Samy Awad Allah Jad Allah Rabah 2026/07/07 Opinion 103 Visits
The book Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Brazilian thinker Paulo Freire cannot be read in isolation from the contexts of oppression and liberation that have plagued the world for decades.
However, when this reading is transferred to Palestinian soil, words transform from mere dry educational theories to tools of daily and existential engagement.
In Palestine, education is not just a process of knowledge accumulation or a means to obtain academic certificates; rather, it is an act of existence and continuity in the face of systematic attempts at cultural erasure and genocide.
This article aims to provide an in-depth critical reading of Freire's thought, applying his core concepts to the contemporary Palestinian reality, specifically in light of the disastrous circumstances that led to what is known as 'educational points' amidst the rubble and tents in the Gaza Strip.
Here, we are not just reading a book, but we are reading a reality being reshaped by the alphabet in the face of the tank and with the pen in the face of the siege.
Freire's philosophy finds in Palestine its harshest and most authentic laboratory, where 'education as an act of freedom' becomes a tangible reality experienced every morning in lesson sessions inside tents or in schools crowded with displaced people.
Freire begins his book with a scathing critique of what he calls 'banking education'; in this model, students are viewed as empty vessels, and the teacher is the 'depositor' who fills these vessels with the knowledge deemed appropriate.
This type of education reinforces passivity, kills the spirit of critique, and transforms the individual into a being capable of adapting to the reality of oppression instead of striving to change it.
Freire sees that banking education serves the interests of the oppressors because it prevents the oppressed from recognizing their reality as active subjects in history.
In the Palestinian context, 'banking education' takes on a clear colonial dimension.
Historically, colonialism has always attempted to dominate the Palestinian mind through educational curricula, whether by erasing national terms, obscuring the Palestinian historical narrative, or imposing the oppressor's narrative as an absolute truth.
Attempts to 'Israelize' education in occupied Jerusalem, or international pressures to modify the Palestinian curricula to strip them of their resistance content, are contemporary forms of 'banking deposit' aimed at creating a 'new Palestinian human' reconciled with his defeat.
The oppressed, in this context, as Freire describes, is one who is meant to read the world through the eyes of his oppressor and adopt the values of the oppressor as criteria for success and civilization.
What characterizes the Palestinian reality is this instinctive and organized resistance to this banking model.
The Palestinian student, even in formal schools, often practices a type of 'double consciousness'; he receives the official curriculum to succeed, but he derives his true awareness from the street, from the tales of the ancestors, and from the reality of checkpoints, arrests, and wars.
This dissonance between the 'deposited information' and the 'lived reality' is what undermines the colonial banking education project.
Freire proposes a revolutionary alternative called 'problem-posing education'. This type of education is based on dialogue and equality between the teacher and the learner.
The ultimate goal is to achieve 'critical consciousness', which is the ability to recognize social, political, and economic contradictions and take action against oppressive elements in reality.
For the Palestinian, critical consciousness is not an intellectual luxury practiced by academics in university halls, but a survival instinct.
The Palestinian child who asks his teacher: 'Why can't we go to the sea of Jaffa?' or 'Why did they demolish our house?' is a child practicing 'problem posing' instinctively.
Liberatory education in Palestine begins from these existential questions; it is the education that connects geography lessons with the location of the military barrier, and history lessons with the key of return hanging around the grandmother's neck.
Freire emphasizes that consciousness goes through stages: from 'semi-rigid' consciousness that sees problems as an inevitable fate, to 'naive' consciousness...