Knowledge At The Level Of The Logos

Response to Question Number Two

At, by, conditions, doxa, educator, is, knowledge, level, logos, of problem-posing, role, students, superceded , to, together, true, under, with, which. You've just read twenty-one different words listed alphabetically written within the English language. It is fairly reasonable to believe that a person of average intelligence, fluent in the language would know what each and every one of these words mean. However, if not, could easily find their definitions within the pages of a dictionary, or within the confides of today's world wide web. But what would happen if the language of these words had changed, and so all of a sudden they're not written in English anymore, they're written in Spanish, or French, Arabic, or Chinese? Would their meanings change within the perceptions of there perceivers? What would happen if you took these words, and scrambled them into a statement written by Paulo Friere such as "The role of the problem-posing educator is to create together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa, is superceded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos," (266). Sure you might know what each one of these words mean, but do you really understand the crafted complexity, portraying years of frustration through the artistic arrangement of those words fused together? Do you understand what Freire is trying to express? To understand such a statement as this, one must understand the context in which it was created, the beliefs embodied within its creator, and the message in which it's part of.

Paulo Freire, a native of Recife, Brazil, he spent most of his early career working in poverty-stricken areas of his homeland, developing methods for teaching illiterate adults to read and write (as he would say) to think critically and, thereby, to take power over their own lives (258)… The choice, according to Freire, is fairly simple: teachers either work "for the liberation of the people -their humanization-or for their domestication, their domination… According to Freire, a teacher's most crucial skill is his or her ability to assist students' struggle to gain control over the conditions of their lives, and this means helping them not only to know but "to know that they know."… For Freire, reading the written word involved understanding a text in its very particular social and historical context, and re-writing what is read (259).