It’s rare that I pick up a book, read it, and then act on what I read. The last time I did this – around three years ago - was when I read Microsoft Access for Dummies, and created a database. Other than that, I cannot think of many books that have inspired me to action. And so it is with Daring to Dream, a posthumous collection of some of the writings, speeches, and dialogues of “perhaps the most influential education writer of our times” (Freire, 2007, back cover). Faced with Freire’s vision of education that is a reaction to social injustice and poverty, I have absolutely no plan to do anything about it.
There are essentially two big ideas (and this is a big ideas book – don’t come looking for detailed commentary) in Daring to Dream. The first is, to put it tritely, “you can make a difference.” Freire coats this truth with much verbiage about history being mutable, transformable; and he rejects a deterministic and fatalistic view of history and life. He wants the reader to understand the possibility of being the subject (i.e. the do-er) rather than the object (or the done-to) of history. This means that it is possible to do something to change the world. The second idea follows from the first: in order to sustain the belief that one can have this kind of effect on the scheme of things, in the words of Rodgers and Hammerstein: “You got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?” (Rodgers & Hammerstein, n.d.). Or, as Freire would say it, “Dreaming is…a requirement or a condition which has become permanent in the history we make and which makes and re-makes us” (Freire, 2007, p. ix).
Freire was motivated by a desire to eradicate social inequality and poverty from his native Brazil and the world. He wanted the poor to realize that power relations that pertain in the world are not mandated by laws of nature or of God. Guided by the dream of a re-invention of democracy and of liberation, they might act to change their circumstances. It was educators’ role to help them understand this, and in Chapter 5 of Daring to Dream, we witness Freire modeling the kind of participatory education that might begin to have this effect, one in which, rather than attempting to indoctrinate students with fixed truth, he invites them to create their own meanings on the subject of reading.
I desperately want to say this is inspiring. But to be inspiring, it needs to inspire something. I cannot state that the book is inspiring and do nothing, for that is a contradiction. Yet although Freire and I are both involved in and concerned about education, my circumstances are very different from his. I am no longer a teacher, but a manager in an education setting. My students are not children, they are young adults. They are not poor, but well-heeled international students seeking to be a part of the ‘global elite’ by improving their English and perhaps going on to gain a degree at an American university. I don’t have much contact with these students; I mainly deal with their teachers. And it is not my job to influence the moral content of these teachers’ lessons. So what do I do with Freire’s ‘inspirational’ message about alleviating the burden of the poor by inspiring in them a dream of the future and convincing them that they can change the world?
The effect has to be a modest and subtle one. I have read many, many books in the field of applied linguistics, and happily accept that I cannot use what I read the next day at work. What these books do is to create a deep well of knowledge and opinion within me. As I go about my daily tasks, I usually don’t need to draw from this well, but when difficulties arise, that is when I can reach in and ask, “What can inform my decision-making here?” As an example: in sociolinguistics, we learn about bilinguals and their tendency to code-switch (i.e. switch naturally from one language to another). So when questions arise about students’ use of their first language in the classroom, or why students won’t use ‘English only’ outside the classroom in the school hallways, I don’t simply try to enforce rules around this; I consider why it is that these bilingual people don’t use their second language only, and attempt to craft a solution that respects the fact that bilinguals, far from being limited to one language, can and do make use of a richness of language resources that monolinguals will never be able to access. After the problem is resolved (at least for the time being), I can put that knowledge ‘back in the well.’
I can conceive of Freire’s book as a similar addition to my store of background knowledge – it deepens my well. Maybe I cannot use his work immediately, and I cannot predict when a situation will arise in which I can use it. But one day, maybe soon, maybe a long time from now, a problem, large or small, may arise in my work in which Freire’s message that the situation is not set in stone; that I can dream of a better way; that it is right to work toward fairness in our society and in the world – can guide my decision making. At that time, I expect I will draw from Freire and let his ideas inspire me. And actually, I think this is good enough.
References
Freire, P. (2007). Daring to Dream: Toward a Pedagogy of the Unfinished. Paradigm Publishers.
Rodgers, R., & Hammerstein, O. (n.d.). Rodgers and Hammerstein: Happy Talk. Wikia. Retrieved October 15, 2010, from http://lyrics.wikia.com/Rodgers_And_Hammerstein:Happy_Talk
