Richard Miller
Brittany Scott February 22, 2013 Prof. Brittany Scott February 22, 2013 Prof. “The Stereotypes of Freire, Miller, Rodriguez, and Bordo” Having to read four stories from four well educated authors can leave you puzzled, but it can also open your mind to other forms of learning. The stories “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education by Paulo Freire, “The Dark Knight of the Soul” by Richard Miller, “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez, and “Beauty (Re)Discovers the Males Body” by Susan Bordo all take on different aspects of learning. But while analyzing my readings I noticed that each author made a stereotype for their view of learning.
Paulo Freire’s, said to be one of the most influential radical educators of our world viewings of literature were based on students and teachers. Freire created a system for teachers and students to have an equal power, but while doing his research him began to compare student teacher learning relations. Freire stereotyped students as takers (depositories) and teacher’s givers (depositors), but he also made it known that at times a student can be the giver. By students getting their education from a higher power, Freire feels as if it is depriving students of their creativity.
In a passage from Freire states “Oppression – overwhelming control – is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of education, which serves the interest of oppression, is also necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized, view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative powers. ” I believe that Freire use his concepts as examples. From the quote from the book, he made it known that we as students are oppressed by the higher authority, the teacher.
Through his explanations he made it known that we receive and the more that we just receive, we are only going to regurgitate. Which leave you to having no creativity. In Richard E. Miller”s “The Dark Knight of the Soul” he compared literature to massacres. In Millers first story He used the events that happened at Columbine High School. Stating that the two young fellas Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were all these things such as middle class, follower and leader, smart kid and a loser, and the even had alcohol fueled dreams but yet Miller felt as if more education and religion would have kept the two in line.
The young ma Harris was said to have applied to numerous of colleges but was rejected and he was also rejected from the Marine Corps from having some drug in his system, all of this being weeks before the big massacre. They were bright students and brilliant when it came to computers and math but only one of them had something going for themself and that was Klebold. Klebold was well known in school, had a date for prom and even visited a college wee we was going to be attending in the upcoming semester, but soon both boys worlds would meet and collide.
Miller basically said that if we read, write, and talk more that we are less likely to commit to deviance acts of violence. Richard Rodriguez used himself as a personal image but used his family as reflective image for the upcoming success he was striving for in “The Achievement of Desire. ” Although Rodriguez is Latino and his family is considered to be middle class, as he got older and his knowledge began to expand he began to look down on of those little or less knowledge of what he knew.
He was very distant from his family because of the love he ad from his books and the little interaction he would give them because he felt different; he felt like he could/should be better than them. As he got older his family laughed at him and called him names because he somewhat considered himself better than them. As he got older he began to critique himself for the distance, looking down on his family, and wanting to be so much of a scholar that he finally realized he was basically by himself.
Being in a school in another country, watching others and how they socialize made realize that he was by himself and that instead of investing so much time into books, trying to be like that teacher he should have invested his time into a family ad even having friends. In Susan Bordo’s “Beauty (Re) discovers the Male Body” she takes the pressure off of us woman and finally puts it on the man by comparing the judgment of the males’ picture and the females’ picture.
Bordo took the fire off of us females and finally put it of the male by comparing the likelihood of a female dressed a certain way in a photo on a billboard or in a magazine somewhere to a male dressed with more or less clothing. I can recall Bordo saying “Woman may dread being surveyed harshly… men are not supposed to enjoy being surveyed period. ” She feels that men are getting more comfortable wearing little to no clothing, being looked at as meat, or maybe even a sex symbol. In a commercial advertisement that Bordo seen read “men act and woman appear. A man can sit around and do work but not pay attention to any attention that is coming his way while a woman will show off her legs and her cleavage just to get that attention she is looking for. As time changes men are becoming more self-conscious of their appearance and what others may think of them. They are more willing to pose naked and take on certain roles in movies that they would not have in once upon a time. Whether it is their size, their looks, their shape, or even their masculinity both mean and woman are creatures of appearances and actions.
Each author has their own perception of imaging. Whether it is visual, hands on, or something that they actually may have been a part of. During their phases of teaching they all began to hypothesize or stereotype a human been in some shape or form of an object. They still stick to their idea and they go on to describe how and why they feel that we as people are what they are characterizing. Freire, Miller, Rodrigues, and Bordo were all well educated in their area of works. They also made it easy for me as a student to understand learning through their eyes.
