Over the past week I have been mesmerized with the story of Ingrid Betancourt, the one-time candidate for President of Colombia, kidnapped during the campaign in 2002 and held prisoner by rebels for 6 years until her rescue last week. I have been reading all I can about her career prior to the kidnapping and trying to learn more about the socio-political context in Colombia - then and now. She's one of many brave crusaders struggling for social justice in oppressive cultural contexts around the word, but represents a level of sacrifice, personal risk-taking, and profound engagement in revolutionary transformation that isworthy of examination.
Simultaneously I have been re-reading Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire's words seem to have significant bearing in reflecting upon the personal sacrifices, willing sacrifices, of Betancourt for the sake of bringing about cultural change in Colombia. Incidentally, I caught an HBO documentary titled The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt over the weekend. It was playing on CNN. It provides a very detailed backstory to her kidnapping and what transpired afteward. Betancourt's story makes me consider a number of things.
How much are we willing to sacrifice for the good of others? Can we hope to understand the true nature of oppression in a nation such as the United States? How do we form alliances with the oppressed, when we are all ultimately both oppressed and oppressors at some level ourselves. And let me be specific here; by "we" I am referring to the dominant oppressive class to which I at least partially belong, have full access to, derive great privilege from, and can retreat within at any time of my choosing. I speak here to my white brothers and sisters. If we, as educators, do indeed seek social transformation through our practice, then we have become revolutionary leaders. In Freire's terms, we have become converts to the cause of the oppressed, and seek to ameliorate that oppression through our pedagogical action. We have become humanists. However how far are we willing to go? How much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice? We do not face the reality of imprisonment in the jungle for years, however we do face the reality of confronting our own complicit role in the oppression of others. That is the true bridge to cross to become an agent of transformational change.
Freire tells us...
"Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow of ambiguous behavior. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom - which must then be given to (or imposed on) the people - is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to see as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but feels alarm at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his 'status,' remains nostalgic towards his origins."
Reformers such as Betancourt have given up pieces of their lives, if not their lives themselves, in taking a stand for the sake of the powerless. Yet even in less pressing circumstances an accomplice to social transformation must give something up, must sacrifice. Freire suggests that one thing that must first go is the privilege of imposition, of knowing what is right for the oppressed. The pathway to transformation must emerge from the interaction of converted oppressors with the oppressed in the co-construction of new truths and new ways of knowing. Certainly such ideas have profound implications for education. What would American public education look like if we made a wholesale shift to the type of sacrifice Freire is suggesting?
