that every Catholic is to
be devoted to action on behalf of others, particularly the weak and
Vidal is testimony to the deep thirst that is felt among significant sections of the global
community for an alternative way of sharing our common humanity. In the Catholic
tradition the popularity of spiritual writers who express a desire for what could be
called ‘a globalised consciousness for the common good’ enjoy wide popularity and
support. Prominent spiritual leaders such as Joan Chittister, Richard Rohr, Albert
Nolan, Timothy Radcliffe, John Dear, Helen Prejean and Hans Küng serve as examples
from the Catholic Tradition alone; 2) It may appear insignificant, but a very tangible
sign of the growing numbers of people who are seeking alternatives to mainstream
media is the re-emerging popularity of the independent documentary. Documentaries
have now made a return to cinemas throughout the Western world. This phenomena
again demonstrates the thirst for alternatives to the homogenised and corporatised
mainstream media as well as the undercurrents of change that are emerging despite
the best efforts of corporate interests to prevent it. The following are examples of such
successful documentaries: The Corporation; The Take; An Inconvenient Truth; Enron–The
smartest Guys in the room; Outfoxed; The New Rulers of the World; Power and Terror; Sicko;
Shut up and Sing; The War on Democracy. These serve as examples of well patronised
independent documentaries shown in cinemas between 2005–2008. For an assessment
of the potential of this counterveiling movement to bring about positive social change
see Bagdikian, The New Media, 260, McChesney, Rich Media, 119–20, Derber, People
before Profit, 234–70, Clive Hamilton, What's Left: The Death of Social Democracy,
Quarterly Essay; Issue 21. (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2006), 1–99.

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disenfranchised, so that the good of the whole is preserved. What is really

required of the contemplative critical educator is enter into a dialogue with
students about the kind of society they want to live in. This is never going to be
easy to solve, but through entering into dialogue about it, the transformation
has already begun.
Ultimately, as well as the credibility and the authenticity of the Catholic school
what may be at stake is the very existence and wellbeing of a decent democratic
society. In Centesimus annus John Paul II argued that authentic democracy is
possible only on the basis of a correct conception of the human person.887 If we
do not have an ordered humane perception of the human person and if the
dignity of each person in the polity is not defended, such a ‘democracy’ easily
“turns into open and thinly disguised totalitarianism”.888 The Catholic school
system within a democracy stands or falls with the values it embodies and
promotes, in particular, respect for inalienable human rights and for the
common good.889
This is where critical educators and Catholic contemplatives come together in a

very harmonious and tangible way. For both, the principle of the common good
lies at the very heart of the focus of their attention. In a very real sense,
democratic society is founded on “a kind of faith” that each citizen assumes
political responsibility; that each citizen knows what is going on, understands
the difficulties involved, and has worked out an answer that can help to
contribute, intelligently and constructively, to the common work (or what
Merton terms the “liturgy”) of living within society.890 For this to become a
reality, there must be a considerable amount of solid educational preparation, a
real training of the mind and, a genuine formation in those intellectual and
887 Centesimus Annus, no. 46.

888 Ibid.
889 Evangelium Vitae, no. 70.

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spiritual disciplines without which freedom is impossible.891 As was

demonstrated in Chapter Three, critical thinking was a central pillar in Merton’s
educational philosophy;892 but Merton also makes a direct connection between
critical thinking, democracy and what he called “the intellectual and spiritual
disciplines”.893 For Merton the capacity to think critically emerged from a
profound and serious immersion in the best thinking that has been engaged in
within and outside the tradition. This is an activity that contemplatives have
nurtured throughout the centuries in the Catholic tradition, so that it is now an
essential part of the contemplative way.
A critical Contemplative anthropology
From a Catholic anthropological perspective, the primary purpose of the

Catholic school is to mediate an experience of the sacred, in order that students
can be empowered to grow into “fully alive and free human beings”.894 Such a
goal inevitably implies the creation of a school culture and curriculum that lays
the intellectual, moral and spiritual foundations for every student to be
empowered to internalise a deep sense of the preciousness of the other.
Students can only imbibe such a message if they are treated in this manner,
which is why the relational quality of the teacher’s disposition is crucial to the
identity of the critical contemplative school.895 This quality of education will
891 Ibid.
892 “Nothing” Merton claimed, “can take the place of thoughts … if we do not think …
we are at the mercy of forces which we never understand, forces which are arbitrary,
destructive, blind, fatal to us and to our world”. Ibid., 78.
893 This same concern is evident in Groome’s work. See Groome, Educating for Life, 221,
51.
894 Ibid., 246.
895 For the importance of relational teaching see Moore, Teaching from the Heart, 131–62,
Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 9–33, Bernie Neville, Educating Psyche (Greensborough,
Melbourne: Flat Chat Press, 2005), 233–63.

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only be genuine if each teacher genuinely values everyone’s presence.896
In a very concrete way, the Catholic school – via each individual teacher – leads
every member of the community in their first steps in understanding that it is
“the vulnerable bestowal of life upon the other that leads to fruition,
satisfaction, and the highest happiness”.897 But such a quality of love can only
be bestowed on others when one first knows and experiences the unconditional
love of God in a personal, experiential sense. Through the experience of love the
person is infused with the knowledge of who they truly are.898 When they
sense, in the very depths of their being, that God is in love with them
personally, the power to be attentive to others is released in so that the love that
has been poured into the depths of their heart naturally overflows out to others.
From a contemplative perspective all the goals of Catholic education converge
into this one goal: to know and experience the deep personal love that God feels
for each of us; that is the source of all good, all wisdom and all knowing.
Contemplative critical educators would invite the entire school community to

such an intimate relationship with God. This relationship would lead outward
to a radical ‘unselfing’, so that the sufferings and plight of the most
marginalised in our world is felt with compassion, and acted upon with
justice.899 In such a context the whole curriculum becomes mystagogical.900 Not
896 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 8, bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (London:
Women's Press, 2000).
897 McIntosh, Mystical Theology, 175–76.
898 In the words of Rowan Williams, “Knowing ourselves as loved creatures is the only
way of knowing ourselves truthfully”. Quoted in Ibid., 221.
899 Merton’s perspectives on self-forgetfulness were presented in Chapter Three. For
Weil too, this “unselfing” (décréation) should be one of the primary intents of
education: “Each person believes they are the centre of the world …but”, she reflects,
“we become centred and attentive when we can receive the sufferings of others”. Weil,
Waiting on God, 52–53.
900 ‘Mystagogy’, according to McIntosh, is an ancient technical term for teaching that

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only the orientation, content and methodology of the curriculum, but the
spiritual, psychological and physical architecture of every facet of school life
would reflect a critical contemplative orientation. The intention is to provide an
education that illuminates the divine through the experience of the divine.
When this quality of awareness and attentiveness permeates the very being of
the school, then everything that is done in the school becomes sacramentalised
– that is, what happens in the school becomes “like a sacrament”.901
In such a Catholic school corporatist views and values can gain little traction;
the power to resist it is too great. What will be experienced in that critical
contemplative setting is a different quality of corporatism from the one that has
been spoken of in this chapter and which always threatens to colonise the
school community – if granted the opportunity. The corporatism of the critical
contemplative school will echo the corporatism that is to be found in the Acts of
the Apostles (Acts 4:32–37). There is to be found a corporatism that literally
means to live and act as though the whole community belonged to “one body”
– as the etymology of the word suggests. In such a corporate context the
Catholic school becomes a place where all knowledge, all authority, all
technology will be held in common for the common good of all. It becomes a
place of encounter with each other and with the world – a subject to subject
encounter.902
Chapter Conclusion: Discerning and resisting corporatism –

A Vital role of the Catholic School
This chapter has tentatively proposed that ‘the signs of the times’ are indicating
does not merely speak about the divine mystery but helps to lead others to a
participatory understanding of it; in other words, the methodology leads us “to
participate in the reality we desire to know”. McIntosh, Mystical Theology, 27.
901 Weil, Waiting on God, 57.
902 Moore, Teaching from the Heart, 184.

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that there may be a need to enter into a process of discernment concerning the
role that corporatism may be playing in shaping the contemporary Catholic
school. It is proposed that a critical contemplative approach to Catholic
education will achieve such an end.
Critical educators, whose focus of concern corresponds closely to the concerns

of the social teaching of the Church, have studied the ways in which public
education is now being shaped by corporatist ideology. They have argued that
corporate ethics and ways of being, have insinuated their way into educational
theory and practice without sufficient attentiveness, interrogation and
discernment. This chapter has applied their analysis to a contemporary Catholic
educational setting. The question of the extent to which this ideology, which is
fashioning and shaping wider culture in its own image, is fashioning and
shaping the culture of the Catholic school, was tentatively proposed and
explored.
It was argued that there is at least some anecdotal evidence to suggest that
many of the negative features of corporatism that critical educators perceive in
the public system may also be replicated in Catholic schools, particularly in
contexts where Catholic schools are heavily funded by the state. Through an
examination of the findings of critical educators on three of the most significant
areas of school life – school management, perception and use of technology, and
approach to curriculum – it was suggested that some of the negative corporatist
features they highlight may have embedded themselves in a Catholic
educational context. At the very least, it was suggested, further study and
investigation is warranted.
It was subsequently proposed that the most effective antidote to corporatised

education is a critical contemplative modality. The critical trajectory when
coupled with the contemplative trajectory of the Catholic tradition offers the
power to ‘open the doors of perception’ in order to ‘see rightly’ and develop an
imaginative and discerning insight into the essence of all human realities. While
a corporate approach leads to the corrosion of character and spiritual sensibility

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due to its essentially individualistic, competitive and authoritarian orientation,

a critical contemplative approach is empowering and transformative as it is
dialogical, communitarian and focused on the common good. Such a Catholic
education is both an initiation and an experience of the transformed
consciousness. It represents a way of educating that critically engages with
every facet of experience – socio-political, psychological and spiritual. It is an
education that frees human intuition and imagination by teaching with
intuition and imagination.903
The praxis of a critical contemplative orientation would involve designing a

curriculum which built around the pedagogy of the question. This pedagogical
orientation seeks to unveil those powerful forces which profoundly shape
students’ perception and horizons. This would inevitably involve exposing the
pervasive, yet hidden, sources of propaganda and coercion that so influence
culture in the contemporary world. It would also involve participation in an
ongoing dialogue concerning the ways in which “classic” texts within tradition
have been interpreted and will make ethical and moral judgments about those
interpretations. In keeping with the mission the Church has articulated since
Vatican II, they would highlight the ways in which minority groups,
particularly the poor, women and indigenous groups have been “silenced” by
those who dominate historical and contemporary discourse. Through such
discourse, the hope was expressed that students would feel impelled to work
for justice and peace and commit themselves to the transformation of the
structural injustices that cause so many to suffer.
Such an orientation, it was argued, while fulfilling the spiritual goals of the
Catholic school, is also profoundly democratic, in that its intention is to lead the
students, through dialogue, towards the alternative transcendent experience of
‘power with’ – which is the fruit of a contemplative vision – instead of ‘power
over’, which is the fruit of a corporatised vision.
903 Ibid., 174.

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It was argued that there is much that is at stake for the tradition in becoming
conscious of the ubiquity of corporatism. The discernment process suggested
here is fashioned in order to preserve the very integrity, authority and value of
Catholic culture and tradition itself.904 Consequently, it can be proposed that
the quality of the discernment process involved in interpreting the world
becomes crucial to Catholic education; it will determine what is taught and how
it is taught. This prayerful art has been bequeathed to present generations by
tradition; it is the art that can now be utilised to empower Catholic students and
teachers to ‘see rightly’ in the contemporary world so that they can “read the
signs of the times” with humanity and integrity.
Ultimately, this is an argument about the very essence of the Catholic school. It
is staking a claim for the retrieval of an intensely dialogical, critical
contemplative modus operandi that is founded on respect for the student and
teacher, dignity of the person and of work, creation of community, building of
webs of solidarity, particularly with those most disempowered, thus fashioning
a community of faith that takes action to transform the world for the common
good. Such an education, it was argued, is an education that is the practice of
freedom in our contemporary world.
904 This idea is adapted from Crossan’s perspective on empire. See Crossan, God and
Empire, 238.

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Chapter Six: Building a Future Full of Hope (Thesis

Conclusion)
It has been the consistent claim of this thesis that the Catholic school can be a
place where it is possible for freedom to be realised and embodied. This
vision for an education that is the practice of freedom is firmly rooted in Catholic
anthropology but draws also on insights that can be garnered from critical
secular perspectives. It therefore presents as a paradigm and a model of what
it means to reflect theologically in the midst of a concrete contemporary
sociohistorical situation and seeks to let that theology inform the thought and
action of the Catholic educator.
In order to root itself in the Catholic Tradition, the thesis began by

establishing the goals of Catholic education. It was then argued in Chapter
Two that those goals were to a large extent realised through Paulo Freire’s
conscientising vision for education, which presented the act of learning as a
form of historico-cultural, political psychoanalysis. The fictitious dialogue
between Freire and Merton in Chapter Three acted as a reinforcement and an
expansion of Freire’s conscientisation method. Whereas Freire emphasised the
socio-political and cultural forces that need to be brought to consciousness,
Merton emphasised self-understanding and awareness of God’s relational
presence as the keys to true integral freedom. Merton’s contemplative vision
for education prioritised the need to stimulate an awakening and an
attunement in the heart of the student to the voice of God, if they were to be
empowered to ‘see rightly’ and resist ‘the false self’. The quality and thrust of
this dialogue was further expanded and contemporised in Chapter Four
where Giroux and Groome fictitiously dialogued about their respective
visions for a liberating education. Giroux, representing the view of many
other critical educators, perceives the essence of education to be the
questioning of received assumptions about the nature, content and purpose of
schooling itself. Groome views the educational process as a sacramental

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activity that is oriented towards self-knowledge through engagement with the

‘depth structures’ of the Catholic Tradition. While each vision is distinctive
and founded on different presuppositions – one religious, the other secular –
there was nonetheless a remarkable synchronicity and agreement concerning
their conception of the content and methodology of a liberating education.
The primary feature that links all four interlocutors – Freire, Merton, Groome
and Girioux – is a deep reverence for the dignity and right of the person,
particularly the poor and marginalised. In this sense they all serve as models
of true discernment for educators, as they connect dignity and consequent
freedom of the human person to the way in which power is exercised in
society and in education. The analysis presented in Chapter Five was a
natural extension of thinking developed in the previous chapters. It was
proposed that if Catholic educators are to defend the dignity of both teachers
and students, they need to engage in a careful discernment process in order to
assess whether or not, and to what extent, corporatist thinking and modus
operandi has permeated the Catholic school system. What was proposed as a
credible antidote was a critical contemplative approach to Catholic education.
Critical contemplative education, as presented in this thesis, can be defined as

critical reflection on Christian praxis in the light of the Word.905 At the core of
a critical contemplative vision for education lies a theological definition of
human freedom. It is an approach which orients all educational endeavours
towards respect and reverence for all members of the school and global
educating community as a consequence of their divine origin and nature. For the
critical contemplative, God’s transcendence proves to be a protection for the
905 Adapted from Jeff Astley, Leslie J. Francis, and Colin Crowder, Theological
Perspectives on Christian Formation: A Reader on Theology and Christian Education
(Leominster: Gracewing, 1996), 190.

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transcendence of the human person as well.906
Future Orientations
The aim has not been to produce a detailed plan for Catholic education, but
rather to propose an orientation in the light of the foregoing dialogues and
argument. What can be deduced and inferred from the argument will now be
consolidated and synthesised into ten key orientations that would need to be
appropriated if a critical contemplative educational vision is to become
concretised in Catholic schools. These orientations are interrelated and
interdependent and need to be understood as a totality; freedom is a seamless
garment which is fashioned from many elements. These orientations satisfy
the five imperatives proposed by the Secretary for the Vatican’s Congregation
for Catholic Education (at the time of writing), Archbishop Michael Miller. In
his view, Catholic educational institutions ought to be:
1. inspired by supernatural vision;

2. founded on a Christian Anthropology;
3. animated by Communion and community;
4. imbued with a Catholic Worldview; and
5. sustained by the witness of teaching.907
Orientation No.1: To Discern ‘the Signs of the Times’
The traditional spiritual practice of discernment offers a way of becoming

attuned to God’s presence and graciousness at an individual and collective
level in the Catholic school. It is an activity which seeks a profound encounter

907 Archbishop Miller argues that these five characteristics must be present if a school
is to be considered Catholic. Miller, “Catholic Schools”.

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with God and God’s will.908 An immersion in this art needs to be a non-
negotiable dimension of Catholic education, since discernment is the only
tested method the tradition possesses for unveiling God’s continuing
revelation. It is an activity that promotes lifegiving educational enterprises
and filters out negative, illusory and destructive perceptions. A discerning
school community is also empowered to challenge the fixed assumptions,
certitudes and prejudices and make informed and balanced judgements about
the mission of the school. Through discernment any self-destructive pursuit
of power and profit can be detected and counteracted; it frees the school
community to perceive new truths emerging in the chaos of destructive
ideologies such as corporatism. Through discernment, the school community
develops the power ‘to see rightly’ what is the most appropriate course of
action as willed by God in any given situation. Such ‘right seeing’ means
being able to perceive and counteract forces that undermine genuine
Christian community building.
In a discerning community, a critical contemplative atmosphere is generated

where there is genuine dialogical, communal search for the truth. In such a
context there would be an intimate association between discernment, silence,
and sanctity. Reverence and prayerfulness is the natural impulse of those who
are in relationship of encounter with the transcendent, with fellow human
beings and with all created reality. The teacher who reads the signs of the
times would be an informed citizen, familiar with his or her community,
nation, and world”.909 Christian Discernment interpreted in this way becomes
a sophisticated form of dialogue; the relational to-and-fro quality of dialogical
encounter becoming the means by which horizons are expanded, perception
is sharpened and truth is apprehended. It becomes the only means by which
the school community can faithfully interpret ‘the signs of the times’.
908 McIntosh, Mystical Theology, 26.

909 O'Brien and Shannon, Catholic Social Thought, 7.

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Orientation No.2: To Become Conscious of, and Expand,

Individual and Collective Horizons
This thesis concurs with Lonergan when he argues that the fundamental
problem in developing a philosophy of Catholic education is the horizon of
the educationalist.910 The perception of reality created by each human being is
a function of the horizon that is operative in forming their unique view. If an
intentional awareness of the horizons from which individual and collective
consciousness is formed is to be developed, then each individual member of
the school community will need to commit themselves to broadening and
deepening those horizons.
If the teacher, and those in powerful leadership positions, have horizons that
are “insufficiently enlarged” 911 – as happens when a corporate ideological
perspective is operative – then the school will be limited in its capacity to
bring freedom to students or staff. But if teachers and administrators can
expand their horizons beyond the limits set by dominant hegemonic powers
into a more enlarged and inclusive universe of being, then Catholic education
will carry the possibility of an authentic integral freedom. If administrators,
teachers and students are to live in this ‘universe of being’ they would need to
commit themselves individually and collectively to ‘unveiling’ their own
prejudicial and stunted thought, since those who harbor prejudiced patterns
of thought cannot be free and cannot bring freedom to others. For Catholic
educators this could mean a commitment to enlargement of horizons by
anchoring themselves to what is richest and deepest in the Catholic tradition
and at the same time be open to others who do not share Catholic faith or
910 Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran, Topics in

Education: The Cincinnati Lectures of 1959 on the Philosophy of Education (Toronto:
Lonergan Research Institute, University of Toronto Press, 1993), 106.
911 The terminology is adapted from Lonergan. See Ibid.

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identity. Such a quality of dialogue would require an intelligent conversation

with the founding texts of the tradition, the cumulative experience of the
tradition, as well as a profound reflection on contemporary cultural and
spiritual experience.
The horizon being advocated here is one where the wisdom of tradition is
valued and honoured in the way in which Merton and Groome honour it. The
Catholic school ought to be a community where faith is lived and practiced;
where a web of relationships that are full of transformative possibilities are
intentionally nurtured and formed; a place where an absolutist and
reductionist religious consciousness is discouraged in favour of an inclusive
sacramental consciousness. Ultimately, the nature of freedom being
advocated is firmly rooted in the traditional Catholic belief that integral
liberation only becomes possible when freedom becomes the means to attain
what is truly and intrinsically good.912 ‘The Good’ being the ultimate goal of
Catholic education – a good that is “a concrete, cumulative process resulting
from developing human apprehension and human choices”.913
In the context of a critical contemplative perspective, this will mean that

teachers and students in Catholic schools will be invited to choose to emerge
from the limits corporate ideology places on their horizons and embrace true
freedom by accepting that the truth is not a set of fixed certitudes or a ‘pre-
cast’ way of responding to the world, but a mystery that is to be entered into,
and wrestled with. It is a process of going deeper and deeper into an
incomprehensible mystery on the one hand, and on the other, utilising one’s
deepest intelligence and experience to make the world intelligible and
912 This is an adaptation of Avery Dulles’ observations on Pope John Paul II’s
reflections on freedom. Dulles’ exact words are: “For him, [Pope John Paul II]
freedom is not an end in itself but a means to attain what is truly and intrinsically
good”. Dulles, The Splendor of Faith, 153.
913 Lonergan, Crowe, and Doran, Topics in Education, 26, 33.

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comprehensible. Only when collective horizons are enlarged in this way, is it

possible to fashion a liberating education.
Orientation No.3: To Engage in Dialogue as a Means and an End
As outlined in Chapter Two and modelled in Chapters’ Three and Four,

dialogue is both the method and the means of attaining freedom. It is the
heart of Freire’s conscientisation method and is the core of a contemporary
Catholic conscientisation as outlined in Chapter Five. True dialogue is not just
with other people but a commitment also to enter into meaningful dialogue
with one’s personal and communal history, culture and tradition. True
dialogue as elucidated in Chapter Three involves a critical engagement with
the socio-political system as this is the arena that determines the quality of
existence for the community at large. Dialogue is not simply a theoretical
exploration, whether that exploration be individual or communal; it also
involves practical action. In this sense praxis is dialogue as it involves a
meaningful exchange between experience and theory.
The focus of all dialogue is the dignity of the individual, which is why
mutuality is essential to all dialogical encounters. Entering into dialogue takes
seriously the belief that each individual is capable of knowing, and each
individual can reach the highest level of being; in short, it takes each
individual’s full humanity seriously. Dialogue tempers authoritarian and
superiority instincts and curbs the desire to dominate others, thus fostering a
communitarian culture. Dialogue builds relationships, establishes a sense of
belonging, agency and ownership. In this sense dialogue acts as a bulwark
against the destructive impulses of corporatism. As argued in Chapter Five,
corporatism thrives on hierarchy, control and competition which is how
oppression is born.
A dialogical approach involves open and trusting engagement with people

and ideas that are sometimes opposed to one’s own personal perspective. In

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contrast to the corporatist approach to human relationships, it is a to-and-fro

process of sharing where the ‘other’ is listened to, valued and included.
To nurture dialogue is simply to nurture the quality and nature of the

relationships Jesus nurtured. All the Gospels sketch a portrait of a historical
Jesus who was radically open to the ‘other’. Rather than impose his power
from on high, he modelled a way of relating to others that flowed from a
sense of love, vulnerability and openness. If this was the way of Jesus, it must
also be the way of the Catholic school. The dialogical way encourages all
members of the community to work as a body and participate in decision-
making as a community of believers.
Most importantly, the dialogical way includes those who are excluded from
conventional or ‘corporate’ management systems. A dialogical community
values communion and relationship over status and success. It is a mode of
existence that values accompaniment and solidarity so that the kind of
communion that signifies true community can become a reality. When this
happens the school can legitimately claim to be “the home and the school of
communion”.914
This goes to the heart of the argument about Catholic schools. Dialogue can
take Catholic schools beyond safe and conventional ways of understanding
what it means to be a human being in the world, and by implication, what it
means to be Catholic in the world. Without a dialogical critical approach, the
Catholic school risks becoming another ‘service industry’ that provides
economic benefits and anodyne ‘spirituality’ in a corporatist culture. In the
process the rich and profound social justice/contemplative tradition is
drowned by the normative values and beliefs of the wider culture. A
dialogical culture can open up alternative possibilities to uncritical passivity
and instead become the means by which a critical eye can be cast, not only on
914 Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 43.

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society, but the way the school’s value and belief systems manifest themselves
within wider society.
Orientation No.4: The Formation of Critical Contemplatives
The contemplative way is the only tried and tested approach to education that
can prevent the Catholic school from inadvertently or unconsciously adopting
ways of educating that are destructive to the spiritual identity and nature of
the human person.
A contemplative education, as envisioned by Merton, is designed to ‘open the

doors of perception’ in the individual and in the community. Such a power
can only emanate from an intimate relationship with Jesus who “is the pole
star of human freedom”.915 It is the example and grace of Jesus that
empowers each individual to die to ‘false self’ and allow the ‘real self’ to
emerge. The false self being that part of every human that is “shackled by
egotism”916 full of visible passions and hidden compulsions, that lead to
isolation, alienation and unhappiness. From a contemplative anthropological
perspective, the human being sets out on the journey to freedom when they
consciously control their inner compulsions, and learn to channel their
potential power and energy to serving the needs of others by nurturing
relationships marked by love and service. When the ‘false self’ is brought
under control through election and choice, the life of God is liberated within,
and true compassion, empathy and freedom are liberated. This is the self-
transcending vision for human existence that Merton believed was possible
for every human being to experience.917 But this, as both Merton and Groome
point out, is a quality of being that has to be actively sought as well as taught
915 Benedict XVI, “Pope Tells Congregation to Fix Minds on Jesus”, Catholic News,
http://www.cathnews.com. (Accessed 13 February 2006).
916 Ibid.
917 Merton, New Seeds, 1.

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– it doesn’t just happen. This is what makes Catholic education so distinctive

and important. Catholic education can be a formation in this way of
perceiving existence. Such is the particularity of the Catholic ‘take’ on the
world.918
But this contemplative take on education is also a ‘critical’ one. While the
disposition of the contemplative is passive and accepting when it comes to
following the prompting and inspiration of the Spirit of God, it is very active
in opposing that which is unloving and not of God. Because they honour the
dignity of each living being, the approach of the critical contemplative is to
demonstrate concern for each person’s earthly well-being as well as their
heavenly destiny.919 To add the word ‘critical’ to contemplative is to
acknowledge that far too often in the history of the Church this critical
dimension has been sanitised out of the contemplative trajectory; the political
implications of the contemplative vision being frequently downplayed in
favour of a more ethereal, spiritualised version of contemplation. The
intentional insertion of the word ‘critical’ serves to emphasise the need to
reclaim what should be an intrinsic aspect to the contemplative tradition. As
argued in Chapters’ Three-to-Five, it is particularly important and relevant for
the present age. So the particular take of the contemplative Catholic school is
to be immersed in a form of prayerfulness that extends to an uncompromising
critique of the structures which cause injustice, and will actively defend the
principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, the option for the poor – and above all,
the common good. Within this framework, the critique of corporate ideology
is a vital part of a critical contemplative Catholic education, since it unveils
where there is a lack of love in the contemporary world and attempts to guide
the school community towards a more loving way of being.
918 This is an appropriation of Archbishop Miller’s language. He speaks regularly of

the particularity of the Catholic ‘take’ on education. See Miller, “Catholic Schools”.
919 See Massaro, Living Justice, 47.

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A contemplative critical education, then, is a humanising vision (Groome) of

education that sees the purpose of education as not simply a preparation for
work, but rather as a preparation for life in all its complexity, richness, beauty
pain, suffering, justice and injustice. By learning to live in a deeper union with
God and to be free to love as God loves they are formed into a way of “seeing
rightly” their own selves and all created reality through the lens of
compassion and love.
Orientation No.5: To Learn What it Means to Belong
A critical contemplative education ought to be, above all else, an education in

becoming human. In the previous chapter it was argued that if the school is
organised along corporate lines it will become an environment marked by
fragmentation and alienation; the school curriculum will be goal oriented –
geared to acquiring knowledge, power, and social status and where the
contemplative life will be disregarded as an outdated, sentimental, and
emotional distraction from the ‘real’ business of education. Worse still, it may
be preserved as a cynical veneer for public relations purposes. If the school is
truly discerning however, the contemplative life will be seen as a source of
love that can reorient the school community away from competitive self-
centredness, towards an understanding of the intrinsic beauty of humanity
and of life and the true means of empowering everyone to grow. For this to
happen, however, a certain quality of environment and culture needs to be
created.
The integral freedom that a critical contemplative education seeks is the

freedom that comes from feeling a sense of acceptance and belonging. The
whole atmosphere of such a school will exude a sense of welcome and home-
away-from-homeliness. Learning that is marked by direct and personal
contact between teachers and students will be a hallmark of the critical

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contemplative school, since all human beings flower when they are confident
that they are accompanied by a people who care about them personally.920 In
the contemplative tradition of the Church, the notion of accompaniment is
essential to growth in the spiritual life. It was clear in Chapter Four that
Merton was very much a companion to those he taught as well as being
accompanied by others who guided him on his journey. Each student who
enrols in the Catholic school implicitly asks the question: who is walking with
me?921 It is through being accompanied and unconditionally accepted that
each member of the school community will learn to accept themselves, which
in turn is a prerequisite for accepting others. In such an environment they are
freed to learn to be open to the ‘other’ and do not devalue or judge them by
acting out of fear. They can give themselves permission to ‘cross borders’
(Giroux) and transgress the boundaries that have been placed in their
consciousness by their cultural formation. Instead of avoiding those who are
‘different’ they can learn to listen to them and celebrate their difference. This
quality of dialogical encounter nurtures a deep sense of inclusion and
belonging which in turn leads to inner healing as well as a profound sense of
their own intrinsic value. Through this quality of relationship they discover a
sense of union with the ‘other’ which gives students and teachers a direct and
genuine experience of community that is ‘church’. In such an environment the
human heart learns that it does not need the kind of ‘success’ or status or
privileges offered by the corporatist paradigm and that it is the to-and-fro
relational encounters in the every day of the human journey that really matter
and give meaning to earthly and earthy existence.

921 This question is adapted from Jean Vanier’s perspective on his L’Arche
communities. See Vanier, Becoming Human, 129. Vanier makes the observation that
the word “accompaniment,” like the word “companion”, comes from the Latin
words cum pane, which mean “with bread”. It might well be suggested that
companionship is the food without which the soul withers and dies.

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Orientation No.6: To Identify and Counteract Ideology in the

Catholic School
It is axiomatic that power tends to corrupt.922 Power, most would agree, is

often used to crush and enslave rather than to empower and free. It is for this
reason that it was particularly stressed that in order to be true to the goals of
Catholic education, each Catholic school needs to engage in a thorough
discernment process to unveil the powerful forces that are shaping
contemporary consciousness. This is a very difficult and confronting task.
Ideology, while one may be aware of its presence, has a way of insinuating
itself into the fabric of daily life in such a manner that it gradually becomes
part of accepted normative thought.
It may at first appear like an extreme comparison, but there is a certain

parallel between the way in which Fascism insinuated itself into the
consciousness of many European Christians in the 1930s and the way in
which corporatism lodges itself in contemporary Christian consciousness. The
Catholic and Protestant Churches in Nazi Germany – with some notable
exceptions – did not rise up against the racist and expansionist Nazi ideology;
in fact, it could be argued that these mainstream Churches were in many
cases co-opted into the ideology. In Catholic schools, most teachers were
acquiescent in declaring themselves willing to comply with the regulation of
Gleichschaltung, which in fact meant that they agreed to give up Catholic
principles in their profession to take on those of the Nazi Party.923 Viewed
922 That “power corrupts, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely”, is the
actual oft-misquoted aphorism penned by Lord Acton. (Emphasis added)
923 See Josephine Koeppel, Edith Stein: Philosopher and Mystic, The Way of the
Christian Mystics; V.12 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1990), 153. For a
profound reflection on this viewpoint from the perspective of another Christian
denomination see Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s last sermon in Berlin, July 23, 1933 in Edwin

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historically, what occurred was to some extent predictable; what happened

has often happened in the past: as a collective, they lost sight of the larger
principles and values to which they were meant to be committed. There were
those, however, who did not lose sight of those larger principles and values,
figures such as Sophie Scholl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Franz Jägerstätter and
Edith Stein, who represent a minority of Christians who stood against the
might of Nazism and who today are seen as brave, faithful and prophetic
visionaries. An examination of the lives of such prophetic individuals reveals
that, in very different ways, each was a critical contemplative in their unique
time and place who had the capacity to see the corruption at the heart of Nazi
ideology and refused to participate in its destructive practices. They have
become models for what a Christian is to do when confronted by the
destructive actions of ideology.
This thesis has made the claim that corporatism is an ideology, a systematic
way of organising human affairs that is based on destructiveness and
alienation. It may not be the genocidal ideology that Nazism was, but it is
nonetheless a way of organising society – economically, politically and
socially – whereby the darkest traits that lie in every human heart, such as
greed, the narcissistic lust for power and status, are encouraged, nurtured and
rewarded. It is consequential that if Catholics allow themselves to be co-opted
by this ideology they will become what the system requires of them –
irrespective of the professed beliefs of the local and global institution.
In Chapter Five it was argued that the primary task of the critical
contemplative Catholic school in a contemporary context, is to unveil,
through a careful discernment process, the presence and modus operandi of
this ideology – and then counteract it.
Robertson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan,

2005), 74–81.

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It was argued that there is a possibility that a certain servitude to corporate

management strategies, language and veneration of technology can be
detected in Catholic schools. If this is so, it will have come about for lack of
sufficient discernment concerning the ways in which such a mode of thought
and action impacts on the authenticity and credibility of a Catholic educational
vision. Corporatism, whatever its benefits, is all too frequently contaminated
by the all-consuming push for profit and efficiency, achieved in most cases at
the expense of people’s true humanity. In this sense, it was argued, Catholic
schools could end up embodying two conflicting and contradictory messages:
in one sense Catholic school promotes a “spiritual” vision of human
community which speaks of the dignity and primacy of the humanity, and
preciousness of each individual, and, at the same time may promote a
corporate ideology which transforms schools into production sites that
corrode the dignity of the person, undermines genuine solidarity and trust
and can ultimately lead to a fragmented sense of community where everyone
is dehumanised.
Freire’s observation, that one cannot liberate human beings by alienating them,
seems applicable in this context. Corporatism is an alienating ideology,
consequently it cannot simply be absorbed into the infrastructure of the
school to exist side by side with the spiritual identity of the school. A critical
contemplative Catholic school will intentionally resist corporatism because
Catholic beliefs and values contest the culture of utilitarian values and the
state of alienation that corporatism represents and embodies.
Orientation No.7: To Fashion a Critical Contemplative

Curriculum
If corporatism is to be resisted, and if critical contemplation is to be the

operative paradigm in the Catholic school, then the shape and form of the
curriculum will have to be carefully planned and discerned. What has been
outlined in Chapter Five is a suggested orientation of curriculum rather than

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a coherent prescriptive plan.
If the key purpose of the Catholic school is to provide an “integral” education

designed to nurture “the whole person”924 then each student will have to
gradually learn what it means to be a true human being in the world. To learn
what it means to be a human being requires a willingness to draw on the
wisdom that has been gleaned from human experience throughout history.
Groome’s is a vision for curriculum that is at once steeped in the intellectual
and moral virtues that can be derived from tradition, but is nonetheless open
to the insights to be gleaned from contemporary understandings of the
education process.
This thesis has proposed that the essentials of Freire’s conscientisation

method provide the focus for a critical contemplative curriculum. This
approach to education, which has at its core the pedagogy of the question, is
designed to break open the monopoly that powerful social, economic and
political interests hold over how the very content and process of education
itself is designed and implemented. Freire’s key insight that such traditional
“banking” models of education enslave the individual, while a liberating
model of education empowers the individual to take control of their own
destiny, thereby leading them to freedom, is a constant motif of this thesis. In
a contemporary context, where many feel powerless to cope with the
consequences of global capitalism, Freire’s insight, that it is through coming
to understand the forces that shape consciousness that freedom is discovered,
seems vital and urgent in Catholic schools. Consequently, it was proposed
that a curriculum that helps students to interrogate their lifeworld by asking
critical questions would need to be fashioned if student learning was to be
oriented towards integral freedom. Through question-asking the student
uncovers the ideological stance which lies behind the ‘knowledge’ or

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‘perspective”, which they are being asked to accept as ‘truth’. Freire’s key
questions are vital and relevant in the formation of curriculum in the
contemporary Catholic school; questions such as: “Who produces and defines
education? What counts as curriculum knowledge? In what ways do school
structures and classroom dynamics reproduce the values and norms
embodied in the accepted social relations of the wider social structure? Whose
interests does this knowledge serve?” and, “What kind of participation
students, parents, teachers, and grassroots movements have in the discussion
around the organisation of content (curriculum design)”.925
Such open questioning has the power to lead the whole school into
challenging educational territory. The school community that asks these kinds
of questions can no longer be a docile, passive and compliant facilitator of
someone else’s will; they cannot passively and unquestioningly accept the
impositions and directives of higher educational authorities. They put all new
theories and impositions to the test of their own practice and evaluate them in
the light of what they perceive and interpret from their own experience and
learning. Such an approach flies in the face of traditional hierarchical models
of educational bureaucracy, which tends to offer unquestioning assent to the
dictates of corporate ideologues.
The school community that claims this discerning agency will understand
that a curriculum that is humanly created can be humanly transformed. Such
a school is one that will always think about practice.926 Critical educators can
engender in the contemplative Catholic educator a much greater awareness
that there needs to be more intense discussion concerning convergences,
contradictions, tensions and paradoxes that are created when Catholic culture
exists within the context of a wider more dominant corporate culture. In such

926 Ibid.

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a context Catholic schools may explicitly teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ
through the explicit curriculum, but may be implicitly teaching something
contradictory through the ‘hidden’ or ‘null’ curriculum.
Critical theory and contemplative practice are co-joined in a curriculum that

desires to bring about a consciousness in each member of the school
community of what it means to be free from the forces which cause distortion,
injustice and unfreedom in a complex postmodern context.
Orientation No.8: To Fashion School Communities of Resistance,

Solidarity, and Promotion of the Common Good
Nelson Mandela has observed that a person cannot be free if they are taking
away someone else’s freedom.927 In a sense then, every human being is
unfree. Since all humanity is connected as a human community and yet
deeply divided by injustice and inequality no-one can be free. Pedro Arrupe’s
oft-quoted insight that, “if there is hunger anywhere in the world, then our
celebration of the Eucharist is somehow incomplete everywhere in the
world”, has the ring of a profound and disturbing truth. It is impossible, in
our divided world, to conceive of a quality of love that does not include
action to change the world. It is also impossible to conceive of a Catholic
education that does not induct each student into such a perspective. To
become conscious of how the world functions, socially, politically and
economically is the beginning of resistance to injustice and inequality. It is
with this knowledge base that the student comes to understand how best to
respond. But as was highlighted in previous chapters, there are ideological
factors which can prevent students and teachers from accessing the
knowledge and understanding needed if they are to become engaged in
927 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, 1st ed.
(Boston: Little Brown, 1994), 544.

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action to transform the world. The powerful forces of corporate ideology

labour to keep the public in a state of distraction and ignorance. In a critical
contemplative context, students and staff would work to resist this attempt to
subvert and colonise the true mission of the Catholic school. The whole school
ethos would emphasise in teaching and modelling, the importance of the
‘other’ in all human activity and relationships. It would teach and model the
belief that being educated is not a question of conforming to conventional
norms, nor is it gaining honour in a strictly hierarchical societal structure; it is
instead to be compassionate, to seek relationship, particularly with the
excluded, and to seek truth and justice. This ultimately is what it means to
“put on the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).
In a corporatised culture, such an education is countercultural; it

consequently could to be embarked upon successfully only if networks of
solidarity and dialogue are created. By establishing justice and outreach
groups within the school as well as tapping in to wider global networks such
webs of solidarity can be established. It would be important also to study
those who model such prophetic and engaged way of being in the world.
Students and staff can derive inspiration from conscientised human beings
who lead the way and show what it means to be a true human; those who
embody what it means to follow one’s deepest conscience and who model
what it means to have the courage to speak the truth about the world. These
can be historical figures such as Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone
Weil, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Edith Stein and Oscar Romero,
but equally important from a learning perspective is to establish connections
with contemporary communities of resistance. All over the world there are
individuals and groups attempting to network in order to find ways of
establishing a new way of understanding humanity – many of those referred
to in this thesis have been or are instrumental in this movement.
Contemporary visionaries such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Joan Chittister, Jean
Vanier, Helen Prejean, Jon Sobrino, Timothy Radcliffe, Elizabeth Johnson,

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Richard Rohr and John Dear are attempting to do what Merton did in the
1960s – to reclaim for the Church the vital role that faith and spirituality can
play in creating a healthy, just and harmonious world.
This option for a critical contemplative education is unashamedly partisan. It

stands firmly on the side of truth and justice and confronts destructive
ideologies that undermine humanity, the common good, and the solidarity of
the human community. Rabbi Lerner describes two different interpretations
of religion: one, seeks to dominate and control and forges associations with
conservative interest groups; the other, seeks to share power, defend human
rights and defend justice by promoting the common good for all.928 Critical
contemplative education promotes the latter form.
It is to be noted that such an option does not imply rejection of others who do
not share this vision. Christian resistance can never involve hatred of any
kind. In the dialogue between Merton and Freire (Chapter Three) it was
pointed out that when political liberation comes to those who were victims of
oppression they can very easily slide into becoming defensive and aggressive
– just like their old masters. It is the difficult task of the critical contemplative
educator to work actively for a just world order, but at the same time to
understand, forgive and enter into genuine dialogue with those who
perpetrate injustices at a personal, communal and global level.929 This will
inevitably mean – as Merton highlighted – confronting the oppressor within
one’s own heart; not just confronting, but forgiving as well. For the critical
contemplative is aware that whatever the negative character traits, no matter
how high the walls of fear, there is a person, a sacred being who is the
dwelling place of God, who may also be trapped in a cycle of fear and
928 Lerner, The Left Hand of God 1-2, 41, 108–09.

929 For an elaboration of this argument see Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, The Art of
Forgiveness: Theological Reflections on Healing and Reconciliation (Geneva: WCC
Publications, 1997), i–xi.

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oppression. Since this is the case, forgiveness and the nonviolence that such
sacredness and humanity implies, is the option that the critical contemplative
must choose and must teach. The one who forgives the oppressor is in fact
expressing a great hope for them; it expresses a deep yearning that they too
will abandon fear and self-destruction and embrace the freedom of self-giving
love.
Orientation No.9: To Take Action to Transform the World
One of the inspiring aspects of the work of critical educators is their well-
founded belief that a different, more just future is possible for humanity.
However, in presenting visions of a more just and egalitarian future there is
always the danger of designing a utopia. This, as Kasper points out, is just as
dangerous as ideology; for “if ideology represses human freedom, utopia
expects too much of it”.930 Critical contemplative education is not a grand
plan to be foisted on the world in a self-righteous manner; it is not another
ideology. What it does offer is a strategy for living the gospel faithfully in the
contemporary world at a grassroots level. It is concerned to bring to
consciousness a knowledge of the political, social, cultural and spiritual forces
that shape our response to the world and to God, to the sacred ground of the
local school where one is situated; it is a ‘here and now’, ‘in this place’, vision
for Catholic education. The contemplative dimension seeks to let the work of
the school be the work of God.
Critical contemplative education represents a credible and responsible option

at a time when humanity is faced with a choice between moving along a path
of collective self-destruction which corporatism represents, or, joining
together in a cooperative effort to humanise the world for the benefit of the
entire human race. This is not utopianism, but constitutes instead a re-

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imagining of one’s inner relationship with God and with the world. This re-
imagining will involve a certain “purification of one’s loyalties”,931 where each
staff member and student will be invited to ask hard questions and make a
certain choices.
Though critical contemplative education has a strong element of critique, it

does not follow that it is a negative or destructive way of perceiving learning.
Critique is always engaged in with the aim of rediscovering the beauty and
wonder of existence, and with savouring the joy that is to be discovered in
being fully engaged with life and with the world. In this sense it is a joyful
“yes” to life. To live life with openness, integrity, compassion and joy is a
profound expression of hope. To live in such a counter-cultural manner will
inevitably involve an embrace of the pain and suffering in the world, but such
an embrace may (paradoxically) lead to deeper conviction, a richer exerience
of solidarity and the release of a new imagination.932
The critical contemplative school then, will be a place where there is a curious
combination of resistance against, and embrace of, contemporary culture: a
resistance against all that dehumanises in culture – particularly corrosive
corporatism, and an embrace of our contemplative nature which nurtures the
growth of the individual toward a full humanity through an ongoing process
of inner transformation.
Orientation No.10: To Embrace the Joys and Hopes of the Poor
The hermeneutics of a critical contemplative education are “to love Yahweh
931 Massaro, Living Justice, 200. See also John Eagleson and Philip J. Scharper, Puebla
and Beyond: Documentation and Commentary (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979), 252.
932 The emphasis on the “embrace of pain” and “release of a new imagination” are
influenced by the writings of Walter Brueggemann. See in particular Walter
Brueggemann, Hope within History (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987).

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… to do justice to the poor and oppressed”.933 Catholic schools have a long

history of serving the most disadvantaged.934 But the task of defining
disadvantage in a globalised, postmodern context is very difficult. To some
extent, as this thesis has argued, corporatism, to varying degrees makes
everyone poor since “the vast majority of us, who see ourselves as free, are
really captives of the same structures and forces that cause the poverty and
oppression we wish to eliminate”.935 Global corporations have created
enormous wealth, but much of that wealth has been generated at great cost to
the environment, the exploitation of the weak, and greater inequality of
wealth distribution.936 While there is some trickle-down effect, corporatism
concentrates the wealth into a smaller proportion of the population, and that
minority then use their vast wealth to impose their will on the rest by shaping
social and political institutions to serve their ideology and their wants. The
Christian way contests this approach. As Merton argued, “a theology of love
cannot be allowed merely to serve the interests of the rich and powerful …
while exhorting the poor and underprivileged to practice patience [and]
meekness”.937 There cannot be a credible theology of love that does not
involve action to change unjust ways of organising human society, and no
933 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation

(Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1973), 194. Gutiérrez is echoing the prophetic
summons “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”.
(Micah 6:8)
934 As the Congregation for Catholic Education points out, right from the days of
their first appearance in Europe, Catholic schools have generously served the needs
of the “socially and economically disadvantaged” and have given “special attention
to those who are weakest”. On the Threshold, no. 15.
935 Frank Marangos “Liberation theology and Christian education theory” in Astley,
Francis, and Crowder, Theological Perspectives 188.
936 For a well-substantiated analysis of the global trend towards increasing inequality
and disparity of wealth and wellbeing see Wright, A Short History of Progress, 124–28.
937 “Toward a Theology of Resistance” in Merton, Faith and Violence, 10–12.

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gospel stance so radically contests corporatist ethos and ideology as does

solidarity with the poor.938
A critical contemplative education seeks to make a theology of love real by

modelling a different form of human organisation. Groome argues that the
truly Christian vision is for education is one that is “a Humanising Education,
for life, for all.”939 Christian community is a radically inclusive form of human
organisation, where the gifts of all are celebrated and the goods of humanity
which are gifted from a gracious God for the common good, are shared for
the benefit of all. In the concrete local situation this will mean that those who
are weakest and most vulnerable, financially, psychologically and spiritually
will feel welcome; they will genuinely experience inclusion as equals. This
sense of belonging and inclusiveness is not extended out of pity and
misguided charity, but because those who are weakest and most vulnerable
have a gift to offer at an individual level, as well as at a communal and
societal level.940 In a school context, when the teacher becomes truly present to
those who are in the weak position, they can discover that it is they that need
to learn from the one they are teaching.941 This is the lesson Freire learned at a
young age and a lesson that can still be learned by every prospective
teacher.942 A truly dialogical context is the only context that allows everyone
to be truly present to each other so that the gifts of the weakest most
938 For an elaboration of this perspective see Astley, Francis, and Crowder, Theological
Perspectives 189.
940 For an expansion of this idea see Gutiérrez and Barr, The Power of the Poor,
Gustavo Gutiérrez and Matthew J. O'Connell, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the
Innocent (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987).
941 Here, Jean Vanier’s writings on the philosophical underpinnings of his L’Arche
communities are being adapted to an Catholic educational context. See for example
Vanier, Community and Growth, ———, Becoming Human.
942 See Appendices 2&4

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disempowered members of the community can be revealed, valued, shared

and celebrated.
Any theory of community inclusiveness is credible and convincing only if it

reflects a praxis of inclusiveness to which it corresponds. Inclusiveness is real
when each member of the community makes themselves vulnerable to the
brokenness of the world that they experience in their own lives as well as in
the people they meet. The suffering that is encountered through such
vulnerability does not crush or destroy, but becomes the source of strength to
take action to transform the world and bring it into conformity with the
yearning for justice and freedom that is embedded in every human heart. The
openness to the needy in one’s own immediate community naturally opens
one’s heart to those who are needy in the global community.
Concluding Remarks: Opening to “a future full of hope”

(Jer 29:11)
This thesis has proposed that corporatism presents a significant challenge to

the integrity of Catholic education. Though corporatism represents a way of
interpreting human existence and of organising society that has always been
part of the human story, it has now metamorphosed into an ideology that
dominates business, public institutions, culture and consciousness. It signifies
therefore a way of being in the world that has the potential to block the
possibility of freedom. Nonetheless, the argument of this thesis has been, that
the violent normalcy of corporatist ideology is not the inevitable destiny of
humankind. Human beings created civilization and culture, therefore, as
Freire and Giroux articulate, human beings can undo what is negative and
destructive – another possibility always remains open and viable. This too is
the message of the contemplative tradition which communicates the belief
that freedom can be found by attaching oneself to the transformative way of
Jesus Christ and detaching oneself from false self and the false promises that
ideology promotes.

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The reality is, that an alternative to corporatism does have to be found, since
an ideology that requires constant economic growth and condemns billions of
people to a state of servitude is neither sustainable or desirable. If
transformation is to be initiated, education has to be a key catalyst in that
transformation process. This thesis has attempted to set an orientation for the
contribution that Catholic educational institutions can make to the
transformation of education, so that a more enriched and expansive way of
perceiving what it means to be a human in the world can be discerned and
concretised. It does not represent a fanciful utopianism, but a viable
transformative vision which generates genuine eschatological hope for
humanity. It is an educational vision that straddles the tension between
acceptance of the world as it is, and a longing for a more humanised, just
social order.
From a critical contemplative perspective, it is the profoundest expression of

hope in the possibility of human transformation when the teacher, and/or
school leader, desires to draw the school community beyond the idolatrous
propensities of corporate culture through a conscientisation process which
intentionally chooses to break out of the prison of compulsion and greed, and
walk to freedom through compassion, solidarity and communion. The critical
contemplative understands that if this can be achieved in the smallest of ways
where one’s feet are planted, then a profound hope springs up for a
transfigured world. Ultimately, a critical contemplative Catholic education is
one that mediates a divine therapeutic healing for the individual, and the
community. Such an education is the practice of freedom and constitutes an
anticipation, a yearning for, and manifestation of the reign of God.

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Appendices
Appendix 1a: Experiences which formed Freire’s vision for

an education that is the practice of freedom
Difficult experiences, particularly of poverty and marginalisation, were the

most powerful influences on Freire’s dialogical vision for education as the
practice of freedom. These experiences deepened his conviction that a new way
of educating was not only desirable, but also possible if both poor and rich
were to be emancipated from the oppressive power of the existing social and
political order.
Paulo Freire was born in Recifé on September 19, 1921, into a middle class
family.943 At the age of seven, his family suffered severe financial difficulties
due to the onset of the great depression. The next eight-to-ten years were
marked by great difficulty and hardship. From time to time during this period
he even experienced real physical hunger; this had a profound impact on
him.944 The loss of social position put him in touch with the world of the poor.
“By falling into poverty,” he says, “I learned from experience what social class
meant.”945 It was this experience which forged in Freire a sense of “solidarity
with the children from the poor outskirts of town”946 He made real friends
with the poor and this was to have a profound impact on his later
943 Freire, Letters to Cristina, 21–22, Freire and Macedo, Literacy, 30, Taylor, Texts of
Paulo Freire, 14.
945Ibid., 28–29.

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philosophical outlook.947 His impulse to enter into dialogue with the

significant ‘other’ has its roots in this early experience. Through his own
“difficult, if not tragic”948 experience of poverty, he learned how humiliating it
is to be poor, and came to understand that poverty affects every aspect of
one’s life,949 so he “learned to respect those who find themselves in a position
of weakness or frailty.”950 When he and his family were treated with
indignity by others, he came to understand how vulnerable the poor are to
abuse by those who have power over them.951
His father had strong political views and “was the first we heard to criticise
the divide between manual and intellectual work”.952 He remembers his
constant comments about the disrespect for liberty, the abuse of power, the
arrogance of the rulers, the silencing of the people, the disrespect for public
property, and corruption.953 Of his own disposition as a child Freire recalls
that he was gifted with curiosity, a taste for listening, discipline and
perseverance.954 He learned about the value of dialogue from his parents and
was never was afraid to ask questions.955
These same proclivities and concerns constitute a consistent refrain in Freire’s

own writings. According to his own testimony it is clear that the seeds of his
revolutionary liberatory vision for a dialogical education that is the practice of

949 See Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 29.
951 Ibid., 41, 69.
952 Ibid., 42.
953 Ibid., 43, 74–76, Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 29, Freire, Pedagogy of the
City, 55..
954 Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 54, 94.

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freedom, were sown through his family formation as well as through his
traumatic childhood experiences of poverty and hardship.
Towards Young Adulthood: An awareness of ‘The Other’ Grows
As an adolescent he became “passionately attracted to linguistic problems”, 956

and began to dream of seeing himself teaching the syntax of the Portuguese
language. By the time he was eighteen he was profoundly interested in
linguistics, philology, and the philosophy of language, which led him to
general theories of communication. This in turn generated a special interest in
issues of meaning.957
It was at this time that he discovered teaching as his love,958 but his time at
SESI959 was another decisive moment in his development as a dialogical
educator.960 He refers to this time as his “foundation time”. Without this
experience with the peasants, he reveals, “it would be almost impossible to
have written Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.961 Here we see the first blossoming of
his critical dialogical approach to education, an approach that will typify and
dominate Freire’s philosophy of education from this time onwards. He
observed that SESI (the organisation) was paternalistic, condescending and
sought to domesticate workers.962 This negative experience sowed the seeds of
956 Ibid., 63, 79, ———, Pedagogy of the City, 96.

959 SESI is an acronym for ‘The Social Service of Industry’. See Gadotti, Reading Paulo
Freire, 6.
960 He refers to the importance of this experience to his own formation on a number
of occasions. See Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 29, Freire, Pedagogy of the
City, 110, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 13ff, ———, Letters to Cristina, 82.
961 Freire, Letters to Cristina, 82, ———, Pedagogy of the City, 110.

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the idea of developing a new way of approaching education: a method based

on empowerment as opposed to disempowerment; discernment and dialogue
as opposed to deposition of knowledge.
He says of this time that his dealings with the poor had “vaccinated” him
against what he called, “an elitist arrogance”.963 They taught him that, he
should “never dichotomise these two sets of knowledge, the less rigorous one
from the much more rigorous one”.964 This is an insistence that recurs
consistently in Freire’s writings, and, as will be demonstrated, lies at the heart
of his conception of dialogical praxis. Experience and rigorous study cannot be
separated in Freire’s eyes.965
Exile: A New Vision Affirmed
In early 1961 he was appointed director of the newly created Cultural

Extension Service at the University of Recifé.966 Using some methods he had
begun to develop at SESI, he started to confront the enormous problem of
illiteracy in the region, bringing thousands of illiterate peasants throughout
the North-East into literacy Culture Circles. A ‘Culture Circle’ (Circulo de
Cultura) is a group of individuals involved in learning to read and write. A
significant part of this learning process involves a political analysis and
dialogue about the reasons for their existential situation; the peer group
engages in a social and political “reading” of the world.967 Since his literacy
963 Ibid, Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 29.

967 For an extended description see ———, The Politics of Education, viii, Tom Heaney,
“Issues in Freirean Pedagogy”,
http://nlu.nl.edu/ace/Resources/Documents/FreireIssues.html. (Accessed 12 June

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method achieved remarkable results President Goulart put him in charge of

the national literacy programme in nineteen-sixty-four.968 But a US backed
military coup put a stop to his work, and, in 1964; he was arrested and
accused of being “a traitor to Christ and the Brazilian people”.969 Freire was
imprisoned, stripped of his rights as a citizen, and sentenced into exile.970
Freire subsequently revealed that his rather gloomy perspective on the
incapacity of conventional education models to transform society came to
birth at this time.971
In 1967 he finished Education: the Practice of Freedom. In this foundational text

he describes the new dialogical literacy method he had developed.972 It was at
this time also, over a two-year period (1967-1968), that he wrote Pedagogy of
the Oppressed973 and this “quickly established Freire’s international reputation
as a radical, even revolutionary, pedagogue.”974
During his time with the WCC (World Council of Churches), from 1970 to
1979, he gained entry to many international educational programs.975
Probably the most important, in terms of the development of his own
thinking, and the most celebrated, in terms of the controversy it generated,
1999).
968 See “Obituary: Paulo Freire”, The Tablet, 17 May 1997, 647, Taylor, Texts of Paulo
Freire, 24, E. de Kadt, Catholic Radicals in Brazil (London: Oxford University Press,
1970), 104, Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 6.
969 Editorial, “Obituary: Paulo Freire”, The Tablet, 17 May 1997, 647.
970 Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 27, Miguel Arraes, Brazil: The People and the Land
(Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1969).
971.Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 30–33.
974 ———, The Politics of Education.
975 Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 11–14.

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were the efforts to establish a literacy program in Guinea-Bissau.976 From this

experience he learned the importance of learning about the culture of the
‘other’. “I learned,” he recalls, “that the very nature of my task called for
learning about others’ cultures so that I could teach them a little of what I
think is valid.”977 This orientation toward enculturation was to become a
central pillar of Freire's dialogical approach.
The origin of his advocacy of the political dimension of the education process
has its source in this time of exile. 978 He was “reborn” with a new
consciousness of politics, education and transformation.979 So much so, that
the first book published after his exile was entitled The Politics of Education. In
this book he gave expression to what he later was to call a pedagogy of the
question where he advocates the hermeneutic of suspicion: “each day be ready
not to accept what is said just because it is said … each day investigate,
question, and doubt … it is always necessary … not to be overly sure of
‘certainties’.”980
Homecoming and Practical Action for Freedom
Freire returned to Brazil 1980,981 and took up a post as Professor of Philosophy

of Education at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo and the
976 See Pedagogy in Process. See also, ———, The Politics of Education, 184–85, Freire
and Macedo, Literacy, 96–98, Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 107. For a
detailed discussion see Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 46, Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation,
12, Facundo, “Freire Inspired Programs in the United States and Puerto Rico: A
Critical Evaluation”, Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, Heaney, “Freirean Pedagogy”.
977 Freire, The Politics of Education, 182, Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 31.
978 Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 31–32.
979 Ibid., 33.

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public Universidade de Campinas in São Paulo.982 In 1989 he was appointed

education secretary for the city of São Paulo. In the three years under his
control until his resignation in 1991 he attempted to ‘democratise’ education
in that municipality by introducing sweeping changes in the areas of
curriculum, teacher training, school governance and literacy training. 983
This practical action during his time as education secretary clearly affected his
educational vision. His final publications evidence the accumulated wisdom
and learning gleaned from a lifetime of putting his dialogical method into
practice. His late publications all concentrate very heavily on the dialogical
imperative of teaching and learning.984
The Release of a new imagination: Freire’s Educational Vision

Emerges
In keeping with his own philosophy of coherence, one can see the consistency
between Freire’s life-experience and his pedagogical vision. Freire’s research
and writing gives evidence of his learning until the time of his death. The
more one understands his formative experiences the more his liberating
vision of education as the practice of freedom comes sharply into focus. His
encounters with the poor, (as a boy and as young adult), his experience of
exile, his literacy work in many different countries and contexts, his practical
initiatives as director of education in São Paulo, all these experiences have
given his educational vision its dialogical, critical and liberatory shape and
content.
Freire was always in dialogue; in dialogue with his own experience, the

983 Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 98–107.
984 See Freire, Pedagogy of the City, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, ———, Letters to Cristina,
———, Teachers as Cultural Workers.

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experience of others, and his perceptions of the world around him. This
dialogue and openness led to the transformation of his consciousness.
Certainly, dialogue lies at the heart of Freire’s vision and understanding of
human learning; it comprises the core ingredient of his vision and praxis, a
process which, as will be argued later in this chapter, is essentially a dialogue
between practice (experience) and theory.
When speaking of his experience it is important to refer also to his intellectual

or theoretical formation. Freire’s vision for the educational process resulted
from the integration of what he learned from experience into what he learned
as a scholar and vice versa. An identification of some of the scholars who
profoundly influenced his educational theories proves instructive. In Freire
one hears echoes of many influential thinkers who paved the way for his
philosophy of education as the practice of freedom.

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Appendix 1b: Freire’s Intellectual Formation: Groundwork

for a Dialogical, Prophetic Imagination
For Freire, authentic knowing emerges from a conversation between

appropriated experience and academic study. Sprinkled throughout his
writings one finds a large number of writers that he acknowledges as having
had a profound impact on his thinking and perception.985 Appendix 1 charted
the experiences that formed his dialogical vision, this appendix outlines those
intellectual influences that most profoundly affected his educational
philosophy.
Taylor is one of the few scholars to focus on Freire’s training in classical

philosophy as an important formative source for his vision. As Professor of
the History and Philosophy of Education at the University of Recifé, Freire
had an intimate knowledge of educational theorists “from Aristotle, via Hegel
985 In Pedagogy of the Oppressed he reveals the influence of Hegel as well as

revolutionary Marxist thinkers such as Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Camilo Torres
and Fidel Castro and Christian Marxists such as Eric Fromm and Reinhold Niebuhr,
see Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 27, 35, 67, 102, 38. Some of these appear again in
The Politics of Education and this time Helder Camâra is added. ———, The Politics of
Education, 141, Footnote 11. He acknowledges the influence of the Brazilian
sociologist Gilberto Freyre in Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 20. In
Pedagogy of the City he again adds figures such as the French educator George
Snyders and Alfred N. Whitehead. Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 88, 98. In Pedagogy of
Hope he actually lists some of the people who have been the greatest influence on
him; “Marx, Lukács, Fromm, Gramsci, Fanon, Memmi, Sartre, Kosik, Agnes Heller,
M. Ponty, Simone Weil, Arendt, Marcuse [and] many others”. ———, Pedagogy of
Hope, 18. This list of influences is repeated in ———, Letters to Cristina, 80. Though he
later adds Cabral to the list, ———, Letters to Cristina, 116. In work he also makes
special reference to the influence of Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age. ———,
Letters to Cristina, 124.

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to Rousseau”.986 Taylor argues that from Aristotle Freire imbibed the

following ideas: learning to learn to read the world; the inseparability of theory
and practice (Praxis); the distinction between humans and animals, in that
humans are capable of being other; and the use of generative words in the
learning of language.987 It is certainly true to say that Freire’s pedagogy is
fundamentally Aristotelian in so far as Aristotle’s insights into the role of
cognition and intentionality in the learning process are clearly reflected in
Freire’s work.988
It is necessary to go back further than Aristotle when identifying the

influences on Freire’s thought, particularly in regard to his dialogical vision. It
can be argued that his understanding of dialogue is closely aligned with that
of Socrates.989 As was the case with Socrates, Freire’s dialogues have as their
object the enlightenment of the learner.990 Through strategic questioning the
986 Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 45ff.

987 Ibid.
988 It is important to mention that while Freire’s orientation is Aristotelian, he does
not share Aristotle’s views on social class relations. In keeping with the accepted
norms of his time Aristotle accepted the existence of the Master/Slave relationship;
that he sees it as being part of “a universal natural pattern”. See Aristotle, The Politics,
64ff, 69. Freire follows Hegel in his rejection of the validity of the master slave
relationship. See G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (London: Harper & Row,
1967), part 3. Freire’s vision of the ideal teacher, however, bears a remarkable
similarity to the ideal person described by Aristotle; even Freire’s language is similar.
See Freire, Pedagogy of the City, 50, 140, ———, Pedagogy of Hope, 61, ———, Teachers
as Cultural Workers, 4, Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book III.
989 The connection between all these scholars is maintained through Plato; Aristotle
being a pupil of Plato, and Plato in turn being a pupil of Socrates. See Richard
Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our
World View (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 25–72, 177–90.
990 It must be pointed out that unlike Socrates, who saw the knowledge holder as

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learner is led to see that their existing understanding is limited, thus readying
themselves for a more sophisticated and profound understanding. This
process is really at the heart of Freire’s conscientisation method. It is
profoundly dialogical in the Socratic sense. Following Socrates, Freire argues
that by “discovering that they are capable of knowing ... [the learner learns]
by assuming themselves, taking themselves as cognising subjects, and not as
an object upon which the discourse of the educator impinges.”991 If, as Tarnas
suggests, Socrates “often referred to himself as an intellectual midwife,
through his dialectical skill bringing to birth the latent truth in another’s
mind,”992 then Freire is his pedagogical disciple.993
There is little doubt that Freire’s philosophy has been deeply influenced by
those classical philosophers who have ‘formed’ the western mindset. Careful
study of Freire’s Conscientisation method reveals a close connection with
many of the insights into human freedom and the process by which one
becomes free that was conceived by such philosophers as Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle. But Freire does not simply ‘borrow’ their ideas; he refashions them
in the light of the development of human thought which has occurred in the
enlightening the learner, Freire saw enlightenment as a two way process: the teacher
and learner enlightening each other. His dialogical exchanges have, nevertheless, a
Socratic dialogical quality about them.
992 Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped
Our World View, 40.
993 See Appendix 2 for a ‘text book’ example of Freire’s embodiment of his vision of
learning through Socratic dialogue. It represents a penetrating example of Freire’s
“intellectual midwifery” Ibid. and clearly illustrates his debt to Socrates. All the
features of the Socratic method of teaching and learning are in evidence: the learner,
by responding to the strategic questioning of the teacher, comes to a deeper
understanding of issue in question, through their own intelligent reasoning abilities
and thereby move from a state of “ignorance”, to a state of “knowing”.

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intervening cultural periods. If the source of his thinking reaches back into
classical philosophy, his unique philosophy of education and mode of
expression is likewise shaped by many Enlightenment and post-
enlightenment intellectuals. Excepting Christian social theory, it is responsible
to argue that Georg Hegel and Karl Marx exerted the most profound
influence on Freire’s vision of education as the practice of freedom.
The Formation of Critical Consciousness: To be Free, is to be

Conscious of Freedom
The dialectic between the Master and the Slave, developed by Hegel, can be
considered the principal theoretical framework of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.994
A close reading of this text reveals the influence of The Phenomenology of the
Mind and The Philosophy of History.995 For Hegel, history was not to be
understood simply as a set of facts, but as the reasons why the facts happened
as they did. Similarly, for Freire, human freedom for any individual is only
real if one is conscious of being free. Freedom and consciousness therefore are
inextricably linked.996 For Hegel, our consciousness is a progress towards
absolute knowledge of the Absolute, the Spirit which can be identified with
the Christian God.997 For Hegel and Freire, freedom has a dialectical quality; a
person becomes aware of their freedom through the stages of consciousness
by which they recognise “their not being free” (the limit situations). But they
994 See Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 74.

995 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy
of History, Great Books in Philosophy (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991).
996 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 10ff.
997 For a discussion of the relationship between Hegelian thought and Christian
theology see Timothy G. McCarthy, The Catholic Tradition: The Church in the Twentieth
Century (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1998), 33, D. MacCulloch, Groundwork of Christian
History (London: Epworth Press, 1987), 258–59.

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also recognise that these are not simply given, they are not immutable.
Accordingly they are able to intervene in those self-same limit situations and
create the possibility of them being otherwise.998 Due to this possibility of
intervention on the part of the individual, all human beings are consequently
in a state of progress, or becoming. This way of understanding the growth
and education of the human being resonates forcefully in Freire’s works.
To Change Perception: The Essential Task
The influence of Marx and Marxist thought is particularly apparent in Freire’s

early writings.999 The synthesis of two seemingly opposed ideologies
(Christianity and Marxism) that is evident in this work is one of the most
problematic aspects of Freire’s philosophy.1000
Marx’s insistence that the task of philosophy is not just to interpret the world,
but to change it, is clearly in evidence in Freire.1001 Not only his terminology,
but many of Marx’s key perceptions and ideas re-emerge particularly in
998 In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire like Hegel argues that people must perceive
their limit situations and contradictions in their lives if they are to overcome them.
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 71–72.
999 The similarity of not only the subject matter but also the language used is striking.
If one reads, for example, the opening section of Part 1 of The Manifesto of the
Communist Party, one is struck by the similarity of Freire’s rhetoric and language. See
for example Marx, Engels, and Moore, Manifesto, 40–41. In his writings Freire
acknowledges that many of his most formative influences include those Marxist
thinkers such as Georges Snyders, Rosa Luxemburg, Louis Althusser, E.J.
Hobsbawm, Antonio Gramsci and Karel Kosik. See Gadotti, Reading Paulo Freire, 75,
Freire, The Politics of Education, xxiii, ———, Letters to Cristina, 116, 92–95, Freire and
Faundez, Learning to Question, 54–58, Evans, Evans, and Kennedy, Pedagogies for the
Non-Poor, 22, Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 42–45.
1000 This tension was explored in Chapter Three.
1001 McCarthy, The Catholic Tradition: The Church in the Twentieth Century, 38.

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Freire’s early work: the necessity of class struggle, the inevitability of

revolution; the unity of action and reflection; human work as praxis; the
nature and function of ideology; the ideology of the ruling classes as the main
obstacle to revolutionary change, and the structure and dynamics of
alienation. As is the case with Marx and his followers, Freire wants to change
the world, and, in order to change it, the ideologies operative in the political
and economic structures of each society must be uncovered.1002 On a number
of occasions in Learning to Question, Freire repeats the Marxist critique of the
educational structure, according to which schooling is believed to reproduce
the relationships and values of the dominant class in society.1003 Following
Marx, and particularly Marxist thinkers such as Gramsci, Freire argues that all
humans are capable of dialogue and can negotiate their own path to freedom.
This perspective counteracts the hegemonic relationships which have been set
up by the ‘elites’.
Freire’s revolutionary rhetoric, however, is tempered somewhat by his

commitment to Christian thought and practice. His attempt to fuse Marxism
with Christianity was, according to his own testimony, deeply influenced by
other Christian Marxist thinkers. Both Reinhold Niebuhr and Erich Fromm
are referred to on a number of occasions in Freire’s texts.1004 Niebuhr was
particularly eloquent in pointing out the ways in which the attitudes of the
powerful classes keep the poorer classes in a subjugated state, and
1002 His definition of ideology, as a symbolic framework of the mind that legitimates
the power and privileges of the dominant group and sanctions social evils inflicted
on the powerless, is taken directly from Marx. This interpretation of the theory of
ideology is foundational for Freire’s pedagogical approach. For an elaboration of this
perspective on Freire see Schipani, Religious Education Encounters Liberation Theology.
1003 See Freire and Faundez, Learning to Question, 30–31, 62, 76–80.
1004 See for example Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 35, 51, 101–02, ———, The
Politics of Education, 123, 28.

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highlighted the contradictions that those attitudes and values entailed for any
thinking Christian.1005 He also makes an extensive reference to Niebuhr when
explaining how the powerful classes attempt to prevent the lower classes
from thinking, thereby thwarting their freedom.1006
Freire knew Erich Fromm personally, and Fromm’s influence is clearly

discernible in Freire’s work. Freire’s representation of the sadistic tendencies
of the oppressor’s consciousness is taken directly from Fromm. As does
Fromm, Freire presents the bourgeois world view as being basically necrophilic
(death-loving) and therefore static, unable to accept the biophilic (life-loving)
experience of Easter.1007
What these thinkers have in common is their distrust of capitalist relations.

They see it as an essentially anti-dialogical ideology that denies large numbers
of people their essential right to be free autonomous human beings. The
critique of these unjust structures and the promotion of a strongly democratic
personalist approach to human freedom was also canvassed by a number of
French philosophers, especially Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier. 1008
From Mounier, Freire picks up his extremely important theme of the
1005 See Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, particularly Chapter 5: “The Ethical
Attitudes of Privileged Classes” 113ff.
1006 See Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 101–02, Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral
Society, 169ff.
1007 See Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 5ff, Fromm,
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 433–89, Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 35, —
——, The Politics of Education, 123.
1008 Mackie argues that both these philosophers gave Freire the intellectual context in
which to forge a pedagogy of liberation. Mackie, Literacy and Revolution, 94. See also
Taylor, Texts of Paulo Freire, 35.

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318
“humanisation” of the human being.1009 Mounier was critical of traditional

Catholicism and well as European rationalism and had supported the worker-
priest movement,1010 arguing that the Church should identify ‘authentically’
with the people. This identification with, and celebration of the character and
culture of the poor, is at the core of Freire's dialogical vision. For Freire, as
with Mounier, freedom could mean only “freedom in action”. There can be no
liberty for humankind “except in creating engagement: there is no
engagement without creating a liberty” and this liberty comes, “not from
following history” but from making history.1011 In Freire, we also find the same
optimistic view of human possibility and the same insistence that human
beings have to be agents of their own liberation.
Freedom was the central concern of Jacques Maritain’s work. Maritain’s

Christian existentialism focused on authenticity and being. “To be known as
object, to see oneself in the eyes of one’s neighbour, is to be severed from
oneself and from one’s identity”, he argued.1012 For Freire also, this severance
from identity that is experienced by the oppressed is a central problem. With
Maritain, Freire believed that as subject, each person IS: they do not simply
exist.1013 The “person”, their worth and their existence, stands at the very
centre of Maritain’s philosophy. This personalist and communitarian
philosophy was appropriated by Freire. For both Freire and Maritain,
freedom is the destiny and right of every human being no matter how

1010 For an historical overview of the worker-priest movement see J. Comby and D.
MacCulloch, How to Read Church History Vol. 2 (London: SCM Press, 1989), 223.
1011 Emmanuel Mounier, Be Not Afraid: Studies in Personalist Sociology (London:
Rockliff, 1951), 141, 66.
1012 Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent (New York: Doubleday Image, 1957),
70.
1013 Ibid., 70, 76, Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 146.

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319
poor.1014
There is a large number of other scholars whose work is referred to in Freire’s

writings. For example, the ideas of a number of other European existentialists
such as Gabriel Marcel, Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Buber and Karl Jaspers
surface in Freire’s work.1015 For his understanding of the sociology of poverty,
Freire acknowledges his indebtedness to Brazilian social scientists such as
Francisco Weffort, Gilberto Freyre, Fernando de Azeveda as well as Jonathan
Kozol from the USA.1016
Finally, there is the influence of the radical emancipatory educators such as

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A.S. Neill and Ivan Illich. In Émile, Rousseau
advocated that children ought to be allowed to grow up “according to
nature”, with the minimum of intervention by teachers or parents in their
intellectual and moral development.1017 For Neill also, school should be a
place where learning was not imposed from the outside but grew out of the
individual’s own curiosity and desires. There are some echoes of these radical
perspectives in Freire’s work, though Freire invests these ideas with his own
1014 See Maritain, The Education of Man.

1015 From Marcel, Freire draws a great deal of his description of a “massified” society.
See Freire, Critical Consciousness, 19. Freire himself recognises that his concept of
banking education is similar to Sartre’s concept of “digestive” or “nutritive”
education. See ———, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 2. For an analysis of the
influence of Buber and Jaspers see Elias, Pedagogue of Liberation, 34, 36.
1016 Freire and Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation, 20, Freire, Letters to Cristina, 124, ———,
Pedagogy in Process, 1–4, Jonathan Kozol, Free Schools (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin,
1972), ———, The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1975), 193–95, ———, Children of the Revolution: A Yankee Teacher in the
Cuban Schools (New York: Delta Press, 1980), Kozol, Illiterate America.
1017See Rousseau, Emile, 38.

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320
particular perspective and nuance.1018 A radical educator who is often

mentioned in the same breath as Freire, is the Austrian educator Ivan Illich.1019
Illich’s influential work, Deschooling Society was first published the same year
as Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Like Freire, he focuses on the debilitating power
of oppression and critique of conventional education and the class system.1020
Even their respective visions bear certain similarities: Illich’s learning “webs”,
for example, are remarkably similar in form and content to Freire’s “culture
circles”.1021 Both highlight and advocate the dialogical, liberative potential of
education.
The foregoing represents a brief synthesis of the most significant influences

that Freire himself acknowledges as having a profound influence on the shape
of his thought. There are, no doubt, many other intellectuals and scholars that
could be added to the list.
1018 In 1921 Neill founded Summerhill, an international ‘free school’, where each child
could grow in near total freedom. See Neill, Summerhill.
1019 Freire and Illich were in dialogue over a number of years. Before his move to
Geneva in 1970 Freire attended two of Illich’s summer camps at Curenavaca in
Mexico. See Freire, Kennedy, and Illich, “Pilgrims of the Obvious”, 4.
1020 See Illich, Deschooling Society, 9–31, 44–48, Ivan Illich, Celebration of Awareness
(Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1973), 83–88.
1021Illich, Deschooling Society, 75–105.

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Appendix 2: Freire the Exemplar of Dialogue
The dialogue cited below,1022 represents an apposite example or Freire’s

personalist dialogical model of the education process. If the etymology of the
word education is to “draw out of” (e ducare), then the role of the educator is to
resemble that of a midwife who facilitates the birth of new vision, new
perceptions and new understanding. This dialogue exhibits Freire’s powers of
intellectual, psychological and spiritual midwifery.
Freire is in discussion with a group of peasants. The dialogue is taken up at a

point where one of the peasants claims that he is ignorant and knows very
little:
“Fine,” I had told them. “I know. You don’t. But why do I

know and you don’t?”......The answer was not long in
coming.
“You know because you’re a doctor, sir, and we’re not.”
“Right, I’m a doctor and you’re not. But why am I a doctor

and you’re not?”
“Because you’ve gone to school, you’ve read things, studied

things, and we haven’t.”
“And why have I been to school?”
“Because your dad could send you to school. Ours couldn’t.”
“And why couldn’t your parents send you to school?”
“Because they were peasants like us.”
“And what is ‘being a peasant’?”
“It’s not having an education...not owning anything...working

from sun to sun...having no rights....having no hope.”
“And why doesn’t a peasant have any of this?”

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322
“The will of god [sic].”
“And who is god?”
“The Father of us all.”
“And who is a father here this evening?”
Almost all raised their hands, and said they were.
I looked around the group without saying anything. Then I

picked out one of them and asked him, “How many children
do you have?”
“Three.”
“Would you be willing to sacrifice two of them, and make

them suffer so that the other one could go to school, and have
a good life, in Récife? Could you love your children that
way?”
“No!”
“Well, if you,” I said, “a person of flesh and bones, could not

commit an injustice like that — how could God commit it?
Could God really be the cause of these things?”
A different kind of silence. Completely different from the

first. A silence in which something began to be shared. Then:
“No. God isn’t the cause of all this. It’s the boss!”
This exchange discloses much more than his dialogical methodology. It

reveals his personalist philosophy of education; his conscientisation method;
his deep respect for the experience and knowledge of the poor; and, his image
of the Transcendent.

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Appendix 3: Banking VS Problem posing Education: The

Contrast1023
“Banking” Education “Problem-Posing” Education

Education as the practice of domination Education as the practice of freedom
Teacher “deposits” knowledge on the Consists in acts of cognition, not
student. transferrals of information
Treats students as objects of assistance Makes them critical thinkers
Students not called upon “to Know" but Students are not docile listeners but are
to memorise the contents narrated by the critical co-investigators in dialogue with
teacher the teacher
Lecturing is the dominant teaching Dialogue between teacher and student is
method; dialogue is resisted the dominant teaching method. Education
regards dialogue as indispensable to the
act of cognition which unveils reality
Anaesthetises and inhibits creative power Involves a constant unveiling of reality
Attempts to maintain the submersion of Strives for the emergence of consciousness
consciousness and critical intervention in reality
Presents human beings as abstract, Denies that the human person is abstract,
isolated, independent, and unattached to isolated, independent, and unattached to
the world; it also presents the existence of the world; it also denies that the world
the world as a reality apart from human exists as a reality apart from the
beings individual human being
Uncritical acceptance of the reality which Humans develop their power to perceive
is “a given.” Reality is static, unchanging critically the way they exist in the world
and unchangeable. with which and in which they find
themselves; they come to see the world
not as a static reality, but as a reality in
process, in transformation
Attempts, by mythicising reality, to Sets itself the task of de-mythologising
conceal certain facts which explain the
way humans exist in the world
Inhibits creativity and domesticates Bases itself on creativity and stimulates

(although it cannot completely destroy) true reflection and action upon reality,
the intentionality of consciousness by thereby responding to the vocation of men
1023 This table comprises direct quotations from Freire’s work. See ———, Pedagogy of
the Oppressed, 46–59.

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isolating consciousness from the world, and women as beings who are authentic
thereby denying men and women their only when engaged in inquiry and
ontological and historical vocation of creative transformation
becoming more fully human
Theory and practice, as immobilising Theory and practice take men and
and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge women’s historicity as their starting point;
women and men as historical beings problem-posing education affirms humans
as beings in the process of becoming – as
unfinished, uncompleted beings in and
with a likewise unfinished reality ... men
and women are aware of their
incompleteness ... In this incompleteness
and this awareness lie the very roots of
education as an exclusively human
manifestation; the unfinished character of
the human person and the
transformational character of reality
necessitate that education be an ongoing
activity
Reinforces a fatalistic perception of one’s Education is revolutionary futurity; is
situation prophetic; presents a fatalistic perception
of the situation as a problem.
Isolation and individualism emphasised Solidarity and fellowship emphasised
Serves the interests of the oppressor; Humanist and liberating praxis; posits as
accepts the status quo. fundamental that human beings subjected
to domination must fight for their
emancipation

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Appendix 4: A Lesson in Humility for the Teacher
Freire describes how he gave a long speech to group of parents on the subject of
child punishment. In his speech he had advocated a dialogical, as opposed to
punitive, approach to the rearing of children. When he finished, one of the
workers put up his hand and said, “Okay Doctor Paulo, you said beautiful
words just now. Doctor Paulo … I don’t know where is your house, but how
many children do you have?” Freire answers that he has five. “Okay.” Replied
the man,
your house first of all must be ... a free standing house ... with a
garden ... a good room for you and your wife...and two big
rooms for your three daughters and two boys ... your kitchen
must be very good with all the equipment, and also a shower ...
electric hot water, even in Northeast Brazil ... When you arrive
home at the end of the day, your children, they are happy,
beautiful, with clean clothes. They’ve had good food. At seven
o’clock at night, you don’t have any problems; the children will
go to bed. You don’t need to force them to sleep because they
really are sleepy. They are well, they have health, and above all,
they ate … When one of your children has some problem, the
doctor comes immediately to see what it is. But, Doctor Paulo,
this is not our situation. Our house doesn’t have even one
bedroom. One room, just one, for all the things or functions of
the house. I arrive at home tired. I did not eat well. And my five
children did not eat also. They are not clean. We can’t be – we
don’t have water. They are hungry, and they are diabolic. The
next day at four o’clock again I must be awake in order to go
again to the manufactory (sic.). I have to beat them in order for
them to sleep because I need to sleep. If I don’t sleep, I can’t
work, and they cannot be alive. Then, Doctor, don’t think that
the workers beat the children because they don’t love them. We
love our children as well as you love yours. The question is that
you have different material conditions to love, and we don’t
have. Then, for you, the fact of beating is as if we did not love
them. I would like, Doctor Paulo, to know whether in our
situation you would be very dialogical.1024
Freire says of this man that “he was one of the most important educators I had

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till today”.1025 In Pedagogy of Hope he asserts that even though
this talk was given about thirty-two years ago, I have never
forgotten it. It said to me, despite the fact that I didn’t
understand this at the time, much more than it immediately
communicated.1026
This simple peasant “in his intonations, his labourer’s syntax and rhythm, the
movements of his body, his hands of an orator, in the metaphors so common to
popular discourse”, brought home to Freire the imperative that, when teaching
others, one must understand the world which the students come from.1027 He
learned from this also that the progressive educator, “even when one must
speak to the people, one must convert the “to” to a “with” the people. And this
implies respect for the ‘knowledge of living experience’ of which I always
speak”. That night, Freire confesses, “I learned to listen”.1028
1025 Ibid.
1027 Ibid.
1028 Ibid., 27.

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327
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Changing Faith: The Experience and Resolution of Disruptive Episodes in the Faith of

Christian Emerging Adults

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Fashioning a Dialogical Vision for

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

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Name in Full: Michéal Brendan Loughnane

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FREEDOM: A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE IN CONTEXT 2

THE CHOICE OF INTERLOCUTORS 11

NOTES ON SCOPE, STYLE AND STRUCTURE 20

CHAPTER ONE: DISCERNING CATHOLIC EDUCATION 28

DISCERNING FREEDOM: THE GOALS OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 34

DISCERNMENT, THE GOALS, AND THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL 42

CHAPTER TWO: SETTING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR A REVITALISED VISION FOR

THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NON-DIALOGICAL SOCIAL AND POLITICAL WORLD 49

CONSCIENTISATION AND PEDAGOGY: FREIRE’S LIBERATING VISION 55

DIALOGICAL EDUCATION AS THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM: THE ANTIDOTE TO “BANKING” EDUCATION

PAULO FREIRE’S CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND PRACTICE: AN ASSESSMENT 87

CHAPTER THREE: UNVEILING A CRITICAL CONTEMPLATIVE VISION FOR

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THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION 102

DISCERNING CHRISTIAN POWER 117

CONTEMPLATION AND EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM 134

RESISTANCE, REORIENTATION AND FREEDOM: THE “PEDAGOGY OF THE QUESTION” 140

THE LIBERATING TEACHER: A CONTEMPLATIVE AT HEART 155

REFLECTION ON DIALOGUE: CONCLUSIONS AND ORIENTATIONS 157

CHAPTER FOUR: BORDER CROSSING AS EDUCATION FOR LIFE: HENRY GIROUX IN

UNDERSTANDING THE POLITICAL NATURE OF SCHOOLING AS A PREREQUISITE FOR FREEDOM 162

CATHOLIC AND SECULAR VISIONS OF FREEDOM: A DIALOGUE 167

FREEING THE EDUCATORS TO EDUCATE FOR FREEDOM 171

CATHOLIC CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION AND SECULAR PROGRESSIVE HUMANISM: COMMONALITIES

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS AND “BORDER PEDAGOGY” 181

FREEDOM TO INTEGRATE FAITH AND POLITICS 185

THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY: THE STYMIEING OF FREEDOM 191

CRITICAL PERCEPTION IS DISCERNMENT 194

ENGAGED CONVERSATION: AN AVENUE TO FREEDOM AND HOPE 197

CHAPTER CONCLUSION 203

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCERNING A CRITICAL CONTEMPLATIVE VISION FOR A

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DISCERNING A CRITICAL CONTEMPLATIVE CATHOLIC EDUCATION 211

NAMING THE POWERS: DEVELOPING A CONTEMPLATIVE CRITICAL LITERACY IN THE CATHOLIC

CONTEMPLATIVE CRITICAL CATHOLIC EDUCATION: DISCERNING A WAY TO “SEE RIGHTLY” 260

CHAPTER CONCLUSION: DISCERNING AND RESISTING CORPORATISM – A VITAL ROLE OF THE

CHAPTER SIX: BUILDING A FUTURE FULL OF HOPE (THESIS CONCLUSION) 277

FUTURE ORIENTATIONS 279

CONCLUDING REMARKS: OPENING TO “A FUTURE FULL OF HOPE” (JER 29:11) 301

APPENDIX 1B: FREIRE’S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION: GROUNDWORK FOR A DIALOGICAL, PROPHETIC

APPENDIX 2: FREIRE THE EXEMPLAR OF DIALOGUE 321

APPENDIX 3: BANKING VS PROBLEM POSING EDUCATION: THE CONTRAST 323

APPENDIX 4: A LESSON IN HUMILITY FOR THE TEACHER 325

CHURCH DOCUMENTS 327

OTHER REFERENCES 328

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This thesis seeks to contribute to a practical theology of Catholic education.