First, Young raises important points about the nature of knowledge and claims to ‘truth’ and objectivity. The assumption is that everyday knowledge cannot be objective because it is too close to experience, does not have a history behind it, and is unformed or lacks any rational structure. Freire counters this by observing that:

doi:10.4324/9781315707556-14

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First, Young raises important points about the nature of knowledge and claims to ‘truth’ and objectivity. The assumption is that everyday knowledge cannot be objective because it is too close to experience, does not have a history behind it, and is unformed or lacks any rational structure. Freire counters this by observing that:

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ABSTRACT

In the ﬁrst moment, that of the experience of and in daily living, my conscious self is exposing itself to facts, deeds without, nevertheless, asking itself about them, without looking for their ‘reason for being’ . . . knowing that results from these involvements is that made from pure experience. In the second moment, in which our minds work epistemologically, the methodological rigour with which we come close to the object, having ‘distanced ourselves’ from it, that is, having objectiﬁed it, oﬀers us another kind of knowing, a knowing whose exactitude gives to the investigator or the thinking subject a margin of security that does not exist in the ﬁrst kind of knowing, that of common sense. (Freire 1998, 93)

We have a strong tendency to aﬃrm that what is diﬀerent from us is inferior. We start from the belief that our way of being is not only good but better than that of others who are diﬀerent from us. . . . The dominant class, then, because it has the power to distinguish itself from the dominated class, ﬁrst, rejects the diﬀerences between them but, second, does not pretend to be equal to those who are diﬀerent; third, it does not intend that those who are diﬀerent shall be equal. (Freire 1998, 71)