Freire in Blogland

Summary
In “The Spirit of Paulo Freire in Blogland: Struggling for a Knowledge-Log Revolution,” Christine Boese discusses two issues associated with blogs: first, the impact of a journalist’s personal blogs on professionally affiliated organizations, and, second, the “disruption” klogs cause in a small workplace. The discussion is grounded in the connection Boese makes between blog culture and Paulo Freire’s notion of “critical consciousness.” Boese’s expectations for the role of blogs in the workplace are not met, as media competition, posting anxiety (fear of publishing what ought not be published), and internet discomfort and unfamiliarity problematize many writers’ blogging practices. Finally, Boese suggests that, in line with Freirean theory, that blogging media set alongside mass media is the “key to an open society,” that it’s a checks-and-balances system on the Internet, and that it’s not yet functioning as it should—and can—because of hierarchical forces similar to those described in Freire’s work.

Reflection
I was excited to see Paulo Freire’s work as a part of this text because I’d recently finished Pedagogy of the Oppressed for the first time, and I wanted to see whether his ideas coalesced with blogging practices the way I’d anticipated. Having just finished a Freirean text, I could easily follow the examples Boese provided, and I found her Freirean addition to the critique to be quite useful as an argument to question blog censorship (or even discouragement, if we can’t justly call it “censoring”). Boese’s discussion of blogs as being “dialogic” (Friere) and as being “oriented toward humanization” resonated most with me because I’m interested in enhancing the distance learning classroom though Freirean pedagogy, and much of what Boese writes coincided with work I’ve been doing that discusses the importance of acknowledging student identity and making connections with them on a personal level in an effort to educate them and bring them into the ongoing conversation that is academia and scholarship.

Response
I’m interested in further investigating the notion that “[b]y design, logs are oriented toward humanization” mostly because there seems to be a stigma (especially in academia) that the computers depersonalize the classroom, that we sacrifice the face-to-face with the implementation of technology in the classroom, that even in PowerPoint presentations, the removal of the self is inevitable. I disagree. I think that the majority of students are more at ease posting comments than they are espousing them in person in a crowded classroom (each of my courses has twenty-two students), and this is direct result of their participation in technology outside of the classroom. One of Freire’s arguments in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is to meet people where they are—in the villages—and to make the education useful and relevant to them. If it doesn’t connect, they won’t connect. Online communication is comfortable for incoming college students, and making use of this has its advantages: they are able to speak freely and to create an identity in writing. In this way, technology-equipped and online classrooms afford students voices they might not have (or wish to withhold) in the traditional classroom.