Education De Montessori a los Zapatistas

near the end of the last millennium, Paulo Freire’s tome, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,1 assailed traditional educational philosophies either as bureaucratic and authoritarian based on paternalism and humanitarianism which camouflaged a “top-down” approach characterized by monotony and lethargy or as dialectic between oppressors and the oppressed. both employed a narrative style of instruction. t his narrative style metaphorically likened educators to depositors who filled their depositories with as much content as possible. t he more they deposited, the better they were at their craft. t he “containers” or “receptacles” were passive, hollow or even alienated. (One can see where Freire is coming from.) t his concept left no room for critical thinking because students were too busy storing what had been deposited. “The more meekly the receptacles permitted themselves to be filled, the better students they were”1. Compare Freire’s critique to another a few decades older: We know only too well the sorry spectacle of the teacher who, in the schoolroom, must pour certain cut and dried facts into the heads of the scholars. In order to succeed in this barren task, she finds it necessary to discipline her pupils into immobility and to force their attention 2

She likened the children in these schools, “fastened” to their desks, to butterflies mounted on pins “spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless knowledge which they have acquired.” Montessori was every bit the radical! Her first schools were founded in the san Lorenzo tenement section of Rome, Italy in 1907.