Education for Liberation as part of broader liberation philosophy is not like conventional education which is designed in most cases to serve the interests of the colonialist, imperialist or internal elitist state apparatus.
Education for Liberation as a school of thought within liberation philosophy, anti-imperialist, critical pedagogy and de-colonial theory is neither a reformist nor a neutral model of education, it’s an eternal revolutionary process of liberation. It firmly opposes the educational systems which historically became vehicles of an oppressor’s vision of silencing, disorienting and miseducating oppressed peoples.
Conventional educational systems are never intended to produce critical thinkers or to liberate minds. They aim to produce submissive workers, passive citizens and loyal subjects who can help the system flourish. The conventional classroom as part of oppressor’s state machinery doesn’t have the liberation of the oppressed as part of its goals rather it sees the necessity of continual subjugation.
The classroom is never the starting point of education for liberation or for critical thinking. On the contrary, this can only begin when a journey towards self-discovery – as an individual or as a collective self – makes it possible for us to know who truly we are as rational beings and to go beyond what’s being taught. In other words, education for liberation is about bringing into life part of ourself – the history, culture and values which the system has been trying to bury in the dustbin of history. As once taught by the revolutionary thinker Paulo Freire, true education is a practice of freedom, a revolutionary process that enables the oppressed to get awakened.
This type of education is not about waiting for some miraculous or accidental state to make it happen, or praying to an invisible higher being to come and instil in us. Rather it’s about making conscious efforts to liberate ourselves from the lies which have been repeated to us for so long that they have become comfortable lies. Sometimes unlearning age-old lies about our history, our cultures and about ourselves is a most painful process, but we have to go through it so as to build stronger foundations for self-worth, pride, respect and resistance.
Understanding that schooling is not same as education, and that certification is not same as liberation, is the key to emancipation. Going to school does not necessarily mean you are capable of thinking critically nor of understanding your worth as a human being. In most cases, what we go through in our educational journey conditions us so that we spend the rest of our lives defending and trying to fit into a system which we had no hand in making and which was not created in our interests.
Schooling trains us to want validation from those who criminalize our very existence. But a truly liberatory educational environment makes it possible for us to learn together without any sense of being coerced. This understanding can lead us to questions like what type of education can help us get free? Give us a sense of purpose? Make us fully human? Take control of our own affairs?
Questioning helps us dive into “Know Thyself” philosophy that can help us understand the root causes of the moral evils that we face, and also understand those parts of our history and culture which have been intentionally erased by the system. Questioning makes it possible for us to discover the infinite part of our being and, more importantly, understand the system and how it works.
This is not an act of intellectual pleasure: it is necessary for the survival of the masses, especially the oppressed masses. It enables them to stay strong in the midst of the stormy system that tries its best to erase them. Not knowing yourself means not knowing your culture, history, community and collective place in the existential struggle which makes you vulnerable to control or even turned into your own enemy. Understanding how our identities have been shaped by the oppressive system is a first step towards the eternal process of liberation.
As one of key thinkers in the black consciousness struggle, Frantz Fanon argued that colonialism is not just the occupation of the land but the occupation of memory. It replaces, erases and distorts. The education for liberation takes historical consciousness as a matter that should be taken seriously because only through understanding the root causes of issues, can we have a clear futuristic picture of matters at hand. Understanding history is necessary because those behind the system have always written versions of history to glorify some and victimize others. Being conscious of the history beyond what the propaganda machines of the system teach is a necessary duty. Liberatory education teaches us to ask who benefits from our ignorance? Who authored the available books? Whose voices were silenced? Who is behind the system they want us to dearly serve?
Since conventional education has never been neutral and operates from biased ground, it gets us to become workers for the system rather than making us think for ourselves. It praises a blind following of the rules of the existing power rather than a questioning them. Education for liberation doesn’t teach us to get a room in the unjust system. Rather it encourages us to study why and how that unjust system was built in the first place and what sustains it.
Education for Liberation is not about getting a seat next to the master’s table,. It’s about destroying the master’s table while coming up with a completely new table that can be utilized justly. Therefore, education for liberation is an eternal process of removing the oppressive system and replacing it with a just one. The day we start to ask infinite questions in realms far beyond what we are being taught by the system is the starting point towards real freedom.
Education is more political than merely learning of facts. The type of education we get shapes the dynamics of power, possibility and identity. It determines our future whether we become liberated or remain in the chains of oppression. Without surgical examination of what’s being put forward by the system we can easily be brainwashed to become agents of our own destruction by loving those behind our troubles and hating the victims of injustice.
Liberatory education begins not within institutions but in the soul of the struggle. Self-discovery, historical truth, collective awakening and understanding are the bases of revolution. Liberatory education is grounded in the grassroots efforts of the oppressed masses. Informed masses who understand their power are not easy to control. This is what worries the system more than anything else. Getting to know yourself is not just a personal discovery. It’s the beginning of change – a change that makes liberation possible. Education for liberation is not the way to freedom, it’s the freedom itself.
By Mohammed Yagoub