ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 I cited Freire’s (1970) list of attitudes and practices that characterize ‘banking’ education. As a way of beginning to tie together the loose ends of this study I would like to offer a counterlist of attitudes and practices that I have come to find central to empowerment:
• The teacher and students both teach and are taught by each other; • The teacher is aware of not knowing everything and is open to the students’
knowledge and experience, which are actively valued; • The teacher and students all engage in critical, reflective, imaginative and
collaborative thinking; • The teacher talks and listens, the students talk and listen; they engage in
dialogue; • The teacher and student interact, striving to meet each other’s needs instead of
being the respective perpetrators and victims of discipline; • The teacher and students make choices based on what is most meaningful for
them with sensitivity to each other’s verbal and nonverbal cues; • The students are actively engaged in meaningful experiences that the teacher
facilitates; • The teacher and students together decide on program content and revise and
change it as their interests and needs change; • The teacher allows her/his personal charisma, vulnerability, and humility to
create her/his authority based on mutual respect, discovery, and love for learning;
• The teacher and students form a collective Subject of the learning process, sharing joint ownership of the classroom life.
