Assignment 1c

I read Katherine's (but she goes by Katy) blog and she has two kids, 8 months and another 8 year old! :) She describes in the Freire assignment that Paulo worked with repressed, poor, illiterate people until he was thrown in jail in 1964 in Bolivia. Freire also wrote a book that sold over 750,000 copies, called Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The second blog I looked at was Anthony's. He thinks of California as a very liberal place, and lives 16.78 miles away from the SRJC campus. He then describes how Paulo Freire stressed dialogue in popular and informal in education. One term he Freire commonly used was "praxis" which is an action that is informed and linked to certain values. This information will help in our Humanities class because his ideals are a basis of what we will be learning about: studying other cultures and how their cultures differs from our own, which is exactly what Freire aimed to do. It also points out that education is a big player in any culture and humanity.

Assignment 1b

Paulo Freire was one of the most influential thinkers of the late 20^th century. His ideas have been used throughout time and are still used today, such as in this class! Some of his main ideas and facts about him are as described below:

Since Paulo was raised and became familiar with poverty and hunger at a young age, he was always dedicated to helping those who aren’t as fortunate as we are. He was a believer in a term called liberation theology, which emphasizes the Christian mission to bring justice to the poor and oppressed, often through political activism. He did this by starting a few teaching careers in his native country, and then continued to travel all around the world. He was also offered a position to be a professor at Harvard University.

He also believed that the public education system was corrupted, and not useful. So he worked to reform the system so it worked in ways to teach better. A term called “banking education” describes how learners can have pre-selected knowledge deposited in their brains, and it’s the teacher’s job to fill the open space.

Another term I believe says a lot about Freire is “culture of silence”. This is where dominated individuals lose the means by which they critically respond to the culture that is forced on them by a dominant culture. In other words, it’s the way minorities and people of less power/money respond to being taught by the dominant culture. It is the culture of people that are silenced by the dominant culture. Freire made a point to help out these individuals who were “silenced” and made sure their opinions were voiced and heard by others.

LINKS USED FOR RESEARCH:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

http://www.education.miami.edu/ep/contemporaryed/Paulo_Freire/paulo_freire.html

Assignment 1a

1. What is your first name only (NOT last name): Miranda
2. Why are you taking this class and what do you hope to learn: I am taking this class for a few reasons. One, it is required for transfer and my GE. Two, I took Humanities 6 two semesters ago and really enjoyed it, and I was hoping to just gain more knowledge on the topic. I hope to learn about all sorts of new and interesting things!
3. How far do you live from SRJC main campus (go to google, maps to get the SPECIFIC answer; for this you type in your address and 1501 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa, CA to find the exact mileage. EXAMPLE: 2.6 miles from campus. The goal here is to use new tools available to us. You can always come back to edit this): I live18.3 miles away from the main campus, although I do live about 5 min away from the Petaluma campus ;)
4. What do you think of when you think "California"? Does this differ from what non-Californians think and if so, how? When I think of California, I think of sunny beaches, green mountains, and lots of tan people. This is also very stereotypical. I think non-Californians probably have the same view because those are all very big stereotypes about Cali.
5. Have you created a blog or webpage in the past? No, but I do have Myspace and Facebook

6. Regarding computers, are you on a mac or a pc? PC

7. What was your January 20th, 2009 like, or what do you remember of this day? I got up VERY early (I'm a late sleeper) and watched the President's Inaugeration, which was actually very exciting for me, since I voted for Mr. Barack Obama!